Red Hat Linux 7.0 (Guinness) Release Notes ------------------------------------------ This document describes features that are new to Red Hat Linux 7.0, but may not have been available prior to our documentation being finalized. Installation-Related Enhancements --------------------------------- The Red Hat Linux 7.0 installation program includes a number of new features. For more information, please refer to the Official Red Hat Linux Installation Guide. Improvements to Red Hat Linux 7.0 which will make installation even easier include: o New Multi-CD Install -- The Red Hat Linux 7.0 installation program is now capable of installing Red Hat Linux from multiple CD-ROMs. Because of this change, if you intend to support NFS, FTP, or HTTP installations, it is no longer possible to simply mount a single Red Hat Linux CD-ROM, and install from it. Instead, you must copy the RedHat directory from each CD-ROM comprising Red Hat Linux 7.0 onto a disk drive: - Insert CD 1 mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom cp -var /mnt/cdrom/RedHat /location/of/disk/space umount /mnt/cdrom - Insert CD 2 mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom cp -var /mnt/cdrom/RedHat /location/of/disk/space umount /mnt/cdrom You must then make /location/of/disk/space accessible to the installation program (for example, exporting it for NFS installations): - Export /location/of/disk/space o Installation Program Supports RPM 4.0 -- The Red Hat Linux 7.0 installation program now supports the newest version of the RPM Package Manager: RPM 4.0. Because RPM 4.0 uses a new database format, the Red Hat Linux 7.0 installation program automatically migrates the rpm database to the new format during upgrades. For more information, please see the "RPM 4.0" section below. o XFree 4.0.1 -- Configuration of your X Window System during the installation has never been more thorough. From choosing your monitor and its correct settings, to video card probing, to testing your desired X setup, Xconfigurator will help you set everything just right. o Labels are used by default in the installer and /etc/fstab -- The ext2 filesystem's support for labels is now used in Red Hat Linux 7.0. Note that this applies to fresh installations only; upgrades to Red Hat Linux 7.0 from prior versions of Red Hat Linux will not be configured to use labels. In fresh installations, the installer creates labels for all ext2 filesystems created during the installation process, and /etc/fstab uses the labels to associate the filesystems with their mount points. (Note that you can use e2label after installation to display/change any filesystem's label.) o USB Support -- The installation program now supports USB devices (mice and keyboards). o Help Text Available in Text Mode Installation -- Help text has been added to the text mode installation program to further assist you during your installation of Red Hat Linux 7.0. By pressing F1, you can enable help text for that specific screen. Press Enter to close the help text screen. o Install-Time LDAP and Kerberos Configuration -- LDAP and Kerberos can now be configured for account authentication at install-time (custom installations only). o Unsupported Workaround for 1024 Cylinder LILO Limitation -- If your BIOS and hard drive support EDD block transfers, you can enter "linux lba32" at the "Boot:" prompt when booting the installation program. This will enable you to place the linux kernel on any partition, regardless of the starting cylinder. USE THIS OPTION AT YOUR OWN RISK; IT IS NOT SUPPORTED. System-Related Enhancements --------------------------- There are many features new to Red Hat Linux 7.0 that are not part of the installation process. Some new features are tools or applications that you can use, while others are new versions of the kernel or desktop environments. This list will provide a bit more information about what to expect from Red Hat Linux 7.0 once you are actually using the OS itself. o Upgraded Core System Components -- The following major system components have been upgraded in Red Hat Linux 7.0: - glibc 2.1.92 (compatible with 2.2 kernel, but 2.4-ready as well) - XFree86 4.0.1, XFree86 4.0.1 runtime environment - XFree86 3.3.6 X servers included for maximum hardware compatibility - GNOME 1.2 - kernel 2.2.16 - GCC 2.96 o New and Updated Drivers -- Many drivers are new to Red Hat Linux 7.0, or have been newly upgraded, including but by no means limited to: - aacraid 1.0.6 - qla2x00 2.23 - e1000 2.0.7 - e100 1.2.1 - cciss 1.0.0 - 3c90x 1.0.0i - emu10k1 - 2.4 USB backport - kaweth - Tachyon FibreChannel - SysKonnect FDDI - Crystal SoundFusion support - lm_sensors - pcmcia 3.1.19 (better PCMCIA/Cardbus support) o RPM 4.0 -- The newest version of the RPM Package Manager is included in Red Hat Linux 7.0. RPM 4.0 now includes a virtualized database access framework. This has allowed migration of the RPM database from Berkeley DB 1 to Berkeley DB 3.1 format. The Red Hat Linux 7.0 installation program automatically migrates DB 1 databases to the new DB 3.1 format. To migrate from DB 1 to DB 3.1 manually, use RPM's --rebuilddb option, specifying two additional options: rpm --rebuilddb --dbapi 1 --rebuilddbapi 3 This automatically converts DB 1 databases to the new DB 3.1 format. To revert to DB 1 format after migrating to DB 3.1, use this command: rpm --rebuilddb --dbapi 3 --rebuilddbapi 1 Many parameters in the RPM database can be tuned using RPM macros. For more information, read /usr/lib/rpm/macros. Local modifications should be made to /etc/rpm/macros. RPM 4.0 can install packages built with RPM 2.0 and later. Support for legacy RPM 1.0 packages has been disabled. Please note that packages built with the default settings in RPM 4.0 cannot be installed on versions of RPM less than 3.0.5. RPM 4.0 is capable of building packages compatible with older versions of RPM, but this is not enabled by default. When building binary packages with RPM 4.0, users can now take advantage of new %configure and %makeinstall macros for packages utilizing autoconf for build configuration. The macros pass FHS compliant paths to the configuration scripts. Combined with RPM macro definitions for the various paths passed to %configure, this greatly simplifies migrating packages to FHS paths. o Packages Optimized -- All packages that comprise Red Hat Linux 7.0 have been optimized for maximum performance. Some packages are optimized for Pentium Pro and above processors while remaining compatible with 386, 486, and Pentium processors. Other packages are optimized for a specific processor family (with the installation program installing the package with the most appropriate optimizations). As in prior releases, Red Hat Linux 7.0 installs kernels optimized for a specific processor family for maximum performance. o Basic USB Support -- Red Hat Linux 7.0 includes support for USB devices (primarily mouse and keyboard devices, although modules for other device types are included). The usbview graphical tool is also included, and can be used to display the devices present on the Universal Serial Bus. o IDE Disk Drive Tuning Now Easier -- For the adventurous user, IDE disk drive tuning parameters (for improving performance) can be found in the /etc/sysconfig/harddisks file. o Expanded Hardware Accelerated 3-D Support -- Accelerated 3-D support is included for the following graphics chipsets, using the XFree86-4.0.1 DRI/DRM infrastructure: - Intel i810/i815 - ATI Rage 128 - Matrox G200 Note that these modes require quite a bit more memory than the ordinary modes, which can cause previously working modes to fail. If you'd rather have high resolution than accelerated 3-D on these cards, run Xconfigurator with the --nodri option, or comment/remove the "dri" line from the "Module" section in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. You must then add your desired resolutions to the "Display" subsection of the "Screen" section after creating a file with lower resolutions in Xconfigurator. Other 3-D chipsets may work, through the use of third-party drivers and/or software. Contact the manufacturer of your chipset for more information. At the time of the Red Hat Linux 7.0 release, the X server is automatically configured in such a way that allowed only the root user to use the DRI functionality. This is because DRI requires kernel interaction. A workaround to enable DRI for all users is to add "Modes 0666" to the "DRI" section of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. o Details Behind Hardware Accelerated 3-D Support -- To implement the expanded 3-D support present in Red Hat Linux 7.0, we have included a special, modified version of Mesa. We did this because we needed to support both XFree86 3.3.x servers and XFree86 4.0.1 servers. The version of Mesa included in XFree86-4.0.1 can only be used in conjunction with the XFree86-4.0.1 X server; it fails against 3.3.x. The standalone