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Recommended update for Linux kernel

Knowledgebase

(Last modified: 02JUN2005)


solutions Recommended update for Linux kernel SuSE Linux Maintenance Web (0faea246aeed504807fe049bfbcdf8e5)

Applies to

Package: kernel-s390x
kernel-source
kernel-syms
Product(s): SUSE CORE 9 for IBM zSeries 64bit
Patch: patch-10157
Release: 20050602
Obsoletes: none

Indications

Everyone using the Linux Kernel should update.

Description

Release Notes for SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 Service Pack 2 Kernel
Overview
1. Important general information
1.1 Purpose
2. Enhancements
2.1 Installation 2.2 Platforms / Hardware / Drivers 2.3 Availability 2.4 Serviceability 2.5 Scalability 2.6 Performance 2.7 Security
3. Maintenance fixes
3.1 Bug fixes 3.2 Security fixes
4. Multiple Kernels
5. Known problems
1. Important general info
These kernel release notes are generic for all SLES 9 based products, so some parts may not apply to a particular architecture/product. In unobvious cases the respective architectures are listed explicitly. These release notes do not stick strictly to the kernel changes but also prospects to related fields and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 Service Pack2 in general.
1.1 Purpose
This SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Service Pack serves multiple purposes:
  • Contains enhancements to the SLES 9 code base (see chapter 2 for kernel related parts).
  • Contains all maintenance fixes (see chapter 3), which were released since GA of SLES 9.
  • Provides an easy update of your system or individual packages to the latest Service Pack level. This is especially useful if you can not use online update mechanisms.
  • Provides improvements for an easy fresh installation using the latest kernel, drivers and updates to the installer.
  • Include PTFs (special fixes for customers) which were folded back into the common code base making them maintained.
  • Contains useful additional information and documentation.
Through joint testing and maximum care we try hard not to break any ISV certification with a Service Pack, but we recommend that you doublecheck with your ISV about the certification status of your application.
2. Enhancements
2.1 Installation
  • Added detection support in hwinfo for new/updated hardware drivers (see 2.2)
  • Updated reiserfs to version 3.6.19
  • Several LVM and resize fixes in yast2-storage
  • Several AutoYaST fixes and make module dependencies configurable in desktop files
  • Fix mount by label and mount by uuid
  • Added dialog to allow assigning PCI IDs to drivers
    • This enables us to submit additional PCI IDs to a driver to enable the use of the devices utilizing the new PCI IDs: In case the driver was released before the related hardware, the support functionality is also warranted in the majority of the cases.
    • Afterwards this information will be used during the installation but will also persist in the installed system.
2.2 Platforms / Hardware / Drivers
  • Support of many new hardware components via driver and PCI ID updates:
    • updated tg3 to version 3.23 to support ??
    • updated bcm to version 8.1.11 to support Broadcom BCM5752
    • updated e1000 to version 6.0.52 to support ??
    • updated e100 to version 3.4.7 to support ??
    • updated ixgb to version 1.0.95 to support 10 GB Ethernet
    • updated ipr to version 2.0.10.2
    • updated sk98lin to version 8.14
    • updated qlogic qla2xxx to latest official version 8.00.02 plus several fixes
    • updated qlogic qla4xxx to the latest official version 5.00.02
    • updated cciss driver to version 2.6.6 and fixed wrong PCI ID
    • Added 3w-9xxx driver for series 9000 SATA Raid cards
    • Added PCI Express Card support to the pciehp driver
    • added support Intel ICH7 chipset (PATA, SATA, I2C, PIRQ and AC97)
    • added support Intel ICH4L chipset
    • updated support for Intel i915 chipset (hwinfo, sax2, xf86)
    • updated MPT fusion driver to version 3.02.18
    • fixed aic7?xx driver probe info
    • many improvements on Altix hardware support, including improved error handling, VGA console support, improved support for IOC4
