User changes in UNICOS 9.0.2

SCD is in the process of upgrading all the Crays (except shavano) from UNICOS 8.0.4 to UNICOS 9.0.2. This upgrade is expected to be completed around September 1996. As always, you can check the DailyB for the latest developments.

Note: Because shavano has an older Model D I/O Subsystem (IOS-D), it cannot be upgraded to UNICOS 9; it will remain at UNICOS 8.0.4.

This article summarizes some of the changes in UNICOS 9.0.2 that may affect users. These changes include items that are new, enhanced, changed, or deleted. Many of these changes were dictated by Cray Research's conformance to the XPG4 (X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 4) standard and to the POSIX standard.

The information here was gleaned from the Cray Research manual UNICOS 9.0 Release Overview, RO-5000 9.0. For more information on any item, check the relevant man page (in UNICOS 9.0.2) or the Release Overview manual (which has a very good index).

Fortran and C changes

• Languages and libraries: Languages and libraries are now part of the new "Programming Environment." You must initialize to use them:
  • csh/tcsh users: Put this in your .cshrc (after any other path commands):

         # initialize PrgEnv
         source /opt/modules/modules/init/csh
         module load modules PrgEnv
    

    Note that your .login is executed after your .cshrc, so you might need to move path settings from .login to .cshrc. Please contact the Consulting Office at consult1@ncar.ucar.edu or call at (303) 497-1278 if you need assistance.

  • sh/ksh users: Put this in your .profile (after any other path information):

         # initialize PrgEnv
         . /opt/modules/modules/init/ksh
         module load modules PrgEnv
    

• Open files:The default number of open files (per process) is 64. You can increase this up to 128 with the statement:

           /usr/bin/limit -v -p 0 -f 128
  

  If you need more open files, you will need to contact the Consulting Office.

Changes in commands

• New commands:
  • chkpnt_util: Examines a restart file.
  • ticksum: Provides a time-independent checksum of a file.
  • whoami: Displays the effective current login name.

• Enhanced commands:
  • emacs: Upgraded (from 18) to 19.28. There are some incompatibilites; see /usr/lib/emacs/README2.
  • man: New options -s and -l.
  • rcp: New -T option to report transfer times and rates.
  • tar: New -p option to restore archived files with the original permissions.

• Modified commands:
  • awk: Input records are parsed into fields as soon as they are read, which can change the way that fields are parsed--if the action statement of the awk program assigns the FS variable.

  • bc: Is now the Free Software Foundation version. The previous standard UNIX versions of bc and dc have been renamed to obc and odc

  • find: Changes affect -atime, -ctime, and -mtime.(See sidebar, "Changes to the 'find' utility in UNICOS 9.")

  • make: Default rule for converting .F to .f files was changed to call cf77 (which automatically calls gpp) instead of calling cpp. The CF77PP and CF77PPFLAGS macros are no longer defined. To pass options to the cf77 preprocessor, the FFLAGS macro can be used. Note that there are differences in the way that gpp and cpp operate. If you want to continue to have make call cpp for .F files, you must call cpp explicity or write your own make rule.

  • nm: Option -g replaces -f; option -A replaces -o.

  • od: Default output has been changed (from 8-byte words) to 2-byte words. You can use the -t option to receive output in 8-byte words.

  • pr: Several options have changed, including -L, -f, -l, -w, and -o.

  • ps: Output for the -f or -l options has a new column labeled C. This column is unused on UNICOS, but is required by the standard.

  • sh/ksh:
    • The built-in time command was renamed to shtime.
    • If built-in trap is invoked with no options or operands, the output is slightly different.
    • The built-in jobs command has slightly different output.
    • On a call to a function, $0 now remains unchanged instead of being reset to the name of the function.
    • The && and || operators now have equal precedence and are evaluated left to right.

  • vi: Several subtle POSIX changes to vi, which can be disabled with set noposix92.

  • yacc: Several minor changes.

• Deleted commands
  • ftref, ilimit, maxfile, plcopy, pshell

  • cl, dc (still around as odc), hconv, ldovl, lmedit, lmstak, nicem, nmodex, oawk, old, osh, whodo

New and changed system calls

• access: Can now access the effective user and group IDs.
• chdiri: New call that changes to a directory by using the inode number.
• openi: New call that opens a file by using the inode number.
• signal: Can now mask the signobdm signal.
• sigctl: Functionality is more limited. Consider using sigaction instead.
• unlink2: New call that is similar to unlink(2) but returns the number of bytes freed

Changes in subroutines

• See man memword for three new routines that do word-oriented memory operations.

• The memory manager routines formerly documented in man memmgr have been replaced with a new set of routines documented in man malloc. For example, _memcheck is now malloc_check. The new routines are similar to the old ones except that all sizes are in bytes rather than in words.

Miscellaneous changes

• $TMPDIR: TMPDIR is now in /tmp rather than /usr/tmp.

• ja: The "Job Accounting--Summary Report" is somewhat different. For example, it no longer reports General Accounting Units (GAUS) used.

• CALL MSWRITE(...NOWAIT): Fortran/C programs that call MSWRITE with the NOWAIT option should be recompiled.

• Multitasking: Due to compliance with POSIX threads, there may be changes in multitasked programs for the definition of a process and in the behavior of signals. Please see the Release Overview for details.

• Function prototypes: Several function prototypes in various system include files have changed. The affected include files are: nl_types.h, search.h, stdlib.h, stdio.h, string.h time.h, unistd.h.