1. GemStone/S 64 Bit 3.2.8 Release Notes 
Overview
GemStone/S 64 Bit 3.2.8 is a new version of the GemStone/S 64 Bit object server. This release fixes a number of bugs, some potentially serious; we recommend everyone using or planning to use GemStone/S 64 Bit v3.2.x upgrade to this new version.
These release notes provide changes between the previous version of GemStone/S 64 Bit, version 3.2.7, and version 3.2.8. If you are upgrading from a version prior to 3.2.7, review the release notes for each intermediate release to see the full set of changes.
The Installation Guide has not been updated for this release. For installation, upgrade and conversion instructions, use the Installation Guide for version 3.2.6.
Supported Platforms
Platforms for Version 3.2.8
GemStone/S 64 Bit version 3.2.8 is supported on the following platforms:
- Solaris 10 and 11 on SPARC
- Solaris 10 on x86
- AIX 6.1, TL1, SP1, and AIX 7.1
- Red Hat Linux ES 6.5, Ubuntu 12.04, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, on x86
- Mac OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), with Darwin 10.8.0 kernel, on x86
For more information and detailed requirements for each supported platforms, please refer to the GemStone/S 64 Bit v3.2.6 Installation Guide for that platform.
GBS Versions
The following versions of GBS are supported with GemStone/S 64 Bit version 3.2.8. You must use GBS version 7.6.1 or later for VisualWorks, or 5.4.2 or later for VA Smalltalk, with GemStone/S 64 Bit v3.2.8.
GBS version 7.6.1
Changes and Bugs Fixed
The following are changes between v3.2.7 and v3.2.8:
Updates to SUSE support
SUSE 11, SP3 relies on an earlier version of glibc than the one for which GemStone/S 64 Bit v3.2.5 and later are compiled. While the only issues appear to be related to LDAP, and otherwise testing completes successfully, due to the glibc mismatch SUSE 11, SP3 cannot be officially certified.
Support for SUSE Enterprise Linux 12 has been added in this release.
Updated SSL libraries
The version of OpenSSL used by GemStone/S 64 Bit v3.2.8 has been updated to 1.0.2d.
Topaz ALLSTACKS command added
Topaz now includes the command allstacks. This command performs the equivalent of stk on all instances of GsProcess associated with the ProcessScheduler and stacks saved by previous stack save commands.
Voting while commit in progress may miss objects
After an MFC, Gems must vote on possibleDead objects, so that objects that they still reference are not marked dead. The timing of this vote, during a commit but before commit completed, resulted in a window in which otherwise unreferenced objects that were referenced by newly committed objects were not checked, and not correctly voted down. This may result in repository corruption. This scenario appears to be rare, and was found in internal testing; it requires a specific set of conditions of new object creation, reference, and voting to occur. (#45557)
Multithreaded operations may miss objects
The multithreaded scan operation used by object audit, list references, and similar functions may, under certain circumstances, have incomplete results in the returned values. Missing results are possible if the system is under heavy load (with intense shadowing, or after an MFC or epoch), so that an internal rescan needs to be done; and non-empty possibleDead/dead may also cause results to be understated. (#45570)
markForCollection, reclaim, and similar GC functions are not affected by this bug.
Risk of premature termination of a GsProcess by the ProcessScheduler
In scenarios with multiple GsProcess instances, when one process is being terminated, the scheduler may incorrectly apply that terminate to the wrong GsProcess, causing that process to terminate prematurely. (#45579).
Remote login failures when NetLDI running as root
When logging in remotely, the NetLDI on the Stone’s machine starts a pageserver to service the remote session. With the NetLDI running as root, logins would fail, since the hostusername and hostpassword in the login parameter’s NRS were not used to compose the NRS used to start the page server. (#45496)
More information on deadlock in image
If a deadlock condition is detected (Error 2366), the system will now print all current Smalltalk stacks to the Gem log, to help in diagnosis. (#45509)
Improved error messages
In restore from backup, a write failure reports "RepWritePage failed", without providing details. (#45426)
In restore of a transaction log, when a duplicate filename is found, it reports an error message "unable to re-originate log", which is not informative. (#45447)
encodeUsing: with nil argument resulted in SEGV
Sending encodeUsing: with an argument of nil resulted in a SEGV. (#45518)
TotalOtherPages statistic now excludes free frames
The cache statistic TotalOtherPages previously included free frames, since these frames were indicated by being set to an invalid page kind. Now, free frames are not included in the counts of "OtherPages". (#45448)
GBJ on AIX, using GbjCacheStats results in SEGV
Due to the way environment variables are handled on AIX, GBJ application that call java GbjCacheStats.attach( ), can SEGV during a later call. While this issue only affects GBJ version 3.1.x, the actual bug and fix are in GemStone/S 64 Bit server code. (#45413)