Red Hat Linux 9 Release Notes
Copyright (c) 2003 Red Hat, Inc.
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Hardware Requirements
The following information represents the minimum hardware requirements
necessary to successfully install Red Hat Linux 9:
CPU:
- Minimum: Pentium-class
- Recommended for text-mode: 200 MHz Pentium-class or better
- Recommended for graphical: 400 MHz Pentium II or better
Hard Disk Space (NOTE: Additional space will be required for user data):
- Custom Installation (minimum): 475MB
- Server (minimum): 850MB
- Personal Desktop: 1.7GB
- Workstation: 2.1GB
- Custom Installation (everything): 5.0GB
Memory:
- Minimum for text-mode: 64MB
- Minimum for graphical: 128MB
- Recommended for graphical: 192MB
Note that the compatibility/availability of other hardware components
(such as video and network cards) may be required for specific
installation modes and/or post-installation usage. For more information
about hardware compatibility, see the Red Hat Linux Hardware Compatibility
List at
http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/
Installation-Related Notes
This section outlines those issues that are related to Anaconda (the Red
Hat Linux installation program) and installing Red Hat Linux 9 in
general.
o The Red Hat Linux installation program has the ability to test the
integrity of the installation media. It works with the CD, DVD, hard
drive ISO, and NFS ISO installation methods. Red Hat recommends that
you test all installation media before starting the installation
process, and before reporting any installation-related bugs (many of
the bugs reported are actually due to improperly-burned CDs). To use
this test, type linux mediacheck at the boot: prompt.
o While most present-day computers are able to start the installation
process by booting directly from the first Red Hat Linux distribution
CD, some hardware configurations require the use of a boot diskette.
If your hardware requires a boot diskette, you should be aware of the
following change.
Red Hat Linux 9 uses a different boot diskette layout than
previous releases of Red Hat Linux. There is now a single boot
diskette image file (bootdisk.img) that is used to boot all systems
requiring a boot diskette.
If you are performing anything other than an installation from an IDE
or USB device, you will be asked to insert a driver diskette created
from one of the following image files:
- drvnet.img - For network installations
- drvblock.img - For SCSI installations
- pcmciadd.img - For PCMCIA installations
As with previous releases of Red Hat Linux, these image files can be
found in the images/ directory on the first installation CD.
o Also in the images/ directory is the boot.iso file. This file is an
ISO image that can be used to boot the Red Hat Linux installation
program. It is a handy way to start network-based installations
without having to use multiple diskettes. To use boot.iso, your
computer must be able to boot from its CD-ROM drive, and its BIOS
settings must be configured to do so. You must then burn boot.iso onto
a recordable/rewriteable CD-ROM.
o The rescue mode environment (accessed by booting with the "linux
rescue" boot-time command) has been enhanced. Numerous requested
utilities have been added, and there is now support for activating
network interfaces. Commands needed for SCSI tape support are also
available. Please test this environment and send us your feedback.
If you chose to mount an existing installation in rescue mode and you
have man pages installed on that existing installation, the man
command will work while in rescue mode.
o The Red Hat Linux installation program now detects existing Red Hat
products on your system, and will prompt you to select the product you
would like to upgrade. You will also have the option of performing a
complete re-installation of the system instead of upgrading. Please
report any problems you may experience with this new feature.
If the contents of your /etc/redhat-release file has been changed from
the default, your Red Hat Linux installation may not be found when
attempting an upgrade to Red Hat Linux 9.
You can relax some of the checks against this file by entering the
following at the boot: prompt:
linux upgradeany
Use the upgradeany option only if your existing Red Hat Linux
installation was not detected.
o isolinux is now used for booting the Red Hat Linux installation CD. If
you have problems booting from the CD, you can write the
images/bootdisk.img image to a diskette according to the directions in
the Red Hat Linux Installation Guide.
o During a graphical installation, you can now press SHIFT-Print Screen
and a screenshot of the current installation screen will be taken.
