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Product Release Notice IntervalZero RTX 9.0
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Product Release Notice IntervalZero RTX 9.0 |
RTX 9.0 Runtime with Tools Release Notes
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While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and completeness of all information in this document, IntervalZero, Inc. assumes no liability to any party for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions or by statements of any kind in this document, its updates, supplements, or special editions, whether such errors, omissions, or statements result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. IntervalZero, Inc. further assumes no liability arising out of the application or use of any product or system described herein; nor any liability for incidental or consequential damages arising from the use of this document. IntervalZero, Inc. disclaims all warranties regarding the information contained herein, whether expressed, implied or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
IntervalZero, Inc. reserves the right to make changes to this document or to the products described herein without further notice.
RTX, RT-TCP/IP, RtxTcpIpStack, Platform Evaluator, and TimeView are all trademarks of IntervalZero, Inc.
Microsoft, MS, and Win32 are registered trademarks and Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
All other companies and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
RTX v9.0 Release Notes
September 2008
Introduction
These release notes provide RTX™ 9.0 release-specific information, including notes and known issues. Please take the time now to become thoroughly familiar with this information.
About RTX Runtime With Tools
The RTX Runtime With Tools includes:
- The RTX Runtime subsystem, used to execute real-time applications and provide networking support to the RTX environment.
- A set of tools and utilities for diagnosing issues and monitoring the performance of your RTX environment.
- If you chose to purchase the optional RTX USB component, your installation package will also include:
- The RTX USB Runtime, which provides a dedicated USB Stack and USB Class drivers to support common USB classes, such as Communication and Mass Storage. The RTX USB Runtime is necessary for the execution of RTSS applications that use USB devices.
Windows OS Support
RTX 9.0 supports the following operating systems:
- Windows Vista
- Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
- Windows 2003 Server with Service Pack 1, Service Pack 2, or R2
There is only one RTX install for all Windows operating systems and it requires a single license key. The RTX executables are compatible across the platforms. However, there are serveral caveats you must adhere to; see “Operating System Requirements” in the RTX Installation Guide for complete details.
Note RTX also supports Windows XP Embedded. This support is provided in a separate installer.
Note RTX has a Silent Installer that provides a command line interface to the RTX Runtime product installation. This interface can be invoked from the command line or used within your own product installation so as not to require user interaction during the installation process.
Evaluation Version Only
Please note that if you are using the Evaluation Version of RTX, you have the following limitations:
- The Evaluation version of RTX expires after 30 days.
- The Evaluation version can be used for evaluation purposes only. Any RTX application developed using the Evaluation version of RTX will not run using the licensed version of RTX.
- The evaluation version of RTX cannot be installed on uniprocessor machines running Windows Server 2003 SP2.
New Features and Updates
The RTX 9.0 includes the following new features and updates:
• Expanded support of SMP/MP Dedicated such that the RTSS subsystem can now run on multiple dedicated CPUs. Up to seven CPUs can be dedicated to RTSS. This new functionality includes the following APIs so that applications can take advantage of multiple dedicated RTX processors:
- GetProcessAffinityMask retrieves the process affinity mask for the specified process and the system affinity mask for the Real-Time Subsystem.
- SetProcessAffinityMasksets a processor affinity mask for specified process.
- SetThreadAffinityMask sets a processor affinity mask for the specified thread.
- SetThreadIdealProcessorsets a preferred processor for a thread.
- RtCreateTimerEx creates a timer associated with the specified clock, and returns a handle to the timer. Use this call, instead of RtCreateTimer, if you are developing for an RTX dedicated system and want to set the processor affinity for the timer handler.
- RtGetProcessAffinityMask allows a Win32 application to get the processor affinity mask for an RTSS process, and also to retrieve the system affinity mask for the Real-Time Subsystem.
- RtSetProcessAffinityMask allows a Win32 application to set the processor affinity mask for an RTSS process.
- Visual Studio and WinDbg debugging support for environments that have multiple dedicated RTX processors.
- Updated RTX tools that support an SMP environment:
- RTX Properties Control Panel allows you to configure your system for shared or dedicated mode and specify the number of RTSS
- processors you will have if you use dedicated mode. Manual changes to the boot.ini or use of BCDedit are not necessary.
- RTX Properties Control Panel lets you select the processor on which to run the RT-TCP/IP and USB stacks.
- Platform Evaluator can run tests across multiple processors.
- PerformanceView has been updated to display all RTSS processors.
- ObjectViewer displays ideal processor and affinity mask information for processes and threads.
- RTSSrun allows you to set an ideal processor and affinity mask.
