Chapter 10. Deprecated functionality

Deprecated Kickstart commands

The following Kickstart commands have been deprecated:

User and Group customizations in the edge-commit and edge-container blueprints have been deprecated

Specifying a user or group customization in the blueprints is deprecated for the edge-commit and edge-container image types, because the user customization disappears when you upgrade the image and do not specify the user in the blueprint again.

The initial-setup package now has been deprecated

The initial-setup package has been deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.3 and will be removed in the next major RHEL release. As a replacement, use gnome-initial-setup for the graphical user interface.

The provider_hostip and provider_fedora_geoip values of the inst.geoloc boot option are deprecated

The provider_hostip and provider_fedora_geoip values that specified the GeoIP API for the inst.geoloc= boot option are deprecated. As a replacement, you can use the geolocation_provider=URL option to set the required geolocation in the installation program configuration file. You can still use the inst.geoloc=0 option to disable the geolocation.

SHA-1 is deprecated for cryptographic purposes

The usage of the SHA-1 message digest for cryptographic purposes has been deprecated in RHEL 9. The digest produced by SHA-1 is not considered secure because of many documented successful attacks based on finding hash collisions. The RHEL core crypto components no longer create signatures using SHA-1 by default. Applications in RHEL 9 have been updated to avoid using SHA-1 in security-relevant use cases.

fapolicyd.rules is deprecated

The /etc/fapolicyd/rules.d/ directory for files containing allow and deny execution rules replaces the /etc/fapolicyd/fapolicyd.rules file. The fagenrules script now merges all component rule files in this directory to the /etc/fapolicyd/compiled.rules file. Rules in /etc/fapolicyd/fapolicyd.trust are still processed by the fapolicyd framework but only for ensuring backward compatibility.

SCP is deprecated in RHEL 9

The secure copy protocol (SCP) is deprecated because it has known security vulnerabilities. The SCP API remains available for the RHEL 9 lifecycle but using it reduces system security.

OpenSSL requires padding for RSA encryption in FIPS mode

OpenSSL no longer supports RSA encryption without padding in FIPS mode. RSA encryption without padding is uncommon and is rarely used. Note that key encapsulation with RSA (RSASVE) does not use padding but is still supported.

NTLM and Krb4 are deprecated in Cyrus SASL

The NTLM and Kerberos 4 authentication protocols have been deprecated and might be removed in a future major version of RHEL. These protocols are no longer considered secure and have already been removed from upstream implementations.

Digest-MD5 in SASL is deprecated

The Digest-MD5 authentication mechanism in the Simple Authentication Security Layer (SASL) framework is deprecated, and it might be removed from the cyrus-sasl packages in a future major release.

OpenSSL deprecates MD2, MD4, MDC2, Whirlpool, Blowfish, CAST, DES, IDEA, RC2, RC4, RC5, SEED, and PBKDF1

The OpenSSL project has deprecated a set of cryptographic algorithms because they are insecure, uncommonly used, or both. Red Hat also discourages the use of those algorithms, and RHEL 9 provides them for migrating encrypted data to use new algorithms. Users must not depend on those algorithms for the security of their systems.

/etc/system-fips is now deprecated

Support for indicating FIPS mode through the /etc/system-fips file has been removed, and the file will not be included in future versions of RHEL. To install RHEL in FIPS mode, add the fips=1 parameter to the kernel command line during the system installation. You can check whether RHEL operates in FIPS mode by using the fips-mode-setup --check command.

libcrypt.so.1 is now deprecated

The libcrypt.so.1 library is now deprecated, and it might be removed in a future version of RHEL.

The --token option of the subscription-manager command is deprecated

The --token=<TOKEN> option of the subscription-manager register command is an authentication method that helps register your system to Red Hat. This option depends on capabilities offered by the entitlement server. The default entitlement server, subscription.rhsm.redhat.com, is planning to turn off this capability. As a consequence, attempting to use subscription-manager register --token=<TOKEN> might fail with the following error message:

Setting the TMPDIR variable in the ReaR configuration file is deprecated

Setting the TMPDIR environment variable in the /etc/rear/local.conf or /etc/rear/site.conf ReaR configuration file), by using a statement such as export TMPDIR=…​, does not work and is deprecated.

The dump utility from the dump package has been deprecated

The dump utility used for backup of file systems has been deprecated and will not be available in RHEL 9.

The SQLite database backend in Bacula has been deprecated

The Bacula backup system supported multiple database backends: PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. The SQLite backend has been deprecated and will become unsupported in a later release of RHEL. As a replacement, migrate to one of the other backends (PostgreSQL or MySQL) and do not use the SQLite backend in new deployments.

Network teams are deprecated in RHEL 9

The teamd service and the libteam library are deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 and will be removed in the next major release. As a replacement, configure a bond instead of a network team.

