User`s guide

Technology Preview

• rds-tools (RDS utilities)

• sdpnetstat (sdpnetstat, InfiniBand SDP diagnostic utility)

• srptools (InfiniBand SDP utilities)

• uname26 (uname26, wrapper utility for the UNAME26 personality patch)

• xfsdump (administrative utilities for the XFS file system)

• xfsprogs (XFS file-system utilities)

xfsprogs-devel

xfsprogs-qa-devel

For details of the channels on which these packages are available, see Chapter 3, Installation and

Availability.

1.5 Technology Preview

The following features included in the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 are still under

development, but are made available for testing and evaluation purposes.

• DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block Device)

A 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)

for 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.

• 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 at http://

oss.oracle.com/projects/tmem/.

1.6 Compatibility

Oracle Linux maintains user-space compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is independent of the

kernel version running underneath the operating system. Existing applications in user space will continue

to run unmodified on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 and no re-certifications are needed for

RHEL certified applications.

To minimize impact on interoperability during releases, the Oracle Linux team works closely with third-party

vendors whose hardware and software have dependencies on kernel modules. The kernel ABI for UEK R3

will remain unchanged in all subsequent updates to the initial release. In this release, there are changes to

the kernel ABI relative to UEK R2 that require recompilation of third-party kernel modules on the system.

Before installing UEK R3, verify its support status with your application vendor.