Pie Box

July 29th, 2008

Update 7 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

Kernel: added Intel ICH10 SATA, USB, HD Audio and I2C(SMBUS), updated NMI infrastructure to latest(2.6.25), added task IO accounting, added partition statistics to 'iostat' command, added IO task accounting to getrusage() call, added enumeration of pagecache pages in show_mem()'s output, removed Tux's O_ATOMICLOOKUP flag from open() system call, exported process limits through /proc//limits, added TCP_RTO_MIN, implemented udp_poll() to reduce likelihood of false positive return from select(), added 'nfs.enable_ino64' boot command line parameter to enable/disable 32-bit inode numbers, added /proc/sys/vm/nfs-writeback-lowmem-only to fix NFS read performance regression, added /proc/sys/vm/write-mapped tunable parameter to help select faster NFS read performance, updated CIFS to 1.50c, added core dump masking support, autofs5 now supported
Virtualisation: PV-on-HVM drivers to accelerate disk and network I/O for guests, expanded vnif number for guest domains over four and added tick divider capability to help keep fully virtualised guest time skew to a minimum
Encryption and security: shadow-utils, authconfig, pam, anaconda and libuser now support generation of SHA-256 and SHA-512 hashes to meet government requirements and added Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment package to allow file system integrity testing
Tuning and debugging: production support, new support for unprivileged users, reference manuals and post-crash trace data recovery
Tools: added JRockit JDK 1.6.0
Networking and IPv6: added IPv6 for iSCSI, added OFED 1.3 and improved reliability of autofs
Storage: udev now supported in cciss driver, added ability to vgsplit an active Volume Group where the split involves only inactive LVs and enhanced partition statistics
Platform: added /dev/msr[0-n] device files, built PowerNow-k8 as module to allow removal, added greyhound event-based profiling support, added sb800 SATA controller support, added missing sb600 sb700 40 pin IDE cable support, fixed 64-bit DMA issue on sb700 systems, added relevant PCI device IDs to support for ICH10, updated eHEA driver to latest upstream and added poll_controller support to support netdump and netconsole, added lro support as kernel networking module, updated ipr driver to support dual SAS RAID controller function for new PCIe ipr adapters, added SLB shadow buffer support, added support for CPU freq values greater than 32-bit on POWER5 and POWER6, extended floating point exception handler, updated zfcp driver to include bugfixes, updated qdio driver to fix FCP/SCSI write IO stagnates on LPR and updated cio driver to include bugfixes
Laptop and desktop: added tablet support for cintiq 20wsx, intuos3 4x6, 12x12 and 12x19, upgraded to Firefox3 and full support for evolution28
Driver updates including aacraid, arcmsr, bnx2, CCISS, cxgbe, edac_i3000, edac_i5000, dm-multipath, e1000, forcedeth, i2c-1801, ide, igb, ixgbe, libata, lpfc, megaraid, megaraid_sas, mptfusion, pci_ids, psmouse, q1a2xxx, q1a4xxx, s2io, sata_svw, stex, tg3 and wacom
Driver additions including bnx2x and i2c_piix4
Other notable additions include: technology previews of frysk and gcc4

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 is aimed at people who need a stable OS with a long lifespan but don't want an expensive bundled support contract. It is derived from open source software with only four packages modified in order to replace trademarks and logos with our own. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 include the Linux 2.6 kernel, SELinux, GNOME 2.8, Samba 3.0, Logical Volume Manager 2, PCI Express support and NFSv.4.

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

PixExcel, based in the United Kingdom, recognised the demand for enterprise quality Linux software that does not come bundled with an expensive support contract. This led to the release of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS back in April 2004. Since then PixExcel has been supplying a growing client base ranging from the home enthusiast to multi-million pound corporations. These clients share one thing in common - they demand a quality product but are sufficiently skilled to operate it without the expense of a support contract.

Pie Box Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution that is derived from open source software. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

November 17th, 2007

Update 6 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

New kernel features including ability to disable out of memory killer
Driver updates including aacraid, adp94xx, bonding, bnx2, cciss, dell_rbu, e1000, ehea, forcedeth, ibmveth, IPMI, ipr, iscsi-sfnet, lpfc, megaraid_sas, mptfusion, OpenIB, qla2100, qla2200, qla2300, qla2322, qla2400, qla2xxx, qla3xxx, qla4xxx, qla6312, s2io, sdio, sym53c8xx and tg3
Drivers added arcmsr, cxgb3, e1000e, netxen, pata_jmicron and pata_pdc2027x
Samba upgrade from 3.0.10 to 3.0.25
Updates to lvm2, NFS performance metrics, diskdump support, gdm, alsa, WPA Supplicant driver, PAM module, Microcode, automounter
Technology previes including autofs5, evolution 28, frysk, gcc4, systemtap

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

June 15th, 2007

Update 9 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

Kernel fixes including networking subsystem, dcache handling, the ext2 & ext3 file systems, the USB subsystem, ACPI handling and the audit subsystem
Device driver fixes in tg3, e1000, megaraid_sas and aacraid
Security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements to numerous system packages

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 is aimed at people who need a stable OS with a long lifespan but don't want an expensive bundled support contract. It is derived from open source software with only four packages modified in order to replace trademarks and logos with our own. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 include the Linux 2.4 kernel, GNOME, Apache 2, Samba 3 and Logical Volume Manager.

