Rolling shells

Well, as most of you may already know, Red Hat has released RHEL version 5 update 3 today, and they appear to have been quite hard at work. So what can you all expect in CentOS 5.3? Here’s a brief rundown of cool stuff to look forward to:

Networking

• NetWorkManager and wpa_supplicant updates mean better wireless security support. NetworkManager has a whole host of updates listed, so loads of good things have been happening there.
• Updated driver support for a number of broadcom, forcedeth, ralink, and realtek cards made it into the kernel, so those of you in irc complaining that your nic wasn’t recognized should be happier after this.
• There are also a few improvements for intel networking, both wired and wireless, so that should give the intel crowd their feel-good too.

Storage

This is where things get interesting, so hang on.

• ext4 support is now included, so you can feel free to play with it. All accounts have it being pretty interesting.
• encrypted block devices are now supported in anaconda for direct install. Anyone with a laptop should be interested in this one. (This one is my personal favorite. A die-hard suse fan always rubs on this when we debate)
• There’s added support for IBM’s DS4xxx series disk systems in the dm_multipath package now. In theory this should rid us of the rdac driver update reboot hell. I’ll be testing this feature out tomorrow.
• 3ware and megaraid_sas also made the cut for driver updates. These two should have a fair bit of performance improvements to them.

One thing I’m still waiting to see sorted out is the httpd fiasco on x86_64. In previous releases, you could install both, but it would cause conflicts when run. RH says they fixed this by removing the x86_64 version of httpd from the x86_64 distro. I’m really hoping they mean that they’ve removed the x86 version from the x86_64 distro, and that the release notes just have a nice little heart-stopping typo. Anyone dealing with multi-arch issues might want to keep an eye on this one between visits to the therapist.

Update: Seems the httpd issue was for ppc, though the arch was not clearly spelled out in the release notes. Have a look athttp://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv5-list/2009-January/msg00098.html for information.

You can get the full reading on what’s coming from this url:  http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html/Release_Notes/index.html

What features are you looking forward to the most with the new release? I’m curious to see which features people are most interested in using. Let me know in the comments below.