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Technical Notes

4. Storage and Filesystems

The ext4 Filesystem
The ext4 file system is a scalable extension of the ext3 file system, which was the default file system of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. Ext4 is now the default file system of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Because of delayed allocation and other performance optimizations, ext4's behavior of writing files to disk is different from ext3. In ext4, a program's writes to the file system are not guaranteed to be on-disk unless the program issues an fsync() call afterwards.
Further information on the allocation features of ext4 is available in the Storage Administration Guide
CIFS servers that require plaintext passwords
Some Common Internet File System (CIFS) servers require plaintext passwords for authentication. Support for plaintext password authentication can be enabled using the command:
echo 0x37 > /proc/fs/cifs/SecurityFlags

Warning

This operation can expose passwords by removing password encryption.
Event Tracing in GFS2
GFS2's event tracing is provided via the generic tracing infrastructure. The events are designed to be useful for debugging purposes. Note, however that it is not guaranteed that the GFS2 events will remain the same throughout the lifetime of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Further details on GFS2's glocks and event tracing can be found in the following 2009 Linus Symposium paper: http://kernel.org/doc/ols/2009/ols2009-pages-311-318.pdf
mpi-selector
The mpi-selector package has been deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. environment-modules is now used to select which Message Passing Interface (MPI) implementation is to be used.

Note

The man page for the module command contains detailed documentation for the environment-modules package.
To return a list of what modules are available, use:
module avail
To load or unload a module use the following commands:
module load <module-name>module unload <module-name>
To emulate the behavior of mpi-selector, the module load commands must be place in the shell init script (e.g. /.bashrc) to load the modules every login.

4.1. Technology Previews

fsfreeze
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 includes fsfreeze as a Technology Preview. fsfreeze is a new command that halts access to a filesystem on disk. fsfreeze is designed to be used with hardware RAID devices, assisting in the creation of volume snapshots. Further details on fsfreeze are in the fsfreeze(8) man page.
DIF/DIX support
DIF/DIX, is a new addition to the SCSI Standard and a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. DIF/DIX increases the size of the commonly used 512-byte disk block from 512 to 520 bytes, adding the Data Integrity Field (DIF). The DIF stores a checksum value for the data block that is calculated by the Host Bus Adapter (HBA) when a write occurs. The storage device then confirms the checksum on receive, and stores both the data and the checksum. Conversely, when a read occurs, the checksum can be checked by the storage device, and by the receiving HBA.
The DIF/DIX hardware checksum feature must only be used with applications that exclusively issue O_DIRECT I/O. These applications may use the raw block device, or the XFS file system in O_DIRECT mode. (XFS is the only filesystem that does not fall back to buffered IO when doing certain allocation operations.) Only applications designed for use with O_DIRECT I/O and DIF/DIX hardware should enable this feature. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 includes the Emulex LPFC driver version 8.3.5.17, introducing support for DIF/DIX. For more information, refer to the Storage Administration Guide
Filesystem in Userspace
Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) allows for custom filesystems to be developed and run in user-space.
LVM Snapshots of Mirrors
The LVM snapshot feature provides the ability to create backup images of a logical volume at a particular instant without causing a service interruption. When a change is made to the original device (the origin) after a snapshot is taken, the snapshot feature makes a copy of the changed data area as it was prior to the change so that it can reconstruct the state of the device. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 introduces the ability to take a snapshot of a mirrored logical volume.
A known issue exists with this Technology Preview. I/O might hang if a device failure in the mirror is encountered. Note, that this issue is related to a failure of the mirror log device, and that no work around is currently known.
btrfs
Btrfs is under development as a file system capable of addressing and managing more files, larger files, and larger volumes than the ext2, ext3, and ext4 file systems. Btrfs is designed to make the file system tolerant of errors, and to facilitate the detection and repair of errors when they occur. It uses checksums to ensure the validity of data and metadata, and maintains snapshots of the file system that can be used for backup or repair. The btrfs Technology Preview is only available on the x86_64 architecture.

Btrfs is still experimental

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta includes Btrfs as a technology preview to allow you to experiment with this file system. You should not choose Btrfs for partitions that will contain valuable data or that are essential for the operation of important systems.
LVM Application Programming Interface (API)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta features the new LVM application programming interface (API) as a Technology Preview. This API is used to query and control certain aspects of LVM.
FS-Cache
FS-Cache is a new feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta that enables networked file systems (e.g. NFS) to have a persistent cache of data on the client machine.

