Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3 Update 5 Release Notes

Copyright © 2005 Red Hat, Inc.

Introduction

The following topics are covered in this document:

  • Changes to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program (Anaconda)

  • General information

  • Kernel-related information

  • Changes to drivers and hardware support

  • Changes to packages

Changes to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Program (Anaconda)

The following section includes information specific to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program, Anaconda.

Note

In order to upgrade an already-installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 system to Update 5, you must use Red Hat Network to update those packages that have changed. The use of Anaconda to upgrade to Update 5 is not supported.

Use Anaconda only to perform a fresh install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5.

  • If you are copying the contents of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5 CD-ROMs (in preparation for a network-based installation, for example) be sure you copy the CD-ROMs for the operating system only. Do not copy the Extras CD-ROM, or any of the layered product CD-ROMs, as this will overwrite files necessary for Anaconda's proper operation.

    These CD-ROMs must be installed after Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been installed.

General Information

This section contains general information not specific to any other section of this document.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5 now includes the diskdump facility, which can serve as an alternative to (or be used in conjunction with) the Netdump facility.

    The diskdump facility for i386 systems currently support the aic7xxx, aic79xx, mpt fusion, dpt_i2o, megaraid2, sym53c8xx, sata_promise and ata_piix devices. On ia64 systems, the aic7xxx, aic79xx, mpt fusion, megaraid2, sym53c8xx, and sata_promise devices are supported. On AMD64 and Intel® EM64T systems, the aic7xxx, aic79xx, mpt fusion, megaraid2, sym53c8xx, sata_promise, and ata_piix devices are supported.

    Note

    The sym53c8xx and sata_promise and ata_piix modules are newly supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5.

    Usage of the diskdump facility requires a dedicated disk device or disk partitions that are large enough to contain all physical system memory. In the event of a system crash, memory will be written to the configured disk location. Upon subsequent reboot, the data will be copied from the disk and formatted into a vmcore file, identical in functionality to that created by the netdump facility, and stored in the unique subdirectory /var/crash/. The vmcore file may be analyzed using the crash(8) utility.

    The kernel modules required for the diskdump facility are automatically included in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 kernel. The associated user-space diskdump package is named diskdumputils-1.0.1-4, and like netdump, is installed by default.

    The available and appropriate disk location must first be configured and then preformatted for use. After formatting, the diskdump facility may be turned on with chkconfig(8), and then the service must be started. Detailed documentation concerning configuration and user tasks is included with the diskdumputils at the following: 

    	  /usr/share/doc/diskdumputils-1.0.1-4/README

    Further information can be found in the diskdumpfmt(8), diskdumpctl(8), and savecore(8) man pages.

Kernel-Related Information

This section contains information related to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5 kernel.

  • Systems with processors featuring AMD64 and Intel® EM64T are typically configured as NUMA platforms, which means that the kernel constructs multiple memory nodes at boot-time rather than constructing a single memory node. The multiple node construct can result in memory exhaustion on one or more of the nodes before other nodes become exhausted. When memory exhaustion happens, the following could result:

    1) The system will swap the exhausted nodes while there is available memory on other nodes, resulting in poor overal performance

    2) Processes are killed due to Out-Of-Memory (OOM) errors even though there is available memory

    3) Less than optimal performance due to excessive memory bandwidth when processes running on an exhausted node allocate memory on one or more different nodes

    The kernel is capable of detecting when OOM process kills occur on AMD64 and Intel® EM64T NUMA systems due to memory exhaustion on one or more nodes while there is available memory on other nodes. When the kernel detects this condition, it displays the following warning at the console: 

     
OOM kill occurred on an x86_64 numa system! The
numa=off boot option might help avoid this.

    Adding numa=off at the boot command line in /boot/grub/grub.conf and rebooting the system disables the creation of separate memory nodes at boot-time and elminates the possibility of one memory node becoming exhausted even though other nodes have available memory.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5 now extends Netdump platform support from i386 to include AMD64, Intel® EM64T, Itanium, and IBM® POWER architectures.

    Documentation concerning configuration of a netdump client can be found in the following document:

    /usr/share/doc/netdump-0.7.7/README.client

    Documentation concerning configuration of a netdump server can be found in the following document:

    /usr/share/doc/netdump-server-0.7.7/README

    The vmcore file may be analyzed using the crash(8) utility.

    For more information on using Netdump, refer to the netdump(8) and netdump-server(8) man pages.

Changes to Drivers and Hardware Support

This update includes bug fixes for a number of drivers. The more significant driver updates are listed below. In some cases, the original driver has been preserved under a different name, and is available as a non-default alternative for organizations that wish to migrate their driver configuration to the latest versions at a later time.