Mesa supports the XFree86 3.3.x servers, but does not support the DRI infrastructure in XFree86-4.0.1, which means that hardware accelerated 3-D support is not possible. Therefore, it was decided to add DRI-awareness to the standalone Mesa libraries, creating one library that can be used both by XFree86-4.0.1 servers for DRI, and by XFree86-3.3.x servers for software-based rendering. Frequently asked questions: - Exactly how did you do this? We packaged some of the DRI-related files from XFree86-4.0.1 into a tarball. We linked these into the standard Mesa tree, and then applied a patch. The goal of this patch is to have the library determine (at initialization time) which X server it's running on and the extensions that are currently present. Depending on the results, it uses either normal Mesa routines or the added DRI based routines. - Why didn't you do instead? We investigated several alternatives. Among these were: 1) Symlinks of various sorts. This was rejected, mainly because this does not allow for a shared /usr (such as NFS) to be used easily by both versions of servers. 2) A wrapper library that dlopen()s the correct library This actually works for most cases. However, if an application dlopen()s a library linked against libGL with the flag RTLD_NOW, it will fail. - Will this patch be integrated into a future release of Mesa? Maybe, maybe not. In its current form, it's somewhat hackish; that is why it hasn't been submitted to the Mesa maintainers yet. - GL in 7.0 isn't working right. Should I send a report to the Mesa team? In general, no. Please enter any problems you have in Bugzilla: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/ After looking at the bug, we may then ask you to send a report to the Mesa team, but reporting bugs to us first allows us to figure out whether the bug is in what we did in our Mesa package as opposed to the base Mesa distribution, and allows the Mesa team to not have to worry about our changes. o XFree86 4.0.1 Configuration File Change -- The XFree86 4.0.1 configuration located in /etc/X11 may be named XF86Config or XF86Config-4, depending on the X server in use. The way to determine the name currently used is to issue the following command: ls -l /etc/X11/X If the X symlink points to a file starting with "XF86_", the XF86Config configuration file used; otherwise, the XF86Config-4 file is used. Note that you may actually see both files on your system; use the above command to determine which file is currently being used. o RH PPP Dialer (rp3) Only PPP Configuration Tool -- The PPP configuration tool (known as rp3) is now the only recommended tool for configuring dialup Internet connections based on the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). If you have an ISDN line, the isdn-config tool should be used. If you must use SLIP or CSLIP as your dialup protocol, you should use the netcfg tool. o GCC Compiler 2.96 -- GCC 2.96 allows for faster optimized code and more complete C++ support. o BSD lpr Replaced by LPRng -- LPRng is a reimplementation of BSD lpr, and includes accounting and authentication abilities. The main LPRng project page is available at: http://www.astart.com/LPRng/LPRng.html While the use of LPRng should be transparent to end users, there are a number of system-level differences that system administrators should understand. They are outlined below: - Changes to rhs-printfilters and printtool -- Changes in spooling between LPRng and BSD lpr have caused a major change in the input format of rhs-printfilters. BSD lpr's lpd directed standard input to the print filter, while LPRng's lpd passes a file name. In addition, printtool no longer copies master-filter from /usr/lib/rhs/rhs-printfilters/ into the printer's spool directory when configuring a printer; instead it creates a symlink in the spooler directory to the master-filter. This will prevent future upgrade-related issues, as changes to the master-filter will propagate automatically to the spoolers that use it. POTENTIAL PRINTING PROBLEM WITH UPGRADES -- However, there is an upgrade issue with printers that were configured using older versions of printtool and rhs-printfilters. Since the filter that resides in the print spool directory is a copy of the old master-filter, upgrades to the new master-filter will not be reflected in the filters residing in any old spool directories. Since the rhs-printfilters input format has changed to accommodate LPRng, these older