RedHat beta severn - released
Nikos Charonitakis
frolix68 at yahoo.gr
Tue Jul 22 16:19:03 EEST 2003
http://rhl.redhat.com/
Release notes
Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 Release
Notes
Copyright (c) 2003 Red Hat, Inc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Red Hat Linux Project Introduction
With this release, the Red Hat Linux product is
becoming the Red Hat Linux
Project -- an openly-developed project designed by
Red Hat, open for
general participation, led by a meritocracy,
following a set of project
objectives. For more information, see the Red Hat
Linux Project website:
http://rhl.redhat.com/
In addition to the website, the following mailing
lists are available:
o rhl-list at redhat.com -- For users of Red Hat
Linux releases
o rhl-beta-list at redhat.com -- For testers of Red
Hat Linux beta releases
o rhl-devel-list at redhat.com -- For developers,
developers, developers
o rhl-docs-list at redhat.com -- For participants of
the docs project
To subscribe to any of these lists, send an email
with the word
"subscribe" in the subject to <listname>-request
(where <listname> is one
of the above list names.)
The Red Hat Linux project also includes an IRC
(Internet Relay Chat)
channel. IRC is a real-time, text-based form of
communication. With it,
you can have conversations with multiple people in
an open channel or chat
with someone privately one-on-one.
To talk with other Red Hat Linux project
participants via IRC, access
freenode IRC network. Initially, you can use
irc.freenode.net as the IRC
server, although you may decide to select a server
that is geographically
closer to you. See the freenode website
(http://www.freenode.net/) for
more information. Red Hat Linux project
participants frequent the
#rhl-devel channel, as well as individual project
channels for large
projects. Individual project channels, IRC server,
and channel information
can be found on the project pages.
Hardware Requirements
The following information represents the minimum
hardware requirements
necessary to successfully install Red Hat Linux
9.0.93:
CPU:
NOTE: The following CPU specifications are stated
in terms of Intel
processors. Other processors (notably, offerings
from AMD, Cyrix, and VIA)
that are compatible with and equivalent to the
following Intel processors
may also be used with Red Hat Linux.
- Minimum: Pentium-class
- Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class
or better
- Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or
better
Hard Disk Space (NOTE: Additional space will be
required for user data):
- Custom Installation (minimum): 475MB
- Server (minimum): 850MB
- Personal Desktop: 1.7GB
- Workstation: 2.1GB
- Custom Installation (everything): 5.0GB
Memory:
- Minimum for text-mode: 64MB
- Minimum for graphical: 128MB
- Recommended for graphical: 192MB
Note that the compatibility/availability of other
hardware components
(such as video and network cards) may be required
for specific
installation modes and/or post-installation usage.
Installation-Related Notes
This section outlines those issues that are related
to Anaconda (the Red
Hat Linux installation program) and installing Red
Hat Linux 9.0.93 in
general.
o The Red Hat Linux installation program has the
ability to test the
integrity of the installation media. It works
with the CD, DVD, hard
drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods.
Red Hat recommends that
you test all installation media before starting
the installation
process, and before reporting any
installation-related bugs (many of
the bugs reported are actually due to
improperly-burned CDs). To use
this test, type linux mediacheck at the boot:
prompt.
o During a graphical installation, you can press
SHIFT-Print Screen and
a screenshot of the current installation screen
will be taken. These
are stored in the following directory:
/root/anaconda-screenshots/
The screenshots can be accessed once the
newly-installed system is
rebooted.
o Certain hardware configurations (particularly
those with LCD displays)
may experience problems while starting the Red
Hat Linux installation
program. In these instances, restart the
installation, and add the
"nofb" option to the boot command line.
NOTE: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean graphical
installations started
using the "nofb" option will start in English,
and then switch to the
appropriate language once the graphical phase
of the installation
process begins.
o Some Sony VAIO(R) notebook systems may
experience problems installing
Red Hat Linux from CD-ROM. If this happens,
restart the installation
process and add the following option to the
boot command line:
pci=off ide1=0x180,0x386
This option allows the installation to proceed
normally; any devices
not detected due to the use of this option will
be configured the
first time Red Hat Linux is booted.
o Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 now supports graphical FTP
and HTTP
installations. The default for these
installation modes remains
text-based; however, graphical installations
can be enabled by passing
"graphical" as a boot-time option.
Note that graphical FTP and HTTP installations
increase memory
requirements by approximately 64MB, due to the
necessity of containing
the installer image. However, if you boot the
installation program
from CD-ROM 1, no additional RAM will be
required; instead the
installer image will be mounted from the
CD-ROM.
o Hard drive installations are now graphical by
default. There is no
memory penalty, as parted now uses a kernel
interface that makes it
possible to keep partitions mounted on a device
while other partitions
are being modified.
o Installation via VNC is now supported. To
initiate a VNC-based
installation, pass "vnc" as a boot-time option.
