[ug-bosug] BeleniX 0.4.4 available

[Moinak Ghosh]

Hi Folks,

  After some gap another BeleniX revision is now available. The
following are some of the stuff that goes into this release:

* Upgraded to the OpenSolaris source snapshot: 20060626.
* The most important feature of this release is the development of
  an I/O scheduler for the HSFS module. The I/O scheduler enhances
  CD/DVD read performance using the following techniques:
  I/O reordering using the CLOOK algorithm, I/O coalescing, semi-
  asynchronous readahead for sequential reads.

  All these techniques together deliver upto 24 second reduction in
  LiveCD boot time. That apart these enhancements benefit general
  data CD read performance for a variety of scenarios like install
  from CD/DVD, playing audio/video files from CD etc.  While
  testing using a patched Solaris Express install DVD, upto 9 min
  reduction in install time was observed on a fast AMD64 desktop.
  A detailed write-up with the DTrace profiling results will follow
  soon.

* Updated drivers and device support.
* Addressed some bugs and rfes. One bug caused harddisk installs to
  remain incomplete.
* Slight improvement in Xorg startup time by reducing the number
  of path lookups (and ENOENTs) that Xorg has to do to locate the
  modules. The workaround was to create symbolic links in
  /usr/X11/lib/modules/solaris
* Introduced a new partition (including extended partitions) viewing
  tool (/usr/bin/partmgr). It also paves the way for the ability to
  utilize Linux swap (primary or extended) in future releases.

See the website (www.belenix.org) for further details.

Regards,
Moinak.