Chapter 4. New features

Minimal RHEL installation now installs only the s390utils-core package

In RHEL 8.4 and later, the s390utils-base package is split into an s390utils-core package and an auxiliary s390utils-base package. As a result, setting the RHEL installation to minimal-environment installs only the necessary s390utils-core package and not the auxiliary s390utils-base package. If you want to use the s390utils-base package with a minimal RHEL installation, you must manually install the package after completing the RHEL installation or explicitly install s390utils-base using a Kickstart file.

NSS rebased to 3.101

The NSS cryptographic toolkit packages have been rebased to upstream version 3.101, which provides many bug fixes and enhancements. The most notable changes are the following:

Libreswan accepts IPv6 SAN extensions

Previously, IPsec connection failed when setting up certificate-based authentication with a certificate that contained a subjectAltName (SAN) extension with an IPv6 address. With this update, the pluto daemon has been modified to accept IPv6 SAN as well as IPv4. As a result, IPsec connection is now correctly established with IPv6 address embedded in the certificate as an ID.

Custom key sizes in ssh-keygen

You can now configure the size of keys generated by the /usr/libexec/openssh/sshd-keygen script by setting environment variables SSH_RSA_BITS and SSH_ECDSA_BITS in the /etc/sysconfig/sshd environment file.

fips-mode-setup checks for use of Argon2 KDF in open LUKS volumes before enabling FIPS mode

The fips-mode-setup system management command now detects key derivation functions (KDF) used in currently open LUKS volumes, and aborts if it detects usage of Argon2 KDF. This is because Argon2 KDF is not FIPS-compatible, so preventing its use helps ensure FIPS compliance. As a result, switching into FIPS mode on a system with open LUKS volumes that use Argon2 as a KDF is blocked until those volumes are closed or converted to a different KDF.

New SELinux boolean to allow QEMU Guest Agent executing confined commands

Previously, commands that were supposed to execute in a confined context through the QEMU Guest Agent daemon program, such as mount, failed with an Access Vector Cache (AVC) denial. To be able to execute these commands, the guest-agent must run in the virt_qemu_ga_unconfined_t domain.

OpenSSL rebased to 3.2.2

The OpenSSL packages have been rebased to upstream version 3.2.2. This update brings various enhancements and bug fixes, most notably the following:

crypto-policies provide algorithm selection in Java

The crypto-policies packages have been updated to extend its control to algorithm selection in Java. This is caused by the evolution of the Java cryptographic agility configuration and crypto-policies needing to catch up to provide a better mapping for a more consistent system-wide configuration. Specifically, the update has the following changes:

The selinux-policy git repository for Centos Stream 10 is now publicly accessible

CentOS Stream contributors now can participate in the development of the SELinux policy by contributing to the c10s branch of the fedora-selinux/selinux-policy git repository.

clevis rebased to version 20

The clevis packages have been upgraded to version 20. The most notable enhancements and fixes include the following:

ca-certificates provide trusted CA roots in the OpenSSL directory format

This update populates the /etc/pki/ca-trust/extracted/pem/directory-hash/ directory with trusted CA root certificates. As a consequence, lookups and validations are faster when OpenSSL is configured to load certificates from this directory, for example, by setting the SSL_CERT_DIR environment variable to /etc/pki/ca-trust/extracted/pem/directory-hash/.

The nbdkit service is confined by SELinux

The nbdkit-selinux sub-package adds new rules to the SELinux policy, and as a result, nbdkit is confined in SELinux. Therefore, the systems that run nbdkit are more resilient against privilege escalation attacks.

libreswan rebased to 4.15

The libreswan packages have been rebased to upstream version 4.15. This version provides substantial improvements over the previous version 4.9 that was provided in previous releases.

jose rebased to version 14

The jose package has been upgraded to upstream version 14. jose is a C-language implementation of the Javascript Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) standards. The most important enhancements and fixes include the following:

Four RHEL services removed from SELinux permissive mode

The following SELinux domains for RHEL services have been removed from SELinux permissive mode:

The bootupd service is SELinux confined

The bootupd service supports updating the bootloader, and therefore needs to be confined. This update to the SELinux policy adds additional rules, and as a result, the bootupd service runs in the bootupd_t SELinux domain.

