Copyright (c) 1986 Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.

@(#)softonvax.t 5.5 (Berkeley) 04/11/86

Berkeley Software for UNIX\(dg on the VAX\(dd

4.3BSD version of April 1986 .R

.FS \(dg\s-2UNIX\s0, \s-2UNIX/32V\s0, \s-2UNIX\s0 System III, and \s-2UNIX\s0 System V are trademarks of AT&T Bell Laboratories. .FE .FS \(dd\s-2VAX, UNIBUS, MASSBUS\s0, and \s-2DECwriter\s0 are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. .FE

A new version of the \s-2UNIX\s0 system for the \s-2VAX\s0 family of computers is available from the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California at Berkeley. This is an updated package of software for \s-2UNIX/32V\s0\(dg licensees, and includes a kernel for the \s-2VAX\s0 with many bug fixes and improved performance as well as many other programs. This document highlights the differences between the September, 1983 distribution known as 4.2BSD and the April, 1986 release known as 4.3BSD. A more detailed explanation of the differences is contained in the documents ``Changes to the Kernel in 4.3BSD'', and ``Bug Fixes and Changes in 4.3BSD''. This document also summarizes the hardware supported by the distribution.

The new release may be used in two ways: as a bootstrap system for new hardware (or to bootstrap systems that were previously running 3BSD, 4.0BSD, 4.1BSD, or \s-2UNIX/32V\s0), or to update a system running 4.2BSD. Hardware configurations supported for booting are described below and in the document ``Installing and Operating 4.2BSD''. The things most notable for sites that are updating 4.3BSD to this new release are:

The performance of the system as a whole has been improved to be at least as good as that of 4.1BSD, and in many instances is better. The system now provides full support for the Xerox Network System network communication protocols. Most of the remaining Internet dependencies in shared kernel code have been removed or generalized. A new Internet name domain server has been added to allow sites to administer their name space locally and export it to the rest of the net. The C and Fortran 77 compilers have been modified so that they can generate single precision floating point operations. The Fortran 77 compiler and associated I/O library have undergone extensive changes to improve reliability and performance. The symbolic debugger, dbx, has been dramatically improved. Dbx works on C, Pascal and Fortran 77 programs. Support has been added for the VAX 8600 and 8650 processors with MASSBUS and UNIBUS peripherals, but not CI peripherals. Many bug fixes have been made. System support in 4.3BSD

As distributed the kernel supports process sizes with a program size of up to 6 megabytes. The hard limit on the size of data and stack has been raised to roughly 17 megabytes with a soft limit of 6 megabytes. The soft limit may be increased up to the hard limit with the csh limit command. These numbers can be increased up to 64 megabytes per process segment on systems willing to dedicate increased disk space for paging the process image.

The system now maintains the number of rows and columns associated with each terminal or window on the system. If these parameters are changed, all processes associated with the terminal or window receive a ``window size change'' signal. Several utilities including rlogin and vi have been modified to catch and respond to this signal.

Major new utilities in 4.3BSD

This section describes some of the additional user-level software available with this distribution; we describe only software that is not part of the 4.2BSD distribution. Full documentation and source for this (and all supplied) software is made available with the distribution.

The B language from the Center for Mathematical Research in Amsterdam has been added as user contributed software. This augments the existing set of languages already present on 4.2BSD including C, Fortran 77, Pascal, Franz Lisp, APL, ICON, and FP.

There are two new screen based editors in 4.3BSD. In addition to the venerable modeful editor vi, are added two modeless editors. The first is GNU emacs, full of functionality but somewhat big and slow. The other is jove from Jonathan Payne, a mean and lean editor in the modeless tradition.

An alternative to Mail is now available in the fourth rewrite of the Rand mail handler, mh (version 6.3 with Berkeley modifications). For those users that spend half their day reading mail, this mail handler backed by an 8650 is up to the job.

