Red Hat Linux 6.2

Product: Red Hat Linux

Version: 6.2 final

From:

• ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/linux/redhat/
• or ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/redhat
• or ftp://sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/Mirror/Linux/redhat/redhat-6.2/

Red Hat has released the final version of version 6.2 of its Linux distribution. The new release is available in downloadable ISO format, ready for burning onto CD-ROM, or as files for a ready-to-run version.

Note, however, that Red Hat Linux 6.2 has a serious security breach in the form of an undocumented password that, some say, acts as a "backdoor." The operating system, which includes a new utility called Piranha, allows users with the name "piranha" and the password "q" to "run whatever command an attacker wants," claims an article on CNET.com.

Internet Security Systems (ISS), the group that found the vulnerability, gives the problem its most severe rating and says it could provide a launch pad for a more severe attack.

We were unsuccessful in getting the system to work properly with our test system's nVIDIA TNT2 Vanta graphics card, despite the fact that the Red Hat 6.2 includes a TNT2 driver. We had to configure the card as a generic VGA compatible (with only 16 colors - ugh!) to get any graphics at all. The new release does not include the recently released XFree86 4.0 series of graphics drivers, nor does it support a graphical installation option (as did the 3.6 drivers)  if the 4.0 drivers are downloaded and obtained separately. Fortunately, the Vanta drivers available separately from the nVIDIA website work, if you can manage the fairly elaborate installation procedure.

Some functions, such as direct support of the UDF file system used by CDRW disks are allegedly present, but are still annoyingly obscure. Even a simple feature such as opening "netconfig" to reconfigure a network card's TCP/IP parameters seems unnecessarily obscure -- the Network icon opens an unrelated "Talk" feature and none of the Help pages we found described how to define an IP address. Even the many HOWTO pages on the Red Hat site (if you can get there) seem to omit this key piece of info: it is most easily accomplished by typing "netconfig" into the terminal shell.

For Further Reading:

• Linux Versions - Comparing the Linux releases from Red Hat, Caldera and S.u.S.E. Plus, Corel WordPerfect and Linuxberg.
• Linux_versions-pt2 - Linux for Mac, plus download locations for Red Hat 6.0, SuSE 6.1 and Caldera 2.2 distributions.
• Ars-Technica: Red Hat Linux installation
• Linux Today
• www.kernel.org

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