These are stored in the following directory:
/root/anaconda-screenshots/
The screenshots can be accessed once the newly-installed system is
rebooted.
o The parted disk partition manipulation program has been upgraded to
version 1.6.
o Users of Red Hat Linux 6.2 that want to upgrade their system to Red
Hat Linux 9 must first have all errata updates applied before
starting the upgrade process. The most straightforward way to
accomplish this is to use Red Hat Network. A Red Hat Linux 6.2 system
that is not completely up-to-date will not upgrade successfully to Red
Hat Linux 9.
o Text mode installations using a serial terminal work best when the
terminal supports UTF-8. Under UNIX and Linux, Kermit supports UTF-8.
For Windows, Kermit '95 works well. Non-UTF-8 capable terminals will
work as long as only English is used during installation. An enhanced
serial display can be used by passing "utf8" as a boot-time option to
the installation program. For example:
linux console=ttyS0 utf8
General Notes
This section describes post-installation issues.
o There have been issues observed when upgrading Red Hat Linux 6.<x>,
7.<x>, 8.0, and 9 systems running Ximian GNOME. The issue is
caused by version overlap between the official Red Hat Linux RPMs and
the Ximian RPMs. This configuration is not supported by Red Hat. You
have several choices in resolving this issue:
1) You may remove Ximian GNOME from your Red Hat Linux system prior to
upgrading Red Hat Linux.
2) You may upgrade Red Hat Linux, and then immediately reinstall
Ximian GNOME.
3) You may upgrade Red Hat Linux, and then immediately remove all
remaining Ximian RPMs, and replace them with the corresponding Red Hat
Linux RPMs.
You must resolve the version overlap using one of the above choices.
Failure to do so will result in an unstable GNOME configuration.
o There has been some confusion regarding font-related issues under the
X Window System in recent versions of Red Hat Linux. At the present
time, there are two font subsystems, each with different
characteristics:
- The original (15+ year old) subsystem is referred to as the "core X
font subsystem". Fonts rendered by this subsystem are not
anti-aliased, are handled by the X server, and have names like:
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
The newer font subsystem is known as "fontconfig", and allows
applications direct access to the font files. Fontconfig is often used
along with the "Xft" library, which allows applications to render
fontconfig fonts to the screen with antialiasing. Fontconfig uses more
human-friendly names like:
Luxi Sans-10
Over time, fontconfig/Xft will replace the core X font subsystem. At
the present time, applications using the Qt 3 or GTK 2 toolkits (which
would include KDE and GNOME applications) use the fontconfig and Xft
font subsystem; most everything else uses the core X fonts.
In the future, Red Hat may support only fontconfig/Xft in place of the
XFS font server as the default local font access method.
NOTE: Two exceptions to the font subsystem usage outlined above are
OpenOffice.org (which uses its own font rendering technology), and
Mozilla (which uses fontconfig, but not GTK 2).
If you wish to add new fonts to your Red Hat Linux 9 system,
you must be aware that the steps necessary depend on which font
subsystem is to use the new fonts. For the core X font subsystem, you
must:
1. Create the /usr/share/fonts/local/ directory (if it doesn't already
exist):
mkdir /usr/share/fonts/local/
If you had to create /usr/share/fonts/local/, you must then add it to
the X font server (xfs) path:
chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/local/
2. Copy the new font file into /usr/share/fonts/local/
3. Update the font information by issuing the following command:
ttmkfdir -d /usr/share/fonts/local/ -o
/usr/share/fonts/local/fonts.scale
4. Reload the xfs font server using the following command:
service xfs reload
Adding new fonts to the fontconfig font subsystem is more
straightforward; the new font file only needs to be copied into the
/usr/share/fonts/ directory (individual users can modify their
personal font configuration by copying the font file into the
~/.fonts/ directory).
After the new font has been copied, use fc-cache to update the font
information cache:
fc-cache <directory>
(Where <directory> would be either the /usr/share/fonts/ or ~/.fonts/
directories.)
Individual users may also install fonts graphically, by browsing
fonts:/// in Nautilus, and dragging the new font files there.