Support available to file system customization for the simplified-installer and raw image types

With this enhancement, now you can add file system customizations to a blueprint when building the following image types:

The default value for the DefaultLimitCore systemd configuration option is now set to unlimited:unlimited

Previously, the default value for the DefaultLimitCore systemd configuration option was set to 0:infinity. As a result, all processes started by systemd had a soft process limit for core files set to 0, and no core files were created by default. However, the process adjusted the limit as required.

openCryptoki rebased to version 3.23.0

The openCryptoki packages are updated to version 3.23.0, which provides multiple bug fixes and enhancements. Notable changes include:

librtas rebased to version 2.0.6

The librtas package is updated to version 2.0.6. With this update, you can use the lockdown-compatible ABI provided by the kernel.

The BIND 9.18 is now supported in RHEL

BIND 9.18 has been added in RHEL 9.5 in the new bind9.18 package. The notable feature enhancements include the following:

NetworkManager now supports the leftsubnet parameter for IPsec VPNs

With this update, NetworkManager supports the leftsubnet parameter to define the private subnet behind the local participant used to configure subnet-to-subnet scenarios in Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) VPNs.

nmstate now supports the congestion window clamp (cwnd) option

With this update, you can use the cwnd option of the nmstate utility to set a maximum limit on the TCP congestion window size. This way you can control the maximum amount of unacknowledged data expressed as a number of packets that can be in transit over the network at any given time. The following example YAML file sets the cwnd option:

The NetworkManager-libreswan plugin supports the rightcert option

You can use the rightcert option when configuring Libreswan connections through NetworkManager. With this option, you can authenticate the "right" side participant of the IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) connection using a certificate.

The nmstate utility now supports the rightcert option

You can use the rightcert option when configuring Libreswan connections through the nmstate utility. With this option, you can authenticate the "right" side participant of the IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) connection using the certificate. The following example YAML file sets the rightcert option:

nmstate now supports the leftsubnet option

You can define entire subnets for IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) connections when configuring Libreswan connections through the nmstate utility by using the leftsubnet option. This ensures secure communication between different network segments. The following example YAML file sets the leftsubnet option:

NetworkManager supports connecting to IPsec VPNs that use IPv6 addressing

Previously, NetworkManager supported only IPv4 addressing when using the NetworkManager-libreswan plugin to connect to Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) VPN. With this update, you can connect to IPsec VPNs that use IPv6 addressing.

You can use both firewalld and nftables services simultaneously

The firewalld and nftables systemd services are available to use simultaneously. Previously, users could enable only one of these services at a time. With this enhancement, these systemd services no longer conflict with each other.

Kernel version in RHEL 9.5

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.5 is distributed with the kernel version 5.14.0-503.11.1.

The eBPF facility has been rebased to Linux kernel version 6.8

Notable changes and enhancements include:

rteval now supports relative CPU lists for loads

With this enhancement, the --loads-cpulist now accepts relative CPU lists as arguments. The syntax is the same for the default measurement CPU list when using the parameter --measurement-cpulist.

A support for 420xx devices is added to QAT

With this update, QAT supports 420xx devices. It includes a new device driver that supports updates to the firmware loader and other capabilities. Compared to 4xxx devices, the 420xx devices now have more acceleration engines, 16 service engines, and 1 administrative engine, and support the wireless cipher algorithms ZUC and Snow 3G.

Introducing noswap option when mounting TMPFS filesystem

TMPFS is an in-memory filesystem largely utilized for quickly sharing information across multiple processes. Starting with version 2.2, glibc expects a tmpfs filesystem to be mounted at dev/shm to support POSIX shared memory. This mount point is necessary for shm_open and shm_unlink subroutines to function correctly. TMPFS blocks can be swapped out when there is a memory shortage, which poses a problem for certain performance- or privacy-critical workloads.

Kernel module is now updated to version 6.8

Kernel module is now updated to version 6.8, which includes the following features:

Introducing rteval container for real-time performance testing

The rteval container provides tools and methods for accurately measuring system latencies. With this feature, users can measure the real-time performance of their systems. It evaluates the configuration of the Linux kernel for optimal real-time performance to analyze performance based on specific application needs.

