Chapter 14. Shells and command-line tools
14.1. Localization is distributed in multiple packages
In RHEL 8, locales and translations are no longer provided by the single glibc-common
package. Instead, every locale and language is available in a glibc-langpack-CODE
package. Additionally, not all locales are installed by default, only these selected in the installer. Users must install all further locale packages that they need separately.
The meta-packages which install extra add-on packages containing translations, dictionaries and locales for every package installed on the system are called langpacks.
For more information see Using langpacks.
14.2. Removed support for all-numeric user and group names
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8, the useradd
and groupadd
commands does not allow you to use user and group names consisting purely of numeric characters. The reason for not allowing such names is that this can confuse tools that work with user and group names and user and group ids, which are numbers.
See more information about Adding a new user from the command line.
14.3. The nobody user replaces nfsnobody
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 used the nobody
user and group pair with the ID of 99 and the nfsnobody
user and group pair with the ID of 65534, which is also the default kernel overflow ID.
In RHEL 8, both of these pair have been merged into the nobody
user and group pair, which uses the ID of 65534. The nfsnobody
pair is not created in RHEL 8.
This change reduces the confusion about files that are owned by nobody
but are not related to NFS.
14.4. Version control systems
RHEL 8 provides the following version control systems:
-
Git 2.18
, a distributed revision control system with a decentralized architecture. -
Mercurial 4.8
, a lightweight distributed version control system, designed for efficient handling of large projects. -
Subversion 1.10
, a centralized version control system.
Note that the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) and Revision Control System (RCS), available in RHEL 7, are not distributed with RHEL 8.
14.4.1. Notable changes in Subversion 1.10
Subversion 1.10
introduces a number of new features since the version 1.7 distributed in RHEL 7, as well as the following compatibility changes:
-
Due to incompatibilities in the
Subversion
libraries used for supporting language bindings,Python 3
bindings forSubversion 1.10
are unavailable. As a consequence, applications that requirePython
bindings forSubversion
are unsupported. -
Repositories based on
Berkeley DB
are no longer supported. Before upgrading, back up repositories created withSubversion 1.7
by using thesvnadmin dump
command. After installing RHEL 8, restore the repositories using thesvnadmin load
command. -
Existing working copies checked out by the
Subversion 1.7
client in RHEL 7 must be upgraded to the new format before they can be used fromSubversion 1.10
. After installing RHEL 8, run thesvn upgrade
command in each working copy. -
Smartcard authentication for accessing repositories using
https://
is no longer supported.
14.5. Packages moved from crontab entries to systemd timer
The packages used in crontab
entries now use systemd
timers. Run the following commands to find packages with systemd
timer entries:
$ repoquery --qf %{name} -f '/usr/lib/systemd/system/*.timer'
$ repoquery --qf %{name} -f '/etc/cron./'