---

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta 1 (Taroon) Announced

Red Hat is pleased to announce the general availability of Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta 1 (Taroon).

This is a public beta. Please feel free to forward this
announcement to anyone within or outside your organization who may
be interested in testing this beta release.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 is the next generation of our
comprehensive suite of Linux operating systems — designed for
mission-critical enterprise computing and certified by top
enterprise software vendors. More information on the current Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 product line is available at http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/.

This announcement includes details on obtaining the beta
software, reporting bugs, and communicating with Red Hat and other
testers via mailing lists during the beta period.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta 1 is available for the following
architectures:

  • x86 (i686/Athlon 32-bit)
  • ia64 (Intel Itanium2 64-bit)
  • x86_64 (AMD64 64-bit)
  • ppc (IBM iSeries and pSeries 64-bit)
  • s390 (IBM S/390 31-bit)
  • s390x (IBM zSeries 64-bit)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta 1 is available in two
variants:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS
    • Designed for server applications, includes the core operating
      system as well as network server packages
    • Available for x86, ia64, x86_64, ppc, s390, s390x
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS
    • Designed for workstation applications, includes the core
      operating system as well as desktop productivity, development,
      communications, and network client packages
    • Available for x86, ia64, x86_64

A third variant, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES, designed for
mid-range server applications, has an identical package set to Red
Hat Enterprise Linux AS at Beta 1. General users interested in the
ES product should test the AS Beta 1 release.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta 1 contains a wide range of new
features, including but not limited to the following:

  • Kernel based on 2.4.21 with numerous scalability enhancements:
    • Native Posix Threading Library (NPTL)
    • Thread Local Storage & Futex APIs
    • Per-device locks for block IO
    • Memory management enhancements: RMAP VM & large pages
      support
    • O(1) scheduler
    • Hyperthreading scheduler
    • Integrated Summit chipset support
    • NFS performance & stability enhancements
    • Large Translation Buffer pages – hugetlbfs
    • Ext3 updates for performance and stability
    • Semtimedop â semaphores with time limitation
    • Fine-grain process accounting (x86 only)
    • ACPI 2.0 (Itanium2 & AMD64 only)
    • Many driver updates and additions
  • 4GB/4GB Kernel/User Memory Split (x86 bigmem kernel only)
    • Support for up to 64GB on x86
    • 4GB of virtual address space for kernel and almost 4GB for each
      user process on x86
  • Development Environment
    • gcc 3.2.3 tool chain
    • gcc “ssa” tool chain included as a technology preview
    • gcj / libgcj (Java gcc compiler front-end)
    • gdb 5.3.90 – including multi-threaded core dump and gcore
    • glibc 2.3.2
    • Eclipse 2.1 Developer Environment
  • Improved I/O subsystem
    • 64-bit SCSI/Fibre Channel DMA support
    • Up to 256 SCSI devices
    • VaryIO support (permits larger I/O transfers)
    • Serial ATA support – SATA1 (for Intel PIIX/ICH ATA ICH5)
    • Hotplug PCI framework (x86 and ia64 only)
    • Asynchronous I/O on sockets
    • Expanded Asynchronous I/O for disks support
  • Desktop enhancements
    • XFree86 4.3.0
    • Bluecurve ™ graphical user interface (Unified GNOME/KDE look
      and feel)
    • OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 office productivity suite
    • Ximian Evolution 1.4.3
    • Mozilla 1.4
  • Improved serviceability
    • Logical Volume Manager (LVM1) support
    • Kernel crash dump and analysis enhancements
    • Configurable application core dump paths
    • Code profiling support included in the kernel (OProfile)
    • Support for diskless systems
  • Networking Enhancements
    • Improvements to channel bonding
    • Failover & bandwidth aggregation for servers w/ multiple
      NICs
    • More complete kernel IPv6 support
    • Kernel IGMP updated from V2 to V3
    • Samba 3.0 (Beta)
    • Apache 2.0 web server
    • TUX web accelerator update
  • Security enhancements
    • Filesystem ACLs
    • General purpose cryptographic API in the Kernel
    • Position Independent Executables
    • Kernel support for ipsec on IPV4
  • Red Hat Cluster Manager enhancement
    • Multinode high availability clustering with new GUI

