Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 Release Notes (AMD64 and Intel® EM64T Edition)

Copyright © 2004 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 2, you must use Red Hat Network to update those packages that have changed. The use of Anaconda to upgrade to Update 2 is not supported.

Use Anaconda only to perform a fresh install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2.

  • If you are copying the contents of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 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.

  • For information regarding various system configuration limits, refer to:

    http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/configuration/

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 adds support for Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (hereafter referred to as "Intel® EM64T"), which allows processors supporting this technology to access larger amounts of memory.

    Details regarding Intel® EM64T are available from Intel's web site:

    http://www.intel.com/technology/64bitextensions/

    Support for Intel® EM64T has been added to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 x86-64 distribution. This means that Intel processors with this technology are now supported, in addition to the previously-supported AMD64 processors.

    In order to support Intel® EM64T, a new kernel package, specific to these processors, has been introduced; for more information regarding the kernel changes made to support this technology, refer to the Kernel-Related Information section of this document.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 adds a graphical boot option back-ported from Fedora Core. It is disabled by default; to enable, add the rhgb option to the boot command line, and ensure that the GRAPHICAL line in /etc/sysconfig/init reads:

              

GRAPHICAL=yes

  • To speed login when NIS is used, it is now possible to request the use of the netid.byname map instead of the groups.byname map for providing group-related information to NIS clients. This map is traditionally not used for this purpose, but in most configurations contains the necessary information, and is generated by default on recent Linux and Solaris™ NIS servers.

    To enable this feature, find the following line in /etc/default/nss:

    
# NETID_AUTHORITATIVE=TRUE

    Next, use a text editor to remove the leading '#' character, saving your changes when done.

    Note

    No cross-checks of the netid.byname map are done by either the NIS server or client. Therefore, the responsibility of ensuring that netid.byname contains appropriate information rests with the system administrator.

    It is also possible to improve NIS performance by using the services.byservicename map. If this map exists and has been built properly, its use can be enabled by the following setting in /etc/default/nss:

    
SERVICES_AUTHORITATIVE=TRUE

    The services.byservicename map must contain both names of services and aliases as keys, both without protocol specified and with protocol. Recently-updated Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Solaris NIS servers provide properly-built services.byservicename maps.

  • The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 Extras CD-ROM includes the fonts-monotype package. This optional package contains the Albany™, Cumberland™, and Thorndale™ fonts by Agfa Monotype. These fonts provide a core set of document fonts with metrics close to those of core fonts included with other common operating systems.

    OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 had been configured to prefer the optional Agfa Monotype fonts by default. When these fonts are installed, Microsoft Office documents opened and viewed from OpenOffice.org will preserve much more of their original look and layout.

    Note

    Other than a more consistent look and layout, there will be no loss of functionality if the fonts-monotype package is not installed.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 includes version 1.1.0 of the OpenOffice.org office suite.

    With the update to OpenOffice.org 1.1.0, changes have been made to the program's font handling and text drawing procedures. Documents, especially Impress and PowerPoint® presentations, should be reviewed to ensure that any text fits within the same boundaries as before. Most Microsoft Office documents that were opened (but not saved) by earlier versions of OpenOffice.org will be unaffected, but documents created (or opened and saved) with versions prior to 1.1.0 may exhibit this behavior when opened with OpenOffice.org 1.1.0.

    Earlier versions of OpenOffice.org used printer metrics to determine appropriate text spacing when laying out text. OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 uses device-independent metrics; a newer, more cross-platform compatible and printer-independent method. Therefore, text spacing for OpenOffice.org documents created or saved with earlier versions may not be exactly the same. Symptoms of this behavior can include text that now runs off the edge of a slide or overlaps other text below it where previously this did not occur.

    It is possible to revert to the use of printer metrics; however, this is not recommended, as documents saved with a copy of OppenOffice.org 1.1.0 so configured will exhibit similar problems when accessed using other copies of 1.1.0.

    Should you require the earlier text layout method, open the preferences dialog by selecting Tools, then Options. The "Use printer metrics for document formatting" setting is not global, but appears on the General panel for each document type (Text Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, and Drawing) — therefore, you must individually set this option for each document type you use.

