Oracle Enterprise Linux Release Notes

Release 4.9

Introduction

Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 update 9 is a collection of  erratas including security fixes, bug fixes and enhancements released via the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN).  There is no media kit  for this release. To install Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 9, you must upgrade from Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 8 via Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN).  Before upgarding the 4.8 system, make sure your system is registered with ULN and subscribed to Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 latest channel or Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 8 installation media and patches channels for the architecture of your system. This document covers the following topics regarding Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 9.

• Changes from upstream release
• New packages added
• Kernel and driver updates  
• Unbreakable Linux Support
• Known issues

For the latest updates please refer to the online version of release notes available at:

http://oss.oracle.com/el4/docs/

NOTE: Upgrading Oracle Enterprise Linux from a beta release is not supported. Further, in-place upgrades between major versions of Oracle Enterprise Linux are not supported. Oracle does not recommend upgrading from earlier major versions of Oracle Enterprise Linux. A fresh installation is strongly recommended, rather than a system upgrade between major versions.

Changes from Upstream Release

Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 9 is not a media release and is only a collection of packages released on top of Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 update 8 (see the Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 8  release notes for information on Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 8). The following RPMs are modified from the upstream release. All changes are related to trademarks and look and feel, unless otherwise noted below under the specific RPM.

• comps
• coreutils
• firefox
• httpd
• kernel : Bug fixes added by Oracle are mentioned under Kernel and Driver Updates.
• rhpl 
• system-config-network
• xorg-x11

New Packages Added

Oracle Enterprise Linux includes the following additional packages:

• enterprise-release : Replaces redhat-release RPM in the upstream product.

• ocfs2

• oracleasm

Kernel and Driver Updates

This section includes significant changes in the kernel in this release.

Bug Fixes added by Oracle

• fix skb alignment that was causing sendto() to fail with EFAULT [orabug 6845794]

• backout patch sysrq-b that queues upto keventd thread [orabug 6125546]

• netrx/netpoll race avoidance  [orabug 6143381]

• use lfence instead of cpuid instruction to implement memory barriers[orabug 7452412]

• add netpoll support to xen netfront

• execshield: fix endless GPF fault loop [orabug 7175395]

• port el5u2 patch that allows 64-bit PVHVM guest to boot with 32-bit dom0 [orabug 7452107]

• update shrink_zone patch to allow 100% swap utilization  [orabug 7566319,6086839]

• fix oops in nlmclnt_mark_reclaim  [orabug 8568878]

• fix cpu hotplug crash  [orabug 7521308]

• Bring up vcpus before khelper init  [orabug 7521308]

• flush the tlb cache immediately  [orabug 9138767]

• Allowed machine_reboot running on boot_cpu  [orabug 8425237]

• FP register state is corrupted during the handling a SIGSEGV [orabug 7708133]

• fix x86_64 largesmp kernel reboot hang  [orabug 9126592]

• fix file attribute caching [orabug 8449921]

• Add compat32 support for readahead and fadvise64 [orabug 9458826]

• free pte on hugetlb_prefault to avoid the clear_page race [orabug 9493665]

• Flush tlb cache immediately to avoid clear_page race  [orabug 9488844]

• remove limit on number of retries on AIO  [orabug 10044782]

• check to see if hypervisor supports memory reservation change [orabug 7556514]

• use hypercall to fixmap pte updates [orabug 8433329]

Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 Update 9 ships with two sets of kernel packages. One [kernel-2.6.9-100.0.0.0.1.EL] with bug fixes added by Oracle and the other [kernel-2.6.9-100.EL] is an unmodified RHEL kernel. Fixes/Additions from Upstream Distribution Provider

• Security and other bug fixes.

Driver Updates:

• microcode in kernel-utils package updated to 2010-09-14 version of Intel microcode

• Added support for Intel Xeon in OProfile

• Checksum utilities supporting the entire SHA-2 famity in updated coreutils package systemtap

• systemtap package updated to version 1.3 to support newer kprobe capabilities

• Firefox updated to version 3.6.13

• ksh(Korn Shell) updated to the version ksh93t+  

Unbreakable Linux Support

Oracle Enterprise Linux offers an option to keep your operating system up-to-date with the latest operating system patches using up2date. To use this option you need to have Unbreakable Linux Support. For more information, please visit http://linux.oracle.com.

Note: Prior to using up2date, import the RPM-GPG-KEY for Oracle Enterprise Linux:

rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY

Known Issues

• Updating all packages from Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.7 to Oracle Enterprise Linux 4.9 on multilib architectures may fail for openmpi-libs package due to dependency issues. To work around this issue, first update the compat-dapl package before updating the remaining packages:

• Bugs in previous versions of openmpi and lam package may cause up2date to fail when upgrading all packages. The following error will be reported  when attempting to upgrade openmpi or lam: