Previously, the restorecon utility did not change MLS (multi-level security) levels unless the -F parameter was used. As a consequence, the /dev and /dev/pts filesystems were not correctly labelled after boot in systems with configured MLS policy. This bug has been fixed and the restorecon -F command is now used for /dev and /dev/pts by default.

When an explicit configuration option, such as crashkernel=128M, was specified to reserve crash dump memory, the kexec-disable upstart job unconditionally freed up the memory if the kdump mechanism was not enabled. This action could not be reverted until a reboot. With this update, kexec-disable job has been changed to not free reserved memory, unless the crashkernel parameter is set to auto, thus fixing this bug.

Previously, when the /etc/modprobe.d/bonding.conf file or the modprobe.conf file was used to set the bonding options, the bond0 interface never came up after a service restart because the arp_ip_target module was not restored. This bug has been fixed and arp_ip_target is now restored when configured in one of these files.

Previously, there was a bug in the rc.sysinit script that allowed to properly set a hostname when more than one IP address was passed to the ipcalc utility. Even though it was difficult to emulate such a scenario, the rc.sysinit script has been fixed to prevent this bug, and ipcalc is now always passed only a single IP address.

When a network interface was configured with the NetworkManager utility to statically assign an IP address or a prefix, then NetworkManager was stopped, and the interface was reset via the ifdown and ifup utilities, the interface lost its IP address. With this update, the network scripts have been fixed to properly read the IPADDR0 parameter in interface configuration files, and now IP addresses of such interfaces are preserved in the described scenario.

Previously, when two VLAN interfaces were bonded together, the /etc/init.d/network script got into a loop and became unresponsive, trying to resolve MAC addresses of the interfaces. As a result, the server was prevented from completing its start-up sequence. With this update, /etc/init.d/network has been fixed, MAC addresses of VLAN interfaces are now resolved properly, and bonds between such interfaces now work as expected.

Previously, when the PREFIX option was specified for the ifcfg utility while the NETMASK option was undefined, the netmask was calculated without regard to the PREFIX value. With this update, the expand_config() function has been fixed to use the PREFIX properly, and the netmask is now calculated correctly in the described scenario.

When a system needed to be restarted after an unexpected termination, root password was not accepted to run the emergency shell. With this update, the rc.sysinit script has been fixed to run the /bin/plymouth command instead of /usr/bin/plymouth, thus fixing this bug. Additionally, other relevant scripts have been updated to properly work with the separated /usr/ directory.

Due to a bug in the /etc/init.d/halt script, no mount point set up with the word nfs in its path could be unmounted at reboot or shut down. This bug has been fixed and such mount points are now unmounted properly.

In Red Hat Entreprise Linux 6, when the emergency parameter was appended to the kernel command line, the system failed to invoke the sulogin command. With this update, the rcS-emergency task, which is run before the rc.sysinit script if emergency is passed to the kernel, has been added, and sulogin is now properly invoked in the described scenario.

Due to a bug in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifdown-eth script, the PID file name passed to the dhclient utility during a shutdown procedure did not include the IP version prefix. Consequently, leases for IPv6 addresses could not be released. This bug has been fixed and the shut down procedure now works properly both with the IPv4 and IPv6 clients.

Previously, the ifup and ifdown scripts explicitly ignored IPv6 configuration files that contained an alias. With this update, clients properly utilize aliases on IPv6 devices in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

There was a need to have a simple mechanism for troubleshooting network problems, integrated into existing log monitoring facilities. With this update, network scripts have been updated to report errors via the syslog utility, and the error messages now appear in configured syslog channels.

Previously, configuration options for the sysctl utility could only be changed in the /etc/sysctl.conf file. With this update, several scripts have been updated to also recognize additional configuration files located in the /etc/sysctl.d/ directory.

With this update, network start-up scripts have been enhanced to support all ethtool command options. These options can be set via the ETHTOOL_OPTS parameter in configuration files located in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ directory and take effect after reboot.

With this update, start-up network scripts have been enhanced to set up static ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) entries located in the /etc/ethers file, allowing to load these entries early in the system startup.