CentOS 6.3 Release Notes

Last updated: September 30, 2012

1. Translations

Translations of these release notes are available for the following languages :

• Deutsch (de) - Christoph Galuschka

• English (en)

• Español (es) - José G. Arribas

• Dutch (nl) - Joshua Thijssen

• Romana (ro) - Manuel Wolfshant

• 简体中文 (zh-cn) - Timothy Lee

• 繁體中文 (zh-tw) - Timothy Lee

2. Introduction

Welcome to the CentOS 6.3 release. CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by our Upstream OS Provider (UOP)¹.

CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor's redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)

We have decided not to follow the UOP's usage of Installation Codes. All 'channels' are available to the System Administrator at time of installation.

Similar to the practice of the upstream vendor, there is no supported path to 'upgrade' an installation of a prior major CentOS release (presently CentOS 5) to a new major release. This is not a CentOS imposed limitation, but rather reflects the upstream's approach on this matter. People who feel adventuresome and want to experiment are reminded to take and test backups first. As a note to people who attempt the upgrade in spite of this warning, such as by the unsupported upgradeany option from the media install command line, please note that you will need to manually retrieve the current centos-release package, manually do a rpm -e --nodeps removal of the prior centos-release package, and then manually install the CentOS 6 centos-release package, before yum can have any chance of working properly.

The continuous release ( CR ) repository makes generally available packages that will appear in the next point release of CentOS, on a testing and hotfix basis until formally released.

Please read through the other sections before trying an install or reporting an issue.

3. Install Media and sha1sum

sha1sum i386:
541f98e36a7034ab3b470ddf5e2232df3829983e  CentOS-6.3-i386-bin-DVD1.iso
44d9e8652af683b844138ea2ea03e6772c18a613  CentOS-6.3-i386-bin-DVD2.iso
c596411085110dbb67fb030e667ae054afb413c8  CentOS-6.3-i386-minimal.iso
51dcbf68ddc0fc2907ecbba055bf041dc8ae7ca9  CentOS-6.3-i386-netinstall.iso
7cb1ea7eb35e4ee7112d4cd6b56528562cabc65a  CentOS-6.3-i386-LiveCD.iso
f34c3f9c6880bffe6344aa6a0381275689f0bf02  CentOS-6.3-i386-LiveDVD.iso

sha1sum x86_64:
eaa52f3d1ccf2df3b03e064fb0fa6168be28a4d4  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso
29eee5946372ed29de509b9604d895b99d36a33f  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-bin-DVD2.iso
09801301433c8dc1a93d732790f9a4d8ca7895e6  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-minimal.iso
c85069ee289d6eb279ba1c1ab0c259513302b8fd  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-netinstall.iso
e04fbc13598800e5b71a3d2eb62af66100acfcfc  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-LiveCD.iso
e810015efaa0e3adf0c0a3c100f79eb8fce83e97  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso
3c73f54debc87b6ee7e77ef1795f9ad6987532c7  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-minimal-EFI.iso
94b0d16f49dd39ec660321202cb4b8bbc3fe1e64  CentOS-6.3-x86_64-netinstall-EFI.iso

4. Major changes

• In accordance with upstream CentOS 6.3 now includes libreoffice as Office suite. The "Desktop" install group will automatically install the complete suite. If you update from a previous version of CentOS 6 using 'yum update' and have openoffice installed, the update will automatically remove openoffice and install libreoffice. See this link for further information.

• Upstream has deprecated the matahari API set for operating system management. User who choose to continue to use matahari should - as always - install the updates provided with CentOS 6.3. Matahari will not be part of future upstream releases and therefore also not of future CentOS releases. See here for more information.

• There are new tools for moving machines (both Virtual and Physical) from their current format to a Virtual KVM Machine. The packages responsible are called virt-p2v (physical to virtual) and virt-v2v (virtual to virtual). After installation of the virt-p2v rpm, the bootable ISO for P2V conversions is located at /usr/share/virt-p2v/virt-p2v-0.8.6-5.20120502.1.el6.iso. Please see the upstream documentation linked in the further reading section of these release notes for more information on these exciting enhancements.

