Version: 2 - Published: Oct 24, 2025 

Contents

Relevant Products

Charon-PAR 3.0.21.

This document also contains information about older versions. However, please always refer to the documentation for your product version.

Software and Hardware Requirements

See Software Product Description and Charon-PAR 3.0 for Linux - User's Guide.

Information about Version 3.0.21

New Features in Version 3.0.21

• Ability to disable receive checksum offloading for the E1000 in the emulator configuration (ID#100413). If not enabled in HP-UX (via HP_IETHER_RECV_CKO in hpietherconf), RX checksum offloading should be disabled in the emulator configuration. Failure to do so may cause a slow-down in network performance to to additional overhead. The new configuration parameter for emulated E1000 Ethernet cards is offloading. The default value is true (i.e., RX offloading is enabled in the emulator).

Problems Fixed in Patch Release 3.0.21 Build 23701

• The emulator start failed with the message 
  The HPSUSAN number defined in the emulator configuration file is out-of-range. Please correct and retry. (ID#100466)
  The patch release is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and derivatives) of version 8, 9, and 10.

Problems Fixed and Other Updates in Version 3.0.21 Build 23700

• Charon-PA3 running MPE: a bug in DIT1 processing was identified and fixed (ID#100421). Depending on the applications running on the emulated system, this bug could cause applications to fail in various, not predictable ways.

• Network performance regression since 3.0.17 (ID#100413). The network performance in versions newer than version 3.0.16 could be worse than in the older versions.

Known Caveats in Version 3.0.21

Charon-PAR version 3.0.21 has the following known caveats:

• SSH-based data transfer performance and overall CPU load on the guest system are influenced by the SSH encryption method used. On Rocky Linux 8, a higher level encryption is used by default which can lead to a lower performance of the guest system when compared to older guest operating system versions. Possible workaround: configure SSH with less demanding parameters
  (e.g.,  -o 'Ciphers aes128-ctr' -o 'MACs umac-64-etm@openssh.com'). Caveat: this also makes the connection somewhat less secure.

• When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

• Repeated MMU assist off messages may be displayed. This message means that the MMU assistance module detected an unsupported guest OS. It is normal to see these messages during a reset and when the guest OS is starting (when the guest OS is not available).

• If running the Charon emulator host in a Nutanix VM, it must be ensured that Nutanix host partitioning be configured in a way that the emulator's domain (node) does not conflict with or share any resources with other nodes. Failing to do so can cause low performance and instability.

• There may be a problem loading additional modules into the expansion slots of rp34xx and rp44xx models. If you encounter this problem, please contact Stromasys support for a workaround.

• HP-UX 11.11 lpmc_em CPU errors (ID#100084). Should this problem occur, the following workaround can be implemented:

  # Stop diagnostics daemon
# /sbin/init.d/diagnostic stop
# Set config to disable diagnostics
# echo "DIAGNOSTICS=0" >> /etc/rc.config

• HP-UX 11.31 is only supported on specific models. Server models: rp34xx, rp44xx, rp7405, rp7410, rp7420, rp8420, rp6440, rp8440; workstation models: с8000 (ID#100098). Of these models, the current version of Charon-PAR supports rp34xx and rp44xx.

• Low network performance, particular in Google cloud environments, when a dedicated NIC is configured for the guest OS (ID#100117). This is related to the cloud environment not properly disabling offloading for the NIC as configured on the Linux level. Workaround: use the MACVTAP interface configuration or (on GCP) configure the instance with gVNIC interfaces.

• HP-UX 11.11, "btlan: Invalid connection type in SROM" reported in dmesg. This message does not affect network operation (ID: 100118).

• MPE Virtual tape errors/timeouts when restoring large backup (ID#100130). Workaround:
  Force the store to use sequential (instead of index read. Enter the following command before restoring the backup:
  :setvar hpfastsearch false.

