Well, the solution is quite simple. Stop the Nagios service (”service nagios stop” for RedHat based systems) and delete (or archive, which is better in case something goes wrong) the file ”/var/log/nagios/retention.dat”

After this, start the Nagios service again (”service nagios start” for RedHat based systems) and the timers will all be set to zero, with Status on Pending, indicating the first check is being scheduled.

The full announcement can be read here.

AMD64/Intel(r) 64, Itanium Processor Family, System p

and System z

- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server for x86,

AMD64/Intel(r) 64, Itanium Processor Family, System p

and System z

- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop for x86 and

AMD64/Intel(r)

Enhancements

————

A technical overview that describes the major enhancements can be found at:

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/resource_center/

+ Support for up to 126 CPUs in the x86_64 Xen-based

Hypervisor (up to 32 CPUs per virtual server)

+ Support for up to 1TB memory per host on x86_64

(up to 80GB per virtual server)

+ Increased number of dynamic IRQs for x86_64 to allow for

more guests on large systems

+ Support for more than 16 disk devices per guest

+ Added Virtio drivers for use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

as a guest on KVM-based hypervisors

+ Automatically determine correct parameters for large memory

machines. The domain 0 is automatically restricted to 32GB,

but the hypervisor sees the full amount of memory in the

machine

+ Support for Intel Extended Page Tables (EPT) which delivers

higher performance in Fully Virtualized environments

+ Support for 2MB backing page tables on x86_64

+ Support for more than 4 NICs per guest

+ Blktap statistics added

+ Fixes made to properly reserve kdump memory for Xen and

to provide crash with needed address

+ Fixed timer problems after migration

+ Added Intel VT-i2 support for new ia64 processor

+ Fixed lengthy network outage after live migrations

+ Xen log file rotation

+ Xenstore database moved to tmpfs

+ Xen paravirtualized drivers included for fully-virtualized

(FV) Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 guest kernels. Thus the

xenpv-kmod package no longer needs to be added to Red Hat

Enterprise Linux 5 FV kernels for paravirtualized (Xen)

disk and network support

+ Support for vmcoreinfo for IA64 Xen

* Cluster Improvements

+ Cluster mirror support (2-leg mirrors only)

+ GFS2 parallel cluster file system is supported (previously

a Technology Preview)

+ Fencing improvements:

- Added SSH support to the DRAC, Blade Center, iLO, and

Egenera fencing agents

- Added support for WTI RSM8R4 and WTI MPC-8H power

controllers to the WTI fencing agent

* Desktop Enhancements

+ NetworkManager 0.7

- Mobile broadband for select hardware

- Static IP support

- Networking before login

- Much faster connection times

- Connection sharing/multiple active connections

+ Laptop support

- Backported keyboard quirks

+ Updated graphics drivers

- ATI Radeon r400, r500, and r600 chipsets are fully

supported for mode setting (previously a Technology

Preview)

- ATI Radeon r400 and r500 now support 2D acceleration

(previously a Technology Preview)

- Intel G4x/GM4x (Cantiga and EagleLake) support mode

setting and 2D acceleration

- Intel GMA950, 2D only

- Expanded Matrox G200 coverage

* System Services Enhancements

+ Rebased cups (print server), now with full Kerberos support

+ Rebased ksh, lm-sensors, net-snmp, OpenIPMI, openldap,

openmotif, python-urlgrabber, rpm, tog-pegasus, vnc, yum,

yum-utils

* Developer Platform

+ OpenJDK

- First fully open and compatible JDK included in RHEL

- Based on OpenJDK (

http://icedtea.classpath.org/

https://rhn.redhat.com/network/software/download_isos_full.pxt

Release notes for this release are available on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 site at:

Installation is quite straightforward. Boot from the DVD and the rest is a piece of cake. The first screen asks for your local settings and apart from your Licence Key and disk to install on, those are the only questions in the setup process.

And then suddenly Windows 7 is starting itself.

After starting you get a change to setup your first username.

After finishing setting up your accounts, the desktop is displayed and you’re ready to go. The first impression is “this is the same as Vista!” apart from the missing Sidebar. The Sidebar has disappeared from Windows 7 and the Gadgets are placed directly onto the desktop. The advantage is that you cannot only align them vertically, but also horizontally at the same time. Or place them in the middle or just any place you like!