    • chipset and RMP3 console port support for HP zx2 systems
    • chipset recognition for HP sx2000 systems
    • updated aic7xx to mainline kernel version 2.6.12-rc2
    • updated aic79xx to mainline kernel version 2.6.12-rc2
    • updated emulex-lpfc to version 8.0.16.6_p3
    • updated ibmvscsi driver with mainline version
    • updated ALSA sound system (kernel, lib, utils, ...) to 1.0.9rc2 to support latest sound chips and features
    • added vt1211 support to i2c to handle sensors on VIA EPIA motherboards
    • fixed keyboard to survive if any key (e.g. F2) is pressed early
    • updated ndiswrapper to version 1.1 for latest wireless support
    • updated wireless-tool to version 1.1.0 which adds support for ipw2100 and ipw2200
    • Backported AMD dual core node detection support
    • Added dual-core PowerNow! support for Opteron processors (single- and dual-core)
    • Added multi-core/multi-thread identification for Montecito
    • Support x86 cache identification through cpuid(4)
    • Updated avm_fcdsl with new fixed drdsl version from AVM
    • Updated tmscsim driver to 2.6.11.8
  • Removed obsolete "cloned" (*-new) drivers from SP1 due to real driver update
    • tg3-new
    • bcm-new
    • e1000-new
    • aic79xx-new
  • Included support for Oracle Cluster Filesystem 2 (ocfs2) for limited use cases
    • At the time of this release notes support is limited to the following
      conditions:
      • x86, AMD64 & Intel EM64T, Itanium hardware platform (not: IBM POWER, IBM S/390 & zSeries)
      • valid support agreement with Novell and Oracle
      • use as a home for Oracle RAC (no general purpose use)
      Support conditions may be extended over time. Please contact your
      Novell sales or support representative about the current status.
  • Activate raw device for S/390
  • Update hangcheck driver and enable it on all platforms
  • Included support for Novell nss filesystem (km_nss)
  • Various XFS (and DMAPI) and JFS fixes
  • Assorted fixes for ext2, ext3, and Lustre
  • Added autofs4 support with version 4.1.3 (kernel and userland)
    • You can enable autofs4 with the following steps:
      • Deinstall autofs
      • Install autofs4
      • Uncomment following line in /etc/modprobe.conf: alias autofs autofs4
      • Remove loaded autofs module: modprobe -r autofs
  • Fixed an Oops in ACL code
  • Updated CIFS to 1.33
  • Updated libata to 2.6.11 level for various bugfixes and AHCI/SATA2 support Fixed error handling for ATAPI devices, plus various fixes on top of that
  • Improved iSCSI and SAN/NAS support with patches from EMC, NetAPP and others
  • Fix booting from iSCSI and allow static network interface config
  • Backported several NFS and RPC bugfixes, stability and performance enhancements from upstream/mainline kernel and updated nfs-utils package
  • NFS direct IO fixes
  • Made NFSD DMAPI aware
  • Fixed sunrpc xprt_bindresvport
  • Enhanced /proc/mounts to include timeo and retrans
  • Included several HP/Compaq devices in SCSI blacklist
  • Added various USB fixes
  • Fixed mempool allocation deadlocks
  • On x86-64, enable HPET timer via kernel parameter; default is "disabled"
  • Fixed timers runing too fast on EM64T when HPET is not present
  • Print only activated CPUs (s390 only)
  • Integrated numerous other bugfixes from upstream/mainline kernel
  • Updated microcode_ctl to version 1.11 and fix script activation on install
  • Disabled MMConfig by default. Can be reenabled with pci=mmconf
  • Disabled ASPM on all PCI Express cards
  • Updated pciutils with more PCI IDs, to fix sysfs parsing and to support PCI-Express
  • Added faster software suspend (swsuspend)
    • The software suspend provided with SP1 worked, but we made a much faster implementation available with SP2.
  • Updated CKRM
    • Added I/O controller
    • Enabled numtasks and cpu controllers
  • Tweaked page coloring
  • devs now creats all /dev/ttyS* device nodes.
  • Fixed aio read-ahead performance regression
  • Add some additional taints (on bad_page, mce, and forced rmmod)
  • Favor SIGKILL to other signals
  • Fix s2io link detection
  • Several InfiniBand stack fixes