NVMf-FC kdump is now supported on the IBM Power

NVMf-FC kdump now supports the IBM Power system for running kexec-tools. This allows the capture of system memory dumps over a fiber channel network using the NVMe storage devices for high-speed and low-latency access to storage for crash dump data.

UEFI variable filesystem (efivarfs) now supports analyzing persistent EFI variable space

With this update, you can now analyze the space used by persistent EFI variable storage on systems booted in UEFI mode. Using the utilities df and du, you can calculate the total space used by UEFI variables, such as EFI boot variables and the UEFI Secure Boot databases.

File system quotas for tmpfs file system are now supported

The /tmp directory is typically mounted using tmpfs, and it is accessible to all users by default. This presents a risk where a single user can potentially fill up the entire system memory by writing excessively to this directory.

NVMe TP 8006 in-band authentication with NVMe/TCP is now supported

NVMe TP 8006 in-band authentication for NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) was introduced in RHEL 9.2 as a Technology Preview, which is now fully supported. This feature provides DH-HMAC-CHAP in-band authentication protocol for NVMe-oF, which is defined in the NVMe Technical Proposal 8006. For details, see the dhchap-secret and dhchap-ctrl-secret option descriptions in the nvme-connect(1) man page.

cryptsetup rebased to version 2.7

The cryptsetup package has been rebased to version 2.7. It contains improvements for the libcryptsetup package to support Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) encrypted devices in the kdump enabled systems.

Dax feature is now supported for Ext4 and XFS

The direct access (dax) feature for the Ext4 and XFS file systems, previously available as a Technology Preview, is now fully supported. DAX enables an application to map persistent memory directly into its address space, enhancing performance. For more information, see Creating a file system DAX namespace on an NVDIMM.

New pcs status wait command

The pcs command-line interface now provides a pcs status wait command. This command ensures that Pacemaker has completed any actions required by changes to the Cluster Information Base (CIB) and does not need to take any further actions in order to make the actual cluster state match the requested cluster state.

pcs support for new commands to query the status of a resource in a cluster

The pcs command-line interface now provides pcs status query resource commands to query various attributes of a single resource in a cluster. These commands query:

New pcs resource defaults and pcs resource op defaults option for displaying configuration in text, JSON, and command formats

The pcs resource defaults and pcs resource op defaults commands and their aliases pcs stonith defaults and pcs stonith op defaults now provide the --output-format option.

New Pacemaker option to leave a panicked node shut down without rebooting automatically

You can now set the PCMK_panic_action variable in the /etc/sysconfig/pacemaker configuration file to off or sync-off. When you set this variable to off or sync-off, a node remains shut down after a panic condition instead of rebooting automatically.

Support for new pcsd Web UI features

The pcsd Web UI now supports the following features:

Increased performance of the Python interpreter

All supported versions of Python in RHEL 9 are now compiled with GCC’s -O3 optimization flag, which is the default in upstream. As a result, you can observe increased performance of your Python applications and the interpreter itself.

httpd rebased to 2.4.62

The httpd package has been updated to version 2.4.62 that includes various bug fixes, security fixes, and new features. Notable feature include :

mod_md rebased to version 2.4.26

The mod_md module has been updated to version 2.4.26. Notable changes over the previous version include:

PostgreSQL 16 now provides the pgvector extension

The postgresql:16 module stream is now distributed with the pgvector extension. With the pgvector extension, you can store and query high-dimensional vector embeddings directly within PostgreSQL databases and perform a vector similarity search. Vector embeddings are numerical representations of data that are often used in machine learning and AI applications to capture the semantic meaning of text, images, or other data types.

A new db_converter tool to convert a libdb database to the GDBM format

The deprecated Berkeley DB (libdb) now provides the db_converter tool for converting a lidbd database to the GNU dbm (GDBM) database format. The db_converter tool is distributed in the libdb-utils subpackage.

A new nodejs:22 module stream is fully supported

A new module stream, nodejs:22, previously available as a Technology Preview, is fully supported with the release of the RHEA-2024:11235 advisory. The nodejs:22 module stream now provides Node.js 22.11, which is a Long Term Support (LTS) version.

System GCC rebased to version 11.5

The system version of GCC in RHEL 9 has been updated to version 11.5. This update provides numerous bug fixes.

