Scientific Linux 6.8 BETA 1 i386/x86_64 June 16, 2016 These are notes of the "Alpha/Beta" releases for Scientific Linux 6.8 . -------------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS IS NOT FOR PRODUCTION. This is for testing. Please report back any issues to [log in to unmask] . There should be no expectation that a "yum" upgrade to SL 6.8 will work. A new install is the recommended method to move from "sl6rolling"(this alpha/beta release) and the released SL 6.8. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOWNLOAD INFO --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Network Install Images: http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/i386/images/boot.iso http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/x86_64/images/boot.iso Iso Download area i686: http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/i386/iso/ http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/i386/iso/README x86_64: http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/x86_64/iso/ http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/x86_64/iso/README --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Major Differences from SL 6.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PACKAGES ADDED/CHANGED ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- OpenAFS OpenAFS has been updated to version 1.6.18 from openafs.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGED compared to Enterprise 6 Packages Changed by Scientific Linux --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Packages modified by Scientific Linux should contain 'sl' within their release string. Packages can be changed for a few reasons - removing trademarks, fixing errors, providing different behavior, or fixing build issues. Each of the changed packages below lists is reason for its change along with some historical information. httpd Changed the default index.html to remove upstream's branding. This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. plymouth Removed the red colors for text mode. This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. redhat-logos Changed all trademarked icons and pictures from upstream. Changed styles of items such as background, gdm, and kdm to change the tradedress style. This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. sl-bookmarks sl-bookmarks replaces redhat-bookmarks and removes upstream branding This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. sl-indexhtml sl-indexhtml replaces redhat-indexhtml and removes upstream branding This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. sl-release sl-release replaces redhat-release and removes upstream branding This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. sl-release-notes sl-release-notes replaces Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes* This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. anaconda Add the Scientific Linux install classes DVD installs do not ask for the network unless needed This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. redhat-rpm-config Changed to recognize Scientific Linux as an Enterprise Linux This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. xorg-x11-server Changed to remove TUV's support URL This change went into effect with SL 6.3 and continues in this release. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PACKAGES CHANGED FOR BUILDING REASONS Some packages would not build in our build environment. We changed these packages in order for them, or other packages, to build. The changes are minimal and are associated with a bug filed upstream to hopefully reduce this list over time. The final packages have been compared to freely available ones and are not significantly different. To distinguish these packages we typically put 0.sl6 at the end of the release number. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- epydoc To fix a build error with python-nss a patch was added (bz#578920) This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and was fixed by upstream in 6.1 . For some features texlive-dvips and texlive-latex are required, but not listed in the SPEC file. (bz#522249) This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. mod_auth_kerb We Changed "--with-krb5=/usr/kerberos" to "--with-krb5=/usr" because the krb location changed in SL6. (bz#661777) This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and ended with SL 6.3 opal opal needed a bug fix patch in order for ekiga to build. The opal-3.6.6-buildopts.patch was missing one line for it to work properly. (bz#661769) This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. pilot-link When "autoreconf -is" is called this causes libtool to run from /usr/bin/libtool which is version 2.2.6b but the source ships its own libtool in pilot-link-0.12.4/libtool which is version 2.2.6 and called from the make files. This version mix does not work. (bz#663632) This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. rome TUV 6 provides jdom-1.1.1 and not jdom-1.0 so we changed it to 1.1.1 (bz#665537) This change went into effect with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. qpid-cpp The SPEC file wrongly mandates TUV be listed as the vendor (bz#785919) This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and ended in SL 6.3 qpid-qmf The SPEC file wrongly mandates TUV be listed as the vendor (bz#785921) This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and ended in SL 6.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHANGES TO COMPS.XML The comps.xml file determines what packages are in groups. This determines what packages get installed automatically when you select a group during install, or when you use yum groupinstall. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have made the following changes to comps. We merged all of the comps.xml files from The Upstream Vendor into one file for each arch. If a group was in any of TUV comps.xml files, for that arch, then it was included in our comps.xml file. If a group was default for either of TUV comps.xml, then is was made default in our comps.xml file. If a package was in a group for either of TUV comps.xml files, then it was put in that group in our comps.xml file. Added the following groups: icewm misc-sl openafs-client repos spins ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- REMOVED COMPARED TO ENTERPRISE 6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- rhn-client-tools We cannot provide RHN connections, so we have removed the RHN tools. People requiring RHN must use Enterprise Linux from upstream This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. rhnlib We cannot provide RHN connections, so we have removed the RHN tools. People requiring RHN must use Enterprise Linux from upstream