filters will not function correctly with LPRng. We have implemented a limited fix, in that, upon upgrade, the rhs-printfilters rpm will compare the master-filter that is already on the machine with the filters in the spool directories, and if they are identical, it will replace those filters with symlinks, before it replaces the master-filter. This will handle most upgrade cases. However, in two scenarios the new master-filter will not be used: o If you have a custom, or edited filter, it will not be replaced. o Printer filters configured using versions of rhs-printfilters older than the version currently on your system will not match the master-filter, and therefore will not be replaced. In these cases, it is up to the system administrator to determine whether it is better to replace the current filter with a symlink to /usr/lib/rhs/rhs-printfilters/master-filter (or simply use printtool to delete and recreate the printer entry), or to leave the current filter in place. o INTEROPERABILITY ISSUES WITH OLDER VERSIONS OF lpr -- Versions of the BSD lpr's lpd that shipped with older versions of Red Hat Linux improperly handle extensions to the lpr/lpd protocol, and will generate "cannot stat file" error messages when extended lpd spoolers (such as LPRng) try to print to them. However, the file spooled by LPRng will still print. Red Hat, Inc. will release an errata to lpr for Red Linux 5.2 and 6.2 systems that will eliminate the incorrect error message. o UPGRADE ISSUE WITH POSTGRESQL - Upgrading to Red Hat Linux 7.0 has certain implications related to postgresql. Existing databases must undergo a dump and restore cycle. The best way to do this is to use pg_dumpall(1) BEFORE upgrading to Red Hat Linux 7.0. After the upgrade, please see the README.rpm file in /usr/share/doc/postgresql*/. Note that the upgrade keeps the old binaries around (along with a helper script) after the upgrade, but doing the dump before the upgrade and restoring afterwards (after removing the old database) is highly recommended. o Encryption-related changes -- The following packages have been changed to provide additional support for encryption-related technologies: - OpenSSH encryption tools are included in Red Hat Linux 7.0, allowing secure remote logins to your system. - The OpenSSL cryptography toolkit is included in Red Hat Linux 7.0 enabling secure communication. - CIPE is now included in Red Hat Linux 7.0 for building encrypted VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). Note that if you used CIPE 1.3 (or earlier) previously, you'll either have to regenerate your CIPE keys, or change them by passing them through the following "tr" command: tr \[a-f] \[1-6] This is necessary because previous CIPE versions contained a serious bug in key handling which is fixed in the new version. o Sawfish window manager now included -- The sawfish window manager is now included in Red Hat Linux 7.0 as the default window manager for GNOME. Based on a Lisp-like language, sawfish is extensible, and GNOME-aware. o Enlightenment Window Manager Updated -- The Enlightenment window manager has been upgraded to 0.16, and includes many features that are part of desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE. o inetd replaced by xinetd -- The xinetd package has greater functionality than the inetd super-server it replaces. See the configuration file /etc/xinetd.conf (and the files in /etc/xinetd.d) for more information on xinetd's default configuration for Red Hat Linux 7.0. (NOTE: On upgrades, /etc/inetd.conf will be converted to an xinetd-style file using the inetdconvert script present in the xinetd RPM. Your original inetd.conf will be saved as /etc/inetd.conf.rpmsave.) o xinetd Support in ntsysv/chkconfig -- ntsysv and chkconfig now controls services started from xinetd as well as the standard init scripts. o Support For sar/sard System Status Reporting -- The sysstat RPM includes sar/sard along with iostat. o New graphical boot screen for LILO -- LILO now uses a graphical screen that displays available boot selections. o Greater FHS Compatibility -- Red Hat Linux 7.0 has moved towards greater compatibility with the FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard). Therefore, the following directories have moved: /usr/man is now /usr/share/man /usr/doc is now /usr/share/doc /usr/info is now /usr/share/info See http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ for more information on FHS. o Other