A new tunable for glibc is available to improve performance by placing dynamic objects closer together

Previously, the dynamic loader of glibc placed dynamic objects randomly throughout the available address space to enhance security. Consequently, objects were often too far apart, which led to inefficient calls between them.

glibc now supports dynamic linking of Intel APX-enabled functions

An incompatible dynamic linker trampoline was identified as a potential source of incompatibilities for Intel Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) applications. As a workaround, it was possible to use the BIND_NOW executable or use only the standard calling convention. With this update, the dynamic linker of glibc preserves APX-related registers.

Optimization of AMD Zen 3 and Zen 4 performance in glibc

Previously, AMD Zen 3 and Zen 4 processors sometimes used the Enhanced Repeat Move String (ERMS) version of the memcpy and memmove library routines regardless of the most optimal choice. With this update to glibc, AMD Zen 3 and Zen 4 processors use the most optimal versions of memcpy and memmove.

System version of GDB rebased to version 14.2 and GDB removed from GCC Toolset

GDB has been updated to version 14.2. Starting with RHEL 9.5, GDB is transitioning into a rolling Application Stream with its system version rebased in minor releases of RHEL. Therefore, GDB is not included in GCC Toolset 14 in RHEL 9.

elfutils rebased to version 0.191

The elfutils package has been updated to version 0.191. Notable improvements include:

SystemTap rebased to version 5.1

The SystemTap tracing and probing tool has been updated to version 5.1. Notable changes include:

valgrind rebased to version 3.23.0

The Valgrind suite has been updated to version 3.23.0. Notable enhancements include:

libabigail rebased to version 2.5

The libabigail library has been updated to version 2.5. Notable changes include:

New GCC Toolset 14

GCC Toolset 14 is a compiler toolset that provides recent versions of development tools. It is available as an Application Stream in the form of a Software Collection in the AppStream repository.

GCC Toolset 14: GCC rebased to version 14.2

In GCC Toolset 14, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has been updated to version 14.2.

GCC Toolset 14: annobin rebased to version 12.70

In GCC Toolset 14, annobin has been updated to version 12.70. The updated set of the annobin tools for testing binaries provides various bug fixes, introduces new tests, and updates the tools to build and work with newer versions of the GCC, Clang, LLVM, and Go compilers. With the enhanced tools, you can detect new issues in programs that are built in a non-standard way.

GCC Toolset 14: binutils rebased to version 2.41

RHEL 9.5 is distributed with GCC Toolset 14 binutils version 2.41. New features include:

GCC Toolset 13: GCC supports AMD Zen 5

The GCC Toolset 13 version of GCC adds support for the AMD Zen 5 processor microarchitecture. To enable the support, use the -march=znver5 command-line option.

LLVM Toolset updated to 18.1.8

LLVM Toolset has been updated to version 18.1.8.

Rust Toolset rebased to version 1.79.0

Rust Toolset has been updated to version 1.79.0. Notable enhancements since the previously available version 1.75.0 include:

Go Toolset rebased to version 1.22

Go Toolset has been updated to version 1.22.

PCP rebased to version 6.2.2

Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) has been updated to version 6.2.2. Notable changes over the previously available version 6.2.0 include:

Grafana rebased to version 10.2.6

The Grafana platform has been updated to version 10.2.6.

Red Hat build of OpenJDK 17 is now the default Java implementation in RHEL 9

The default RHEL 9 Java implementation is being changed from OpenJDK 11, which has reached its End Of Life (EOL), to OpenJDK 17. After this update, the java-17-openjdk packages, which provide the OpenJDK 17 Java Runtime Environment and the OpenJDK 17 Java Software Development Kit, will also provide the java and java-devel packages. For more information, see the OpenJDK documentation.

python-jwcrypto rebased to version 1.5.6

The python-jwcrypto package has been updated to version 1.5.6. This version includes a security fix to an issue where an attacker could cause a denial of service attack by passing in a malicious JWE Token with a high compression ratio.

ansible-freeipa rebased to 1.13.2

The ansible-freeipa package has been rebased from version 1.12.1 to 1.13.2 Notable enhancements include:

ipa rebased to version 4.12.0

The ipa package has been updated from version 4.11 to 4.12.0. Notable changes include:

certmonger rebased to version 0.79.20

The certmonger package has been rebased to version 0.79.20. The update includes various bug fixes and enhancements, most notably:

