Scientific Linux 4.1 Release Notes

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Introduction

   The following topics are covered in this document:

     o Changes to the Scientific Linux installation program (Anaconda)

     o General information

     o Changes to drivers and hardware support

     o Changes to packages

Installation Related Notes

   The following section includes information specific to installation of
   Scientific Linux and the Anaconda installation program.

  Note

   In order to upgrade an already-installed Scientific Linux 4.x system
   to 4.1, you must use yum or apt to update those packages that
   have changed.

   You may use Anaconda to perform a fresh installation of Scientific
   Linux 4.1 or to perform an upgrade from the latest updated version
   of Scientific Linux 3.0.x to Scientific Linux 4.x.

General Information

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

     o The openssh-3.9p1 package included in Scientific Linux 4.x
       introduced two different modes of X11 forwarding: trusted and
       untrusted. In the default Scientific Linux 4.x configuration,
       passing the -X flag to /usr/bin/ssh (or using the "ForwardX11 on"
       configuration option) enables untrusted X11 forwarding. This mode
       restricts the X11 protocol to prevent a malicious application using a
       forwarded SSH connection from compromising the security of the local
       X11 server (for example, by performing keystroke monitoring); but few
       X11 applications are usable in this mode.

       In Scientific Linux 4.1, the default configuration of
       the openssh client has been changed such that passing the -X flag
       enables trusted X11 forwarding. The trusted forwarding mode allows all
       X applications to work correctly when forwarded over an SSH
       connection; but, as with previous releases of Scientific
       Linux, it should only be used when invoking trusted applications.

  Important

       X11 forwarding is disabled by default in Scientific Linux 4.x,
       which differs from previous Scientific Linux 3.0.x releases such
       that attempting to run a malicious X11 application over an ssh
       connection cannot compromise the local X11 server. You should only use
       X11 forwarding when connecting to trusted servers.

     o Scientific Linux 4.1 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, megaraid, ata_piix, and sata_promise devices. On
       ia64 systems, the aic7xxx, aic79xx, mpt fusion, and sata_promise
       devices are supported. On AMD64 and Intel(R) EM64T systems, the
       aic7xxx, aic79xx, mpt fusion, megaraid, sata_promise, and ata_piix
       devices are supported. Finally, on PPC64 systems, the ipr and
       sym53c8xx_2 devices are supported.

  Note

       The megaraid and SATA devices are newly supported in
       Scientific Linux 4.1.

       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 configured disk location 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.

  Important

       The diskdump facility may fail to write a dump file if cluster mode is
       enabled on megaraid adapters. You can disable cluster mode on megaraid
       adapters using the device's WebBIOS utility. Consult your manufacturer
       documentation for more information on using WebBIOS.

       The kernel modules required for the diskdump facility are
       automatically included in the Scientific Linux 4.x kernel. The
       associated user-space diskdump package is named diskdumputils-1.0.1-5,
       and like netdump, is installed by default.

       The 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-1.0.1-5/README

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

Kernel Notes

   This section contains notes relating to the Scientific Linux 4.1 kernel.

     o An issue that causes USB mice to stop responding after a few hours of
       use has been discovered on certain systems. A BIOS setting that
       enables USB emulation causes 2.6 kernel mouse driving to freeze, which
       necessitates either changing to a virtual console using Ctrl-Alt-Fx
       then switching back to the graphical desktop or unplugging and
       re-plugging the mouse in order to regain functionality.

       To prevent the freezing of USB mice, it is recommended to disable USB
       Emulation support (also called USB Legacy Support) in the system's
       BIOS. Refer to your system manufacturer documentation for more
       information about finding and disabling this BIOS setting.

     o The Scientific Linux 4.1 kernel automatically disables
       NUMA optimizations (numa=off) by default on systems using the AMD64
       dual core processor. This ensures stable operation across multiple
       systems where each has a different system BIOS implementation for
       reporting dual core processors.

       Users have the ability to safely override this default for a system
       where the manufacturer has stated conformance with the reporting of
       dual core processors as expected by Scientific Linux 4.1 kernel.

       Users can override the numa=off default by specifying numa=on on the
       Linux boot prompt or on the active kernel line in the grub.conf file.
       If the system fails to boot after enabling this function, remove the
       override and retry it. This limitation is expected to be removed in a
       future Scientific Linux 4.x update.

