Installation and Availability

4 Installation and Availability

You can install Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 on Oracle Linux 7.5 or later, if you are running either RHCK or a previous Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel release. If you are currently running an earlier Oracle Linux release, you must first update your system to the latest available update release.

The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 is supported on the x86-64 architecture, but not on x86. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 is also supported on the 64-bit Arm (aarch64) architecture.

Installation Overview

If you have a subscription to Oracle Unbreakable Linux support, you can obtain the packages for Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 by registering your system with the Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) and then subscribing it to additional channels. See Subscribing to ULN Channels.

If your system is not registered with ULN, you can obtain most of the packages from the Oracle Linux yum server. See Enabling Access to Oracle Linux Yum Server Repositories.

Having subscribed your system to the appropriate channels on ULN or Oracle Linux yum server, upgrade your system. See Upgrading Your System.

Subscribing to ULN Channels

ULN channel requirements differ depending on the platform architecture that you are using.

For Oracle Linux 7 on the 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platform, no RHCK is available and UEK R5 is used by default. Your system must be subscribed to:

ol7_aarch64_latest (latest user space packages for Oracle Linux 7)

For Oracle Linux 7 on the x86 platform, the kernel image and user space packages are available on the following ULN channels:

ol7_x86_64_latest (latest user space packages for Oracle Linux 7)
ol7_x86_64_UEKR5 (kernel-uek*, dtrace-utils*,ndctl-*, btrfs-progs-* and xfsprogs-*)

The following procedure assumes that you have already registered your system with ULN.

To subscribe your system to a channel on ULN:

Log in to https://linux.oracle.com with your ULN user name and password.
On the Systems tab, click the link named for the system in the list of registered machines.
On the System Details page, click Manage Subscriptions.
On the System Summary page, select each required channel from the list of available channels and click the right arrow to move the channel to the list of subscribed channels.

Subscribe the system to the appropriate channels for your platform architecture.
Click Save Subscriptions.

For information about using ULN, see Oracle Linux: Unbreakable Linux Network User's Guide for Oracle Linux 6 and Oracle Linux 7.

Enabling Access to Oracle Linux Yum Server Repositories

Packages are also available on the Oracle Linux yum server repository at https://yum.oracle.com/.

Yum repository requirements differ depending on the platform architecture that you are using.

For Oracle Linux 7 on the 64-bit Arm (aarch64) platform, no RHCK is available and UEK R5 is used by default. Your system must have the following repository enabled:

ol7_latest (latest user space packages for Oracle Linux 7)

For Oracle Linux 7 on the x86 platform, the kernel image and user space packages are available on the following repositories:

ol7_latest (latest user space packages for Oracle Linux 7 other than the RDMA tool packages)
ol7_UEKR5 (kernel-uek*, dtrace-utils*,ndctl-*, btrfs-progs-* and xfsprogs-*)

To enable access to the Oracle Linux 7 repositories on the Oracle Linux yum server, use yum-config-manager. For example, to enable access to the ol7_latest and ol7_UEKR5 repositories, run the following command:

# yum-config-manager --enable ol7_latest,ol7_UEKR5

Note:

You can only use yum-config-manager to enable or disable repositories after you already have a configuration file for the specified repository. Repository configurations are typically stored in /etc/yum.repos.d. The repository configurations that are required to install UEK on Oracle Linux 7 are included in the oraclelinux-release-el7 package.

See Oracle Linux 7: Administrator's Guide.

Upgrading Your System

To upgrade your system to Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5:

After enabling access to the appropriate ULN channels or repositories on the Oracle Linux yum server, run the following command, which upgrades the system to UEK R5:
```
# yum update
```
After upgrading the system, reboot it, selecting the UEK R5 kernel (version 4.14.35) if it is not the default boot kernel.

If you have questions regarding configuring or using the yum command to install updates, refer to Oracle Linux: Unbreakable Linux Network User's Guide for Oracle Linux 6 and Oracle Linux 7.

The kernel's source code is available through a public git source code repository at https://github.com/oracle/linux-uek.

Installing Oracle-Supported RDMA Packages

The following procedure describes how to upgrade from the OFED release to the RDMA release. The instructions describe how to remove the oracle-ofed-release packages and then install the oracle-rdma-release packages.

Subscribe your system to the appropriate ULN channels or enable the appropriate yum repositories:
- If your system is registered with ULN, subscribe the system to the ol7_x86_64_UEKR5_RDMA, ol7_x86_64_UEKR5, and ol7_x86_64_latest channels on ULN.
  
  By default, the ol7_x86_64_UEKR5 and ol7_x86_64_latest channels are enabled when you register an Oracle Linux 7 system with ULN.
- If you want to install the packages from the Oracle Linux yum server, enable the required repositories and make sure your system is using the modular yum repository configuration. If your system is not using the modular yum repository configuration, install the oraclelinux-release-el7 package and run the /usr/bin/ol_yum_configure.sh script:
```
# yum install oraclelinux-release-el7
# /usr/bin/ol_yum_configure.sh
```
  Enable the ol7_latest, ol7_UEKR5, and ol7_UEKR5_RDMA repositories:
```
# yum-config-manager --enable ol7_latest ol7_UEKR5 ol7_UEKR5_RDMA
```
  If you do not intend to use this kernel, you can optionally disable the ol7_UEKR4 repository.
  
  Note:
  
  The RDMA packages that are installed from the ol7_UEKR5_RDMA repository are not compatible with other UEK releases.
  
  See Oracle Linux 7: Administrator's Guide for more information.

Stop and then disable the rdma.service service:

# systemctl stop rdma.service
# systemctl disable rdma.service

Remove any existing OFED packages:

# yum remove 'ibacm*'
# yum remove 'ib-bonding*'
# yum remove 'ibutils*'
# yum remove 'infiniband-diags*'
# yum remove 'libibacl*'
# yum remove 'libibcm*'
# yum remove 'libibmad*'
# yum remove 'libibumad*'
# yum remove 'libibverbs*'
# yum remove 'libmlx4*'
# yum remove 'librdmacm*'
# yum remove 'libsdp*'
# yum remove 'mstflint*'
# yum remove 'ofed-docs*'
# yum remove 'ofed-scripts*'
# yum remove 'opensm*'
# yum remove 'perftest*'
# yum remove 'qperf*'
# yum remove 'sdpnetstat*'
# yum remove 'rdma*'
# yum remove 'rds-tools*'
# yum remove 'rdma-core*'

Clean all yum cached files from all enabled repositories:
```
# yum clean all
```
Install the RDMA packages for UEK R5.
- If you are installing the packages on a bare-metal system, run the following command:
```
# yum install oracle-rdma-release
```
- If you are installing the packages on a virtualized platform (either on a Xen or KVM guest), run the following command, instead:
```
# yum install oracle-rdma-release-guest
```
(Optional) If you require the libpcap package, you must install this separately:
```
# yum install libpcap
```

Each UEK release requires a different set of RDMA packages. If you change the kernel on your system to a UEK release earlier than UEK R5, remove the existing UEK R5-based RDMA packages before installing the correct packages for the new kernel by running the following command:

# yum remove --setopt=clean_requirements_on_remove=1 oracle-rdma-release

Caution:

Downgrading UEK versions is not advisable, except for testing purposes.