389-ds-base rebased to version 2.5.2

The 389-ds-base package has been updated to version 2.5.2. Notable bug fixes and enhancements over version 2.4.5 include:

Improved MIT krb5 TCP connection timeout handling

Previously, TCP connections timed out after 10 seconds. With this update, MIT krb5 TCP connection handling has been modified to no longer use a default timeout. The request_timeout setting now limits the total request duration rather than the duration of individual TCP connections. This change addresses integration issues with SSSD, especially for two-factor authentication use cases. As a result, users experience more consistent handling of TCP connections, as the request_timeout setting now effectively controls the global request maximum duration.

samba rebased to version 4.20.2

The samba packages have been upgraded to upstream version 4.20.2, which provides bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version. The most notable changes are:

New SSSD option: failover_primary_timeout

You can use the failover_primary_timeout option to specify the time interval in seconds for the sssd service to attempt reconnecting to the primary IdM server after switching to a backup server. The default value is 31 seconds. Previously, if the primary server was unavailable, SSSD would automatically switch to a backup server after the fixed timeout of 31 seconds.

GNOME Online Accounts can restrict which features providers can use

You can use the new goa.conf file in the system configuration directory, usually named /etc/goa.conf, to limit what features each provider can use.

New package: cockpit-files

The cockpit-files package provides the File manager page in the RHEL web console. With the File manager, you can perform the following actions:

Support for new ha_cluster system role features

The ha_cluster system role now supports the following features:

Support for configuring GFS2 file systems by using RHEL system roles

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.5 supports the configuration and management of the Red Hat Global File System 2 (GFS2) by using the gfs2 RHEL system role. The role creates GFS2 file systems in a Pacemaker cluster managed with the pcs command-line interface.

New sudo RHEL system role

sudo is a critical part of RHEL system configuration. With the new sudo RHEL system role, you can consistently manage sudo configuration at scale across your RHEL systems.

The storage RHEL system role can now manage Stratis pools

With this enhancement, you can use the storage RHEL system role to complete the following tasks:

New variables in the journald RHEL system role: journald_rate_limit_interval_sec and journald_rate_limit_burst

The following two variables have been added to the journald RHEL system role:

New variables in the podman RHEL system role: podman_registry_username and podman_registry_password

The podman RHEL system role now enables you to specify the container image registry credentials either globally or on a per-specification basis. For that purpose, you must configure both role variables:

New variable in the postfix RHEL system role: postfix_files

The postfix RHEL system role now enables you to configure extra files for the Postfix mail transfer agent. For that purpose, you can use the following role variable:

The snapshot RHEL system role now supports managing snapshots of LVM thin pools

With thin provisioning, you can use the snapshot RHEL system role to manage snapshots of LVM thin pools. These thin snapshots are space-efficient and only grow as data is written or modified after the snapshot is taken. The role automatically detects if the specified volume is scheduled for a thin pool. The added feature could be useful in environments where you need to take frequent snapshots without consuming a lot of physical storage.

New option in the logging RHEL system role: reopen_on_truncate

The files input type of the logging_inputs variable now supports the following option:

New variable in the logging RHEL system role: logging_custom_config_files

You can provide custom logging configuration files by using the following variable for the logging RHEL system role:

The logging RHEL system role can set ownership and permissions for rsyslog files and directories

The files output type of the logging_outputs variable now supports the following options:

Using the storage RHEL system role creates fingerprints on managed nodes

If not already present, storage creates a unique identifier (fingerprint) every time you run this role. The fingerprint has the form of the # system_role:storage string written to the /etc/fstab file on your managed nodes. As a result, you can track which nodes are managed by storage.

New variables in the podman RHEL system role: podman_registry_certificates and podman_validate_certs

The following two variables have been added to the podman RHEL system role:

New variable in the podman RHEL system role: podman_credential_files

Some operations need to pull container images from registries in an automated or unattended way and cannot use the podman_registry_username and podman_registry_password variables.