4.2. Known Issues

  • Mounting file systems on a guest using the -o nobarrier option is not recommended, even if the host is directly conneted to Enterprise-class storage.
  • When an LVM mirror suffers a device failure, a two-stage recovery takes place. The first stage involves removing the failed devices. This can result in the mirror being reduced to a linear device. The second stage - if configured to do so by the administrator - is to attempt to replace any of the failed devices. Note, however, that there is no guarantee that the second stage will choose devices previously in-use by the mirror that had not been part of the failure if others are available.
  • In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, infiniband support (specifically the openib start script and the openib.conf file) were supplied by the openib package. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the openib package is renamed to rdma. Additionally, the service has been renamed to rdma and the configuration file is now located in /etc/rdma/rdma.conf.
  • The NFSv4 server in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 currently allows clients to mount using UDP and advertises NFSv4 over UDP with rpcbind. However, this configuration is not supported by Red Hat and violates the RFC 3530 standard.
  • If a device-mapper-multipath device is still open, but all of the attached paths have been lost, the device is unable to create a new table with no paths. Consequently, the following unusual output may be returned from the multipath -ll output command:
    mpatha (3600a59a0000c2fd0003079284c122fec) dm-0,size=2.0G hwhandler='0'|-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=0 status=enabled| `- #:#:#:# -   #:#  failed faulty running`-+- policy='round-robin 0' prio=0 status=enabled  |- #:#:#:# -   #:#  failed faulty running  `- #:#:#:# -   #:#  failed faulty running
    Output of this type indicates that there are no paths to the device. The erroneous lines in the output preceded by the string #:#:#:# will be removed in a future release.
  • ext2 and ext3 filesystems do not use a page_mkwrite mechanism to intercept page faults. The quota subsystem can not account for this additional usage when writing to disk. Consequently, a user may exceed their disk block quota by issuing memory-mapped writes into a sparse region of a file. Note, also, that this is a longstanding behavior in the ext2 and ext3 filesystems.
  • Parted in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 cannot handle Extended Address Volumes (EAV) Direct Access Storage Devices (DASD) that have greater than 65535 cylinders. Consequently, EAV DASD drives cannot be partitioned using parted and installation on EAV DASD drives will fail. To work around this issue, complete the installation on a non EAV DASD drive, then add the EAV device after installation using the tools provided in s390-utils.
  • Systems that have an Emulex FC controller (with SLI-3 based firmware) installed may return a kernel panic during install. If the SAN disk is not required for installation, work around this issue by disconnecting the SAN connection from the Emulex FC controller. Note that this issue does not occur on SLI-4 based controllers. To determine the firmware interface of the adapter, run the command
    cat /sys/class/scsi_host/host{n}/fwrev
  • When multipath is configured to use user_friendly_names, it stores the binding between the wwid and the alias in /etc/multipath/bindings. When multipath creates devices in early bootup, (for example when the root filesystem is on a multipath device) it looks at /etc/multipath/bindings in the initramfs. When it creates devices during normal operation, it looks at /etc/multipath/bindings in the root filesystem. Currently, these two files aren't synced during initramfs creation. Because of this, there may be naming conflicts which keep new multipath devices from being created after bootup. To work around this, the bindings for the devices created by the initramfs must be copied into /etc/multipath/bindings after installation. The format of the bindings is:
    <alias><space><wwid>
    for example:
    mpatha 3600d0230000000000e13955cc3757801
  • Direct Asynchronous IO (AIO) that is not issued on filesystem block boundaries, and falls into a hole in a sparse file on ext4 or xfs filesystems, may corrupt file data if multiple I/O operations modify the same filesystem block. Specifically, if qemu-kvm is used with the aio=native IO mode over a sparse device image hosted on the ext4 or xfs filesystem, guest filesystem corruption will occur if partitions are not aligned with the host filesystem block size. Generally, do not use aio=native option along with cache=none for QEMU. This issue can be avoided by using one of the following techniques:
    1. Align AIOs on filesystem block boundaries, or do not write to sparse files using AIO on xfs or ext4 filesystems.
    2. KVM: Use a non-sparse system image file or allocate the space by zeroing out the entire file.
    3. KVM: Create the image using an ext3 host filesystem instead of ext4.
    4. KVM: Invoke qemu-kvm with aio=threads (this is the default).
    5. KVM: Align all partitions within the guest image to the host's filesystem block boundary (default 4k).
  • Mixing the iSCSI discoveryd mode and the normal discovery mode is not supported. When using discoveryd mode, iscsid will attempt to login from all iSCSI ifaces found in /var/lib/iscsi/ifaces. If the iface cannot log into the target this will fill the log with failure messages every discoveryd_poll_inval seconds. To prevent this, the iface can be deleted by running "iscsiadm -m iface -o delete -I ifacename".
  • A change in the 2.6.31 Linux kernel made the net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1 more strict in the I/O that is accepted. Consequently, in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, if there are multiple interfaces on the same subnet and I/O is sent to the one that is not the default route, the I/O will be dropped. Note that this applies to iSCSI iface binding when multiple interfaces are on the same subnet. To work around this, set the net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter parameter in /etc/sysctl.conf to 0 or 2, and reboot the machine.
  • Attempting to run multiple LVM commands in quick succession might cause a backlog of these commands. Consequently, some of the operations requested might time-out, and subsequently, fail.
  • dracut currently only supports one FiberChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) connection to be used to boot from the root device. Consequently, booting from a root device that spans multiple FCoE devices (e.g. using RAID, LVM or similar techniques) is not possible.
  • If an LVM volume requires physical volumes that are multipath or FCoE devices, the LVM volume will not automatically activate. To enable automatic LVM activation, create a udev rules file /etc/udev/rules.d/64-autolvm.rules with the following content:
    SUBSYSTEM!="block", GOTO="lvm_end"ACTION!="add|change", GOTO="lvm_end"KERNEL=="dm-[0-9]*", ACTION=="add", GOTO="lvm_end"ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}!="LVM*_member", GOTO="lvm_end"PROGRAM=="/bin/sh -c 'for i in $sys/$devpath/holders/dm-[0-9]*; do [ -e $$i ] && exit 0; done; exit 1;' ", \ GOTO="lvm_end"RUN+="/bin/sh -c '/sbin/lvm vgscan; /sbin/lvm vgchange -a y'"LABEL="lvm_end"
    Note, however that this work around may impact system performance.
  • The fscontext=, defcontext=, rootcontext= or context= mount options should not be used for remount operations. Using these options can cause the remount of a manually mounted volume to fail, returning errors such as:
    mount: /dev/shm not mounted already, or bad option

