Release Notes for SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 for AMD64(TM) & Intel(R) EM64T

These release notes cover the following areas:

General

Updated SLES 9 manuals and translations of YaST messages

You will find the SLES 9 manuals in pdf format on CD1 in the directory "docu". They contain lots of valuable information. Please read them as they may answer many questions for you. Translations for YaST are also included.

Feedback on documentation and translations should be mailed to

documentation@suse.de

3-D Support for nVidia Graphics Cards

The RPM packages NVIDIA_GLX and NVIDIA_kernel for the nVidia driver with 3-D support are no longer available. To install the nVidia driver, use the nVidia-driver patch in YOU (YaST Online Update). The drivers for 2D support are still included in SLES.

Removable Media / subfs

Removable media are now integrated via subfs. It is not necessary to mount the media manually. A cd /media/* triggers the automatic mounting. Note that media cannot be ejected while a program is accessing them.

vmware Installation

If you install within vmware, you should disable acceleration in vmware: Edit-> Virtual Machine Settings -> Options -> Advanced -> Disable acceleration

Lustre Clustering File System Support

We have included Lustre as the cluster capable file system of our choice. For Novell support offerings regarding Lustre please contact http://www.suse.com/feedback.

Globus Toolkit 2.0

The Globus Toolkit 2.0 was part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8. Because of major changes in the Globus TK API and of binaries we have decided to not include Globus Toolkit 2.x or 3.x into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. Support for the Globus Toolkit available through a consulting agreement. Please contact http://www.suse.com/feedback for available offerings.

cifs

The cifs which is shipped together with samba is currently not supportet. The current implementation is not stable enough to work in a production environment.

Update

Network Device Setup

The network device setup has been changed. Previously the configuration of a non-existing interface triggered initialization of the hardware. Now, new hardware is searched for and initialized first, which then triggers the setup of the new network interface.

Additionally new names are introduced for the configuration files. Since the name of a network interface is created dynamically and the usage of hotplug devices increases more and more, a name like ethX is not usable anymore for configuration purposes. Therefore we now use unique descriptions like the MAC-address or the PCI slot for naming of interface configurations.

Note: You can use interface names of course once they are present. ifup eth0 / ifdown eth0 still works.

The configuration for devices is found in /etc/sysconfig/hardware. The interfaces these devices provide is as usual (just with different names) in /etc/sysconfig/network.

An extended README is available under /usr/share/doc/packages/sysconfig/README.

Sound configuration

After an update from an older distribution the sound cards will have to be reconfigured. This can be done using the sound module of YaST2. Invoke YaST as user root using the command yast2 sound.

Non UTF-8 filenames

Files on filesystems created by 9.0 and older distributions use (when not set otherwise) non-UTF-8 encoding for its file-names. If these file names contain non ASCII characters, they will be garbled on SLES 9 and later versions. A fix is to use the convmv script which changes the encoding of the files to UTF-8.

XML Stylesheets and DTDs

The FHS now requires XML resources (DTDs, stylesheets, etc.) to be installed in /usr/share/xml. Therefore, some directories are no longer available in /usr/share/sgml. If you encounter problems, modify your scripts or makefiles or use the official catalogs (especially /etc/xml/catalog or /etc/sgml/catalog).

Codepage with mounting VFAT partitions

When mounting VFAT partitions the parameter formerly called code= must be changed to codepage=. If mounting a VFAT partition causes problems, check if the file /etc/fstab contains the old name for the parameter.

Apache 1.3 has been replaced by Apache 2

The apache web server (version 1.3) has been replaced by apache2 (version 2.0.49). A system update on a machine with a HTTP server installation will remove the apache package, install apache2 and you will need to adapt your setup manually. There is no automated facility avaialble.

Configuration files that were under /etc/httpd are now in /etc/apache2. Apache2 requires either package apache2-prefork (recommended for stability) or apache2-worker.