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

May 19th, 2007

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS U5 now available

Update 5 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

New kernel features including paravirtualised kernel for i686, updated kernel support for Infiniband, NFS performance metrics, EDAC for Opteron, diskdump support for sata_nv & ibmvscsi drivers, netdump support for 8139cp driver, CIFS updated to 1.45 and clustering application support through dm device ioctls
Driver updates including 3w-9xxx, ahci, ata_piix, bnx2, bonding, cciss, e1000, ibmvscsic, ipr, ixgb, libata, megaraid_mm, megaraid_sas, mptbase, pdc_adma, qla2100, qla2200, qla2300, qla2322, qla2400, qla2xxx, qla6312, r8169, sata_mv, sata_nv, sata_promise, sata_qstor, sata_sil, sata_sis, sata_svw, sata_sx4, sata_uli, sata_via, sata_vsc, sky2, stex, tg3
Driver additions including qla3xxx, qla4xxx
Additional platform support for Intel ICH9 chipset, PCIe power management quirk, AMD quad-core systems, RDTSCP, MCE Thresholding support for AMD 0x10 family processors, PCI-Express support for Altix, eClipz, ppc host ethernet adapter device driver, SHUB2 hardware support
Security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements to numerous system packages
Other notable additions include: technology preview release of OpenOffice.org 2.0, WPA-Supplicant driver now included, automounter load balancing with replicated servers, configurable location for core dumps in netdump-server, selectable core dump filtering, microcode update, session keyring initialisation PAM module, gdm update for new audit system, Linux-z/VM monitoring with established z/VM tools, DASD awareness for multipath-tools, Infiniband update from 1.0 to OFED-1.1 code base, native SAS & STAT devices now supported, support for SCSI-3 persistent group reservations, mdadm support for RAID50, GUI iSCSI configuration, multipath-tools support for DASD disks

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

August 14, 2006

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS U4 now available

Update 4 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

New kernel features including Device Mapper mirroring support, IDE diskdump support and Vmalloc support >64MB
Enhanced kernel features including multi-core scheduler support and performance & power enhancements for Intel's Core2 Duo & Xeon 5100 series processors (Woodcrest)
Enhanced system tools including LVM2 Mirror Support, updated Infiniband technology preview, technology preview release of gcc-4.1, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) preparation, updated Bonded Ethernet destination slave interface hashing capabilities
Browser re-base from Mozilla to Seamonkey (application suite from Mozilla Foundation including web browser, email & newsgroup client and IRC client)
Source re-base from Firefox version 1.0 to 1.5, Thunderbird version 1.4 to 1.5, OpenOffice.Org version 1.1.2 to 1.1.5
Driver updates including ipmi, ib_mthca, bnx2, bonding, e100, e1000, sky2, tg3, ipw2100, ipw2200, 3w-9xxx, ips, iscsi_sfnet, lpfc, megaraid_sas, qla2xxx, qla6312, sata_promise, sata_vsc, ibmvscsic, ipr
Driver additions including dcdbas, sata_mv, sata_qstor, sata_uli, skge, stex, pdc_adma
Security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements to numerous system packages

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

July 24, 2006

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS U8 now available

Update 8 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

New kernel features including diskdump support on megaraid_sas, qlogic & swap partitions and new hardware support via driver & SCSI white-list updates
Enhanced kernel features including networking subsystem, NFS & autofs4 file systems and SCSI & USB subsystems
Enhanced system tools including the addition of OpenIPMI userspace tools
Browser re-base from Mozilla to Seamonkey (application suite from Mozilla Foundation including web browser, email & newsgroup client and IRC client)
Driver updates including bnx2, cciss, e1000, emulex, forcedeth, ipmi, qlogic and tg3
Driver additions including adp94xx and dcdbas
Security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements to numerous system packages

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

March 16, 2006

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS U7 now available.

Update 7 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

Improved support for NUMA architectures
Enhanced system tools including the addition of OpenIPMI userspace tools
Driver updates including aacraid, e1000, emulex, fusion, ipmi, megaraid2,tg3, SATA support, lpfc, serverworks, siimage, aic7xxx
Driver additions including bnx2, dell_rbu and megaraid_sas
Security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements to numerous system packages

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com.

March 10, 2006

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS U3 now available.

