Oracle® Linux

Release Notes for Oracle Linux 6.4 for SPARC

Copyright © 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

E40165-01

March 2013

Abstract

This document contains information on the first release of Oracle Linux 6 for SPARC. This document may be updated after it is released. To check for updates to this document, refer to the Oracle Linux 6 documentation library on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Web site:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37670_01/index.html

This document is intended for users and administrators of Oracle Linux. It describes potential issues and the corresponding workarounds you may encounter while using Oracle Linux 6 on the SPARC platform. Oracle recommends that you read this document before installing or upgrading Oracle Linux 6 for SPARC.

Document generated on: 2013-03-21 (revision: 631)


Table of Contents

Preface
1. New Features and Changes
1.1. Supported Systems
1.2. Notable Changes and Differences from Oracle Linux 6.4 on x86 or x86_64
1.3. Packages Added to the Distribution
1.4. Updated or Modified Packages
1.5. Packages Not Included in the Distribution
2. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel
2.1. Important Patches and Modifications
2.2. Known Issues and Limitations
3. Availability and Installation

Preface

The Oracle Linux 6.4 for SPARC Release Notes provides a summary of the most notable changes and differences and lists known issues and possible workarounds for Oracle Linux 6.4 for SPARC.

Audience

This document is written for system administrators who want to use Oracle Linux on the SPARC platform. It is assumed that readers have a general understanding of the Linux operating system.

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Related Documents

The latest version of this document and other documentation for this product are available at:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/linux/documentation/index.html.

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Chapter 1. New Features and Changes

Oracle Linux 6.4 for SPARC is the first public release of Oracle Linux on the SPARC architecture. It was built from the same source packages as the corresponding Oracle Linux distribution for the x86 architecture, plus any required patches and modifications to support the SPARC platform.

This document outlines the most notable changes and differences and lists known issues and possible workarounds. It is an addendum to the Oracle Linux 6 Update 4 Release Notes for x86:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37670_01/E39522/html/index.html

1.1. Supported Systems

Oracle Linux for SPARC is a pure 64-bit operating system and can only work on a 64-bit SPARC CPU. Installation on 32-bit SPARC processors is not supported. You can install Oracle Linux for SPARC on bare metal servers and Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly known as Logical Domains).

Any SPARC CPU model that supports the sun4v architecture (that is, all UltraSPARC T, SPARC T4, T5, M5 and Fujitsu SPARC64-X) should be capable of running Oracle Linux for SPARC.

Oracle Linux for SPARC has been built and tested on the following systems/platforms:

  • Fujitsu M10-1, M10-4, and M10-4S (using firmware version XCP2040 or later)

  • Oracle or Sun T4-1, T4-2, T5-2, T4-4, T5-8, M5, and M10

  • Oracle VM Server for SPARC version 3.0 (see Preinstallation Tasks and Requirements in the Oracle VM Installation and Upgrade Guide for Release 3.2.1)

The Hardware Certification List at http://linux.oracle.com/hardware-certifications lists all SPARC systems that are certified to work with Oracle Linux for SPARC.

For information about known issues related to peripheral support (for example, network or storage adapters), see Section 2.2, “Known Issues and Limitations”.

1.2. Notable Changes and Differences from Oracle Linux 6.4 on x86 or x86_64

Oracle Linux 6.4 for SPARC is built from the same source files as the Oracle Linux 6.4 release for the x86 platform. A number of packages were amended to compile on the SPARC architecture. These portability changes were applied on top of the existing source archives. In many cases, the changes only related to the RPM specification files that define how to compile the source code and package the resulting binaries. In some cases, changes to the actual source code were necessary. All of these patches are available in the source RPM packages.

Due to the fundamental differences of the SPARC and PC architecture, some additional changes were necessary. The most notable changes are the use of the SILO boot loader instead of GRUB and the removal of some x86-specific packages. The configuration of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel has been adapted to the SPARC environment. A number of SPARC-specific patches have been incorporated to better support the features that are available on this architecture. In addition, drivers for devices that are not available on the SPARC architecture have been disabled in the kernel configuration.

  • The Red Hat compatible kernel is not included. The system installs and boots the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel by default.

  • There is no separate boot ISO image for the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.

  • Btrfs is not supported on the root file system.

  • Ksplice is not yet supported. This is planned for a future update release of Oracle Linux for SPARC.

  • DTrace is not yet supported. This is planned for a future update release of Oracle Linux for SPARC.

