Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.5 released

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.4 released

z14

Oracle 12c R1 and R2 now certified on RHEL 7.1 and SLES 12 SP1 for Linux on z / LinuxONE

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.9 released

RHEL 5 end of service

Red Hat announced the end of service for RHEL 5. They will offer another three and a half years of security patches and critical fixes if a customer has bought the Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS).

This enterprise distribution has been in the market now for more than ten years. Now it's time to move on. Best of course would be the RHEL 7 stream, which right now is at RHEL 7.3. Every day you stay on the old release without security updates is increasing the risk of being hacked!

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.3 released

On November 3rd 2016 Red Hat released the next regular update to their flag ship operating system.

The kernel level for 7.3 is kernel-3.10.0-514.el7.

Here is my usual summary of links to more information:

• Complete RHEL 7 documentation
• RHEL 7.3 release notes
• RHEL 7.3 known issues
• RHEL 7.3 kernel CVE and bugfix documentation
• RHEL 7 installation guide
• RHEL 7 installation guide for z
• RHEL 7 performance tuning guide
• IBM documentation on developerworks (7.2 version)
• RHEL limits
• RHEL lifecycle with the end date for the Extended Update Service (EUS)
• RHEL7 package list

From a Linux on z Systems perspective the major enhancements are in the tool chain. The compiler can now can exploit the SIMD instructions of z13.

Also in September Red Hat achieved EAL4+ / common criteria certification for RHEL 7.1:

• Red Hat press release
• Red Hat certification overview
• BSI certification report  

 (updated 4/11/2016)

z13 feature exploitation - which distribution levels are required

In this post I'll try to summarize which distribution levels, packages, APARs, PTFs etc are needed to exploit a given z13 (performance) function. I expect this to change over time, so please revisit for updates.

For the virtualization layers I use the label "(guest)" for enablement of guest exploitation. So you need at least the given version of the Hipervisor to exploit a certain function in the guest. Of course you also need the respective guest support.

All version levels in the table are minimum levels.

Feature	Red Hat	SUSE	Ubuntu	z/VM (host)	z/VM (guest)	KVM (host)	KVM (guest)
SMT	7.2	12 SP1	16.04	6.3+		1.1.1
SIMD: kernel support – compiled SIMD apps can run	7.2	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+(3)	1.1.1	1.1.1
z13 tool chain support (compiler, binutils)	tbd	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+		1.1.0
PCI: RoCE 10 Gb Ethernet	7.2(1)	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+
PCI: RoCE 10 Gb OFED stack	7.2(1)		16.04		6.3+
PCI: zEDC Java(4)	7.2(1)	12 SP1	16.04		6.3+
PCI: zEDC zlib preload library	(1)(2)	(2)	16.04		6.3+
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-
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(1) fixes coming, maybe in next fix pack
(2) RYO lib from https://github.com/ibm-genwqe/genwqe-user
(3) z/VM APAR VM65733 required
(4) Java 7 SR9FP30, Java 7.1 SR3FP40, Java8 SR3

(updated 9/30/2016)

Fedora 24 for IBM z Systems and Linux ONE released

The new Fedora 24 for z Systems / s390x / LinuxONE was released 6/21/2016 together with the Intel version. Thanks to the Fedora team for closing the time gap between the architectures! The kernel level is kernel-4.5.5-300.

As usual the download is available from the Fedoraproject site and the respective mirrors and known issues  are covered in the wiki.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 released

On May 11 2016 Red Hat has announced the availability of RHEL 6.8. This marks the transition into what in Red Hat's product life cyle is called production phase 2. The kernel level is now kernel-2.6.32-642.el6, for the main bug fixes see the kernel update description.

As usual there are the release notes and the technical notes in two separate documents. The complete documentation can be reached from the Red Hat documentation page (you need to select "6" on the left bar).

The IBM documentation for RHEL 6.4 on developerworks still applies for this release.

From a technical perspective the most important part are the z13 performance patches, which will make certain workloads run faster than on previous releases.

IBM Interconnect 2016 news

This week at Interconnect in 2016 there were some good demos that I want to share. In the key note presentation from Ross Mauri "Master Hybrid Cloud, Defend Against Cyber Threats with IBM z Systems and IBM LinuxONE"

there are some interesting demonstrations: the "shopping experience" demo for LinuxONE starts at 25:15 and blockchain demo for LinuxONE starts at 51:22.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.2 released

On November 19th 2015 Red Hat released the next regular update to their flag ship operating system.

The kernel level for 7.2 is kernel-3.10.0-327.el7. The number of technology previews for System z has been greatly reduced, successful testing allows now support for those features.