During update there may be some conflicts requiring manual attention

Known issues:

Using SAMBA with LDAP

If you used Samba on SLES 8 with SAMBA_SAM set to "ldap" in /etc/sysconfig/samba you need to migrate your Samba LDAP configuration to the new Samba 3 LDAP schema as included in SLES 9. You find additional information how to migrate your Samba LDAP configuration at http://www.suse.com/sles/documentation/samba/

Raw Devices

There have been significant changes in the implementation of raw devices. For more details, see /usr/share/doc/packages/util-linux/README.raw which is provided in the util-linux package.

Installation

Some systems might not install with the default settings.

In this case first try the "Installation - ACPI Disabled" option, and if this doesn't work either, choose the option "Installation - Safe Settings".

Please report these cases via http://www.suse.com/feedback.

Installing with an FTP-Server

If you use an FTP-Server to provide the CDs for installation, there is an restriction for the path you specify during the installation. Currently you may only specify relative paths. That means that every path specified starts at the login directory of the ftp server. There is no difference whether you use personal or anonymous login.

Same CD requested twice

Depending on the selection you chose it is possible that some CDs have to be inserted twice during the installation process. We know this issue, but due to dependencies it cannot be always avoided. A workaround is to install via network or harddisk instead of CDs.

PCI Hotplug

To support real PCI hotplug, the acpiphp kernel module needs to be loaded by the pci.rc script. You can enable this by setting the sysconfig variable HOTPLUG_DO_REAL_PCI_HOTPLUG=yes.

Setting up an installation server for network installations

To set up an installation Server for installations via NFS/FTP/HTTP the CDs have to be copied into a special directory structure.

Go to a directory of your choice and execute the following commands:

mkdir -p installroot/sles9/CD1

# now copy the contents of SLES CD1 into this directory

mkdir -p installroot/core9/CD1

# now copy the contents of SLES CD2 into this directory

mkdir -p installroot/core9/CD2

# now copy the contents of SLES CD3 into this directory

mkdir -p installroot/core9/CD3

# now copy the contents of SLES CD4 into this directory

mkdir -p installroot/core9/CD4

# now copy the contents of SLES CD5 into this directory

mkdir -p installroot/core9/CD5

# now copy the contents of SLES CD6 into this directory

ln -s sles9/CD1/boot boot

ln -s sles9/CD1/content content

ln -s sles9/CD1/control.xml control.xml

ln -s sles9/CD1/media.1 media.1

mkdir -p installroot/yast

echo "/sles9/CD1 /sles9/CD1\n/core9/CD1 /core9/CD1" > yast/instorder

echo "/sles9/CD1 /sles9/CD1\n/core9/CD1 /core9/CD1" > yast/order

If you are now asked for the installation directory just specify

installroot

If you want to set up a MS windows system as an install server go to the directory dosutils/install. There is a script install.bat that will create the structure and asks you for the CDs. There are also the files instorder and order that have to be copied to the directory \suseinstall\yast. Before you copy the order file please replace the Variables UserAccount, PASSword and IP-Number with the respective Values of your MS windows machine. During the installation process you only need to specify the share suseinstall.

Problems with "xhost +" to display remote X sessions on your local screen

This is only relevant if you control an installation over a network and want to display your remote X or YaST session on your local display. On some Linux/Unix-Systems it is no longer sufficent to enter the command "xhost +" to grant access to the local X-Server. For security reasons the X-Server no longer listens on port 6000. To verify whether the X-Server still listens on port 6000 enter the command:

netstat -an | grep 6000

If the line

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6000 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

does not show up, the server is not listening. In this case you can either enable port 6000 or use the command

ssh -X "Address of the system be installed"

which will always work.

Adding storage drivers after initial installation needs manual intervention

During installation, all block-device drivers for storage controllers are added to an "initial ramdisk". This ensures accessibility for attached storage at all times.

Adding such a controller (with attached storage) at a later point in time will initially work as expected (as a side-effect of the new hot/coldplug capabilities), but later on (e.g. after creating a LV on those disks) it may not function.

To ensure system integrity at all times, we recommend to follow YaST2 standards and add the appropriate module to INITRD_MODULES in /etc/sysconfig/kernel, and then rerun /sbin/mkinitrd.