If necessary, a
password can be set by adding
"vncpassword=<password>" to the
boot-time options. The VNC display will be
"<host>:1", where <host> is
the IP address or hostname of the system
installing Red Hat Linux.
General Notes
This section describes post-installation issues.
o There have been issues observed when upgrading
Red Hat Linux 7.<x>,
8.0, 9 and 9.0.93 systems running Ximian GNOME.
The issue is caused by
version overlap between the official Red Hat
Linux RPMs and the Ximian
RPMs. This configuration is not supported. You
have several choices in
resolving this issue:
1) You may remove Ximian GNOME from your Red
Hat Linux system prior to
upgrading Red Hat Linux.
2) You may upgrade Red Hat Linux, and then
immediately reinstall
Ximian GNOME.
3) You may upgrade Red Hat Linux, and then
immediately remove all
remaining Ximian RPMs, and replace them with
the corresponding Red Hat
Linux RPMs.
You must resolve the version overlap using one
of the above choices.
Failure to do so will result in an unstable
GNOME configuration.
o There has been some confusion regarding
font-related issues under the
X Window System in recent versions of Red Hat
Linux. At the present
time, there are two font subsystems, each with
different
characteristics:
- The original (15+ year old) subsystem is
referred to as the "core X
font subsystem". Fonts rendered by this
subsystem are not
anti-aliased, are handled by the X server, and
have names like:
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
The newer font subsystem is known as
"fontconfig", and allows
applications direct access to the font files.
Fontconfig is often used
along with the "Xft" library, which allows
applications to render
fontconfig fonts to the screen with
antialiasing. Fontconfig uses more
human-friendly names like:
Luxi Sans-10
Over time, fontconfig/Xft will replace the core
X font subsystem. At
the present time, applications using the Qt 3
or GTK 2 toolkits (which
would include KDE and GNOME applications) use
the fontconfig and Xft
font subsystem; most everything else uses the
core X fonts.
In the future, Red Hat Linux may support only
fontconfig/Xft in place
of the XFS font server as the default local
font access method.
NOTE: An exception to the font subsystem usage
outlined above is
OpenOffice.org (which uses its own font
rendering technology).
If you wish to add new fonts to your Red Hat
Linux 9.0.93 system, you
must be aware that the steps necessary depend
on which font subsystem
is to use the new fonts. For the core X font
subsystem, you must:
1. Create the /usr/share/fonts/local/ directory
(if it doesn't already
exist):
mkdir /usr/share/fonts/local/
2. Copy the new font file into
/usr/share/fonts/local/
3. Update the font information by issuing the
following commands (note
that, due to formatting restrictions, the
following commands may
appear on more than one line; in use, each
command should be entered
on a single line):
ttmkfdir -d /usr/share/fonts/local/ -o
/usr/share/fonts/local/fonts.scale
mkfontdir /usr/share/local/
4. If you had to create
/usr/share/fonts/local/, you must then add it
to the X font server (xfs) path:
chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/local/
Adding new fonts to the fontconfig font
subsystem is more
straightforward; the new font file only needs
to be copied into the
/usr/share/fonts/ directory (individual users
can modify their
personal font configuration by copying the font
file into the
~/.fonts/ directory).
After the new font has been copied, use
fc-cache to update the font
information cache:
fc-cache <directory>
(Where <directory> would be either the
/usr/share/fonts/ or ~/.fonts/
directories.)
Individual users may also install fonts
graphically, by browsing
fonts:/// in Nautilus, and dragging the new
font files there.
NOTE: If the font filename ends with ".gz", it
has been compressed
with gzip, and must be decompressed (with the
gunzip command) before
the fontconfig font subsystem can use the font.
o Due to the transition to the new font system
based on fontconfig/Xft,
GTK+ 1.2 applications are not affected by any
changes made via the
Font Preferences dialog. For these
applications, a font can be
configured by adding the following lines to the
file ~/.gtkrc.mine:
style "user-font" {
fontset = "<font-specification>"
}
widget_class "*" style "user-font"
(Where <font-specification> represents a font
specification in the
style used by traditional X applications, such
as
"-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*".)
o Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 now uses a graphical
interface while booting. The
graphical boot screen will appear once the
kernel has loaded.
Presently the graphical boot interface has
known issues with respect
to interactions with the Kudzu hardware probing
tool; work on
resolving these issues is proceeding. Graphical
booting is controlled
by the GRAPHICAL line in the
/etc/sysconfig/init file; set it to "no"
to permanently disable graphical booting.
