Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta Available Today for Public Download

[JakeS]

[quote]
jlehtone wrote:
[quote]JakeS wrote:
If CentOS6, is released as stable some time this year, I might switch it to my main Desktop OS :D (RHEL is meant to be late this year, but not sure about CentOS6 probably early next year if RHEL hits around Sept :-)).
[/quote]
Timing, timing, timing. With a user base accustomed to "decent desktop applications" (whatever those are, wonders a CLI/Xfce/Emacs/LaTeX user) of Fedora 10+, one starts to wonder whether a deliberate stall in F-updates could allow a transparent side-grade to C-6. But "next year" will be way to far for F-12.[/quote]Hmm, not a bad idea.

Though transparent may not be as easy as one may think. For example, if like me, you've had your Fedora installed for a while (I originally upgraded my system from FC6 to F10, and it was fine (as each release came out of course), that died(Randomly, a few months after upgrade to FC10), I then re-installed at that time, and have upgraded since to FC12, so my System has already gone from FC10 --> FC11 --> FC12.

Plus, don't get me wrong here, but Fedora is great distro, it really is, fair enough it has a few (hundred) bugs, but it's good once you get the hang of it. However, Fedora, quite bluntly is rather bloated right now. I was originally using gnome, but after trying to cut down on ram usage (400/350MB on average) I done quite a few things, un-installing stuff, disabling services and what not, but it refused to budge, yet I noticed on the RHEL beta, it was sitting quite happily around 170MB, that's less than this XFCE will even go right now, which is good, but I kinda got used to the way XFCE works and now prefer it over gnome since I switched while trying to cut down ram (I managed to get down to 230MB). Although seam-inly, it is Xorg which is causing the bloat, as it's using the most ram. (4%).

What with my machine being "Dated" now (An old AMD Athlon 64 3000+, can you believe that? xD), and with FC12 seeming just right for my machine, I figured "Hey, why not just put CentOS6, on" after all it is built on the foundations of Fedora 12 (Or will be)

But the question is, do you REALLY want to take the bloat over to RHEL?

Not to mention all the cleaning that will be needed first, for example removing RPM Fusion and all packages installed from it (Its bound to cause conflicts on CentOS after a while), along with a few other Fedora 12 repo's and packages I got installed that are not "Stock". Oh and remove the Xfce packages, as apparently, they do not exist in RHEL. Although, then go build you own just to get the .el6 extension :p

Then you have another problem, you would have to do the whole switch manually, as for example the kernel in RHEL6 Beta is currently 2.6.32-11.el6 I believe, where as Fedora 12's is: 2.6.32.11-99.fc12

(At least, is on my System)

And theirs bound to be tons of packages in Fedora, with newer versions than RHEL

I don't think it'd be easy, do a side-grade, as you seriously, will have to do it bit by bit.

Which is why.. I just have to give it a go, it sounds fun!

FC10 --> FC11 --> FC12 --> CentOS6 - Yup that will look great, I gotta try it (When everything is final of course) :D

*Note to self: Keep an CentOS6 installation DVD handy for when it all goes wrong.

[Pumpino]

You want to "upgrade" a system from F12 to CentOS 6? Why would you attempt something that's not supported and is so "unclean"? Surely doing a fresh install of CentOS 6 when it's released would only take you half a day to configure.

[JakeS]

[quote]
Pumpino wrote:
You want to "upgrade" a system from F12 to CentOS 6? Why would you attempt something that's not supported and is so "unclean"?[/quote]
The challenge of trying to actually make it work, and the fun of it. Considering this is a desktop system, for personal use, no matter how-long the down time, it's not loosing anyone any money, nor is it causing anyone any problems.

I would be working towards making the entire system "clean" also, so it's not including any .fc12 packages (Except those, that redhat may include as they have done before with .fc6 packages) :-)

Aside, I would have a 6.0 CentOS DVD handy, so when/if it goes wrong, I can just wipe the attempt and do a clean install :-)

[quote]
Pumpino wrote:
Surely doing a fresh install of CentOS 6 when it's released would only take you half a day to configure.
[/quote]
Where's the fun in that? :-P

[pschaff]

[quote]
JakeS wrote:
...
Aside, I would have a 6.0 CentOS DVD handy, so when/if it goes wrong, I can just wipe the attempt and do a clean install :-)
...[/quote]

Have fun, but better make that a RHEL6 Beta DVD for the foreseeable future.

