New driver features in DDI 8 and SVR5

The SVR5 kernel is based on the SCO SVR5 2.0 kernel with additions of SCO OpenServer 5 technology as appropriate.

The native ddi versions for SVR5 are ddi: 8, ddi: 8mp, sdi: 4, and mdi: 2. Drivers that use ddi: versions from ddi: 5 and sdi: 2 forward can be installed, although we recommend that drivers be written to conform to ddi: 7 and sdi: 3 or higher versions for portability to future releases. Note that support for ddi versions 1 through 4 and sdi version 1 have been dropped for SVR5. Additional versioned interfaces have been added to the system to support network adapter drivers and I2O drivers, among others. See ``DDI interface versioning'' for detailed information about supported interface versions.

The SVR5 versioning scheme is enhanced to support versioning of structure layouts and to enforce versioning for driver entry point routines that are documented in the D2 manual page sections.

Several major improvements in the fundamental kernel file and memory subsystems will drive new versions in the generic (meaning not subsystem-specific) device driver interfaces. This includes the following enhancements:

• different entry points and entry point versioning. See ``Entry-point routines''.

• support for 64-bit (long long) file sizes. See ``Large device support''.

• support for large physical memory sizes (64-bit physical address type). See ``Large memory support (DDI 8)''.

• extension of the device numbering scheme to support large configurations. See ``Device number''.

• support for hot-plug devices. See ``Hotplug devices''.

• support for layered storage devices. See ``Layered device drivers''.

• kernel threads. See ``Kernel threads''.

• Support for I2O devices. See ``I2O''.

The SVR5 Hardware Developer's Kit also includes support for the following:

• the kdb and scodb kernel debuggers. See ``Debugging kernel drivers'' and ``Using SCODB on SVR5''.

• Test suites used to verify the sanity of mass storage, network adapter, and graphics adapter cards. See the following for more information:

  
  hbacert(1Mcert)

  Test suites for SDI Host Bus Adapter (HBA), target, RAID, and layered drivers.

  
  loadtests(1Mcert)

  General system certification suites. Use these suites to verify that the kernel is sane after installing kernel-level drivers.

  
  ndtests(1Mcert)

  Test suites for MDI network cards and drivers.

  
  spm(1Mcert)

  Performance test for network cards and drivers.

  
  NFB test suites

  documentation is included in README files in the directories with the suites.

See also:

• ``New features in SVR5 SDI''