PTC MKS Toolkit Homepage v9.6 Patch 1 
Release Notes October 2014

PTC MKS Toolkit is the leader in UNIX to Windows user productivity, platform interoperability, and application portability.

PTC Inc.
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  MKSToolkitSupport@ptc.com

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PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6 Patch 1

PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6 Patch 1 is a maintenance update for PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6. It includes several fixes as described in Fixed Problems below. In addition, the Known Issues section of these notes has been updated.

Zip updated to version 3 and Unzip updated to version 6

These versions allow the manipulation of Zip64 archives, storage and retrieval of symbolic links, storage and retrieval of utf-8 files names even with TK_ARCHIVE_CHARSET=ANSI_ASCII, while maintaining maximum compatibility with previous versions.

OpenSSL updated to version 1.0.1h

OpenSSL in both The NuTCRACKER Platform and the utilities are updated to 1.0.1h which claims to be immune to the Heartbleed bug. Even if your use was not affected, you will sleep easier knowing you have the upgrade in place.

The NuTCRACKER Platform adds a port of the popular SQLITE3 library

Ported applications link to sqlite3.lib and the runtime is distributed with The NuTCRACKER Platform. The sqlite3.exe utility is also available.

Support for mandoc formatted man pages added with mandoc.exe

The PTC MPS Toolkit man executable has been enhanced to recognize unformatted man pages in the mandoc format and hand them to mandoc.exe for processing.

Clang 3.4 beta for The PTC NuTCRACKER Platform

PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers have an optional installation component containing the LLVM clang 3.4 compiler ported to The NuTCRACKER Platform and enhanced to replace the GNU C port in the PTC MKS Toolkit Resource Kit. The current version (still considered to be a beta port) does not yet provide a C++ runtime library. As the "C" runtime library in The NuTCRACKER Platform is upgraded to modern standards over the next few releases, this library will be ported and delivered. The end result will allow GNU C code (both code and command line options) to port more easily with PTC NuTCRACKER.

If you are interested in this feature, select a custom install (or change the current install) to add the clang 3.4 feature. Details of PTC MKS Toolkit specifics can be found in a companion PDF file on the start menu and with "man 1 clang".

Reimplemented symlink() and readlink()

Both The NuTCRACKER Platform and Utility libraries have been reworked to provide correct implementations for symlink() and readlink() and hence the ln.exe and ls.exe utilities inherit those improvements.

PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6

PTC MKS Toolkit is the leader in UNIX to Window scripting, connectivity, and application migration.

Support for Absoft FORTRAN version 13.0

PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers has updated the runtime libraries needed to support Absoft FORTRAN version 13.0.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Support

PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6 is compatible with the final release versions of Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 and Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Express (also known as Visual C++ 12.0 Express).

An updated version of the UNIX to Windows Porting Guide with instructions on using the Visual Studio 2013 and Visual C++ 2013 Express IDEs has been included with PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6.

Intel C++ 10.x, 2011, 2013 and 2013 SP1 Support

PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6 is compatible with all Intel C++ compilers between release 8.0 and 14.0 (2013 SP1). These compilers have a compatibility mode with Microsoft Visual Studio which is enabled by the cc and cxx wrappers. The installer will auto-detect these compilers and the ncenv(1) environment generators can be used to pick one after installation. Version 2011 and later have no IA64 compilers, but where a compiler is found it can be used in place of the Visual C++ compiler.

New Utilities

openldap client utilities ldapcompare, ldapexop, ldapurl, ldapadd, ldapdelete, ldapmodrdn, ldapsearch, and ldapwhoami have been added.

tkpath is a cygpath command line compatible utility which aides in ports using autoconf.

realpath with some Win32 specific capabilities added.

dmidecode added.

Updated version of Perl

Perl has been updated to version 5.10.1 to provide better compatibility with a number of CPAN modules.

Old versions of Visual Studio deprecated.

The use of Visual Studio 6.0, Visual Studio .NET, and Visual Studio .NET 2003 are deprecated in this release. Support for these compilers may be dropped in a future release.

Old versions of Windows deprecated.

Support for Windows XP and Server 2003 is deprecated in this release. Support for these platforms may be dropped in a future release.

Itanium support deprecated.

Microsoft has deprecated Itanium versions of Windows and neither Microsoft Visual Studio nor Intel C++ XE ships with a compiler targeting the Itanium architecture. It is PTC's intention to remove all Itanium support in the next release of PTC MKS Toolkit. Please contact PTC MKS Toolkit sales or support if you need further information.

