Chapter 1. Overview
1.1. Major changes in RHEL 8.10
Installer and image creation
Key highlights for RHEL image builder:
-
You can create different partitioning modes, such as
auto-lvm
,lvm
, andraw
. - You can customize tailoring options for a profile and add it to your blueprint customizations by using selected and unselected options, to add and remove rules.
For more information, see New features - Installer and image creation.
Security
SCAP Security Guide 0.1.72 contains updated CIS profiles, a profile aligned with the PCI DSS policy version 4.0, and profiles for the latest DISA STIG policies.
The Linux kernel cryptographic API (libkcapi) 1.4.0 introduces new tools and options. Notably, with the new -T
option, you can specify target file names in hash-sum calculations.
The stunnel TLS/SSL tunneling service 5.71 changes the behavior of OpenSSL 1.1 and later versions in FIPS mode. Besides this change, version 5.71 provides many new features such as support for modern PostgreSQL clients.
The OpenSSL TLS toolkit now contains API-level protections against Bleichenbacher-like attacks on the RSA PKCS #1 v1.5 decryption process.
See New features - Security for more information.
Dynamic programming languages, web and database servers
Later versions of the following Application Streams are now available:
- Python 3.12
- Ruby 3.3
- PHP 8.2
- nginx 1.24
- MariaDB 10.11
- PostgreSQL 16
The following components have been upgraded:
- Git to version 2.43.0
- Git LFS to version 3.4.1
See New features - Dynamic programming languages, web and database servers for more information.
Identity Management
Identity Management (IdM) in RHEL 8.10 introduces delegating user authentication to external identity providers (IdPs) that support the OAuth 2 Device Authorization Grant flow. This is now a fully supported feature.
After performing authentication and authorization at the external IdP, the IdM user receives a Kerberos ticket with single sign-on capabilities.
For more information, see New Features - Identity Management
Containers
Notable changes include:
-
The
podman farm build
command for creating multi-architecture container images is available as a Technology Preview. -
Podman now supports
containers.conf
modules to load a predetermined set of configurations. - The Container Tools packages have been updated.
- Podman v4.9 RESTful API now displays data of progress when you pull or push an image to the registry.
- SQLite is now fully supported as a default database backend for Podman.
-
Containerfile
now supports multi-line HereDoc instructions. -
pasta
as a network name has been deprecated. - The BoltDB database backend has been deprecated.
-
The
container-tools:4.0
module has been deprecated. - The Container Network Interface (CNI) network stack is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
See New features - Containers for more information.
1.2. In-place upgrade and OS conversion
In-place upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8
The possible in-place upgrade paths currently are:
- From RHEL 7.9 to RHEL 8.8 and RHEL 8.10 on the 64-bit Intel, IBM POWER 8 (little endian), and IBM Z architectures
- From RHEL 7.9 to RHEL 8.8 and RHEL 8.10 on systems with SAP HANA on the 64-bit Intel architecture.
For more information, see Supported in-place upgrade paths for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
For instructions on performing an in-place upgrade, see Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8.
For instructions on performing an in-place upgrade on systems with SAP environments, see How to in-place upgrade SAP environments from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8.
For information regarding how Red Hat supports the in-place upgrade process, see the In-place upgrade Support Policy.
Notable enhancements include:
-
New logic has been implemented to determine the expected states of the
systemd
services after the upgrade. - Locally stored DNF repositories can now be used for the in-place upgrade.
- You can now configure DNF to be able to upgrade by using proxy.
- Issues with performing the in-place upgrade with custom DNF repositories accessed by using HTTPS have been fixed.
-
If the
/etc/pki/tls/openssl.cnf
configuration file has been modified, the file is now replaced with the target default OpenSSL configuration file during the upgrade to prevent issues after the upgrade. See the pre-upgrade report for more information.
In-place upgrade from RHEL 6 to RHEL 8
It is not possible to perform an in-place upgrade directly from RHEL 6 to RHEL 8. However, you can perform an in-place upgrade from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 and then perform a second in-place upgrade to RHEL 8. For more information, see Upgrading from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7.
In-place upgrade from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9
Instructions on how to perform an in-place upgrade from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9 using the Leapp utility are provided by the document Upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9. Major differences between RHEL 8 and RHEL 9 are documented in Considerations in adopting RHEL 9.
Conversion from a different Linux distribution to RHEL
If you are using Alma Linux 8, CentOS Linux 8, Oracle Linux 8, or Rocky Linux 8, you can convert your operating system to RHEL 8 using the Red Hat-supported Convert2RHEL
utility. For more information, see Converting from an RPM-based Linux distribution to RHEL.
If you are using CentOS Linux 7 or Oracle Linux 7, you can convert your operating system to RHEL and then perform an in-place upgrade to RHEL 8.
For information regarding how Red Hat supports conversions from other Linux distributions to RHEL, see the Convert2RHEL Support Policy document.
1.3. Red Hat Customer Portal Labs
Red Hat Customer Portal Labs is a set of tools in a section of the Customer Portal available at https://access.redhat.com/labs/. The applications in Red Hat Customer Portal Labs can help you improve performance, quickly troubleshoot issues, identify security problems, and quickly deploy and configure complex applications. Some of the most popular applications are:
- Registration Assistant
- Product Life Cycle Checker
- Kickstart Generator
- Kickstart Converter
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux Upgrade Helper
- Red Hat Satellite Upgrade Helper
- Red Hat Code Browser
- JVM Options Configuration Tool
- Red Hat CVE Checker
- Red Hat Product Certificates
- Load Balancer Configuration Tool
- Yum Repository Configuration Helper
- Red Hat Memory Analyzer
- Kernel Oops Analyzer
- Red Hat Product Errata Advisory Checker
1.4. Additional resources
- Capabilities and limits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 as compared to other versions of the system are available in the Knowledgebase article Red Hat Enterprise Linux technology capabilities and limits.
- Information regarding the Red Hat Enterprise Linux life cycle is provided in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle document.
- The Package manifest document provides a package listing for RHEL 8.
- Major differences between RHEL 7 and RHEL 8, including removed functionality, are documented in Considerations in adopting RHEL 8.
- Instructions on how to perform an in-place upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 are provided by the document Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8.
- The Red Hat Insights service, which enables you to proactively identify, examine, and resolve known technical issues, is now available with all RHEL subscriptions. For instructions on how to install the Red Hat Insights client and register your system to the service, see the Red Hat Insights Get Started page.
Release notes include links to access the original tracking tickets. Private tickets have no links and instead feature this footnote.[1]