CentOS-7 (1611) Release Notes
Last updated: December 21, 2016
Contents
1. Translations
Translations of these release notes are available for the following languages:
2. Introduction
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The CentOS Project does not provide any verification, certification, or software assurance with respect to security for CentOS Linux. The Security Profiles provided in the CentOS Linux installers are a conversion of the ones included in RHEL Source Code. If certified / verified software that has guaranteed assurance is what you are looking for, then you likely do not want to use CentOS Linux. See this link if you plan to use Security Profiles. |
Hello and welcome to the fourth CentOS-7 release. The CentOS Linux distribution is a stable, predictable, manageable and reproducible platform derived from the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)1.
CentOS conforms fully with Red Hat's redistribution policy and aims to have full functional compatibility with the upstream product. CentOS mainly changes packages to remove Red Hat's branding and artwork.
We have decided not to follow Red Hat's usage of Installation Roles. In CentOS Linux all content from every distribution 'channel' is made available to the user at time of installation.
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
Various installation images are available for installing CentOS. Which image you need to download depends on your installation environment. All of these images can either be burned on a DVD or dd’ed to an USB memory stick.
If you are unsure which image to use, pick the DVD image. It allows selecting which components you want to install.
Live media images are also available, both for Gnome and KDE desktop environments. These allow you to test out CentOS by booting from the DVD or USB stick. The third livecd image uses Gnome, and as the livecd name implies, it is small enough to fit on a CD. This image does not contain libreoffice. You can also install CentOS to your hard disk from the live media images, but please note that what gets installed on your hard disk is exactly the same as you see when using the live media. For more flexibility in selecting which packages you want to have installed, please use the DVD image.
The netinstall image can be used for doing installs over network. After booting the computer with the netinstall image, the installer will ask from where it should fetch the packages to be installed.
The everything image contains all the packages that are available for CentOS-7, including those that are not directly installable from the installer. If you want to install those other packages, you must mount the install media on your installed system after the installation, and copy or install the packages from there. For most users installing from the DVD image and then installing the other packages with ”yum install <packagename>” instead is probably easier.
Attention |
4. Verifying Downloaded Installation Images
Before copying the image to your preferred installation media you should check the sha256sum of the downloaded installation images.
sha256sum x86_64: c455ee948e872ad2194bdddd39045b83634e8613249182b88f549bb2319d97eb CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1611.iso af4969ebbdc479d330de97c5bfbb37eedc64c369f009cb15a97f9553ba441c88 CentOS-7-x86_64-Everything-1611.iso 8af6ad70c35c9b65e7ca88b38d18bed14598eb122169c1a22fc3f5b1c2de7d87 CentOS-7-x86_64-LiveGNOME-1611.iso b584dd3cf2e287756aa6f6ec0f287500470b7e588b605211981b3b9ad09abac9 CentOS-7-x86_64-LiveKDE-1611.iso 27bd866242ee058b7a5754e83d8ee8403e216b93d130d800852a96f41c34d86a CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1611.iso f2f7367deb90a25822947660c71638333ca0eceeabecc2d631be6cd508c24494 CentOS-7-x86_64-NetInstall-1611.iso
5. Major Changes
Since release 1503 (abrt>= 2.1.11-19.el7.centos.0.1) CentOS-7 can report bugs directly to bugs.centos.org. You can find information about that feature at this page.
- Various new packages include among others: python-gssapi, python-netifaces, mod_auth_openidc, pidgin and Qt5.
- Support for the 7th-generation Core i3, i5, and i7 Intel processors and I2C on 6th-generation Core Processors has been added.
- Various packages have been rebased. Some of those are samba, squid, systemd, krb5, gcc-libraries, binutils, gfs-utils, libreoffice, GIMP,SELinux, firewalld, libreswan, tomcat and open-vm-tools.
Because of these rebases some 3rd party repositories (Like EPEL, ELRepo, nux!, etc.) may not have all their packages rebuilt to use the newer packages in this release. This may cause the inability to update to the new release until those repositories fix their dependencies. You should contact the 3rd party repository owner to get problems fixed, or remove problem packages from 3rd party repositories to complete the update to this release.
- SHA2 is now supported by OpenLDAP.
ECC-support has been added to OpenJDK-8, PerlNet:SSLeay and PerlIO::Socket::SSL.
- Bluetooth LE is now supported.
- virt-p2v is now fully supported. virt-v2v and virt-p2v add support for the latest windows releases.
- Lots of updated storage, network and graphics drivers.
- Technology Preview: Among others support of Btrfs, OverlayFS, CephFS, DNSSEC, kpatch, the Cisco VIC and usNIC kernel driver, nested virtualization with KVM and multi-threaded xz compression with rpm-builds.
More information can be found at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.3_Release_Notes/index.html.
If you plan to use Security Profiles in Anaconda, please see this link.
6. Deprecated Features
The following packages are deprecated with the release of 7.3(1611):
- nautilus-open-terminal (replaced with gnome-terminal-nautilus)
- sslwrap (from python)
- libnetlink
- various device drivers (i.e. 3w-9xxx or 3w-sas)
More can be found here.