• Ctrl+c in the Charon-PAR console is passed to the emulator's child processes and kills the PuTTY console process (ID#100188). To prevent this behavior, the emulator serial line configuration can be changed as follows:

  • Modify the default configuration serial.uart0.device.command="putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

    • either to: serial.uart0.device.command="trap '' SIGINT ; putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost", or

    • to: serial.uart0.device.command="setsid putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

• The emulator sets the default physical serial line parameters during boot unless set explicitly by HP-UX (ID#100245). Workaround: use the port_defaults parameter in the configuration file to set the correct parameters.

• Text mode curses applications (for example smh) may not work correctly on the serial console (ID#100252). Console is not recognized as a serial line supporting terminal control functions. Possible workarounds: configure getty on another serial line, or access the emulator via telnet or SSH.

• Maximum size for SCSI disks is currently 2TB (ID#100258).

• Unexpected halt during Oracle test on HP-UX 11.31 (ID#100262).

• Unexpected unicode/non-ascii symbols in the HPCPUNAME (ID#100266).

• A 32-bit HP-UX guest system may crash under high network load because the RX/TX interrupt frequency of the 10 Mbit LAN card becomes too high (ID#100269). Possible workaround: configure a traffic shaper on the Linux host level if the system encounters this problem.

• TOC in HP-UX on an emulated rp7400 system when the configuration contains SCSI controllers on the second system bus (ID#100221, duplicate of ID#100298).

• If a VE license is used, the emulator must always be run as root (ID#100314).

• The reset operation of the emulated system may be incomplete. This may cause problems in other parts of HP-UX later (ID#100321).

• Under high network load, the HP-UX guest system may become unresponsive for short periods of time (ID#100338).

• Adding the superIO option crashes the emulator (ID#100375).

• Under not yet clearly understood but rare conditions, the emulator may crash in iomap.cpp (ID#100376).

• In very rare cases, in an emulated system with multiple CPUs, the startup my fail with the error mp_wait_for_rendez: timeout occurred (#100397).

• The SCSI commands 0x25 Read Capacity and 0xA3 Report Device Identifier are not implemented (ID#100405).

Information about Version 3.0.20

New Features in Version 3.0.20

• The current 64-bit PCI subsystem implementation was extended to the 32-bit systems, in particular the model B132L (ID#100408). The configuration commands are now the same between the 64-bit and the 32-bit models. The exact configuration options and PCI device support depend on the features of the original model and the capabilities of the HP-UX version running on the emulated system. The B132L emulated model now has one PCI bus with 4 PCI slots supporting one additional SCSI controller and several additional Ethernet controllers. Please check the B132L configuration template for details. In total, all installed PCI devices must not have more than 4 PCI functions. Therefore, if a dual-port SCSI controller is loaded, only two additional Ethernet cards are supported.

Problems Fixed and Other Updates in Version 3.0.20 Build 23600

• MPE networking stops working (ID#100416). Emulator log message shows a warning similar to do_tx (): EWA0: overflow. This change implements a workaround for the problem.

• Charon-PAR, due to a race condition, could crash with a segmentation fault in parport.cpp (ID#100418).

• Improved charon-report (ID#100415).

• Unneeded asserts were removed to avoid emulator crashes on non-fatal error conditions (ID#100359).

• Superflous traces logs in production image were removed (ID#100410).

• Under rare conditions, an emulated dec21x4x network controller shows an error (DMA failure) on the HP-UX boot and the guest system has no network connectivity (ID#100318). The cause could be an incomplete system reset (ID#100321).

• Implemented SCSI extended device property report (ID#100414); the error shown in the Charon log file was inquiry with EVPD page 86: invalid field in cdb.

Known Caveats in Version 3.0.20

Charon-PAR version 3.0.20 has the following known caveats:

• SSH-based data transfer performance and overall CPU load on the guest system are influenced by the SSH encryption method used. On Rocky Linux 8, a higher level encryption is used by default which can lead to a lower performance of the guest system when compared to older guest operating system versions. Possible workaround: configure SSH with less demanding parameters
  (e.g.,  -o 'Ciphers aes128-ctr' -o 'MACs umac-64-etm@openssh.com'). Caveat: this also makes the connection somewhat less secure.

