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6.1 Release Notes

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Release Notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1

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Abstract

Red Hat Enterprise Linux minor releases are an aggregation of individual enhancement, security and bug fix errata. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 Release Notes documents the major changes made to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 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.

1. Hardware Support

Naming convention for network interfaces

Traditionally, network interfaces in Linux are named eth[X]. However, in many cases, these names do not correspond to actual labels on the chassis. Modern server platforms with multiple network adapters can encounter non-deterministic and counterintuitive naming of these network interfaces.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 introduces biosdevname, an optional convention for naming network interfaces. biosdevname assigns names to network interfaces based on their physical location. Note, however that biosdevname is disabled by default, except for a limited set of Dell systems.
Refer to the Red Hat Knowledge Base for further information on using biosdevname.
USB 3.0

The implementation of version 3.0 of the Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) specification is a fully supported feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1. USB 3.0 support was previously considered a Technology Preview in previous releases.

CPU and Memory Hot-add

On Nehalem-EX, hot-adding of CPUs and memory is now fully supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1. Note, however that the hardware must also support hot-adding. Damage may occur from an attempt to hot-add CPUs or memory on hardware without support for hot-adding.

Driver Updates

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 features a wide range of driver updates, including updates to the following device drivers:

  • ixgbe driver for Intel 10 Gigabit PCI Express Network devices
  • mlx4 driver for Mellanox ConnectX HCA InfiniBand hardware, providing support for Mellanox Connect X2/X3 10GB devices
  • be2net driver for ServerEngines BladeEngine2 10Gbps network devices
  • bnx2 driver for Broadcom NetXtreme II network devices, including support for Advanced Error Reporting (AER), and PPC support for 5709 devices
  • bnx2i driver for Broadcom NetXtreme II iSCSI
  • bnx2x driver for Broadcom Everest network devices
  • igbvf and ixgbevf Virtual Function drivers
  • tg3 driver for Broadcom Tigon3 ethernet devices
  • bfa driver for Brocade Fibre Channel to PCIe Host Bus Adapters
  • bna driver for Brocade 10G PCIe ethernet Controllers
  • cxgb4 driver for Chelsio Terminator4 10G Unified Wire Network controllers
  • be2iscsi driver for ServerEngines BladeEngine 2 Open iSCSI devices
  • be2net driver for ServerEngines BladeEngine2 10Gbps network devices
  • lpfc driver for Emulex Fibre Channel HBAs
  • e1000 and e1000e drivers for Intel PRO/1000 network devices
  • Intel Iron Pond ethernet driver
  • Intel Kelsey Peak Wireless driver
  • Intel SCU driver
  • megaraid_sas driver for LSI MegaRAID SAS controllers
  • mpt2sas driver for the SAS-2 family of adapters from LSI Logic
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