5. Networking

NetworkManager
NetworkManager is enabled by default if it is installed. However, NetworkManager is only installed by default in the client use cases. NetworkManager is available to be installed for the server use cases, but is not included in the default installation.

5.1. Technology Previews

IPv6 support in IPVS
The IPv6 support in IPVS (IP Virtual server) is considered Technology Preview.

5.2. Known Issues

  • If the qeth interface was previously configured using system-config-network 1.6.0.el6.2, the "OPTIONS=" line needs to be manually added to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-<interface>.
    After the configuration has been manually changed, activate the interface by either rebooting the system, or running the following commands:
    # /sbin/znet_cio_free# SUBSYSTEM="ccw" DEVPATH="bus/ccw/devices/<SUBCHANNEL 0>" /lib/udev/ccw_init# ifup <interface>
  • A known issue in the bnx2 driver prevents BCM5709S network adapters from performing a vmcore core dump over NFS.
  • Intel 82575EB ethernet devices do not function in a 32 bit environment. To work around this issue, modify the kernel parameters to include the intel_iommu=off option.
  • Running the rds-ping command may fail, returning the error:
    bind() failed, errno: 99 (Cannot assign requested address).
    Note, also that this error may occur even with LOAD_RDS=yes set in /etc/rdma/rdma.conf. To work around this issue, load the rds-tcp module.
  • Running the command rds-stress on a client may result in the following error attempting to connect to the server:
    connecting to <server IP address>:4000: No route to hostconnect(<server IP address>) failed#
  • When configuring a network interface manually, including static IP addresses and search domains, it is possible that a search entry will not be propagated to /etc/resolv.conf. Consequently, short host names that do not include the domain name will fail to resolve. To workaround this issue, add a search entry manually to /etc/resolv.conf.
  • Under some circumstances, the NetworkManager panel applet cannot determine if a user has permission to enable networking. Consequently, after logging into the desktop, the "Enable Networking" and "Enable Wireless" checkboxes may be disabled. To work around this, run the following command as root:
    touch /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy
    Alternatively, WiFi can be enabled using the command:
    nmcli nm wifi on
    or disabled using the command:
    nmcli nm wifi off
  • Under some circumstances, the netcf command crashes, returning the error message:
    Failed to initialize netcferror: unspecified error
    To work around this issue, set the following value in /etc/sysctl.conf:
       net.bridge.bridge-nf-call-iptables = 0
    This issue presents when the augeas library (used by netcf) has trouble parsing one of the system config files that netcf needs to read or modify.
  • The default value of the Emulex lpfc module parameter, lpfc_use_msi, was 2 (MSI-X) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 this default is now set to 0 (INTx). This change causes the driver behavior to stop using MSI-X interrupt mode and reverts to using non-msi (INTx) interrupt mode. This change in defaults addresses apparent regressions in some hardware platforms, introduced when the default lpfc driver value was previously changed from 0 to 2 (which made MSI-X the default behavior).
    If the lpfc module is behaving erratically, work around this issue by setting the lpfc module parameter lpfc_use_msi to 2.

6. Clustering

6.1. Technology Previews

pacemaker
Pacemaker, a scalable high-availability cluster resource manager, is included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 as a Technology Preview. Pacemaker is not fully integrated with the Red Hat cluster stack.

6.2. Known Issues

  • Supplying an invalid version number in cluster.conf as a parameter to the cman_tool command will cause the cluster to stop processing information. To work around this issue, ensure that the version number used is valid.
  • Under some circumstances, creating cluster mirrors with the '--nosync' option may cause I/O to become extremely slow. Note that this issue only effects I/O immediately after the creation of the mirror, and only when '--nosync' is used. To work around this issue, run the following command after the creating the mirror.
    lvchange --refresh <VG>/<LV>
  • luci will not function with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 clusters unless each cluster node has ricci version 0.12.2-14
  • The sync state of an inactive LVM mirror cannot be determined. Consequently, the primary device of an LVM mirror can only be removed when the mirror is in-sync.
  • If device-mapper-multipath is used, and the default path failure timeout value (/sys/class/fc_remote_ports/rport-xxx/dev_loss_tmo) is changed, that the timeout value will revert to the default value after a path fails, and later restored. Note that this issue will present the lpfc, qla2xxx, ibmfc or fnic Fibre Channel drivers. To work around this issue the dev_loss_tmo value must be adjusted after each path fail/restore event.
  • Generally, placing mirror legs on different physical devices improves data availability. The command lvcreate --alloc anywhere does not guarantee placement of data on different physical devices. Consequently, the use of this option is not recommended. If this option is used, the location of the data placement must be manually verified.
  • The GFS2 fsck program, fsck.gfs2, currently assumes that the gfs2 file system is divided into evenly-spaced segments known as resource groups. This is always the case on file systems formatted by mkfs.gfs2. It will also be the case for most file systems created as GFS (gfs1) and converted to gfs2 format with gfs2_convert. However, if a GFS file system was resized (with gfs_grow) while it was in the GFS format, the resource groups might not be evenly spaced. If the resource groups are not evenly spaced, and the resource groups or the resource groups index (rindex) become damaged, fsck.gfs2 might not function correctly.
    There is currently no workaround for this issue. However, if the resource groups are not damaged, avoid this issue by copying the file system contents to a new device with evenly-spaced resource groups. Format the new device as gfs2 with mkfs.gfs2, and copy the contents from the old device to the new device. The new device will have evenly-spaced resource groups.

7. Authentication

7.1. Technology Previews

certmonger
The certmonger service aims to manage certificates on behalf of services running on client systems. It warns administrators when a certificate which it has been asked to watch is nearing the end of its validity period, and can be told to attempt to automatically obtain a new certificate when this happens. It supports certificates and private keys stored in either PEM or NSS database formats. It can interact with CAs running either IPA or certmaster, and is intended to be extensible to support other implementations.
ipa-client
IPA is an integrated solution to provide centrally managed Identity (machine,user, virtual machines, groups, authentication credentials). This package includes client-side functionality that when combined with a supported server can be used to provide features like kerberized sshd.

7.2. Known Issues

  • Enabling user authentication against an LDAP server using authconfig --enableldapauth does not correctly set up the /etc/nslcd.conf configuration file. Consequently, LDAP users will be denied access to the system. To work around this issue, remove the line containing pam_password md5 from the /etc/nslcd.conf file.
  • The System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) currently supports following LDAP referrals on anonymous-bind LDAP connections only.
  • The authentication configuration utility does not keep the 'Require smart card for login' check box set when Kerberos is also enabled. When the check box is checked and the configuration is saved with the 'Apply' button, the system will correctly require smart card for login. However, on the subsequent run of the authentication configuration utility the check box will be unchecked again and it is necessary to check it again to keep the option switched on.
  • When attempting to perform PKINIT pre-authentication, if the client has more than one possible candidate certificate the client may fail to select the certificate and key to use. This usually occurs if certificate selection is configured to use the value of the keyUsage extension, or if any of the candidate certificates does not contain a subjectAltName extension. Consequently, the client attempts to perform pre-authentication using a different (usually password-based) mechanism.
  • After installing certmonger, the system message bus daemon needs to be signaled to reload its configuration to allow the certmonger service to start properly. To work around this issue, send the dbus-daemon process a SIGHUP signal, or, alternatively, reboot the system.

8. Security

8.1. Technology Previews

OpenSCAP
OpenSCAP is a set of open source libraries that support the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) standards from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). OpenSCAP supports the SCAP components:
  • Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)
  • Common Platform Enumeration (CPE)
  • Common Configuration Enumeration (CCE)
  • Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)
  • Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL)
  • Extensible Configuration Checklist Description Format (XCCDF)
Additionally, the openSCAP package includes an application to generate SCAP reports about system configuration. This package is considered a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
TPM
TPM hardware can create, store and use RSA keys securely (without ever being exposed in memory), verify a platform's software state using cryptographic hashes and more. The user space libraries, trousers and tpm-tools are considered a Technology Preview in this Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

9. Devices and Device Drivers

PCI Device Ordering
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the PCI device ordering is based on the PCI device enumeration. PCI device enumeration is based on the PCI enumeration algorithm (depth first then breadth) and is constant per system type. Additionally, once the devices are discovered, the module loading process is sequentialized, providing persistent naming of the interfaces.

9.1. Technology Previews

Brocade BFA Driver
The Brocade BFA driver is considered a Technology Preview feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The BFA driver supports Brocade FibreChannel and FCoE mass storage adapters.
SR-IOV on the be2net driver
The SR-IOV functionality of the Emulex be2net driver is considered a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

