Hello, Emacs, this is an -*- Indented-Text -*- file!
$Id: Changes,v 1.4 1994/04/14 18:02:13 wollman Exp $
This file is intended to keep track of important kernel and user
changes in FreeBSD between releases. Entries are in reverse
chronological order; userids can be decoded with the chart at the end
- I/O clustering is implemented for all block devices. This should
substantially improve the performance of disk drives which don't
have write-behind caches, especially on IDE drives. (dyson/davidg)
- Allow mbufs to point to other ``external'' objects than just
clusters, and add in performance enhancements for NFS from Yuval
- Yet more VM system improvements. (dyson/davidg)
o 4-MB systems should now spend substantially less time in the VM
o General cleanup and some portability fixes.
o A new system process is now responsible for keeping page
statistics, rather than making the pagedaemon do it, which was
getting impractical. Performance is improved on small-memory
o Process resource usage counters are now properly updated for
- Fixed bugs in truncating mapped files. (dyson/davidg)
- A new version of the interrupt-handler glue code has been added, which
is faster and architecturally cleaner than the previous version. The
beginnings of better profiling support have also been added. (bde/davidg)
- This file moved from /sys/i386/doc to /sys/doc. (wollman)
- Bounce buffers have been implemented for ISA devices which use
DMA (although not all devices can make use of it yet). (davidg/dyson)
- The set*id() functions have been changed (wollman):
o A significant security hole involving the POSIX saved uid and gid
o The setreuid() and setregid() functions now never change the real
ID, but rather only ensure that you will be able to change the
EFFECTIVE ID back to what you specified as a real ID. This change
breaks the setruid() and setrgid() functions, which were a bad
idea in a POSIX environment anyway. Logic taken from 4.4BSD.
o The SUGID process flag bit has been implemented as in 4.4, and the
`ps' program modified to print it out.
- The scheduling algorithm has been changed to penalize
processes that fork a lot, like `make', which should enhance
interactive performance during such operations significantly.
- MCLBYTES is now 4096, so each mbuf cluster is given a whole page, in
preparation for page flipping. (davidg/dyson)
- More VM system improvements (dyson/davidg):
o Pre-faulting of initial pages on process startup and mmap (faster
than starting and immediately taking a fault).
o Even more efficient physical map (pmap) code.
o Pageouts are now clustered, similar to pagein clustering in 1.1.
o The pageout code is more efficient and keeps better statistics.
o The procfs can now provide more information from the VM system.
o Some pager bugs have been fixed.
- Improved IP checksum and bzero routines. (bde/dyson)
- The Mitsumi CD-ROM driver is more careful about recognizing Ethernet
- `struct tty's now allocated dynamically, and ring buffers can be
---------------------------
Between 1.1 BETA and 1.0.2:
---------------------------
- QIC-40 and QIC-80 tapes are now supported, using the `ft' driver
from Jim Babb. (alm/nate)
- Improved lpt driver, should no longer lock up when lprm is done on
an active job. Fixed up the probe routine so that it works on most
if not all printers now. (csgr/rgrimes)
- Substantial changes to system configuration; you MUST re-build
`config' before attempting to build a 1.1 kernel. (nate/martin)
- Improved the quality of the information given to the user when
a fatal trap occurs. (davidg)
- Added support in the if_ed driver for the WD8013W, WD8003W, and
- Change to generic console code to eliminate console hangs with all
- Upgrade to new version of syscons which handles the `hanging console'
problem and adds some new features and code cleanup. (nate)
- Various TCP bugs fixed - don't forward loopback packets; Nagel
congestion avoidence - immediately ack small packets. (davidg)
- TCP debugging code is now truly optional, thus reducing kernel size
when it is disabled (the default). (davidg)
- Because the `sio' FIFOs are now configurable, the `com' driver is no
longer supported. (team sighs with relief)
- Performance and stylistic improvements to the `sio' serial driver.
Probe code now works somewhat better for oddball devices. The 16550
FIFO length is now configurable using `flags' in the config
- Performance improvements and complete implementation of POSIX VMIN
and VTIME for the generic TTY code. (ache/bde)
- Crash dumps on SCSI disks now work and are standard. (rgrimes/davidg)
- QMAGIC is now the official default executable format. (davidg)
- Network booting is now supported, as is booting from DOS. (martin)
- Local LDTs are now supported for WINE (based on work by John Brezak).
