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Table of Contents

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• New platform support

  • Linux Red Hat Enterprise 7.x
  • Linux FedoraCore 20, 21 and 22
  • VMware ESXi 6.0
  • Please notice RHEL 6.x is not supported 

• CHARON product packaging

  • CHARON binaries are linked statically since this release. CHARON-VAX and CHARON-AXP can be installed on the same host (ID#4710)

  • CHARON Charon Linux Toolkit is included in the distribution. It is a set of text based menu and utilities to simplify CHARON operational procedures and provide Guest to Host communication channel. CHARON WebUI has been retired
  • All emulated VAX models are installed by default. Allowed VAX models are controlled by CHARON license (ID#4711)
• Performance improvements
  • On 64bit Linux CHARON is able to address up to 3.5 GB emulated VAX RAM for /6630 and /6660 models
• New configuration options and configuration changes
  
  • MPIO storage path support is implemented (ID#4328)
  • Full support for CI/DSSI virtual clusters (ID#4389)
  • VLANs are supported (ID#4401)
  • CHARON Sample configuration templates updated, some minor errors fixed (ID#4435)
  • The log file language is set to English (ID#4509)
  • CHARON console log rotation has been implemented (ID#4639)
  • CARON log file format switched to UTF-8 (ID#4188)
  • Rotating log file switch can be configured to be triggered by maximum file size and time period (ID#4639)

  • LK401-AT keyboard sequences (i. e. PF4 + Compose) is supported (ID#3837)

• New licensing options. Please refer to User Manual and online Knowledge Base for details,  technical restrictions, and best practices (ID#2856, #4137, #4285)
  
  • Software licensing (SL) is available. Software license is bound to physical system hardware components or virtual machine hardware components (ID#4344)
  • Network licensing is available, for both hardware dongles (require special dongle) and software licensing
  • CHARON instance counter on a Network license switched to instance mode from station/instance mode, which allows CHARON instances to be spread around the network at user convenience. For example, a Network license with 6 CHARON instances allows to run 3 instances on a first hosting server, 2 instances on a second hosting server, and one instance in a third hosting server. In the previous versions of CHARON Network license controlled number of hosting systems and CHARON instances per host system.
  • CHARON license check order can be managed via configuration file, Production and Backup license IDs can be specified (ID#4249) 
  • Software License can be relocated to another host 
  • New parameter "license_key_lookup_retry" has been introduced allowing to set a number of license retries with specified time interval for the license checks on CHARON startup (ID#4399) 
  • License protection run time package (Sentinel) has been upgraded to the current stable version, stability improved (ID#4209, 4711)  
  • Please notice that CHARON HASP runtime environment is customized by Stromasys. Environment downloaded directly form SafeNet would not provide full functionality (specifically, Software Licensing will not work). Stromasys will maintain and distribute HASP environment updates as CHARON product patches if necessary
• CHARON utilities
  
  • MTD utility supports SCSI Passthrough mode for tapes without Linux driver (ID#3927)

  • CHARON utilities fully support mixed encoding in log files (ID#4642, 4646)

  • Network Configuration Utility (NCU) compatibility with supported OS versions has been improved, functionality extended (ID#4530, 4563, 4454)

  • hasp_srm_view utility can display either a particular license or all available licenses (ID#4618)

  • mkdskcmd utility does not allow to reduce vdisk size (ID#4506)

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• An old version of CHARON-VAX has to be removed before installing the current version
• A CHARON license update is required. Stromasys might request a HASP dongle state (c2v file) or a host fingerprint taken by HASP Update Service (which is included in the CHARON kit) in order to issue a license update. Please refer to License installation for details
• If VMware is used, it must be upgraded to version 5.x or 6.0
• It's recommended to archive the old CHARON log before starting the new version n order to avoid mixing character encoding in the log file
• CHARON-VAX cannot be started remotely remotely via ssh, telnet, VNC, etc., if a local HASP dongle or a local software license is used. Please use CHARON Charon Linux Toolkit. Alternatively, network dongle or network software license can be used. Another option is to configure CHARON-VAX as a Linux service/daemon manually. See this chapter for details of how to configure CHARON-VAX as a service/daemon
• Intelligent packet processing should be switched off for the network adapters dedicated to CHARON with "Network Control Center" (NCC) utility. Please refer to FTP, NFS, and general network issues with CHARON-AXP and CHARON-VAX on Linux for details
• Linux Xterm does not provide the full functionality of a VT100 terminal by default. Please refer to the user manual for the details of setting up the mode for emulating VT100.
• The CHARON-VAX configuration file should be reviewed if migrating from CHARON-VAX for Windows. Linux specific configuration parameters (for example, network adapter references) should be changed to Linux specific parameters. Please refer to the "CHARON-VAX V4.7 for Linux - User's Guide" for details.
• CHARON executables, libraries and data (disk container files) should be excluded from all the antivirus checks, including on-the-fly checks and scheduled scans
• HT (Hyper-Threading Technology) should be disabled on the hosting server
• Power management and screen saver should be switched off on the hosting server
• Please note that the actual network communication speed and mode are determined by the Linux network speed and mode settings. This configuration change is required to avoid network timeouts in VAX/VMS during the negotiation phase