LauS (Linux Auditing System) Notes

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 features LAuS, the Linux Auditing System. This system is composed of kernel-resident and user-space components that facilitate highly-configurable and robust logging of system call use. This document provides an overview of how the auditing system is put together and basic information on how to get it running. Pointers to relevant documentation are also provided that should help in making the best use of this new capability.

LauS Overview

LauS consist of two types of components:

  • The kernel component

  • The User-space components

Kernel Component

The default kernel provided with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 contains modifications that enable system-call auditing. When auditing is not in use, these modifications are performance-neutral. The kernel component provides access to the auditing facilities through a character-special device — /dev/audit. Through this device, a user-space daemon (auditd) can enable or disable auditing and can provide the kernel with the rulesets it is to use to determine when an invocation of a system call must be logged. This device is also used by auditd to retrieve audit records from the kernel for transfer to the audit log. Refer to the audit(4) man page for information about supported ioctl() calls and /proc/ interfaces for managing and tuning auditing behavior.

User-Space Components

There are a number of programs provided that transfer audit records from the kernel to the audit log and manipulate the resulting data. These programs and their documentation are found in the laus package.

Auditing is performed for a process if that process registers itself with the kernel as auditable. This registration is propagated to any process started from a registered process. Modifications were made to PAM to assure the auditing of all user sessions when kernel auditing is enabled.

auditd

The audit daemon can be run as a service and configured with chkconfig. The audit daemon reads a number of files from /etc/audit/ at startup.

The contents of /etc/audit/audit.conf specify how and where to write audit records and what to do if the logs overrun available disk space. The contents of /etc/audit/filesets.conf and /etc/audit/filters.conf specify the rulesets the kernel uses to determine if a system call is auditable. The audit daemon can also be run with the -r option to instruct auditd to reload the rulesets and communicate any changes to the kernel. Refer to the auditd(8), audit-filters(5), audit-conf(5), and audit-filesets(5) man pages for more information.

aurun

This program enables an auditing context for itself and execs the program specified on its command line. This can be used to enable auditing on processes that are not generally part of a user session. Refer to the aurun(8) man page for more information.

aucat

This program writes the contents of the audit log to standard output. There are also options for specifying the level of detail required. Refer to the aucat(1) man page for more information.

augrep

This program writes audit log records matching specified patterns to standard output. Refer to the augrep(1) man page for more information.

PAM

The Pluggable Authentication Modules package has been modified to log authentication activity. Failed and successful authentications are logged to the audit log. PAM marks for auditing all sessions which are started from successful authentication and generates an audit record when the session is terminated.

For Further Information

Detailed information regarding data formats can be found in the laus-fields(7) and laus-record(7) man pages.

Kernel-Related Information

This section contains information related to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 kernel.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 contains an additional kernel, specifically developed to support Intel® EM64T. This kernel contains the following changes:

    · Loadable microcode — Intel® EM64T supports loadable microcode while AMD64 processors do not. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 kernel has been extended to include loadable microcode for Intel® EM64T in a manner similar to other Intel 32-bit processors.

    · Hyper-Threading Technology support — Intel® EM64T supports Hyper-Threading Technology, while AMD64 processors do not. This includes implementing the mwait functionality in the idle loop so that the execution will not consume valuable resources when idle. This means that systems containing one Intel® EM64T processor are likely to perform better than a single-processor AMD64 system when running CPU-intensive applications. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 kernel has been extended to include Hyper-Threading Technology support for Intel® EM64T similar to other Intel 32-bit systems and halting the CPU in the idle loop rather than busy waiting.

    · Software IOTLB — Intel® EM64T does not support an IOMMU in hardware while AMD64 processors do. This means that physical addresses above 4GB (32 bits) cannot reliably be the source or destination of DMA operations. Therefore, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 kernel "bounces" all DMA operations to or from physical addresses above 4GB to buffers that the kernel pre-allocated below 4GB at boot time. This is likely to result in lower performance for IO-intensive workloads for Intel® EM64T as compared to AMD64 processors.

    · Lack of 3DNow!™ instructions: — Intel® EM64T does not recognize the prefetch and prefetchw instructions while AMD64 processors do. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 kernel excludes these instructions in both C and assembly language code and therefore will suffer a small amount of performance degradation.

    · New capabilities — Intel® EM64T includes several capability expansions. These new capabilities are visible when comparing the contents of /proc/cpuinfo on systems containing Intel® EM64T versus AMD64-based systems. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 kernel has been extended to identify these capabilities, store and process the new associated bits in the x86 capabilities mask, and to provide meaningful changes to the contents of /proc/cpuinfo.

