Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Beta

Red Hat released today the beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3. It is a development version and therefore the implemented features and the supported configurations are subject to change before the release of the final product. Red Hat subscribers can update using Yum, or download the ISO image of the new version.

Some info from the release announcement:

Enhancements

This beta release includes the following improvements:

* Virtualization Enhancements
+ Support for up to 126 CPUs in the x86_64 Hypervisor
+ Support for up to 1TB memory per host on x86_64
+ The number of dynamic IRQs was increased for x86_64 to allow
  for more guests on large systems.
+ Support for more than 16 disk devices per guest
+ Virtio drivers were added for use of Red Hat Enterprise
  Linux 5 as a guest on KVM hypervisors
+ Automatically determine correct parameters for large memory
  machines.  The domain 0 will be automatically restricted to
  32GB, but the hypervisor will see the full amount of memory
  in the machine
+ Intel EPT support for higher performance in Fully
  Virtualized scenarios
+ Support for 2MB backing page tables on x86_64
+ Out-of-the-box support for > 4 NICs
+ Blktap statistics were added
+ Fixes were made to properly reserve kdump memory for Xen and
  to provide crash with needed address
+ Timer problems after migration were fixed
+ Intel VT-i2 support for new ia64 processor was added
+ Lengthy network outage after migrations was fixed
+ Xen logfile rotation
+ Xenstore database moved to tmpfs
+ Xen paravirtualized drivers are included for
  fully-virtualized (FV) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 guest
  kernels. Thus the xenpv-kmod package no longer needs to be
  added to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
  FV kernels to get paravirtualized (Xen) disk and network
  support
+ Support for vmcoreinfo for IA64 Xen

* Cluster Improvements
+ Cluster mirror support (2-leg mirrors only)
+ The GFS2 parallel cluster file system is supported
+ Fencing improvements:
  - SSH support has been added to the DRAC, Blade Center,
    iLO, and Egenera fencing agents
  - Support for WTI RSM8R4 and WTI MPC-8H power controllers
    has been added to the WTI fencing agent

* Desktop Enhancements
+ NetworkManager 0.7
  - Mobile broadband for select hardware
  - Static IP support
  - Networking before login
  - Much faster connection times
  - Connection sharing/multiple active connections
+ Laptop support
  - Keyboard quirks backported
+ Updated graphics drivers
  - r400/r500 are now fully supported (no longer
    Technology Preview)
  - Eagle Lake and Cantiga (2d only)
  - Expanded Matrox G200 coverage

* System Services Enhancements
+ Rebased cups (print server), now with full Kerberos support
+ Rebased ksh, lm-sensors, lftp, net-snmp, openIPMI, openldap,
  openmotif, python-urlgrabber, rpm, tog-pegasus, vnc, yum,
  yum-utils

* Tool Enhancements
+ SystemTap
  - Initial implementation of userspace tracing (user static
    markers and stack unwinding coming soon)
  - Remote script compiling (secure version coming soon)
  - Beginner's Guide will be available for GA
  - Improved tapset organization and documentation
+ GDB Debugger
  - Rebase, now based on version 6.8 (previously based on
    version 6.5)
  - Multiple location breakpoints for C++ templates,
    constructors, inlined functions, etc.

* Encryption Enhancements
+ Root and swap encryption support in the installer
  - Hibernate / resume support with encrypted disks

* Security Enhancements
+ Authentication and Identity
  - pkinit clients can now be configured to use keys for
    client certificates which may not contain
    Kerberos-specific extensions
  - pkinit interoperability fixes
  - krb5 now applies the correct file context to database
    lock files
  - krb5 servers no longer log everything twice by default
  - nss_ldap now configured with support for paged results
    extension
+ SELinux enablement of new NetworkManager and audit
  functionality
+ Improved Audit and Logging
  - TTY input audit support
  - Remote audit logging via unencrypted connection

* Windows Interoperability
+ Rebased samba from 3.0.28 to 3.0.32 which supports Windows
  Vista and 2008 and various fixes for DC functionality
  (interoperability with Citrix and Domain trusts)

* Kernel Improvements
+ New features include:
  - Added private futexes support
  - Added preempt-notifiers implementation
  - Included tracepoint/markers infrastructure
  - Added response oriented wake up behavior to scheduler
  - Fixed gettimeofday for HPET, PMTimer, TSC
  - Updated NMI infrastructure to latest
  - Enabled deep C states for idle efficiency for Intel's
    Tylersburg chipset
  - Added extend MCE banks support for Intel's Dunnington,
    Nehalem processors
  - Added ACPI tstate support (processor throttling control)
  - Added AMD IOMMU driver support
  - Enhanced Partition Statistics
  - Enabled CIFS' DFS support and update CIFS to latest
  - Updated Autofs4 to the latest
  - Increased stack size for ia32 application
  - Added kprobe-booster and return probe-booster support
  - Added PCI domain support
  - Added RAID 4/5/10 in dm-raid
+ Hardware support enhancements:
  - Drivers added:
      ath5k, hp-ilo, inet_lro, neic, niu, r8169, rt2x00,
      rtl818x, uvcvideo, virtio
  - Drivers updated:
      3w-9xxx, 3w-xxxx, aacraid, aic94xx, alsa, arcmsr, bcm43xx,
      bnx2, bnx2x, cciss, chelsio, cpufreq, cxgb3, e1000,
      e1000e, fusion, hpiolo, ibmvscsi, igb, ieee80211, ipw2x00,
      iwlwifi, ixgbe, lpfc, mac80211, megaraid_sas, mptscsi,
      myri10ge, netxen-nic, OpenIB, powernow_k8, qla2xxx,
      qla24xx, qla84xx, sata, sata_svw, tg3, zd1211rw

Technology Previews

Technology Preview features are included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux to provide the features with wide exposure with the goal of supporting these features in a future release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Technology Preview features are not supported under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 subscription services and may not be functionally complete.  Red Hat welcomes customer feedback and suggestions for Technology Previews.  Advisories will be provided for high-severity security issues in Technology Preview features.

The following Technology Preview features are new or enhanced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 beta.  See the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Release Notes for more information.

- AIGLX including X server and updated Mesa package
- Compiz composition manager
- dm-multipath install
- Dogtail gui
- Limited eCryptFS support
  + Add ecryptfs support to kernel
  + Add authentication in crypto library to kernel
- ext4 file system / e4fsprogs
- Firewire
- GCC 4.3
  + Compiler based on gcc 4.3
  + OpenMP3 conformance
- generic fcoe (potential TP)
- Indic languages: Assamese, Kannada, Sinhalese, Telugu
- iSCSI boot
- Kerberos security for CIFS
- kernel DFS support for CIFS
- ktune: a service that sets several kernel tuning parameters
  to values suitable for specific system profiles
- Support for 32-bit paravirtualized (PV) guests on
  64-bit AMD64/Intel(r) 64 hosts
- SystemTap utrace support for user space tracing
- Trusted Computing Group (TCG) / Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
  Support
  + Include the TCG stack
  + Include the Trousers TSS stack
  + Add trust computing/trust platform module in kernel and
    tpm-tools
  + boot-loader support will be considered for inclusion in a
    future release
- VMware ESX cluster fencing agent

GPL Version 3 Licensed Components

The following packages in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 are licensed under GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPLv3):

* gcc43-4.3.2-7.el5
* gcc43-c++-4.3.2-7.el5
* gcc43-gfortran-4.3.2-7.el5
* gdb-6.8-23.el5
* lftp-3.7.3-1.el5

Comments

• good
  By: agm @ 05/11/2008