5. Known Issues

• There is an issue with DVD2 of the i386 architecture. The .discinfo file contains a '1' instead of a '2' to identify the disc image. There is a new DVD for download from Bug 5861

• On Intel and AMD based processor architectures, CentOS 6 requires PAE support for 32-bit x86 chips, following the upstream's requirement

• The installer needs at least 392MB of memory to work. Text mode will automatically be used if the system has less than 652MB of memory.

• The text installer has limited capabilities compared to the GUI installer. Most notably there is no support for configuring partition layout, storage methods or package selection. Please refer to the official documentation for details. Here you can find some useful information on creating and using kickstart files which can be used to perform advanced configuring without the need for the GUI installer.

• The installer media for the 32 bits architecture (CentOS-6.3-i386-netinstall.iso, CentOS-6.3-i386-bin-DVD1.iso) does not offer at boot time the memory test suite (memtest). The test is available in the x86_64 (64 bits - CentOS-6.3-x86_64-netinstall.iso,CentOS-6.3-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso) images. This approach is identical to the one taken by the UOP.
• The message "Insufficient memory to configure kdump!" appears during install. This is a known issue which appears on systems with less than 2 GB RAM. This can be ignored.
• Content for both the i386 and x86_64 arches is split into two DVDs. We have tried to get all basic server and basic desktop installs only from DVD-1.
• Make sure that you setup correctly the selinux context of the public key if you transfer it to a CentOS 6 server with selinux enabled. Otherwise selinux might forbid access to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file and by matter of consequence key authentication will not work. In order to setup the correct context you can use:

  restorecon -R -v /home/$ACCOUNT/.ssh 

  ssh-copy-id from CentOS 6 is aware of selinux contexts and the previous workaround is not needed.

• There is no longer a boot.iso image in the images/ directory of the installation tree. Use the netinstall.iso instead as documented in CentOS-6 FAQ #1.

• Many people have complained that Ethernet interfaces are not started with the new default NetworkManager tool. See CentOS-6 FAQ#2.

• A forum user has reported an issue with use of a local repo with a kickstart install, giving an error [Errno 14] Peer cert cannot be verified or peer cert invalid. The referenced post includes a workaround, and pointers to the upstream bug BZ#599040.

• There seems to be an issue when using 802.1q VLANing on bonded (802.3ad) interfaces and certain NICs. See this upstream bugzilla entry and this CentOS bugzilla entry for details. The CentOS-Plus Kernel released with 6.3 contains a patch to fix this issue. Starting with kernel 2.6.32-279.2.1 this issue is fixed.

• There is an issue where booting the CentOS-images from certain EFI-enabled hardware might fail. With the Release of EFI-enabled netinstall- and minimal-ISOs this is resolved. For further detail please take a look at CentOS Bug #0005387.

• If you update CentOS 6.2 to 6.3 with certain packages only, the system may hang upon reboot. For example, this happens if you apply only the security updates from CentOS 6.3. To fix this issue, boot the system with a "enforcing=0" kernel option and update selinux policy to 3.7.19-155.el6_3 (or later) available in the 6.3 updates repository.

• A forum user reports that some Nvidia video cards may present a black screen in the installer. The suggested work-around is:

  Press <tab> as soon as the boot menu is displayed. Add nouveau.noaccel=1 nomodeset to the end of the kernel boot options, and continue the boot. This should result in a usable video display and allow the installer to complete. Choosing "basic video driver" at the boot menu might work as well. The kernel options should be automatically added to /boot/grub/grub.conf and should be used unless the proprietary Nvidia driver is installed. The kmod-nvidia package from ELRepo should work after installation, and takes care of blacklisting the nouveau driver.