Also a new taksbar should be in place, which is slighly see-through like the rest of the glass interface. But obviously the emulated graphics card from VMware doesn’t support this kind of gimmicks, to here it’s the same solid taksbar from Vista.

I will install Windows 7 in the coming days on a phisical system hoping to get all of the new interface and I’ll keep you guy posted!

Just on the heels of the Fedora Project’s fifth anniversary, the Beta of Fedora Linux version 10 (code-named Cambridge) is now available:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease

There is also a Beta contest! Test five things in the Beta that are important to you as a user. If you find a bug *and* report it, you get the free attention of a package maintainer on a problem personally important to you!

https://bugzilla.redhat.com

Do your part to make Fedora 10 that much better.

Among the new, fun, and interesting features:

      * New NetworkManager with connection sharing
      * Improved printer handling
      * Remote virtualization and easier virt storage
      * Sectool, an auditing and security testing framework
      * RPM 4.6, the first big RPM change in several years

… and more …

      * New version of PackageKit for managing software, with more fixes
        and enhancements (which benefits all distributions)
      * New version of PulseAudio (which benefits all distributions)
      * Kernel 2.6.27, including better support for WiFi
      * Better support for the EFI for Apple Macintosh hardware
      * Faster graphical start-up by Plymouth, replacing the venerable
        RHGB
      * Better support for webcams through the hard work in kernel
        2.6.27 (which benefits all distributions)
      * New icon theme “Echo”, to be completed with the theme graphic
        “Solar” in the Fedora 10 release
      * Gnome 2.24
      * KDE 4.1
      * Adding the NetBeans IDE
      * Eclipse 3.4
      * Automatic installation of multimedia codecs
      * Better HDTV support in X.org
      * “Sugar” graphical environment (from OLPC) available for use,
        testing, and development

A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList

For release information, including common and known bugs, please see the release notes:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Beta/ReleaseNotes

The Alpha release provides the first opportunity for the wider community to become involved with the testing of rawhide:

• Alpha represents a sanitized snapshot of rawhide, Fedora’s development branch, which undergoes rapid changes before becoming the next major release.
• The Alpha should boot on the majority of systems, and provides:
  • A look at what new features are to be included in the next release
  • A way to provide feedback and bug reports to help ensure that the next release is as good as possible

Fedora 10 features

Some highlights of Fedora 10 Alpha:

• Many improvements, bugfixes, and enhancements from upstream
• New graphical boot environment
• Wireless connection sharing
• Audio improvements to remove glitches
• Security audit tool
• Improved webcam support
• Better IR remote control support
• RPM 4.6
• OCaml
• Haskell

For more information:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Alpha/ReleaseNotes

What to test

Test status is being tracked here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/TestResults/Fedora10Install/Alpha 

Check out this page before reporting problems, including looking through the bug trackers as linked on that page.

For a more detailed list of installation tests:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/TestPlans/Fedora10Install

Get the Alpha

The Alpha release is available both through the mirroring system and via bittorrent.

For direct http access to a local mirror:

http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/test/10-Alpha/

For a list of mirrors carrying the content and the various protocols they support:

http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/10-Alpha/

For bittorrent:

http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ 

Join Fedora

To find ways you can help and participate, visit:

http://join.fedoraproject.org/

Update: okay, I was a little premature with my conclusions and as I had a busy week at work I didn’t have much time to do some more research. Okay, that’s no excuse, I know…

So, back to business. Adding the noreplace-paravirt option to the kernel arguments makes the installation launch. After installation you also need to edit grub.conf to add it once more and Fedora will keep working.

Thanks to Nick for pointing me to this. 

The installation started quite hopeful with the welcome screen.

But after continuing it stopped abruptly:

I will have a look at the Beta at my other workstation later, I’ll keep you posted about that!

Update: This can be fixed by adding noreplace-paravirt to the kernel arguments.

As I restarted the computer after the kernel update, I got the same message as with the previous kernel update, of which I wrote about here. This time the problem kernel is version 2.6.24.3-34.fc8.

After this second kernel having problems in a row, I recommend to increase the number of kernels on your system once again. Instructions on how to do that can be found here, but this time increase to 4 or more.

I’ll keep you updated.

Update: This can be fixed by adding noreplace-paravirt to the kernel arguments.