The nbde_client RHEL system role now enables you to skip running certain configurations

With the nbde_client RHEL system role you can now disable the following mechanisms:

The ssh RHEL system role now recognizes the ObscureKeystrokeTiming and ChannelTimeout configuration options

The ssh RHEL system role has been updated to reflect addition of the following configuration options in the OpenSSH utility suite:

The src parameter was added to the network RHEL system role

The src parameter to the route sub-option of the ip option for the network_connections variable has been added. This parameter specifies the source IP address for a route. Typically, it is useful for the multi-WAN connections. These setups ensure that a machine has multiple public IP addresses, and outbound traffic uses a specific IP address tied to a particular network interface. As a result, support for the src parameter provides better control over traffic routing by ensuring a more robust and flexible network configuration capability in the described scenarios.

The storage RHEL system role can now resize LVM physical volumes

If the size of a block device has changed and you use this device in an LVM, you can adjust the LVM physical volume as well. With this enhancement, you can use the storage RHEL system role to resize LVM physical volumes to match the size of the underlying block devices after you resized it. To enable automatic resizing, set grow_to_fill: true on the pool in your playbook.

New features for 64-bit ARM hosts

The following virtualization features have now become fully supported on the 64-bit ARM architecture:

RHEL supports live migrating VMs with attached NVIDIA vGPUs

With this update, you can now live migrate a running virtual machine with attached vGPUs to another KVM host. Currently, this is only possible with NVIDIA GPUs.

nbdkit rebased to version 1.38

The nbdkit package has been rebased to upstream version 1.38, which provides various bug fixes and enhancements. The most notable changes are the following:

Adjustable packet loss prevention added for the NetKVM driver

This update adds the MinRxBufferPercent parameter for the the NetKVM driver, which you can use to reduce the risk of received packet loss in Windows virtual machines. The default value of MinRxBufferPercent is 0, and setting a higher value, up to 100, improves the prevention of packet loss, but might increase CPU consumption during high network traffic.

OpenTelemetry Collector for RHEL on public cloud platforms

When running RHEL on a public cloud platform, you can now use the OpenTelemetry (OTel) framework to collect and send telemetry data, such as logs, metrics, and traces. This helps you maintain and debug your RHEL cloud instances. With this update, RHEL includes the OTel Collector service, which you can use to manage logs. The OTel Collector gathers, processes, transforms, and exports logs to and from various formats and external back ends.

awscli2 is generally available for RHEL on AWS

With the awscli2 utility, you can now use Amazon Web Services (AWS) APIs from a RHEL instance to deploy new infrastructure offerings, as well as manage existing deployments. Note that installing awscli2 from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux repository ensures that awscli2 is installed from a trusted source and receives automatic updates. As a result, you can gather information regarding cloud deployment services, manage infrastructure resources, and refer to built-in documentation provided with awscli2.

Log collection on Azure is now disabled by default

Previously, the Windows Azure Linux Agent (WALA) in Microsoft Azure collected debugging logs on virtual machines (VMs) by default. However, these agent logs might contain confidential information. To improve data security, WALA is now disabled by default, and does not collect any data on the VM. To re-enable log collection, do the following:

The --api-url option is now available

With the --api-url option you can call another API as per requirement. For instance, the API for an OCP cluster. Example: sos collect --cluster-type=ocp --cluster-option ocp.api-url=_<API_URL> --alloptions.

The new --skip-cleaning-files option is now available

The --skip-cleaning-files option for the sos report command allows you to skip cleaning selected files. The option supports globs and wildcards. Example: sos report -o host --batch --clean --skip-cleaning-files 'hostname'.

The plugin option names now use only hyphens instead of underscores

To ensure consistency across sos global options, the plugin option names now use only hyphens instead of underscores For example, the networking plugin namespace_pattern option is now namespace-pattern and must be specified by using the --plugin-option networking.namespace-pattern=<pattern> syntax.

Image mode for RHEL now supports FIPS mode

With this enhancement, you can enable the FIPS mode when building a bootc image to configure the system to use only FIPS-approved modules. You can use bootc-image-builder, which requires enabling the FIPS crypto policy in the Containerfile configuration, or use the RHEL Anaconda installation, that additionally to enabling FIPS mode in the Containerfile, also requires adding the fips=1 kernel argument when booting the system installation. See Installing the system with FIPS mode enabled for more details.

Image mode for RHEL now supports logically bound app images

With this enhancement, you have support for container images that are lifecycle bound to the base bootc image. This helps unite different operational processes for applications and operating systems and the app images are referenced from the base image as image files or an equivalent. As a result, you can manage multiple container images for system installations, for example, for a disconnected installation, the system must all be mirrored, not just one.

