Oracle Linux 6.3 Release Notes Updated June 2012 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction This document covers the following topics regarding Oracle Linux 6. * Packages added by the upstream release * Changes from the upstream release * Packages modified from upstream release * Packages removed from upstream release * New packages added by Oracle * Kernel * Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 * Introduction * Driver Updates * Features * Upgrading to Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 * Known Issues * Technology Preview Features * Configuring Updates for Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 For the latest updates please refer to the online version of release notes available at: http://oss.oracle.com/ol6/docs/ NOTE: An upgrade of Oracle Linux from a beta release is not supported. Further, an in-place upgrade between major versions of Oracle Linux is not supported. Oracle does not recommend an upgrade from earlier major versions of Oracle Linux even though anaconda provides an option to do this upgrade. A fresh installation is strongly recommended rather than a system upgrade between major versions. Customers who want to use new features in Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel can do so without upgrading to Oracle Linux 6 as Oracle Linux 5.8 already includes Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. Packages added by the Upstream Release The following packages have been added to the upstream release: * byzanz * crash-gcore-command * device-mapper-persistent-data * i2c-tools * ibacm * ipset * java-1.7.0-openjdk * ledmon * libmnl * libqb * libreoffice * libwacom * numad * scl-utils * usbredir Changes from the Upstream Release Packages modified from upstream release The following packages are modified from the upstream release. All changes are trademark and look/feel related unless otherwise noted below under the specific package. * abrt * anaconda * basesystem * compat-glibc * dbus * device-mapper-multipath * dracut * efax * firefox * firstboot * gnome-desktop * gstreamer * httpd * initscripts * irqbalance * java-1.7.0-openjdk (DISTRO_NAME changed to "Oracle Linux") * kabi-whitelists * kabi-yum-plugins * kde-settings * kdebase-workspace * libxml2 * libxslt * luci * mkbootdisk * openssl098e * piranha * policycoreutils * python-virtinst * qpid-cpp * qpid-qmf * redhat-bookmarks * redhat-indexhtml * redhat-lsb * rpmdevtools * setroubleshoot * setroubleshoot-plugins * sos * system-config-date * system-config-date-docs * system-config-kickstart * system-config-network * system-config-services * system-config-services-docs * system-config-users-docs * system-icon-theme * systemtap * tog-pegasus * wireshark * xsane * xulrunner Packages removed from upstream release The following packages have been removed. * iprutils * libehca * libica * libreport-plugin-rhtsupport * librtas * libservicelog * libvpd * lsvpd * openssl-ibmca * openssl-ibmca * powerpc-utils * ppc64-utils * publican-redhat * python-rhsmm * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-as-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-bn-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-de-DE * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-en-US * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-es-ES * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-fr-FR * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-gu-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-hi-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-it-IT * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-ja-JP * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-kn-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-ko-KR * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-ml-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-mr-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-or-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-pa-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-pt-BR * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-ru-RU * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-si-LK * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-ta-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-te-IN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-zh-CN * Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-6-zh-TW * redhat-logos * redhat-release-server * s390utils * servicelog * subscription-manager * subscription-manager-migration-data * virt-who * yaboot New Packages added by Oracle The following packages have been added to the base release * kernel-uek * lxc [Oracle bug 14020262] * ocfs2 * ocfs2-tools * oracleasm * oracleasm-support * oracle-logos * oraclelinux-release * oraclelinux-release-notes Kernel Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 ships with two sets of kernel packages: * Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 [kernel-uek-2.6.39-200.24.1.el6uek] * Installed and booted by default * Red Hat compatible Kernel [kernel-2.6.32-279.el6] * Installed by default Note: By default, both the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and the Red Hat Compatible Kernel for the specific architecture (i386 or x86_64) are installed, and the system boots the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel by default. If needed, /etc/grub.conf and /etc/sysconfig/kernel can be modified to make the system boot with the Red Hat Compatible Kernel by default. Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 is based on the upstream kernel 3.0.16 stable source tree. Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 Driver Updates from Update 2 Network Drivers updates * Updated be2net to version 4.2.220o * Updated bnx2 to version 2.2.1 * Updated bnx2x to version 1.72.00-0 * Updated cnic to version 2.5.10 * Updated cxgb3 to version 1.1.4-ko * Updated cxgb4 to version 1.3.0-ko * Updated e100 to version 3.5.24-k2-NAPI * Updated e1000 to version 7.3.21-k8-NAPI * Updated e1000e to version 1.9.5-k * Updated igb to version 3.2.10-k * Updated igbvf to version 2.0.1-k * Updated ixgbe to version 3.6.7-k * Updated ixgbevf to version 2.2.0-k * Updated netxen_nic to version 4.0.78 * Updated qlcnic to version 5.0.28.1 * Updated qlge to version 1.00.00.30 * Updated r8169 to version 2.3LK-NAPI * Updated tg3 to version 3.122 Storage Drivers updates * Updated be2iscsi to version 4.2.162.0o * Updated bnx2fc to version 1.0.10 * Updated lpfc to version 8.3.5.68.6p * Updated mptsas to version 3.04.19 * Updated mpt2sas to version 13.100.00.00 * Updated qla2xxx to version 8.04.00.03.39.0-k Features This release of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel has been improved/enhanced by Oracle in several areas, including bug fixes and extended functionality. All of these modifications have been contributed back upstream and are available in mainline Linux. Btrfs Btrfs provides a flexible way to manage storage, without needing a separate volume manager. It provides built-in RAID support and ensures data integrity by using redundancy and checksums. Btrfs also supports lightweight copies/clones of files or directories with snapshots as well as online data compression. The Btrfs code in the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 includes many new features as well as numerous performance improvements, that were merged from a number of long running projects and cleanup queues. Note: The standard installation media does not have support for creating a btrfs root filesystem on initial install. If you want to install Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 and use btrfs as your root filesystem, please use the alternative boot ISO media which uses btrfs as the default root filesystem. Using the boot.iso requires that the full installation source be available via a network method, i.e. FTP, HTTP or NFS. New Btrfs features/functionality * An updated version of btrfsfsck, a tool to check and repair a Btrfs file system, is now included in the btrfs-progs package. This new btrfsck now supports a --repair option that allows fixing errors in the extent allocation tree and block group accounting. btrfsck also provides the option --init-csum-tree which replaces the check-sum root with an empty one. This will clear out the CRCs but allows the file-system to be mounted with the mount option nodatasum. * Automatic defragmentation: Brtfs now provides an online defragmentation facility that reorganizes data into contiguous chunks wherever possible to create larger sections of available disk space and improve read and write performance. * Scrubbing: you can initiate a check of the entire file system by triggering a file system scrub job that is performed in the background. The scrub run scans the entire file system for integrity and automatically attempts to report and repair any bad blocks it finds along the way. Instead of going through the entire disk drive, the scrub run only deals with data that is actually allocated. Depending on the allocated disk space, this is much faster than performing an entire surface scan of the disk. * LZO compression: In addition to the already existing zlib compression algorithm, data can now be alternatively compressed using LZO, which provides higher compression ratios and faster decompression for certain types of data. * Read-only snapshots * Different compression and copy-on-write settings for each file/directory (in addition to the per-filesystem controls). Btrfs compression can be controlled on a per file/directory basis. It can be enabled any time after a subvolume has been created. In the default mode, it will flag the file as not compressible and will not try to compress blocks again. In compress-force mode, Btrfs will keep trying for new writes, in case the newly added file content becomes compressable. * List all subvolumes on a file system (btrfs subvolume list) * List all files recently modified (btrfs subvolume find-new) * Allow changing the subvolume to be mounted by default with btrfs subvolume set-default (to better support snapshot-assisted distribution upgrades) * Direct I/O support * Introduced mount option nospace_cache * Allow to mount -o subvol=path/to/subvol/you/want relative from the normal fs_tree root * Now records a number of previous tree roots as backups, which can be useful in recovering damaged filesystems. If a given mount fails to go through because a tree root is bad, you can now use mount -o recovery and Btrfs will walk through the array and try to mount older versions of the file system. Btrfs bug fixes and performance improvements * Asynchronous creation of snapshots. Avoids waiting for the snapshot to be committed to disk. * Significantly improved ls readdir() performance * Switched the btrfs tree locks to reader/writer * Improvements to the logging code. Lots of data was logged more than once, greatly increasing the I/O load. Log I/O traffic has been cut to ~25% of the previous level. * Allow to overcommit ENOSPC