QNX Technical Articles

Date of this edition: February 06, 2015

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If you installed an experimental version of this software, uninstall it before installing the production version.

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Contents...

• What's new in this product suite?
• Troubleshooting: safe mode
• Video support
• USB support in the installation program
• Known issues
• Where to find release notes for specific products
• Online documentation
• Technical support

For the most up-to-date version of these notes, go to our website, www.qnx.com, log into your myQNX account, and then go to the Download area.

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Changes to these notes since June 17, 2011 are highlighted below with this icon:

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What's new in this product suite?

The QNX 4 Product Suite 2011 has been validated on the following hardware:

In addition, the QNX 4 Product Suite 2011 has been validated on the following desktop systems:

• HP Z200 Workstation
• HP Z200 320W 89 Efficient Chassis
• Intel Core i3-530 2.93 4MB/1333 DC CPU
• HP 2GB (2x1GB) DDR3-1333 ECC RAM
• Intel HD graphics (Integrated)
• HP 160GB SATA 7200 1st HDD
• HP PS/2 Standard Keyboard US
• HP USB Optical Scroll Mouse

The QNX 4 Product Suite 2011 includes the following new drivers and components:

• USB Stack 2.0, a backport of the QNX Neutrino USB stack (not just an update of the previous USB stack v1.00). The new stack includes:
  • increased support for USB controllers
  • increased support for USB devices (e.g. USB CD-ROMs)
  • the latest bug fixes from the QNX Neutrino USB stack
  • EHCI isochronous mode support
  • a fix for an issue that caused the system to freeze when a USB Controller shared an IRQ with the SATA controller
  • a fixed devu-prn driver

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  If you created any USB drivers for the USB v1.00 stack, you must rebuild them with the new usbdi.lib in order for them to work correctly with the USB v2.00 stack.

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  The components of the USB stack are as follows:

  io-usb

  USB stack; includes support for the OHCI, UHCI and EHCI chipsets

  io-usb-ehci

  Tiny USB stack; includes only support for the EHCI chipsets

  Fsys.umass

  USB mass-storage class driver

  devu-kbd

  USB keyboard class driver

  devu-mouse

  USB mouse class driver

  devu-prn

  USB printer class driver

  usb

  USB status utility; displays USB device information

  (Ref# 75987)

• Drivers for USB touchscreens:

  devu-egalax

  Driver for EGALAX USB touchscreen controllers

  devu-elo

  Driver for Elo USB touchscreen controllers

  devu-microtouch

  Driver for Microtouch SC USB touchscreen controllers

  devu-touchintl

  Driver for Touch International DMC TSC-10 touchscreen controller

  calib

  New calibration utility (Ref# 72085; Ticket ID 87889)

• TCP/IP 5.1 components (Ref# 75988)

Other changes include:

boot

Now correctly calculates the CPU frequency on most processors. (Ref# 43481)

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If your PC fails to boot, edit the buildfile for the OS image, use the boot command's new -c option to specify the CPU frequency (in MHz), and then build a new OS image. For more information, see the Building an OS Image chapter of the Installation & Configuration guide.

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bootpd

Supports a -D option that fills several fields of the vendor-specific information required for some PXE clients to boot.

calib

Supports touch screens with larger-resolution touch membranes. (Ref# 67264)

qnx4/graphics/trappers/crttrap.list

Updated to include the new graphics drivers.

devu-prn

Now switches to the correct USB printer interface. (Ref# 58292; Ticket ID 83809)

fdisk

Now reports correct disk sizes. (Ref# 59636; Ticket ID 84288)

Fsys.atapi

Updated to support the latest PATA/SATA chipsets. Updates include support for Intel ESB and 82801 SATA chipsets as well as ATI SB400 and JMicron 36x. (Ref# 49177)

This disk driver doesn't have online documentation, but the usage message describes the options:

# use Fsys.atapi
  

Input

• Enhanced touchscreen support

Net

Fixed the trace log messages for new drivers. (Ref# 77423)

Network drivers

The following drivers have been updated to support new versions of the controller family:

• Net.e1000
• Net.ether82557
• Net.i82540
• Net.rtl8169
• Net.rtl

(Ref# 75993, 75989, 75990)

Other updates to the network drivers include:

• If there's no link at startup, the Net.e1000 driver now sets the speed to 0 Mbps. (Ref# 75455, 98316)
• We've corrected the MDI write routine for the Net.ether82557 driver. (Ref# 81957; Case# 00105159)
• Net.i82540 now works correctly with the Intel 82566 network controller. (Ref# 58372)
• Net.rtl8169:
  • Now works correctly at 1000Mbps. (Ref# 71715)
  • No longer stops working after approximately 20 seconds in some setups. (Ref# 76490)
  • We've removed a bad CRC from small frames. (Ref# 76783)

nettrap

Updated to support the latest network drivers.