  • Several SCSI layer fixes, and an update to handle broken SCSI 2 devices
  • Updated syslinux to take bios memory size into account
  • Updated linuxrc to use 0.0.0.0 as IP in bootp requests and handle '-' in module names correctly
  • Allow skipping of IO-APIC ID check via kernel parameter
  • Many further architecture- and platform- specific fixes
  • Include AppArmor kernel support
  • Add Xen patches to kernel-source
    • We integrated Xen patches into the kernel-source package. This added an additional arch/xen subdir and does NOT have any influence on the regular SLES kernels and thus not invalidate any testing.
    • IMPORTANT NOTE: XEN will not be supported with SP2 for production use, but we will make the needed Xen packages available as a "technology preview" on an FTP site, independently of SP2. This shall allow people to play with it and to get familiar with Xen. The exact location will be announced seperately.
2.3 Availability
  • Added memory mirroring patches from Stratus
  • Fixed several bugs in drbd
  • Fixed several bugs in heartbeat (and build with OpenIPMI)
  • Integrated multipath devices into hotplug and added fix for many devices
  • Added support for multipathed devices in udev
  • Added support for "multipath" option in initrd to support a delayed partition probing per host adapter needed in multipath setups
  • Updated multipath-tools to 0.4.4 and added pp_alua path prio checker, fixed several bugs and enabled additional hardware
  • Updated device-mapper to 1.01.01
  • Backported device mapper snapshot fixes and multipath support from 2.6.11-rc3
  • Included ocfs2 module from Oracle (see above)
  • Fixed several problems using EVMS, in particular related to multi-pathing
2.4 Serviceability
  • Updated Linux kernel crash dump (lkcd) and lkcdutils
    • Fix kdb interaction with lkcd dumps
    • Reduce stack usage in lkcd
    • Added support for polling I/O for diskdump on selected platforms
    • Added support for more than 4GB for network dump
    • Support dynamic bufsize
    • Increase console loglevel before taking dumps
    • Use fast gzip in lkcd dumps
    • Added support for 'secure' mode of netdump
    • Fix lcrash 'trace' failure with unwind
    • Fix magic number handling
    • Fix netdump-server looping
    • Fix number of online CPUs (ia64 only)
    • Fix 'whatis' command
  • Enable poweroff on Altix
2.5 Scalability
  • Improved dual-core support for x86 and x86-64
  • Enabled NUMA support on SLES9 for POWER
  • Fixed shmget to not be limited to 2G
  • Allowed shm to be executable
  • Detect systems which always operate in physical APIC mode
  • Significantly faster booting with thousands of disks attached
  • Allow to optionally disable partition scan for devices
  • Optionally disable blkid on boot by setting DISABLE_BLKID
2.6 Performance
  • Made perfmon subsystem pluggable
  • Added support for IA64 hardware performance counters via the perfmon interface
  • Added cpu_relax to delay loop
  • Increased MAX_IO_APICS
  • Fixed performance problem with inode cache size
  • Allow slab cache to be shrunk from userland
2.7 Security
  • Included all security fixes (see 3.1 below)
  • NX support on x86: Add support for non-executable pages on x86 arch
  • Added protection against spoofed queue messages in iptables
  • Backported SCTP iptable modules from 2.6.11
3. Maintenance fixes
3.1 Bugfixes
Service Pack 2 contains all the latest bugfixes for each package released
via the maintenance Web since the GA version. See chapter 4.3 how to install
these and chapter 7 where to find detailed documentation for each patch.
3.2 Security fixes
Service Pack 2 contains all the latest security fixes for each package
released via the maintenance Web since the GA version. See chapter 4.3
how to install these and chapter 7 where to find detailed documentation
for each patch.
4. Multiple Kernels
It is possible to install multiple kernels side by side. This feature is meant
to allow administrators to upgrade from one kernel to another by installing the
new kernel, verifying that the new kernel works as expected, then uninstalling
the old kernel. While YaST does not yet support this feature, kernels can