9.2. Known Issues

  • The udev daemon in Red Hat Enterprise 6 watches all devices for changes. If a change occurs, the device is rescanned for device information to be stored in the udev database.
    The scanning process causes additional I/O to devices after they were changed by tools. udev to can be told to exclude devices from being watched with a udev rule. A rule can be created by adding a new file <myname>.rules in /etc/udev/rules.d containing the following line:
    ACTION=="add|change", SYMLINK=="disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_SAMSUNG_HD400LDS0AXJ1LL903246", OPTIONS+="nowatch"
    The SYMLINK should be replaced with any symlink path found in /dev/disk/* for the device in question.
    This will prevent unexpected I/O on the device, after data was written directly to the device (not on the filesystem). However, it will also prevent device updates in the udev database, like filesystem labels, symbolic links in /dev/disk/*, etc.
  • Under some circumstances, the bfa-firmware package in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 may cause these devices to encounter a rare memory parity error. To work around this issue, to update to the newer firmware package, available directly from Brocade.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 only has support for the first revision of the UPEK Touchstrip fingerprint reader (USB ID 147e:2016). Attempting to use a second revision device may cause the fingerprint reader daemon to crash. The command
    lsusb -v -d 147e:2016 | grep bcdDevice
    will return the version of the device being used in an individual machine.
  • The Emulex Fibre Channel/Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet (FCoE) driver in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 does not support DH-CHAP authentication. DH-CHAP authentication provides secure access between hosts and mass storage in Fibre-Channel and FCoE SANs in compliance with the FC-SP specification. Note, however that the Emulex driver (lpfc) does support DH-CHAP authentication on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, from version 5.4. Future Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 releases may include DH-CHAP authentication.
  • Partial Offload iSCSI adapters do not work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Consequently, devices that use the be2iscsi driver cannot be used during installation.
  • The hpsa_allow_any kernel option allows the hpsa driver to be used with older hardware that typically uses the cciss module by default. To use the hpsa driver with older hardware, set hpsa_allow_any=1 and blacklist the cciss module. Note, however that this is an unsupported, non-default configuration.
  • Platforms with BIOS/UEFI that are unaware of PCI-e SR-IOV capabilities may fail to enable virtual functions
  • The recommended minimum HBA firmware revision for use with the mpt2sas driver is "Phase 5 firmware" (i.e. with version number in the form 05.xx.xx.xx.) Note that following this recommendation is especially important on complex SAS configurations involving multiple SAS expanders.
  • The persistent naming of devices that are dynamically discovered in a system is a large problem that exists both in and outside of kdump. Nominally, devices are detected in the same order, which leads to consistent naming. In cases where devices are not detected in the same order, device abstraction layers (e.g. LVM) make essentially resolve the issue, though the use of metadata stored on the devices to create consistency. In the rare cases where no such abstraction layer is in use, and renaming devices causes issues with kdump, it is recommended that devices be referred to by disk label or UUID in kdump.conf.
  • The following issues and limitations may be encountered with the Broadcom bnx2, bnx2x, and cnic drivers
    • Support for only one VLAN per port
    • If deactivating the interface (i.e. the ifdown and ifup commands) the driver will need to be unloaded and reloaded to function correctly.

10. Kernel

Kdump Auto Enablement
Kdump is now enabled by default on systems with large amounts of memory. Specifically, kdump is enabled by default on:
  • systems with more than 4GB of memory on architectures with a 4KB page size (i.e. x86 or x86_64), or
  • systems with more than 8GB of memory on architectures with larger than a 4KB page size (i.e PPC64).
On systems with less than the above memory configurations, kdump is not auto enabled. Refer to /usr/share/doc/kexec-tools-2.0.0/kexec-kdump-howto.txt for instructions on enabling kdump on these systems.
crashkernel parameter syntax
Please note that in future versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (i.e. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 and later) the auto value setting of the crashkernel= parameter (i.e. crashkernel=auto) will be deprecated.
Barrier Implementation in the Kernel
The barrier implementation in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 kernel works by completely draining the I/O scheduler's queue, then issuing a preflush, a barrier, and finally a postflush request. However, since the supported file systems in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 all implement their own ordering guarantees, the block layer need only provide a mechanism to ensure that a barrier request is ordered with respect to other I/O already in the disk cache. This mechanism avoids I/O stalls experienced by queue draining. The block layer will be updated in future kernels to provide this more efficient mechanism of ensuring ordering.
Workloads that include heavy fsync or metadata activity will see an overall improvement in disk performance. Users taking advantage of the proportional weight I/O controller will also see a boost in performance. In preparation for the block layer updates, third party file system developers need to ensure that data ordering surrounding journal commits are handled within the file system itself, since the block layer will no longer provide this functionality.
These future block layer improvements will change some kernel interfaces such that symbols which are not on the kABI whitelist shall be modified. This may result in the need to recompile third party file system or storage drivers.
Systemtap Tracepoints
The following 3 virtual memory tracepoints are deprecated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • trace_mm_background_writeout(unsigned long written)
  • trace_mm_olddata_writeout(unsigned long written)
  • trace_mm_balancedirty_writeout(unsigned long written)

10.1. Technology Previews

Remote Audit Logging
The audit package contains the user space utilities for storing and searching the audit records generated by the audit subsystem in the Linux 2.6 kernel. Within the audispd-plugins subpackage is a utility that allows for the transmission of audit events to a remote aggregating machine. This remote audit logging application, audisp-remote, is considered a Technology Preview in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
Linux (NameSpace) Container [LXC]
Linux (NameSpace) Containers [LXC] is a Technology Preview feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta that provides isolation of resources assigned to one or more processes. A process is assigned a separate user permission, networking, filesystem name space from its parent.

