Scientific Linux 6.0

Release Notes

Release Notes for Scientific Linux 6.0 - Alpha 2
December 10, 2010

INFO

Web Site
http://www.scientificlinux.org

Download
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/
http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/
ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6rolling/
Mirror List - http://www.scientificlinux.org/download/mirrors

Mailing Lists
scientific-linux-devel@fnal.gov - Development of Scientific Linux
scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov - Users of Scientific Linux supporting each other
scientific-linux-announce@fnal.gov - Announcements concerning Scientific Linux
scientific-linux-errata@fnal.gov - Announcements about Security Errata

ADDED compared to Enterprise 6

• icewm
  Summary: Fast and small X11 window manager
  Added because we needed a lightweight modern window manager. There are some machines that just don't have much CPU and/or memory, and both KDE and GNOME can really slow these machines down.
  This is not installed by default
  ADDED for dependancies
  • glib
  • gtk+
  • imlib
• revisor
  Summary:Revisor provides a set of command line and graphical tools for building distributions.
  Added to be able to create the distribution as well as sites.
  This is not installed by default
  ADDED for dependancies
  • livecd-tools
  • sl-revisor-config (replaced spin-kickstarts)
Added for packages to build correctly
• ocaml-camomile
  Added for virt-top.
• glibc-static.i686 in x86_64
  Added for grub.

Tweak RPMs ADDED

• SL_desktop_tweaks
  Summary:This adds a terminal icon to the kicker panel for GNOME.
  It's not a necessity, and the icons can be added manually, but it's much nicer to just have them there from the start.
  At this time, we have not been able to get this to work for KDE4
  This is installed if you install the general desktop, which is GNOME.
• SL_enable_serialconsole
  Summary:This script makes all the changes necessary to send console output to both the serial port and the screen. This also creates a login prompt on the serial port and allows users to login at this prompt.
  Added for headless servers that want to redirect their output through their serial console during bootup, and also plan on logging in on those consoles.
  This is not installed by default
• SL_password_for_singleuser
  Summary: Changes startup scripts to require the root password for single user mode.
  Added for people concerned about someone getting root access to your computer by just sitting down to it.
  This is not installed by default

CHANGED compared to Enterprise 6

Changed for trademark / branding reasons

• httpd
  Summary: Changed index.html. Changed release name
• sl-bookmarks (replaced redhat-bookmarks)
  Summary: Changed the bookmarks to be SL's basic bookmarks
• sl-indexhtml (replaced redhat-indexhtml)
  Summary: Changed the default browser web page to be SL's basic page
• sl-release (replaced redhat-release-server/client/workstation)
  Summary: Changed the release to be Scientific Linux
• sl-release-notes (replaced Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes*)
  Summary: Added Scientific Linux release notes
• redhat-logos
  Summary: Changed all trademarked icons and pictures.

Changed for building reasons

• epydoc / python-nss
  This was a case where epydoc needed a bug fix patch in order for python-nss to build. We put in the following patches from Fedora 13, but left the numbering the same as RHEL 6.
  Fix crash with newer docutils (#578920) - Lubomir Rintel
  Add texlive-dvips and texlive-latex requirements (#522249) - Matthias Saou
• guile
  We commented out it's final check.
• linuxdoc-tools
  On RHEL/SL 6 perl -V:installvendorlib gives /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/
  The files section was looking for the files in /usr/share/perl5/
  We first wanted to change the files section to look in the installvendorlib area but the RHEL 6 rpms have the files in /usr/share/perl5
  So we changed the $installvendorlib area via a define of installvendorlibdefine
• mod_auth_kerb
  We Changed "--with-krb5=/usr/kerberos" to "--with-krb5=/usr" because the krb location changed on RHEL 6.
• pilot-link
  when "autoreconf -is" is called this causes libtool to run from /usr/bin/libtool which is version 2.2.6b but the source ships its own libtool in pilot-link-0.12.4/libtool which is version 2.2.6 and called from the make files. This version mix does not work.
• rome
  RHEL 6 provides jdom-1.1.1 and not jdom-1.0 so we changed it to 1.1.1
• ruby
  We fixed the shellwords arguments building bug.

comps.xml
The comps.xml file determines what packages are in groups. This determines what packages get installed automatically when you select a group during install, or when you use yum groupinstall.
We have made the following changes to comps.

• We merged all of the comps.xml files from The Upstream Vendor into one file for each arch. If a group was in any of TUV comps.xml files, for that arch, then it was included in our comps.xml file. If a group was default for either of TUV comps.xml, then is was made default in our comps.xml file. If a package was in a group for either of TUV comps.xml files, then it was put in that group in our comps.xml file.
• Added the following groups:
  • icewm
  • misc-sl
• Changed the following packages from "default" to "optional"
  abrt-*, rhn-setup-gnome, rhnsd, system-config-kdump, yum-rhn-plugin

Directory Structure

Comming Soon