Oracle® Linux 7 Release Notes for Oracle Linux 7.1

1.1 System Requirements

You can install Oracle Linux 7 on x86-64 systems with up to 2048 logical CPUs and 64 TB of memory. The theoretical upper limit is 5120 logical CPUs and 64 TB of memory, but this configuration is not supported. A minimum of 2 logical CPUs and 1 GB of memory per logical CPU is recommended. Although the minimum disk space required for installation is 1GB, a minimum of 5 GB is recommended.

1.2 File System, Storage, and Address Space Limitations

The following table lists the maximum file size and maximum file system size for the btrfs, ext4, and XFS file systems.

File System Type	Maximum File Size	Maximum File System Size
btrfs	50 TB	50 TB
ext4	50 TB	50 TB
XFS	16 TB	500 TB

The maximum supported size for a bootable LUN is 50 TB. GPT and UEFI support are required for LUNs larger than 2 TB.

The maximum size of the address space that is available to each process is 128 TB.

1.3 Shipped Kernels

Oracle Linux 7 Update 1 includes the following kernels:

kernel-3.10.0-229.el7: Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK).
kernel-uek-3.8.13-55.1.6.el7uek: Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 (UEK R3), which is the default kernel.

1.4 Kdump Configuration During Installation

It is now possible to configure Kdump during non-graphical installation. For limitations on using the crashkernel=auto setting, see Section 3.5, “Crash Kernel auto Setting”.

1.5 Load Balancing and High Availability

Oracle Linux 7 includes the Keepalived and HAProxy technologies for balancing access to network services while maintaining continuous access to those services.

Keepalived uses the IP Virtual Server (IPVS) kernel module to provide transport layer (Layer 4) load balancing, redirecting requests for network-based services to individual members of a server cluster. IPVS monitors the status of each server and uses the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) to implement high availability.

HAProxy is an application layer (Layer 7) load balancing and high availability solution that you can use to implement a reverse proxy for HTTP and TCP-based Internet services.

For more information, see Oracle® Linux 7: Administrator's Guide

1.6 MySQL Community and MariaDB Packages

In the initial release of Oracle Linux 7, the MySQL Community 5.6 packages were provided on the Oracle Linux 7 full installation DVD image but were not installable using the Anaconda installer or kickstart. The ISO image for this update to Oracle Linux 7 provides support for installing either MySQL 5.6 or MariaDB by using either the Anaconda installer or kickstart.

It is not possible to install MySQL and MariaDB on the same system as package conflicts exist. Installing the MySQL packages replaces any conflicting MariaDB packages.

By default, neither MySQL 5.6 packages nor MariaDB packages are installed. It is possible to install either the MySQL 5.6 package group or the MariaDB package group on a system by using the graphical installer or kickstart, but not both package groups.

To install the MySQL 5.6 packages using kickstart, specify the @mysql package group in the %packages section. If you also specify @mariadb, it is ignored.

To install the MariaDB packages using kickstart, specify @mariadb but not @mysql in the %packages section.

Both the MySQL Community 5.6 and the MySQL Community 5.5 packages are also available on the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and Oracle Linux yum server.

1.7 Spacewalk Client Registration

It is not necessary to install the Spacewalk client before registering an Oracle Linux 7 Update 1 system with a Spacewalk server. Instead, you can use the rhnreg_ks command, specifying the server URL, a user name that is authorized to register the system, the user's password in plain text, and the activation key to be associated with the system:

# rhnreg_ks --serverUrl=http://spacewalk_server/XMLRPC --username=user \
  --password=passwd  --activationkey=activation_key

Oracle recommends installing the full Spacewalk client after registration to support all of the features provided by Spacewalk, which include provisioning and auditing.

1.8 UPEK Fingerprint Readers

Support has been added for the UPEK fingerprint readers found on Lenovo T400 and other laptops as well as some external USB fingerprint readers.

1.9 Technology Preview

The following features are still under development, but are made available for testing and evaluation purposes with UEK R3:

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.
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 https://oss.oracle.com/projects/tmem/.
UEFI Secure Boot

This update provides support for installing and using Oracle Linux 7 on systems that have enabled UEFI Secure Boot. A system in Secure Boot mode will load only boot loaders and kernels that have been signed by Oracle.

For the RHCK, the following features are currently under technology preview:

Active Directory and LDAP sudo providers.
Block and object storage layouts for parallel NFS (pNFS).
Block device caching by LVM, which allows small, fast devices to act as caches for large, slow devices.
btrfs file system. Oracle supports btrfs with UEK R3.
Crash kernel can be configured to boot with more than a single CPU.
DIF/DIX for data integrity checking on SCSI devices.
LSI Syncro CS feature in the megaraid_sas driver to support High-Availability Direct-Attached storage (HA-DAS) adapters.
LVM API.
More than 32 PCI slots can be configured with PCI Bridge in QEMU.
OpenLMI Software Provider.
PCI Express Bus, AHCI Bus, and USB 3.0 host adapter emulation are provided for KVM guests.
SCAP Workbench and the OSCAP Anaconda add-on.
Single-Root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) in the qlcnic driver.
Storage array management, which includes a command-line interface and the libStorageMgmt API.
The dm-era device-mapper target records changes made to blocks over a specified time period.
Trusted Network Connect.
virtio-blk-data-plane in Quick EMUlator (QEMU) improves block I/O performance.

Note

The upstream Kpatch RPM has been removed from Oracle Linux. Customers who wish to patch their running kernel with zero downtime should evaluate Oracle's Ksplice technology, which is included at no additional cost with Oracle Linux Premier support.

1.10 Compatibility

Oracle Linux maintains user-space compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is independent of the kernel version that underlies the operating system. Existing applications in user space will continue to run unmodified on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 (UEK R3) 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. UEK R3 contains 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.

1.11 Unsupported Emulex Devices

The following Emulex LightPulse HBA devices are being desupported by Emulex and are not supported for use with Oracle Linux 7:

LP10000 (VID:10DF, DID:FA00)
LP10000S (VID:10DF, DID:FC00)
LP101 (VID:10DF, DID:F0A1)
LP1050 (VID:10DF, DID:F0A5)
LP11000S (VID:10DF, DID:FC10)
LP11000-S (VID:10DF, DID:FD11)
LP111 (VID:10DF, DID:F0D1)
LP6000 (VID:10DF, DID:1AE5)
LP7000 (VID:10DF, DID:F700)
LP8000 (VID:10DF, DID:F800)
LP9002 (VID:10DF, DID:F900)
LP952 (VID:10DF, DID:F095)
LP9802 (VID:10DF, DID:F980)
LP982 (VID:10DF, DID:F098)
LPe1000 (VID:10DF, DID:F0F5)
LPe1000-SP (VID:10DF, DID:F0F5)
LPe1002-SP (VID:10DF, DID:F0F7)
LPe11000S (VID:10DF, DID:FC20)
LPx1000 (VID:10DF, DID:FB00)