Pg.i830

• Updated to add support for new controllers (Ref# 73440, 75991)
• Fixed a problem with system freeze when crttrap is started
• Fixed problem with cursor in pterm (Ref# 71456)

Pp.ps

Added support for Cyrillic fonts and updated the documentation accordingly. (Ref# 36291, 97861)

route

Now supports the show command.

SMBfsys

• SMBfsys can now read the root directory on an Ubuntu SMB Share. (Ref# 56837)
• Calling fsync() on a SMB mountpoint no longer blocks forever. (Ref# 58269)

tar

Now supports a -C option that lets you change the current directory.

/etc/config/traceinfo

Updated to support new trace output from drivers.

vedit

If you upgrade from a previous version of the QNX 4 Product Suite, the installer no longer moves the files for vedit. (Ref# 72623)

vesabios.trap

Increased the maximum number of detected graphics modes to 128

Changes in the Installation program:

• The boot floppy image compression method has changed from gzip to bzip2.
• USB components are included on the Installation CD and are available during the installation.
• The installation program's “Build OS” step is fixed. Modifications in the buildfile and sysinit in the installation program are now applied correctly.

Troubleshooting: safe mode

When your machine first boots from the CD, you'll see a message telling you to press any key for safe mode. If you do this, you'll see a menu of installation instructions containing several options:

Diagnostic Mode – F1

This option lets you specify the hardware that will be auto-detected. If you have any unusual devices, you may choose to select/unselect them. After Auto-detection, you may add additional devices manually by using the Add... button.

VGA 16 Color only – F2

You can use this option if any video problems appear when first booting or entering graphics mode. Later on during the installation, you'll be prompted for a video probe to obtain a better resolution.

Keyboard only (no PS/2 Mouse) – F3

If you have problems with your keyboard or pointing device, you may try this option.

Verbose – F4

This option displays all the available information when device drivers or other programs are run. You may find this option useful if there's a problem that's difficult to recognize/diagnose. The additional details provided may be required to help resolve problems.

Reset Keyboard – F5

If you have problems with your keyboard or pointing device, you may try this option.

Reset PS/2 Mouse – F6

If you have problems with your PS/2-compatible pointing device, you may select this option. Some controllers don't get initialized properly.

Use USB stack — F7

This option launches the io-usb manager. It would be useful if you have a problem with a USB mouse or keyboard, if you want to use a USB-CDROM, or install QNX to a USB-flash device.

Emulate Video BIOS – F9

You can use this option if any video problems appear when first booting or entering graphics mode. Often laptops “emulate” video chipsets through software.

Video support

Some video cards (e.g. in some portables) might not be supported in Photon. Even though the Product Installer can support many of these cards, in order to run Photon itself on such computers you might need a newer version of the Photon graphics drivers.

If this is the case, install all of the latest patches for Photon from the CD. If your video card still isn't supported, please contact Tech Support.

USB support in the installation program

To enable USB support during the installation:

1. Enable the USB stack (press F7) in the Safe Mode menu to run the io-usb manager.
2. In the first installation program step, press F12 or choose the Run installation in diagnostic mode check box.
3. Press F2 or the Next button.
4. In the “Hardware adapter type” list, select “USB mass storage device”.
5. Press F2 or the Next button.
6. The auto-detect hardware procedure should find all connected USB mass storage devices (USB CD-ROM, USB floppy, USB flash).

USB support lets you install QNX from a USB CDROM and install QNX on a USB flash.

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The installation program currently doesn't support preparing a boot floppy for the USB floppy drives.

