Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta 1 has been released:

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.

Bug Reporting
-------------

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Beta testers, who have assigned Technical Account Managers (TAMs) and/or Technical Partner Managers, should report all bugs with this beta release using your current Issue Tracker account.

All other beta users should report bugs using Red Hat's Bugzilla. To report and query for bugs in this Beta release, you need a Bugzilla account with access to the "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Public Beta" product.

To report a bug via Bugzilla:

1. Login to the Bugzilla home page at http://bugzilla.redhat.com. If you don't have an existing account, simply create one by going to this page:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/createaccount.cgi

2. On the Bugzilla home page, choose the "New" tab. Proceed to Step 3, "Choosing Your Product" by clicking that button at the bottom of the page.

3. Choose Product "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Public Beta".

4. Choose Version "rhel5-beta1".

5. Choose the component against which you wish to report a problem, such as kernel, glibc, etc. If you do not know the component or want to file a bug against the general product, please choose "distribution" as the component.

6. Choose the platform, such as: "All", "x86_64", etc.

7. Provide the information about the problem you're reporting by entering information in the appropriate fields. In the Summary field, provide a clear and descriptive abstract of the issue. In the Description field, please state clearly that you are using a *Beta 1* package and provide the full package versions of any components you are experiencing problems with (as packages may be updated).

8. Check to make sure that all information is accurate and click the "Commit" button to submit your problem report.

Known Issues
------------

The release notes are at the end of this announcement. You can view additional known issues in the Red Hat Knowledge Base system at:

http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/topten_105_0.shtm

Mailing Lists
-------------

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and subsequent updates, the announcement mailing list is rhelv5-announce redhat com. Subscribe using the web-based mailing list interface at:

http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv5-announce

Red Hat has created a public mailing list for general discussion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (Tikanga) Beta releases. To subscribe to the list, send mail to rhelv5-beta-list-request redhat com with 'subscribe' in the subject line. Leave the body empty. Or subscribe using the web-based mailing list interface at:

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv5-beta-list/

Thank you for your interest in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 beta program. We look forward to working with you to ensure a high quality release!

Sincerely,

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Team