We ran a story the other day regarding the future patches for IRIX that would only be available via special contracts. SGI sent OSNews the following statement regarding the patches/maintance releases and feature streams (==updates that include new features) for IRIX 6.5.“SGI employs a release stream model for IRIX 6.5 that allows users to receive continuous upgrades without disruption to their operating environments. The IRIX 6.5 maintenance release stream contains bug fixes and new hardware support with guaranteed forward and backward compatibility with other IRIX 6.5m releases. The IRIX 6.5 feature release stream contains the absolute latest feature developments as soon as they become available. Both the maintenance and feature streams are released on a regular, quarterly basis. Over time, selected features from the IRIX 6.5 feature release stream may be migrated into the maintenance release stream, provided this can be done without any threat to binary compatibility. — SGI”
SGI Comments on IRIX’s Release Model
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Eugenia Loli
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And is that a good idea on production equipment? Or am I just confused by market speak?
Its not quite the same as M$ checking your machine and uploading software to it, installing the software, and so on. SGI provides upgrades either on CD or downloadable, for regular use, and you choose when and what to install. They also have a service called ESP, which basically involves them remotely administrating the software setup on your machine, so you can just sit back and get your work done. Of course I would never want such a thing, but I can imagine a number of large corps. that might find it useful.
This is just SGI”s standard speech about the quarterly update policy for IRIX. Doesn’t address the fact that service contracts are now required for *any* of those updates. Unfortunately, the cost of one year for a SGI service contract could pay for several PCs or Macs, which are arguably more powerful. I’m not planning on seeing many IRIX boxes updated past 6.5.17m.
At least this proves that OSNews is an important press outlet, no?
I was gonna say the same. LOL
Seeing that SGI are going to be releasing their “big iron” linux box’s in the 1st Quarter next year will they be rolling their own distro. like sun or just using one of the current distro’s that has an Itanium port but using the custom SGI Linux kernel?
By the way Redhat are working on “Advanced Workstation” for the Itanium 2 (with help from HP)
No, SGI has repeatedly said that they will _not_ release their own Linux distribution. If you read their documentation (available at their OSS website at http://oss.sgi.com/), Red Hat seems to be the distribution that will come bundled with those IA-64 systems.
What they’ve done in the past, and probably in the future, is supply a cloned copy of the Redhat Install Disc 1 with SGI specific packages on it. You’d boot off the SGI disc, which looks more or less like the Redhat install (with SGI logos), select your packages as usual. It then asks for Redhat Linux Disc 1 (the standard one), Disc 2, then it’s own disc back. It then adds its custom rpms (xfstools, an xfs kernel, etc) and finishes.
In a previous role I regularly updated 300+ SGI live running workstations starting from 6.5.3m, and keeping them up to date, all with very few issues; note that I said few, not none!
You wouldn’t do this unless you first tested it on a non production machine of course. Good software is not an excuse for stupidity.
The maintenance/feature stream idea is a great idea.
IMHO Inst/swmgr is by far the best software management system out there. Leaves rpm,pgkadd,swinstall etc in the shade.
Brian