SysInfo^TM 5.0 Release Notes

Documentation Guide
Supported Systems
System Requirements
License Information
Major New Features/Improvements
- Platform Specific Changes
Platform Specific Notes
Known Issues

Documentation Guide

SysInfo 5.0 README - A guide to this product.
SysInfo 5.0 Release Notes (doc/RELEASE_NOTES.html) - Supported platforms, platform specific notes, and new features.
SysInfo 5.0 Installation (INSTALL.html) - Installation requirements and installation instructions including how to compile from source.

Supported Systems

The following table indicates what platforms are supported for this release of SysInfo. This platform list is subject to change with each dot dot release of SysInfo.

			Supported Class Information
OS	Mfg	Hard- ware	Gen	Ker	Sys	HW	SW	Part	Prt	Lic	NI	NIF	GUI	Notes
AIX 4.3 - 5.1	IBM	pSeries (RS6000)	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	See Platform Notes
FreeBSD 4.0 - 4.x		IA32 (x86)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	See Platform Notes
HP-UX 10.20 - 11.11	HP	hp9000	Y	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Versions prior to 10.20 should work but are untested. Version 11.11 is also known as 11i.
IRIX 6.5	SGI	MIPS	Y	N	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	IRIX 6.5 tested. IRIX 5.x - 6.4 may no longer work.
Linux 2.2, 2.4 (glibc 2.1 and later)		IA32 (x86)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Supported Distributions: Red Hat Linux 6.0 and later, Red Had Enterprise Linux 2.1 and later. Other distributions with Linux kernel 2.2 + glibc 2.1 and later should work. See Platform Notes
MacOS X 10.1 - 10.2	Apple	Power	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y¹	¹GUI requires Apple's X11 for OS X software. See Platform Notes for more details.
Solaris 2.6 - 9	Sun	SPARC	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	See Platform Notes
Solaris 7 - 9	Sun	IA32 (x86)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Tested on limited hardware.
KEY: Y - Yes, it's supported N - No, it's not supported P - Planned			SUPPORTED CLASS INFORMATION KEY: Gen - General Information (`--class general`) Ker - Kernel Information (`--class kernel`) Sys - SysConf Information (`--class sysconf`) HW - Hardware (device) Information (`--class hardware`) SW - Software Information (`--class software`) Part - Partition Information (`--class partition`) Prt - Printer Information (`--class printer`) Lic - License Information (`--class license`) NI - Network Information (`--class network`) NIF - Network Interface Information (`--class netif`) GUI - Graphical User Interface

System Requirements

The following are the system requirements for binary (precompiled) distributions:

Your system must be one of the systems specified in the Supported Systems table.
10 - 150 MB of disk space for the installed software.
Super-user (root) privileges are required for proper installation.
Run-time memory usage varies from 1 MB - 100 MB depending on system configuration and installed software.

License Information

The SysInfo license scheme allows no-cost use by fully accredited educational institutions. Government and military organizations, including research institutions primarily funded by government sources, are not eligible for free licenses. All other customers need to purchase the proper license. More information, including pricing is available by clicking here.

SysInfo will automatically allow 60-days of free use (with all features) for demonstration purposes when installed with no license. Just download and install it.

MagniComp^TM offers FREE SysInfo licenses to educational institutions. SysInfo will automatically detect if it's being run on a system in a domain known to be an education domain. This includes the following domains:

.edu
.edu.CC
.cc.state.us
.ac.CC
.uni-*.de

where CC is a country code. Please click here for more information on MagniComp^TM's Free Educational License Program.

Major New Features/Improvements

This is a major new release which adds support for MacOS X, the new SysInfo Service Protocol (SSP) for remote access, major architectural changes, and many others.

The following major features/changes were added in this release:

Apple MacOS X support has been added. All Apple systems which support MacOS X are supported. See MacOS X Platform Notes for more information.
Remote SysInfo access has been added. The new mcsysinfod(8) agent implements the new SysInfo Service Protocol (SSP). This agent allows a remote system to obtain SysInfo data over an IP connection. The Command Line Interface accepts the new --host hostname option to obtain SysInfo data via SSP from hostname rather than direct from the local system. The Graphical User Interface has a new Show Host button which does the equivalent.
Major internal architectural changes have been implemented to support the new Remote SysInfo access feature and future expandability. In particuliar, SysInfo has been split into a low level SysInfo Engine (SIE) and an upper level presentation layer. The SIE layer probes the local system and presents the raw data to the presentation layer or to the mcsysinfod(8) server which passes the data on to the presentation layer. The SIE layer is essentially the same stable mature code base as in previous releases. The presentation layer is a complete rewrite in perl. The report format remains unchanged except for additional fields and data classes. Other formats may have subtle differences.
The Network Information class has been added. This new data class provides information on general network configuration including DNS and NIS.
The Network Interface class has been added. This class provides highly detailed information about all detected network interfaces, both physical as well as virtual. Information includes IP address, subnet mask, network number, interface configuration flags, and link media status.
The License class has been added. This class provides detailed information about licenses found on the scanned system. Currently we support licenses provided by Macrovision's FLEXlm. We report licenses provided by FLEXlm server(s) running on the scanned system.
Distribution and installation of SysInfo has been revamped. There are now multiple SysInfo product downloads for each platform and each product consists of one or more packages which can be selected or deselected for installation. The main difference in product downloads is to seperate the SysInfo Software Developers Kit (SDK) files from the runtime files since most customers don't need the SDK.
Caching has been added to cache most class and license data. This significantly improves runtime performance when the same data is repeatedly requested.
More than 2500 devices have been added to our PCI device database. We now have over 11,000 entries.

