Release Notes for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 2

Provide enhancements to the SLES 10 code base (see Chapter 2, New Features).

Provide all maintenance fixes (see Chapter 3, Driver Updates) released since GA of SLES 10.

Provide an easy update (see README) of your system or individual packages to the latest Service Pack level. This is especially useful if you cannot use online update mechanisms.

Provide an easy fresh install (see README) using the latest kernel, drivers, and installer updates.

Include PTFs (special fixes for customers) which were folded back into the SLES 10 common code base making them part of the maintained code base.

Provide useful additional information and documentation (see Chapter 5, Installation-Related Notes).

915resolution was added to change the resolution of the 845G, 855GM, 865G, 915G, 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 965G and 965GM chipsets

Docking station support for Santa Rosa chipsets were added

Complete iSCSI support was added to autoyast2

Add support for --dynamic-list, AMDFAM10h, SSE5 and all POWER6 instructions to binutils

Updated crash to version 4.0-4.8 and increased the number of supported CPUs to 16384

Added support of dhcpFailOverPeer objects to dhcp

Allow online resize of root filesystem on Ext3

Enable krb4 support in evolution

eDirectory NMAS support was added to FreeRADIUS

Added optional SSE5 instructions to gcc

Full RFC3484 (getaddrinfo/IPv6) support, AF_IUCV and support for up to 4096 CPUs added to glibc

Added 'start this script before' support to insserv

Added kdump package and YaST2 frontend with support for saving dumps over network and to filter kdump images.

When doing a network install, check if the IP address of the machine to be installed is already in use by another machine. This check can be suppressed with parameter "forceip=1" either on the command line or in the configuration file.

Added support for LUKS and LVM over iSCSI to mkinitrd

New PAM module 'pam_faildelay' was added to change the delay on failure per application

Added sblim-cim-client, a CIM Client Class Library for Java applications

Added StrongSwan 4.1.10, an OpenSource IPsec-based VPN Solution for Linux

Added support for SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader including a YaST2 module for configuration

Added audit support to hwclock

iSNS support was added to the YaST2 iSCSI modules

Support for bridge devices, ficon devices and VLANs was added to the YaST2 network module

The default disk label for disks larger than 2 TB is now GPT

It is now possible to install on NFS as root partition

The YaST2 storage module is now able to online resize ext3

Python bindings for YaST2

The maximum number of raw devices can be specified as boot option (max_raw_minors=XX, where 1 <= XX <= 65536)

Add a new kernel which is designed to run on top of a virtual machine interface layer (VMI). The VMI interface layer is part of the package kernel-vmi which is available as x86 package only (not for x86_64). This package can be installed via your favorite update tool once the system has a registered update channel.

A hardware handler for the DM-MPIO framework to enable explicit ALUA support (ALUA: T10 Asymmetric LUN Access or T10 ALUA) was added.

Support for Autofs version 5 was added additional to the standard version 4.

The Open-iSCSI stack was updated to enhance the iSCSI boot/install capability so that it is not limited to a single integrated network interface any more. This update changed the sysfs layout.

Support added for SB700 S/PATA

Integrated support for AMDFam11h (Griffin)

Integrated support for NFS locking of a clustered filesystem

Support for mount counting and last check timestamping for fsck -a on reiserfs was added.

AppArmor was updated to the latest version.

Wide UTF-8 character support was enabled for Aspell.

The following packages were added for better support of XEN management tools: gtk-vnc, virt-viewer

The HPI STONITH module of heartbeat was enabled.

Support for Intel(R) iAMT was added.

IPA Fonts were added.

The Firmware for Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN Cards was added.

Added Unicode text editor 'yudit' to edit and convert text of different languages.

Improved support for LVM and Device-Mapper based mirroring.