• When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

• Repeated MMU assist off messages may be displayed. This message means that the MMU assistance module detected an unsupported guest OS. It is normal to see these messages during a reset and when the guest OS is starting (when the guest OS is not available).

• If running the Charon emulator host in a Nutanix VM, it must be ensured that Nutanix host partitioning be configured in a way that the emulator's domain (node) does not conflict with or share any resources with other nodes. Failing to do so can cause low performance and instability.

• There may be a problem loading additional modules into the expansion slots of rp34xx and rp44xx models. If you encounter this problem, please contact Stromasys support for a workaround.

• HP-UX 11.11 lpmc_em CPU errors (ID#100084). Should this problem occur, the following workaround can be implemented:

  # Stop diagnostics daemon
# /sbin/init.d/diagnostic stop
# Set config to disable diagnostics
# echo "DIAGNOSTICS=0" >> /etc/rc.config

• HP-UX 11.31 is only supported on specific models. Server models: rp34xx, rp44xx, rp7405, rp7410, rp7420, rp8420, rp6440, rp8440; workstation models: с8000 (ID#100098). Of these models, the current version of Charon-PAR supports rp34xx and rp44xx.

• Low network performance, particular in Google cloud environments, when a dedicated NIC is configured for the guest OS (ID#100117). This is related to the cloud environment not properly disabling offloading for the NIC as configured on the Linux level. Workaround: use the MACVTAP interface configuration or (on GCP) configure the instance with gVNIC interfaces.

• HP-UX 11.11, "btlan: Invalid connection type in SROM" reported in dmesg. This message does not affect network operation (ID: 100118).

• MPE Virtual tape errors/timeouts when restoring large backup (ID#100130). Workaround:
  Force the store to use sequential (instead of index read. Enter the following command before restoring the backup:
  :setvar hpfastsearch false.

• Ctrl+c in the Charon-PAR console is passed to the emulator's child processes and kills the PuTTY console process (ID#100188). To prevent this behavior, the emulator serial line configuration can be changed as follows:

  • Modify the default configuration serial.uart0.device.command="putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

    • either to: serial.uart0.device.command="trap '' SIGINT ; putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost", or

    • to: serial.uart0.device.command="setsid putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

• The emulator sets the default physical serial line parameters during boot unless set explicitly by HP-UX (ID#100245). Workaround: use the port_defaults parameter in the configuration file to set the correct parameters.

• Text mode curses applications (for example smh) may not work correctly on the serial console (ID#100252). Console is not recognized as a serial line supporting terminal control functions. Possible workarounds: configure getty on another serial line, or access the emulator via telnet or SSH.

• Maximum size for SCSI disks is currently 2TB (ID#100258).

• Unexpected halt during Oracle test on HP-UX 11.31 (ID#100262).

• Unexpected unicode/non-ascii symbols in the HPCPUNAME (ID#100266).

• A 32-bit HP-UX guest system may crash under high network load because the RX/TX interrupt frequency of the 10 Mbit LAN card becomes too high (ID#100269). Possible workaround: configure a traffic shaper on the Linux host level if the system encounters this problem.

• TOC in HP-UX on an emulated rp7400 system when the configuration contains SCSI controllers on the second system bus (ID#100221, duplicate of ID#100298).

• If a VE license is used, the emulator must always be run as root (ID#100314).

• The reset operation of the emulated system may be incomplete. This may cause problems in other parts of HP-UX later (ID#100321).

• Under high network load, the HP-UX guest system may become unresponsive for short periods of time (ID#100338).

• Adding the superIO option crashes the emulator (ID#100375).

• Under not yet clearly understood but rare conditions, the emulator may crash in iomap.cpp (ID#100376).

• In very rare cases, in an emulated system with multiple CPUs, the startup my fail with the error mp_wait_for_rendez: timeout occurred (#100397).

• The SCSI commands 0x25 Read Capacity and 0xA3 Report Device Identifier are not implemented (ID#100405).