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
   Scientific Linux update is applied, because in most cases only one
   older-revision driver will be preserved for each update.

   The following device drivers are updated in Scientific Linux 4.1:

     o Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel HBA (lpfc driver)

     o LSI Logic MegaRAID Controller family (megaraid_mbox driver)

     o Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100/2200 adapters (ieee80211/ipw2100/ipw2200
       drivers)

     o Broadcom Tigon3 (tg3 driver)

     o Intel(R) Pro/100 Adapter family (e100 driver)

     o Intel(R) PRO/1000 Adapters (e1000 driver)

     o Serial ATA (SATA) devices (sata driver)

     o Neterion 10GB Ethernet adapter (s2io driver)

     o The kernel shipped with Scientific Linux 4.1 includes
       the new megaraid_mbox driver from LSI Logic, which replaces the
       megaraid driver. The megaraid_mbox driver has an improved design, is
       compatible with the 2.6 kernel, and includes support for the latest
       hardware. However, megaraid_mbox does not support some of the older
       hardware that was supported by the megaraid driver.

       Adapters with the following PCI vendor ID and device ID pairs are not
       supported by the megaraid_mbox driver:

 vendor, device

 0x101E, 0x9010
 0x101E, 0x9060
 0x8086, 0x1960

       The lspci -n command can be used to display the IDs for adapters
       installed in a particular machine. Products with these IDs are known
       by (but not limited to) the following model names:

     o Broadcom 5820

     o Dell PERC (dual-channel fast/wide SCSI) RAID controller

     o Dell PERC2/SC (single-channel Ultra SCSI) RAID controller

     o Dell PERC2/DC (dual-channel Ultra SCSI) RAID controller

     o Dell CERC (four-channel ATA/100) RAID controller

     o DRAC 1

     o MegaRAID 428

     o MegaRAID 466

     o MegaRAID Express 500

     o HP NetRAID 3Si and 1M

  Note

   Both Dell and LSI Logic have indicated that they no longer support these
   models in the 2.6 kernel. As a result, these adapters are no longer
   supported in Scientific Linux 4.1.

     o Scientific Linux 4.1 provides support for disk devices
       that are larger than 2 terabytes (TB). Although there is limited
       support for this feature in the Scientific Linux 4.0 release,
       4.1 contains many improvements (both in user space programs and
       in the kernel). In general, 4.1 is considered a requirement for
       support of disk devices larger than 2 TB.

       Please note the following guidelines and restrictions related to large
       device support:

       . Typical disk devices are addressed in units of 512 byte blocks. The
       size of the address in the SCSI command determines the maximum device
       size. The SCSI command set includes commands that have 16-bit block
       addresses (device size is limited to 2 GB), 32-bit block addresses
       (limited to addressing 2 TB), and 64-bit block addresses. The SCSI
       subsystem in the 2.6 kernel has support for commands with 64-bit block
       addresses. To support disks larger then 2 TB, the Host Bus Adapter
       (HBA), the HBA driver, and the storage device must also support 64-bit
       block address. We have tested the QLogic qla2300 driver and the
       Emulex lpfc driver, included in Scientific Linux 4.1,
       on an 8 TB logical unit on a Winchester Systems FX400 (rev. 3.42B and
       above is required).

       . The commonly-used MS-DOS partition table format can not be used on
       devices larger than 2 TB. For devices larger than 2 TB, the GPT
       partition table format must be used. The parted utility must be used
       for the creation and management of GPT partitions. To create a GPT
       partition, use the parted command mklabel gpt.

       Scientific Linux requires that all block devices be initialized with a valid
       partition table, even if there is a single partition encompassing the
       entire device. This requirement exists to prevent potential problems
       caused by erroneous or unintended partition tables on the device.

       . The Anaconda installer currently only supports GPT partition tables
       on the Itanium(TM) architecture. As a result, it is not possible to
       install or format devices that are larger that 2 TB with Anaconda,
       except on Itanium(TM) platforms.

       . The / and /boot directories must be located on devices that are 2 TB
       in size or less.

       . Various issues with LVM2 on large devices are fixed in 
       Scientific Linux 4.1. Do not use LVM2 on devices larger than 2
       TB prior to installing 4.1.

       As noted above, Scientific Linux requires that a partition table be written to
       the block device, even when it is used as part of an LVM2 Volume
       Group. In this case, you may create a single partition that spans the
       entire device. Then, be sure to specify the full partition name (for
       example, /dev/sda1, not /dev/sda), when you use the pvcreate and
       vgcreate commands.