To disable graphical booting at boot-time,
append "nogui" to your
bootloader command line.
o For proper Java operation, the Mozilla Web
browser requires a Java
plugin compatible with gcc32 (such as Sun j2re
1.4.2).
o Historically, the SSH and Telnet protocols have
not included
negotiation of the character encoding to be
used for text sent over
the connection. Instead, it has been assumed
that both ends will use
Latin-1, Latin-2, UTF-8, EUC-JP, or whatever
the most appropriate
character encoding for the user's language
might be.
Red Hat Linux has made a transition from
single-locale encodings such
as Latin-1 to UTF-8. As a result, you may have
problems when making a
Telnet or SSH connection between newer versions
of Red Hat Linux and
older versions, or between newer versions of
Red Hat Linux and other
operating systems. Symptoms of possible
problems include (for example)
a mangled display in "mc", or the inability to
read non-ASCII files.
In the long term, all systems are expected to
migrate to UTF-8,
eliminating this issue. In the short term,
there are some workarounds
to be aware of:
- In gnome-terminal, the "Terminal->Character
Coding" menu allows you
to force a specific encoding.
- The xterm(1) and luit(1) man pages describe
the -en and -lc options,
which can be useful.
- The iconv command line utility, especially
with the -c option to
handle invalid characters, can be useful for
converting files to other
encodings.
o As part of the migration to UTF-8, some issues
should be kept in mind:
- Filenames located on ext3 file systems should
be in UTF-8.
- The input of non-ASCII characters from the
system console is not
possible; only graphical applications support
the input of these
characters.
- Some languages currently do not display
correctly in Red Hat Linux
9.0.93. These languages include Greek, and
Gaelic (both types).
o The default system and user encoding for
Japanese, Korean, Simplified
Chinese and Traditional Chinese locale has
changed to UTF-8.
For backward compatibility support in the
legacy character set, you
can override your existing locale by editing
/etc/sysconfig/i18n or
~/.i18n. Changes made to the
/etc/sysconfig/i18n file effect the
entire system, while changes made to the
~/.i18n file only effect that
user's login session.
You can also pass a LANG environment variable
when you run a
application to change the character set:
LANG=ja_JP.eucJP gedit
You can also view files using different
encodings in a virtual
terminal by using the following command:
lv <filename>
Current known issues to new locales -- Korean
man pages are still in
the legacy character set.
o OpenLDAP Upgrade-Related Notes -- The on-disk
storage format used by
slapd, the standalone OpenLDAP server binary,
has changed. Users
upgrading LDAP servers from previous releases
of Red Hat Linux must
dump their directories to LDIF files using
slapcat and re-import them
into the new format using slapadd.
Because OpenLDAP now uses version 2 of the
Cyrus SASL library, secrets
stored in databases used by version 1 of the
SASL library will not be
usable for authenticating clients to an LDAP
directory server.
Administrators can generate an initial database
for use with version 2
of the library by running the following
command:
dbconverter-2 /etc/sasldb
o By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent
(MTA) does not accept
network connections from any host other than
the local computer. If
you want to configure Sendmail as a server for
other clients, you must
edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and change the
DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also
listen on network devices (or comment out this
option entirely using
the dnl comment delimiter). You must then
regenerate
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf by running the following
command (as root):
make -C /etc/mail
Note that you must have the sendmail-cf package
installed for this to
work.
Package Changes
The following packages have been added to Red Hat
Linux 9.0.93:
- acpid -- Daemon for ACPI (Advanced Configuration
and Power Interface)
- apr -- Apache Portable Run-time libraries
- apr-util -- Utility library for Apache Portable
Run-time
- aspell-en -- Word lists for English (including
Canadian, British, and
American)
- automake16 -- Automake 1.6 compatibility
- bitstream-vera-fonts -- High-quality fonts
donated by Bitstream, Inc.
- bluez-bluefw -- Bluetooth firmware loader
- bluez-hcidump -- Bluetooth protocol analyzer
- bluez-pan -- Bluetooth Personal Area Networking
support
- bluez-sdp -- Service Discovery Protocol
libraries/utilities
- boost -- Peer-reviewed portable C++ libraries
- boost-jam -- Build tool based on FTJam
- brltty -- Provides braille terminal access to
console
- dbus -- System-wide message bus
- devhelp -- API document browser
- dovecot -- IMAP/POP3 mail server
- dvd+rw-tools -- DVD+RW/+R media mastering
utilities
- epiphany -- GNOME Web browser based on the
Mozilla rendering engine
- fonts-arabic -- Arabic fonts
- freeglut -- Open source implementation of the GL
Utility Toolkit (GLUT)
- freeradius -- Open source server supporting the
RADIUS (Remote
Authentication Dial-In User Service) authentication
protocol
- fribidi -- Implementation of the Unicode BiDi
algorithm
- gcc32 -- Version 3.2.3 of GCC
- gnome-pilot-conduits -- Additional conduits for
PDAs running Palm OS(R)
- gok -- Accessibility-related on-screen keyboard
for GNOME
- gtkhtml3 -- Lightweight HTML engine
- ipsec-tools -- IPsec-related tools
- libgal2 -- GNOME Application Library
- libgcrypt -- General-purpose cryptography library
- libieee1284 -- Library for communicating with
parallel port-attached
devices
- libsoup -- HTTP library implementation
- libwpd -- Library for reading/converting
WordPerfect(R) documents
- nano -- A small and easy-to-use text editor
- neon -- HTTP and WebDAV client library
- openobex -- Implementation of the Object Exchange
(OBEX) wireless data
transfer protocol
- ots -- Text summary library
- rhgb -- Support for Red Hat graphical boot
- setarch -- Utility for setting architecture
string returned by uname
command
- xemacs-sumo -- Useful Lisp packages for XEmacs;
split out from xemacs
for easier maintenance
- xterm -- Split from XFree86 for easier
maintenance and updating
The following packages have been removed from Red
Hat Linux 9.0.93:
- LPRng -- CUPS is default printing solution
- aspell-ca -- Removed at the request of its
maintainer due to a
questionable license
- bonobo-conf -- No longer required by other
packages in Red Hat Linux
- exmh -- Developer resource constraints
- galeon -- Replaced by epiphany (Galeon 1.2.<x>
series no longer
maintained)
- jdkgcj -- Previously required for building
OpenOffice.org; no longer
needed
- kde2-compat -- No longer required
- pine -- Non-Open Source license and long-term
maintenance concerns
- postgresql72 -- No longer required
- pspell -- Replaced by aspell
- qt2 -- No longer required
- qtcups -- Obsoleted by kprinter
- soup -- Replaced by libsoup
- tripwire -- Developer resource constraints
- watanabe-vf -- Copyright issues
The following packages have been deprecated, and
may be removed from a
future release of Red Hat Linux:
- Glide3 -- Multi-platform issues
- lilo -- GRUB is the recommended bootloader
- sndconfig -- No longer required by mainstream
hardware
- ncpfs -- No longer part of Red Hat Linux profile
- mars-nwe -- No longer part of Red Hat Linux
profile
Kernel Notes
This section covers issues that are related to the
Red Hat Linux 9.0.93
kernel.
o The Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 kernel includes
support for ACPI (Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface). When
booting the Red Hat Linux
installation program from CD (and booting the
installed system) this
kernel uses ACPI on some systems (depending on
certain factors such as
whether the hardware supports ACPI and the date
of its BIOS ACPI
implementation). ACPI is used for device
enumeration (but not for
sleeping). You can disable ACPI by using the
following boot option:
acpi=off
NOTE: The ACPI subsystem results in a kernel
too big to fit on a
diskette; therefore, the kernel placed on boot
diskettes does not
include ACPI support. In addition, because of
these size issues,
emergency boot diskettes will not work. You
must use rescue mode from
the installer instead of an emergency boot
diskette.
o The Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 kernel includes new
Exec-shield functionality
Exec-shield is a security-enhancing
modification to the Linux kernel
that makes large parts of programs -- including
their stack -- not
executable. This can reduce the potential
damage of some security
holes. Exec-shield is related to the older
"non-exec stack patch" but
has the potential to provide much greater
protection.
Exec-shield's behavior can be controlled via
the proc file system. The
command used is:
echo <value> > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield
Where <value> is one of the following:
- 0 -- Exec-shield is always disabled
- 1 -- Exec-shield is disabled, except for
binaries that enable it
- 2 -- Exec-shield is enabled, except for
binaries that disable it
- 3 -- Exec-shield is disabled
NOTE: Binary marking (the ability to identify
those binaries that
should run with Exec-shield enabled/disabled)
is not yet implemented.
o The Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 kernel now makes it
possible to prevent the
loading of kernel modules. This can be useful
for system
administrators wanting to ensure that only a
strictly-controlled set
of modules are loaded. To disable kernel module
loading, issue the
following command:
echo off > /proc/modules
Once this command has been issued, all further
attempts to load kernel
modules will fail.
NOTE: Once kernel module loading has been
disabled, a reboot is
required to re-enable it.
o The Red Hat Linux 9.0.93 kernel now includes
support for laptop mode.
When placed in laptop mode, the kernel batches
disk I/O, allowing the
disk drive to become idle long enough for the
drive's power-saving
features to take affect. This can result in
significant increases in
battery runtime.
To enable laptop mode, issue the following
command:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode
To disable laptop mode, issue the following
command:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode
NOTE: The APM scripts included with Red Hat
Linux 9.0.93 automatically
enable laptop mode when switching to battery power.
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