Information about Version 3.0.19

New Features in Version 3.0.19

• PCI bus enabled on B132L for adding Tulip and E1000 network cards (E1000 not yet supported on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00).

• DIT1 floating point improvement. The user can now choose between 3 modes (precise, normal, fast) depending on their workload characteristics. More information is provided in the user's guide.

Problems Fixed and Other Updates in Version 3.0.19 Build 23500

• Passing HP-UX 10.20 offline diagnostics (ID#100254).

• DIT1 floating point improvement (ID#100396). The user can now choose between 3 modes (precise, normal, fast) depending on their workload characteristics. More information is provided in the user's guide.

• HPUX 11.31 installation failed on rp3440 when trying to installing boot area on disk  (ID#100400).

• PCI bus enabled on B132L (ID#100403) for adding Tulip and E1000 network cards (E1000 not yet supported on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00).

• Cosmetic typo (in word "rendezvous") fixed in emulator output (ID#100398).

Known Caveats in Version 3.0.19

Charon-PAR version 3.0.19 has the following known caveats:

• SSH-based data transfer performance and overall CPU load on the guest system are influenced by the SSH encryption method used. On Rocky Linux 8, a higher level encryption is used by default which can lead to a lower performance of the guest system when compared to older guest operating system versions. Possible workaround: configure SSH with less demanding parameters
  (e.g.,  -o 'Ciphers aes128-ctr' -o 'MACs umac-64-etm@openssh.com'). Caveat: this also makes the connection somewhat less secure.

• When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

• Repeated MMU assist off messages may be displayed. This message means that the MMU assistance module detected an unsupported guest OS. It is normal to see these messages during a reset and when the guest OS is starting (when the guest OS is not available).

• If running the Charon emulator host in a Nutanix VM, it must be ensured that Nutanix host partitioning be configured in a way that the emulator's domain (node) does not conflict with or share any resources with other nodes. Failing to do so can cause low performance and instability.

• There may be a problem loading additional modules into the expansion slots of rp34xx and rp44xx models. If you encounter this problem, please contact Stromasys support for a workaround.

• HP-UX 11.11 lpmc_em CPU errors (ID#100084). Should this problem occur, the following workaround can be implemented:

  # Stop diagnostics daemon
# /sbin/init.d/diagnostic stop
# Set config to disable diagnostics
# echo "DIAGNOSTICS=0" >> /etc/rc.config

• HP-UX 11.31 is only supported on specific models. Server models: rp34xx, rp44xx, rp7405, rp7410, rp7420, rp8420, rp6440, rp8440; workstation models: с8000 (ID#100098). Of these models, the current version of Charon-PAR supports rp34xx and rp44xx.

• Low network performance, particular in Google cloud environments, when a dedicated NIC is configured for the guest OS (ID#100117). This is related to the cloud environment not properly disabling offloading for the NIC as configured on the Linux level. Workaround: use the MACVTAP interface configuration or (on GCP) configure the instance with gVNIC interfaces.

• HP-UX 11.11, "btlan: Invalid connection type in SROM" reported in dmesg. This message does not affect network operation (ID: 100118).

• MPE Virtual tape errors/timeouts when restoring large backup (ID#100130). Workaround:
  Force the store to use sequential (instead of index read. Enter the following command before restoring the backup:
  :setvar hpfastsearch false.

• Ctrl+c in the Charon-PAR console is passed to the emulator's child processes and kills the PuTTY console process (ID#100188). To prevent this behavior, the emulator serial line configuration can be changed as follows:

  • Modify the default configuration serial.uart0.device.command="putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

    • either to: serial.uart0.device.command="trap '' SIGINT ; putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost", or

    • to: serial.uart0.device.command="setsid putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

• The emulator sets the default physical serial line parameters during boot unless set explicitly by HP-UX (ID#100245). Workaround: use the port_defaults parameter in the configuration file to set the correct parameters.