Update 3 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

Enhanced security including execshield updates, use of gcc FORTIFY_SOURCE build option in some package updates, SELinux policy updates, updated kernel key management support
Enhanced system tools including SystemTap dynamic system instrumentation tool, kernel crash dump analysis tool, technology preview of Frysk execution analysis framework, updated OpenIPMI support
Enhanced storage including improvements to autofs/automount, device-mapper snapshot and multipath I/O improvements, support for 4GB versions of Fibre Channel HBAs, NFS access control lists (asynchronous I/O)
Enhanced networking including technology preview of Infiniband support via the OpenIB stack
Driver updates including cciss, hangcheck-timer, ipmi_devintf, ipmi_msghandler, ipmi_poweroff, ipmi_si, ipmi_watchdog, mptbase, e1000, ixgb, tg3, aacraid, ahci, ata_piix, iscsi_sfnet, libata, qla2100, qla2200, qla2300, qla2322, qla2xxx, qla6312, sata_nv, sata_promise, sata_svw, sata_sx4, sata_vsc, cifs
Driver additions including bnx2, dell_rbu, ib_mthca, megaraid_sas, qla2400, typhoon
Security updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements to numerous system packages

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

October 13, 2005

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS U2 now available.

Update 2 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

Improved support for dual-core processors
Improved Logical Volume Management administration tool
Improved kernel crash dump analysis tools
New CAPP-style system auditing capabilities
New kernel key ring facility & tools
New OpenPegasus WBEM/CIM management tools for standards based system monitoring & control
New SCTP run-time library & command-line tools
New user-level libraries for IPMI support & updated OpenIPMI driver support
New iSCSI software initiator support & tools
New device-mapper based multipath I/O support
Driver updates including 3c59x, cciss, cio, crypto, CTC-MPC, dasd, e100, e1000, ipw2100, ixgb, libata, lpfc, megaraid_mbox, megaraid_mm, mptbase, qeth, qla2100, qla2200, qla2300, qla2322, qla2xxx, qla6312, sata_ahci, sata_qstor, sata_sil, sata_svw, sata_via, tg3 and zfcp
Security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements to numerous system packages

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com.

October 10, 2005

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS U6 now available.

Update 6 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

Improved support for dual-core processors
Kernel and user support for 2 terabyte partitions on block devices
Improved diskdump capability (Compaq SMART Array controller module)
Driver updates including 3w-9xxx, cciss, e100, e1000, lpfc, lpfcdfc, fusion, iscsi, ipmi, qlogic, tg3 and various SATA drivers
Security updates, bug fixes and feature enhancements to numerous system packages

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

September 27, 2005

Screenshots of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS have been made available here.

August 6, 2005

Screenshots of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS have been made available here. Screenshots of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS will be available in the near future.

June 13, 2005

Repository updated to include Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS Update 1.

Update 1 of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 was made available today. This update includes the following enhancements:

Improved disk dump capability (including SATA and megaraid support).
Updated Intel Centrino ipw2100/ipw2200 wireless drivers and firmware.
Driver updates including ata_piix, bonding, e1000, e100, ibmveth, libata, lpfc, megaraid_mbox, megaraid_mm, sata_nv, sata_promise, sata_sil, sata_sis, sata_svw, sata_via, sata_vsc, and tg3.
Many platform hardware support updates and bug fixes.
Security updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements to numerous system packages.

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 is aimed at people who need a stable OS with a long lifespan but don't want an expensive bundled support contract. It is derived from open source software with only four packages modified in order to replace trademarks and logos with our own. This results in a product that is fully compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 include the Linux 2.6 kernel, SELinux, GNOME 2.8, Samba 3.0, Logical Volume Manager 2, PCI Express support and NFSv.4.

Further information regarding Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 and subscriptions to the Updates service may be found at www.piebox.com

Pie Box Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution that is derived from open source software. Pie Box Enterprise Linux is NOT affiliated with, produced, maintained or supported by Red Hat, Inc. in any way. Red Hat and the Red Hat Shadowman logo are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. RPM is a trademark of Red Hat, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

May 20, 2005

Repository updated to include Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS Update 5.

February 28, 2005 - PixExcel launches Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS

PixExcel today released version 4 of its Pie Box Enterprise Linux product.

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS is built from open source software with only four packages modified in order to replace trademarks and logos with our own. This results in a product that is fully compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Features of Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS include the Linux 2.6 kernel, SELinux, GNOME 2.8, Samba 3.0, Logical Volume Manager 2, PCI Express support and NFSv.4.

In conjunction with the release, the Pie Box Repository has been extended to support 4 AS.

Pie Box Enterprise Linux 4 AS and subscriptions to the Updates service are available immediately via www.piebox.com

December 23, 2004

Repository updated to include Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS Update 4.

September 2, 2004

Repository updated to include Pie Box Enterprise Linux 3 AS Update 3.

August 21, 2004

Price drops across the entire product range.

April 19, 2004

Product launch.