Chapter 5. RHEL 8.1.1 release

Red Hat makes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 content available quarterly, in between minor releases (8.Y). The quarterly releases are numbered using the third digit (8.Y.1). The new features in the RHEL 8.1.1 release are described below.

5.1. New features

A new module stream: postgresql:12

The RHEL 8.1.1 release introduces PostgreSQL 12, which provides a number of new features and enhancements over version 10. Notable changes include:

  • The PostgreSQL Audit Extension, pgaudit, which provides detailed session and object audit logging through the standard PostgreSQL logging facility
  • Improvements to the partitioning functionality, for example, support for hash partitioning
  • Enhancements to query parallelism
  • Stored SQL procedures enabling transaction management
  • Various performance improvements
  • Enhancements to the administrative functionality
  • Support for the SQL/JSON path language
  • Stored generated columns
  • Nondeterministic collations
  • New authentication features, including encryption of TCP/IP connections when using GSSAPI authentication or multi-factor authentication.

Note that support for Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation, available in upstream since PostgreSQL 11, is not provided by the postgresql:12 module stream.

To install the postgresql:12 stream, use: 

# yum module install postgresql:12

If you want to upgrade from an earlier postgresql stream within RHEL 8, follow the procedure described in Switching to a later stream and then migrate your PostgreSQL data as described in Migrating to a RHEL 8 version of PostgreSQL.

(JIRA:RHELPLAN-26926)

Rust Toolset rebased to version 1.39

Rust Toolset has been updated to version 1.39. Notable changes include:

  • The async - .await syntax has been added to stable Rust. You can now define async functions and blocks and .await them.
  • Enhanced pipelined compilation improves build time for optimized, clean builds of some crate graphs by 10-20%.
  • When the by-move bindings are in the main pattern of a match expression, if guards can now reference those bindings.
  • Rust is supposed to detect memory-safety bugs at compile time, but the previous borrow checker had limitations and allowed undefined behaviour and memory unsafety. The new NLL borrow checker can find these problems and was raising warnings about that as a migration step. These warnings are now hard errors.
  • The rustc compiler now provides a lint when functions mem::{uninitialized, zeroed} are used to initialize some of the types, for example, &T and Box<T>.
  • The following functions are now const fn in the standard library: Vec::new, String::new, LinkedList::new, str::len, [T]::len, str::as_bytes, abs, wrapping_abs, and overflowing_abs.

To install the Rust Toolset module stream, run the following command as root: 

# yum module install rust-toolset

For detailed instructions regarding usage, see Using Rust Toolset.

(BZ#1680096)

A new module: jmc:rhel8

RHEL 8.1.1 introduces JDK Mission Control (JMC), a powerful profiler for HotSpot JVMs, as a new jmc module. JMC provides an advanced set of tools for efficient and detailed analysis of extensive data collected by the JDK Flight Recorder. The tool chain enables developers and administrators to collect and analyze data from Java applications running locally or deployed in production environments. Note that JMC requires JDK version 8 or later to run. Target Java applications must run with at least OpenJDK version 11 so that JMC can access JDK Flight Recorder features.

The jmc:rhel8 module stream has two profiles:

  • The common profile, which installs the entire JMC application
  • The core profile, which installs only the core Java libraries (jmc-core)

To install the common profile of the jmc:rhel8 module stream, use: 

# yum module install jmc:rhel8/common

Change the profile name to core to install only the jmc-core package.

(BZ#1716452)

NET Core 3.1 now available in RHEL 8

This update adds the .NET Core 3.1 Software Development Kit (SDK) and the .NET Core 3.1 Runtime to RHEL 8. In addition, the ASP.NET Core 3.1 framework for building web application and services is now available.

(BZ#1711405)

A new installer for virtio-win drivers

An interactive Windows Installer has been added to the virtio-win package. This makes it possible to easily and efficiently install paravirtualized KVM drivers in virtual machines that use Microsoft Windows as their guest operating systems.

(BZ#1745298)

container-tools updated

The container-tools module, which contains the podman, buildah, skopeo, and runc tools, has been updated. The tools in the container are now built with FIPS mode enabled. In addition, this update fixes several bugs and a security issue.

(BZ#1783277)

conmon is now in a separate package

The conmon open container initiative (OCI) container runtime monitor utility has been moved into a separate conmon package. It is no longer available in the podman package.

(BZ#1753209)