SuSEfirewall2 now autodetect bridge interfaces and permit traffic.

zSeries: AF_IUCV Protocol Support: Enables IUCV communication via the BSD socket interface between Linux VM guests or between a Linux guest and CMS. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8289-04, Chapter 21. AF_IUCV protocol support.

zSeries: Kernel NSS support: Saves memory when running multiple Linux server with the same kernel under z/VM by allowing to save the kernel in a Named Saved Segment in z/VM. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8289-04, Chapter 13. Shared kernel support.

zSeries: ETR (external time reference) Support: Enables Linux images to synchronize with parallel Sysplex or GDPS by providing z/OS compatible external timer reference and maintaining data consistency groups for XRC data mover. More info: The ETR support introduces a new kernel parameter "etr" that is used to set the initial state for the online attribute of the two ports. The syntax of the parameter is "etr=[on | off | port0 | port1]". The default is "off". The ETR support introduces a number of sysfs-attributes. There are two time synchronization ports etr0 and etr1, which can be accessed via sysfs under: /sys/devices/system/etr

zSeries: Dynamic CHPID reconfiguration via SCLP: Allows to react to hardware changes and to configure path for the LPAR from the Linux system. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8289-04, Chapter 2, Configuring a CHPID on LPAR and Chapter 32, chchp and lschp.

zSeries: skb scatter-gather support for large incoming messages: Improves network throughput and reliability (avoid memory allocation failures in network subsystem) with large MTU sizes and jumbo frames. In particular this renders HiperSockets highly available even for large messages.

zSeries: FCP performance data collection - adapter statistics: Provides more hardware performance metrics which are available from the FCP adapter on IBM System z9 and z10.

zSeries: Support for Processor Degradation: Generates uevents for all CPUs if the CPU-capability changes. This can happen e.g. because the CPUs are overheating. The CPU-capability can be read via: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuN/capability. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8289-04, Chapter 2, CPU capability change.

zSeries: Provide Linux process data into z/VM monitor stream: Allows to consolidate monitor data from multiple z/VM guest with z/VM monitor tools. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8289-04, Chapters 4, 14, 15, 16 and 32 (mon_fsstatd and mon_procd).

zSeries: z/VM unit record device driver: Allows to access the z/VM reader from a running Linux system, useful for tasks like preparing the z/VM reader from Linux to install or to dump to the z/VM reader. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8289-04, Chapter 18. z/VM unit record device driver.

zSeries: STSI change for capacity provisioning: Make the permanent and temporary capacity information as provided by the STSI instruction of the IBM System z10 available to user space via /proc/sysinfo.

zSeries: Hotplug daemon for CPU and memory management: New daemon in s390-tools 1.6.3 that manages CPU- and memory-resources based on a set of rules. Depending on the workload CPUs can be enabled or disabled. The amount of memory can be increased or decreased exploiting the Cooperative Memory Management (CMM1) feature. See: man -a cpuplugd. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8411-00, Chapters 36 (cpuplugd - Activate CPUs and control memory Use).

zSeries: HiperSockets MAC layer routing support: Enables Layer-2 support in HiperSockets, including IPv6 for Layer-2, on the new z10 hardware. Note that connecting Layer-2 and Layer-3 hosts is not supported. To use it, echo 1 > layer2 attribute before setting the HiperSockets device online.

zSeries: Support two OSA ports per CHPID: Exploits the next OSA adapter generation offering two ports within one CHPID, giving you four ports per card ("Four-port exploitation on OSA-Express3 GbE SX and LX"). The additional port number 1 can be specified with the qeth sysfs-attribute "portno". More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8411-00, Chapters 9 (Specifying the relative port number).

zSeries: In kernel and software Support for CP Assist Instructions AES & SHA: Enables the crypto driver and library to exploit the new z10 hardware encryption providing performance enhancements for AES-192, AES-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512.

zSeries: Linux CPU Node Affinity: Improve performance of the system by scheduling processes to the optimal node where the CPU is associated, exploiting the new z10 CPU node topology. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8411-00, Chapters 2 (Examining the CPU topology).

zSeries: Large Page Support: Enables better system performance with large memory footprints like in Java or database workloads by exploiting the new z10 hardware feature to be able to use large memory pages (1 MB). See: Linux kernel source tree under Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt. More info: Device Drivers, Features, and Commands - SC33-8411-00, Chapters 28.

