10.3. Other Package Changes

As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 the popular lshw is now available. In addition, the graphical interface is also available as lshw-gui.

The lshw tool provides a method to interrogate hardware configuration and deliver output in plaintext, XML, or HTML. In addition to the output formats, lshw can report in both long or short layouts and can also perform sanitization of sensitive data such as serial numbers.

The version shipped is B.02.17. Further information and a complete list of options can be found in the manual page.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 provides OpenJDK 8 as a Technology Preview. OpenJDK 8 is the open-source reference implementation of the Java SE 8 Platform Specification defined by JSR 337. This new version of the specification adds lambda expressions and default methods to the Java programming language. It also includes a new date and time API, and extends the Java programming language to allow annotations on types.

Javadoc parsing is stricter in this release, which means that some javadocs created for previous versions of OpenJDK may not compile. If you must compile prior to modifying your javadocs for these changes, you can temporarily disable javadoc generation to work around these stricter requirements.

Additionally, a number of methods are deprecated as of this release. See the specification for details.

The libnl3 package provides version 3 of libnl, a collection of libraries for netlink interfaces. libnl3 provides similar functionality to libnl, but is not a backward compatible replacement for it. Therefore, as of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6, libnl3 can be installed in parallel with the original libnl package.

The opencryptoki package, which provides a PKCS#11 implementation for Linux has been updated to version opencryptoki-3.2-2.el6.

This rebase includes an opencryptoki token for access to the Enterprise PKCS#11 (EP11) features of the CEX4S crypto adapter, CPACF MSA4 extensions, and architecture support for IBM® Z Series.

For more details see the Security and Administration Section.

Red Hat Support Tool (redhat-support-tool) facilitates console-based access to Red Hat's subscriber services and gives Red Hat subscribers more venues for accessing both the content and services available to them as Red Hat customers. Further, it enables our customers to integrate and automate their helpdesk services with our subscription services. The capabilities of this package include:

Detailed usage information for the tool can be found in the Red Hat Customer Portal at https://access.redhat.com/site/articles/445443.

Red Hat customers can use this library to easily integrate their help desk solutions and IT infrastructure with the services provided by the Red Hat Customer Portal. Further, this library will be used by and integrated into shipped products for automatic problem determination/diagnostics.

The python library provided by this package is an abstraction layer that simplifies interactions with the Red Hat Customer Portal. Simply create an instance of the API by providing the necessary authorization credentials, then use the API object to interact with the Red Hat Customer Portal.

Some of the interactions supported by this API include, but are not limited to, automatic diagnostic services on log files, knowledge base searching, support case creation, attaching files to support cases, viewing the status of support cases, and viewing entitlements.

The new rsyslog7 package provides rsyslog version 7. The previous package, rsyslog, continues to provide version 5.

As of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6, Red Hat will focus on maintaining the rsyslog7 package, and only critical security issues will be fixed in the rsyslog package. This allows legacy projects that require version 5 to remain supported, while giving customers access to version 7, which includes performance improvements and introduces production support for structured logging.

A number of packages are dependent on rsyslog and installation requires some manual steps to ensure there are no dependency issues.

Red Hat recommends that you use the yum shell command to upgrade, using the following steps

# yum shell
> erase rsyslog
> install rsyslog7
> run transaction
> quit

Further information can be found in the Red Hat Knowledgebase at https://access.redhat.com/solutions/282663

Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7, the Red Hat Insights service is now available.

Red Hat Insights is a proactive service designed to enable you to identify, examine, and resolve known technical issues before they affect your deployment. Insights leverages the combined knowledge of Red Hat Support Engineers, documented solutions, and resolved issues to deliver relevant, actionable information to system administrators.

The service is hosted and delivered through the customer portal at https://access.redhat.com/insights/ or using Red Hat Satellite.

To register your systems, follow the latest Getting Started Guide for Insights, which is available at: https://access.redhat.com/insights/getting-started/

For further information, data security and limits, see https://access.redhat.com/insights/splash/