• Text mode curses applications (for example smh) may not work correctly on the serial console (ID#100252). Console is not recognized as a serial line supporting terminal control functions. Possible workarounds: configure getty on another serial line, or access the emulator via telnet or SSH.

• Maximum size for SCSI disks is currently 2TB (ID#100258).

• Unexpected halt during Oracle test on HP-UX 11.31 (ID#100262).

• Unexpected unicode/non-ascii symbols in the HPCPUNAME (ID#100266).

• A 32-bit HP-UX guest system may crash under high network load because the RX/TX interrupt frequency of the 10 Mbit LAN card becomes too high (ID#100269). Possible workaround: configure a traffic shaper on the Linux host level if the system encounters this problem.

• TOC in HP-UX on an emulated rp7400 system when the configuration contains SCSI controllers on the second system bus (ID#100221, duplicate of ID#100298).

• If a VE license is used, the emulator must always be run as root (ID#100314).

• Under rare conditions, an emulated dec21x4x network controller shows an error (DMA failure) on the HP-UX boot and the guest system has no network connectivity (ID#100318). The cause could be an incomplete system reset (ID#100321).

• Under high network load, the HP-UX guest system may become unresponsive for short periods of time (ID#100338).

• Adding the superIO option crashes the emulator (ID#100375).

• Under not yet clearly understood but rare conditions, the emulator may crash in iomap.cpp (ID#100376).

• In very rare cases, in an emulated system with multiple CPUs, the startup my fail with the error mp_wait_for_rendez: timeout occurred (#100397).

• The SCSI commands 0x25 Read Capacity and 0xA3 Report Device Identifier are not implemented (ID#100405).

Information about Version 3.0.18

New Features in Version 3.0.18

• MACVTAP network configuration scripts

Problems Fixed and Other Updates in Version 3.0.18 Build 23400

• Sample script /opt/charon/bin/macvtap.sh to create MACVTAP interface (#100390). If used, it must be run before the emulator starts. The script could be run manually, or it could be included in a systemd service file for the emulator startup (ExecStartPre=/opt/charon/bin/macvtap.sh). The script must be adapted to the actual emulator host environment before use.

• Superfluous E1000 diagnostic messages (reg[000c0] ICR notimpl <- fffffffb) were filling the log file (#100391).

• 82596 received an illegal sized frame (#100395).

• Confirmation of HP-UX 10.20 support on the B132l and 720 32bit models (#100157).

Known Caveats in Version 3.0.18

Charon-PAR version 3.0.18 has the following known caveats:

• SSH-based data transfer performance and overall CPU load on the guest system are influenced by the SSH encryption method used. On Rocky Linux 8, a higher level encryption is used by default which can lead to a lower performance of the guest system when compared to older guest operating system versions. Possible workaround: configure SSH with less demanding parameters
  (e.g.,  -o 'Ciphers aes128-ctr' -o 'MACs umac-64-etm@openssh.com'). Caveat: this also makes the connection somewhat less secure.

• When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

• Repeated MMU assist off messages may be displayed. This message means that the MMU assistance module detected an unsupported guest OS. It is normal to see these messages during a reset and when the guest OS is starting (when the guest OS is not available).

• If running the Charon emulator host in a Nutanix VM, it must be ensured that Nutanix host partitioning be configured in a way that the emulator's domain (node) does not conflict with or share any resources with other nodes. Failing to do so can cause low performance and instability.

• There may be a problem loading additional modules into the expansion slots of rp34xx and rp44xx models. If you encounter this problem, please contact Stromasys support for a workaround.

• HP-UX 11.11 lpmc_em CPU errors (ID#100084). Should this problem occur, the following workaround can be implemented:

  # Stop diagnostics daemon
# /sbin/init.d/diagnostic stop
# Set config to disable diagnostics
# echo "DIAGNOSTICS=0" >> /etc/rc.config

• HP-UX 11.31 is only supported on specific models. Server models: rp34xx, rp44xx, rp7405, rp7410, rp7420, rp8420, rp6440, rp8440; workstation models: с8000 (ID#100098). Of these models, the current version of Charon-PAR supports rp34xx and rp44xx.