Hardware support in 4.3BSD

The system runs on VAX-11/725, VAX-11/730, VAX-11/750, VAX-11/780, VAX-11/785, VAX-8600, and VAX-8650 processors and supports the standard DEC mass storage peripherals: RM03, RM05 RP06, RP07, RA60, RA80, RA81, RM80, RL02, and RK07 disks; TS11, TU80, TE16, TU45, TU77, TU78, and TU81 tapes. DEC standard bad block handling is supported on all the DEC disk drives except the RL02.

The EMULEX SC21-V and SC31 UNIBUS storage module disk controllers are supported with AMPEX 9300 and CDC 9766 300 Megabyte disk drives, AMPEX Capricorn 330 Megabyte Winchester disk drives, FUJITSU 160 Megabyte Winchester drives. In addition, the SC31 supports FUJITSU Eagle 404 Megabyte Winchester drives. The EMULEX SC750 (emulating the DEC RH750 MASSBUS interface) and the SC780 and SC7000 disk controllers (emulating the DEC RH780 MASSBUS interface) are supported with the CDC 9775, 9766, and 9730 disk drives, AMPEX 9300 and Capricorn disk drives, and the FUJITSU Eagle 404 Megabyte Winchester disk drive. Bad blocking support is provided on all disks attached to an EMULEX UNIBUS or MASSBUS controller. The EMULEX TC-11 tape controller (that emulates a TM11 DEC UNIBUS controller), the EMULEX TC-7000 tape controller (that emulates a TU77 DEC MASSBUS controller), and System Industries Model 9700 tape drive (that emulates a DEC TU45 controller on the UNIBUS) are supported.

To bootstrap the system, a supported disk and tape drive are needed. To maintain all the system sources and binary programs, at least 120 Megabytes of disk storage is required.

For terminal interfaces, the standard DEC DZ11, DMZ32, DHU11, and DMF32 terminal interfaces are supported. In addition, DH11 emulators such as the ABLE DH/DM (that replaces the ABLE DMAX) and EMULEX CS-11 are supported. The system also provides support for standard line printer interfaces emulting the DEC LP11 or the parallel port of the DMF32. Support for serial printers such as a DECwriter-III and printer-plotters such as those made by BENSON/VARIAN or VERSATEC is available with standard drivers.

This release supports any number of any of the devices described above. The devices may be placed arbitrarily on any available MASSBUS and UNIBUS interfaces. For the 8600 and the 8650, adapters may be on either of the SBIA's. The system configures at boot time, locating available devices, using a system configuration compiled into the kernel. The configuration description contains all the information about the topology of the machine and the addresses at which the various devices are located. It is possible (and desirable) to write the description using ``pattern matching'' to only partially specify some of the interconnects. The bootstrap passes the identity of the load device to the kernel, which will use it as the root file system.

The system configuration program sizes system data structures based on a specification of the maximum number of active users to be present on the system. To build a system for a larger or smaller workload you only need change this single constant. The system also initializes the parameters to the paging system and sizes its file system buffer cache based on the amount of available memory.

The system supports access to the 11/780 and 11/785 console floppy disk, the 8600 and 8650 RL02 console disk drive, and the 11/725, 11/730, and 11/750 TU58 console cassette tape. However, reliable access to the 11/750 TU58 cassette interface is possible only on a totally quiescent system.

What this distribution does not contain

Two new system facilities that had been planned for the 4.2BSD release were dropped in order that the 4.2BSD system might be distributed at the earliest possible time. We mention them here mostly to point out that they have still not been added to this system:

Enhanced memory management support. This being the support of large address space processes, sharing of memory between processes, and mapping disk files to and from a process' address space. Portals and wrapping. These two notions are part of the original interprocess communication design. Their implementation required extensive reorganization to the system.

Also planned, but still not available is remote file system support. At the time of the release, no single remote file system scheme fully addressed the wide spectrum of semantic correctness and reasonable performance. Like networking, we do not expect that any single remote file system will ever solve all needs. Consequently we are working to design a framework that will support the full range of remote file system protocols just as we did with multiple network protocol support.