10.2. Known Issues

  • Calgary IOMMU default detection has been disabled in this release. If you require Calgary IOMMU support add 'iommu=calgary' as a boot parameter.
  • The kdump service fails on systems with large amounts of memory and crashkernel=auto enabled, returning the error message kdump: kexec: failed to load kdump kernel in /var/log/messages.
    To workaround this issue, change the crashkernel parameter to 128M (on x86_64 and x86 architectures) or 256M (on the ppc64 architecture).
  • If the kdump crash recovery technology is enabled and in use on a given system, minimum memory requirements should be raised by the amount of memory reserved for kdump usage. This value is determined by the user, and specified on the kernel command line, via the crashkernel parameter. The default value for this setting is 128MB.
  • When using the DIF/DIX hardware checksum features of a storage path behind a block device, errors will occur if the block device is used as a general purpose block device.
    Buffered I/O or mmap(2) based IO will not work reliably as there are no interlocks in the buffered write path to prevent overwriting cached data while the hardware is performing DMA operations. An overwrite during a DMA operation will cause a torn write and the write will fail checksums in the hardware storage path. This problem is common to all block device or file system based buffered or mmap(2) I/O, so the problem of I/O errors during overwrites cannot be worked around.
    DIF/DIX enabled block devices should only be used with applications that use O_DIRECT I/O. Applications should use the raw block device, though it should be safe to use the XFS file system on a DIF/DIX enabled block device if only O_DIRECT I/O is issued through the file system. In both cases the responsibility for preventing torn writes lies with the application, so only applications designed for use with O_DIRECT I/O and DIF/DIX hardware should enable this feature.
  • The memory controller in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 beta may encounter stability issues when under heavy stress testing or memory pressure.
  • The i686 debug kernel may crash on some systems when starting the udev service.
  • Systems configured with Intel 82578DM NICs may not be recognized during boot/install resulting in driver load failure, (driver probe fails with error -2).
  • This pre-release version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 provides automated Physical CPU Socket and Memory Hot-Add support. Note, however, that CPU Socket and Memory Hot-Remove actions are not supported. Additionally, only single CPU Socket add events are supported at this time, and tsc support is disabled after a CPU Socket add event.
  • In Beta releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, PCIe ASPM would be enabled on PCIe hierarchies even if they lacked an _OSC method as defined in section 4.5 of the PCI firmware specification, release 3.0. Post Beta, firmware must provide an appropriate _OSC method on all PCI roots in order to allow PCIe ASPM to be enabled. The "pcie_aspm=force" boot parameter may be passed in order to enable PCIe ASPM.
  • Use of the cciss and hpsa drivers with some controllers (e.g. P400, P400i, E500, P800, P700m and 6402/6404) may cause kdump to fail.
  • The top-level makefile to of the kernel in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 includes the -Werror option as part of the standard kernel build. Consequently, all kernel compile warnings are reported as errors. In non-production environments, the -Werror flag can be disabled by removing the following two lines from the top-level kernel Makefile:
    KBUILD_CFLAGS   += $(shell if [ $(CPP_VERS) -ge 4004004 ]; then \ echo "-Wno-array-bounds -Werror"; else echo ""; fi)
    Note, however, that Red Hat does not support custom built kernels or custom built modules.
  • Some SystemTap probes require the additional module, uprobes.ko at run time. This additional module is usually built automatically when the script is compiled. However, in the client-server case, the uprobes.ko module is not returned by the server to the client. Consequently, missing symbols are reported when the module representing the script is loaded. To work around this issue, use the following command to manually build the uprobes.ko module on the client host.
      make -C <prefix>/share/systemtap/runtime/uprobes
    Note that "<prefix>" is the install prefix for systemtap, and that this manual build of uprobes.ko will only need to be done once.
  • Due to the way ftrace works when modifying the code during startup, the NMI watchdog causes too much noise and ftrace can not find a quiet period to instrument the code. Consequently, machines with more than 512 cpus will encounter issues with the NMI watchdog. Such issues will return error messages similar to "BUG: NMI Watchdog detected LOCKUP" and have either 'ftrace_modify_code' or 'ipi_handler' in the backtrace. To work around this issue, disable nmi_watchdog using the command:
    nmi_watchdog=0
  • Under some circumstances, a kernel panic on installation or boot may occur if the "Interrupt Remapping" feature is enabled in the BIOS. To work around this issue, disable interrupt remapping in the BIOS.
  • The kernel will panic when booting the kdump kernel on a s390 system with an initramfs that contains an odd number of bytes. To work around this this issue, generate an initramfs with sufficient padding such that it contains an even number of bytes.
  • Creating many 'cpu' control groups (cgroups) on a system with a large number of CPUs will slow down the machine when the control groups feature is enabled. To work around this issue, disable control groups.
  • Under certain circumstances, the Linux kernel makes an erroneous assumption about where to reserve memory for the kdump kernel on large-memory POWER systems. Consequently, a newly installed POWER system may return the following message during the initial post installation bootup:
    returning from prom_init Kernel panic - not syncing: ERROR: Failed to allocate 0x4000 bytes below 0x10000000. Rebooting in 180 seconds..
    Complete the following steps to work around this issue. Note, however, that this work around disables the kdump feature.
    1. The system will reboot 180 seconds after the initial error message was returned. After reboot, the yaboot prompt will be presented:
       Welcome to Red Hat Enterprise Linux! Hit <TAB> for boot options Welcome to yaboot version 1.3.14 (Red Hat 1.3.14-34.el6) Enter "help" to get some basic usage information boot:
      At the prompt, enter the following line and press enter.
      linux crashkernel=512M-2G:256M
    2. Log in to the system as root, and open /etc/yaboot.conf in a text editor. The yaboot.conf file should be similar to:
       # yaboot.conf generated by anaconda boot=/dev/sda1 init-message="Welcome to Red Hat Enterprise Linux!\nHit <TAB> for boot options" partition=2 timeout=5 install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot delay=30 enablecdboot enableofboot enablenetboot nonvram fstype=raw image=/vmlinuz-2.6.32-59.el6.ppc64 label=linux read-only initrd=/initramfs-2.6.32-59.el6.ppc64.img append="rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us console=hvc0 crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet root=UUID=63f94acf-6241-4a66-a861-9de912602287"
      Remove the string crashkernel=auto from the append= line. Save the file, and exit the editor. Subsequent reboots of the system will boot to the system prompt.
  • On 64-bit POWER systems the EHEA NIC driver will fail when attempting to dump a vmcore via NFS. To work around this issue, utilize other kdump facilities, for example dumping to the local filesystem, or dumping over SSH.
  • A BIOS emulated floppy disk might cause the installation or kernel boot process to hang. To avoid this, disable emulated floppy disk support in the BIOS.
  • The preferred method to enable nmi_watchdog on 32-bit x86 systems is to use either nmi_watchdog=2 or nmi_watchdog=lapic parameters. The parameter nmi_watchdog=1 is not supported.
  • The module loading operation of certain crypto libraries will not be successful. Consequently, the modules required for in-kernel crypto cannot be loaded. In-kernel crypto cannot be used with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 until this issue is resolved.
  • A BIOS issue on some platforms incorrectly indicates that the system busmastering flag must be checked before entering the deep C state. Consequently, some systems might spend a significantly lower percentage of time in deep C states (C3 and lower) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5. Updated the BIOS on affected systems will resolve this issue.
  • IMA in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 GA is enabled by loading an IMA policy. However, future updates will require the boot parameter "ima=on" in addition to loading an IMA policy to enable IMA. This change reduces overhead on systems not using IMA.

