Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4AS U7 now available

Update 7 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

• Kernel: added Intel ICH10 SATA, USB, HD Audio and I2C(SMBUS), updated NMI infrastructure to latest(2.6.25), added task IO accounting, added partition statistics to 'iostat' command, added IO task accounting to getrusage() call, added enumeration of pagecache pages in show_mem()'s output, removed Tux's O_ATOMICLOOKUP flag from open() system call, exported process limits through /proc/<pid>/limits, added TCP_RTO_MIN, implemented udp_poll() to reduce likelihood of false positive return from select(), added 'nfs.enable_ino64' boot command line parameter to enable/disable 32-bit inode numbers, added /proc/sys/vm/nfs-writeback-lowmem-only to fix NFS read performance regression, added /proc/sys/vm/write-mapped tunable parameter to help select faster NFS read performance, updated CIFS to 1.50c, added core dump masking support, autofs5 now supported
• Virtualisation: PV-on-HVM drivers to accelerate disk and network I/O for guests, expanded vnif number for guest domains over four and added tick divider capability to help keep fully virtualised guest time skew to a minimum
• Encryption and security: shadow-utils, authconfig, pam, anaconda and libuser now support generation of SHA-256 and SHA-512 hashes to meet government requirements and added Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment package to allow file system integrity testing
• Tuning and debugging: production support, new support for unprivileged users, reference manuals and post-crash trace data recovery
• Tools: added JRockit JDK 1.6.0
• Networking and IPv6: added IPv6 for iSCSI, added OFED 1.3 and improved reliability of autofs
• Storage: udev now supported in cciss driver, added ability to vgsplit an active Volume Group where the split involves only inactive LVs and enhanced partition statistics
• Platform: added /dev/msr[0-n] device files, built PowerNow-k8 as module to allow removal, added greyhound event-based profiling support, added sb800 SATA controller support, added missing sb600 sb700 40 pin IDE cable support, fixed 64-bit DMA issue on sb700 systems, added relevant PCI device IDs to support for ICH10, updated eHEA driver to latest upstream and added poll_controller support to support netdump and netconsole, added lro support as kernel networking module, updated ipr driver to support dual SAS RAID controller function for new PCIe ipr adapters, added SLB shadow buffer support, added support for CPU freq values greater than 32-bit on POWER5 and POWER6, extended floating point exception handler, updated zfcp driver to include bugfixes, updated qdio driver to fix FCP/SCSI write IO stagnates on LPR and updated cio driver to include bugfixes
• Laptop and desktop: added tablet support for cintiq 20wsx, intuos3 4x6, 12x12 and 12x19, upgraded to Firefox3 and full support for evolution28
• Driver updates including aacraid, arcmsr, bnx2, CCISS, cxgbe, edac_i3000, edac_i5000, dm-multipath, e1000, forcedeth, i2c-1801, ide, igb, ixgbe, libata, lpfc, megaraid, megaraid_sas, mptfusion, pci_ids, psmouse, q1a2xxx, q1a4xxx, s2io, sata_svw, stex, tg3 and wacom
• Driver additions including bnx2x and i2c_piix4
• Other notable additions include: technology previews of frysk and gcc4

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 is aimed at people who need a stable OS with a long lifespan but don't want an expensive bundled support contract. It is derived from open source software with only four packages modified in order to replace trademarks and logos with our own. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 include the Linux 2.6 kernel, SELinux, GNOME 2.8, Samba 3.0, Logical Volume Manager 2, PCI Express support and NFSv.4.

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

PixExcel, based in the United Kingdom, recognised the demand for enterprise quality Linux software that does not come bundled with an expensive support contract. This led to the release of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS back in April 2004. Since then PixExcel has been supplying a growing client base ranging from the home enthusiast to multi-million pound corporations. These clients share one thing in common - they demand a quality product but are sufficiently skilled to operate it without the expense of a support contract.

Pie Box Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution that is derived from open source software. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

The full press release may be found here. -- PixExcel Limited URL: http://www.pixexcel.co.uk