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Known restrictions of build 171-01

• Network booting is supported with exception of VAX6xxx models.
• A segmentation violation in module NCR53C94 may very rarely occur. If that happens, please provide CHARON configuration and log files to Stromasys (ID#4633)
• CMS commands may slow down due to a its internal design. STROMASYS provides (on request) a special OpenVMS utility to solve the problem (ID#4651)
  
• CHARON cannot correctly define the total number of available CPUs on mutli CPU groups systems (NUMA architecture, etc) - it reports only a number of the CPUs found in its first group. This problem will be fixed in future releases.
  As a workaround, enable "Node interleaving" from the BIOS (if available) to make the BIOS report the total number of available CPUs (as a part of one consolidated NUMA group) to the operating system.
  For example, on HP Proliant servers, the configuration sequence is the following:
  - Boot the server, press F9 and enter BIOS setup.
  - Select "Advanced Options" -> "Advance Performance Tuning Options" -> "Node Interleaving", set it to "Enabled".
  - Boot Linux

• If a network cable is disconnected, CHARON-VAX might not detect that link is down (ID#4318)

• Unexpected exception (SCB + 004) machine check may happen on a VAX 4000 Model 700/705 under certain rare conditions (ID#4242)
• CHARON-VAX does not emulate graphical adapter. Applications hardcoded to use graphical hardware as their own interfaces may not function correctly
• By default the layout of the right part of the PC keyboard is not mapped to the layout of the VT100 keyboard. Use a special script created by Geoff Kingsmill ( http://www.decuslib.com/decus/freewarev50/decxterm/decxterm ). Run this script, then run CHARON-VAX normally according to instructions in the Users's Guide. (ID#3030)
• By default a telnet session to the CHARON-VAX console port does not support ESC sequences of a VT100. To enable this open xterm, connect to CHARON-VAX and press "Ctrl-]" once connected. Then issue the "mode char" command to enable character mode. If it is also required to map the right part of the keyboard correctly, use the xterm started by Geoff Kingsmill's script (see above). (ID#3030)

• Network speed auto negotiation works with some restrictions (see the table below). It is always recommended to use full duplex mode on the hosting server.

  Host settings	VAX/VMS (autodetect mode)
  1 Gbps full duplex	100 Mbps full duplex
  100 Mbps full duplex	100 Mbps full duplex
  100 Mbps half duplex	100 Mbps half duplex
  10 Mbps full duplex	10 Mbps full duplex
  10 Mbps half duplex	10 Mbps half duplex

  
  

• The firmware does not support the history of commands called with the up/down arrow keys.
• VMS 7.x Monitor utility shows the maximum CPU quantity instead of actually configured quantity.
• A Telnet session from OpenVMS running on emulated host may freeze console output. The console output can hang when the virtual serial line sends XOFF/XON sequence. The TELNET client sends XOFF to the remote node's TELNET server to suspend output, but for unknown reason XON is discarded and remote node's TELNET server has no chance to resume output. The console remains "frozen". As the remote site is not sending any output to it. When that happens, the local node is reachable over network, and can be unlocked by typing the 'break' character - usually "Ctrl-]" and exiting telnet session by typing "exit" at "TELNET>" prompt.
• Emacs hangs if the OPA0 console is used. Emacs works fine over telnet connection.

• Please note that CHARON-VAX has not been tested with SAN attached storage volumes over 2TB in size.

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