Oracle Linux 6.6 (based on RHEL 6.6) has been released
Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Linux 6.6 for x86 (32 bit) and x86_64 (64 bit) architectures.Oracle Linux 6.6 released
Oracle Linux 6 Update 6 ships with three sets of kernel packages:
*
Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2
(|kernel-uek-2.6.39-400.215.10.el6uek|) for x86
*
Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3
(|kernel-uek-3.8.13-44.1.1.el6uek|) for x86|_|64
*
Red Hat Compatible Kernel (|kernel-2.6.32-504.el6|) for x86 and x86_64
By default, both the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and the Red Hat Compatible Kernel are installed.
UEK R3 includes the following major improvements over UEK R2:
*
Integrated DTrace support in the UEK R3 kernel and user-space
tracing of DTrace-enabled applications.
*
Device mapper support for an external, read-only device as the
origin for a thinly-provisioned volume.
*
The|loop|driver provides the same I/O functionality as|dm-nfs|by
extending the AIO interface to perform direct I/O. To create the
loopback device, use the*losetup*command instead of*dmsetup*.
The|dm-nfs|module is not provided with UEK R3.
*
Btrfs*send*and*receive*subcommands allow you to record the
differences between two subvolumes, which can either be snapshots of
the same subvolume or parent and child subvolumes.
*
Btrfs quota groups (/qgroups/) allow you to set different size
limits for a volume and its subvolumes.
*
Btrfs supports replacing devices without unmounting or otherwise
disrupting access to the file system.
*
Ext4 quotas are enabled as soon as the file system is mounted.
*
TCP controlled delay management (/CoDel/) is a new active queue
management algorithm that is designed to handle excessive buffering
across a network connection (/bufferbloat/). The algorithm is based
on for how long packets are buffered in the queue rather than the
size of the queue. If the minimum queuing time rises above a
threshold value, the algorithm discards packets and reduces the
transmission rate of TCP.
*
TCP connection repair implements process checkpointing and restart,
which allows a TCP connection to be stopped on one host and
restarted on another host. Container virtualization can use this
feature to move a network connection between hosts.
*
TCP and STCP early retransmit allows fast retransmission (under
certain conditions) to reduce the number of duplicate acknowledgements.
*
TCP fast open (TFO) can speed up the opening of successive TCP
connections between two endpoints by eliminating one round time trip
(RTT) from some TCP transactions.
*
The TCP small queue algorithm is another mechanism intended to help
deal with bufferbloat. The algorithm limits the amount of data that
can be queued for transmission by a socket.
*
The secure computing mode feature (/seccomp/) is a simple sandbox
mechanism that, in strict mode, allows a thread to transition to a
state where it cannot make any system calls except from a very
restricted set (|_exit()|,|read()|,|sigreturn()|, and|write()|) and
it can only use file descriptors that were already open. In filter
mode, a thread can specify an arbitrary filter of permitted systems
calls that would be forbidden in strict mode. Access to this feature
is by using the|prctl()|system call. For more information, see
the|prctl(2)|manual page.
*
The OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) 2.0 stack supports
the following protocols:
o
SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) enables access to remote SCSI devices
via remote direct memory access (RDMA)
o
iSCSI Extensions for remote direct memory access (iSER) provide
access to iSCSI storage devices
o
Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) is a high-performance,
low-latency, reliable connectionless protocol for datagram delivery
o
Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) supports stream sockets for RDMA
network fabrics
o
Ethernet over InfiniBand (EoIB)
o
IP encapsulation over InfiniBand (IPoIB)
o
Ethernet tunneling over InfiniBand (eIPoIB)
The OFED 2.0 stack also supports the following RDS features:
o
Async Send (AS)
o
Quality of Service (QoS)
o
Automatic Path Migration (APM)
o
Active Bonding (AB)
o
Shared Request Queue (SRQ)
o
Netfilter (NF)
*
Paravirtualization support has been enabled for Oracle Linux guests
on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.
*
The Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) tunneling protocol overlays a
virtual network on an existing Layer 3 infrastructure to allow the
transfer of Layer 2 Ethernet packets over UDP. This feature is
intended for use by a virtual network infrastructure in a
virtualized environment. Use cases include virtual machine migration
and software-defined networking (SDN).