The following additional features/changes were added in this release:

The canonical program name is now mcsysinfo rather than sysinfo. The sysinfo program name is now a link to mcsysinfo.
New Command Line Option parsing has been implemented. Some options now have short (-X) options. Long options can now be specified with either two dashes (--) or a single dash (-).
The man pages have been split up such that mcsysinfo(1) is now an overview of SysInfo with a guide to the other SysInfo man pages and documentation. The mcsysinfo(1) man page is new and contains the bulk of what was in sysinfo(1) in previous releases.
A new $HOME/.mcsysinforc file is now supported. Many command line options may be set in this file. See the new mcsysinforc(5) man page for details.
The GUI screen format default is now set to columns. The tree layout is still available.
Icons and fonts in the GUI have been improved.
VESA DDC support has been updated to version 3.0.
Added data to show the number of virtual CPU found in a system under General class data. This number typically indicates more CPUs than is physically present due to system features like Intel's hyperthreading CPUs.
Added OS Distribution Name, Short Name, and Version to the General class data.

Platform Specific Changes

AIX	RPM software detection has been added. Previously just the native OS software registry was scanned. If the `rpm` command is found, RPM is now scanned in addition to the native registry. Results from `oslevel` command are now cached to improve performance.
BSD/OS	Windriver BSD/OS support has been removed due to low demand.
FreeBSD	Software class data support as been added. Software registered with pkg_info(1) is reported.
HP-UX	Kernel class data now works on 64-bit systems.
MacOS X	Support for Apple's MacOS X has been added in this release.
Linux	Updated VESA DDC support to version 3.0. Fix several bugs causing core dumps.
Sun	Solaris 2.5.1 support has been dropped with this release. RPM software detection has been added. Previously just the native OS software registry was scanned. If the `rpm` command is found, RPM is now scanned in addition to the native registry. Improve the CPU Type in General class to be more accurate. Various system model and device definition updates including definetions for E10K, E15K, V100, and V120 models.

Many other changes and bug fixes were made. Please see the doc/CHANGES file in the distribution for a complete list of changes.

Platform Specific Notes

AIX (IBM)	Support for querying SCSI devices has been added as of SysInfo version 4.2. However, devices in use - especially disks in use - will not contain the additional SCSI data because AIX (through at least version 4.3.3) does not provide a means of querying a SCSI device which is already in use.
HP-UX	If you are running HP-UX 11.00 you must install a current HP Quality Pack or else the SysInfo Agent will not work. To obtain a current QP from HP, please visit http://www.esca.hp.com/us/. When obtaining software class information on HP-UX, SysInfo may appear to be sluggish taking several minutes to gather information depending on the speed and hardware configuration of the system. It may also use lots of memory (20-70MB). These problems are due to the use of the HP-UX swlist command which is both slow in outputting information and copious in its output.
MacOS X	The SysInfo GUI requires that you have Apple's X11 User for OS X and X11 SDK for OS X installed prior to installing SysInfo. These packages are not part of MacOS X 10.1 - 10.2 and must be downloaded from Apple at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx. Printer class data is supported on MacOS X 10.2 or later. It is not supported on earlier releases.
Sun Solaris	Solaris 7 and later: Special compilation care is required on Solaris 7 and later. See the Solaris 7 and later compilation notes in the Installation documentation. VESA Extend Display Identification Data (EDID) for monitors appears to only be available from Creator Series 2 (FFB2) and later Creator frame buffers. No sign of EDID data on any other Sun framebuffer so far.
Linux	Only IA32 (x86) 32-bit systems are currently supported. Support for hardware class information is provided for Linux systems which run the Linux 2.2 or later kernel. Only devices connected to the PCI bus will be recognized by SysInfo even if Linux recognizes the device. Devices connected to ISA, EISA, MicroChannel, or other legacy buses will not be identified by SysInfo. Kernel class data is not supported on Linux.
FreeBSD	On FreeBSD 4.0 and later, devices on PCI buses are recognized. On releases prior to 4.0, both PCI and ISA bus devices are recognized. There is no EISA support.

Known Issues

Monitor blinks when SysInfo is run. Certain graphics drivers on Linux will momentarily blink the attached monitor when SysInfo and other similiar programs such as ddcprobe are run. The blink occurs when the monitor is probed via the DDC protocol. The blinking is a bug in the graphics drivers themselves rather than a bug in the SysInfo. If you wish to avoid blinking monitors, specify the --avoidblink command line option. When specified, DDC probing will not be performed when graphics cards known to have this problem are installed. The list of known graphics cards known to have this problem is as follows:
- Matrox G200
- Intel 815

SysInfoTM 5.0 Release Notes

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