11. Development and Tools

11.1. Technology Previews

libdfp
An updated libdfp library is available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. libdfp is a decimal floating point math library, and is available as an alternative to the glibc math functions on Power and s390x architectures, and is available in the supplementary channels.
Eclipse Plugins
The following plugins for the Eclipse software development environment are considered to be Technology Previews in this pre-release version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • The Mylyn plugin for the Eclipse task management subsystem
  • the eclipse-callgraph C/C++ Call Graph Visualization plugin

11.2. Known Issues

  • cURL is a tool for getting files from FTP, HTTP, Gopher, Telnet, and Dict servers, using any of the supported protocols. The cURL API, and consequently, the python bindings for cURL, do not provide textual messages for errors. Therefore, all applications that use the python bindings for cURL will return errors in formats such as:
     Pycurl Error 6 - ""
    instead of more useful messages such as:
     Pycurl Error 6 - "Could not resolve hostname: blah.example.com"
    cURL error codes can be manually interpreted by reading the /usr/include/curl/curl.h file.
  • Due to a deficiency in java-1.6.0-ibm-plugin for AMD64 and Intel 64, IBM Java 6 Web Start cannot open JNLP files. This affects file management tools and WWW browsers. To work around this open JNLP files using the command:
    /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.6.0-ibm.x86_64/bin/javaws file.jnpl
    Note that 32-bit packages are not affected by this issue.
  • Under some circumstances on the PPC64 architecture, Ruby does not save the context correctly when switching threads. Consequently, when a thread is restored it has a stale value which might return a architecture fault.
  • Under some circumstances, libdfp encounters an issue converting some values from string to DFP with the conversion command strtod32. The strtod64 and strtod128 commands do work correctly.

12. Desktop

nautilus-open-terminal behavior change
The nautilus-open-terminal package provides a right-click "Open Terminal" option to open a new terminal window in the current directory. Previously, when this option was chosen from the Desktop, the new terminal window location defaulted to the user's home directory. However, in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the default behavior opens the Desktop directory (i.e. ~/Desktop/). To enable the previous behavior, use the following command to set the desktop_opens_home_dir GConf boolean to true:
gconftool-2 -s /apps/nautilus-open-terminal/desktop_opens_home_dir --type=bool true
Adobe Flash and Adobe Acrobat Reader on 64-Bit
The 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux Supplementary CD contains the 32-bit versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Flash for use on the 64-bit architecture. To use these browser plugins correctly, the nspluginwrapper.i686 and alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 packages must be installed prior to the installation of the plugins.
gnome-packagekit architecture filter
By default, gnome-packagekit uses a filter to hide packages that are not the same architecture as the system. Consequently, when installing packages for other architectures (e.g. the 32-bit versions of acroread and flash-plugin on the 64-bit architecture) the "Only native filters" from the Filters menu must be unchecked for these packages to be visible.