- RTSSkill and Task Manager display ideal processor and affinity mask information.
- In addition to the SMP-related changes, the following updates have been made to the RTX tools:
- Non-admin users can run RTX tools and use the RTX Properties control panel through use of the RTX User Account Control Override service.
- TimeView has been enhanced to allow it to run until it has been manually stopped or the system has crashed.
- Object Viewer now provides thread duration information.
- Modifications to the PnP driver that allow you to configure devices so that they do not request line-based resources (even if the device is not MSI-capable)
- Modifications to the local memory and heap implementations that use a more optimized hash table logic.
- FIONRead support has been added to IOCTRLSocket.
- The RT-TCP/IP Stack has been upgraded to use the 8.4 version of the Fusion Stack.
- RTX no longer uses the Rtwinapi.h, so there is no more need to reverse priorities. As a result, the priority settings of the InterruptPriority
and ReceivePriority parameters in the RtxTcpIp INI file have been changed as follows:
- InterruptPriority: 127 Max (highest priority), 0 Min (lowest priority). Default value is 64.
- ReceivePriority: 127 Max (highest priority), 0 Min (lowest priority). Default value is 63.
• The following bugs have been fixed in this release:
• The RTX plug-and-play driver may sometimes fail to get device resources for devices sharing an IRQ after getting the first device. (6972)
Incorporated Patches
- CallStackEngPatch11608 - Patch that zeroes out the call stack and increases the number of frames allowed on a debug stack.
- RTX_ProxyProcessPatch_02202008: Patch for proxy process synchronization issues.
- RT-TCPIP_0208_RawSockets.exe: Patch to fix raw sockets.
- RTX_IoApicInterrupt_Patch.exe: Patch to fix an IO APIC write issue.
- RTSSkill_492008: Fix for the RTSSKill error that happens when trying to view an RTDLL with a long file name.
Documentation Changes
For the RTX 9.0 release, the following changes appear in the documentation:
- Documentation for the expanded support of multiple dedicated RTSS processors can be found in these locations:
- Using RTX Runtime > Configuring RTX for Shared or Dedicated Processing
- Using the RTX SDK > Understanding RTX Behavior > Process and Thread Management > Processor Affinity
- The “Introduction to RTX,” “RTX Architecture,” and “Causes and Management of Latencies” topics have been moved into the “About RTX” book.
- In the “Using the RTX SDK” book, the “Understanding RTX Behavior” section has been reorganized into smaller topics with more descriptive TOC entries.
- Descriptions of the RTX Properties control panel tabs have been moved to the “Using RTX Runtime” book under the “Using the RTX Properties Control Panel” section.
Getting Support
IntervalZero offers a number of support options for RTX users, including technical support and the IntervalZero Web site.
Before calling technical support, determine the version of RTX installed on your system, by opening the RTX Properties Control Panel and looking at the About page.
Technical Support
For technical support related to installing and using RTX, IntervalZero offers several channels of communication. You can:
- Submit support issues using the IntervalZero support Web site ( http://support.intervalzero.com ).
- Call technical support at 1-800-334-8649. Hours are Monday - Friday, 8:30a – 5:30pm Eastern time (US – GMT-500), excluding holidays.
IntervalZero Products Forum
The IntervalZero Products Forum is intended to facilitate the flow of information among our customers, and provide an environment to share questions, issues, tips, tricks and ideas between members who use IntervalZero real-time software products. You can find the IntervalZero Products Forum at:
http://forums.intervalzero.com
To join, you must be a currently active IntervalZero customer, however, blog information is available to anyone. Click the Join link from the home page and enter your membership data. Your request will be verified and you will receive a welcome email, after which you can log into the site and have full access to post and respond to the forums.
Notes
The following items are notes that the user should be aware of in this release of RTX. Where applicable, a note may include a reference number at the end of its description for tracking purposes.
Reported as of version 9.0
This section lists new notes reported as of version 9.0.
- On a Vista system, if Windows User Account Control is enabled and RTX User Account Control is disabled, all RTX applications and tools must be “run as administrator” on that system (5838). Specific behavior includes:
- If it is not run as an administrator, the RTX Properties control panel will display a message about running a legacy CPL with elevated permissions.
- If it is not run as an administrator, the RTXServer Console will run correctly but have limited functionality. Also, if the RTXServer tries to write to the Program Files directory, it will fail without providing an error message.
- Tools such as RTSS Object Viewer will fail to start.
- RTSSRun no longer pops up a message if an RTSS process has been successfully registered for boot time. It now only provides information if the call fails.
Reported previous to version 9.0
These notes were reported previously but still apply to version 9.0.