NOTE: If the font filename ends with ".gz", it has been compressed
with gzip, and must be decompressed (with the gunzip command) before
the fontconfig font subsystem can use the font.
o Due to the transition to the new font system based on fontconfig/Xft,
GTK+ 1.2 applications are not affected by any changes made via the
Font Preferences dialog. For these applications, a font can be
configured by adding the following lines to the file ~/.gtkrc.mine:
style "user-font" {
fontset = "<font-specification>"
}
widget_class "*" style "user-font"
(Where <font-specification> represents a font specification in the
style used by traditional X applications, such as
"-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*".)
o New features in XFree86 include:
- Xcursor - New mouse cursor code, allowing color, antialiased, alpha
blended (translucency), animated, themeable, multi-size mouse pointers
to be used.
- ATI Radeon 9000, 9100, FireGL 8700, 8800 3D/2D/Xv support is now
available. ATI Radeon 9500 Pro and 9700 Pro, as well as ATI FireGL X1
and Z1 are now supported 2D-only. Support for over 30 additional ATI
Rage 128 chipsets have been added to this release, which should cover
all existing Rage 128 chipsets now.
- Intel i845, i852, i855, and i865 integrated video support
(2D/3D/Xvideo), and improved Intel i830 video support. The Intel video
driver has been completely restructured and largely rewritten to be
much more robust, and support more hardware. Many bugs have been
fixed, as well as many workarounds for broken laptop and motherboard
BIOSs that limit memory to 1Mb.
- New support for NVIDIA GeForce 4, nForce, GeForce 2 Go, and various
other NVIDIA hardware. Also, the nv driver has been enhanced to
attempt to autodetect unknown NVIDIA chips that aren't officially
supported, but can probably be coaxed to work anyway (albeit not
officially supported) by treating them similarly to one of the other
supported chips in the same family. The nv driver, as in previous
releases, remains 2D only.
- At the time these release notes were finalized, NVIDIA's binary-only
accelerated 3D drivers are not currently compatible with Red Hat Linux
9. NVIDIA is aware of the problem; watch the NVIDIA website
for updates regarding this situation.
- Updated Savage driver which supports the newest Savage video
chipsets, and fixes various bugs.
- A brand new driver for the National Semiconductor Geode chipset,
nsc, is provided.
- Many other video driver updates and improvements have been made.
- Many new input drivers including fpit, palmax, ur98 and others have
been added.
o By default, the Sendmail mail transport agent (MTA) does not accept
network connections from any host other than the local computer. If
you want to configure Sendmail as a server for other clients, you must
edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and change the DAEMON_OPTIONS line to also
listen on network devices (or comment out this option entirely using
the dnl comment delimiter). You must then regenerate
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf by running the following command (as root):
make -C /etc/mail
Note that you must have the sendmail-cf package installed for this to
work.
o CUPS is now the default print spooler, and redhat-config-printer is
the recommended tool for configuring it. It may be launched from the
System Settings menu, using the Printing menu entry. LPRng is still
provided, and upgrades from previous installations using LPRng will
continue to use it.
o GNOME Print Manager, a simple graphical print queue management tool,
is now included. It may be launched from the System Tools menu, using
the Print Manager menu entry. In addition, when a print job is in the
queue, an icon will appear in the panel's system notification area.
o Red Hat Linux 9 includes the Native POSIX Thread Library
(NPTL), a new implementation of POSIX threads for Linux. This library
provides performance improvements and increased scalability for i686
or better processors.
This thread library is designed to be binary compatible with the old
LinuxThreads implementation; however, applications that rely on the
places where the LinuxThreads implementation deviates from the POSIX
standard will need to be fixed. Notable differences include:
- Signal handling has changed from per-thread signal handling to POSIX
process signal handling.
- getpid() returns the same value in all threads.
- Thread handlers registered with pthread_atfork are not run if
vfork() is used - no manager thread
Applications that are known to have problems using NPTL include:
- Sun JRE prior to version 1.4.1
- IBM JRE
If an application does not work properly with NPTL, it can be run
using the old LinuxThreads implementation by setting the following
environment variable:
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=<kernel-version>
The following versions are available:
- 2.4.1 - Linuxthreads with floating stacks
- 2.2.5 - Linuxthreads without floating stacks
NPTL support for all dynamically-linked applications can be disabled
by using the following boot-time option:
nosysinfo
o A new system message has been added to Red Hat Linux 9:
application bug: <app-name>(<app-pid>) has SIGCHLD set to SIG_IGN but
calls wait(). (see the NOTES section of 'man 2 wait'). Workaround
activated.