easily be installed and uninstalled from the shell using rpm -i <package>.rpm.
For information about managing packages from the command line, refer to the
Administration Guide.
The default boot loader menus contain one kernel entry. Before installing
multiple kernels, it is useful to add an entry for the extra kernels, so that
they can easily be selected. The kernel that was active before installing a new
kernel can be accessed as vmlinuz.previous and initrd.previous. By creating a
boot loader entry similar to the default entry and having this entry refer to
vmlinuz.previous and initrd.previous instead of vmlinuz and initrd, the
previously active kernel can be accessed.
5. Known problems
  • SGI Altix and Silicon Graphics Prism systems (ia64) SGI recommends PROM 4.20 or subsequent versions for all SGI Altix and Silicon Graphics Prism systems running SLES9 SP2. The updated PROM contains key bug fixes, along with support for new kernel features, such as memory error recovery. The latest PROM firmware can be obtained from SGI Supportfolio(TM): http://support.sgi.com Caveat: PROM 4.20 and subsequent versions are not compatible with SLES9 SP1 or earlier kernels. If you want to switch between SLES9 SP1 and SLES9 SP2 kernels, DO NOT upgrade the PROM on your system.
  • For S/390 and zSeries For Installation more than 256 MB is needed.
  • For x86_64 For update to SP2 more then 256 MB are needed.
  • For Intel x86 and x86-64 CPUs Prior to SP2, the microcode update init script was disabled by default; normally the script should be enabled to allow for fixes to be applied to the microcode of Intel x86 and x86-64 CPUs. The default has been changed in SP2, so the microcode updating will be enabled on new installations. However, on old installations where SP2 is applied as an update, the script will not be enabled if it was disabled before. We recommend to enable it by issuing the command "insserv microcode" on the command line of a root shell or by enabling it in the YaST runlevel editor.
  • Using SCSI or hotplug devices may lead to boot failure or mount problems On reboot, SCSI or hotplug devices may be assigned to different device file
    names than before. If the root filesystem moved to a different device name,
    the kernel will not find it and fail booting.
    Workarounds:
    For a root filesystem use mount by volume label, see below. For all other
    filesystems configure mount by UUID using YaST2:
    • In YaST2 go to the Partitioner
    • For every SCSI device partition /dev/sd? with a mount point, go to Edit... -> Fstab Options and select Mount in /etc/fstab by UUID.
    Using mount by volume label for root filesystem:
    • Assign a volume label to the root filesystem and activate mount by volume label Go to the YaST2 Partitioner. Select the root filesystem (Mount on /) and go to Edit, then Fstab Options. Check Mount in /etc/fstab by Volume label. Enter a label in the field Volume Label, e.g. rootvollabel. Be sure to use a volume label that is not used by any other volume in the system. Commit changes (press Ok, Ok, Next).
    • Set up the root= kernel parameter in the bootloader configuration Go to the YaST2 Boot Loader Setup. Press Edit Configuration Files. In the line that starts with append =, add root=LABEL=rootvollabel to the kernel command line. rootvollabel is the Label you assigned to the root filesystem above. Commit changes (press Ok, Finish).
  • Detection of systems which always operate in physical APIC mode doesn't work yet

Solution

Please install the updates provided at the location noted below.

Installation notes

This update is provided as an RPM package that can easily be installed onto a running system by using this command:
rpm -Fvh kernel-s390x.rpm kernel-source.rpm kernel-syms.rpm
zipl
Finally, reboot the system with
shutdown -r now
to load the new kernel (replace "now" with the appropriate amount of time to allow local users to cleanly log out, for example "+5" for five minutes.)

links to download packages

Download Source Packages

Download the source code of the patches for maintained products.


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