12.1. Known Issues

  • When enabled, fingerprint authentication is the default authentication method to unlock a workstation, even if the fingerprint reader device is not accessible. However, after a 30 second wait, password authentication will become available.
  • ATI RN50/ES1000 graphics devices have limited Video RAM (VRAM) and are restricted to an 8-bit color depth for the text console. Consequently, the graphical boot screen is unavailable on systems using these graphics devices.
  • On the GNOME desktop, the CD/DVD burning utility brasero conflicts with the automounting feature in Nautilus. Consequently, the following error message will be displayed when brasero attempts to verify the checksum of the disc:
    Error while burning: You do not have the required permissions to use this drive
    In most cases, the data is still written to the disc.
  • The system-config-users tool cannot always detect if a home directory can be created correctly. Consequently, system-config-users might fail silently when attempting to create a home directory on some file systems (e.g. home directories located beneath an autofs mount-point). Typically, when this issue is encountered, the user account itself is created, but the creation of the home directory fails. To create a user with an auto-mounted home directory, create the home directory manually before creating the user in system-config-users.
  • Evolution's IMAP backend only refreshes folder contents under the following circumstances: when the user switches into or out of a folder, when the auto-refresh period expires, or when the user manually refreshes a folder (i.e. using the menu item Folder > Refresh). Consequently, when replying to a message in the Sent folder, the new message does not immediately appear in the Sent folder. To see the message, force a refresh using one of the methods describe above.
  • Not all languages have predefined default input method engines. Consequently, in some languages, ibus will not have an input method engine configured. To work around this issue, add an input method using the Input Method configuration dialog (System > Preferences > Input Method
  • Using the im-chooser tool, XIM cannot be disabled as the default GTK immodule. Disabling input-methods using im-chooser and restarting the desktop session will still result in GTK applications using the XIM immodule. Consequently, using the Ctrl+Shift+U key combination to the directly input of Unicode characters from their hexidecimal code will not work. To work around this issue, use im-chooser to enable ibus. Enabling ibus permits gtk-im-context-simple's Unicode input and compose sequences to be used.
  • The hardware mute button on Lenovo ThinkPad X200 notebooks does not work. Note, however, that the volume down and volume up buttons function correctly.
  • The clock applet in the GNOME panel has a default location of Boston, USA. Additional locations are added by via the applet's preferences dialog. Additionally, to change the default location, left-click the applet, hover over the desired location in the "Locations" section, and click the "Set..." button that appears.
  • In some multi-monitor configurations (e.g. dual monitors with both rotated), the cursor confinement code produces incorrect results. For example, the cursor may be permitted to disappear offscreen when it should not, or be prevented from entering some areas where it should be allowed to go. Currently, the only work around to this issue is to disable monitor rotation.
  • ATI RN50/ES1000 graphics devices have a lower number of hardware controllers than output connectors. Due to a defect in the graphical boot system, this type of configuration results in a blank display. Consequently, users of systems with these ATI graphics devices will experience prolonged (potentially up to 2 minutes or longer) blank screens during boot up and shutdown. Once the boot process completes and a login prompt is available, the display will function as expected. The prolonged blank screen can be avoided by removing "rhgb" from the list of boot parameters on the kernel command line in /etc/grub.conf
  • If a Russian keyboard is chosen during system installation, the login screen is configured to use Russian input for user names and passwords by default. However, pressing Left Shift and Right Shift does not cause the input to change to ASCII mode. Consequently, the user cannot log in. To work around this issue, run the following sequence, as root, post installation:
    . /etc/sysconfig/keyboard; echo $LAYOUT | grep -q ",us" && gconftool-2--direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/var/lib/gdm/.gconf --set/apps/gdm/simple-greeter/recent-layouts --type list --list-type string $(echo$LAYOUT | awk -F, '{ print "[" $2 "," $1 "]"; }') && echo "DONE"
  • For KMS drivers, the syntax is:
    video=[connector:]mode
    "connector", which is optional maps to the name of the connector as listed in /sys/class/drm/card0. For example:
    ~% ls /sys/class/drm/card0 card0-LVDS-1  card0-VGA-1  dev  device  power  subsystem  uevent
    This device has connectors named LVDS-1 and VGA-1. If no connector is specified the requested mode will apply to all connectors.
    Mode strings may be of the form:
    <xres>x<yres>[R][-<bpp>][@<refresh>][i][eDd]
    Parts inside <> are mandatory, parts inside [] are optional. R requests the use of the CVT reduced-blanking formula, applicable for some digital displays; otherwise GTF is used. i requests an interlaced mode. e forces the output to be enabled even if it appears to be disconnected; d forces the output to be disabled. For DVI connections, D forces the use of the digital signal path instead of analog; on other connectors it has no effect. Only one of e, d, or D may be given.
  • Under some circumstances, the Add/Remove Software (gpk-application) graphical user interface does not display Supplementary groups or packages the Supplementary group is chosen. To work around this, use the System>Refresh Package Lists option to refresh the package lists.

A. Package Manifest

Previous versions of the Technical Notes contained a Package Manifest appendix. The Package Manifest is now available as a seperate document.
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