Product SiteDocumentation Site

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5



5.7 Release Notes
=================


Release Notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7
----------------------------------------------


Logo


Red Hat Engineering Content Servicesrhelv5-list@redhat.com



Legal Notice
============

Copyright © 2011 Red Hat. The text of and illustrations in this document
are licensed by Red Hat under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share
Alike 3.0 Unported license ("CC-BY-SA"). An explanation of CC-BY-SA is
available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. In
accordance with CC-BY-SA, if you distribute this document or an
adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version. Red
Hat, as the licensor of this document, waives the right to enforce, and
agrees not to assert, Section 4d of CC-BY-SA to the fullest extent
permitted by applicable law. Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the
Shadowman logo, JBoss, MetaMatrix, Fedora, the Infinity Logo, and RHCE
are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and
other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in
the United States and other countries. Java® is a registered trademark
of Oracle and/or its affiliates. XFS® is a trademark of Silicon Graphics
International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other
countries. MySQL® is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United
States, the European Union and other countries. All other trademarks are
the property of their respective owners.


1801 Varsity Drive
 Raleigh, NC 27606-2072 USA
 Phone: +1 919 754 3700
 Phone: 888 733 4281
 Fax: +1 919 754 3701

Abstract

Red Hat Enterprise Linux minor releases are an aggregation of individual
enhancement, security and bug fix errata. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5.7 Release Notes documents the major changes made to the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 operating system and its accompanying applications for
this minor release.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Installation

2. Subscriptions and Entitlement

3. Virtualization

      3.1. Xen

      3.2. KVM

4. Device Drivers

      4.1. Storage Drivers

      4.2. Network Drivers

      4.3. Graphics Drivers

5. Filesystem/Storage Management

      5.1. Global File System 2 (GFS2)

6. System Security Services Daemon (SSSD)

A. Revision History

Red Hat Enterprise Linux minor releases are an aggregation of individual
enhancement, security and bug fix errata. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5.7 Release Notes documents the major changes made to the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5 operating system and its accompanying applications for
this minor release. The Release Notes provide high level coverage of the
improvements and additions that have been implemented in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.7. For detailed documentation on all changes to Red
Hat Enterprise Linux for the 5.7 update, refer to the Technical Notes


Note
----

Refer to the Online Release Notes for the most up to date version of the
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 Release Notes.


Note
----

Under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7, please use RHN Classic Subscription
Management if you have subscriptions for the following products,

  *  Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for HPC Compute Node

  *  Load Balancer Add-on

For more information on the new features of subscription management,
please refer to the Red Hat Knowledgebase.


1. Installation
----------------

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux installer (also known as anaconda) assists
in the installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. The Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5.7 includes the following enhancements:

  *  A kickstart installation, by default, has the SSH port open in the
    firewall settings. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7, the new
    "--no-ssh" kickstart option for the firewall command can be used to
    ensure that SSH access to a system is disabled.

  *  The new blacklist functionality in anaconda is used to avoid the
    installation or probing of drivers.

  *  anaconda provides added support for the subscription and entitlement
    changes implemented in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7. Refer to
    Section 2, “Subscriptions and Entitlement” for further
    information.


2. Subscriptions and Entitlement
---------------------------------

Effective software and infrastructure management requires a mechanism to
handle the software inventory — both the type of products and the
number of systems that the software is installed on. Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5.7,includes support for the new Entitlement Platform which
provides oversight for the software entitlements for an organization and
a more effective content delivery system. On local systems, the new Red
Hat Subscription Manager offers both GUI and command-line tools to manage
the local system and its allocated subscriptions. A better method to
handle subscriptions will help our customers maintain their software
compliance and will make installing and updating Red Hat products much
simpler.


Note
----

For more information refer to the Overview of changes to Red Hat
subscription and entitlement management article on the Red Hat
Knowledgebase.