7. Known Issues
A list of known upstream issues can be found here. Given that we build from the same sources, many if not all of those issues will likely also apply to CentOS Linux. You can also find information on notable updates here.
SElinux received major changes in this release, which might break certain functionality on your system. You might want to take a look at this bugzilla entry for further information.
- The initramfs files are now significantly bigger than in CentOS-7 (1503). You may want to consider lowering installonly_limit in /etc/yum.conf to reduce the number of installed kernels if your /boot partition is smaller than 400MB. New installations should consider using 1GB as the size of the /boot partition.
- The newer version of openssh in this release does not exit on the first match in the .ssh/config file as the older version did. This means if you have multiple host sections that match in your config for a given host, ALL will be applied. As an example, if you have a "host1.example.com" entry and a "*.example.com" entry, it will apply BOTH sets of instructions to "host1.example.com" but only the "*.example.com" section for "host2.example.com".
Many people have complained that Ethernet interfaces are not started with the new default NetworkManager tool/have to be explicitly enabled during installation. See CentOS-7 FAQ#2.
- At least 1024 MB RAM is required to install and use CentOS-7 (1611). When using the Live ISOs for install, 1024 MB RAM produces very slow results and even some install failures. At least 1344 MB RAM is recommend for LiveGNOME or LiveKDE installs.
- If your screen resolution is 800x600 or lower, parts of the images shown at the bottom during install are clipped.
VMware Workstation/VMware ESXi allow to install two different virtual SCSI adapters: BusLogic and LsiLogic. However the default kernel from CentOS-7 does not include the corresponding driver for any of them thus resulting in an unbootable system if you install on a SCSI disk using the defaults for CentOS Linux. If you select 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux' as OS, the paravirtualized SCSI adapter is used, which works.
Commonly used utilities such as ifconfig/netstat have been marked as deprecated for some considerable time and the 'net-tools' package is no longer part of the @core group so will not be installed by default. Use nmcli c up ifname <interfacename> to get your network up and running and use yum to install the package if you really need it. Kickstart users can pull in the net-tools package as part of the install.
The AlpsPS/2 'ALPS DualPoint TouchPad' edge scrolling does not work by default on CentOS-7. See bug 7403 for the command to make this feature work.
After the update, some NICs may change their name from something like enoxxxxxxxx to something like ensxxx. This is due to the updated systemd package. More on this can be found here.
The 4 STIG Security Profiles in the anaconda installer produce a broken sshd_config that must be edited before sshd will start (BZ 1401069)
Several ipa-* packages conflict with themself BZ 1370134
SELinux is preventing /usr/libexec/colord from read access on the file /etc/udev/hwdb.bin BZ 1373082 or BZ 1398030
Cover art placeholder visible when viewing disabled BZ 1396775
8. Fixed Issues
For all the fixed issues it is best to look at the errata release page here and look for fixes dated after November 3rd 2016.
9. Packages and Applications
9.1. Packages modified by CentOS
- abrt
- anaconda
- apache-commons-net
- basesystem
- chrony
- compat-glibc
- curl
- dhcp
- firefox
- glusterfs
- grub2
- httpd
- initial-setup
- ipa
- kabi-yum-plugins
- kernel
- kde-settings
- libguestfs
- libreport
- ntp
- openssl098e
- oracleasm
- oscap-anaconda-addon
PackageKit
- pcs
- plymouth
- redhat-lsb
- redhat-rpm-config
- scap-security-guide
- shim
- sos
- subscription-manager
- system-config-date
- system-config-kdump
- thunderbird
- xulrunner
- yum
9.2. Packages removed from CentOS that are included upstream
- Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-7-*
- redhat-access-gui
- redhat-bookmarks
- redhat-indexhtml
- redhat-logos
- redhat-release-*
- subscription-manager-firstboot
- subscription-manager-migration
- subscription-manager-migration-data
9.3. Packages added by CentOS that are not included upstream
- centos-bookmarks
- centos-indexhtml
- centos-logos
- centos-release
9.4. Packages released as 7.2.1511 updates with older packages on the 7.3.1611 install media
- java-1.8.0-openjdk
- tzdata
10. Sources
All CentOS-7 sources are hosted at git.centos.org. All code released into the distribution originated from git.centos.org.
Source RPMs will also be published once the release is done, in the usual location at http://vault.centos.org/centos/7/
From a CentOS machine you can easily retrieve sources using the yumdownloader --source <packagename> command.
11. 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.
11.1. Special Interest Groups
CentOS consists of different Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that bring together people with similar interests. The following SIGs already exist (among others):
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.
- ARM, PPC and i386 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
11.2. Mailing Lists 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.
11.3. 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.
12. Further Reading
The following websites contain large amounts of information to help people with their CentOS systems:
Upstream release notes and documentation : https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/
Copyright (C) 2016 The CentOS Project
Visit http://www.redhat.com/rhel/ (1)