• Low network performance, particular in Google cloud environments, when a dedicated NIC is configured for the guest OS (ID#100117). This is related to the cloud environment not properly disabling offloading for the NIC as configured on the Linux level. Workaround: use the MACVTAP interface configuration or (on GCP) configure the instance with gVNIC interfaces.

• HP-UX 11.11, "btlan: Invalid connection type in SROM" reported in dmesg. This message does not affect network operation (ID: 100118).

• MPE Virtual tape errors/timeouts when restoring large backup (ID#100130). Workaround:
  Force the store to use sequential (instead of index read. Enter the following command before restoring the backup:
  :setvar hpfastsearch false.

• Ctrl+c in the Charon-PAR console is passed to the emulator's child processes and kills the PuTTY console process (ID#100188). To prevent this behavior, the emulator serial line configuration can be changed as follows:

  • Modify the default configuration serial.uart0.device.command="putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

    • either to: serial.uart0.device.command="trap '' SIGINT ; putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost", or

    • to: serial.uart0.device.command="setsid putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

• The emulator sets the default physical serial line parameters during boot unless set explicitly by HP-UX (ID#100245). Workaround: use the port_defaults parameter in the configuration file to set the correct parameters.

• Text mode curses applications (for example smh) may not work correctly on the serial console (ID#100252). Console is not recognized as a serial line supporting terminal control functions. Possible workarounds: configure getty on another serial line, or access the emulator via telnet or SSH.

• Maximum size for SCSI disks is currently 2TB (ID#100258).

• Unexpected halt during Oracle test on HP-UX 11.31 (ID#100262).

• Unexpected unicode/non-ascii symbols in the HPCPUNAME (ID#100266).

• A 32-bit HP-UX guest system may crash under high network load because the RX/TX interrupt frequency of the 10 Mbit LAN card becomes too high (ID#100269). Possible workaround: configure a traffic shaper on the Linux host level if the system encounters this problem.

• TOC in HP-UX on an emulated rp7400 system when the configuration contains SCSI controllers on the second system bus (ID#100221, duplicate of ID#100298).

• If a VE license is used, the emulator must always be run as root (ID#100314).

• Under rare conditions, an emulated dec21x4x network controller shows an error (DMA failure) on the HP-UX boot and the guest system has no network connectivity (ID#100318). The cause could be an incomplete system reset (ID#100321).

• Under high network load, the HP-UX guest system may become unresponsive for short periods of time (ID#100338).

• Adding the superIO option crashes the emulator (ID#100375).

• Under not yet clearly understood but rare conditions, the emulator may crash in iomap.cpp (ID#100376).

• In very rare cases, in an emulated system with multiple CPUs, the startup my fail with the error mp_wait_for_rendez: timeout occurred (#100397).

Information about Version 3.0.17

New Features in Version 3.0.17

• Support for E1000 gigabit lan adapter 

Problems Fixed and Other Updates in Version 3.0.17 Build 23300

• Improvement of DMA agent (ID#100382).

• Tapes on HP-UX 11.31 were always reported as offline (ID#100387). The error in the emulator log file was Inquiry with EVPD page 83: invalid field in cdb.

• Implementation of E1000 network card emulation (ID#100378). The HP-UX E1000 driver supports checksum offloading (CKO), TCP segmentation offloading (TSO), Jumbo frames up to 9000 bytes. Host NIC types supported: TAP, MACVTAP, DUMMY.

• Under some circumstances Charon-PAR 3.0.16 did not release the console port (default 30000) after the console connection was disconnected (ID#100383). Subsequent connection attempts would fail.

• The HP-UX commands setboot -v and and  setboot -t FASTBOOT=on would fail with error accessing firmware - Invalid argument (ID#100384). This change implemented boot test list, including fastboot parameters. Since boot test selection is meaningless for the emulator, the parameters are not changed by the set command.

• Add support for the IFF_VNET_HDR flag in the network subsystem to allow offload control for checksums and segmentation (ID#100385).

