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Chapter 1. Overview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9

1.1. Major changes in RHEL 9.9
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Installer and image creation

Review the most notable changes to RHEL installer and image creation in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • The standalone image-builder-cli tool is generally available for building operating system artifacts and image-mode assets.
  • Image mode for RHEL includes integrated system registration during first boot, user-specified base image options, and explicit safety warnings when creating image-mode assets without a default user account.

See New features - Installer and image creation for more information.

Security

Review the most notable changes to security in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • Keylime has been rebased to version 7.14.3 and keylime-agent-rust to 0.2.10, adding evidence verification for AMD SEV-SNP confidential virtual machines.
  • RHEL 9.9 contains the fapolicyd framework in version 2.0.1, which introduces multi-threaded parallel decision processing, transactional policy and trust database updates, dynamic database sizing, and systemd watchdog integration.
  • The opencryptoki package is rebased to version 3.27.0, which adds support for the PKCS #11 version 3.2 specification, including ML-DSA and ML-KEM post-quantum key types and mechanisms, key encapsulation and decapsulation, and new key wrapping mechanisms.
  • The new sequoia-sq package provides the sq command-line tool, enabling administrators to read and inspect OpenPGP certificates, including default RHEL RPM signing keys.
  • The rsyslog omelasticsearch module now supports configurable TLS versions, cipher suites, and key exchange groups, enabling post-quantum cryptography (PQC) when forwarding logs to Elasticsearch servers.
  • The aide package now includes a pre-configured aide-check.timer systemd timer unit for automated integrity checks and supports modular drop-in configuration files in the /etc/aide.d/ directory.

See New features - Security for more information.

Kernel

Review the most notable kernel updates in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • Enables Memory System Resource Partitioning and Monitoring (MPAM) on 64-bit ARM through the resctrl file system for cache allocation, memory-bandwidth control, and monitoring.
  • Adds AMD Assignable Bandwidth Monitoring Counters (ABMC) for persistent, assignable memory-bandwidth counters through resctrl.
  • Extends the kernel crypto API with Kerberos 5 support and related Ceph CEPH_CRYPTO_AES256KRB5 cryptography.
  • Improves networking with user-controlled transmit timestamp identifiers, IP address protocol-origin metadata, and VSOCK network-namespace support.
  • Strengthens storage and clustering paths for SMB, GFS2, Device Mapper cache, NVMe multipath, and firmware-assisted dump handling.
  • Reports CXL firmware-first protocol errors through CXL trace events.
  • Improves observability with in-kernel BPF actions for rtla timerlat, additional resctrl telemetry controls, and improved perf sched timehist output.
  • Expands driver and platform enablement. For the updated driver inventory, see Device drivers.
  • Tightens Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) appraisal on previously unevaluated file systems.

See New features - Kernel for more information.

Hardware enablement

Review the most notable hardware enablement updates in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • Adds device IDs so that drivers can match additional Realtek-based USB wireless adapters, including D-Link AN3U (RTL8192FU), D-Link AC13U (RTL8812CU), MSI AX1800 Nano GUAX18N (RTL8832BU), and D-Link VR Air Bridge DWA-F18 (RTL8832AU). These device-ID additions enable driver matching and do not, by themselves, establish formal hardware support status.
  • Extends Intel Nova Lake platform recognition for Intel HID, PUNIT telemetry, processor thermal devices, DLVR, and ACPI DPTF interfaces. These ACPI or PCI ID additions enable driver matching and do not, by themselves, establish formal platform support status.
  • Enables Tegra241 SoC handling for the NVIDIA Grace fuse driver on 64-bit ARM systems, and builds the Arm Firmware Framework for Arm A-profile (FF-A) transport into the kernel so that systems that require FF-A can access a TPM.

Dynamic programming languages, web and database servers

Review the most notable changes to dynamic programming languages, web and database servers in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • PHP 8.4 is available.

See Technology Previews - Dynamic programming languages, web and database servers for more information.