- The Rt82543 NIC driver has been replaced with the RtE1000 NIC driver. If you currently use the Rt82543 driver, you must change the name of the driver in the RtxTcpIp INI file to RtE1000 (5725, 6449).
- The 82540EM Intel Pro 1000 MT Desktop network card was found to incorrectly support MSI so the RTE1000 driver only provides line-based support for this device. (6426, 6485)
- When multiple NIC cards are configured to use the same subnet, all traffic to any of the cards is routed through the first interface which has the best-matching network ID entry in the routing table. The best-matching ID has the longest subnet mask that matches the destination IP address. If the connection to the best-matching interface fails, connection to all of the NIC cards on that subnet will also fail. To determine what the best-matching interface in the routing table is, use the RtssRoute utility.
- RTX does not support Vista on PIC systems. (5855)
- PCI express video controllers can cause jitter (large latencies) within an RTX application (3228).
Workarounds for this problem are:
- Select /BASEVIDEO in the boot.ini to use standard VGA display driver, or
- Disable all DirectDraw and Direct3D acceleration in Display Control Panel. Click the Settings tab, then Advanced, then Troubleshoot.
• The NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE video driver causes long latencies on Vista systems and should be disabled (5837). It’s properties are:
Driver file: nvlddmkm.sys Driver version: 7.15.10.9746 Date: 12.7.2006
Note If you disable this video driver using the RTX control panel, your display will turn black and you will need to reboot. If you remove it from the Windows control panel, this is not required.
- On Vista, IntervalZero cannot sign its RtxPnp.inf file because it gets modified to support customer devices. Because of this, when you convert a device to RTX, you get a popup message that the publisher of the driver can not be determined. (6089)
- If you install RTX Runtime on Windows Server 2003 and then subsequently uninstall RTX, you must reboot the system before you can reinstall RTX.
- During the Windows boot up and shutdown, some systems exhibit latencies due to device driver or hardware initialization. Use srtm.rtss during boot time to measure these latencies for your particular system.
- The Rt3C905 driver will only find (and operate with) installed 3COM 3C905B-TX-NM NICs and 3C905C-TXM NICs. If you are in doubt about whether your installed NIC is a 3C905B or 3C905C, use ScanBus to get a listing of all PCI cards that are installed. ScanBus is provided in RTX as a code sample (see the RTX documentation for details). The NICs supported by the 3C905 driver have VendorID=0x10b7 (3COM) and either DeviceID=0x9055 (3C905B) or DeviceID=0x9200 (3C905C).
- Installing Windows Diagnostics for the 3COM 3C905 NIC will reclaim the device from RTX (assuming it had previously been converted). (1712)
- On certain Dell dual-processor systems with Xeon chip sets (for example, Dell 650, Dell 670), the maximum timer delivery latency for a periodic RTX timer in Dedicated Mode is doubled under intensive Video activities. Investigation results show that the high latency is inherited from the hardware.
- After installing RTX on a system with HT enabled, do not disable HT without uninstalling RTX first. Disabling HT will cause Windows to replace the current HAL type with the "MPS Uniprocessor" HAL type. Starting RTX on a system with the "MPS Uniprocessor" HAL installed can cause the system to bug check.
- When RTX is uninstalled from a system, any devices converted to RTX will need to be returned to Windows by using the Windows Device Manager.
- On Windows XP or greater, if the RTX Debugging Manager loads the TransportEthernet.dll, the windows firewall will pop up a message asking if you want to block the RtxDbgManager.exe. You must not block RtxDbgManager if you wish to us Host/Target debugging. (4362)
- All RTX calls that require Windows resources, such as printf, are executed by an RTSS thread and will block until the RTX server (running as a Windows service) reads the message. The RTSS thread will consequently be suspended and allow lower priority RTSS threads to execute.
- On dual-core and hyperthreading-enabled systems where RTX is configured for shared mode, the PerformanceView tool shows long durations in RTX due to memory access. You can shorten the durations by configuring RTX to use local memory by default. See the "Memory Settings" topic in the RTX Tools Help for details about using local memory. (5577)
- Using the TimeView command line functions on multiprocessor systems, where the SRI events are selected for tracing, the time values of SRI on Win32 processes are invalid parameters. Only the RTSS events have valid time parameters.
- The following notes apply to RTX USB only:
- RTX USB supports one dedicated USB Host Controller.
- In some cases, the RtxUsb Stack may need to be restarted for a newly plugged in USB device to function properly.