Known Caveats in Version 3.0.17

Charon-PAR version 3.0.17 has the following known caveats:

• SSH-based data transfer performance and overall CPU load on the guest system are influenced by the SSH encryption method used. On Rocky Linux 8, a higher level encryption is used by default which can lead to a lower performance of the guest system when compared to older guest operating system versions. Possible workaround: configure SSH with less demanding parameters
  (e.g.,  -o 'Ciphers aes128-ctr' -o 'MACs umac-64-etm@openssh.com'). Caveat: this also makes the connection somewhat less secure.

• When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

• Repeated MMU assist off messages may be displayed. This message means that the MMU assistance module detected an unsupported guest OS. It is normal to see these messages during a reset and when the guest OS is starting (when the guest OS is not available).

• If running the Charon emulator host in a Nutanix VM, it must be ensured that Nutanix host partitioning be configured in a way that the emulator's domain (node) does not conflict with or share any resources with other nodes. Failing to do so can cause low performance and instability.

• There may be a problem loading additional modules into the expansion slots of rp34xx and rp44xx models. If you encounter this problem, please contact Stromasys support for a workaround.

• HP-UX 11.11 lpmc_em CPU errors (ID#100084). Should this problem occur, the following workaround can be implemented:

  # Stop diagnostics daemon
# /sbin/init.d/diagnostic stop
# Set config to disable diagnostics
# echo "DIAGNOSTICS=0" >> /etc/rc.config

• HP-UX 11.31 is only supported on specific models. Server models: rp34xx, rp44xx, rp7405, rp7410, rp7420, rp8420, rp6440, rp8440; workstation models: с8000 (ID#100098). Of these models, the current version of Charon-PAR supports rp34xx and rp44xx.

• Low network performance, particular in Google cloud environments, when a dedicated NIC is configured for the guest OS (ID#100117). This is related to the cloud environment not properly disabling offloading for the NIC as configured on the Linux level. Workaround: use the MACVTAP interface configuration or (on GCP) configure the instance with gVNIC interfaces.

• HP-UX 11.11, "btlan: Invalid connection type in SROM" reported in dmesg. This message does not affect network operation (ID: 100118).

• MPE Virtual tape errors/timeouts when restoring large backup (ID#100130). Workaround:
  Force the store to use sequential (instead of index read. Enter the following command before restoring the backup:
  :setvar hpfastsearch false.

• Ctrl+c in the Charon-PAR console is passed to the emulator's child processes and kills the PuTTY console process (ID#100188). To prevent this behavior, the emulator serial line configuration can be changed as follows:

  • Modify the default configuration serial.uart0.device.command="putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

    • either to: serial.uart0.device.command="trap '' SIGINT ; putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost", or

    • to: serial.uart0.device.command="setsid putty -telnet -P 30000 localhost"

• The emulator sets the default physical serial line parameters during boot unless set explicitly by HP-UX (ID#100245). Workaround: use the port_defaults parameter in the configuration file to set the correct parameters.

• Text mode curses applications (for example smh) may not work correctly on the serial console (ID#100252). Console is not recognized as a serial line supporting terminal control functions. Possible workarounds: configure getty on another serial line, or access the emulator via telnet or SSH.

• Maximum size for SCSI disks is currently 2TB (ID#100258).

• Unexpected halt during Oracle test on HP-UX 11.31 (ID#100262).

• Unexpected unicode/non-ascii symbols in the HPCPUNAME (ID#100266).

• A 32-bit HP-UX guest system may crash under high network load because the RX/TX interrupt frequency of the 10 Mbit LAN card becomes too high (ID#100269). Possible workaround: configure a traffic shaper on the Linux host level if the system encounters this problem.

• TOC in HP-UX on an emulated rp7400 system when the configuration contains SCSI controllers on the second system bus (ID#100221, duplicate of ID#100298).

• If a VE license is used, the emulator must always be run as root (ID#100314).