NetworkManager connection profiles in ifcfg format are deprecated

In RHEL 9.0 and later, connection profiles in ifcfg format are deprecated. The next major RHEL release will remove the support for this format. However, in RHEL 9, NetworkManager still processes and updates existing profiles in this format if you modify them.

The iptables back end in firewalld is deprecated

In RHEL 9, the iptables framework is deprecated. As a consequence, the iptables backend and the direct interface in firewalld are also deprecated. Instead of the direct interface you can use the native features in firewalld to configure the required rules.

The PF_KEYv2 kernel API is deprecated

Applications can configure the kernel’s IPsec implementation by using the PV_KEYv2 and the newer netlink API. PV_KEYv2 is not actively maintained upstream and misses important security features, such as modern ciphers, offload, and extended sequence number support. As a result, starting with RHEL 9.3, the PV_KEYv2 API is deprecated and will be removed in the next major RHEL release. If you use this kernel API in your application, migrate it to use the modern netlink API as an alternative.

ATM encapsulation is deprecated in RHEL 9

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) encapsulation enables Layer-2 (Point-to-Point Protocol, Ethernet) or Layer-3 (IP) connectivity for the ATM Adaptation Layer 5 (AAL-5). Red Hat has not been providing support for ATM NIC drivers since RHEL 7. The support for ATM implementation is being dropped in RHEL 9. These protocols are currently used only in chipsets, which support the ADSL technology and are being phased out by manufacturers. Therefore, ATM encapsulation is deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.

The kexec_load system call for kexec-tools has been deprecated

The kexec_load system call, which loads the second kernel, will not be supported in future RHEL releases. The kexec_file_load system call replaces kexec_load and is now the default system call on all architectures.

Network teams are deprecated in RHEL 9

The teamd service and the libteam library are deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 and will be removed in the next major release. As a replacement, configure a bond instead of a network team.

lvm2-activation-generator and its generated services removed in RHEL 9.0

The lvm2-activation-generator program and its generated services lvm2-activation, lvm2-activation-early, and lvm2-activation-net are removed in RHEL 9.0. The lvm.conf event_activation setting, used to activate the services, is no longer functional. The only method for auto activating volume groups is event based activation.

Persistent Memory Development Kit (pmdk) and support library have been deprecated in RHEL 9

pmdk is a collection of libraries and tools for System Administrators and Application Developers to simplify managing and accessing persistent memory devices. pmdk and support library have been deprecated in RHEL 9. This also includes the -debuginfo packages.

libdb has been deprecated

RHEL 8 and RHEL 9 currently provide Berkeley DB (libdb) version 5.3.28, which is distributed under the LGPLv2 license. The upstream Berkeley DB version 6 is available under the AGPLv3 license, which is more restrictive.

Smaller size of keys than 2048 are deprecated by openssl 3.0 in Go’s FIPS mode

Key sizes smaller than 2048 bits are deprecated by openssl 3.0 and no longer work in Go’s FIPS mode.

Some PKCS1 v1.5 modes are now deprecated in Go’s FIPS mode

Some PKCS1 v1.5 modes are not approved in FIPS-140-3 for encryption and are disabled. They will no longer work in Go’s FIPS mode.

SHA-1 in OpenDNSSec is now deprecated

OpenDNSSec supports exporting Digital Signatures and authentication records using the SHA-1 algorithm. The use of the SHA-1 algorithm is no longer supported. With the RHEL 9 release, SHA-1 in OpenDNSSec is deprecated and it might be removed in a future minor release. Additionally, OpenDNSSec support is limited to its integration with Red Hat Identity Management. OpenDNSSec is not supported standalone.

The SSSD implicit files provider domain is disabled by default

The SSSD implicit files provider domain, which retrieves user information from local files such as /etc/shadow and group information from /etc/groups, is now disabled by default.

The SSSD files provider has been deprecated

The SSSD files provider has been deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9. The files provider might be removed from a future release of RHEL.

The nsslapd-ldapimaprootdn parameter is deprecated

In Directory Server, the nsslapd-ldapimaprootdn configuration parameter is used to map a system root entry to a root DN entry. Usually, the nsslapd-ldapimaprootdn parameter has the same value as the nsslapd-rootdn parameter. In addition, changing one attribute but not changing the other leads to a non-functional autobind configuration that breaks dsconf utility and access to the web console.

The nsslapd-conntablesize configuration parameter has been removed from 389-ds-base

The nsslapd-conntablesize configuration parameter has been removed from the 389-ds-base package in RHEL 9.3. Previously, the nsslapd-conntablesize configuration attribute specified the size of the connection table that managed established connections. With the introduction of the multi-listener feature, which improves the management of established connections, Directory Server now calculates the size of the connection table dynamically. This also resolves issues, when the connection table size was set too low and it affected the number of connections the server was able to support. Starting with RHEL 9.3, use only nsslapd-maxdescriptors and nsslapd-reservedescriptors attributes to manage the number of TCP/IP connections Directory Server can support.