1.3. Packages Added to the Distribution

The following RPM packages have been added to the distribution to better support Linux on SPARC:

  • elftoaout

    The elftoaout utility converts a static ELF binary to a static a.out binary. If you use an ELF system on SPARC, run elftoaout on the kernel image so that the SPARC PROM can network boot the image.

  • genromfs

    The genromfs tool creates romfs file systems, which are lightweight, read-only file systems that are supported by the Oracle Linux kernel. Romfs file systems are mainly used to create initial RAM disks during installation.

  • piggyback

    The piggyback utilities are designed to attach an initial ram disk to an a.out-format kernel image.

  • pigz

    The pigz utility is a fully functional replacement for gzip. Its parallel implementation exploits multiple processors and multiple cores to the maximum extent possible when compressing data.

  • prtconf

    The prtconf utility dumps the SPARC OpenPROM device tree in a compact, readable format similar to that produced by prtconf on Oracle Solaris. It also allows you to change OpenPROM options.

  • silo

    The silo package installs the SILO (Sparc Improved LOader) boot loader, which you need to boot the Oracle Linux kernel on a SPARC system. SILO installs onto your system's boot block and you can configure it to boot Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, and SunOS.

  • v4l-utils

    This package contains video4linux2 utilities.

1.4. Updated or Modified Packages

In addition to the kernel itself, many RPM packages have been modified to compile and work on the SPARC architecture. In most cases, the changes relate to the RPM building process and minor portability issues.

The following packages have been modification to accommodate the differences required by the SPARC architecture:

  • anaconda

    The installer has been modified to accommodate changes to path names, differences in disk partitioning, package grouping, networking, boot loader configuration, and a different kernel. For performance reasons, calls to gzip have been replaced by pigz.

  • binutils

    The GNU binary utilities have been modified to provide the required opcodes for the T4 crypto instructions.

  • gcc

    Multiarch support has been disabled.

  • gdb

    The GNU debugger has been modified to work around SPARC toolchain issues (for example, memory alignments).

  • glibc

    The GNU C Library has been updated to fix an issue in SHMLBA helper function and multiarch support has been disabled.

  • initscripts

    Modifications to LDOM have been applied in addition to a few extra console rules.

  • NetworkManager

    The dispatcher does not warn about an invalid connection for the hostname action.

  • openssl

    The openssl package has been modified to provide support for the built-in encryption functions of the SPARC T4/T5 chip. The T4 crypto engine implements acceleration for the following cryptographic algorithms:

    • Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithms:

      aes-128-cbc, aes-192-cbc, aes-256-cbc, aes-128-ctr, aes-192-ctr, aes-256-ctr, aes-128-cfb8, aes-192-cfb8, aes-256-cfb8, aes-128-ecb, aes-192-ecb, and aes-256-ecb

    • Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithms:

      des-cbc, des-ede3-cbc, des-ecb, and des-ede3-ecb

    • Cryptographic hash functions:

      md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, and sha512

    You can use the openssl speed command to test the speed of these algorithms. To test the speed without T4 acceleration, set the OPENSSL_DISABLE_T4 environment variable to any value.

  • parted

    Sun disk label support has been implemented.

  • procps

    The buffer size has been increased from 64 to 128 KB to handle the additional information provided via /proc/stat.

  • udev

    The udev dynamic device manager has been updated to support virtual devices that Oracle VM creates for SPARC client device drivers.

  • ypbind

    The script /etc/dhcp/dhclient.d/nis.sh failed to preserve the SELinux context on /etc/yp.conf. This would have lead to the system not starting up any services when performing a minimum install in an environment where the DHCP server advertised a NIS domain.

If you want to learn more about the individual changes, you can use the following command to view the RPM change logs for a specified package:

# rpm -q --changelog package

1.5. Packages Not Included in the Distribution

When compared with the corresponding x86 release, the following packages are not included on the SPARC version:

  • cpuspeed

  • dmidecode

  • firefox

  • grub - GRUB boot loader

  • kernel - Red Hat compatible kernel (2.6.32)

  • valgrind

These packages were either not required on the SPARC architecture (but might have been replaced with SPARC-specific counterparts) or did not build due to portability issues. Those packages that did not build due to portability issues will be provided as individual downloads from the Unbreakable Linux Network and the Public Yum Server as soon as these issues have been resolved.

Chapter 2. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel

This chapter describes the important patches and modifications, known issues, and limitations for the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2.

Oracle Linux for SPARC boots an optimized version of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39), including enhancements and modifications that are required to better support the SPARC sunv4 architecture. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 for SPARC is based on the same source code as the x86 version plus the SPARC-specific modifications.

2.1. Important Patches and Modifications

The following important patches and modifications have been made in this release:

  • InfiniBand support has been disabled (CONFIG_INFINIBAND=n).

  • CONFIG_NO_HZ has been disabled.

  • CONFIG_NODES_SHIFT has been increased from 4 to 5 to support SPARC systems with up to 32 sockets.

  • CONFIG_NR_CPUS has been increased from 256 to 4096 to support SPARC systems with a large number of strands, cores, or sockets.

  • Patches have been added to properly identify the new CPUs in /proc/cpuinfo, for example, SPARC M5 and SPARC64-X.

  • Patches have been added to enable many SPARC-specific performance improvements.

  • The openprom kernel driver has been enabled.

  • The following device driver modules have been disabled for SPARC:

    • dme1737

    • f71805f and f71882fg

    • ipmi_si

    • it87

    • lightning

    • lm78

    • mk712

    • ns588

    • pc87360 and pc87427

    • radeon and radeon_kms

    • sch5627

    • smsc47b397 and smsc47m1

    • snd-mtpav

    • tmp_atmel

    • tpm_nsc and tpm_tis

    • vt1211

    • w83627ehf and w83627hf

2.2. Known Issues and Limitations

This section describes known issues in this release.

SILO boot loader

The SILO boot loader is still compiled as a 32-bit binary. To work around the architecture detection functionality of rpm, the package is a noarch RPM. This is a temporary workaround until SILO has been made fully 64-bit safe.

ixgbe network driver fails to load

On some systems (for example, T5) with an Intel10 Gigabit PCI-Express network adapter, the ixgbe network driver fails to load with an invalid MAC address error. Currently, there is no workaround and this device can not be used.

megasas RAID driver fails to initialize firmware

On systems (for example, T4-1) with a MegaRAID SAS HBA, the megasas driver module fails with a Failed to init firmware/FW in FAULT state error. Currently, the driver module does not work on big-endian architectures such as SPARC. A fix is in preparation and will be made available.

Active guest domains crash randomly

When changing the virtual network link status of a domain, the virtual switch emits a signal via the logical domain channels (LDCs) to all other domains. As a result, binding or unbinding other guest domains might cause an active guest domain to crash. The workaround is to use either the ldm add-vsw or ldm set-vsw command to set inter-vnet-link=off for the virtual switch configuration, for example:

# ldm set-vsw inter-vnet-link=off vswitch-name

When the inter-vnet-link property is set to off, LDC channels are not configured between virtual network devices for inter-vnet communications. Instead, LDC channels are assigned only for communication between each virtual network device and the virtual switch.

Unloading and reloading the sunvnet driver can cause a kernel panic

If rmmod and modprobe are used to unload and subsequently reload the sunvnet kernel module, the system can crash with a kernel panic.

Installation on a T5 system can abort with a kernel panic

If the stack trace refers to tlb_fixup_done, try starting the installation by passing numa=off as a boot parameter.

Network installation

Bootstrapping an installation over the network by using boot net:dhcp at the OpenBoot prompt (similar to using PXE boot on x86) is not supported.

netconsole is not supported on LDOM guests

The LDOM guest network driver currently does not provide support for the netpoll interface, which is required to enable the netconsole driver.

SELinux messages at boot time

During system boot, SELinux may output messages such as the following:

SELinux: Permission audit_access in class file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission audit_access in class dir not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission execmod in class dir not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission audit_access in class lnk_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission open in class lnk_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission execmod in class lnk_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission audit_access in class chr_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission audit_access in class blk_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission execmod in class blk_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission audit_access in class sock_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission execmod in class sock_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission audit_access in class fifo_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission execmod in class fifo_file not defined in policy.
SELinux: Permission syslog in class capability2 not defined in policy.
SELinux: the above unknown classes and permissions will be allowed

These classes have not yet been fully adapted to the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. You can ignore these messages as they are not critical.

Chapter 3. Availability and Installation

Oracle Linux 6.4 for SPARC is available as ISO installation media from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (http://e-delivery.oracle.com/linux) and as individual RPM packages from the Unbreakable Linux Network (http://linux.oracle.com) and the Public Yum Server (http://public-yum.oracle.com).

The distribution can be installed both as a guest domain in Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly known as Logical Domains) or on a bare metal server. See the instructions in the Installation Guide for Oracle Linux 6.4 for SPARC, which is available at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37670_01/index.html.

If you have questions regarding configuring or using yum to install updates, refer to the Oracle Linux Administrator's Solutions Guide at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37670_01/index.html.

The kernel's source code is available via a public git source code repository at http://oss.oracle.com/git.