reservations (speeds up a test from 45 minutes to 10 seconds) * Be smarter about committing the transaction: xfstests 83 goes from taking 445 seconds to taking 28 seconds * Inode Items operation improves file creation and deletion performance significantly * Improved reserved space accounting and handling -ENOSPC (out of disk space) situations * Dump free space cache on disk to speed up block group caching * Fixed regressions in the mount and general error handling code, which also fixes some problems in the mount -o autodefrag mode * Tweaked the ENOSPC throttling. The file system tries to start I/O to make sure it can do all the allocations that it has promised to do. The end result is a dramatic improvement in random write workloads among many others. * Improved the scrubber and provided utilities to walk Btrfs' many backrefs. The scrubber is much faster thanks to extensive btree readahead and instead of just informing the user that a specific block is bad, it tells him which btree or which file was impacted by that bad block. * Fixed the Btrfs cache flushing. This one probably explains many of the corruptions that have been reported, especially on multi-device filesystems. Ceph users running with -o notreelog were dramatically more likely to trigger the corruptions. The problem was that Btrfs was triggering cache flushes before the last copy of the super block, instead of doing them before the first copy. Take extra care about getting flushes done to all the devices in a multi-device FS before writing any of the supers. * Fix for tree corruptions when running multi-threaded snapshots with mount -o inode_cache enabled Xen domU improvements Several bug fixes and improvements have been incorporated to make the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel scale and cooperate better as a guest (domU) in Oracle VM and Xen. * Xen block backend from Linux 3.3 kernel. This provides the fully featured Xen blkback along with extra features, such as passing through a flush (a lighter version of barrier), discard (also known as TRIM or SCSI UNMAP) and various bug-fixes and enhancments. * Xen PCI backend from Linux 3.3 kernel, this includes the option to specify how the PCI structure shows up in the PV guest - either as in host or virtualized; Fixes to make it work with SR-IOV VF cards; and numerous mutex fixes. * Memory self-ballooning - allows the guest to automatically balloon depending on the workload. * Transcendent memory support for HVM and PV guests * Tracing API support for Xen MMU operations. * Syncing the wall-clock time from the initial domain * Numerous code cleanups and bug fixes (e.g. in the following areas: memory balloning, blkfront, P2M, E820, IRQ, MMU, Gntalloc driver) Other improvements * dm-nfs: device-mapper target that allows you to treat an NFS file as a block device. It provides loopback-style emulation of a block device using a regular file as backing storage. The backing file resides on a remote system and is accessed via the NFS protocol. Upgrading to Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 As Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 now ships with the latest Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2, upgrading via the installation media will evaluate whether or not to install this latest kernel based on the currently installed kernel. The following upgrade scenarios should be considered: 1. Upgrading from Oracle Linux 6 GA, Update 1 or Update 2 without UEK2 installed If you have an existing Oracle Linux 6 GA, Update 1 or Update 2 install that does not have the already released Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 installed, the Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 media will not install this kernel by default. Note that the Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 installation media does not contain any updates to the original Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, so in this scenario, only the latest Red Hat Compatible Kernel will be installed. 2. Upgrading from Oracle Linux 6 GA, Update 1 or Update 2 with the UEK2 installed If you have an existing Oracle Linux 6 GA, Update 1 or Update 2 install that already has the released Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 installed, the Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 media will install the latest version of this kernel. Upgrades that are performed via YUM will use whatever repositories are configured to upgrade the system. The latest Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 can be found in the ol6__UEK_latest repository, i.e. either ol6_i386_UEK_latest or ol6_x86_64_UEK_latest. You should ensure that this repository is enabled either via the Unbreakable Linux Network or in the /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-ol6.repo file if you want to install this kernel. Known Issues 1. Hardware virtualized with Paravirtualized Drivers (PVHVM) guests on Oracle VM 3.0 crash during Oracle Database install This can occur on Oracle VM 3.0 if the guest is set with a maximum memory (maxmem) parameter greater than the amount set at boot (memory). To avoid this issue, please ensure the maxmem and memory parameters are equal. This issue has been resolved in Oracle VM 3.1.1. 