The SMB1 protocol is deprecated in Samba

Starting with Samba 4.11, the insecure Server Message Block version 1 (SMB1) protocol is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

GTK 2 is now deprecated

The legacy GTK 2 toolkit and the following, related packages have been deprecated:

LibreOffice is deprecated

The LibreOffice RPM packages are now deprecated and will be removed in a future major RHEL release. LibreOffice continues to be fully supported through the entire life cycle of RHEL 7, 8, and 9.

Motif has been deprecated

The Motif widget toolkit has been deprecated in RHEL, because development in the upstream Motif community is inactive.

The network system role displays a deprecation warning when configuring teams on RHEL 9 nodes

The network teaming capabilities have been deprecated in RHEL 9. As a result, using the network RHEL system role on a RHEL 8 control node to configure a network team on RHEL 9 nodes, shows a warning about the deprecation.

SecureBoot image verification using SHA1-based signatures is deprecated

Performing SecureBoot image verification using SHA1-based signatures on UEFI (PE/COFF) executables has become deprecated. Instead, Red Hat recommends using signatures based on the SHA2 algorithm, or later.

Limited support for virtual machine snapshots

Creating snapshots of virtual machines (VMs) is currently only supported for VMs not using the UEFI firmware. In addition, during the snapshot operation, the QEMU monitor might become blocked, which negatively impacts the hypervisor performance for certain workloads.

The virtual floppy driver has become deprecated

The isa-fdc driver, which controls virtual floppy disk devices, is now deprecated, and will become unsupported in a future release of RHEL. Therefore, to ensure forward compatibility with migrated virtual machines (VMs), Red Hat discourages using floppy disk devices in VMs hosted on RHEL 9.

qcow2-v2 image format is deprecated

With RHEL 9, the qcow2-v2 format for virtual disk images has become deprecated, and will become unsupported in a future major release of RHEL. In addition, the RHEL 9 Image Builder cannot create disk images in the qcow2-v2 format.

virt-manager has been deprecated

The Virtual Machine Manager application, also known as virt-manager, has been deprecated. The RHEL web console, also known as Cockpit, is intended to become its replacement in a subsequent release. It is, therefore, recommended that you use the web console for managing virtualization in a GUI. Note, however, that some features available in virt-manager might not be yet available in the RHEL web console.

libvirtd has become deprecated

The monolithic libvirt daemon, libvirtd, has been deprecated in RHEL 9, and will be removed in a future major release of RHEL. Note that you can still use libvirtd for managing virtualization on your hypervisor, but Red Hat recommends switching to the newly introduced modular libvirt daemons. For instructions and details, see the RHEL 9 Configuring and Managing Virtualization document.

Legacy CPU models are now deprecated

A significant number of CPU models have become deprecated and will become unsupported for use in virtual machines (VMs) in a future major release of RHEL. The deprecated models are as follows:

RDMA-based live migration is deprecated

With this update, migrating running virtual machines using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) has become deprecated. As a result, it is still possible to use the rdma:// migration URI to request migration over RDMA, but this feature will become unsupported in a future major release of RHEL.

The Intel vGPU feature has been removed

Previously, as a Technology Preview, it was possible to divide a physical Intel GPU device into multiple virtual devices referred to as mediated devices. These mediated devices could then be assigned to multiple virtual machines (VMs) as virtual GPUs. As a result, these VMs shared the performance of a single physical Intel GPU, however only selected Intel GPUs were compatible with this feature.

Running RHEL 9 containers on a RHEL 7 host is not supported

Running RHEL 9 containers on a RHEL 7 host is not supported. It might work, but it is not guaranteed.

SHA1 hash algorithm within Podman has been deprecated

The SHA1 algorithm used to generate the filename of the rootless network namespace is no longer supported in Podman. Therefore, rootless containers started before updating to Podman 4.1.1 or later have to be restarted if they are joined to a network (and not just using slirp4netns) to ensure they can connect to containers started after the upgrade.

rhel9/pause has been deprecated

The rhel9/pause container image has been deprecated.

The CNI network stack has been deprecated

The Container Network Interface (CNI) network stack is deprecated and will be removed from Podman in a future minor release of RHEL. Previously, containers connected to the single Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin only via DNS. Podman v.4.0 introduced a new Netavark network stack. You can use the Netavark network stack with Podman and other Open Container Initiative (OCI) container management applications. The Netavark network stack for Podman is also compatible with advanced Docker functionalities. Containers in multiple networks can access containers on any of those networks.

The Inkscape and LibreOffice Flatpak images are deprecated

The rhel9/inkscape-flatpak and rhel9/libreoffice-flatpak Flatpak images, which are available as Technology Previews, have been deprecated.