This message (which is displayed on the system console and/or in the
system log files) indicates that the application is not completely
standards compliant with respect to its handling of child processes.
If you see this message, you should alert the application's
developers.
o Python has been compiled with UCS4 support (Unicode characters
represented on 4 bytes) as opposed to UCS2. UCS4 allows one to
represent characters outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane. Certain
third-party libraries may stop working because of this change;
recompiling these libraries should be sufficient to resolve the
problem. Please note that "pure" python modules (whose code is written
in python) or compiled modules that do not directly use Unicode are
not affected by this change.
o The fileutils, textutils, sh-utils, and stat packages have been
replaced by the newer coreutils package.
o The RPMs containing the Network Administration Tool have changed names
and functions. The RPM redhat-config-network contains the tool's
graphical user interface, while redhat-config-network-tui contains the
tool itself (along with its text-based user interface).
o Support for XHTML1 - the reformulation of HTML in XML - has been
improved. This has been done by adding the xhtml1-dtd package,
installing the DTDs in the system catalog, and adding native support
in the libxml2 and xsltproc tools.
o The redhat-switchmail command and package have been renamed
redhat-switch-mail. The redhat-switchmail-gnome package has been
renamed redhat-switch-mail-gnome.
o The Oprofile system-wide profiler has been added to Red Hat Linux
9. OProfile is a programmer's tool for analyzing system
performance, using special hardware built into many modern computers.
Documentation for OProfile exists in the oprofile package; after
installing Red Hat Linux 9, issue the command rpm -qd oprofile
to obtain a listing of the available documentation. See the OProfile
website at
http://oprofile.sourceforge.net for more details.
o GDB has been enhanced to allow debugging information for applications
to be read from separate files. This makes it possible to extract
debugging information from binaries and place them in a supplemental
package. During the development of Red Hat Linux 9,
"debuginfo" packages were generated for nearly every package by
implementing special RPM macros. By default, the RPM macro
configuration in Red Hat Linux 9 generates "debuginfo"
packages. If you are building packages and do not want to generate
"debuginfo" packages, add the following to your ~/.rpmmacros file:
%define debug_package %{nil}
Package Changes
The following packages have been added to Red Hat Linux 9:
- bluez-libs - Libraries for Bluetooth(TM) utility programs
- bluez-utils - Bluetooth utility programs
- bogl - Graphics library for framebuffers; used by the Red Hat Linux
installation program
- ckermit - Replaces gkermit
- coreutils - Replaces fileutils, textutils, sh-utils and stat
- desktop-printing - Drag-and-drop printing and print job icon
- devlabel - Support for persistent storage device access
- elfutils - Replaces libelf
- fontilus - Font viewer for Nautilus
- fonts-hebrew - Hebrew fonts
- gnome-icon-theme - Icons for base GNOME environment
- gnome-themes - Collection of themes for GNOME environment
- gstreamer - Multimedia framework library
- gstreamer-plugins - Input and output plugins for gstreamer
- gthumb - Graphics viewer
- hpoj - HP OfficeJet support
- jwhois - Replaces whois
- libgnomeprint22 - Updated libraries
- libgnomeprintui22 - Updated libraries
- libgsf - Library for reading/writing structured files
- nautilus-cd-burner - CD burning support for Nautilus
- nautilus-media - Audio playing support for Nautilus
- openssl096b - Compatibility maintenance package
- postgresql-odbc - ODBC support for PostgreSQL
- postgresql72-libs - PostgreSQL 7.2 compatibility libraries
- printman - Print queue management
- pyorbit - Replaces orbit-python
- redhat-config-samba - Samba configuration tool
- redhat-switch-mail - Renamed from redhat-switchmail
- soup - SOAP implementation library
- startup-notification - Support for busy cursor
- subversion - Version control system
- tsclient - GUI client for VNS and Windows Terminal Server
- ttmkfdir - Separated from XFree86
- vconfig - VLAN (802.1q) configuration program
- xhtml1-dtds - XHTML1 support