       . The maximum size disk that can be a member of an md software RAID
       set is 2 TB. The md RAID device itself can be larger than 2 TB.
       Devices have been tested up to 8 TB.

       . Various issues with e2fsprogs that occur on devices larger than 4 TB
       are addressed in Scientific Linux 4.1. Prior to 4.1,
       these issues can be worked around by specifying mke2fs -b 4096 when
       making an ext2 or ext3 filesystem. The workaround is not necessary in
       4.1.

       The ext2 and ext3 filesystems have an internal limit of 8 TB. Devices
       up to this limit have been tested.

       You may want to use the mke2fs -T largefile4 command to speed up the
       creation of large filesystems.

       . The GFS filesystem is limited to 16 TB on 32-bit systems, and 8
       exabytes (EB) with 64-bit systems. GFS filesystem
       sizes up to 8 TB have been tested.

       . NFS partitions greater than 2 TB have been tested and are supported.

       . Scientific Linux 4.1 user space tools are compiled
       for large file support. However, it is not possible to test every
       program in this mode. Please file a problem report if issues arise
       when using the tools for large file support.

       . The inn program does not function correctly with devices larger than
       2 TB. This will be addressed in a future release of Scientific Linux.

Changes to Packages

   This section contains listings of packages that have been updated or added
   to Scientific Linux 4.x as part of 4.1.

   The following packages have been updated from the original release of
   Scientific Linux 4.0:

     o HelixPlayer

     o ImageMagick

     o ImageMagick-c++

     o ImageMagick-c++-devel

     o ImageMagick-devel

     o ImageMagick-perl

     o alsa-lib

     o alsa-lib-devel

     o anaconda

     o anaconda-product

     o anaconda-runtime

     o apr

     o apr-devel

     o arpwatch

     o authconfig

     o authconfig-gtk

     o autofs

     o binutils

     o bootparamd

     o chkconfig

     o comps-4AS

     o coreutils

     o cpio

     o cpp

     o crash

     o cups

     o cups-devel

     o cups-libs

     o curl

     o curl-devel

     o dbus

     o dbus-devel

     o dbus-glib

     o dbus-python

     o dbus-x11

     o devhelp

     o devhelp-devel

     o device-mapper

     o diskdumputils

     o dmraid

     o e2fsprogs

     o e2fsprogs-devel

     o elinks

     o emacs

     o emacs-common

     o emacs-el

     o emacs-leim

     o emacs-nox

     o enscript

     o ethereal

     o ethereal-gnome

     o evolution

     o evolution-connector

     o evolution-data-server

     o evolution-data-server-devel

     o evolution-devel

     o exim

     o exim-doc

     o exim-mon

     o exim-sa

     o firefox

     o fonts-xorg-100dpi

     o fonts-xorg-75dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-14-100dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-14-75dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-15-100dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-15-75dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-2-100dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-2-75dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-9-100dpi