- DDB will now print symbolic arguments and line numbers in
backtraces (from John Brezak). (davidg)
- Added four pattern memory test to eliminate problems with buggy
chipsets that incorrectly map memory, and to find problems with
defective memory. The memory sizing code has been improved to
further eliminate problems with buggy chipsets/BIOSs. (davidg)
- USE_486_WRITE_PROTECT is now gone; the system will automatically
detect 486 CPUs and behave accordingly. (davidg)
- Added SysV IPC, messaging, and semaphore code by Danny Boulet.
- Because of the VM system changes, Paul Kranenburg's process
filesystem is now MANDATORY in order for `ps' and friends to be able
to dig up process information which has been paged out. (davidg)
- Substantial VM system improvements: (dyson/davidg)
o FreeBSD once again works on 4-MB machines.
o Maximum and default size limits set to reasonable values.
o The user area is now in the process address space, and can
now be paged out along with the rest of the process.
o Process page tables can now be paged out.
o The physical map (pmap) module has been mostly rewritten for
efficiency, and is considerably faster than it used to be.
o The pageout system now actually implements modified LRU.
o Process RSS soft limits implemented. Hooks are in place for
o Pagers can now do multiple-page operations ("page fault
clustering"), and page fault read behind and read ahead
have been implemented to take advantage of this.
o The vnode pager no longer drags pages through the buffer
cache, eliminating an expensive memory copy and flushing
o When the system runs out of swap space, the faulting process
is killed off (with a message to syslog); the old code would
o Swap space allocation is much more efficient, and swap
striping actually works now. It's now possible for every
last block of swap space to be used before the systems runs
o The pagedaemon's algorithms are considerably improved, thus
reducing the amount of CPU time used by the pagedaemon.
o All kernels MUST now load at virtual address 0xf010000, and
the lower 640k is reclaimed for system use. This removes
the 640K kernel size limit.
o VM object cache size is now dynamic and a function of the
kernel `maxusers' parameter.
o Memory in the I/O hole is explicitly marked non-cacheable.
- Added 3C509 driver written by Herb Peyerl. (ats/nate)
- Added a new `wd' driver which does a much better job of probing, handles
stray interrupts better, and supports multiple controllers. In addition
this driver supports DOS partitions much better and conforms to ATA specs
much better. NB: configuration lines for this driver are different
than those for pervious versions; see a GENERIC for details.
- Added support in the if_ed driver for the Toshiba ethernet cards.The
support must be enabled with an "options TOSH_ETHER" in the config
file. Done it this way, because I don't know how widespread the cards
- Added support in the if_ed driver for the SMC Ultra via patches from
- Updated Mitsumi CD driver to work with FX models. (jkh/Gary
- Add extended formats set to floppy driver, improve autoconfiguration,
add "fdformat" utility for floppy formatting.
The format of floppy disk minor numbers has changed, thus
necessitating a new `MAKEDEV fd'. (ache/joerg/Serge Vakulenko)
- Add XNTPD to contrib section, and (un-compilable) kernel support for
same to /sys/kern. (wollman)
- Use linker-constructed sets to initialize certain system tables
rather than manually enumerating all the options in the source files.
This makes certain pseudo-devices and all image activators drop-in at
link time, if desired. (wollman)
- Added YP code from Theo Deraadt. (paul/nate)
- Make all mandatory options ``standard''. (wollman)
- Update `wt' driver to support more devices and controllers. The
driver will also auto-detect tape density on models which support
it. The structure of `wt' device minor numbers has changed;
`MAKEDEV wt' must be run to create the new device nodes.
- Re-design execve() system call to allow for multiple ``image activators''
which recognize and load various file formats. Currently only
a.out and interpreted formats are recognized. (davidg)
- Provide the address of the faulting reference to signal handlers, to
make life easier for smart garbage-collection algorithms. (hsu)
- New, improved process tracing code from Sean Eric Fagan. (davidg)
- Re-organize locore into several different source files according to
- On panic, don't reboot right away but give the user some time to
abort the reboot or at least write down the panic message. (davidg)
- Kernel timezone handling is now delegated to an external program,
`adjkerntz'. No more bogus summer time jumps. (ache)
- Separate all IP-related variables that users might want to modify into
netinet/in_var.c. (wollman)
- New, redesigned SCSI system; should run faster and have fewer bugs.
- Make it possible to mmap(2) /dev/mem. (julian)
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