R tools no longer installed by default.

The R tools (rsh, rexec, rlogin and associated services) are no longer installed by default due to the serious security problems that are inherently present with these tools. If needed, these tools can still be installed by doing a custom install and marking the installer features for "R* Clients" and/or "R* daemons" to be installed.

New Features in Previous Releases

Hardware and Software Requirements

PTC MKS Toolkit products do not have any particular hardware requirements. Any machine that is sufficient to run the underlying operating system is sufficient. All PTC MKS Toolkit products run on Windows systems with Intel 32-bit, Itanium (IA64), or Extended Architecture 64-bit (x64) processors.

PTC MKS Toolkit products have the following software requirements:

  • Platforms. You can install all PTC MKS Toolkit products on:
    • Windows XP
    • Windows Server 2003
    • Windows Server 2003 R2
    • Windows Vista
    • Windows XP x64 Edition
    • Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems
    • Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition
    • Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 Edition
    • Windows Vista x64
    • Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and x64)
    • Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems
    • Windows 7
    • Windows 7 x64
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 (32-bit and x64)
    • Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based Systems
    • Windows 8
    • Windows 8 x64
    • Windows Server 2012 x64

  • FAT File Systems. It is not currently possible to adequately secure a PTC MKS Toolkit installation on a FAT file system. Therefore, on Windows XP/Vista/7/8 systems, we recommend installing PTC MKS Toolkit on an NTFS file system.

  • Compilers. The PTC MKS Toolkit development products work with various compilers and compilation environments. The "Using Languages" chapter of the PTC MKS Toolkit UNIX to Windows Porting Guide describes how to use these PTC MKS Toolkit products with C, C++, and FORTRAN.

    PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers supports the following x86 compilers:
    • Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, 7.0, 7.1, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, or 11.0 (as a separate product or as part of Microsoft Visual Studio or the Windows SDK)
    • Windows SDK
    • Visual C++ 2013 Express (also known as Visual C++ 12.0 Express)
    • Visual C++ 2012 Express (also known as Visual C++ 11.0 Express)
    • Visual C++ 2010 Express (also known as Visual C++ 10.0 Express)
    • Visual C++ 2008 Express (also known as Visual C++ 9.0 Express)
    • Visual C++ 2005 Express (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)
    • Microsoft C++ 2003 Toolkit (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)
    • Intel C++ 8.x, 9.x, 10.x, 2011, 2013, or 2013 SP1 (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)
    • GCC 3.3.1, as provided in the PTC MKS Toolkit Resource Kit

    In addition, PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers also support the following compilation environments:
    • both versions of the Standard Template Library
    • the Absoft Pro FORTRAN f90/f77 compiler, versions 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10, and 13.0. (http://www.absoft.com/)

    PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition supports the following additional 64-bit compilers:
    • Visual C++ from Microsoft Visual Studio 2013
    • Visual C++ from Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
    • Visual C++ from Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (Note: Ultimate edition or Windows SDK is required for IA64 compiler)
    • Visual C++ from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (Note: Team edition or Windows SDK is required for IA64 compiler)
    • Visual C++ from Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (Note: Team edition or Windows SDK is required for IA64 compiler)
    • Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK Compiler
    • Intel C++ 8.x or 9.x (requires Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK)

    Note: As of Windows Vista, the Microsoft Platform SDK was renamed to the Windows SDK. References to the Microsoft Platform SDK also refer to the Windows SDK.

    Note: Support for Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, 7.0, and 7.1 are deprecated in this release. For PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, the VC6 linker is no longer able to link executables that include debug information when the executable is linked against many the static libraries that are included with the product.

    For those 64-bit compilers that require the Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK (that is, the Intel C++ 8.x or 9.x compilers), the version of the SDK required depends upon your system's processor. For those processors with IA64 architecture, you can use any version of the SDK from February 2003 or later, such as the one available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/. For Extended Architecture processors, you must use Build 1289 or later of the SDK.

    When installing PTC MKS Toolkit, you are asked to specify the default compiler to be used with the development utilities provided. Should you decide to change your default compiler from your original choice, you should do the following:

    1. Close all PTC MKS Toolkit shells and utilities.

    2. Select Add or Remove Programs from the Windows control panel applet.

    3. Select PTC MKS Toolkit from the list of programs and click the Change button. The PTC MKS Toolkit installer begins.

    4. When the Program Maintenance dialog appears, check the Modify option and click the Next > button.

    5. As the installer continues with the process of modifying your PTC MKS Toolkit configuration, you are given the opportunity to select a new default compiler as well as to change other installer options.