• Several packages have .centos. in their name and are not modified, see CentOS Bug #0005281 for details. Here are the SRPMS affected:

• bash
• emacs
• gtk2
• pango
• at-spi
• gtk2-engines
• libcanberra
• libgail-gnome
• libwmf
• Packagekit

6. Fixed Issues

7. Packages and Applications

7.1. Packages modified by CentOS

• abrt
• anaconda
• fake-provides
• firefox
• gnome-applets
• gnome-desktop
• httpd
• initscripts
• kabi-whitelists
• kabi-yum-plugins
• kde-settings
• kernel
• libreport
• librsvg2
• luci
• ntp
• openssl098e
• plymouth
• redhat-bookmarks
• redhat-logos
• redhat-lsb
• report
• system-config-date
• thunderbird
• virt-p2v
• xorg-x11-server
• xulrunner
• yum

7.2. Packages removed from CentOS that are included upstream

• abrt-plugin-bugzilla
• redhat-indexhtml
• redhat-release-*
• redhat-release-notes*
• rhnlib
• rhn-check
• rhn-client-tools
• rhnsd
• rhn-setup
• rhn-setup-gnome
• subscription-manager*
• yum-rhn-plugin

7.3. Packages added by CentOS that are not included upstream

• centos-indexhtml
• centos-release
• centos-release-cr

7.4. Packages released as 6.2 updates with older packages on the 6.3 install media

• apr-1.3.9-5.el6_2
• apr-devel-1.3.9-5.el6_2
• java-1.6.0-openjdk-src-1.6.0.0-1.48.1.11.3.el6_2
• java-1.6.0-openjdk-demo-1.6.0.0-1.48.1.11.3.el6_2
• java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel-1.6.0.0-1.48.1.11.3.el6_2
• java-1.6.0-openjdk-javadoc-1.6.0.0-1.48.1.11.3.el6_2
• java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0-1.48.1.11.3.el6_2
• gnome-power-manager-2.28.3-6.el6_2
• gnome-power-manager-extra-2.28.3-6.el6_2
• libvirt-qmf-0.3.0-7.el6_2

8. Sources

All CentOS sources are now hosted at vault.centos.org:

• CentOSPlus: vault.centos.org/6.3/centosplus/Source/SPackages/

• Extras: vault.centos.org/6.3/extras/Source/SPackages/

• OS: vault.centos.org/6.3/os/Source/SPackages/

• Updates: vault.centos.org/6.3/updates/Source/SPackages/

9. How to help and get help

As a CentOS user there are various ways you can help out with the CentOS community. Take a look at our Contribute page for further information on how to get involved.

9.1. Special Interest Groups

CentOS consists of different Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that bring together people with similar interests. The following SIGs already exist:

• Artwork - create and improve artwork for CentOS releases and promotion

• Promotion - help promoting CentOS online or at events

• Virtualization - unite people around virtualization in CentOS

And we encourage people to join any of these SIGs or start up a new SIG, e.g.

• Alpha, S390, Sparc and PPC port - help with porting CentOS to other architectures
• Hardware compatibility - provide feedback about specific hardware
• RPM Packaging - contribute new useful RPM packages
• Translation - help translating the documentation, website and Wiki content

9.2. Mailinglists and Fora

Another way you can help others in the community is by actively helping and resolving problems that users come up against in the mailing lists and the fora.

9.3. Wiki and Website

Even as an inexperienced CentOS user we can use your help. Because we like to know what problems you encountered, if you had problems finding specific information, how you would improve documentation so it becomes more accessible. This kind of feedback is as valuable to others as it would have been to you so your involvement is required to make CentOS better.

So if you want to help out and improve our documentation and Wiki, register on the Wiki or subscribe to the centos-docs mailing list.

10. Further Reading

The following websites contain large amounts of information to help people with their CentOS systems :

• Upstream release notes and documentation : docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/index.html

• What's New in Enterprise Linux 6.3 (by The H Open)

• www.centos.org/

• wiki.centos.org/

• lists.centos.org/

• CentOS-6 fora

• bugs.centos.org/

• planet.centos.org/

• mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/redhat/linux/enterprise/6Client/en/os/SRPMS/

• mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/redhat/linux/enterprise/6Server/en/os/SRPMS/

11. Thanks

We thank everyone involved for helping us produce this product and would like to specifically acknowledge the extra effort made by the QA Team.

Copyright (C) 2012 The CentOS Project