Release Notes for Scientific Linux 6.1
July 28, 2011
The Upstream Vendor 6.1 release notes.
The Upstream Vendor 6.1 technical notes.
Send comments/issues/test reports to scientific-linux-devel@fnal.gov
abattis-cantarell-fonts
This was added because the new graphical theme uses this font.
livecd-tools, liveusb-creator
Updated to later versions
Updated to work with 6.1
redhat-logos
Shawn Thompson created a whole new graphical theme for SL 6 called
"Edge Of Space".
sl-indexhtml
Page changed, by Shawn Thompson, to fit the new graphical theme, "Edge of Space".
de-DE translation provided by Christoph Galuschka
es-ES translation provided by Joseph Marrero
fr-FR translation provided by Manuel Wolfshant and Fabian Arrotin
hu-HU translation provided by Laszlo Dvornik
ja-JP translation provided by Tomoya Inoue
ru-RU translation provided by Linux Ink
sv-SE translation provided by Alexander Lindqvist
sl-release
We pulled the fastbugs and testing repo's out of the repository file that comes with sl-release. They are now in their own rpm called yum-conf-sl-other.
This is done to fix the problem of people checking the fastbugs during the install. Since fastbugs is then not on by default after the install, updates break.
sl-revisor-configs
Updated config files to point to 6x instead of 6.0
Updated ks/sl6.match.tuv.install.dvd.* to match TUV better.
yum-conf-sl-other
This contains the sl-fastbugs, sl-testing, and sl-debuginfo yum repositories.
DVD Install - request to setup network
When you click "Next" on the Boot
Loader Screen, you will be asked to setup your network before you move to the Installation Type Screen.
This is Not Mandatory. You can safely click "Cancel". You will have to click "Cancel" twice. This is normal.
We have added several packages to Scientific Linux that are not found anywhere on the Enterprise releases.
abattis-cantarell-fonts
This was added because the new graphical theme uses this font.
abattis-cantarell-fonts
Summary : Cantarell, a Humanist sans-serif font family
Added because our new graphical theme uses this font.
This is not installed by default.
-- abattis-cantarell-fonts
icewm
Summary : Fast and small X11 window manager
Added because we needed a lightweight modern window manager. There are some machines that just don't have much CPU and/or memory, and both KDE and GNOME can really slow these machines down.
This is not installed by default.
-- icewm
-- icewm-l10n
-- imlib - for dependancies
-- gtk+ - for dependancies
-- glib - for dependancies
openafs
Summary : OpenAFS distributed filesystem
Added because many educational and research centers around the world use AFS as some type of central file system.
This is not installed by default.
-- openafs
-- openafs-authlibs
-- openafs-client
-- openafs-compat
-- openafs-firstboot
-- openafs-kernel-source
-- openafs-kpasswd
-- openafs-krb5
-- openafs-plumbing-tools
-- openafs-server
-- kmod-openafs
revisor, livecd-tools, liveusb-creator
Summary : Scientific Linux Spin Creation
Tools to create Scientific Linux "Spins" or "Sites"
This is not installed by default.
-- revisor
-- revisor-cli
-- revisor-gui
-- revisor-isolinux
-- revisor-rebrand
-- revisor-reuseinstaller
-- revisor-unity-scripts
-- sl-revisor-configs
-- livecd-tools
-- liveusb-creator
yum-autoupdate
Summary : Automatically update your machine daily via yum.
Added for those users who want their system automatically updated without having to worry about doing it by hand.
This is installed by default.
-- yum-autoupdate
external yum repositories
Summary : Various External Yum Repositories
These are not supported by Scientific Linux but are here for your convenience.
This is not installed by default.
-- adobe-release
-- atrpms-repo
-- elrepo-release
-- epel-release
-- rpmforge-release
One of the goals of Scientific Linux is to be as close to the original vendor release of Enterprise Linux. But there are several things that people want to change, for one reason or another. In order to have both worlds we have created these tweak rpm's, more commonly known as SL rpm's. These rpm's can be added or removed to add or remove a feature. It is up the individual user to determine if they want a particular feature or not.