Current features, packages, and naming are subject to change
before the final release.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux development team would like to
encourage you to test this release in non-production environments
and provide feedback via the mechanisms described below. This is
pre-release quality code, and Red Hat makes no guarantees as to
performance, stability, or compatibility across beta releases.
Please run this in non-production environments only. Red Hat will
not support upgrades from one beta release to another, nor from
beta to official released products.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta 1 is available for download via
FTP and Red Hat Network.

FTP Availability

Installable binary ISO images, RPM packages, and source RPMs are
available at:

ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/taroon

Or the following mirrors:

North America:
United States:
ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/RedHat/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

ftp://kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/redhat/linux/beta

ftp://ftp.oregonstate.edu/pub/ftp.redhat.com/beta/taroon

Canada:

ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/redhat/ftp.redhat.com/linux/beta/taroon

Europe:
Czech Republic:

ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.redhat.com/redhat/linux/beta/taroon


ftp://ultra.linux.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.redhat.com/redhat/linux/beta/taroon

Germany:

ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/beta/taroon


http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/ftp/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/beta/taroon


ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/redhat-ftp/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/


http://wftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/redhat-ftp/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

Netherlands:

ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/RedHat/ftp/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/


ftp://ftp.surfnet.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/RedHat/ftp/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

Romania:

ftp://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

Russia:
ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

http://ftp.chg.ru/pub/Linux/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

Switzerland:
ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

Asia/Pacific:
Australia:
http://planetmirror.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

ftp://ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/taroon/

Red Hat Network Availability and
Updates

RPM and source RPM packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta
1 are available via Red Hat Network to all RHN users at:

https://rhn.redhat.com

Installable binary and source ISO images are available via Red
Hat Network to all RHN users with paid subscriptions at:

https://rhn.redhat.com/network/software/download_isos.pxt

During the beta period, we will also be supplying updated
packages via a separate ‘Updates’ channel on Red Hat Network. While
these updates are not subjected to as much system testing as our
release milestones, they enable you to immediately test against
more recent package builds that may resolve bugs and issues, rather
than requiring you to wait until the next full milestone
release.

We strongly encourage you to register for these update channels
to ensure that you are testing the latest beta packages. Note that
you will have to specifically subscribe your systems to the
separate Updates channel by visiting the RHN web interface after
registering your systems.

To subscribe your systems to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Beta
Updates channels, perform the following steps:

  1. Log in to RHN and browse to the “Software” tab, or access it
    directly using this URL:
    https://rhn.redhat.com/network/software/index.pxt
  2. Click on the appropriate Early Access Updates channel for your
    system’s architecture, for example “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 AS
    Beta 1 (i386) Updates”.
  3. Click on the “Target Systems” sub-tab. You should see a list of
    all of the systems you have registered via RHN.
  4. Select the systems that you wish to receive interim update
    packages, and click the ‘Subscribe’ button.
  5. Run the Red Hat Update Agent (up2date) on your target system(s)
    to retrieve and install the new packages from the “Updates”
    channel. Help on using the up2date tool is again available at:

    http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/RHNetwork/ref-guide/up2date-setup.html

Bug Reporting

To ensure accurate tracking and follow-up, all bugs should be
reported using Bugzilla at:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com

We have created a public release category ‘Red Hat Enterprise
Linux Public Beta’ for this early access program. Please use
version “taroon-beta1” as the version for all bugs filed against
this milestone release.

Mailing Lists

Red Hat has created a public mailing list for general discussion
of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (Taroon) Beta releases.

To subscribe to taroon-beta-list, send mail to:

taroon-beta-list-request at redhat com

with

subscribe

in the subject line. You can leave the body empty. Or see:

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/taroon-beta-list/

Thanks for your interest in testing Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3!

Sincerely,

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Developer Insider for top news, trends, & analysis