UEK Release 6 Developer Preview available for Oracle Linux 7 and Oracle Linux 8
January 9, 2020 | 2 minute readThe Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK), included as part of Oracle Linux, provides the latest open source innovations, optimizations and security for enterprise cloud workloads. The UEK Release 5, based on the upstream kernel 4.14, is the current UEK release that powers the production workloads on Oracle Linux 7 in the cloud or on-premises.
Linux 5.4 is the Latest Stable Kernel release, and it is the mainline kernel that the UEK Release 6 tracks. You can experiment the UEK Release 6 preview today with Oracle Linux 7 and Oracle Linux 8 on both x86_64 and aarch64 platforms.
The example below is using an Oracle Linux 8 x86_64 instance on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The kernel was upgraded to the UEK Release 6 preview within a few minutes. The same upgrade procedures apply to an Oracle Linux 7 or Oracle Linux 8 instance running on-premises.
- The Oracle Linux 8 instance runs the current RHCK (Red Hat Compatible Kernel).
[root@ol8-uek6 ~]# uname -a
Linux ol8-uek6 4.18.0-147.el8.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Nov 12 11:05:49 PST 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
- Update the system:
[root@ol8-uek6 ~]# yum update -y
- Enable "ol8_developer_UEKR6" UEK Release 6 Preview Channel:
[root@ol8-uek6 ~]# dnf config-manager --set-enabled ol8_developer_UEKR6
- Run "dnf" command to perform the UEKR6 Developer Preview installation:
[root@ol8-uek6 ~]# dnf install kernel-uek kernel-uek-devel
- Reboot the Oracle Linux 8 instance to have the new kernel take effect. When the Oracle Linux 8 instance comes back, you now have the UEK Release 6 preview running.
[root@ol8-uek6 ~]# uname -a
Linux ol8-uek6 5.4.2-1950.2.el8uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Thu Dec 19 17:07:00 PST 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Further technical details and known issues on UEK6 are available on this dedicated article at Oracle Community - Oracle Linux and UEK Preview space.
If you have any questions, post them to Oracle Linux Community.
Simon Coter
Director, Oracle Linux and Virtualization Product Management
A 19-year Oracle veteran, Simon Coter is an experienced product manager and open source community member. He leads a team responsible for several Oracle Linux and Virtualization offerings, including Oracle Linux, the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux, Oracle Cloud Native Environment, Oracle Linux KVM, Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, Oracle Linux Automation Manager, Gluster, Oracle VM, and VirtualBox. Prior to this, Simon was a technical consultant focused on project management, architectures definition, sizing and implementation, best practices, and technical references for customers.