Multipathing with MD-Devices

To upgrade MD multipathing from SLES 8 to SLES 9 please start the system with the kernel parameter "barrier=off".
YaST will then offer the MD device for update.

Multipathing with LVM1

During the update the multipathing volumes will only be recognized as standard LVM volumes.

It is then recommended to use EVMS. EVMS will recognize LVM1 multipathing.

Updates and Features

Updated core system with latest versions/features of all packages, e.g.

New and improved YAST (our install and administration tool)

Next generation 2.6.5 Linux kernel with many improvements over 2.4 kernels

Improved HA support

Full enablement and support of UTF-8

Ready for the Asian market including translations and commercial fonts

Inclusion of Red Carpet Enterprise daemon

SLES 9 includes the Red Carpet Daemon. To install the Red Carpet Daemon please execute the following command: /usr/sbin/inst-rcd.

New Type of Installation Source: SLP

New feature: linuxrc understands a new installation source, slp. If you select install=slp at the bootloader prompt, linuxrc will send a SLP (Service Location Protocol) request for service install.suse to the network and prompt you to select an entry from the list of returned URLs. See RFC 2608 and http://www.openslp.com for more information on SLP.

OpenSSH Updated to Version 3.8p1

The gssapi support has been replaced with the gssapi-with-mic to fix possible MITM (man-in-the-middle attacks) attacks. These two versions are not compatible. This means that you cannot authenticate from older distributions by kerberos tickets as different methods for authentication are used.

libiodbc has been Dropped

People using FreeRADIUS now have to link against unixODBC as libiodbc has been dropped.

Change in Resolver Library

Incompatible change: the resolver library treats the .local top level domain as link-local domain and sends multicast DNS requests to the multicast address 224.0.0.251 port 5353 instead of normal DNS requests. If you already use the .local domain in your nameserver configuration you will have to switch to another domain name. See http://www.multicastdns.org for more information on multicast DNS.

Wireless LAN Cards

Some wireless LAN cards (PrismGT, Centrino, Atmel, ACX100) need firmware to operate. Due to licensing issues we can not ship these firmware binaries. Please read /usr/share/doc/packages/wireless-tools/README.firmware for information on how to obtain and install the firmware.

Support for Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 (aka Centrino)

There is now experimental support for Intel Centrino WLAN adapters. The driver is not complete, WEP support and operation modes other than managed mode are missing.

SSH and Terminal Applications

When using remote access (notably SSH, telnet and RSH) between SUSE LINUX 9.1 / SLES 9(in its default configuration with UTF-8 enabled) and older systems (9.0 and lower, where UTF-8 is not enabled by default or not supported), terminal applications might display garbled characters.

This is because OpenSSH does not forward locale settings so that system-defaults are used which might not match the remote terminal settings. This affects text mode YaST and applications run remotely as non-root user. The applications run as root are only affected when the users changes the default locales for root (only LC_CTYPE is set by default).

POSIX compliant, high performance threads support (NPTL)

SUSE LINUX 9.1 / SLES 9 features a new pthread implementation called NPTL, which is faster and better than the old implementation called linuxthreads.

If your old program is incompatible with this new threading implementation, we also provide the old one. To switch to the old version, set the environment variable LD_ASSUME_KERNEL to 2.4.21 by using (e.g.) export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.21 in bash.

Applications using ncurses

If problems occur with ncurses based applications running on the text console then simply issuing unicode_stop (reverting keyboard and console from unicode mode) should usually provide a fix.

SuSEplugger

SuSEplugger now supports drive notifications and therefore does not poll the devices. Drives that fail to support notification might not react. A workaround is to enable polling to get back the old behavior.

Printer Configuration

For information about the changes with printing see http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/03/jsmeix_print-einrichten-91.html

modules.conf / modprobe.conf

Parameters for loadable Modules have now to be placed in modprobe.conf.

Providing Feedback to our products

On the top level of the first CD you will find a very detailed ChangeLog. Please also read the READMEs on the CD.

In case of encountering a bug you may file a report via http://www.suse.com/feedback.

Your SUSE LINUX Enterprise Team