This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. rhnsd We cannot provide RHN connections, so we have removed the RHN tools. People requiring RHN must use Enterprise Linux from upstream This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. rhn-setup-gnome We cannot provide RHN connections, so we have removed the RHN tools. People requiring RHN must use Enterprise Linux from upstream This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. subscription-manager We cannot provide RHN connections, so we have removed the RHN tools. People requiring RHN must use Enterprise Linux from upstream This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. In 6.8 we added subscription-manager- back into the release. yum-rhn-plugin We cannot provide RHN connections, so we have removed the RHN tools. People requiring RHN must use Enterprise Linux from upstream This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. vdsm Was accidentally released by TUV. This is a part of RHEV and not Enterprise Linux so it has been removed. This change went into effect with SL 6.2 and continues in this release. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ADDED compared to Enterprise 6 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PACKAGES ADDED --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have added several packages to Scientific Linux that are not found anywhere on the Enterprise releases. These have been added for various reasons which are noted below. icewm This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Summary : Fast and small X11 window manager Added because we needed a lightweight modern window manager. There are some machines that just don't have much CPU and/or memory, and both KDE and GNOME can really slow these machines down. This is not installed by default. icewm icewm-l10n imlib - for dependencies gtk+ - for dependencies glib - for dependencies OpenAFS This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Summary : OpenAFS distributed filesystem Added because many educational and research centers around the world use AFS as some type of central file system. This is not installed by default. openafs openafs-authlibs openafs-client openafs-compat openafs-firstboot openafs-kernel-source openafs-kpasswd openafs-krb5 openafs-plumbing-tools openafs-server kmod-openafs revisor, livecd-tools, liveusb-creator This was added with SL 6.0 and moved into 'sl-adons' in 6.4. Summary : Scientific Linux Spin Creation Tools to create Scientific Linux "Spins" or "Sites" This was not installed by default. revisor revisor-cli revisor-gui revisor-isolinux revisor-rebrand revisor-reuseinstaller revisor-unity-scripts sl-revisor-configs livecd-tools liveusb-creator yum-autoupdate This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Summary : Automatically update your machine daily via yum. Added for those users who want their system automatically updated without having to worry about doing it by hand. This is installed by default. yum-autoupdate abattis-cantarell-fonts This was added with SL 6.1 and continues in this release. Summary : Cantarell, a Humanist sans-serif font family Added because our new graphical theme uses this font. This is not installed by default. abattis-cantarell-fonts glusterfs-server These became dependancies and were added as of SL 6.8. Summary : Cluster file system The following packages were added in support of glusterfs-server. These are not installed by default. glusterfs-server is offered as x86_64 only. nfs-ganesha nfs-ganesha-gluster userspace-rcu - for dependencies userspace-rcu-devel - for dependencies pyxattr - for dependencies External Repositories for yum This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Summary : Various External Yum Repositories These are not supported by Scientific Linux but are here for your convenience. This is not installed by default. adobe-release / yum-conf-adobe atrpms-repo / yum-conf-atrpms elrepo-release / yum-conf-elrepo epel-release / yum-conf-epel rpmforge-release / yum-conf-rpmforge rpmfusion-free-release / yum-conf-rpmfusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tweak RPMs ADDED --------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the goals of Scientific Linux is to be as close to the original vendor release of Enterprise Linux. But there are several things that people want to change, for one reason or another. In order to have both worlds we have created these tweak rpm's, more commonly known as SL rpm's. These rpm's can be added or removed to add or remove a feature. It is up the individual user to determine if they want a particular feature or not. None of these packages are installed by default unless it is noted that they are. SL_desktop_tweaks This adds a terminal icon to the kicker panel for GNOME. It also adds the "add/remove programs" menu item to KDE. Installed by default for the GNOME and KDE desktop groups. This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Who Needs This? Pretty much any previous desktop user of linux. It's not a necessity, and the icons can be added manually, but it's much nicer to just have them there from the start. SL_enable_serialconsole This script makes all the changes necessary to send console output to both the serial port and the screen. This also creates a login prompt on the serial port and allows users to login at this prompt. This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Who Needs This? Headless servers that want to redirect their output through their serial console during bootup, and also plan on logging in on those consoles. Note: It is usually best to install this package after an install. You can either do this by hand, or in the %post section of a kickstart file. This is because the grub file and bootloader aren't created during an install, until after all the packages are installed. There are 4 packages, which correspond to a serial port speed SL_enable_serialconsole SL_enable_serialconsole-96 (9600 baud) SL_enable_serialconsole-192 (19200 baud) SL_enable_serialconsole-384 (38400 baud) SL_enable_serialconsole-1152 (115200 baud) SL_no_colorls Turns off automatic colors in ls. This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Who Needs This? People who don't like the colorized ls or whose terminals can't read the escape sequences. SL_password_for_singleuser Changes /etc/sysconfit/init to require the root password for single user mode. This was added with SL 6.0 and continues in this release. Who Needs This? In our opinion, everyone needs this. We're quite surprised that Enterprise Linux isn't this way by default. If you are concerned about someone getting root access to your computer by just sitting down to it, then this is something you will want to install along with setting a GRUB password.