- Because RTSS has not implemented Installable File System, the support of USB Mass Storage devices is primitive and only a class driver is provided in this release. You are able to attach only one Mass Storage device and need to use block numbers to read from and
- write to the device. If a Mass Storage device is misbehaving, you may need to cycle the power on the device before you restart RtxUsb Stack (through the RTX Properties Control Panel). This process will enumerate all the USB devices attached to the dedicated USB Host Controller.
- If you encounter errors when mounting or trying to write to a USB mass storage device, restart the USBStack.
- Mass storage devices must be formatted as FAT or FAT32 to work with RTX USB. NTFS formatting causes the disk to be unmounted. (6062)
Known Issues
The following items are known issues that the user should be aware of in this release of RTX. Where applicable, an issue may include a reference number at the end of its description for tracking purposes.
Reported as of version 9.0
This section lists new known issues reported as of version 9.0.
- On an installation repair, the boot configuration is not reset back to default values. (6619)
- You will get an error if you do not allow the RTX subsystem to be automatically stopped during an uninstall of Windows XP SP2. (6179)
- On Dell Latitude D420 with Core Duo U2500 CPU systems, the RTSS subsystem will suffer a large decrease in performance if the following conditions exist:
- Intel SpeedStep is enabled.
- Prevent Windows idle state is unchecked on the Hardware tab in the RTX Properties control panel.
- Latency causing devices are not disabled.
- The RTX Server Console does not start up automatically after starting the RTSS subsystem with RT-TCP/IP enabled. To work around this issue, open the RTX Server Console manually by choose Start > All Programs > IntervalZero > RTX > RTX Server Console. (6595)
- RTX does not fully support the Intel PRO/1000 MT Dual Port Server, 82546EB network interface card. Only one of the ports is able to reply to a ping correctly, the other is ends up in an IP conflict.
Reported previous to version 9.0
These known issues were reported previously but still apply to version 9.0.
- The Rtx Properties control panel must be closed before uninstalling RTX. (6151)
- Windows Server 2003 SP2 only supports RTX dedicated environments. It does not support shared environments.
- On Vista systems, when a driver is installed for a device, a copy of the inf file is made and named oemX.inf. This means, if a device is installed and uninstalled multiple times, there will be multiple driver options when selecting a driver in the Device Manager. (5978)
- Sometimes, update driver functionality does not work correctly on Vista, so you may need to completely uninstall the offending driver before installing the Rtx supported driver or the correct Windows driver. (5979)
- Click the Start menu, then right-click Computer and choose Manage.
- Click Device Manager.
- Locate the driver, right-click it, and choose Uninstall.
- Click OK to confirm the uninstall.
- From the Action menu, choose Scan for hardware changes to locate and load the new driver.
- RTX dedicated mode is not compatible with Data Execution Prevention (DEP), introduced in XP Service Pack 2. This feature is configured in the BOOT.INI file and the BCDEdit tool in Vista, and is interdependent with PAE. BOOT.INI must not specify /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN, / NOEXECUTE=OPTOUT, or /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSON for RTX dedicated mode. BCDEdit must not specify nx=optin, nx=optout, or nx=alwayson with dedicated mode.
- When a device is converted to RTX, RTX replaces the function driver for the device. If the driver that is replaced had served as the power policy owner for the device, actively transitioning the device's power state, the device may not be accessible from RTX. The RtxPnp driver used by RTX does not currently power up devices, so a device that was not powered up at the time that it was converted to RTX will not be accessible following the conversion. (2059)
- On dedicated systems, a fatal error in an RTSS program (such as stack fault or double fault on RTSS processor) will not cause a Windows blue or green screen. The RTSS subsystem will be disabled, but Windows and all non
- RTX applications will work correctly unless some application tries to invoke an RTX call. The recommended procedure is to reboot your system.
- Kstrm is not supported on multiprocessor systems because RTSS is allocated to a separate processor. Instead, Srtm is recommended for measuring latencies on a multiprocessor system.
- RTX is incompatible with the DELL PowerEdge Server line of computers because RTX is unable to signal interrupts on the serial board. (1955)
- If RTX generates a starvation exception, some RTX tools will need to be restarted. The exceptions are RTX Properties control panel, Object Viewer, and RTSS Task Manager. These three tools should function correctly if a starvation exception occurs. (4442)
- The following known issues apply to RTX USB only:
- The D-Link DUB-E100 USB 2.0 Fast Ethernet adapter has been found to be unstable when used with RTX USB. Device initialization failures can occur at Physical Probe time.
- The ASIX Ax8817x USB Ethernet device driver (UsbAsix8817x.rtdll) does not support multicast and will not work correctly when the RT-TCP/IP Stack is set to host mode.
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