Filesystem Changes -- Red Hat Linux 7.0 also includes other changes to the directory structure: /home/httpd is now /var/www /home/ftp is now /var/ftp (This makes it possible to automount /home without web or FTP activity keeping it mounted.) To foster greater cross-distribution compatibility, the following symlinks have been added to Red Hat Linux 7.0: /etc/rc.local -> /etc/rc.d/rc.local /etc/rc.sysinit -> /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit /etc/init.d -> /etc/rc.d/init.d /etc/rc#.d -> /etc/rc.d/rc#.d Please note that Red Hat may, in the future, turn the symlinks into directories, and the /etc/rc.d/* directories into symlinks. o /etc/conf.modules File Renamed -- The file conf.modules has been renamed to modules.conf, and still resides in /etc. o Expanded LDAP and Kerberos Integration -- The new authconfig provides an automated method of configuring a Red Hat Linux 7.0 system to use LDAP or Kerberos for user authentication. The installation program takes advantage of this to offer the options at install-time. Install-time LDAP and Kerberos configuration is also available for kickstart installations and after installation. o "service" Command Now Supports Conditional Restart -- The "service" command now includes the "condrestart" option. For example, to restart service only if it is currently running, run 'service condrestart'. o Kickstart Enhancements -- Kickstart has been improved with new commands, as well as partitioning improvements. o Red Hat Network Registration Client -- Red Hat Linux 7.0 includes support for Red Hat Network (RHN), an easily-customized way of receiving system updates. To join Red Hat Network, create a System Profile with the RHN Registration Client. The first time you login as root, the RHN Registration Client (rhn_register) is started. If you cancel it, it will not appear again. Updates can be received via the Red Hat Update Agent (up2date) or the new RHN Web Application. For more information, please see http://www.redhat.com/network. o Red Hat Update Agent and the Red Hat Network -- Existing registered users of the Red Hat Update Agent (up2date) shipped with prior versions of Red Hat Linux are now automatically members of Red Hat Network. If you've used up2date to access priority.redhat.com in the past, you should still be able to do so using Red Hat Linux 7.0 (assuming your access to priority.redhat.com has not expired, of course). Please note that the Red Hat Network Web Application can also be used to get updates, as well as configure email notifications and view per-system update information. To learn more about Red Hat Network, please see http://www.redhat.com/network. o Package Highlights -- the following packages are a small sample of those that are new or upgraded in Red Hat Linux 7.0: - GIMP 1.1.25 - Perl 5.6.0 - Tcl/Tk 8.3.1 - SDL, smpeg - SANE - gphoto - MySQL - AbiWord - dia - aspell (replaces ispell) - XEmacs o pax Included -- pax, the POSIX conformant archiver, is now included in Red Hat Linux 7.0. pax has a much-simplified command line syntax relative to tar and cpio, and reads and writes many archive formats. o gnome-lokkit Firewall Setup Utility Included -- gnome-lokkit makes setting up firewalls an easier process than it was in previous releases of Red Hat Linux. o nut UPS Tools Included -- nut makes is possible to monitor a variety of uninterruptible power supplies. o rp-pppoe Included -- rp-pppoe provides an RFC-2516 compliant implementation of pppoe (Point-to-Point Protocol Over Ethernet). pppoe is now used by many xDSL-based Internet Service Providers. o Next-Generation Technology Previews -- the following are previews of technologies that will play a large role in future versions of Red Hat Linux: - pango (internationalized text layout; see www.pango.org) - Inti (C++ foundation libraries including GTK+ GUI toolkit classes; see sources.redhat.com/inti) - GTK+ 2.0 - KDE version 2 (including KOffice) (*) - Pre-production, highly experimental snapshot of TUX kernel webserver (*) - The 2.4test kernel (TUX support is included as a patch in the kernel24 source RPM; uncomment the line that applies the patch, and rebuild the kernel24 source RPM to use it. Note that patching instructions are present in the spec file.) (*) - glibc 2.1.92 (optimized for 2.4 kernels only) (*) - Mozilla M17 (*) - 3Dfx accelerated 3D support, using Glide (*) (*) These packages are not installed by default, but may be found in the preview directory on CD #2.