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Known issues

The known issues for this edition of the QNX 4 Product Suite include the following:

• It's possible to mount different USB sticks with specific mountpoints by using the Fsys.umass did and vid arguments, but the documentation doesn't explain how. (Ref# J228998)

  Workaround:

  • You must specify the did and vid in full hexadecinal form (e.g., vid=0x1233, not vid=1233). Preparsing the output of usb is the only way.
  • If you're specifying a device and a vendor, you must specify the devno and busno (4 arguments).
  • The -N option must be unique for each invocation of Fsys.umass.
• The purpose of vpim is to convert Latin characters into Japanese characters, so if you put the Input driver into Kana (Japanese phonetic alphabet) mode, none of the vpim option modes have any effect. This is normal behavior, as vpim operates only on Latin character input (Romaji). If you're in Kana mode and you want to use vpim, put the Input driver back into Romaji mode via the Alt-~ keychord.
• On some boards, if you use a USB keyboard and a USB mouse in PS/2 legacy mode, the USB mouse might work incorrectly in Photon; it might move erratically and generate right-button clicks. (Ref# 71682)

  Workaround: Add the -R option to the kbd protocol in the command you use to launch the Input manager, or in /etc/config/trap/input.$NODE or /etc/config/bin/input.$NODE.

• If you upgrade from a previous version of the QNX 4 Product Suite to the QNX 4 Product Suite 2011 version, and you previously installed the “QNX 4.25 OS Patch Level G+” component from the 2008 CD, it'll block the “QNX4 Documentation Patch G” component (you'll see that the QNX4 Documentation component has two installed patches, and patch G is already installed).

  Workaround: Remove the QNX 4 Documentation component (F8) and then install the Documentation component with patch G again.

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  If you upgrade from a previous version (2008 or 2009) of the QNX 4 Product Suite to the 2011 version, we recommend you remove the “QNX 4.25 OS Patch Level G+” and “QNX 4.25 OS Patch 2009” components before upgrading. These components were excluded from the QNX 4 Product Suite 2011. To remove these components, run the phinstall program from the 2008 or 2009 Product Suite CD.

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• The Fsys.atapi driver supports SATA drives only in legacy IDE mode. (Ref# 56067)
• Don't run crttrap trap while you're running Photon; if you do, your system might crash, or even get corrupted. (Ref# 72418)

  Workaround: Run crttrap trap only in text mode.

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  If your system boots automatically into Photon, you can get to text mode by moving /etc/config/bin/ph.num (where num is your system's node number) to a different location, such as root's home directory, and then rebooting. You can move the file back to its original location later if you wish to boot into Photon again.

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• USB keyboards or USB mice can freeze sometimes if the USB keyboard and USB mouse are used at the same time and Net and io-usb are sharing one interrupt line.

  Workaround: Restart Photon or the Input manager.

• On several boards, the installation program can hang up on ATAPI detection if the USB stack is enabled (F7 in the Safe Mode menu).
• The installation program can hang if you try to probe and set video mode during the installation for some unsupported video controllers.

  Workaround: Skip the video mode probe procedure during the installation. (Answer “No” for the installer question “Do you want to probe and set video modes now?”). The first time you boot:

  1. Comment out the line with Hydra.ms in the file /qnx4/graphics/trappers/crttrap.list.
  2. Run crttrap trap to probe the video mode.
  3. Start Photon.

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  Unsupported graphics controllers will work in 640x480x16 mode only.

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• If you've installed both the TCPIP 4.25 stack and TCPIP 5.10, and you then remove the currently used version of TCPIP in the Phinstall program, then to set up the links for the remaining TCP/IP, run the /usr/tcprt/switch.tcpip script. You can also use this script to switch between the versions of TCP/IP.
• The TCPIP 5.10 configuration script updates only the /etc/config/bin/tcpip.$NODE script during the installation and leaves /etc/netstart and /etc/nfsstart unchanged. If you're using the /etc/netstart script to launch TCP/IP 4.25 components, and you then update to TCPIP 5.10, you have to edit the /etc/netstart and /etc/nfsstart scripts manually or replace these files with netstart and nfsstart from the /etc/config/socket directory. This directory contains default configuration files and scripts for the currently used TCP/IP stack.

Where to find release notes for specific products

Each product we ship includes an online “readme” file that contains important information for each release (e.g. recent changes, known problems, configuration hints, and so on).

The files containing the release notes for each of the products you purchased are as follows:

Online documentation

You can read our HTML-based online documentation by using the Photon Helpviewer or a browser, such as our Voyager HTML browser.

Technical support

To obtain technical support for any QNX product, visit the Support area on our website (www.qnx.com). You'll find a wide range of support options, including community forums.

© 2015, QNX Software Systems Limited. All rights reserved.

QNX, Photon, Photon microGUI, Voyager and Foundry27 are trademarks of QNX Software Systems Limited, which are registered and/or used in certain jurisdictions. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.