[JakeS]

[quote]
pschaff wrote:
[quote]
JakeS wrote:
...
Aside, I would have a 6.0 CentOS DVD handy, so when/if it goes wrong, I can just wipe the attempt and do a clean install :-)
...[/quote]

Have fun, but better make that a RHEL6 Beta DVD for the foreseeable future.[/quote]It'd be CentOS6 stable, RHEL6 Beta would be obsolete by then :-) - I'm not switching my machine to a Beta OS for primary :-).

Also, I'd rather wait till everything is stable, so I know what I'm dealing with (Eg versions etc etc). Plus this is still all an if, depending on how things turn out and if I have enough coffee at the time, I may just do a clean install after-all :-).

[pschaff]

[quote]
JakeS wrote:
...
It'd be CentOS6 stable, RHEL6 Beta would be obsolete by then :-) - I'm not switching my machine to a Beta OS for primary :-).

Also, I'd rather wait till everything is stable, so I know what I'm dealing with (Eg versions etc etc). Plus this is still all an if, depending on how things turn out and if I have enough coffee at the time, I may just do a clean install after-all :-).[/quote]
Given your description of your upgrade path, the work oxymoron comes to mind when you mention stability. :-) Good luck with your primary system.

[JakeS]

[quote]
pschaff wrote:
...
Given your description of your upgrade path, the work oxymoron comes to mind when you mention stability. :-) Good luck with your primary system.[/quote]Lol. Yeah.

It'll take quite a bit of um 'fine tuning' before I can even think about rebooting the thing into CentOS :-D

A possible way to do it could be:

1. Get coffee
1.1 Remove all extra stuff from 'other repositories'
2. Remove all stuff not included with RHEL by default.
3. Get Coffee
3.1 Check versions between the two systems.
4. Get coffee
4.1 Swap the release version package to CentOS's. Thus getting rid of All Fedora's default repo's (And manually removing any left overs) and installing CentOS repo's.
5. Get coffee
5.1 Switch RPM & Yum to there .el6 counter parts (Either using 'yum downgrade' or 'yum update' depending on what works for the version.
6. Repeat for other RPM's until there isn't a single .fc12 left. All replaced by .el6.
6.1. Keep getting coffee's when needed while doing above
7. Install any additional RPM's added by CentOS (If any?)
8. Boot to run level 3. (Or try to).
9. Remove nvidia driver (It's manually installed with the .run at the mo)
10. Reboot and hope for the best.
11. Sleep!

:lol:

[pschaff]

[quote]
pschaff wrote:
system-config-display from Fedora 12 SRPM does build and run on RHEL6, and allows setting the monitor to Generic LCD to get full screen resolution under VirtualBox, and presumably real hardware that is not recognized. Beats me why RH would drop this.
[/quote]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=586117

[gulikoza]

Is it just me or is system-config-network-tui also missing? This is a server os, why is it expected to run a graphical tool to manage network? I'd rather hand edit the conf files...

also a very interesting problem: immediately after boot, I cannot login (machine boots into text mode, no X installed). I have to switch to tty2 to make keyboard input work. After logging in on tty2, keyboard responds on tty1 as well. Might be some vmware quirk maybe...

[scottro]

What I found (and I saw in this in some Fedora betas too) is this

You have the login prompt.

You type scott and see nothing (if your user name is scott--otherwise, type something else).

Then, you see the prompt for the password. If you type in your password, it will successfully log you in.

More often, seeing nothing, you hit enter a couple of times, get wrong login, and then it will act properly. (All on tty1)

That is, after the incorrect login, it will offer the login prompt, and this time, echo your user name and go to a new line after you hit enter.

Or, of course, the simple way is as you say--go to tty2 and log in there.

Part of the network issue is due to the beta aspect--accoring to release notes that someone posted on Fedora forum, you will have access to NetworkManager during installation. Fedora 13 (or perhaps Rawhide) already has a command line version of networkmanager. The plan is to eventually have NetworkManager completely replace the current networking tools, IIRC.

(However, by that point, it won't require a GUI).