  • Deployment. When deploying NuTCRACKER Platform applications built with Visual Studio 2005, Windows Installer 3.1 (or higher) must be installed on each target machine to ensure that all parts of the NuTCRACKER Platform are installed correctly.

  • Windows Task Scheduler. The PTC MKS Toolkit Scheduler, the command-line scheduling utilities (at, batch, crontab, and wts) require Internet Explorer 4 (or later) and the Windows Task Scheduler. On most Windows operating systems, these are already installed.

    Alternatively, you can download Internet Explorer and its add-ons from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie.

Installing PTC MKS Toolkit

If you have MKS Toolkit 7.5 or earlier, or if you have a previous version of MKS NuTCRACKER Professional, we recommend that you uninstall it, or install PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6 on another machine.

When installing on a machine with SCO XVision Eclipse installed, you should uninstall it before installing PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6.

Note: If you have PTC MKS Toolkit for Interoperability or MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers installed on a Japanese machine and uninstall XVision Eclipse, PTC X/Server is not installed with a standard English license for these products. Contact Customer Support to request the proper license.

When installing PTC MKS Toolkit on a 64-bit machine, you must first uninstall any previously installed PTC MKS Toolkit releases (version 8.6 and earlier).

When installing PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition on any platform, you must first uninstall any existing PTC MKS Toolkit installation.

When installing PTC MKS Toolkit, you must install from an account with local or domain administrator privileges. You do not need to be an Administrator, but your login ID must be a member of the local or domain Windows Administrators group before you can install.

All PTC MKS Toolkit products share a common installer. If you are installing from a CD, insert the PTC MKS Toolkit distribution CD; the installer should start automatically. If you are installing from an electronic distribution, run the self-extracting installer.

To install PTC MKS Toolkit, click the Install Toolkit button and follow the instructions on the dialogs that appear.

Note: You should turn off all virus protection software before installing PTC MKS Toolkit. Such software can sometimes cause the installation to be interrupted and rolled back. Once you have installed PTC MKS Toolkit, you can turn virus protection back on.

For step-by-step installation instructions and an installation FAQ, see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.

Silent and Administrative Installations

For step-by-step installation instructions and information on administrative and silent installations for PTC MKS Toolkit see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.

Patch Installation

If you are installing a patch for PTC X/Server and PTC MKS Toolkit on the same machine, PTC recommends applying the PTC MKS Toolkit patch to update the shared components before applying the PTC X/Server patch. It is not an error to install the PTC XServer patch first, but you may be asked to reboot after patch install is complete. Installing PTC MKS Toolkit first will reduce the risk that a reboot will be needed.

For step-by-step patch installation instruction for PTC X/Server see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.

Additional Components on the PTC MKS Toolkit CD

The PTC MKS Toolkit CD also includes several items that are not installed as part of the normal installation procedure. These are:

  • The samples directory. This directory contains a collection of sample source code for use with PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers and PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers. Though they can be modified and compiled for 64-bit Windows systems, these samples were designed and tested on 32-bit Windows platforms using the PTC MKS Toolkit porting and migration products.

    These samples include binaries for cpp, gawk, gmake, install, and the groff suite of utilities.

  • The redist directory. This directory contains a collection of utilities and drivers that may be needed to get full use out of MKS products. This includes the recent versions of the Jet Database driver, Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and Adobe® Acrobat® Reader.

Uninstalling PTC MKS Toolkit

Uninstalling PTC MKS Toolkit 8.x or 9.x

To uninstall PTC MKS Toolkit, use the following procedure:

  1. From the Control Panel run Add/Remove Programs.

  2. Remove PTC MKS Toolkit 8.x or PTC MKS Toolkit 9.x, as appropriate.

  3. Remove SCO XVision Eclipse (or PTC X/Server). (This is only necessary if one of the two X Server packages was installed. This X Server is normally only installed with PTC MKS Toolkit for Interoperability, PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, and PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-bit Edition.)

You must reboot your system before reinstalling PTC MKS Toolkit.

Uninstalling Previous Versions of PTC MKS Toolkit

To uninstall a 7.x version of MKS Toolkit, run the TKUninstall utility found in your system directory (you can find your system directory with the windir -s command).

Alternatively, you can uninstall the components manually with the following procedure:

  1. From the Control Panel, run Add/Remove Programs.

  2. Remove, in order, each of the following (if present):
      MKS Evaluation Guide
      MKS Toolkit 7.x
      MKS Platform Components 7.x

You must reboot your system before reinstalling PTC MKS Toolkit.

