OpenSS7 Linux STREAMS (LiS) -- alpha release introduction. 2006-03-02 README-alpha,v 1.1.2.1 2006/03/05 04:02:56 brian Exp Copyright (c) 2001-2006 OpenSS7 Corporation. Copyright (c) 1997-2000 Brian Bidulock See the end for copying conditions (for this file). Linux STREAMS (LiS) =================== This is an incremental release of OpenSS7 Linux STREAMS. The purpose of this release is to provide the technical community with a detailed comparison point for the OpenSS7 Linux Fast-STREAMS releases, which are superior and that deprecates this package. THIS CODE HAS TESTED UNSTABLE. LOADING OR EXECUTING CODE IN THIS RELEASE WILL CRASH YOUR MACHINE AND COULD INADVETENTLY CAUSE DAMAGE. THERE IS NO WARRANTY. The following is an extract from the Installation and Reference Manual: 5.4.2 Alpha Releases -------------------- "Alpha" release are releases that have received little to no testing, or that have been tested and contains known bugs or defects that make the package unsuitable even for testing. The purpose for an "alpha" release are the same as for the pre-alpha release, with the additional purpose that it is an earily release of partially functional code that has problems that an external developer might be willing to fix themselves and contribute back to the project. "Alpha" release packages ship containing warnings that executing the code can crash machines and might possibly do damage to systems upon which it is executed. 4.4 Bugs ======== Linux STREAMS (LiS), both releases from OpenSS7 and GCOM, contain many known bugs. These are unstable releases. Although there are no bugs known to be harmful, the OpenSS7 Project has tested the release and found defects that cause the kernel to lock or crash. Use at your own risk. Remember that there is NO WARRANTY(1) and that the package is no longer actively maintained. This software has tested unstable. As such, it can crash your kernel. Installation of the software could irreparably mangle your header files or Linux distribution in such a way as to make it unstable or unusable. Crashes can lock your system and rebooting the system might not repair the problem. You can loose all the data on your system. Because this software locks or crashes under a large number of test cases in the test suite, simply running the test cases can cause locks or crashes. The resulting unstable system could destroy computer hardware or peripherals making them unusable. You could void the warranty on any system on which you run this software. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. 4.4.1 Known Bugs ---------------- Linux STREAMS (LiS) has many known bugs. Under some architectures, the test cases in the conformance test suite cause the kernel to lock or crash. Linux STREAMS (LiS) contains many races and defects and is unsuitable for production environments. This section provides a summary of some (but not all) known defects. 1. A substantial group of test cases in the POSIX conformance test suite fail. This is largely due to non-fatal defects in LiS. 2. A number of test cases fail under any architecture and result in a kernel lock. In particular if a significant number of modules are pushed onto a Stream using I_PUSH, the kernel will lock when the Stream is closed. The number of modules pushed to cause a crash depends on the speed of the machine upon which the test case is run. The test case in the test suite pushes 64 modules and has always resulted in a kernel lock regardless of the machine speed upon which it was tested. Pushing 20 modules results in a kernel lock on some of the OpenSS7 project 2.57GHz test machines. As a result, any test case that pushes a number of modules, and the performance tests (that push modules for measurement) will cause the kernel to lock. 3. A large number of test cases fail when running under an SMP kernel, regardless of the number of processors on the test system. These test cases cause the kernel to lock. The kernel locks are apparentlhy due to locking defects in the implementation. None of these implementation defects have been repaired. 4. The original LiS-2.18.0 release from GCOM has a large number of defects that were repaired in the OpenSS7 LiS-2.18.1 release. 5. The original LiS-2.18.0 release has defects in the description of data types and handling under 64-bit architectures. 32-bit compatibility for 64-bit architectures is all but non-existent in the LiS-2.18.0 release. Because of binary compatibility issues, many of these defects persist in the OpenSS7 LiS-2.18.1 and LiS-2.18.2 releases. LiS is largely unusable in a 64-bit and almost completely unusable in a mixed architecture. The work-around for these defects is to not use LiS at all: use the OpenSS7 Linux Fast-STREAMS release instead. The OpenSS7 Linux Fast-STREAMS, being a completely independent implemenation, does not suffer from this extensive set of LiS defects. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) See section NO WARRANY under *Note GNU General Public License::. ========================================================================= Copyright (c) 2001-2006 OpenSS7 Corporation. Copyright (c) 1997-2000 Brian Bidulock All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working professionally. Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. GOVERNMENT RESTRICTED RIGHTS. If you are licensing this Software on behalf of the U.S. Government ("Government"), the following provisions apply to you. If the Software is supplied by the Department of Defense ("DoD"), it is classified as "Commercial Computer Software" under paragraph 252.227-7014 of the DoD Supplement to the Federal Acquisition Regulations ("DFARS") (or any successor regulations) and the Government is acquiring only the license rights granted herein (the license rights customarily provided to non-Government users). If the Software is supplied to any unit or agency of the Government other than DoD, it is classified as "Restricted Computer Software" and the Government's rights in the Software are defined in paragraph 52.227-19 of the Federal Acquisition Regulations ("FAR") (or any successor regulations) or, in the cases of NASA, in paragraph 18.52.227-86 of the NASA Supplement to the FAR (or any successor regulations). ========================================================================= Commercial licensing and support of this software is available from OpenSS7 Corporation at a fee. See http://www.openss7.com/ ========================================================================= # vim: ft=README tw=72 nocindent nosmartindent formatoptions+=tcqlorn