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.

IBM ServeRAID (ips driver)

  • The ips driver has been updated from 6.10.52 to 6.11.07

  • The new driver is scsi/ips.o

  • The older driver has been preserved as addon/ips_61052/ips_61052.o

  • The 6.00.26 driver (ips_60026.o) has been removed

LSI Logic RAID (megaraid driver)

  • The megaraid2 driver has been updated from v2.00.9 to v2.10.1.1

  • The new driver is scsi/megaraid2.o

  • The older driver has been preserved as addon/megaraid_2009/megaraid_2009.o

  • The default driver remains the v1.18k driver (megaraid.o)

LSI Logic MPT Fusion (mpt* drivers)

  • These drivers have been updated from 2.05.05+ to 2.05.11.03

  • The new drivers are located in message/fusion/

  • The older drivers have been preserved in addon/fusion_20505/

Compaq SA53xx Controllers (cciss driver)

  • The cciss driver has been updated from 2.4.47.RH1 to 2.4.50.RH1

QLogic Fibre Channel (qla2xxx driver)

  • These drivers have been updated from 6.06.00b11 to 6.07.02-RH2

  • The new drivers are located in addon/qla2200/

  • The older driver have been preserved in addon/qla2200_60600b11/

Note

Note that the QLA2100 adapter has been retired by QLogic. This adapter is no longer supported by QLogic or Red Hat. Therefore, the driver is located in the kernel-unsupported package.

Intel PRO/1000 (e1000 driver)

  • This driver has been updated from 5.2.20-k1 to 5.2.30.1-k1

Broadcom Tigon3 (tg3 driver)

  • This driver has been updated from v2.3 to v2.7

Network Bonding (bonding driver)

  • This driver has been updated from 2.2.14 to 2.4.1

Serial ATA (libata driver)

  • This driver has been updated to version 1.01

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 2.

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 the original release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3:

