SL 5.3 in DAMTP - See the SL 5.7 page
We upgraded to SL 5.7 - this document is now just for historical interest.
SL 5.3 in DAMTP
Scientific Linux (SL) is a Linux system put together by Fermilab, CERN, and various other labs and universities around the world. It includes several software packages which are aimed at use in the Scientific Community and we have added a few extra packages locally.
In DAMTP the default desktop Linux setup is currently based on Scientific Linux 5.2 (sl52). We plan to soon make the (fairly) minor upgrade to Scientific Linux 5.3 (sl53).
This page is intended to document the (fairly small) differences between our sl52 and sl53 installations and benefits of the update.
Why are we upgrading?
Hardware which can be recognised by the SL 5.2 installer is now no longer common and in particular some of the newer network devices in machines like the recent Dell OptiPlex 760 machines requires an updated kernel so upgrading to 5.3 will greatly simplify the installation of new machines.
Scientific Linux 5.3 is currently the latest version and the i386 and x86_64 platform releases happened on 2009-03-19. We have been testing 5.3 since the early alpha/beta releases. This has involved checking that our local customizations and locally added packages (etc) still work as expected (and making any required corrections).
If you discover any problems that appear to be new to sl53 please let us know as soon as possible so we can correct them.
Of course as part of our normal security-updates we have already installed many of the newer packages included in sl53. This upgrade will bring all the other components into line with them and allows us to add some additional packages to all sl5 machines.
| The vast majority of packages will not change. Existing Gnome or KDE settings should continue to work as before. |
|---|
64-bit or 32-bit on the Desktop
Like with sl52 we now support both the 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Most Desktop systems will probably continue to use the x86 (i386, IA32) 32-bit platform for some time.
For most desktop machines there is probably no significant advantage in using the x86_64 platform - and of course many older machines don't support it.
Those systems with large amounts of memory the bigger address space may well help. In a few cases just having access to the x86_64 CPU instructions can make code work faster (if compiled with the right options).
Please note that on the x86_64 platform although in most cases i386 code will mostly run fairly well, some applications may not and there can be a performance penalty caused by running in mixed mode.
Switching to the x86_64 platform cannot be done simply as an update so any machine needing 64-bit support will have to be re-installed.
Highlights of SL 5.2
Of the roughly 1350 packages in the i386 version about 300 will be updated but there will also be a few replacements and a small number of extra packages added during this update.
Updates which users may notice or care about:
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| R | update version to 2.8.1 |
| fonts-indic | update from version 2.1.7 to 2.3.1 for various indic fonts |
| gcc | bug-fixes for c, fortran compilers |
| gdb | upgrade from version 6.5 to 6.8 |
| glibc | various bug-fixes |
| gnome-terminal | bug-fixes |
| kdelibs | minor bug-fixes |
| ksh | version upgrade from 20060214 to 20080202 |
| metacity | bug fixes (focus, iconification) |
| numpy | upgrade from version 1.0.4 to 1.2.1 |
| openmpi | upgrade from version 1.2.5 to 1.2.7 |
| python | bug-fixes |
| tcsh | bug fixes |
| xorg-x11-... | X server bug fixes and driver updates to add support for some newer hardware; in particular ati, i810, mga, nv |
Note that the newer openmpi packages change the way that mpi programs are built and run, see MPI in DAMTP for details.
Extra packages which will be added as part of this update include:
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| git, perl-Git | another common distributed version-control system |
| subversion-perl | perl interface to subversion |
Another 63 updates I would class as fairly important but users probably won't care about - mostly relating to system tools and installation support.
The following have been added to our standard setup since sl52 was released in DAMTP. i.e. these are already available:
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| OpenOffice.org-3.1.0 | newer version of the OpenOffice.org suite |
| ghostscript-8.64 | newer version of Gnostscript |
| Sun Java 1.6.0_13 | newer version of Sun JRE/JDK |
| Sunbird 0.9 | newer version of Mozilla Calendar program |
| Firefox 3.0.10 | newer version of Mozilla web browser |
| Adobe Reader 9 | newer version of Adobe Reader for Linux |
| Scilab 5.1.1 | another scientific/engineering package |
| IDL 7 | newer version of IDL |
| rsync 3.0.5 | newer version of the rsync tool |
| openreduce | Reduce 20081231 Algebraic computation package |
| keychain | Front-end to various key-management agents |
| dia | another drawing package |
| TeX-fonts-20 | truetype versions of the Computer Modern fonts, needed by web browsers viewing pages using jsMath |
| transcode | utility for video stream processing |
What can/will be changed after this upgrade?
Bug fixes to the scripts and configurations will be applied as we find/fix problems. Please report any odd behaviour - we may not have seen it before. Security updates for packages will be applied as we get them. Some updates may require reboots - as always we try to announce planned disruption in advance where possible.
We will consider adding packages that are not currently installed. Especially likely if they are independently requested by several people and the packages ship as a standard part of Scientific Linux 5.2. See the standard set of packages (for i386) in the directory:
/opt/instsl/upstream/53/i386/SL/
and are also available for viewing by web browsers at http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/linux/scientific/53/i386/SL/ as well as from the primary web site and many mirrors. Most of the extra DAMTP added packages are available for download from http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/linux/sl/damtp/5x/ though be careful about using them elsewhere since some have DAMTP specific patches or configurations.
Please let us know if we have missed any packages you want. We may not be able to have them installed right away but we will certainly add them to a list to be tried.