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Chapter 1 New Features and Changes

Table of Contents

The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 (UEK R3) is Oracle's third major release of its heavily tested and optimized operating system kernel for Oracle Linux 6 on the x86-64 architecture. It is based on the mainline Linux kernel version 3.8.13.

The 3.8.13-35 release is the second quarterly update release for UEK R3. It includes security and bug fixes, as well as driver updates.

Oracle actively monitors upstream checkins and applies critical bug and security fixes to UEK R3.

UEK R3 uses the same versioning model as the mainline Linux kernel version. It is possible that some applications might not understand the 3.x versioning scheme. If an application does require a 2.6 context, you can use the uname26 wrapper command to start it. However, regular Linux applications are usually neither aware of, nor affected by, Linux kernel version numbers.

1.1 Notable Changes

Updates to the hpsa driver add new PCI IDs for HP Smart Array controllers, and add the HP SSD Smart Path feature, which improves the performance of select HP Smart Array Controllers in SSD-based HP ProLiant servers.
Support has been added for the Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 family.
Paravirtualization drivers have been added or updated to support Oracle Linux guests running on Microsoft Hyper-V.
The DTrace profile provider now supports profile-n probes that fire at a fixed interval at high-interrupt level on all active CPUs. (For comparison, tick-n probes fire on only one CPU per interval and the CPU on which they fire can change over time.) The units of n default to a frequency expressed as a rate of firing per second. You can use the same suffixes as for tick-n probes to specify either a time interval or a frequency.
Quarterly Update 2 includes a change to requirements for dracut, version 004-303.0.3 or higher is now required.
The kernel-uek-headers package is no longer built and delivered with UEK3 releases. In order to build kernel modules, you only need the kernel-uek-devel package. If you need a headers package, use the kernel-headers package.
Limited support for client-side NFS over RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) has been enabled. Server-side NFS over RDMA is not enabled.

1.2 Xen Improvements

Fixes in netback for Rx (receive) and Tx (transmit) path issues (Bug ID 18379272).
Fixes in netfront for resources leaks and missed timer (Bug ID 18348558).
Fixes in virtual CPU (VCPU) hotplug code (Bug ID 18348666).
Fixes in physical to machine (P2M) code for PCI passthrough (Bug ID 18355746).

1.3 Driver Updates

The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel supports a wide range of hardware and devices. In close cooperation with hardware and storage vendors, several device drivers have been updated by Oracle.

1.3.1 Storage Adapter Drivers

Broadcom

NetXtreme II Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) driver (bnx2fc) updated to 2.4.2e.

Brocade

Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) driver fcpim (bfa) updated to 3.2.23.0.

Cisco

Cisco FCoE HBA driver (fnic) updated to 1.6.0.10.

Emulex

OneConnect (previously known as Blade Engine 2) Open-iSCSI driver (be2iscsi) updated to 10.2.125.0o.

HP Smart Array Controller driver (hpsa) updated to 3.4.4-1.

Intel

NVM Express device driver (nvme) updated to 0.9.

QLogic

Fibre Channel HBA driver (qla2xxx) updated to 8.07.00.08.39.0-k1.
iSCSI HBA driver (qla4xxx) updated to 5.04.00.05.06.02-uek3.

1.3.2 Network Adapter Drivers

Broadcom

NetXtreme II 1 Gigabit network adapter driver (bnx2) updated to 2.2.5f.
NetXtreme II 10 Gigabit network adapter driver (bnx2x) updated to 1.710.10.
NetXtreme II Converged Network Interface Card core driver (cnic) updated to 2.5.18d.
Tigon3 ethernet adapter driver (tg3) updated to 3.136e.

Brocade

10 Gigabit PCI Express network adapter driver (bna) updated to 3.2.23.0.

Cisco

VIC Ethernet NIC Driver (enic) updated to 2.1.1.50.

Emulex

OneConnect (previously known as Blade Engine 2) 10Gbps adapter driver (be2net) updated to 10.2u.

Intel

PRO/1000 PCI Express Gigabit network adapter driver (e1000e) updated to 3.0.4-NAPI.
Ethernet Connection XL710 network adapter driver (i40e) version 0.3.9-k added.
Gigabit Ethernet network adapter driver (igb) updated to 5.1.2.
Gigabit Virtual Function driver (igbvf) updated to 2.3.3.
10 Gigabit PCI Express network adapter driver (ixgbe) updated to 3.19.1.
10 Gigabit PCI Express Virtual Function driver (ixgbevf) updated to 2.12.1.

Oracle

Sun Blade 40/10Gigabit Ethernet network driver (sxge) updated to 0.11202013.
Sun Blade Virtualized 40/10Gigabit Ethernet network driver (sxgevf) updated to 0.11202013.

QLogic

1/10 GbE Converged/Intelligent Ethernet adapter driver (qlcnic) updated to 5.3.55.6.
10 Gigabit PCI-E Ethernet adapter driver (qlge) updated to 1.00.00.34.

1.3.3 Miscellaneous Drivers

Intel

Package Level C-state Idle Injection for Intel CPUs driver (intel_powerclamp) added.

Microsoft

The following paravirtualization drivers have been added or updated to support Oracle Linux guests running on Microsoft Hyper-V:
- HID-compliant mouse driver (hid-hyperv)
- Balloon driver (hv_balloon)
- Network driver (hv_netvsc)
- Virtual storage driver (hv_storvsc)
- Utilities (hv_utils)
- VMBus driver (hv_vmbus)
- Synthetic video frame buffer driver (hyperv_fb)
- Keyboard driver (hyperv-keyboard)

1.4 Technology Preview

The following features included in the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 are still under development, but are made available for testing and evaluation purposes.

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.
Kernel module signing facility
Applies cryptographic signature checking to modules on module load, checking the signature against a ring of public keys compiled into the kernel. GPG is used to do the cryptographic work and determines the format of the signature and key data.
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/.

1.5 Compatibility

Oracle Linux maintains user-space compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is independent of the kernel version running underneath the operating system. Existing applications in user space will continue to run unmodified on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 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. In this release, there are 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.

1.6 Header Packages for Development

The kernel-headers and kernel-uek-headers packages provide the C header files that specify the interface between user-space binaries or libraries and the RHCK and UEK. These header files define the structures and constants that you need to build most standard programs or to rebuild the glibc package.

The kernel-devel and kernel-uek-devel packages provide the kernel headers and makefiles that you need to build modules against the RHCK and UEK.