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5.6 Release Notes
New features and major updates
Red Hat Engineering Content Services
Abstract
1. Installer
anaconda
) assists in the installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.
Kickstart is the automated installation method that system administrators use to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Using kickstart, a single file is created, containing the answers to all the questions that would normally be asked during a typical installation.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 features improved driver support for devices required during the installation process. Support for the following drivers and devices is added to the installer in this release:
- The Brocade BNA Ethernet Controller driver for Brocade 10G PCIe Ethernet Controllers.
- The
cxgb4
driver for Chelsio Terminator4 10G Unified Wire Network Controllers. - The
3w-sas
driver for LSI 3ware 97xx SAS/SATA RAID Controllers.
Note
2. Virtualization
Para-virtualized drivers (the virtio drivers) increase the performance for a virtual machine's block and network devices.
Libvirt is a hypervisor-independent virtualization API that is able to interact with the virtualization capabilities of a range of operating systems. libvirt provides a common, generic and stable layer to securely manage virtualized guests on a host.
pvclock enables a guest to read the clock time of the host. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6, a global synchronization point is added to pvclock, providing a more stable time source for guests.
The virtio-serial driver has been added, enabling vmchannel capabilities on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 guests operating on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 hosts. VMchannel is a transport mechanism used for communication between the host userspace and guest userspace.
The Xen xenoprof command in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 includes added definitions to recognize Core i7 and Atom processors.
3. Networking
On most modern networks, including the Internet, users locate other computers by name. This frees users from the daunting task of remembering the numerical network address of network resources. The most effective way to configure a network to allow such name-based connections is to set up a Domain Name Service (DNS) or a nameserver, which resolves hostnames on the network to numerical addresses and vice versa.
The kernel features the Netlink Drop Monitor (DROP_MONITOR) service that provides detailed network packet loss monitoring. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 features the new dropwatch
utility to interface with the drop monitor service, and return the results to userspace.
Ethernet bridge tables (ebtables
) is a firewalling tool to transparently filter network traffic passing a bridge. The filtering possibilities are limited to link layer filtering and basic filtering on higher network layers. ebtables
is a new package for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 release.
4. Web Servers and Services
Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is an HTML-embedded scripting language commonly used with the Apache HTTP Web server. Version 5.3.3 of PHP is now available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 as the separate php53
package.
Note
php
package supplies version 5.1.6 of PHP, and is still available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6. Ensure that the php
package and the dependencies it requires are removed before installing php53
.
mod_nss provides strong cryptography for the Apache Web server via the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols, using the Network Security Services (NSS) security library. In this release, mod_nss has been updated to version 1.0.8, adding support for the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)
5. Filesystems and Storage
The fourth extended filesystem (ext4) is now a fully supported feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6. ext4 is based on the third extended filesystem (ext3) and features a number of improvements, including: support for larger file sizes and offsets, faster and more efficient allocation of disk space, no limit on the number of subdirectories within a directory, faster file system checking, and more robust journaling.
Note
ext4dev
.
5.1. Logical Volume Manager (LVM)
Note
LVM maintains a small log (on a separate device) which it uses to keep track of which regions are in sync with the mirror or mirrors. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 introduces the ability to mirror this log device.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 introduces the use of the --splitmirrors
argument of the lvconvert
command to split off a redundant image of a mirrored logical volume to form a new logical volume.
LVM in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 also provides additional configuration options for default data alignment and volume group metadata.
6. Authentication and Interoperability
The System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) is a new feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 that implements a set of services for central management of identity and authentication. Centralizing identity and authentication services enables local caching of identities, allowing users to still identify in cases where the connection to the server is interrupted. SSSD supports many types of identity and authentication services, including: Red Hat Directory Server, Active Directory, OpenLDAP, 389 Directory Server, Kerberos and LDAP.
Samba is a suite of programs which use NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) to enable the sharing of files, printers and other information. This package provides a Server Message Block or SMB server (also known as a Common Internet File System or CIFS server) which can provide network services to SMB/CIFS clients.
7. Desktop
IPA Font is a JIS X 0213:2004 compliant Japanese OpenType font provided by Information-Technology Promotion Agency, Japan. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 introduces the new ipa-gothic-fonts
package, containing the Gothic (sans-serif) style font and the new ipa-mincho-fonts
package, containing the Mincho-style font.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 introduces support for the Wacom Cintiq 21UX2 graphics tablet.
The Ghostscript suite provides a PostScript(TM) interpreter, a set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library, which implements the graphics capabilities in the PostScript language), and an interpreter for PDF files. Ghostscript translates PostScript code into many common, bitmapped formats, like those understood by most printers and displays. This enables users to display PostScript files and print them on non-PostScript printers.
8. Kernel
- The tpm_tis driver for Trusted Platform Module (TPM) microcontrollers now automatically loads at boot time.
- Support for the Actual Performance Clock Counter (APERF) and Maximum Qualified Performance Clock Counter (MPERF) Model-Specific Registers (MSRs) on AMD processors has been added.
- Support for ITE-887x chips has been added.
- VIO power management support for Power PC platforms has been added.
- Support for the OSX and OSM OSA CHPID types in the qeth driver has been added
- Advanced Linux Sound Architecture - High Definition Audio (ALSA-HDA) drivers have been updated.
- SystemTap has been updated to version 1.3, providing an integrated compile-server client, automatic structure pretty-printing, faster and improved stack backtraces, and new sample scripts.
- The Kernel Probes (kprobes) implementation has been updated.
- The Per-task statistics interface (taskstats) has been updated.
- Support for TCP cubic congested control has been added.
- Support for the one packet scheduler in the networking stack has been added.
- Two networking tuning parameters, ip_local_reserved_ports and ip_local_port_range parameter, have been added to allow users to reserve ports for third-party applications, and blacklist known offending ports.