Updated heartbeat to version 2.1.3

Updated ocfs2-tools to version 1.4.0

Updated bin86 tools to version 0.16.17

Updated dhcp6 to version 1.0.4

Updated dmapi to version 2.2.8

Updated heartbeat to version 2.1.3, including a resource agent for iSCSI initiator and hooks to SAP resource agents

Updated iprutils to version 2.2.8

Updated irqbalance to version 0.55 for better NUMA awareness

Updated iscsitarget to version 0.4.15

Updated k3b to version 1.0.4

Updated ksh to version 0.93s+, changed signal handler for SIGINT and SIGQUIT to be compatible with the behavior on other operating systems and shells

Updated libica to version 1.3.8

Updated libvirt to version 0.3.3 including mDNS and NUMA support

Updated lvspd to version 1.4.0

Updated microcode_ctl to version 20080108

Updated mod_mono to version 1.2.5

Updated NetworkManager to version 0.6.5

Updated nss_ldap to version 259

Updated openCryptoki to version 2.2.4.1

Updated openhpi to version 2.10.2

Updated PHP to version 5.2.5

Updated QT to version 4.3.4 for LSB compliance

Updated scrim to version 1.4.7

Updated sysstat to version 8.0.4

Updated virt-manager to version 0.5.3

Updated XEN to version 3.2

Updated xfsdump to version 2.2.46

Updated xfsprogs to version 2.9.4

Updated xntp to version 4.2.4p3

Updated xsp to version 1.2.5

Installation using Persistent Device names

If you plan to add additional storage devices to your system after the OS installation, we strongly recommend to use persistent device names for all storage devices during installation. The installer by default uses the kernel device names.

How to proceed:

During installation, enter the partitioner. For each partition, select "Edit" and go to the "FStab Options" dialog. Any mount option except "Device name" provide you persistent devicenames.

To switch an already installed system to using persistent device names, proceed as described above for all existing partitions. In addition, rerun the boot loader module in YaST to switch the bootloader to using the persistent device name also. Just start the module and select "Finish" to write the new proposed configuration to disk. This needs to be done before adding new storage devices.

For further information please look at http://en.opensuse.org/Persistant_Storage_Device_Names.

MD Devices on top of iSCSI not possible

iSCSI devices cannot be used for Linux Software RAID. Using MD devices on top of iSCSI triggers a cyclic dependency that leads to a crash.

Using qla3xxx and qla4xxx driver at the same time

QLogic iSCSI Expansion Card for IBM BladeCenter provides both Ethernet and iSCSI functions. Some parts on the card are shared by both functions. The current qla3xxx (ethernet) and qla4xxx (iSCSI) drivers support Ethernet and iSCSI function individually. They do not support using both functions at the same time. Using both Ethernet and iSCSI functions at the same time may hang the device and cause data lost and filesystem corruptions on iSCSI devices or network disruptions on Ethernet.

Using iSCSI Disks When Installing

To use iSCSI disks during installation it is necessary to add the following parameter to the kernel parameter line: withiscsi=1

During installation, an additional screen appears that provides the possibility to attach iSCSI disks to the system and use them in the installation process.

Since SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 booting from an iSCSI server on i386, x86_64 and ppc is supported, when an iSCSI enabled firmware is used.

On ppc, a single bootfile (zImage.initrd) instead of yaboot is used.

Using EDD Information for Storage Device Identification

If you want to use EDD information (/sys/firmware/edd/<device>) to identify your storage devices, change the installer default settings using an additional kernel parameter.

Requirements:

Procedure:

Automatic installation with Autoyast in an LPAR (zSeries)

For automatic installation with Autoyast in an LPAR, it is required, that the parmfile used for such an installation has blank characters at the beginning and the end of each line (the first line need not to start with a blank). The number of character in one line should not exceed 80 characters.

Adding DASD or zFCP disks during installation (zSeries)

The adding of DASD or zFCP disks is not only possible during the installation workflow, but also when the installation proposal is shown. To add disks at that stage please click on the "Expert" tab and scroll down. There the DASD and/or zFCP entry is shown. These added disks are not shown in the partitioner. To get the disks into the partitioner, you have to click on the expert label and select "reread partition table". This may reset any previously entered information.

Creating LVM or EVMS Volumes with DASDs (zSeries)

If want to create a LVM or EVMS volume with DASDs that are not formatted or partitioned this will fail. The DASDs can be formatted in the DASD activation panel. Creating a partition can be done in the partitioner by hitting the [create] button and specifying "do not format" and removing any mountpoints indicated.

Hot-Add of Memory

Hot-Add-memory is currently only supported on the following machines:

If your machine is not listed, please call support, whether the machine has been successfully tested. Else a maintenance update will explicitly mention the general availability of this feature.

Huge Page Memory support via HMC on POWER

Huge Page Memory support (16GB pages, enabled via HMC) is not yet supported under Linux. Problems occur if huge pages are assigned to a partition in combination with eHEA / eHCA adapters. eHEA: Network interfaces can't be setup if huge page memory is assigned to the same partition.

libhugetlbfs

The libhugetlbfs project shipped with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 is a preview of application provision with transparent access to system huge pages. While the library provides an application with easy access to huge pages when sufficient huge pages have been previously allocated on the system, additional development and testing is required to provide a stable transition to normal pages in a production environment.

Read-Only Root Filesystem

It is possible to run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Service Pack 2 on on a read-only root filesystem. Due to the huge number of possible configurations, this is currently not a supported scenario.

The /tmp and /var/tmp directories needs to be on a separate partition and cannot be mounted read-only.

After the installation has finished and all services are configured, login as root and do the following modifications:

Modify /etc/fstab and add "ro" to the mount options of the root filesystem entry.

   rm /etc/mtab
   ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab
   mkdir /var/lib/hwclock
   mv /etc/adjtime /var/lib/hwclock
   ln -s /var/lib/hwclock/adjtime /etc/adjtime
   # the following two steps are only necessary if you use dhcp:
   mv /etc/resolv.conf /var/lib/misc/
   ln -s /var/lib/misc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
   # Now mount root filesystem read-only and reboot
   mount -o remount,ro /
   reboot
   

The JFS filesystem is no longer supported for new installations. The kernel file system driver is still there, but YaST does not offer partitioning with JFS.

For the future strategy and development with respect to volume- and storage-management on SUSE Linux Enterprise System, please see: http://www.novell.com/linux/volumemanagement/strategy.html

The ippl package is deprecated and will be removed with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.

powertweak package is deprecated and will be removed with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.

CTC, ESCON, and IUCV IP interfaces are no longer officially supported. For compatibility reasons, they are still usable, but with the next release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the support of these interfaces will be dropped completely.

For reasons of compatibility with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, the mapped-base functionality is present in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. This functionality is used by 32-Bit applications that need a larger dynamic data space (such as database management systems).

With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, a similar functionality called flexmap is available. Because this is now the preferred way, mapped-base is deprecated and will vanish in future releases.

i586 and i686 Machine with more than 16 GB of Memory

Depending on the workload, i586 and i686 machines with 16GB-48GB of memory can run into instabilities. Machines with more than 48GB of memory are not supported at all. To run on such a machine, lower the memory with the mem= kernel boot option.

On such memory scenarious we strongly recommend to use a x86-64 with 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and run the x86 applications on it.

Bootloader and mount by UUID or LABEL

When the way the root device is mounted (by UUID or by label) is changed in YaST, the boot loader configuration needs to be saved again to make the change effective for the boot loader.

The "mount by" setting displayed in the YaST2 boot loader module is the setting that will be in effect after saving the configuration.

EVMS Volumes Might Not Appear When Using iSCSI

If you have installed and configured an iSCSI SAN and have created and configured EVMS Disks or Volumes on that iSCSI SAN, your EVMS volumes might not be visible or accessible. This problem is caused by EVMS starting before the iSCSI service. iSCSI must be started and running before any disks or volumes on the iSCSI SAN can be accessed.

To resolve this problem, enter either chkconfig evms on or chkconfig boot.evms on at the Linux server console of every server that is part of your iSCSI SAN. This ensures that EVMS and iSCSI start in the proper order each time your servers reboot.

cpio and files larger 4GB

cpio is not able to add files larger than 4GB to an archive.

KDE and IPv6 Support

By default, IPv6 support is not enabled for KDE. You can enable it using the /etc/sysconfig editor of YaST. This feature is disabled because IPv6 addresses are not properly supported by all Internet service providers and, as a consequence, would lead to error messages while browsing the Web and delays while displaying Web pages.

Installing/Updating on IBM System z9

When installing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 on a System z9, some restrictions apply through hardware or software. Some of these restrictions are part of these Release Notes. For an updated list, refer to http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/linux390/october2005_restrictions.html.

For IBM System z9 machines ensure to have MCF RJ9967101E or IBM System z9 GA3 base driver installed. Otherwise Linux reboot will not work.

Using Disks in z/VM (zSeries)

If SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 is installed on disks in z/VM, which reside on the same physical disk, the created access path (/dev/disk/by-id/) is not unique. The ID of a disk is the ID of the underlying disk. So if two or more disk are on the same physical disk, they all have the same ID.

To avoid this ambiguity, please use the access path by-path. This can be specified during the installation when the mount points are defined.

The above restriction does not apply for SLES10 SP2 (which has fix for Problem-ID 34345 and 43704), if you have the z/VM PTF for APAR VM64273, with which z/VM provides a unique identifier that allows to distinguish between virtual disks on the same real device. Udev rules that provide both old and new /dev/disk/by-id paths are included. To use the new IDs in your multipath setup, please replace the getuid_callout "/sbin/dasdinfo -u -b %n" with "/sbin/dasdinfo -x -b %n" in your multipath configuration for DASD devices. Please see the man page for the dasdinfo tool for additional information.

Local Mounts of iSCSI Shares

An iSCSI shared device should never be mounted directly on the local machine. In an OCFS2 environment, doing so causes all hardware to hard hang.

Restriction When Using cpint/hcp (zSeries)

When using the cpint/hcp interface with z/VM 5.1 or earlier, the guest should not have more than 2 GByte of storage. If the guest has more storage, the command may fail.

HP sx1000- and sx2000-based systems and multiple VGA adapters

HP sx1000- and sx2000-based systems, including rx7620, rx8620, rx7640, rx8640 and all Superdomes, only support the use of a single VGA device per hard partition. The usage of more than one VGA card causes a system hang or crash on all of this systems.

To prevent this on machines with more than one VGA adapter, either do not install the X server at all or configure it manually to use only a single VGA device.

YaST2 CD-Creator and YUM installation sources

The YaST2 CD-Creator module does not support YUM installation sources like our update server provides. For this reason, it is not possible to create a medium with updates included. If you want to create a medium with updates included, use YaST2 Product-Creator.

YaST2 Product-Creator is a successor of YaST2 CD-Creator. It includes a GUI for the kiwi imaging system. This way it is also possible to create a Live-CD, XEN image, etc. from the same configuration used in the CD Creator. The Product-Creator will get shipped together with the SDK.

glibc-debuginfo package on POWER

The glibc-debuginfo package doesn't set up the debug information files for certain processor-optimized versions of the libraries. This affects glibc debugging on the following POWER processors: POWER4, PPC970, POWER5+, POWER6x. To fix the problem, one needs to manually create the missing symbolic links using a sequence of commands like this:

Obtain root priviledges:

   $ /bin/su -
   

Go to the 32-bit debuginfo directory:

   # cd /usr/lib/debug/lib
   # ln -s ppc970 power4
   # ln -s power5 power5+
   # ln -s power6 power6x
   

Go to the 64-bit debuginfo directory:

   # cd /usr/lib/debug/lib64
   # ln -s ppc970 power4
   # ln -s power5 power5+
   # ln -s power6 power6x
   # ln -s . tls
   

Bugfixes

This Service Pack contains all the latest bugfixes for each package released via the maintenance Web since the GA version.