     o fonts-xorg-ISO8859-9-75dpi

     o fonts-xorg-base

     o fonts-xorg-cyrillic

     o fonts-xorg-syriac

     o fonts-xorg-truetype

     o gaim

     o gcc

     o gcc-c++

     o gcc-g77

     o gcc-gnat

     o gcc-java

     o gcc-objc

     o gdb

     o gdk-pixbuf

     o gdk-pixbuf-devel

     o gdm

     o glibc

     o glibc-common

     o glibc-devel

     o glibc-headers

     o glibc-profile

     o glibc-utils

     o gpdf

     o gsl

     o gsl-devel

     o gtk2

     o gtk2-devel

     o hotplug

     o htdig

     o htdig-web

     o httpd

     o httpd-devel

     o httpd-manual

     o httpd-suexec

     o hwbrowser

     o hwdata

     o iiimf-csconv

     o iiimf-docs

     o iiimf-emacs

     o iiimf-gnome-im-switcher

     o iiimf-gtk

     o iiimf-le-canna

     o iiimf-le-hangul

     o iiimf-le-sun-thai

     o iiimf-le-unit

     o iiimf-libs

     o iiimf-libs-devel

     o iiimf-server

     o iiimf

     o initscripts

     o ipsec-tools

     o java-1.4.2-gcj-compat

     o java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-devel

     o kdegraphics

     o kdegraphics-devel

     o kdelibs

     o kdelibs-devel

     o kernel

     o kernel-devel

     o kernel-doc

     o kernel-hugemem

     o kernel-hugemem-devel

     o kernel-smp

     o kernel-smp-devel

     o kernel-utils

     o krb5-devel

     o krb5-libs

     o krb5-server

     o krb5-workstation

     o kudzu

     o kudzu-devel

     o libaio

     o libaio-devel

     o libexif

     o libexif-devel

     o libf2c

     o libgcc

     o libgcj

     o libgcj-devel

     o libgnat

     o libobjc

     o libpcapk

     o libstdc++

     o libstdc++-devel

     o libtiff

     o libtiff-devel

     o libtool

     o libtool-libs

     o lsof

     o lvm2

     o mailman

     o man-pages-ja

     o mod_auth_mysql

     o mod_python

     o mod_ssl

     o mozilla

     o mozilla-chat

     o mozilla-devel

     o mozilla-dom-inspector

     o mozilla-js-debugger

     o mozilla-mail

     o mozilla-nspr

     o mozilla-nspr-devel

     o mozilla-nss

     o mozilla-nss-devel

     o mysql

     o mysql-bench

     o mysql-devel

     o mysql-server

     o net-tools

     o netdump

     o netdump-server

     o nptl-devel

     o nscd

     o nss_ldap

     o ntsysv

     o openoffice.org

     o openoffice.org-i18n

     o openoffice.org-kde

     o openoffice.org-libs

     o openssh

     o openssh-askpass

     o openssh-askpass-gnome

     o openssh-clients

     o openssh-server

     o pam

     o pam-devel

     o pango

     o pango-devel

     o pciutils

     o pciutils-devel

     o pcmcia-cs

     o perl

     o perl-DBI

     o perl-suidperl

     o php

     o php-devel

     o php-domxml

     o php-gd

     o php-imap

     o php-ldap

     o php-mbstring

     o php-mysql

     o php-ncurses

     o php-odbc

     o php-pear

     o php-pgsql

     o php-snmp

     o php-xmlrpc

     o policycoreutils

     o popt

     o postfix

     o postfix-pflogsumm

     o postgresql

     o postgresql-contrib

     o postgresql-devel

     o postgresql-docs

     o postgresql-jdbc

     o postgresql-libs

     o postgresql-odbc

     o postgresql-pl

     o postgresql-python

     o postgresql-server

     o postgresql-tcl

     o postgresql-test

     o procps

     o psacct

     o python

     o python-devel

     o python-docs

     o python-tools

     o redhat-lsb

     o redhat-release

     o rpm

     o rpm-build

     o rpm-devel

     o rpm-libs

     o rpm-python

     o rpmdb-redhat

     o rsh

     o rsh-server

     o selinux-policy-targeted

     o selinux-policy-targeted-sources

     o squid

     o squirrelmail

     o strace

     o system-config-kickstart

     o system-config-lvm

     o tcpdump

     o telnet

     o telnet-server

     o tetex

     o tetex-afm

     o tetex-doc

     o tetex-dvips

     o tetex-fonts

     o tetex-latex

     o tetex-xdvi

     o thunderbird

     o tkinter

     o ttfonts-ja

     o tzdata

     o up2date

     o up2date-gnome

     o vim-X11

     o vim-common

     o vim-enhanced

     o vim-minimal

     o xemacs

     o xemacs-common

     o xemacs-el

     o xemacs-info

     o xemacs-nox

     o xloadimage

     o xorg-x11

     o xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL

     o xorg-x11-Mesa-libGLU

     o xorg-x11-Xdmx

     o xorg-x11-Xnest

     o xorg-x11-Xvfb

     o xorg-x11-deprecated-libs

     o xorg-x11-deprecated-libs-devel

     o xorg-x11-devel

     o xorg-x11-doc

     o xorg-x11-font-utils

     o xorg-x11-libs

     o xorg-x11-sdk

     o xorg-x11-tools

     o xorg-x11-twm

     o xorg-x11-xauth

     o xorg-x11-xdm

     o xorg-x11-xfs

     o xpdf

   The following new packages have been added to Scientific Linux 4.1:

     o compat-libcom_err-1.0-5

   The following packages have been removed from Scientific Linux 4.1:

     o No packages have been removed.

   ( x86 )