For those who are interested in RHEL 7 Beta performance, Phoronix published a benchmark only two days after its release in December.
The progresses made at the kernel level (3.10 kernel), at the compiler level (gcc 4.8.2) and at the graphic level (new Linux kernel Direct Rendering Manager drivers) are some of the reasons of the clear advantage taken by RHEL 7 Beta against RHEL 6.5.
If you want to know more, read the Phoronix RHEL 7 Beta benchmark.

Today I went to the official RedHat forum and learned a firewall tip from Jamie Bainbridge.
If you need to change the firewall configuration of a server and don’t want to lock yourself out of this server, you can type the following command:
# echo "service iptables restart" | at now + 5 minutes
This way, whatever iptables command you type, you will get the configuration reset after the delay specified. Furthermore, you will be able to view and remove the job by using the commands atq and atrm respectively.
Finally, when debugging your firewall configuration, don’t forget to use the -j LOG target to see if/when traffic hits a certain point in the rules. This can be very useful.

On January 7, 2014 Red Hat and CentOS have signed an agreement regarding future cooperation.
The two distributions were already almost identical except for copyrights, subscription management, and kernel drivers. For people preparing Red Hat certifications, it’s a good news because this agreement will insure similarities in the future.
Concerning the CentOS 7 build process, a blog is regularly updated by the team in charge and things go well.
Finally, the CentOS distribution has seen the look of its dedicated website completely changed.

As the RHEL7 Beta has been released, it’s now time to start looking at the new features.
A RHEL7 Beta review is in progress and some RHEL7 quick recipes are already available.
More will come in the future.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Beta has been released on December, 11th 2013.
This release is based on Fedora 19.
The production release should happen in H1 2014.
However, companies are only migrating to RHEL6. As the RHCSA/RHCE exams are scheduled until July/August 2014, RHEL 6 certifications, which are valid for 3 years, are still relevant at least for the 6 next months.

On November 21, 2013 RHEL 6.5 was released.
On December 2, 2013 CentOS 6.5 is now released.
Even though this is not a stunning news, it’s still important to keep an eye on the last available version of the OS.
As its name suggests, it’s a maintenance release, thus without big changes.
One thing to note still, there is no longer support for configuring partition layout, storage methods or package selection in the CentOS 6.5 text installer (Source).

If you have built a KVM lab like I did, you know what it means not to be able to connect to your VM because you made a mistake in your /etc/fstab file.
This happened to everybody!
Hopefully, there is a solution: create a serial console.
It only takes 3 lines and a reboot!
# echo "S0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200" >>/etc/inittab
# grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="console=ttyS0"
# echo "ttyS0" >>/etc/securetty
# reboot
Now, if you want to connect to your vm, type:
# virsh console vm.example.com
If you know why it’s not done by default, let me know!

If you want to test your new RHCSA skills, there is now a small quiz that requires only 5 minutes. Its purpose is not to replace the real exam but to challenge you on some specific points. This way, you will remember them!