Activating PTC MKS Toolkit

PTC MKS Toolkit version 9.6 is copy protected and requires activation against the MKS Activation Server (located at http://www.mkssoftware.com) to operate. The software is node fixed (that is, it is attached to a single computer system) and user counted (the Named Authenticated Users must be specified and are enforced). This activation takes place after installation, so you need to plan your product rollout so you do not find yourself with unactivated software on users' machines.

  • If your site has many different serial numbers and, in the past, have used only one of them on many machines, you will either need to contact MKS Sales to have these serial numbers bundled under one serial number or use each of these serial numbers as they were purchased (that is, install a single license on no more than one machine; install a five user license installed on no more than five machines with one user each, and so forth).

  • If you have used a single serial number to download the new version of PTC MKS Toolkit during the update process and rolled out to many machines, you will need to specify all serial numbers that need to be updated as each serial number has a notion of the version number requested and will not activate unless it has been updated.

  • If you have some serial numbers under a valid PCS contract and some that are not, and they have not been retired, you will be unable to update any of your serial numbers until you bring all licenses in use under a valid PCS, or retire unused licenses permanently, or submit to MKS Personnel in writing, you will not update said serial numbers to any later version, unless you purchase an update license at a later date.

Further information about PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6 activation and the information which is sent to and stored on MKS computers can be found here: http://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/activation.

You can view the MKS Product Activation FAQ at http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/kb/activation.

For questions related to sales issues, please e-mail: MKSToolkitInfo@ptc.com.

For questions related to support issues, please email: MKSToolkitSupport@ptc.com.

We, the PTC MKS Toolkit Product Team, sincerely value and appreciate your business and want to do everything we can to ensure a successful implementation of our products.

Known Issues

The following known issues exist in PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6:

  • CONHOST.exe dies and the console vanishes While running the PTCS automated regression test suites on the NuTCRACKER Platform on a Windows 7 x64 machine we discovered numerous errors we had not seen before. During debugging, we discovered that the console window was vanishing and we had messages in the event log about CONHOST.exe dying with a 0xC0000005 exception. PCTS uses a NutCRACKER ported PDKSH and we had just the right combination of events to trigger a well known bug in Windows. Applying a fix found here: The conhost.exe process crashes when an application exits on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 cured the problem and PCTS again ran properly to conclusion.

  • Perl CPAN support. Some Perl CPAN modules include source code for which must be built into a dll for the module to function. Building such modules is only possible if you have PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers or PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers. In such cases, perl should be launched from a development window (on 64-bit machines, use a 64-bit development window). Not all such Perl CPAN modules will compile out of the box - some may require porting to the NuTCRACKER environment.

  • Problems with constructors for global objects when using deprecated compilers. If you have PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers or PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, and you are compiling and linking applications with one of the deprecated compilers (Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, 7.0 or 7.1), you may have issues whereby constructors and destructors for C++ global objects are not called. This is most likely to happen when you directly use the link command to link your application, but it could also happen if you are using a Visual Studio project to link your application. The fix is to include old_initcode.obj on the command line when you invoke the linker, and this needs to be specified on the command line before c.lib.

    A warning sign that you may encounter this issue is if you encounter this warning message when linking your application:
    c.lib(initcode.obj) : warning LNK4078: multiple ".CRT" sections found with different attributes (40300040)

    If you are using the ld command to link your application, then no changes to your makefiles or build scripts should be required.

  • Last Access Timestamps. On Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2, the default file system behavior for NTFS is to not update the "last access" timestamp on files when you access them, and this will be seen in NuTCRACKER applications where the st_atime field in the stat structure appears to be not be updated as you access files. While many applications will not have an issue with this behavior, some may have problems. You can restore the old behavior with the Windows command: 
    	fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 0
    A reboot will be required after making this change. The current setting of this flag can be queried with the command: 
    	fsutil behavior query disablelastaccess
  • NuTCRACKER Platform Applications and PTC X/Server. Currently, there are some issues with NuTCRACKER Platform applications which use OpenGL to access PTC X/Server features such as Direct Rendering and Overlay Planes on systems using an NVIDIA video card. For details, see the PTC X/Server 8.7 release notes.

  • Short Path Names with Visual Studio 2008. The Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 IDE sometimes crashes when building a Win32 console application with the Additional Library Directories value set to a short path (for example, C:\PROGRA~1\MKSTOO~1\lib). We recommend always using long path names (C:\Program Files\MKS Toolkit\lib in this situation. Microsoft is aware of this issue and has it registered as C++ case number SRX071206601300. A fix is expected in Visual Studio 2008 Patch 1 from Microsoft, scheduled for April or May 2008.

