Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1

Red Hat is pleased to announce the availability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 milestone.
This is a public beta. Feel free to forward this announcement to anyone who may be interested in testing this beta release.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 is a preview of the next generation of Red Hat’s comprehensive suite of enterprise operating systems, designed for mission-critical enterprise computing and certified by top enterprise software vendors. More information on the current, supported releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available at:


http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/


This announcement includes details on obtaining the beta software, reporting bugs, and communicating with Red Hat and other testers via mailing lists during the beta period.


The development of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is closely aligned with Fedora Core 6 and the upstream community.


This is the first Red Hat Enterprise Linux release that includes Xen based open source virtualization technology. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 release contains virtualization on the i386 and x86_64 architectures as well as a technology preview for IA64. We are particularly interested in your feedback on the Xen technology.


Other focus areas for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 testing include the following:


* Network storage (Autofs, iSCSI)
* Kexec / Kdump (replacing Diskdump and Netdump)
* Smartcard integration
* SELinux Security
* Installer improvements
* Clustering and Cluster File systems
* Analysis and Development Tools (SystemTap, Frysk)
* Stateless Linux Enablers
* Infiniband and RDMA (OpenFabrics.Org)
* New Driver Model for better integration of out-of-kernel-tree drivers


This beta release supports a wide range of hardware platforms including:
- 32-bit x86-compatible (i386/i686)
- 64-bit AMD64 and Intel EM64T (x86_64)
- 64-bit Intel Itanium2 (ia64)
- 64-bit IBM eServer iSeries and pSeries and POWER (ppc64)
- 64-bit IBM eServer zSeries (s390x)


New Packaging Structure
———————–


The architecture of the media kit and RHN channel structure has changed from previous versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The number of different variants and media kits has been reduced to the following:


* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Client
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server


Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client is available for the i386 and x86_64 architectures only.


Beyond the core distribution, these media kits contain a number of optional directories that provide additional functionality.


Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
* Cluster – Fail-Over clustering and Web load balancing
* ClusterStorage – Parallel storage access via clustered volume manager and GFS cluster file system
* Virtualization – Xen virtualization environment


Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client
* Desktop – Desktop applications including Evolution and OpenOffice (not available on the Server)
* Workstation – Full Engineering Workstation and Developer package set
* Virtualization – Xen virtualization environment


Accessing the Software
———————-


Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 is made available to existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers via RHN. The beta channels will automatically appear in your account within the next 24 hours. Installable binary and source ISO images are available via Red Hat Network at:


https://rhn.redhat.com/network/software/download_isos_full.pxt


You will be required to login using a valid RHN account with active entitlements. If you’d like to test our Beta product and don’t have an active RHEL entitlement, please contact contact a local Red Hat representative or request an evaluation entitlement at


http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/eval/


Note that while this page says Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, you automatically receive Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 access along with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 trial subscription.


Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is still in development and therefore the contents of the media-kit, the implemented features and the supported configurations are subject to change before the release of the final product. The supplied beta packages and CD images are intended for testing purposes only. Remember that this early access software is not supported and is not intended for production environments! Do not publish any benchmark or performance results based on this beta release. Upgrading from beta releases to the GA product will not be supported.


Installing the Software / Registration Key
——————————————


The installer requires entering a registration key in order to configure the repositories offered for installation. In this beta release, the registration code implementation is a stub and will accept a character combination that then is mapped to the repository selection. The keys are:


Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
V ==> Virtualization
C ==> Clustering
S ==> ClusterStorage


Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client
D ==> Desktop
W ==> Workstation
V ==> Virtualization


On a Server media kit, entering "SV" in the registration code dialog will activate the ClusterStorage and Virtualization repositories.


Note: On the client "D" should always be entered.

Downloads:
RHEL5-Server
RHEL5-Client