A beta release of a new server-oriented edition of Red Hat Linux, Pensacola, is available for your computer-crashing pleasure. We strongly recommend that this beta not be used for mission-critical applications, and we request that all bugs be filed in Red Hat's Bugzilla database at http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/ Please use the "Red Hat Public Beta" product, and the "pensacola" version. All victims^Wtesters should subscribe to pensacola-list@redhat.com by sending mail to pensacola-list-request@redhat.com with a subject of "subscribe", or by visiting https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/pensacola-list/ Pensacola introduces two new areas of functionality beyond Red Hat Linux 7.2 (Enigma): o Advanced clustering technology o Linux kernel tuned specifically for server workloads Clustering: The clustering capabilities include the existing Piranha technology from the Red Hat High Availability Server product, but now include new shared storage failover clustering. The shared storage failover capabilities include STONITH ("Shoot The Other Node In The Head" -- one node physically removes power from the other node for data fencing), NFS failover, CIFS (samba) failover, and hooks for custom applications (e.g. database) Documentation for the clustering components is not complete, but you can use the older Red Hat High Availability Server documentation at http://ha.redhat.com/docs/high-availability/index.html for setting up Piranha (be aware, FOS is no longer included in Piranha; Piranha is used only for LVS clustering), and there is alpha-quality, incomplete documentation available for the new cluster management tools that will be updated nearly daily at http://people.redhat.com/jrfuller/cms/ Kernel: The kernel tuning includes some larger default values, but more particularly it includes: o IO scalability improvements o Large memory tuning o Multi CPU improvements (scheduler) o POSIX AIO for disk access (database helper) o Network logging and network crashdumps o Hyperthreading support (boot with acpismp=force) Availability: You can get your copy of Pensacola at ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/pensacola/ or at mirrors, listed at http://www.redhat.com/download/mirror.html So far, the list of mirrors known to have synchronized includes: ftp://ftp.dulug.duke.edu/pub/redhat/linux/beta/pensacola/ ftp://ftp.shuttleamerica/com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/pensacola/ Many more should be available in a matter of hours. Enjoy testing, and remember: file those bug reports! Once again, that's "Red Hat Public Beta" product, "pensacola" version. Thanks! michaelkjohnson "He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book." Linux Application Development -- Ben Franklin http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/