  • Installing PTC X/Server. When installing PTC MKS Toolkit for Interoperability or PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, you may receive a message asking you to uninstall XVision and reboot before you install PTC X/Server. You can install PTC X/Server from the CD autoplay screen. It cannot be installed by performing a Modify or Repair operation on PTC MKS Toolkit.

  • MIT Kerberos for Windows 3.0.0. When MIT Kerberos for Windows 3.0.0 is installed on a system, it appears to break SSPI, causing credential passing errors. We recommend uninstalling this software on systems running PTC MKS Toolkit and rebooting.

  • Security ID Warning. When the TK_NTSECURITYINFO_OFF environment variable is set, it turns off all security related features. This includes the ability to look up user and group IDs. As a result, utilities such as id, chown, and chgrp that depend upon user and group IDs will not work properly when this variable is set.

  • _NutConf(). MKS Toolkit 8.6 added large file support and as a result inadvertently broke backward binary compatibility for applications linked against previous import libraries. With 8.6p2 and 8.7 we added an environment variable to supplement the _NuTConf() to revert the behavior of the runtime to pre-8.6 form such that read beyond a 2G boundary without large file support enabled will not result in an error. set NUT_DISABLE_FULL_LFS_SEMANTICS=1 to do the equivalent of _NutConf(_NC_SET_FULL_LFS_SEMANTICS, FALSE) without the need to recompile or relink your application.

  • Path Name Issue. If you install the Microsoft Platform SDK or Windows SDK on a 64-bit machine, and your PATH environment variable contains elements that begin with C:\Program files (x86), the script for setting up the 64-bit build environment included with that SDK does not work. There are two possible solutions:

    • Modify the PATH environment variable in the system environment to substitute the short path variant of the folder name Program Files (x86). The short path variant is normally C:\progra~2. You can use dir /x from a command window to be sure.

    • Modify the file setenv.bat in the root directory of the SDK tree. Find the section that looks like this: 
              REM ---------------------------------------------
        REM Patch path to put Bin\WinNT\NT4 in path ahead
        REM of NT5 tools that don't run on NT4
        REM ---------------------------------------------
        For /F "delims=;" %%i IN ('Cmd /c Ver') DO (
          IF "%%i"=="Windows NT Version 4.0" (
            Set Path=%MSSdk%\Bin\WinNT\NT4;%Path%
            Goto Finish
          )
        )
        Goto Finish
      and remove or comment out the line that begins Set Path=.

  • The uil Compiler. The uil compiler used with some Motif applications can generate uid files that are compatible with either 32 or 64-bit platforms. A single uid file cannot be used for both situations. This is consistent with the documented behavior of the uil compiler. The uil compiler normally will try to figure out whether to build the 32-bit or 64-bit version based on your build environment. If the TARGET_CPU environment variable is set to either "AMD64" or "IA64", the uil compiler builds a 64-bit compatible uid file; otherwise, it builds a 32-bit compatible uid file. The TARGET_CPU environment variable is set as appropriate for all 64-bit NuTCRACKER build environments launched from the Start menu.

    • The uid file that is generated by the uil compiler in this release is not guaranteed to be portable to other 64-bit UNIX platforms.

Customer Support

When reporting a problem, you will need certain information about your product, which you can find on the Support Information tab of the PTC MKS Toolkit Control Panel Applet.

Contact PTC MKS Toolkit customer support at:

Web Site: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support
Online Request Form: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/support.asp
E-mail: MKSToolkitSupport@ptc.com
Telephone: +1-703-803-7660
Fax: +1-703-803-3344

Additional PTC MKS Toolkit Resources

There are several other sources for additional information about our PTC MKS Toolkit products.

We have general product information, including technical specifications, detailed utility listings, and datasheets at:

We offer a resource kit including example scripts, additional utilities, more tutorials, and a wide variety of other useful information at:

We have several additional articles, tutorials, and white papers about using features of the PTC MKS Toolkit at:

Through the years, we have accumulated a lot of technical details about the PTC MKS Toolkit products and have put this information in a searchable database at:

Our customers commonly ask certain questions. These questions and their answers are in our Frequently Asked Questions pages at:

Known installation issues are listed at:

Fixed Problems

Several problems were fixed in PTC MKS Toolkit 9.6. These are listed at:

Fixed Problems in Previous Releases

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