Linux desktops Scientific Linux 4 differences

Author: L.S.Lowe. File: sl4xdiffs. This update: 20080328. Part of Guide to the Local System.

This file comments on differences between SL4 and RHEL4. It follows on from my customisation page.

+ Extra RPMs in SL46 not in SL45

Amongst the new packages are:

User-oriented: alpine, evolution28;
Application-oriented: liberation-fonts, pidgin;
System-oriented: autofs5, edac-utils, modversions, sos, wdaemon.

+ Package version differences between SL46 and SL45

As before, there are many differences between a fully-patched SL46 and a fully-patched SL45, even initially. There are over 150 version-number differences, and many more release-number differences.

Amongst the changed versions are (names beginning): R, anaconda, booty, cluster-, cman, cmirror, comps, dapl, device-mapper, diskdumputils, dlm, ethtool, fence, frysk, fuse-sshfs, gcc4, hwdata, ibutils, icewm, initscripts, ipw2200-firmware, jpilot, kudzu, libRmath, libgcj4, libgfortran, libgomp, libib, libmthca, libmudflap, librdmacm, libsdp, luci, lvm2, madwifi, magma, mkinitrd, modcluster, nump, openib, openmpi, opensm, pam_krb5, qlvnictools, rgmanager, rhpl, ricci, sl-release, strace, system-, systemtap, tidy.

+ Extra RPMs in SL45 not in SL44

kernel-xenU and associated kernel-specific modules
Additional packages (names beginning): cluster cman cmirror comps dlm GFS gnbd ibutils lam libibcm librdmacm luci modcluster openib openmpi openoffice.org2 ricci setools sg3_utils systemtap wpa_supplicant yum
Removed/renamed packages: mstflint perftest srptools tvflash

+ Package version differences between SL45 and SL44

Apart from the additional or removed RPMs, noted above, there really ought not to be any differences between a fully-patched SL45 and a fully-patched SL44: at least that is my opinion. But in practice there are many differences: eg. gcc4-4.1.1-53 versus gcc4-4.1.0-18, and so on (as of Oct 2007). It's hard to see why: Red Hat don't freeze their source updates in that way.

To upgrade SL44 to SL45, it's first necessary to remove packages mstflint perftest srptools tvflash, as these are not in SL45. Then I just switched the yum configuration definitions to point to the later tree, and ran yum update.

* Extra SL RPMs not in RHEL4

If you do a full install (Everything) with Scientific Linux, then you get some extra SL* RPMs, not part of RHEL, whose scripts have side effects in that they tweak various parts of the system. As they were mostly inappropriate for me, I suppressed them in the kickstart. They are:

-SL_afs_no_dynroot
-SL_desktop_tweaks
-SL_disable_print_notification
-SL_enable_serialconsole
-SL_enable_slocate_cron
-SL_firefox_parentlock_fix
-SL_inittab_change
-SL_libg2c.a_change
-SL_no_colorls
-SL_pc_speaker
-SL_rpm_show_arch
-SL_sendmail_accept

I also suppress the following in the kickstart:

-cman-kernel-hugemem
-dlm-kernel-hugemem
-GFS-kernel-hugemem
-gnbd-kernel-hugemem
-kernel-hugemem
-kernel-hugemem-devel
-kernel-module-openafs-2.6.9-42.0.3.ELhugemem
-kernel-module-ipw3945-2.6.9-42.0.3.ELhugemem
-ksh93
-j2sdk
-jdk
-java-1.4.2-sun-compat
-java-1.5.0-sun-compat
-GFS
-GFS-kernel
-GFS-kernel-smp
-GFS-kernheaders

There are also added RPMs in SL, not in RHEL, which are mostly simply useful packages; these include: anacron, cdda2wav, gv, icewm, jpilot, ksh93, openafs, pine, xcdroast, yum. For comments on ksh93, see the customisation page.

Package file clashes in SL4x

In SL4x, the package ksh93 clashes with pdksh over the file /bin/ksh.

L.S.Lowe
Birmingham Particle Physics Group