The following packages have been removed from Red Hat Linux 9:
- WindowMaker - Developer resource constraints
- Xft - Integrated into XFree86
- Xtest - No longer required by Anaconda
- anonftp - functionality pulled into vsftpd package
- bdflush - No longer required (needed by 2.2 kernels only)
- fileutils - Replaced by coreutils
- fortune-mod - Unclear copyright status
- gkermit - Replaced by ckermit
- ipvsadm - No longer part of Red Hat Linux product profile
- kbdconfig - Replaced by redhat-config-keyboard
- kernel-uml - Experimental package, removed
- ksymoops - No longer required by kernel
- libelf - Replaced by elfutils
- librpm404 - No longer required compatibility library
- libxml10 - No longer required compatibility library
- mouseconfig - Replaced by redhat-config-mouse
- openldap12 - No longer required compatibility library
- openssl095a - No longer required compatibility library
- orbit-python - Replaced by pyorbit
- php-dbg-base - Not used within distribution
- php-dbg-client - Not used within distribution
- php-dbg-server - Not used within distribution
- redhat-switchmail - Renamed to redhat-switch-mail
- rhmask - Red Hat no longer distributes rhmask files
- rpm2html - Deprecated by author
- sh-utils - Replaced by coreutils
- stat - Replaced by coreutils
- textutils - Replaced by coreutils
- timeconfig - Replaced by redhat-config-date
- whois - Replaced by jwhois
- wine - Developer resource constraints
- wmapm - Part of Windowmaker removal
- wmclock - Part of Windowmaker removal
- wmix - Part of Windowmaker removal
- wu-ftpd - vsftpd is the recommended FTP daemon
- xtoolwait - Not used within distribution
The following packages have been deprecated, and may be removed from a
future release of Red Hat Linux:
- pine - License-related issues
- LPRng - CUPS is the recommended printing solution
- Glide3 - Multi-platform issues
- lilo - GRUB is the recommended bootloader
- sndconfig - No longer required by mainstream hardware
- ncpfs - No longer part of Red Hat Linux product profile
- mars-nwe - No longer part of Red Hat Linux product profile
Kernel Notes
This section covers issues that are related to the Red Hat Linux 9
kernel.
o Special Note: The ACL support added to the kernel in the first two
public beta releases proved to be unstable and caused the kernel to
regress. Red Hat has therefore removed that ACL support from the
kernel for Red Hat Linux 9. Kernel engineers will continue
work on improving the ACL support, which will be available in a future
release. The attr and acl packages needed to support ACLs are still
included to make it easier for users and developers who wish to test
ACLs. Red Hat may, at our discretion, provide ACL support for this
release of Red Hat Linux by means of an upgrade, if future testing
demonstrates that the ACL support has sufficiently improved in
quality.
o The apic boot-time option allowing installation on systems with the
Intel 440GX chipset has been removed because it caused a conflict with
many newer systems: it caused SMM (System Management Mode) not to
function, or to function incorrectly, causing installation on those
systems to fail. Removing the apic boot-time option enables these
newer systems to install successfully.
A different workaround has been provided that allows at least some
systems with the Intel 440GX chipset to boot; this workaround is
automatically enabled, and requires no action on your part. If you
have an Intel 440GX-based system and are unable to install Red Hat
Linux 9 but a previous release of Red Hat Linux installs
correctly, please file a bug report, and include the output (running
on the previous release, of course) of the dmidecode program, run as
root, with your bug report. Note however, that it will not be possible
to install Red Hat Linux 9 at all.
Systems with the 440GX chipset are supported only on a best-effort
basis. Therefore, we welcome bug reports regarding systems with the
440GX chipset, but may or may not be able to resolve them.
o The kernel support for the new NPTL feature changes several internal
kernel programming interfaces significantly. As a result, several
external kernel modules may not compile without modifications to match
the new interfaces. Examples currently include the NVIDIA and ATI 3D
modules, as well as any other modules that use kernel threads and/or
signals.
