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Red Hat Linux 7.3 Release Notes

Copyright © 2002 by Red Hat, Inc.

Anaconda/Installer Notes

Boot Loader

On an upgrade, anaconda now defaults to upgrading your current boot loader configuration without creating a new one. If you are still using LILO and wish to migrate to using GRUB, you will need to select the creation of a new boot loader configuration when asked during the upgrade process.

Kickstart

There is a new directive named %include which can be used with kickstart. This allows you to include the contents of other files as a part of your kickstart configuration. These files should either exist in the installer's initial ramdisk (initrd) or be generated dynamically in the %pre section of the kickstart configuration.
For more information about anaconda and kickstart configuration, refer to the documentation located at /usr/share/doc/anaconda-7.3/.

Miscellaneous

The standalone upgrade mode (typing linux upgrade at the boot prompt) is no longer supported.
Installation from an NFS directory that contains all of the required ISO files is now supported. Additionally, if a file called updates.img exists in the directory from which you install, then it will be used for Anaconda updates.
Refer to the file install-methods.txt in the Anaconda RPM package for detailed information on the various ways to install Red Hat Linux, as well as how to apply Anaconda updates.
ISO images now have an md5sum embedded in them. To test the checksum integrity of an ISO image, type linux mediacheck at the installation boot prompt. The installation program will prompt you to insert a CD and select OK to perform the checksum operation. This checksum operation can be performed on any Red Hat Linux CD and in any order. It is strongly recommended to perform this operation on any Red Hat Linux CD that were created from downloaded ISO images. This procedure only works with CD-based installations.
The log file summarizing your installation is now located in /root as /root/install.log instead of /tmp/install.log. Upgrade logs have also been relocated to /root/upgrade.log.

Kernel Notes

Red Hat Linux 7.3 includes the 2.4.18 kernel as well as the following additions and modifications:

Improved scheduler for lower latency and better SMP performance
Support for 802.11Q (VLAN)
Support for S.M.A.R.T. ™ and other hard disk drive monitoring technologies; in certain cases, hard disk drives employing these technologies will be able to report failure to users ahead of time
LVM (Logical Volume Management) support
USB 2.0 support
LBA48/ATA133 support for drives > 137GB
Support for Cenatek Rocket Drive solid state disks
Older (pre-IDE era) CD-ROM drives are no longer supported.