2. Post-install Anaconda Errors In certain cases, after successfully completing installation and rebooting the system, it is possible that the following error stack appears: Error in sys.excepthook: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/meh/handler.py", line 161, in (lambda) File "/usr/lib/anaconda/exception.py", line 44, in handleException File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/meh/handler.py", line 106, in handleException File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 1169, in mainExceptionWindow ImportError: No module named ui.gui Or: 14:05:55 CRITICAL: anaconda 11.5.0.47 exception report Traceback (most recent call first): File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/_lazyutils.py", line 32, in __ getattr__ File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 1453, in keyRelease if ((event.keyval == gtk.keysyms.KP_Delete ImportError: No module named keysyms These errors would also be logged in anaconda.log in /root after installation. These errors can safely be ignored. 3. Cannot start FCoE Target service with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel The upstream release has added support for FCoE target service. This is not supported with the previous release of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (2.6.32). Customers wishing to use this service must boot into the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39) or the Red Hat Compatible Kernel. 4. Cannot start CGroups Config service with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel This service is not supported with the previous release of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (2.6.32). Customers wishing to use this service must boot into the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39) or the Red Hat Compatible Kernel. 5. mlx4_core conflicts between mlnx_en and ofa packages Both the new mlnx_en and ofa packages contain mlx4_core. Only one of the two packages should be installed. Attempts to install both packages on a single server will result in a package conflict error. To determine which package to use, if you have a Mellanox Ethernet Controller, please use mlnx_en. If you have a Mellanox Infiniband Controller, please use ofa. If you have both, please use ofa as it supports both Ethernet and Infiniband controllers. 6. kdump service fails to start with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel When configuring the crash kernel for the UEK, only standard crash kernel settings, e.g. crashkernel=128M@32M, are supported. The new setting used by the RHCK, i.e. crashkernel=auto, is not supported and will cause the kdump service to fail to start. 7. "iTCO_wdt: failed to reset NO_REBOOT flag, device disabled by hardware/BIOS" error in dmesg when running the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 To get rid of this error at boot time, add the line "blacklist iTCO_wdt" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-watchdog 8. "iTCO_wdt: failed to reset NO_REBOOT flag, reboot disabled by hardware" error in dmesg when running the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel To get rid of this error at boot time, add the line "blacklist iTCO_wdt" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-watchdog 9. Hardware virtualized (HVM) guests with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel always use paravirtualized (PV) drivers The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel adds support for paravirtualized drivers in a HVM guest on Oracle VM. The default is to present only paravirtualized drivers when running in a hardware virtualized guest. To run kernel-uek --including the drivers-- fully hardware virtualized, an additional kernel boot parameter "xen_emul_unplug=never" must be added to the boot parameters in /etc/grub.conf: kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-300.2.1.el6uek ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 xen_emul_unplug=never Adding this kernel boot parameter makes the kernel also present the emulated drivers as it did before (e.g. the 8139cp network driver). 10. Incorrect package count (11684244) Selecting all packages in certain groups during installation might not show the correct count. 11. Default reverse path filtering mode affects certain Oracle products (10649976) Oracle Linux 6 defaults to strict reverse path filtering. Some Oracle products and network storage devices work more reliably when using loose reverse path filtering. To enable loose mode reverse path filtering, issue the following command (assuming you are changing settings for the network interface called eth1). The default setting is 1. sysctl net.ipv4.conf.eth1.rp_filter=2 12. Receive Packet Steering errors for certain network operations (11071685) Certain network operations that utilize receive packet steering could cause errors on the system. 13. Spurious udev messages during restore of a failed path (11682171) When failed paths are restored in a multipath configuration, you may see udevd-work error messages in /var/log/messages. The failed paths do get restored despite these messages. 14. Default NFS v4 mount options The default NFS mount option has changed to NFS v4. To mount an NFS volume using NFS v3 (the default in Oracle Linux 5), use the following mount options: -o vers=3,mountproto=tcp 15. Setting serial console in a hardware virtualized (HVM) guest To set the serial console a hardware virtualized (HVM) guest use following settings in the guest: * On the kernel boot line in grub.conf, add: console=tty0 console=ttyS0,57600n8 * add the following to /etc/securetty ttyS0 16. Oracle RDBMS Server 11gR2 Preinstall Settings not visible after installation If, during installation on an x86_64 system, the pam.i386 package is installed either manually or via package dependency, and the oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall package is also selected, the Oracle Database related settings in /etc/security/limits.conf will be overwritten by the installation of the pam.i386 package. This is most likely to occur when using a kickstart-based automated installation that includes non-standard package selections. To restore these settings, run the oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall-verify script. 