mrt@MRT.MACH.CS.CMU.EDU (Mary Thompson) (01/03/91)
The following are our standard descriptions of Mach 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 Subject: Difference between Mach 2.5 and Mach 2.6 Date: Aug, 1990 Author: Mary R. Thompson ----------- Mach 2.6 is the release from Mt Xinu. It starts from basically the same kernel sources as Mach 2.5, to which they have added the newer Berkeley TCP/IP code and disk labeling. The Unix user environment is an integration of Berkeley "Tahoe" and CMU functionality, which will "look and feel" more like a standard BSD4.3 release. It is also a "stand-alone" release which will boot onto raw hardware. Other software packages in the distribution are: X(version 11.4), the Andrew File System, the Andrew Toolkit, ISIS, a toolkit for building distributed and fault-tolerant applications, Camelot 1.0, a distributed transaction-processing system, and several of the GNU utilities. This release requires recipients to have an AT&T source code license, but the Mt Xinu Mach license will include any other licenses (e.g. NFS) that are required. This release comes with a complete set of the Berkeley Manuals as well as the CMU manuals and documentation for the user provided programs that are included. It also contains the sources for all the programs in the system, unlike the Mach 2.5 release that does not include sources for unmodified BSD 4.3 programs, X11 or Gnu-emacs. The release is for Vaxes, Sun3s and IBM-RTs and i386 machines. Mt Xinu provides some user support with the release, and will contract for additional support services if desired. This release has been available since late spring 1990, and the approximate cost is $3000. Send requests for Mach2.6 to mtxinu-mach@mtxinu.com. Subject: Research Distribution of Mach 3.0 Author: Mary R. Thompson Date: Sept. 21, 1990 We are just beginning to distribute the pure kernel with or without the single server UNIX environment to outside research groups. Note that we are not providing a complete operating system and this should not be thought of as an upgrade from Mach 2.5 or 2.6 MSD. In fact, if you are not already running one of those systems, it will be hard to build or run Mach 3.0. The proper receipients of this system are folks who want to use just a mico-kernel (no Unix stuff) or people who want to build programs as part of this environment. This is not really ready to be run as your only operating system. It is a bit slower and less reliable than either Mach 2.5 or 2.6 and is subject to frequent changes. Access to the UNIX server requires Berkeley licensing as in Mach 2.5, but access to the kernel itself, Mach libraries, etc. does not. Currently the device drivers, which are part of the kernel, require licenses from the manufacturers as follows: Vax - BSD or Ultrix source license Sun 3 - SunOS 3.5 source license PMAX - No license required i386 - No license required The initial distribution consists of sources only for the kernel, UNIX server and some Mach programs. The UNIX server provides only the functionality of the UNIX kernel. Neither the sources nor binaries are supplied for the complete UNIX operating environment. The Mach 3.0 kernel + the UNIX server is compatible with UNIX BSD4.3 programs, but not with all Mach 2.5 programs. This distribution is done only by electronic transfer over the internet. To get the licensed parts of the software our Mach 2.5 SUP program must be used. The unlicensed parts will eventually be available via ftp. The system is under active development both at CMU and OSF and all the pieces are subject to change. Thus you should plan on doing periodic sup updates to keep up with bug fixes, additions and other changes. At the moment the system only builds with Mach 2.5 versions of make and cpp. Possibly other Mach 2.5 tools are needed as well as our include files. If after reading the rest of this description you are interested in suping the Mach 3.0 sources, send mail to mach@cs.cmu.edu for further information. Descriptions of the various pieces of the Mach 3.0 system follow. Pure or Micro Kernel The Mach 3.0 micro-kernel provides the following functions: virtual memory managment, device drivers, inter-process comunication, and scheduling primitives. It does not provide a file system, tty i/o, network support or other UNIX features like signal and UNIX tasks. The pure kernel alone does not give you a usable operating system. The Mach 3.0 kernel currently runs on the following platforms: Vax, Sun 3, DecStations 3100 & 5100 and various i386 boxes. The pure kernel has been running at CMU since early 1989 on the Vax. Recent work in this area includes the ports to the other machine types, a new implementation of IPC, the addition of the processor-set support from Mach 2.5 and the removal of AT&T derived code. Single-Server environment The UNIX single server complements the Mach micro-kernel by providing ufs and nfs file system support, UNIX networking code, UNIX tty and signal support. Together they provide an environment that is equivalent to the UXIX kernel. Most BSD4.3 binaries should continue to run on this system. Not all Mach 2.5 programs will run with out recompilation or changes to conform to the new IPC semantics. Since March of 1989 we have had a usable operating environment running on top of the pure MACH 3.0 kernel. This environment consists of a multi-thread UNIX server running as a user application and a transparent emulation library which resides in each UNIX task. The UNIX server supports a complete BSD4.3 environment but at the cost of requiring an AT&T license. POE Another effort to provide a non-licensed system environment has been started recently called POE. POE is a user application which supplies support for a simple user environment, such as editing, compiling and bootstrapping, using the existing transparent emulation library used in the single-server environment. POE does not aspire to be a complete UNIX kernel environment, but only to give you enough tools to start building traditional "user level applications". It is not being distributed yet, but will probably be ready within a month for Sun3 and i386 platforms. NeXT I don't really know much about the NeXT release. They started with Mach 2.0 added the NFS support and have picked up various kernel improvemnts since that they thought were useful. I beleive that it is either difficult or impossible to get source code from them and CMU does not distribute it, so if you want to do kernel hacking you are in trouble. Their user environment includes Unix, but goes way beyond with all the fancy graphics and sound and object programing environment stuff. OSF/1 snapshots. These are similiar to Mach 2.5 releases but with additions to the user environment. They are available to OSF members for Vaxes and DecStation 3100 and maybe i386. This is currently the only Mach 2.5/6 distribution for the DecStation 3100's. Future Releases CMU will be working primarily on Mach 3.0. Areas of priority are: documentation, adding user environment binaries and sources. Adding more licesnse-free code. Possibly tring to release stable check-pointed versions. Mary Thompson Project Mach Distribution Manager
alan@encore.encore.COM (Alan Langerman) (01/09/91)
In article <1991Jan2.205410.19793@cs.cmu.edu>, mrt@MRT.MACH.CS.CMU.EDU (Mary Thompson) writes: |> OSF/1 snapshots. |> These are similiar to Mach 2.5 releases but with additions to the user environment. They are available to OSF members for Vaxes and DecStation 3100 |> and maybe i386. This is currently the only Mach 2.5/6 distribution for |> the DecStation 3100's. OSF/1 Release 1.0 has gone out the door. It is Release 1.1 that is entering the snapshot stage. Also, OSF/1 runs on three reference platforms, the DECstation 3100, the Intel 802 (not sure if I have the model number correct, it's a 386 box) and the Encore Multimax (National Semi 32532, 2-20 processors). Alan
kevins@chinacat.osf.org (Kevin Sullivan) (01/10/91)
In article <13769@encore.Encore.COM>, alan@encore.encore.COM (Alan Langerman) writes: |> In article <1991Jan2.205410.19793@cs.cmu.edu>, mrt@MRT.MACH.CS.CMU.EDU (Mary Thompson) writes: |> |> OSF/1 snapshots. |> |> These are similiar to Mach 2.5 releases but with additions to the user environment. They are available to OSF members for Vaxes and DecStation 3100 |> |> and maybe i386. This is currently the only Mach 2.5/6 distribution for |> |> the DecStation 3100's. |> |> OSF/1 Release 1.0 has gone out the door. It is Release 1.1 that is entering |> the snapshot stage. |> |> Also, OSF/1 runs on three reference platforms, the DECstation 3100, the |> Intel 802 (not sure if I have the model number correct, it's a 386 box) |> and the Encore Multimax (National Semi 32532, 2-20 processors). |> |> Alan Actually it is the Intel 302. The following is the full hardware configuration for the 386 Intel 302 with 80386 processor and 80387 floating-point co-processor IBM AT compatible bus Western Digital 1007 V hard disk controller Wangtek tape controller Intel iMX-LAN/586 Ethernet board or the Western Digital 8013 Ethernet board That is the offical line from the OSF/1 Release 1.0 Release Notes. Internal to OSF we have run on 386/486, Dells, Compaqs and HP Vectras with appropriate hardware configurations. Other contributed ports include HP DN2500 Intel i860 Intergraph 16-MB InterServe 6000 These "contributed ports" are provided on the Release tape as unsupported code. For more license information regarding OSF/1 1.0 or other OSF technologies please contact OSF Direct Channel (617)621-8700. Kevin Sullivan