TableOfContents

General Points

AFS Sysname List

The AFS sysname list (the output of the fs sysname command) in Zeuthen is:

About Scientific Linux 5 at DESY, Zeuthen

Removable Media and Hotplug Storage Devices

• Mount points are now in /media. They are created at mount time, not after plugging the device. No fstab entries are used, that's why you cannot use the usual mount and umount commands. The names of the mount points are taken from the file system's volume label if applicable. They are removed when the device is removed.

• Manual Mounting If the automatic mounting of devices by GNOME/KDE is not used, gnome-mount can be called manually like this, using the appropriate device file:

  gnome-mount -d /dev/sda1
  gnome-umount -d /dev/sda1

• Hotplug should work better than on SL3 or SL4, thanks to the more modern kernel and hotplug scripts. It is known to not work perfectly in all cases though.

  • Multiple partitions on USB storage devices should work now, at least if all partitions have a supported filesystem, and the partition table format is legal.

  • The new hotplug system does not assign ownership of the device to the user. Hence you can't partition the device or create filesystems, unlike on SL3.

  • The new hotplug system will clean up properly if a mounted device if removed, and it no longer causes problems to log out while a hotplug device is mounted.

    It is still recommended to always umount all filesystems on a hotplug device before removing it physically, and before logging off from the console.

    Notice the GNOME desktop will automount filesystems on hotplug devices when they are

    connected. This feature can be turned off under System->Preferences->Removable Storage:BRattachment:g-v-p.png

Backward Compatibility

Binaries

SL5 should be binary backward compatible with SL4. This means that executables built on and for SL4 should work on SL5. It does not mean that any executable that works on SL4 will work on SL5 as well: If it worked only due to legacy support before, it may no longer work on SL5.

Software

• gcc 4 hints for fixing the typical new compiler errors: http://dev.gentoo.org/~vanquirius/gcc4-porting-guide.html

Known Problems

• no Atrans/afscp
• no afs_admin
• no matlab on 64-bit