Technology Previews
The following technology preview features are provided with UEK R2:
* Distributed Replicated Block Device (Oracle Linux 6 only)
Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD) shared-nothing,
synchronously replicated block device (RAID1 over network), designed
to serve as a building block for high availability (HA) clusters. It
requires a cluster manager (for example, pacemaker) to implement
automatic failover.
* Kernel module signing facility
Applies cryptographic signature checking to modules on module load,
checking the signature against a ring of public keys compiled into
the kernel. GPG is used to do the cryptographic work and determines
the format of the signature and key data.
The kernel module signing facility is a supported feature in the UEK
R3 distribution.
* Linux Containers (Oracle Linux 6 and x86-64 only)
Based on the Linux cgroups and name spaces functionality, Linux
Containers (LXC) allow you to safely and securely run multiple
applications or instances of an operating system on a single host
without risking them interfering with each other. Containers are
lightweight and resource-friendly, which saves both rack space and
power. In order to get started with containers, you need to install
the lxc package, which is included in the package repository of the
Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.
LXC is a supported feature in the UEK R3 distribution.
* Transcendent memory
Transcendent Memory (tmem) provides a new approach for improving the
utilization of physical memory in a virtualized environment by
claiming underutilized memory in a system and making it available
where it is most needed. From the perspective of an operating
system, tmem is fast pseudo-RAM of indeterminate and varying size
that is useful primarily when real RAM is in short supply. To learn
more about this technology and its use cases, see the Transcendent
Memory project page on oss.oracle.com:
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/tmem/
The following technology preview features are provided with UEK R3:
* Distributed Replicated Block Device
Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD) shared-nothing,
synchronously replicated block device (RAID1 over network), designed
to serve as a building block for high availability (HA) clusters. It
requires a cluster manager (for example, pacemaker) to implement
automatic failover.
* Transcendent memory
Transcendent Memory (tmem) provides a new approach for improving the
utilization of physical memory in a virtualized environment by
claiming underutilized memory in a system and making it available
where it is most needed. From the perspective of an operating
system, tmem is fast pseudo-RAM of indeterminate and varying size
that is useful primarily when real RAM is in short supply. To learn
more about this technology and its use cases, see the Transcendent
Memory project page on oss.oracle.com:
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/tmem/
The following Technology Preview features are available when running the
Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK):
* Apache IPA identity management modules
* Btrfs file system
* Closed Process Group (CPG) API for inter-node locking
* Corosync redundant ring with autorecovery
* corosync-cpgtool dual-ring configuration
* Cross Realm Kerberos Trust Functionality (relies on the Samba 4
client library)
* dm-era is a device mapper target that records when blocks are
written to a device and is typically intended for use by backup
applications
* fence_ipmilan agent diagnostic pulse
* fence_sanlock agent for luci
* FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace)
* keepalived daemon for network load balancing and high availability
* Kerberos v1.10 DIR cache storage type to handle TGTs for multiple KDCs
* Kernel Media support
* libqb library for high performance logging, tracing, inter-process
communication, and polling by Pacemaker
* Linux Containers (LXC)
* LVM metadata dynamic aggregation (using lvmetad daemon)
* LVM support for thinly-provisioned snapshots (single system only)
* LVM support for thinly-provisioned logical volumes (single system only)
* Pacemaker high-availability cluster manager
* pcs utility for cluster configuration and management
* Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) provides support for monitoring and
managing performance at the system level
* Precision Time Protocol (PTP) linuxptp implementation
* PTP kernel driver support
* QFQ queuing discipline
* rgmanager support for disabling via /etc/cluster.conf
* Thin-provisioning and scalable snapshots
* trousers and tpm-tools packages that support Trusted Platform Module
(TPM) hardware
For more information, please refer to the online release notes available at:
http://oss.oracle.com/ol6/docs
Software Accessibility
All packages are available on the Unbreakable Linux Network .
Installable binary and source ISO images will available onOracle Software Delivery Cloud shortly.
If ISO images are needed before they are available on Oracle Software Delivery Cloud, please request these via a My Oracle Support service request.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
The Oracle Linux Team
