Elena's Blog

OEL 4.7 was released on ULN on August 1 2008.
There are 6 new channels, el4_u7_i386_base, el4_u7_i386_patch, el4_u7_x86_64_base, el4_u7_x86_64_patch, el4_u7_ia64_base, el4_u7_ia64_patch.
ISOs will be available as usual on eDelivery and OSS will have the SRPMs.
Updated documentation:
ULN Whitepaper
Unbreakable Linux FAQs
Unbreakable Linux Data Sheet

Please see
metalink note 729543.1 for more information about a critical RHEL4.7 kernel bug which affects every Oracle customer running Oracle Enterprise Manager, EL4.7 is not affected.

Release Notes
Source RPMs

The kernel errata that was made available by Red Hat on August 6 2008 fixes the RHEL4.7 kernel problem mentioned in my last entry.
We have issued a corresponding OE4.7 kernel errata, even though we already had the fix in the stock OEL4.7 kernel. You do not need to install this latest errata to fix the problem. You can get the details here:
http://oss.oracle.com/pipermail/el-errata/2008-August/000703.html

The Corresponding Red Hat bugzillas are:
RH bug 455525
RH bug 455074
RH bug 453507

Explanation of the changes (quoting from the Red Hat errata text):

"A set of patches detailed as "sys_times: Fix system unresponsiveness
during many concurrent invocation of sys_times()" and "Minor code cleanup
to sys_times() call" introduced regression which caused a kernel panic
under high load. These patches were reverted in the current release. "

There is a bug in glibc with calloc() not returning zeroed memory when the process address space is locked, for instance by a call to mlockall(). Versions of glibc affected are:

* RHEL-4.6 and OEL-4.6: glibc-2.3.4-2.39, all architectures.
* RHEL-5.1 and OEL-5.1: glibc-2.5-18, all achitectures.
* SLES10 SP2: glibc-2.4-31.54 , all architectures

This produces various symptoms including segmentation faults. Oracle CRS, the cssd process, as of 10.2.0.4 and higher, use the mlockall() call, and can fail. CRS versions prior to 10.2.0.4 do not use this call, and aren't effected.

Details on the problem are posted here:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=473812
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=405781

This bug has been fixed in RHEL5.2 glibc and OEL5.2 (glibc-2.5-54). It is also fixed in RHEL4.7 and OEL4.7 (glibc-2.3.4-2.41). We are currently testing a fix from Novell for SLES10. The bug was not present in earlier versions of glibc and it is not present in RHEL3.
Please see Metalink Note 732847.1

In the last couple of months we have added a few webpages to the Oracle.com website. They give more details about the OEL and OVM products, and also add a comprehensive list of technical contributions the Oracle Linux Engineering Team has made upstream in the various Open Source projects.

The pages are:

OEL technical specifications

OVM technical specifications

Contributions to the various Linux Open Source projects

OCFS2 technical information

Last week a new Oracle Yum repository went live. It contains OEL4 Updates, OEL5 Updates and Oracle VM. It provides a quick way to install new updates as an alternative to downloading the full ISOs from eDelivery. Note that single erratas are not published here, but they are bundled up as usual in the full updates.

OEL 4.8 was released on ULN and on the Oracle public yum repository on May 26, 2009.
There are 6 new channels on ULN, el4_u8_i386_base, el4_u8_i386_patch, el4_u8_x86_64_base, el4_u8_x86_64_patch, el4_u8_ia64_base, el4_u8_ia64_patch.
ISOs will soon be available as usual on eDelivery.
Updated documentation:
ULN Whitepaper
Unbreakable Linux Whitepaper
Unbreakable Linux FAQs
Unbreakable Linux Data Sheet
OEL4 Certification Guidelines
Release Notes
Source RPMs

OEL 5.4 is available on ULN as of today, September 9 2009. Both i386 and x86_64 platforms are ready for download. There are 4 new channels on ULN, el5_u4_i386_base, el5_u4_i386_patch, el5_u4_x86_64_base, el5_u4_x86_64_patch.
The IA64 version will be available shortly, on two new channels: el5_u4_ia64_base, and el5_u4_ia64_patch.
ISOs will soon be available as usual on eDelivery
RPMs will be soon available on the public Yum repository as well.