5.11 Release Notes

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Release Notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11

Edition 11

Abstract

Red Hat Enterprise Linux minor releases are an aggregation of individual enhancement, security and bug fix errata. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 Release Notes document the major changes made to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system and its accompanying applications for this minor release. Detailed notes on all changes in this minor release are available in the Technical Notes.

Preface

The Release Notes provide high-level coverage of the improvements and additions that have been implemented in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11. For detailed documentation on all changes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for the 5.11 update, refer to the Technical Notes.

Chapter 1. Installation and Booting

dmidecode Supports SMBIOS

The dmidecode utility now supports System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) version 2.8, which enables dmidecode to automate builds and deployments on a wider variety of hardware.

Chapter 2. Kernel

Timeout Value Control

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 kernel now includes an option to control the timeout value for I/O error recovery commands. Previously, the retry value was set to 5, which resulted in 90-second timing out messages. Reducing the number of retries allows for a more efficient management of timeout layers.

LSI 12 Gb/s adapters with the MegaRAID SAS driver

LSI MegaRAID SAS 9360/9380 12Gb/s controllers, previously supported as a Technology Preview, are now fully supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11.

Chapter 3. Device Drivers

ProLiant Servers Support

The cciss driver now supports ProLiant servers with the latest HP SAS Smart Array controllers.

Chapter 4. Networking

samba3x: New Format of the Trivial Database (TDB) Files

An update of the samba3x packages changes the format of the Trivial Database (TDB) files, and the existing TDB files are updated to conform to the new format when you upgrade your Samba packages. In addition, earlier versions of Samba are not compatible with the new TDB file format. In order to successfully downgrade to an earlier version of Samba, you must use a backed up version of your TDB files, which uses the previous formatting.

Chapter 5. Subscription Management

Enhanced Error Messaging in Red Hat Support Tool

The Red Hat Support Tool now displays better error messages when the tool is unable to download debug symbols, for example due to insufficient disk space.

Subscription Manager

The Subscription Manager in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 generates the redhat.repo file immediately after user attachment and does not wait for the yum utility.

The Subscription Type field has been included in the Subscription Manager. You can view the field in the command-line interface as well as the graphical user interface to inform you about the kind of subscription that is used, which determines the attributes that drive subscription's behavior.

Repositories can now be enabled and disabled directly in the GUI of Subscription Manager.

Several enhancements to the command-line interface have been introduced:

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11, the rhsm-debug system tool creates a tar file that contains files to be attached to bug reports.
Two new fields have been added to the output of the subscription-manager list --available command. The Provides field shows the names of the products that the system is eligible for. The Suggested field has been added to facilitate compliance and provide parity with the GUI.
The output of the subscription-manager list --available command now includes the stock-keeping unit (SKU).

Chapter 6. Virtualization

Support for ESXi

When the virt-who agent runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11, virt-who can now communicate with VMWare ESXi and obtain the host and guest mapping information for Red Hat Subscription Manager.

Chapter 7. Industry Standards and Certification

NIST Certification for OpenSCAP

OpenSCAP 1.0.8 has been certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) 1.2 in the Authenticated Configuration Scanner category with the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) option. OpenSCAP provides a library that can parse and evaluate each component of the SCAP standard in order to make creating new SCAP tools convenient. Also, OpenSCAP offers a multi-purpose tool designed to format content into documents or scan the system based on this content.

Appendix A. Revision History

Revision History

Revision 0.0-0.1

Mon Sep 15 2014

Milan Navrátil

Release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 Release Notes.

Legal Notice

This document is licensed by Red Hat under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you distribute this document, or a modified version of it, you must provide attribution to Red Hat, Inc. and provide a link to the original. If the document is modified, all Red Hat trademarks must be removed.

Red Hat, as the licensor of this document, waives the right to enforce, and agrees not to assert, Section 4d of CC-BY-SA to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, the Red Hat logo, JBoss, OpenShift, Fedora, the Infinity logo, and RHCE are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries.

Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries.

Java® is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

XFS® is a trademark of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.

MySQL® is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States, the European Union and other countries.

Node.js® is an official trademark of Joyent. Red Hat is not formally related to or endorsed by the official Joyent Node.js open source or commercial project.

The OpenStack® Word Mark and OpenStack logo are either registered trademarks/service marks or trademarks/service marks of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries and are used with the OpenStack Foundation's permission. We are not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.