17. Unbreakable Linux Network After an install of Oracle Linux 6, the screens after the first reboot will guide you to register your system to the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN). If you did not configure your network during the initial installation, the registration process to ULN will not succeed. In this case, you should configure your network by running NetworkManager first (as root). Then restart the ULN registration by running uln_register (as root). 18. Console appears to hang while booting on certain systems (10094052) On some hardware, the console may appear to hang during the boot process after starting udev. But the system does boot up properly and is accessible. A workaround to this problem is to add nomodeset as a kernel boot parameter in /etc/grub.conf: kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-300.2.1.el6uek.x86_64 ro root=/dev/sd0 nomodeset 19. Default IO scheduler For the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, the default IO scheduler is the 'deadline' scheduler. For the Red Hat Compatible Kernel, the default IO scheduler is the 'cfq' scheduler. 20. sched_yield() settings for CFS For the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, kernel.sched_compat_yield=1 by default. For the Red Hat Compatible Kernel, kernel.sched_compat_yield=0 by default. Technology Preview Features The following Technology Preview features are currently not supported under Oracle Linux 6 and may not be functionally complete: * Open multicast ping (Omping) * Matahari * System Information Gatherer and Reporter (SIGAR) * fsfreeze * DIF/DIX support * File system in user space (FUSE) * LVM Application Programming Interface (API) * LVM RAID support * FS-Cache * vios-proxy * IPv6 support in IPVS * Trusted boot * TPM The following Technology Preview features are only available when running the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK): * Parallel NFS * Brocade BFA driver * SR-IOV on the be2net driver * Support for Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) target mode * Kernel Media support * Remote audit logging * Linux (NameSpace) Container [LXC] * Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) driver interface * Diagnostic pulse for the fence_ipmilan agent * System monitoring via SNMP * Wire speed requirement in KVM network drivers * KVM Live Snapshots These features are not suitable for production use. However, these features are included to provide the feature with wider exposure. Configuring Updates for Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 Oracle Linux 6 no longer contains up2date for access to Unbreakable Linux Network. Instead packages are managed using Yum. To register with ULN, use the following command: # uln_register Unbreakable Linux Network To access Linux updates via Unbreakable Linux Network, you must purchase a Linux support subscription. For more information please visit http://linux.oracle.com. During ULN registration the server will be automatically registered with two channels: the latest channel for the base repository as well as the latest channel for the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2. If you have upgraded from a previous release and do not wish the UEK Release 2 to be installed, you will need to manually unsubscribe the server from this channel. The Unbreakable Linux Network includes Oracle-specific software packages, for example Oracle's ASMlib userspace package and the Oracle Instant Client. To enable access to these packages, login to the Unbreakable Linux Network and subscribe to the "Oracle Software" channel. Public Yum Oracle now provides all errata and updates for Oracle Linux via the public yum service. This service does not require a Linux support subscription, but only includes updates to the base distribution and does not include Oracle-specific software. To enable updates via public-yum, please visit http://public-yum.oracle.com and follow the instructions on that website. By default, all new installs of Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 are automatically configured to use the public-yum update service. No modification is required to use this service. The public-yum service is automatically disabled when a server is registered with the Unbreakable Linux Network. Installation Media Note: Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 now contains two distinct repository sources on the installation media. To configure yum to use the installation media as a yum source, create the following file /etc/yum.repos.d/Media.repo with content similar to the following: [ol6_base_media] name=Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 Base Media baseurl=file:///media/Server gpgcheck=0 enabled=1 [ol6_uek_media] name=Oracle Linux 6 Update 3 UEK Media baseurl=file:///media/UEK2 gpgcheck=0 enabled=1 You may need to adjust the baseurl parameter to match where you mount the ISO media on your server.