Here is my usual summary of links to more information:

• Complete RHEL 7 documentation
• RHEL 7.2 release notes
• RHEL 7.2 known issues
• RHEL 7.2 kernel CVE and bugfix documentation
• RHEL 7 installation guide
• RHEL 7 installation guide for z
• RHEL 7 performance tuning guide
• IBM documentation on developerworks
• RHEL limits
• RHEL lifecycle with the end date for the Extended Update Service (EUS)
• RHEL7 package list (now updated to include 7.2)

From a Linux on z Systems perspective this is a major step. This is the first distribution that supports SMT2 natively.So if you install it, you will have twice as many logical CPUs.

And this is the first Red Hat distribution that supports the High Availability and Resilient Storage Add-Ons. So far some restrictions apply, but they hopefully can be lifted in later releases.

(updated 4/26/2016) 

Fedora 23 for IBM z Systems released

The new Fedora 23 for z Systems / s390x was released 11/10/2015. Thanks to the Fedora team for making this available! The kernel level is kernel-4.2.3-300.

As usual the download is available from the Fedoraproject site and the respective mirrors and known issues  are covered in the wiki.

The Virtualization Cookbook for IBM z Systems - updated

The Redbook "The Virtualization Cookbook for z/VM 6.3, RHEL 6.4 and SLES 11 SP3" and the corresponding code examples got an update to the latest distribution levels. They have also reorganized the material into three different books, which I personally don't like that much - but others say this is the way to go.

• Volume 1 - z/VM 6.3 -- pdf
• Volume 2 - RHEL 7.1 -- pdf
• Volume 3 - SLES 12 -- pdf 
• code examples as tgz 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7 released

On July 22, 2015 Red Hat has announced the availability of RHEL 6.7. The kernel level is now kernel-2.6.32-573.el6, for the main bug fixes see the kernel update description.

As usual there are the release notes and the technical notes in two separate documents. The complete documentation can be reached from the Red Hat documentation page (you need to select "6" on the left bar).

For System z this has been a mainly a fix release. Only a few small enhancements have been added all described in the technical notes. Here are some of them:

• s390utils update
• crypto updates: libica, opencryptoki (including EP11 support)

The IBM documentation for RHEL 6.4 on developerworks still applies for this release.

z13

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 released

On March 5th 2015 Red Hat released the first update of their RHEL 7 operating system. 

The kernel level for 7.1 is kernel-3.10.0-229.el7. The number of technology previews for System z has been greatly reduced, successful testing allows now support for those features.

Here is my usual summary of links to more information:

• Complete RHEL 7 documentation
• RHEL 7.1 release notes
• RHEL 7.1 known issues
• RHEL 7.1 kernel CVE documentation
• RHEL 7 installation guide
• RHEL 7 installation guide for z
• RHEL 7 performance tuning guide
• IBM documentation on developerworks
• RHEL limits
• RHEL lifecycle - note that there is no EUS support for RHEL 7.0
• RHEL7 package list (now updated to include 7.1)

As this is a brand new release there are some hick ups aka bugs to be expected. If you are hitting one, please open a bug report with Red Hat and/or IBM.

(updated 3/18/2015) 

Problem with the latest crypto device driver updates on RHEL 6.6 / SLES 11.3 on older hardware

With the introduction of the code for more crypto domains (required for z13) into the service streams of RHEL 6.6 (kernel 2.6.32-504-3.3 and 2.6.32-504.8.1), SLES 11.3 (kernel 3.0.101-42-1) and SLES12 (kernel 3.12.32-33.1) an unfortunate regression has been introduced. The crypto card support for z196 / z114 and older machines is no longer working with the new code. If you are in that situation, please update to the levels below.

This has been fixed in the following kernel levels.

• SLES12 (kernel 3.12.36-38.1 and later)
• SLES11 SP3 (kernel 3.0.101-0.47.50.1 and later)
• RHEL 6 (kernel-2.6.32-504.16.2 and later)

(updated 4/23/2015)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 released

It's been an unusual long time between releases - but now nearly eleven months after the last release Red Hat has announced the availability of RHEL 6.6. The kernel level is now kernel-2.6.32-504.el6, for the main bug fixes see the kernel update description.

As usual there are the release notes and the technical notes in two separate documents. The complete documentation can be reached from the Red Hat documentation page.

For System z this has been a mainly a fix release. Only a few small enhancements have been added all described in the technical notes. Here are some of them:

• libhugetlbfs support for System z
• crypto updates: libica, opencryptoki
• read only sequential data set access avoiding ftp/nfs transfers from z/OS using the zdfs file system

The IBM documentation for RHEL 6.4 on developerworks still applies for this release.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 released

Red Hat has announced the availability of RHEL 5.11. You can find more information on this here:

• Announcement
• Release Notes
• Technical Notes
• Kernel update page including a list of bug fixes 
• kernel level: kernel-2.6.18-398.el5. 

This update is the last update for the great RHEL 5 and the support will finally end in March 2017 (see life cycle page from Red Hat). Even though this seems to be far away right now, please mark your calendars for migration planning!

From a System z perspective this is a pure bug fix release. No new features have been added.

(updated 10/12/2014)