CentOS 8

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smithgcovert1
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by smithgcovert1 » 2019/09/03 13:17:58

Hi all,

I totally get the "its ready when its ready" -- but I've been reloading the status page for the wiki at https://wiki.centos.org/About/Building_8, and there hasn't been an update there since August 15th.

I think the status page thing was a great idea, totally get everyone to stop asking here what the progress is, but it does make tough if that page is never updated.

Also tough when that page says everything is really done except the release steps.

Any idea when that page will be updated again?

Cheers,
Greg

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TrevorH
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by TrevorH » 2019/09/03 14:09:20

CentOS 7.7 takes precedence over unreleased versions. There are [mbz]illions of installed 7.6 instances and there are at least 68 different CVE-fixing packages in 7.7. Current focus is on getting 7.7 out of the door - it's already in the CR repo, isos to follow.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
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Lazlow
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by Lazlow » 2019/09/04 15:46:27

Why not simply post "on hold pending release of Centos 7.7"? I even looked into the arm version (just got a pi4-4gb) and it made me a little nervous when I noticed everything there stopped on the 15th too.

fluke11
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by fluke11 » 2019/09/06 06:14:47

I get both the idea of it being ready when it is ready and that CentOS 7.7 takes priority.

However, the build page has shown the RC work done for a while with no indication of what that means on a practical level. Is there any URL to a pre-release repo? It is fine with me there is no install images and no release of anaconda yet. If I need to install CentOS 7 first, I'm fine with that. If I need to install Fedora 27 or 28 first, I'm fine with that too. If I need to rebuild RPM to 4.14 on a bootstrap install, I'm willing to do that. If I need to get dnf system upgrade working on the bootstrap install, I'm ok with that too.

If things are still incomplete and things aren't working yet, I completely understand. I expect early access would come at an additional cost of time to try an RC that isn't polished yet. But currently there is no URL to such a RC repo to point a dnf system upgrade to?

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avij
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by avij » 2019/09/06 09:16:43

Sorry, if there was a public beta or a release candidate, you would have been pointed to it already. There are no plans to make a public release candidate.

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TrevorH
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by TrevorH » 2019/09/06 09:19:20

currently there is no URL to such a RC repo to point a dnf system upgrade to?
And even if there was, that would not work. There is no dnf system upgrade on RHEL or CentOS. For RHEL there is a (limited) tool called leapp to migrate but it supports only very basic install types. I am not expecting this tool to be available for CentOS.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

fluke11
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by fluke11 » 2019/09/06 22:17:52

TrevorH wrote:
2019/09/06 09:19:20
currently there is no URL to such a RC repo to point a dnf system upgrade to?
And even if there was, that would not work. There is no dnf system upgrade on RHEL or CentOS. For RHEL there is a (limited) tool called leapp to migrate but it supports only very basic install types. I am not expecting this tool to be available for CentOS.
I think you misunderstood me. I am not saying that CentOS supplies the dnf system upgrade for CentOS 7 or 8. I am not saying they should ever supply or support it. What I am saying is if the RC repo was available even without a working iso image and without a working anaconda, I would be willing to work on an ad-hoc solution to make the RC available to more members of the community to play with. If CentOS would want us to hold off on filing any resulting bugs until they can be confirmed with a CentOS endorsed method of installation, I would completely understand.

What I don't understand is the front page of centos.org starting with "The CentOS Project is a community-driven free software effort" while blocking the community from the RC. Even attempting to download the binary packages from Koji produces "403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules." Is that consistent with encouraging a community driven effort?

Also, while it would be understandable to not expect such a tool to be available *FROM* CentOS, I find it troubling to hear an implied expectation that no one ever outside of CentOS would provide such a tool *for* CentOS. Again, shouldn't a community driven effort allow for the possibility of external efforts that do thing *for* the project without it being directly *from* the project?

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avij
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by avij » 2019/09/07 06:55:25

fluke11 wrote:
2019/09/06 22:17:52
Also, while it would be understandable to not expect such a tool to be available *FROM* CentOS, I find it troubling to hear an implied expectation that no one ever outside of CentOS would provide such a tool *for* CentOS. Again, shouldn't a community driven effort allow for the possibility of external efforts that do thing *for* the project without it being directly *from* the project?
There is a historical reason. There was a similar tool for upgrading CentOS 6 to CentOS 7. While it initially kind of worked in some very specific circumstances, CentOS 6 and 7 evolved with the new updates, and the tool would have needed to be updated for these changes. At some point it became dangerous to keep it available, because the tool's brokenness ended up making many CentOS systems unbootable. Quoting from the old 6->7 upgrade tool documentation:
This tool is community maintained, and there are newer versions of this tool that need to be maintained by community members. Here are the packages on git.centos.org:

preupdate-assistant-contents

preupgrade-assistant

redhat-upgrade-tool

Also, the CentOS-6 openscap needs to be verified (and possibly modified), the latest SRPM should be at either:

C6 OS Sources

C6 Updates Sources

If you are interested in modifying these Red Hat packages to work with CentOS Linux, please use the CentOS-Devel Mailing List and collaborate with other community members to bring this functionality to CentOS Linux.
That community collaboration never happened.

The sources for the 7->8 upgrade tool "leapp" are available. If the community manages to get it into working shape, I don't see a reason why it couldn't be used.

fluke11
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by fluke11 » 2019/09/10 01:15:58

avij wrote:
2019/09/07 06:55:25
There is a historical reason. There was a similar tool for upgrading CentOS 6 to CentOS 7. While it initially kind of worked in some very specific circumstances, CentOS 6 and 7 evolved with the new updates, and the tool would have needed to be updated for these changes. At some point it became dangerous to keep it available, because the tool's brokenness ended up making many CentOS systems unbootable.

...

That community collaboration never happened.
There are several side cases that come up over time that both FedUp and redhat-upgrade-tool really were not designed to address very well. CentOS 6 to CentOS 7 also had the unique situation of upgrading GRUB v1 to GRUB v2 with very different syntax formats.

I see equating community history with redhat-upgrade-tool to be similar to bringing up the history of community involvement with NIS/NIS+ service. There are just sometimes things that can't deliver the desired result without a complete rewrite. NIS+ wasn't going to be providing LDAP like results by the community patching it. While NIS+ and LDAP are both directory services, the level of community interest is going to be different because the overall environments are very different.

CentOS 6 to 7 and the tool provided for it is very different than CentOS 7 to 8.
avij wrote:
2019/09/07 06:55:25
The sources for the 7->8 upgrade tool "leapp" are available. If the community manages to get it into working shape, I don't see a reason why it couldn't be used.
Once someone gets familiar with Leapp and Snactor, how do they attempt to prove they got the Leapp actor into a "working shape" for 7 to 8 RC while still banned from accessing 8 RC? If they need to prove "working shape" to get RC access but need to already have RC access to prove it then we seem to be in a circular dependency hell. They community might be better off figuring out if the chicken or the egg came first.

Regardless of what the community does with Leapp right now, CentOS will always still be able to point to the historical reason related to the redhat-upgrade-tool to continue the policy of banning early community work with a 7 to 8 RC upgrade path. It doesn't seem to matter if the historical reason would really be relevant to the current situation or not, the policy to ban the community from the RC RPMs has already been decided.

stevemowbray
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Re: CentOS 8

Post by stevemowbray » 2019/09/11 11:41:01

There is no RC, so all this is moot. Releasing an RC would require additional effort from the maintainers which is better spent actually working on the release, surely?

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