  • anaconda

  • anaconda-images

  • anaconda-runtime

  • ant

  • ant-devel

  • ant-libs

  • arptables_jf

  • arpwatch

  • at

  • binutils

  • clumanager

  • compat-gcc

  • compat-gcc-c++

  • compat-libstdc++

  • compat-libstdc++-devel

  • comps

  • cpp

  • cvs

  • cyrus-sasl

  • cyrus-sasl-devel

  • cyrus-sasl-gssapi

  • cyrus-sasl-md5

  • cyrus-sasl-plain

  • dev

  • devlabel

  • distcache

  • distcache-devel

  • elfutils

  • elfutils-devel

  • elfutils-libelf

  • ethereal

  • ethereal-gnome

  • firstboot

  • fontconfig

  • fontconfig-devel

  • freeradius

  • freeradius-mysql

  • freeradius-postgresql

  • freeradius-unixODBC

  • gaim

  • gcc

  • gcc-c++

  • gcc-c++-ssa

  • gcc-g77

  • gcc-g77-ssa

  • gcc-gnat

  • gcc-java

  • gcc-java-ssa

  • gcc-objc

  • gcc-objc-ssa

  • gcc-ssa

  • GConf2

  • GConf2-devel

  • gdb

  • gdk-pixbuf

  • gdk-pixbuf-devel

  • gdk-pixbuf-gnome

  • gdm

  • glibc

  • glibc-common

  • glibc-debug

  • glibc-devel

  • glibc-headers

  • glibc-profile

  • glibc-utils

  • gnome-mime-data

  • gnome-panel

  • gnupg

  • hotplug

  • httpd

  • httpd-devel

  • hwdata

  • initscripts

  • iproute

  • ipsec-tools

  • iptables

  • iptables-ipv6

  • kbd

  • kdegames

  • kdegames-devel

  • kdepim

  • kdepim-devel

  • kernel

  • kernel-doc

  • kernel-smp

  • kernel-smp-unsupported

  • kernel-source

  • kernel-unsupported

  • kernel-utils

  • kinput2-canna-wnn6

  • krb5-devel

  • krb5-libs

  • krb5-server

  • krb5-workstation

  • kudzu

  • kudzu-devel

  • lftp

  • libf2c

  • libgcc

  • libgcc-ssa

  • libgcj

  • libgcj-devel

  • libgcj-ssa

  • libgcj-ssa-devel

  • libgnat

  • libmudflap

  • libmudflap-devel

  • libobjc

  • libpcap

  • libstdc++

  • libstdc++-devel

  • libstdc++-ssa

  • libstdc++-ssa-devel

  • libxml2

  • libxml2-devel

  • libxml2-python

  • MAKEDEV

  • mdadm

  • modutils

  • modutils-devel

  • mod_python

  • mod_ssl

  • mozilla

  • mozilla-chat

  • mozilla-devel

  • mozilla-dom-inspector

  • mozilla-js-debugger

  • mozilla-mail

  • mozilla-nspr

  • mozilla-nspr-devel

  • mozilla-nss

  • mozilla-nss-devel

  • mutt

  • net-snmp

  • net-snmp-devel

  • net-snmp-perl

  • net-snmp-utils

  • netdump

  • netdump-server

  • netpbm

  • netpbm-devel

  • netpbm-progs

  • nfs-utils

  • nptl-devel

  • nscd

  • nss_ldap

  • openoffice.org

  • openoffice.org-i18n

  • openoffice.org-libs

  • openssh

  • openssh-askpass

  • openssh-askpass-gnome

  • openssh-clients

  • openssh-server

  • openssl

  • openssl-devel

  • openssl-perl

  • openssl096b

  • oprofile

  • oprofile-devel

  • pam

  • pam-devel

  • pam_krb5

  • popt

  • postfix

  • pwlib

  • pwlib-devel

  • quagga

  • quagga-contrib

  • quagga-devel

  • rdist

  • redhat-config-cluster

  • redhat-config-kickstart

  • redhat-config-network

  • redhat-config-network-tui

  • redhat-config-packages

  • redhat-config-printer

  • redhat-config-printer-gui

  • redhat-config-xfree86

  • redhat-rpm-config

  • 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

  • rhdb-admin

  • rhdb-docs

  • rhdb-explain

  • rhpl

  • rpm

  • rpm-build

  • rpm-devel

  • rpm-python

  • rpmdb-redhat

  • rsync

  • samba

  • samba-client

  • samba-common

  • samba-swat

  • sendmail

  • sendmail-cf

  • sendmail-devel

  • sendmail-doc

  • shadow-utils

  • slocate

  • strace

  • sysklogd

  • sysstat

  • SysVinit

  • tcpdump

  • unixODBC

  • unixODBC-devel

  • unixODBC-kde

  • up2date

  • up2date-gnome

  • vsftpd

  • xemacs

  • xemacs-el

  • xemacs-info

  • XFree86

  • XFree86-100dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-75dpi-fonts

  • XFree86-base-fonts

  • XFree86-cyrillic-fonts

  • XFree86-devel

  • XFree86-doc

  • XFree86-font-utils

  • 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-libs

  • XFree86-libs-data

  • XFree86-Mesa-libGL

  • XFree86-Mesa-libGLU

  • XFree86-sdk

  • XFree86-syriac-fonts

  • XFree86-tools

  • XFree86-truetype-fonts

  • XFree86-twm

  • XFree86-xauth

  • XFree86-xdm

  • XFree86-xfs

  • XFree86-Xnest

  • XFree86-Xvfb

  • ypbind

  • ypserv

The following packages have been added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2:

  • commons-dbcp

  • commons-dbcp-devel

  • commons-pool

  • commons-pool-devel

  • eclipse

  • elfutils-libelf-devel

  • Glide3

  • Glide3-devel

  • jaf

  • jaf-devel

  • java-javadoc

  • javamail

  • javamail-devel

  • jpackage-utils

  • junit

  • junit-devel

  • laus

  • laus-devel

  • mtx

  • mysql-jdbc

  • rh-cs-de

  • rh-cs-es

  • rh-cs-fr

  • rh-cs-it

  • rh-cs-ja

  • rh-cs-ko

  • rh-cs-pt_br

  • rh-cs-zh_cn

  • rh-cs-zh_tw

  • rhdb-cc

  • rhgb

  • sg3_utils

  • struts

  • struts-webapps

The following packages have been removed from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2:

  • dietlibc

  • mod_jk2

  • mod_webapp

  • mozilla-psm

( x86-64 )