4. Feature Updates

Systemtap is now a fully supported feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. systemtap provides a free software (GPL) infrastructure to simplify the gathering of information about the running Linux system. This assists diagnosis of a performance or functional problem. With the help of systemtap, developers no longer need to go through the tedious and disruptive sequence of instrument, recompile, install, and reboot that may be otherwise required to collect data.

Note that some features of systemtap for newer Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Linux systems will not work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 due to missing kernel features. The absence of the kernel utrace precludes support for any user-space probing.

dmidecode gives information about BIOSes and motherboard revisions. The version of kernel-utils supplied with this advisory updates dmidecode from version 2.2 to version 2.9. This version identifies newer processors, PCI-express slots and devices, and blade chassis. It also offers enhanced support for the SMBIOS v2.6 specification.

a new version of kernel-utils is included in this release, updating the Intel microcode file to version 20080910, to support newer Intel processors.

smartmontools has been extended to support newer CCISS controllers found in newer HP ProLiant hardware.

The Samba package has been rebased to the upstream version 3.0.33. The 3.0.x version series is a bugfix only branch of the Samba code base. By rebasing to 3.0.33 we will include a number of important bug fixes and security fixes. No new features will be added by this rebase.

For more information on the upstream fixes provided by this rebase, refer to the Samba Release Notes: http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.0.33.html

ipmitool has been updated to the upstream version 1.8.11, which provides several bug fixes and enhancements over the previous release, including the following: Please note that behaviour of the -K command line switch has changed from prompt for Kg key to read Kg key from environment variable. The -Y flag now behaves as the -K did prior to this update.