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Chapter 7. Compiler and Tools

The Net::SMTP Perl module now supports SSL

This update adds support for implicit and explicit TLS and SSL encryption to the Net::SMTP Perl module. As a result, it is now possible to communicate with SMTP servers through a secured channel. (BZ#1557574)

The Net::LDAP Perl module no longer defaults to TLS 1.0

Previously, when the Net::LDAP Perl module module was used for upgrading an unsecured LDAP connection to a TLS-protected one, the module used the TLS protocol version 1.0, which is currently considered insecure. With this update, the default TLS version has been removed from Net::LDAP, and both implicit (LDAPS schema) and explicit (LDAP schema) TLS protocols rely on the default TLS version selected in the IO::Socket::SSL Perl module. As a result, it is no longer necessary to override the TLS version in the Net::LDAP clients by passing the sslversion argument to the start_tls() method to preserve security. (BZ#1520364)

timemaster now supports bonding devices

The timemaster program can be used to synchronize the system clock to all available time sources in case that there are multiple PTP domains available on the network, or fallback to NTP is needed.
This update adds the possibility to specify bonding devices in the active-backup mode in the timemaster configuration file. timemaster now checks if the active interface supports software or hardware timestamping and starts ptp4l on the bonding interface. (BZ#1549015)

pcp rebased to version 4.1.0

The pcp packages have been upgraded to upstream version of Performace Co-Pilot 4.1.0, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version:
  • Added a sized-based interim compression to the pmlogger_check(1) script to reduce data volume sizes on systems configured via the pcp-zeroconf package.
  • Daily compressed archive metadata files.
  • Changed metric labels to first class PCP metric metadata.
  • Metric help text and labels are now stored in PCP archives.
  • Added more Linux kernel metrics: virtual machines, TTYs, aggregate interrupt and softirq counters, af_unix/udp/tcp connection (inet/ipv6), VFS locking, login sessions, AIO, capacity per block device, and other.
  • Performance Metrics Application Programming Interface (PMAPI) and the Performance Metrics Domain Agent (PMDA) API have been refactored, including promotion and deprecation of individual functions.
  • Added new virtual data optimizer (VDO) metrics to pmdadm(1).
  • Improved integration with Zabbix agentd service with further low-level-discovery support in the pcp2zabbix(1) function.
  • Added a new PMDA pmdabcc(1) for exporting BCC and eBPF trace instrumentation.
  • Added a new PMDA pmdaprometheus(1) to consume metrics from Prometheus end-points. (BZ#1565370)

The ps utility now displays the Login ID associated with processes

The new format option luid of the ps utility now enables you to display the Login ID associated with processes.
To display the login ID attributes of running processes, use the following command:
$ ps -o luid
(BZ#1518986)

gcc-libraries rebased to version 8.2.1

The gcc-libraries packages have been updated to upstream version 8.2.1. This update adds the following changes:
  • The libgfortran.so.5 and libgfortran.so.4 Fortran libraries have been added to enable running applications built with Red Hat Developer Toolset versions 7 and later.
  • The libquadmath library has been added as a dependency of the libgfortran.so.5 library.
  • The Cilk+ library has been removed. (BZ#1600265)

systemtap rebased to version 3.3

The systemtap packages have been upgraded to upstream version 3.3, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Limited support for the extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) tracing on the Intel64 and AMD64 architectures has been added. Use the --runtime=bpf option to use eBPF as a backend. Due to numerous limitations of eBPF and its SystemTap interface, only simple scripts work. For more information, see the Knowledge article https://access.redhat.com/articles/3550581 and the stapbpf(8) manual page.
  • The --sysroot option has been optimized for cross-compiled environments.
  • A new --example option allows you to search the example scripts distributed with SystemTap without providing the whole path of the file.
  • The SystemTap runtime and tapsets are compatible with kernel versions up to 4.17.
  • Usage of SystemTap on systems with real time kernel or machines with a high number of CPUs has been improved.
  • Handling of code used for Spectre and Meltdown attack mitigation has been improved. (BZ#1565773)

GDB can disassemble instructions for the z14 processor of IBM Z architecture

The GDB debugger has been extended to disassemble instructions of the z14 processor of the IBM Z architecture, including guarded storage instructions. Previously, GDB displayed only the numerical values of such instructions in the .long 0xNNNN form. With this update, GDB can correctly display mnemonic names of assembly instructions in code targeting this processor. (BZ#1553104)

New packages: java-11-openjdk

The java-11-openjdk packages provide OpenJDK 11 support through the yum utility.
OpenJDK 11 is the next Long-Term Support (LTS) version of Java supported by Red Hat after OpenJDK 8. It provides multiple new features including Modularization, Application Class Data Sharing, Heap Allocation on Alternative Memory Devices, Local-Variable Syntax for Lambda Parameters, and TLS 1.3 support.
The java-11-openjdk packages do not include unversioned provides because OpenJDK 11 is not fully compatible with OpenJDK 8. (BZ#1570856)

Support for new locales in glibc

This update adds support for two new locales: Urdu (ur_IN) and Wolaytta (wal_ET). Additional support has also been added for newer currency symbols like the Euro, such as in el_GR@euro. Users can now specify these locales using the relevant environment variables to take advantage of the new localization support. (BZ#1448107)

New OFD Locking constants for 64-bit-offset programs

Open File Descriptor (OFD) locks are superior to per-process locks for some applications. With this update, 64-bit-offset programs (those that have #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64) are able to use the F_OFD_* constants in system calls, although they still need to detect if the kernel supports those operations. Note that programs which use 32-bit file offsets do not have access to these constants, as the RHEL 7 ABI does not support translating them. (BZ#1461231)

elfutils rebased to version 0.172

The elfutils packages have been upgraded to upstream version 0.172. This update adds support for the DWARF5 debug information format, split-dwarf, and GNU DebugFission:
  • The eu-readelf tool can display split unit DIEs when the --debug-dump=info+ option is used.
  • The eu-readelf tool can inspect separate .dwo DWARF skeleton files with debug information when the --dwarf-skeleton option is used.
  • The libdw library now tries to resolve the alt file containing linked debug information even when it has not yet been set with the dwarf_set_alt() function.
  • The libdw library has been extended with the functions dwarf_die_addr_die(), dwarf_get_units(), dwarf_getabbrevattr_data() and dwarf_cu_info(). (BZ#1565775)