Note

The migration to the latest drivers should be completed before the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux update is applied, because in most cases only one older-revision driver will be preserved for each update.

These release notes also indicate which older-revision drivers have been removed from this kernel update. These drivers have the base driver name with the revision digits appended; for example, megaraid_2002.o. You must remove these drivers from /etc/modules.conf before installing this kernel update.

Keep in mind that the only definitive way to determine what drivers are being used is to review the contents of /etc/modules.conf. Use of the lsmod command is not a substitute for examining this file.

Intel® Pro/100 Adapter family (e100 driver)

  • This driver is updated to version 3.3.6-k2.

  • As part of the update of the e100 driver, the module options for e100 are no longer used. The e100 module options continue to exist in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5 for compatibility with previous Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 releases, but they no longer have any effect on the behavior of the new e100 driver. Customers who wish to configure the behavior of the e100 driver should use the ETHTOOL_OPTS setting available in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* files.

Intel® PRO/1000 Adapters (e1000 driver)

  • This driver has been updated to version 5.6.10.1-k2.

Broadcom Tigon3 (tg3 driver)

  • This driver has been updated to version 3.22RH.

Broadcom 4400 (b44 driver)

  • This driver has been updated to version 0.95.

3ware 9000 Storage Controller (3w-9xxx driver)

  • This driver has been updated to version 2.24.00.011fw.

3ware Storage Controller (3w-xxxx driver)

  • This driver has been updated to version 1.02.00.037. The 1.02.00.033 driver is preserved.

QLogic Fibre Channel (qla2xxx driver)

  • A module parameter has been added to the qla2200 driver to allow the Reduced Interrupt Operation (RIO) to be turned off. RIO is a firmware feature that attempts to increase efficiency by delaying interrupts. RIO provides benefit when there is a heavy load with several commands outstanding. However, it can reduce performance in other workloads (it has been especially evident with tape I/O).

    Note that the module parameter does not apply to the qla2100 or qla2300 drivers.

Compaq SA53xx Controllers (cciss driver)

  • This driver has been updated to version v2.4.54.RH1.

IBM ServeRAID (ips driver)

  • The vary_io feature that was enabled for this driver in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 3 was found to cause adapter hangs in some situations. This feature has been disabled again in the ips driver. Some applications (primarily those that use raw I/O) may experience reduced performance.

Changes to Packages

This section contains listings of packages that have been updated or added from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 as part of Update 5.

Note

These package lists include packages from all variants of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. Your system may not include every one of the packages listed here.

The following packages have been updated from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 4:

  • ImageMagick

  • ImageMagick-c++

  • ImageMagick-c++-devel

  • ImageMagick-devel

  • ImageMagick-perl

  • MyODBC

  • XFree86

  • XFree86-100dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-75dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-14-100dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-14-75dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-15-100dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-15-75dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-2-100dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-2-75dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-9-100dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-ISO8859-9-75dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-Mesa-libGL