- The /proc/sys/vm/vm_devzero_optimized parameter has been added to skip ZERO_PAGE mmap of /dev/zero device.
- Enhancements for iSNS, in the iSCSI Initiator, and the iSNS server have been added.
- Kernel Application Binary Interface (kABI) has been updated.
9. Device Drivers
9.1. Network Device Drivers
- I/O AT (I/O Acceleration Technology) and DCA drivers have been updated. I/O AT is a collection of techniques by Intel to improve network throughput by offloading copy operations. Direct Cache Access (DCA) is an I/O AT feature which can deliver data directly into processor caches.
- The
zd1211
driver for the ZyDAS ZD1211(b) 802.11a/b/g USB WLAN device is now supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6. - The
qlcnic
driver has been updated to the latest upstream version - The
be2net
driver for ServerEngines BladeEngine2 10Gbps network devices has been updated to version 2.102.512r - The
bnx2
driver for the Broadcom NetXtreme II network cards has been updated to version 2.0.8 - The
bnx2x
driver for Broadcom Everest network devices has been updated to version 1.52.53-4 - The
forcedeth
ethernet driver for NVIDIA nForce devices has been updated to the latest upstream version - The
e1000e
driver for Intel PRO/1000 ethernet devices has been updated to the upstream version 1.2.7-k2 - The
enic
driver for Cisco 10G Ethernet devices has been updated to version 1.4.1.2 - The
igb
driver for Intel Gigabit Ethernet Adapters has been updated, adding support for PCI-AER - the
ixgbe
driver for Intel 10 Gigabit PCI Express network devices has been updated to version 2.0.84-k2 - The
netxen
driver for NetXen Multi port (1/10) Gigabit Network devices has been updated to version 4.0.73 - The
qlge
driver for QLogic 10 Gigabit PCI-E ethernet devices has been updated to version 1.00.00.25 - The Solarflare driver (
sfc
) has been updated to version 2.6.36-4c1 - The
tg3
driver for Broadcom Tigon3 ethernet devices has been updated to version 3.108+ - The
vxge
driver for Neterion's X3100 Series 10GbE PCIe devices has been updated to version 2.0.8.20182-k
9.2. Storage Device Drivers
- The
cciss
driver for HP Smart Array controllers has been updated to version 3.6.22.RH1 - The
qla4xxx
driver has been updated to version 5.02.03.00.05.06-d1 - The
bnx2i
driver for Broadcom NetXtreme II iSCSI has been updated to version 2.1.3 - the
be2iscsi
driver for ServerEngines BladeEngine 2 Open iSCSI devices has been updated. - the
lpfc
driver for Emulex Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters has been updated to version 8.2.0.87 - The
ipr
driver has been updated to version 2.2.0.4 - The
3w-sas
driver has been updated to version 3.26.00.028-2.6.18RH - The
3w-xxxx
driver for 3ware SATA RAID Controllers has been updated to version 2.26.08.007-2.6.18RH - The
cxgb3i
driver for Chelsio host bus adapters (HBAs) have been updated. - The
megaraid_sas
driver for LSI MegaRAID SAS controllers has been updated to version 4.31 - The
mpt2sas
driver that supports the SAS-2 family of adapters from LSI has been updated to version 05.101.00.02 - the
qla2xxx
driver for QLogic Fibre Channel HBAs has been updated to version 8.03.01.05.05.06-k
9.3. Desktop Drivers Updates
- The i810 drivers for Intel integrated display devices have been updated with added support for IronLake graphics.
- The
sis
driver has been updated with added support for Volari Z9s devices. - The
mga
driver for Matrox video devices has been updated, with added support for theG200eH
device.
9.4. Printer Drivers
- The HPLIP (Hewlett-Packard Linux Imaging and Printing Project) package provides drivers for HP printers and multi-function peripherals. Version 3.9.8 of HPLIP is now available as a separate
hplip3
package. Note that thehplip3
package provides a newer version of HPLIP that can be installed alongside the version provided in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The relevant command line utilities are prefixed withhp3-
instead ofhp-
, for example:hp3-setup
.
10. Developer Tools
The GNU gettext package provides a set of tools and documentation for producing multi-lingual messages in programs. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6, gettext has been updated to version 0.17. Note that java and libintl.jar support is discontinued in this updated gettext package.
Subversion (SVN) is a concurrent version control system which enables one or more users to collaborate in developing and maintaining a hierarchy of files and directories while keeping a history of all changes. Subversion in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 has been updated to version 1.6.11, introducing the new merge tracking and interactive conflict resolution features.
This update provides a new version of the GNU Project Debugger (GDB), featuring the new Python API. This API allows GDB to be automated using scripts written in the Python Programming Language.
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) includes, among others, C, C++, and Java GNU compilers and related support libraries. GCC 4.4 is now fully supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6, providing interoperability with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The GNU C Library (glibc) packages contain the standard C libraries used by multiple programs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. These packages contain the standard C and the standard math libraries. Without these two libraries, the Linux system cannot function properly.
OpenJDK in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6 is updated to IcedTea version 1.7.5. This update provides the following notable additions:
- HotSpot stability and performance improvements
- Xrender pipeline support
- Fixes for visual anomalies, synchronous timezone support using tzdata
- Improved graphics file support and overall JAR performance
- NUMA allocator support
A. Revision History
Revision History | ||||
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Revision 1-4.400 | 2013-10-31 | Rüdiger Landmann | ||
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Revision 1-4 | 2012-07-18 | Anthony Towns | ||
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Revision 1-1 | Mon Jan 17 2011 | Ryan Lerch | ||
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Revision 1-0 | Thu Jan 13 2011 | Ryan Lerch | ||
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