3. Virtualization
------------------


3.1. Xen

Xen is a high performance and secure open source virtualization
framework. Virtualization allows users to run guest operating systems in
virtual machines on top of a host operating system. Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5.7 provides the following bug fixes and enhancements for Xen:

  *  The performance of Xen guests in 32-bit domains is improved.

  *  The maximum amount of disks that can be attached to a Xen guest has
    been increased from 100 to 256.

  *  The time needed to boot Xen guests is reduced.

  *  Xen guests now support up to 4 serial ports.

  *  xz compression support is now available in Xen pygrub.


3.2. KVM

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 includes support for the Kernel-based
Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. KVM is integrated into the Linux
kernel, providing a virtualization platform that takes advantage of the
stability, features, and hardware support inherent in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux. This release provides the following bug fixes and enhancements:

  *  CDROM emulation in KVM is improved.

  *  Live migration convergence speed is improved.

  *  issues with the boot order of virtual machines have been fixed.


4. Device Drivers
------------------


4.1. Storage Drivers

  *  The bnx2i driver for Broadcom NetXtreme II iSCSI has been updated to
    version 2.6.2.3

  *  The mpt2sas driver that supports the SAS-2 family of adapters from
    LSI has been updated to version 08.101.00.00. Most notably, this
    update provides support for WarpDrive SSS-6200 devices.

  *  The megaraid driver is updated to version 5.34

  *  The arcmsr driver for Areca RAID controllers is updated

  *  The bfa driver for Brocade Fibre Channel to PCIe Host Bus Adapters
    is updated to the current scsi-misc version.

  *  The be2iscsi driver for ServerEngines BladeEngine 2 Open iSCSI
    devices is updated.

  *  The qla2xxx driver for QLogic Fibre Channel HBAs is updated to
    version 8.03.07.00.05.07. Additionally, the qla24xx and 25xx firmware
    is updated to 5.03.16.

  *  The lpfc driver for Emulex Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters is
    updated to version 8.2.0.96 driver.

  *  The IBM Virtual Ethernet (ibmveth) driver is updated, adding support
    for the optional flush of the rx buffer, scatter-gather,
    rx_copybreak, and tx_copybreak support, and enhanced power virtual
    ethernet performance.

  *  The ibmvfc driver is updated to version 1.0.9

  *  The mptfusion driver is updated to version to 3.04.18rh

  *  The cciss driver for HP Smart Array controllers has been updated,
    adding kdump support and performance mode support on the controller.


4.2. Network Drivers

  *  The cxgb4 driver for Chelsio Terminator4 10G Unified Wire Network
    Controllers is updated.

  *  The cxgb3 driver for the Chelsio T3 Family of network devices is
    updated.

  *  The e1000 driver for Intel PRO/1000 network devices has been
    updated, adding support for the Marvell Alaska M88E1118R PHY and
    CE4100 reference platform.

  *  The enic driver for Cisco 10G Ethernet devicesis updated to version
    2.1.1.9

  *  The myri10ge driver for Myricom Myri-10G Ethernet devices has been
    updated to version 1.5.2

  *  The igb driver for Intel Gigabit Ethernet Adapters is updated

  *  The tg3 driver for Broadcom Tigon3 ethernet devices is updated to
    version 3.116, adding support for EEE.

  *  The bna driver for Brocade 10Gb Ethernet devices is updated to
    version 2.3.2.3

  *  The qlcnic driver is updated to 5.0.13, adding support for large
    receive offload (LRO) and generic receive offload (GRO)

  *  The netxen driver for NetXen Multi port (1/10) Gigabit Network
    devices is updated to version 4.0.75, adding support for GbE port
    settings.

  *  The be2net driver for ServerEngines BladeEngine2 10Gbps network
    devices is updated, adding support for multicast filter on the Lancer
    family of CNAs and enabling IPv6 TSO support.

  *  The ixgbe driver for Intel 10 Gigabit PCI Express network devices is
    updated to version 3.2.9-k2, adding support for FCoE and kcq2 support
    on the 57712 device.

  *  The iwl6000-firmware is updated to version 9.221.4.1.