Podman and Buildah support adding OCI artifacts to image indexes

With this update, you can create artifact manifests and add them to image indexes.

Option is available to disable Podman healthcheck event

This enhancement adds a new healthcheck_events option in the containers.conf configuration file under the [engine] section to disable the generation of health_status events. Set healthcheck_events=false to disable logging healthchek events.

Runtime resource changes in Podman are persistent

The updates of container configuration by using the podman update command are persistent. Note that this enhancement is for both SQLite and BoltDB database backends.

Building multi-architecture images is fully supported

The podman farm build command that creates multi-architecture container images is now fully supported.

Quadlets for pods in Podman are available

Beginning with Podman v5.0, you can use Quadlet to automatically generate a systemd service file from a pod description.

The Podman v2.0 RESTful API has been updated

The new fields has been added to the libpod/images/json endpoint:

Kubernetes YAML now supports a data volume container as an init container

A list of images to automatically mount as volumes can now be specified in Kubernetes YAML by using the "io.podman.annotations.kube.image.automount/$ctrname" annotation. Image-based mounts using podman run --mount type=image,source=<image>,dst=<path>,subpath=<path> now support a new option, subpath, to mount only part of the image into the container.

The Container Tools packages have been updated

The updated Container Tools RPM meta-package, which contains the Podman, Buildah, Skopeo, crun, and runc tools, is now available. Podman v5.0 contains the following notable bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version:

The --compat-volumes option is available for Podman and Buildah

You can use the new --compat-volumes option with the buildah build, podman build, and podman farm build commands. This option triggers special handling for the contents of directories marked using the VOLUME instruction such that their contents can subsequently only be modified by ADD and COPY instructions. Any changes made in those locations by RUN Instructions will be discarded. Previously, this behavior was the default, but it is now disabled by default.

A new rhel10-beta/rteval container image

The real-time registry.redhat.io/rhel10-beta/rteval container image is now available in the Red Hat Container Registry to run latency analysis on either a standalone RHEL installation. With rhel10-beta/rteval container image, you can perform latency testing within a containerized setup to determine if such a solution is viable for your real-time workloads or to compare results against a bare-metal run of rteval. To use this feature, subscribe to RHEL with real-time support. No tuning guidelines are provided.

The containers.conf file is now read-only

The system connections and farm information stored in the containers.conf file is now read-only. The system connections and farm information will now be stored in the podman.connections.json file, managed only by Podman. Podman continues to support the old configuration options such as [engine.service_destinations] and the [farms] section. You can still add connections or farms manually if needed however, it is not possible to delete a connection from the containers.conf file with the podman system connection rm command.

macvlan and ipvlan network interface names are configurable in containers.conf

To specify macvlan and ipvlan networks, you can adjust the name of the network interface created inside containers by using the new interface_name field in the containers.conf configuration file.

bootc-image-builder now supports defining and injecting custom Kickstart files to ISO builds

With this enhancement, now you can define a Kickstart by setting users, customize partitioning, inject key, and inject the kickstart file to an ISO build to configure the installation process. The resulting disk image creates a self-contained installer that automates and deploys devices, disconnected systems, edge devices, between others. As a result, it is much easier to create customized media with bootc-image-builder.

Support to building GCP images by using bootc-image-builder

By using the bootc-image-builder tool you can now generate .gce disk images and provision the instances on the Google Compute Engine (GCE) platform.

Support to creating and deploying VMDK with bootc-image-builder

With this enhancement, now you can create a Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) from a bootc image, by using the bootc-image-builder tool, and deploy VMDK images to VMware vSphere.

The podman pod inspect command now provides a JSON array regardless of the number of pods

Previously, the podman pod inspect command omitted the JSON array when inspecting a single pod. With this update, the podman pod inspect command now produces a JSON array in the output regardless of the number of pods inspected.

The composefs filesystem is now available

The composefs read-only filesystem is now fully supported. This is generally intended only to be used by the bootc/ostree and podman projects at the current time. With composefs, you can use these projects to create and use read-only images, share file data between images, and validate images on runtime. As a result, you have a fully verified filesystem tree mounted, with opportunistic fine-grained sharing of identical files.