None of these packages are installed by default unless it is noted that they are.
This adds a terminal icon to the kicker panel for GNOME. It also adds the "add/remove programs" menu item to KDE.
Installed by default for the GNOME and KDE desktop groups.
Who Needs This?
Pretty much any previous desktop user of linux. It's not a necessity, and the icons can be added manually, but it's much nicer to just have them there from the start.
This script makes all the changes necessary to send console output to both the serial port and the screen. This also creates a login prompt on the serial port and allows users to login at this prompt.
There are 4 packages, which correspond to a serial port speed
SL_enable_serialconsole
SL_enable_serialconsole-96 (9600 baud)
SL_enable_serialconsole-192 (19200 baud)
SL_enable_serialconsole-384 (38400 baud)
SL_enable_serialconsole-1152 (115200 baud)
Note: It is usually best to install this package after an install. You can either do this by hand, or in the %post section of a kickstart file. This is because the grub file and bootloader aren't created during an install, until after all the packages are installed.
Who Needs This?
Headless servers that want to redirect their output through their serial console during bootup, and also plan on logging in on those consoles.
Turns off "color" of ls.
Who Needs This?
People who don't like the colorized ls
Changes /etc/inittab to require the root password for
single user mode.
This package used to be called SL_inittab_change
Who Needs This
In my opinion everyone, and we're quite surprised that Enterprise Linux isn't this way. If you are concerned about someone getting root access to your computer by just sitting down to it, then this is something you will want to install.
httpd
Changed index.html. Changed release name
plymouth
Removed the red colors for text mode.
redhat-logos
Changed all trademarked icons and pictures.
Changed styles of items such as background, gdm, and kdm to change the tradedress style.
report
Removed the options to send reports to TUV.
sl-bookmarks
sl-bookmarks replaces redhat-bookmarks
sl-indexhtml
sl-indexhtml replaces redhat-indexhtml
sl-release
sl-release replaces redhat-release
sl-release-notes
sl-release-notes replaces Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes*
Some packages would not build in our build environment. We changed these packages in order for them, or other packages, to build.
We did comparisons of the binary packages after recompiling.
To distingish these packages we put 0.sl6 at the end of the release number.
epydoc
epydoc needed a bug fix patch in order for python-nss to build. We put in the following patches from Fedora 13.
Fix crash with newer docutils (#578920) - Patch provided by Lubomir Rintel
Add texlive-dvips and texlive-latex requirements (#522249) - Patch provided by Matthias Saou
guile
We commented out it's final check.
kdepim-runtime
Added patch required to build with the webkit (bz#660581)
mod_auth_kerb
We Changed "--with-krb5=/usr/kerberos" to "--with-krb5=/usr" because the krb location changed in SL6.
opal
opal needed a bug fix patch in order for ekiga to build. The opal-3.6.6-buildopts.patch was missing one line for it to work properly.
pilot-link
when "autoreconf -is" is called this causes libtool to run from
/usr/bin/libtool which is version 2.2.6b but the source ships its own
libtool in pilot-link-0.12.4/libtool which is version 2.2.6 and called
from the make files. This version mix does not work.
rome
TUV 6 provides jdom-1.1.1 and not jdom-1.0 so we changed it to 1.1.1
The comps.xml file determines what packages are in groups. This determines what packages get installed automatically when you select a group during install, or when you use yum groupinstall.
We have made the following changes to comps.
Web Site
http://www.scientificlinux.org
Download
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.1/
http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.1/
ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.1/
Iso Download area
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.1/i386/iso/
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.1/i386/iso/readme
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.1/x86_64/iso/
http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6.1/x86_64/iso/readme
Mirror List
http://www.scientificlinux.org/download/mirrors
Mailing Lists
scientific-linux-devel@fnal.gov - Development of Scientific Linux
scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov - Users of Scientific Linux supporting each other
scientific-linux-announce@fnal.gov - Announcements concerning Scientific Linux
scientific-linux-errata@fnal.gov - Announcements about Security Errata