Distribution General Notes

There are observed issues upgrading Red Hat Linux 6.x, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 systems running Ximian GNOME. The issue is caused by version overlap between the official Red Hat Linux RPMs and the Ximian RPMs. Please be aware that this is a configuration unsupported 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 methods. Failure to do so will result in an unstable GNOME configuration.
KDE has been updated to 3.0.0 and includes usability enhancements as well as some new applications and features.
Anti-aliased fonts may appear to be non-functioning after the upgrade to KDE 3.0.0. This issue is related to a feature addition: Due to the Qt 3.0 update, it is now possible to use anti-aliased and non-antialiased fonts at the same time in Qt applications. Since the default fonts for the KDE desktop environment are bitmap fonts and therefore can not be anti-aliased, just turning on the enable anti-aliased fonts button in KDE will not modify the look of all applications. To get anti-aliased fonts in menus, window titles, etc., change the fonts for these elements (for example, by replacing Helvetica with Helmet and Courier with Lucidatypewriter).
Red Hat Linux now includes a port of the Debian alternatives system, as a way to support multiple packages providing a particular service. Every binary/file that would be in common between the multiple packages is replaced with a symlink to /etc; this then resolves to the version of that file for the alternative in question. For example:
/usr/sbin/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta -> /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
These symlinks are added and managed by /usr/sbin/alternatives. See man 8 alternatives for more details
Currently, Red Hat Linux offers Sendmail and Postfix as two Mail Transport Agent (MTA) alternatives. For print daemon alternatives, the choices are LPRng and CUPS.
Note that the configurations for LPRng and CUPS are completely separate. If you switch from one printing system to another, you will have to reconfigure your printers. Similarly, postfix and sendmail have separate configuration files.
XFree86 has been updated to version 4.2.0. Included in this version is new support for the following graphics chipsets:
ATI Radeon 7500 (2D/3D), Radeon 8500 (2D)
ATI Radeon Mobility M6/M7 (2D/3D)
Intel i830 (2D/3D)
Matrox G550
nVidia nForce
3DLabs Permedia 4
Older S3 (non-Savage, non-ViRGE) chipsets
NOTE: The nVidia GeForce 4 chipset is not supported by the "nv" driver in XFree86 4.2.0. The XFree86 "vesa" driver, which uses a video card's VESA BIOS to initialize video modes, may work as a temporary workaround until official support is available in a future release.
Mozilla has been updated to 0.9.9. This release includes MathML support, javascript profiling, S/MIME support in mail and news, tabbed browsing, LDAP support in the address book, and a large number of bug fixes.
The Evolution mailer/calendar/contact manager has been added. Evolution includes POP, IMAP, and local mail support, iCalendar support for calendaring and scheduling, and integrated contact management and online tasklists.
MrProject, a project management tool, has been added. MrProject supports planning and tracking projects, including Gantt charts, dependencies, and resource allocations.
The GnomeMeeting video conferencing application has been added. GnomeMeeting is an H.323 compliant videoconferencing tool, which supports H.245 tunneling and also an audio-only mode.
Red Hat Linux now supports both Traditional and Simplified Chinese in addition to support for American English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
Support for DVD-R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RW drives has been included and is available in the dvdrtools package.
Formatting DocBook XML documents using the XSL stylesheet language is now possible. For more information, refer to the xmlto(1) manual page.
The DocBook document type definitions (DTDs) have been merged into one RPM package called docbook-dtds.
The gPhoto2 package has been added to the distribution. gPhoto2 is a software application and interface library for digital cameras. The gPhoto2 package also includes gtKam, a graphical digital camera interface that uses gPhoto2. Kamera, a Konqueror plugin for digital cameras, has been added, as well. The older gphoto application (0.4.3) is deprecated and may be removed in a future release.
The initscripts now disable DMA on IDE CD-ROMs by default. To enable it, make a /etc/sysconfig/harddisk<device> file that contains USE_DMA=1, where <device> is the device of your disk or CD-ROM (such as hdc).
/sbin/service now changes to the root directory before starting or stopping services. There are also changes in the way /sbin/service handles environment variables. For example, if an init script relies on special environment variables (PATH, etc.), the script needs to explicitly set these variables rather than expecting to inherit them.
The bcm5820 package has been replaced with the hwcrypto package. The hwcrypto package also includes support for the AEP 1000 cryptographic accelerator.
The xscanimage program has been deprecated and may be removed in a future release of Red Hat Linux. The xsane program should be used instead.
The rp3 package has been removed; to configure dial-up access use the redhat-config-network package.
The ircii package has been replaced with the epic package. epic is mostly compatible with ircii scripts and includes more features than ircii.
The mkkickstart package has been removed. The ksconfig program should be used instead; you can also edit the /root/anaconda-ks.cfg generated by the installer.
The patchutils package of utilities for manipulating patch files is now included. Patch files are often used in software development.
The autoconf253 and automake15 packages are included, which updates autoconf to version 2.53 and automake to version 1.5 for those who need updated development environments.
The glibc-kernheaders package has been added and will replace the kernel-headers package.
The postgresql package has been updated. To preserve your data, dump the data using the pg_dumpall command before upgrading, then restore the data after the upgrade is complete. Refer to the pg_dumpall(1) man page for more information.
The Red Hat Network Panel Applet is included on GNOME desktop panels by default. This applet allows you to receive Red Hat Network notices and download updates for your Red Hat Linux system. Note that the Red Hat Network Panel Applet does not appear on your GNOME desktop panel if you have upgraded from a previous version of Red Hat Linux. To add this to your panel, choose the following:
Main Menu => Applets => Monitors => Red Hat Network Alert Notification Tool