Security Fixes

This Service Pack contains all the latest security fixes for each package released via the maintenance Web since the GA version.

Program Temporary Fixes

This Service Pack contains all the PTFs (Program Temporary Fix) for each package released via the maintenance Web since the GA version which were suitable for integration into the maintained common codebase.

Locale Settings in ~/.i18n

If you are not satisfied with locale system defaults, change the settings in ~/.i18n. Entries in ~/.i18n override system defaults from /etc/sysconfig/language. Use the same variable names but without the RC_ namespace prefixes, for example, use LANG instead of RC_LANG. For information about locales in general, see "Language and Country-Specific Settings" in the Reference Manual.

Configuration of kdump

The kernel is crashing or otherwise misbehaving and a kernel core dump needs to be captured for analysis.

A description on how to setup kdump can be found under the following URL: http://www.novell.com/support/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=3374462&sliceId=SAL_Public

Realtime Applications

When running real-time applications on larger systems, lower maximum latencies can be achieved by employing the new disable_buffer_lru kernel command-line option. This disables the per-CPU LRU in the buffer cache, and may thus decrease overall filesystem performance.

JPackage Standard for Java Packages

Java packages are changed to follow the JPackage Standard (http://www.jpackage.org/). Read the documentation in /usr/share/doc/packages/jpackage-utils/ for information.

Loading unsupported kernel drivers

To load unsupported kernel drivers automatically during boot, set the sysconfig variable LOAD_UNSUPPORTED_MODULES_AUTOMATICALLY in /etc/sysconfig/hardware/config to "yes".

Nonexecutable Stack

Already introduced for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on the x86-64 (AMD64) architecture with 64-bit kernels, the Linux kernel in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server also supports nonexecutable stack (NX) on x86 for CPUs that support it (Intel Prescott and AMD64) with 32-bit kernels. For this to work, the kernel with PAE support, kernel-bigsmp, must be installed. Go into YaST and install that kernel instead of your default kernel. For 64-bit kernels, all kernels support NX.

The nonexecutable stack improves the security of your system. Many security vulnerabilities are stack overflows, where an attacker overwrites the stack of your program by feeding oversized data to the application that fails to properly check the length. Depending on the details of the program, with nonexecutable stack, these vulnerabilities may either not be exploitable (and only crash the program, resulting in a DoS) or at least be significantly harder to exploit.

Some applications do require executable stacks. The compiler detects this during compilation and marks the binaries accordingly. The kernel enable an executable stack for them to allow them to work.

On x86-64, to provide a higher level of security, the user can pass noexec=on on the kernel command line. The kernel then uses a nonexecutable stack unconditionally and also marks the data section of a program nonexecutable. This provides a higher protection level than just the nonexecutable stack, but potentially causes problems for some applications. Novell has not found any problems during testing the most commonly used applications and services. Because it is not the default, this has not been tested as extensively as the stack protection alone, so Novell only recommends this setup for servers after the administrator has verified that all needed services continue to function properly.

Read the READMEs on the CDs.

Get the detailed changelog information about a particular package from the RPM:

rpm --changelog -qp <FILENAME>.rpm
    

<FILENAME>. is the name of the RPM.

Check the ChangeLog file in the top level of CD1 for a chronological log of all changes made to the updated packages.

Find more information in the docu directory of CD1 of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 CDs. This directory includes PDF versions of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 startup and preparation guides.

http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles10/ contains additional or updated documentation for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.

Visit http://www.novell.com/linux/ for the latest Linux product news from SUSE/Novell and http://www.novell.com/linux/source/ for additional information on the source code of SUSE Linux Enterprise products.