Red Hat MRG

MRG Realtime Product Composition

MRG Realtime is not a complete operating system distribution (ie, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, or 5). Rather, it consists of a small set of RPM packages which are add-ons or replacements to standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 components.

• The prerequisite base-system install is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 or later. After the base-system install, the set of realtime packages are separately added.
  • The maintenance stream for the base system is the same as standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. For example, ongoing fixes to the system utilities, runtime environment, etc, remains identical.
  • The glibc runtime library remains unchanged for realtime. This is possible because all of the prerequisite realtime enablers were delivered in the original glibc that shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. This foresight allows for complete runtime compatibility for applications. There is no need to recompile for realtime.
• After the base-system is installed, the realtime packages are separately installed. These packages include:
  • A replacement kernel - The realtime capabilities are entirely contained in the kernel, thereby providing and "under the hood" system upgrade. The standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 kernel is based on 2.6.18 plus a number of backported features. In contrast, the MRG Realtime is based on 2.6.21 or later and will be enhanced over time to later revisions.
  • A small set of configuration utilities - specifically to tune new parameters which are realtime specific.
  • A small set of performance monitoring tools - to provide visibility into the operation and tuning of realtime capabilities.
  • Documentation, including tuning recommendations.