• Under rare conditions, an emulated dec21x4x network controller shows an error (DMA failure) on the HP-UX boot and the guest system has no network connectivity (ID#100318). The cause could be an incomplete system reset (ID#100321).

• Under high network load, the HP-UX guest system may become unresponsive for short periods of time (ID#100338).

• Adding the superIO option crashes the emulator (ID#100375).

• Under not yet clearly understood but rare conditions, the emulator may crash in iomap.cpp (ID#100376).

Information about Version 3.0.16

New Features in Version 3.0.16

• Parallel port for 720 and B132L models.

• DIT1 run-time update for stability and performance improvements.

Problems Fixed and Other Updates in Version 3.0.16 Build 23201

• When PuTTY was used to connect to the serial console, the emulator automatically entered the IPL section during boot instead of prompting the user. This was due to PuTTY sending an incorrect new line in Telnet protocol mode. This fix corrected the PuTTY Telnet profile included in the emulator kit ("Return key sends Telnet new line instead of ^M"  is now disabled (ID#100379).

Problems Fixed and Other Updates in Version 3.0.16 Build 23200

• Implemented parallel port for 720 and B132L models (ID#100374).

• Implemented serial port flow control protocol on telnet port (ID#100080). This change should resolve problems with copy/paste and input overruns.

• Additional code optimizations and improvements (ID#100370, ID#100373).

Known Caveats in Version 3.0.16

Charon-PAR version 3.0.15 has the following known caveats:

• SSH-based data transfer performance and overall CPU load on the guest system are influenced by the SSH encryption method used. On Rocky Linux 8, a higher level encryption is used by default which can lead to a lower performance of the guest system when compared to older guest operating system versions. Possible workaround: configure SSH with less demanding parameters
  (e.g.,  -o 'Ciphers aes128-ctr' -o 'MACs umac-64-etm@openssh.com'). Caveat: this also makes the connection somewhat less secure.

• When installing the aksusbd package version 8.13 in some CentOS 7.x environments it was observed that the aksusbd service did not start automatically after a new installation or an upgrade. The following error was displayed during the installation: Failed to restart aksusbd.service: Access denied. If this happens, uninstall the aksusbd package and reboot the system. After rebooting the system, re-install the package. The cause of this sporadic problem has not yet been identified.

• Repeated MMU assist off messages may be displayed. This message means that the MMU assistance module detected an unsupported guest OS. It is normal to see these messages during a reset and when the guest OS is starting (when the guest OS is not available).

• If running the Charon emulator host in a Nutanix VM, it must be ensured that Nutanix host partitioning be configured in a way that the emulator's domain (node) does not conflict with or share any resources with other nodes. Failing to do so can cause low performance and instability.

• There may be a problem loading additional modules into the expansion slots of rp34xx and rp44xx models. If you encounter this problem, please contact Stromasys support for a workaround.

• HP-UX 11.11 lpmc_em CPU errors (ID#100084). Should this problem occur, the following workaround can be implemented:

  # Stop diagnostics daemon
# /sbin/init.d/diagnostic stop
# Set config to disable diagnostics
# echo "DIAGNOSTICS=0" >> /etc/rc.config

• HP-UX 11.31 is only supported on specific models. Server models: rp34xx, rp44xx, rp7405, rp7410, rp7420, rp8420, rp6440, rp8440; workstation models: с8000 (ID#100098). Of these models, the current version of Charon-PAR supports rp34xx and rp44xx.

• Low network performance, particular in Google cloud environments, when a dedicated NIC is configured for the guest OS (ID#100117). This is related to the cloud environment not properly disabling offloading for the NIC as configured on the Linux level. Workaround: use the MACVTAP interface configuration or (on GCP) configure the instance with gVNIC interfaces.

• HP-UX 11.11, "btlan: Invalid connection type in SROM" reported in dmesg. This message does not affect network operation (ID: 100118).

• MPE Virtual tape errors/timeouts when restoring large backup (ID#100130). Workaround:
  Force the store to use sequential (instead of index read. Enter the following command before restoring the backup::setvar hpfastsearch false.