Compilers and development tools

Review the most notable changes to compilers and development tools in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • GCC Toolset 16 provides GCC 16.2 and Binutils 2.46 as an Application Stream alongside the system compiler, adding support for several C26 features, including Reflection and Contracts, and changing the default C standard to -std=gnu++20.
  • LLVM Toolset 22.1.8 updates the compiler toolset from the LLVM 21 release series with new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.
  • The rust package 1.97 applies changes from upstream Rust versions 1.93 through 1.97 and switches to the v0 symbol mangling format for more accurate symbol demangling, notably for generic types.
  • The golang package 1.27.3 adds generic methods and the new encoding/json/v2 packages for JSON handling.
  • The gdb package 17.2 adds support for debugging x86-64 Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) shadow stacks and AArch64 Guarded Control Stacks (GCS).

See New features - Compilers and development tools for more information.

Identity Management

Review the most notable changes to Identity Management in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • The ipauser and ipagroup modules in the ansible-freeipa package support a new query state that retrieves information about Identity Management (IdM) users and groups without modifying them.
  • You can map Active Directory AMA SIDs to authentication indicators by using the pam_gssapi_indicators_apply module.
  • You can use numerical UIDs and GIDs in access.conf to bypass name resolution and speed up access checks.

See New features - Identity Management for more information.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux system roles

Review the most notable changes to RHEL system roles in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.9.

  • With the new auditd role, you can automate management of the Linux Audit daemon to standardize audit logging across your infrastructure.
  • With the new trustee_server and trustee_client roles, you can automate the deployment of Trustee server components and the configuration of confidential virtual machines (CVMs).

See New features - Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Roles for more information.

1.2. In-place upgrade
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In-place upgrade from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9

The supported in-place upgrade paths currently are:

  • From RHEL 8.10 to RHEL 9.6, 9.8, and 9.9 on the following architectures:

    • AMD and Intel 64-bit architectures (x86-64-v2)
    • 64-bit ARM architecture (ARMv8.0-A)
    • IBM POWER 9 (little endian) and later
    • IBM Z architectures (IBM z14 or IBM LinuxONE II or later)
  • From RHEL 8.10 to RHEL 9.6, and RHEL 9.8 on systems with SAP HANA

For instructions on performing an in-place upgrade, see Upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9.

For instructions on performing an in-place upgrade on systems with SAP environments, see Upgrading SAP environments from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9.

For information regarding how Red Hat supports the in-place upgrade process, see the In-place upgrade Support Policy.

Notable enhancements and bug fixes include:

  • The logrotate systemd timer is enabled after the upgrade.
  • Introduced set of fixes and enhancements for systems with configured multipath, including migration of the multipath configuration.
  • Introduced initial set of fixes and enhancements for systems with configured Software Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) storage.
  • On ARM machines, the correct target kernel variant is installed to match the system memory page size.
  • Modified keys for several reports that have been inconsistent between major releases. The keys are consistent, regardless of the upgrade path. To view the old and new keys, see the leapp-repository release 0.25.0 changelog.

In-place upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9

It is not possible to perform an in-place upgrade directly from RHEL 7 to RHEL 9. However, you can perform an in-place upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 and then perform a second in-place upgrade to RHEL 9. For more information, see In-place upgrades over multiple RHEL major versions by using Leapp.

1.3. Red Hat Customer Portal Labs
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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:

1.4. Additional resources
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Capabilities and limits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 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 9, including licenses and application compatibility levels.

Application compatibility levels are explained in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: Application Compatibility Guide document.

Major differences between RHEL 8 and RHEL 9, including removed functionality, are documented in Considerations in adopting RHEL 9.

Instructions on how to perform an in-place upgrade from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9 are provided by the document Upgrading from RHEL 8 to RHEL 9.

Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Lightspeed you can proactively identify, examine, and resolve known technical issues. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Lightspeed is included with all RHEL subscriptions. For instructions on how to install the client and register your system to the service, see the Red Hat Lightspeed on RHEL documentation page.

Note

Public release notes include links to access the original tracking tickets, but private release notes are not viewable so do not include links.[1]


[1] Public release notes include links to access the original tracking tickets, but private release notes are not viewable so do not include links.
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