Red Hat Docs  >  Manuals  >  Red Hat Linux Manuals  >  Red Hat Linux 7.1  > 

Red Hat Linux 7.1 Release Notes
PrevNext

System-Related Enhancements and Changes

There are many features new to Red Hat Linux 7.1 that are not part of the installation process. Some new features are server-oriented programs, while others are new applications or desktop environment changes. This list will provide a bit more information about what to expect from Red Hat Linux 7.1 once you are actually using the OS.

  1. Upgraded Core System Components — The following major system components have been upgraded in Red Hat Linux 7.1:

    1. kernel 2.4.x (with additional fixes)

    2. glibc 2.2.2

    3. KDE 2.1.1

    4. XFree86 4.0.3 with the Xft anti-aliased font render extension

    5. GCC 2.96-RH, with many new fixes since the original 7.0 release

  2. Improved USB Support — The 2.4 kernel gives Red Hat Linux 7.1 more mature USB support than previous versions of Red Hat Linux. It contains more drivers, and includes support for storage devices such as CD-ROMs. It also supports hot-pluggable or removable devices — if a supported device is plugged in after booting, the necessary drivers will load automatically.

  3. Removable media drives automatically added to /etc/fstab — Red Hat Linux 7.1 now includes the ability for users to mount and unmount removable media drives. This is done by the updfstab program (which is part of the kudzu boot-time hardware configurator). It adds and removes the necessary entries in /etc/fstab. Note that each entry managed by updfstab contains the new kudzu option — this acts as a token indicating that the entry may subsequently be removed; if you wish to permanently add such an entry to your fstab, simply remove the kudzu option.

    Hot-pluggable devices are handled through a combination of cardmgr, hotplug, updfstab, and pam_console_apply. When the kernel notifies hotplug or cardmgr that a new storage device has been attached to the system, updfstab is run to add the new entries to the fstab. Then, updfstab runs pam_console_apply, which uses the rules specified in /etc/security/console.perms to give the current console user access to the device.

    GNOME users who run magicdev will see device icons appear on their desktop automatically. magicdev regularly checks the timestamp of /etc/fstabc, and directs gmc to rescan devices when the fstab has changed. If you do not run magicdev, the Rescan Devices option on the root gmc menu (which appears when you right-click on the desktop) performs an equivalent function.

    KDE users will see similar functionality.

  4. New and Updated Drivers — Many drivers are new to Red Hat Linux 7.1, or have been upgraded as a result of switching to a 2.4-based kernel. Changes include:

    1. Updated Adaptec AIC7XXX SCSI driver

    2. IEEE1394 (FireWire(tm)) subsystem

    3. Adaptec starfire quad ethernet

    4. Aironet 802.11 WiFI ethernet

    5. National Semiconductor DP83810 ethernet

    6. ATM subsystem and various ATM drivers

    7. DECnet subsystem

    8. Cyclom 2X, DEFEA, and DEFPA FDDI

    9. IPv6 support

    10. NFS version 3

    11. iptables, an improved firewall layer

    12. Maestro3 sound

    13. Broadcom BCM5700 PCI-X 10/100/1000BASE-T controller

    14. IDE UltraDMA/66 and UltraDMA/100 contoller support

  5. 3D acceleration under XFree86 4.0.3 — A wide variety of 3DFX cards have been added to the list of cards supporting accelerated 3D graphics. In addition, Intel i810, Matrox G200, G400, G450 (NOTE: dual-head operation on the G450 is unsupported), and ATI Rage 128 based cards also support accelerated 3D graphics. Please note that 3D acceleration on ATI Radeon cards is not yet supported by XFree86 4.0.3.

  6. New Apache Configuration Tool — apacheconf:

    1. Helps manage virtual hosts in an intelligent fashion

    2. Configured via the Alchemist Data Library

  7. New BIND Configuration Tool — bindconf:

    1. Makes DNS configuration easier

    2. Configured via the Alchemist Data Library

  8. New Printing Configuration Tool — printconf:

    1. Filters are based on David Parson's magicfilter, the foomatic system, and the Linux Printing Database (http://linuxprinting.org).