  *  The iwl5150-firmware package is now available on the Supplementary
    CD.

  *  The 1000e driver is updated to version 1.3.10.

  *  The ixgbevf driver is updated to version 2.0.0-k2.

  *  The igbvf driver is updated.

  *  The bnx2x driver is updated version to 1.62.00-6, adding DCB/PFC,
    FCoE ring support, 57712 device support and BCM84823 to the supported
    PHYs. Additionally, the bnx2x firmware is updated to version 6.2.5.0.

  *  The bnx2 driver is updated to version 2.0.18+.

  *  The atl1e driver for Atheros GbE NICs driver is now available in Red
    Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7.

  *  The iw_cxgb4 driver is now available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    5.7.

  *  The iw_cxgb3 driver is updated


4.3. Graphics Drivers

  *  The vesa driver is updated, to allow the native screen resolution
    (1366x768) to be set on Dell M4500 machines.

  *  The ati driver is updated, enabling DisplayPort interfaces on
    RV635/RV730 cards

  *  The mga driver is updated, providing support for G200eH/eR devices.


5. Filesystem/Storage Management
---------------------------------

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 provides the following notable filesystem
improvements:

  *  A new debugging facility for Network File System (NFS) address space
    operations (aops)

  *  Additional checks to ensure that quota limits cannot be set too
    high.


5.1. Global File System 2 (GFS2)

The Red Hat GFS2 file system is a native file system that interfaces
directly with the Linux kernel file system interface (VFS layer). When
implemented as a cluster file system, GFS2 employs distributed metadata
and multiple journals. GFS2 in Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes the
following notable new features:

  *  The fallocate() system call preallocates filesystem blocks to a
    file. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 introduces support for the
    fallocate() system call on the GFS2 filesystem.

  *  Performance when bouncing locks in a cluster with GFS2 is improved.

  *  gfs2_grow is used to expand the GFS2 filesystem. Previously, growing
    a GFS2 filesystem that was at capacity (full) was unsupported. Red
    Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 introduces support for growing a full GFS2
    filesytem.


6.  System Security Services Daemon (SSSD)
-------------------------------------------

The System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) provides a set of daemons to
manage access to remote directories and authentication mechanisms. It
provides Name Service Switch (NSS) and Pluggable Authentication
Modules(PAM) interfaces toward the system and a pluggable back end system
to connect to multiple different account sources. SSSD in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 5.7 includes the following notable bug fixes and
enhancements:

  *  The new ding-libs package provides utility functions to manipulate
    filesystem pathnames (libpath_utils), a hash table which dynamically
    resizes to achieve optimal storage and access time properties
    (libdhash), a data type to collect data in a hierarchical structure
    for easy iteration and serialization (libcollection), a dynamically
    growing, reference-counted array (libref_array), and a library to
    process configuration files in initialization format (INI) into a
    library collection data structure (libini_config).

  *  Added support for netgroups

  *  Group support to the simple access provider is now supported.

  *  A Kerberos access provider is now included to honor .k5login.

  *  Improved support for delayed online Kerberos authentication.

  *  Significantly reduced time between connecting to a network or
    Virtual Private Network (VPN) and acquiring a Ticket Granting Ticket
    (TGT).

  *  The new automatic Kerberos ticket renewal feature allows long-lived
    processes or cron jobs to function even when the user logs out.

  *  Support for providing kerberos tickets for long-lived processes or
    cron jobs even when the user logs out

  *  Support for 'shadow' access control.

  *  Support for authorizedService access control.

  *  Ability to mix-and-match LDAP access control features.

  *  A new option, providing separate password-change LDAP servers for
    platforms where LDAP referrals are not supported.

  *  Performance improvements when group processing RFC2307 LDAP servers.

  *  A new option, dns_discovery_domain for better configuration when
    using SRV records for failover.


A. Revision History
--------------------

Revision History

Revision 1-1

Mon May 23 2011

Ryan Lerch

Initial Release of the 5.7 Beta Release Notes