  • XFree86-Mesa-libGLU

  • XFree86-Xnest

  • XFree86-Xvfb

  • XFree86-base-fonts

  • XFree86-cyrillic-fonts

  • XFree86-devel

  • XFree86-doc

  • XFree86-font-utils

  • XFree86-libs

  • XFree86-libs-data

  • XFree86-sdk

  • XFree86-syriac-fonts

  • XFree86-tools

  • XFree86-truetype-fonts

  • XFree86-twm

  • XFree86-xauth

  • XFree86-xdm

  • XFree86-xfs

  • am-utils

  • anaconda

  • anaconda-runtime

  • authconfig

  • authconfig-gtk

  • autofs

  • bash

  • bind

  • bind-chroot

  • bind-devel

  • bind-libs

  • bind-utils

  • binutils

  • bonobo-activation

  • bonobo-activation-devel

  • bootparamd

  • bzip2

  • bzip2-devel

  • bzip2-libs

  • cdrecord

  • cdrecord-devel

  • chkconfig

  • comps

  • control-center

  • cpio

  • cpp

  • crash

  • cups

  • cups-devel

  • cups-libs

  • curl

  • curl-devel

  • db4

  • db4-devel

  • db4-java

  • db4-utils

  • devlabel

  • diskdumputils

  • dump

  • dvd+rw-tools

  • emacs

  • emacs-el

  • emacs-leim

  • enscript

  • ethereal

  • ethereal-gnome

  • evolution

  • evolution-devel

  • gaim

  • gcc

  • gcc-c++

  • gcc-g77

  • gcc-gnat

  • gcc-java

  • gcc-objc

  • gd

  • gd-devel

  • gdb

  • gdk-pixbuf

  • gdk-pixbuf-devel

  • gdk-pixbuf-gnome

  • gdm

  • gedit

  • glibc

  • glibc-common

  • glibc-devel

  • glibc-headers

  • glibc-profile

  • glibc-utils

  • gnome-applets

  • gnome-media

  • gnome-panel

  • gnome-vfs2

  • gnome-vfs2-devel

  • grep

  • gtk2

  • gtk2-devel

  • hotplug

  • httpd

  • httpd-devel

  • hwdata

  • imap

  • imap-devel

  • imap-utils

  • imlib

  • imlib-devel

  • initscripts

  • ipsec-tools

  • iscsi-initiator-utils

  • jpackage-utils

  • kdebase

  • kdebase-devel

  • kdelibs

  • kdelibs-devel

  • kdenetwork

  • kdenetwork-devel

  • kernel

  • kernel-doc

  • kernel-source

  • kernel-unsupported

  • kernel-utils

  • krb5-devel

  • krb5-libs

  • krb5-server

  • krb5-workstation

  • kudzu

  • kudzu-devel

  • laus

  • laus-devel

  • laus-libs

  • less

  • libf2c

  • libgcc

  • libgcj

  • libgcj-devel

  • libgnat

  • libobjc

  • libstdc++

  • libstdc++-devel

  • libtiff

  • libtiff-devel

  • libwnck

  • libwnck-devel

  • libxml

  • libxml-devel

  • losetup

  • lsof

  • lvm

  • mailman

  • mailx

  • man-pages-ja

  • metacity

  • mikmod

  • mkinitrd

  • mkisofs

  • mktemp

  • mod_auth_mysql

  • mod_python

  • mod_ssl

  • mount

  • mozilla

  • mozilla-chat

  • mozilla-devel

  • mozilla-dom-inspector

  • mozilla-js-debugger

  • mozilla-mail

  • mozilla-nspr

  • mozilla-nspr-devel

  • mozilla-nss

  • mozilla-nss-devel

  • mysql

  • mysql-bench

  • mysql-devel

  • nautilus

  • ncurses

  • ncurses-devel

  • net-snmp

  • net-snmp-devel

  • net-snmp-libs

  • net-snmp-perl

  • net-snmp-utils

  • net-tools

  • netdump

  • netdump-server

  • nptl-devel

  • nscd

  • nss_ldap

  • ntsysv

  • openmotif

  • openmotif-devel

  • openmotif21

  • openoffice.org

  • openoffice.org-i18n

  • openoffice.org-libs

  • openssh

  • openssh-askpass

  • openssh-askpass-gnome

  • openssh-clients

  • openssh-server

  • pam

  • pam-devel

  • pam_krb5

  • parted

  • parted

  • perl

  • perl-CGI

  • perl-CPAN

  • perl-DBI

  • perl-DB_File

  • perl-suidperl

  • php

  • php-devel

  • php-imap

  • php-ldap

  • php-mysql

  • php-odbc

  • php-pgsql

  • popt

  • procps

  • psacct

  • psmisc

  • python

  • python-devel

  • python-tools

  • quota

  • raidtools

  • redhat-config-httpd

  • redhat-config-users

  • rh-postgresql

  • rh-postgresql-contrib

  • rh-postgresql-devel

  • rh-postgresql-docs

  • rh-postgresql-jdbc

  • rh-postgresql-libs

  • rh-postgresql-pl

  • rh-postgresql-python

  • rh-postgresql-server

  • rh-postgresql-tcl

  • rh-postgresql-test

  • rmt

  • rpm

  • rpm-build

  • rpm-devel

  • rpm-libs

  • rpm-python

  • rpmdb-redhat

  • rsh

  • rsh-server

  • samba

  • samba-client

  • samba-common

  • samba-swat

  • shadow-utils

  • squid

  • squirrelmail

  • strace

  • sysklogd

  • sysreport

  • telnet

  • telnet-server

  • tetex

  • tetex-afm

  • tetex-dvips

  • tetex-fonts

  • tetex-latex

  • tetex-xdvi

  • tkinter

  • tzdata

  • usermode

  • usermode-gtk

  • util-linux

  • vim-X11

  • vim-common

  • vim-enhanced

  • vim-minimal

  • vixie-cron

  • wget

  • xemacs

  • xemacs-el

  • xemacs-info

  • xpdf

  • ypbind

  • ypserv

  • zip

  • zsh

The following packages have been added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5:

  • pstack

The following packages have been removed from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 5:

  • No packages have been removed.

( x86-64 )