    2. Supports over 500 printers

    3. Upgrades old systems configured with printtool

    4. Configured via the Alchemist Data Library

  9. Improvements to Red Hat Network, Software Manager service announced — Red Hat Network, and its client program Update Agent, have been extended for this release of Red Hat Linux. In addition, a new service — Software Manager — has been announced. This technology includes the following enhancements over the previous release:

    1. Update Agent now fully supports command-line operation.

    2. Text-mode configuration utility is included.

    3. Usage of the GUI mode can be disabled by specifying the —nox command line option.

    4. More intelligent resolution of complex chains of package inter-dependencies.

    5. —whatprovides and —solvedeps command line options allow querying of the Red Hat Network database to visually report package dependencies.

    6. —packagedir command line option allows a list of directories to be specified. These directories will be searched for packages when satisfying dependencies.

    7. Kernel upgrades can now be processed by Update Agent.

  10. Emacs/XEmacs site-start.d Directories — Emacs/XEmacs each support a site-start.d directory. Packages can now place emacs .el startup files in the appropriate directory, and they will be loaded when the editor starts. This eliminates the need to edit the site-start.el file directly. The directories are:

    1. /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d

    2. /usr/lib/xemacs/xemacs-packages/lisp/site-start.d

  11. New ADSL/ISDN Configuration Tool — internet-config is a replacement for adsl-config and isdn-config. It guides new users through setting up networking for these popular connection methods.

  12. PostgreSQL Upgrade-Related Notes — If you are upgrading from Red Hat Linux 6.2 or earlier, your existing databases must undergo a dump and restore cycle. The best way to do this is to use pg_dumpall(1) BEFORE upgrading to Red Hat Linux 7.1. After the upgrade, please see the README.rpm file in /usr/share/doc/postgresql*/.

    NoteNote
     

    Upgrading keeps the old binaries around (along with a helper script) after the upgrade, but doing the dump before the upgrade and restoring afterwards (after removing the old database) is highly recommended.

  13. OpenLDAP Upgrade-Related Notes — The on-disk storage format used by slapd, the standalone OpenLDAP server binary, has changed. Users upgrading LDAP servers from previous releases of Red Hat Linux will need to dump their directories to LDIF files using ldbmcat -n and re-import them into the new format using slapadd.

  14. IMAP server changes — The IMAP server now defaults to using its built-in SSL support instead of stunnel's tunneling support. Accordingly, the name of the certificate file used by imapd has changed from stunnel.pem to imapd.pem. Users upgrading from previous releases of Red Hat Linux will need to rename, copy, or create a symbolic link to their existing certificate.

  15. Sendmail — By default, sendmail 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, please edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and change DAEMON_OPTIONS to also listen on network devices, or comment out this option all together. You will need to regenerate /etc/sendmail.cf by running: 
    m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf

    NoteNote
     

    You must have the sendmail-cf package installed for this to work.

  16. Other package highlights:

    1. Ogg Vorbis audio encoder/decoder

    2. Mozilla Web browser

    3. LSB-compliant SGML and XML packages

    4. KDE 2.1 and KOffice

    5. BIND 9.x with DNSsec support and remote named control

    6. SSL support in links, slrn, OpenLDAP, and pine

    7. Pine 4.33

    8. Quanta HTML editor (on Powertools)

    9. Postfix and exim (on Powertools) include SSL/TLS support

    10. WINE (on Powertools) can directly execute Windows .exe binaries from Linux

  17. Deprecated Packages — the following packages are deprecated, and could disappear in a future release:

    1. AfterStep

    2. Netscape 4.x

    3. Qt 1.x

    4. KDE v1 compatibility libraries / build environment

    5. elm

    6. linuxconf

    7. ncpfs

    8. mars_nwe

PrevHomeNext
Installation-Related Enhancements and Changes Known Issues / Trouble Spots: