LINUX DISTRO: RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 WS

RedHat has introduced the Enterprise Linux version 3 series for corporate users. This series has three flavors suited for different needs of an organization. The flavors are AS (Advance Server), ES (Entry/Mid Level Server) and WS (Workstation). Also, recently RedHat released a new flavor for high-volume desktop/client and named it RedHat Desktop. We will be reviewing all the three flavors of RHEL 3, in the coming issues. 

RHEL 3 WS can interact perfectly with the RedHat AS/ES and can provide a very secure and reliable homogeneous client-server environment. As WS is the most cost efficient variant of RHEL series and has a built in framework for HPC (High Performance Clustering) libraries such as PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) and LAM, it is well suited as a headless node for HPC clusters. WS is capable of supporting 1-2 CPU, 32/64-bit Intel and AMD systems. But it lacks some common services such as DHCP and DNS since WS is meant for desktop usage only.

Installation



When you start the installation of RHEL 3 WS, you won't find anything new in it if you have used any of the recent open-source versions of RedHat Series such as RedHat 9 or even FC 1 (Fedora Core 1). The only noticeable thing that you will see is that there is no Installation Type screen in the installation process. Instead, you are directly forwarded to the Package Confirmation screen from where you can either continue with the Default Selection or can go for the Custom Installation. From this Custom Installation you can also opt for Everything Installation. Just as in RedHat 9, here also when you select Indian languages (such as Hindi and Tamil) at the time of installation, you don't have fonts for them; only keyboard maps are available. So if you select them, you will end up with some scrambled characters only. 

Internal architecture



After you are done with the installation you will get an OS that is similar in looks to the one you get in RedHat 9. But, it differs in the internal architecture. One main architectural difference is the back-ported features of kernel 2.6 such as NPTL (Native POSIX Thread Library) compatibility (also available in FC 1). The other important feature you will find is the support for LVM (Logical Volume Manager) that was not there in RHEL 2.1. 

Another important thing is the 4-4 memory split which, in the previous version, used to be 3-1 split, which means that the kernel could have 1 GB of physical memory only and each user process has 3 GB of it. In 4-4 split you can configure the machine to have 4 GB of memory for both the kernel and user process. The OS in this version is capable of handling a maximum of 64 GB of physical memory. 

Anindya Roy