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1 • auto mount (by vern on 2020-12-14 00:51:18 GMT from United States)
My fstab does not contain mounting for my usb device, and yet its mounted differently.
I only have 3 devices in fstab. I never really bouther adjusting fstab.
2 • auto mount 2 (by vern on 2020-12-14 00:53:34 GMT from United States)
The USB device does appear on /proc/mounts though. I never knew about checking there before.
3 • Springdale Linux (by Oko on 2020-12-14 00:55:35 GMT from United States)
In the lieu of the fact that IBM just killed CentOS, how about reviewing the oldest and the only remaining truly free RHEL clone Springdale Linux, which people can use to do the actual work?
http://springdale.math.ias.edu/
4 • fstab (by Newby on 2020-12-14 01:40:41 GMT from Canada)
This week's tip about using and modifying the /etc/fstab entry brings up a question:
I have some 128 Gb USB memory keys from both Lexar and Kingston.
The Lexar units can easily be mounted from the commandline if no fstab entry:
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/memory
The Kingston Data Traveler units will only work by using the UUID.
Is there any way to tell BEFORE you buy such devices whether they are compatible with old-style mounting?
Also, by adding user (or users) and rw options with the above mount command, SHOULD be able to transfer files, but the UUID only devices also seem to reject that, yet work fine if done in X instead of from the commandline. Doesn't seem to be a permissions issue, as this works just fine with the non-UUID supporting devices.
Any ideas?
5 • mounting USB drives (by Jesse on 2020-12-14 02:07:00 GMT from Canada)
@4: "The Kingston Data Traveler units will only work by using the UUID.
Is there any way to tell BEFORE you buy such devices whether they are compatible with old-style mounting?"
I have never encountered a drive that couldn't be mounted using partition names instead of UUID. In fact, I've never used UUIDs when mounting any removable media as it requires more typing and doesn't match dmesg log entries or lsblk output. Half of my thumb drives are Kingstons and they all work with classic /dev/sdc1 style names.
I think there must be either something wrong with the drives (either hardware or partition table corruption) or you've got the wrong device name when you're trying to mount them.
This line, "but the UUID only devices also seem to reject that, yet work fine if done in X instead of from the commandline," also gives me pause. This strongly suggests there is an issue with the command given as the same underlying software is typically used from X.
My suggestions would be to reformat the misbehaving drives and then make very sure the proper device names are being used.
6 • fstab (by Adina on 2020-12-14 02:07:35 GMT from United States)
genfstab / >> /etc/fstab
If you're not an Arch user there are standalone versions of genfstab you can download. It automatically includes swap and any devices mounted to subdirectories of /. If you've restarted the machine already and for some reason can't boot your system, boot it with an Arch Linux install USB, mount your root device to /mnt and other devices to the appropriate subdirectories of /mnt, swapon your swap partition if applicable, and then run
genfstab /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
as though you were in the process of installing Arch. This should restore your fstab to a bootable state, and you can unmount everything and restart into your repaired system. Looking at the new fstab to make sure it includes everything you want is recommended. If you wanted it to refer to UUIDs use option -U and if you wanted it to refer to labels use option -L. Either way the other option will be in a comment so you can switch manually later if you want.
7 • Apple Touch Icon (by Shadow53 on 2020-12-14 02:44:15 GMT from United States)
The TTOS website icon is likely called "apple touch" because that is the hard-coded name of an image that will be used if an iDevice user bookmarks the page or adds the page to their home screen. They evidently decided to reuse that icon file in other places as well.
8 • How many entries are in your fstab file? (by Steve K on 2020-12-14 03:37:18 GMT from United States)
I have 18 entries in my fstab file. Haha, that's because I set up a multi-boot SSD with 14 different Linux distros, 3 data partitions and one swap partition. What fun!
9 • Mounting USB Drives (by Newby on 2020-12-14 03:47:44 GMT from Canada)
@6 Thanks for the helpful comments. After digging up the "suspect" keys and trying to retrace my steps from maybe 3 or 4 months ago, realized my faulty memory had confused 2 different issues I had run into at the time. With the USB keys, the problem did turn out to be permissions. Where my confusion came in was, at that same time, I was trying out a new distro. After some confusion about the fstab, the install memory, and permissions, realized the new distro was assigning the the partitions by UUIDs rather than mount points.
Seeing today's discussion about fstab brought hazy flashback of the issues. Your suggestions helped me retrace what happened. Also taught me that from now on, when trying out a new distro, to keep written notes. Used to do that, but after numerous installs, one gets blase. My memory (the biological one, not the USB keys) "ain't" what it used to be. Trying to think of a suitable Mark Twain quote to insert here......
I seem to have succeeded in reversing the one shown below ("Get your facts first; then you can distort them as much as you please).
10 • Loss of CentOS (by Bobbie Sellers on 2020-12-14 05:31:02 GMT from United States)
Just quoting from the column i scrape together for CUCUG.
"Meet Rocky Linux:
New RHEL Fork by the Original CentOS Creator
December 9, 2020 by Ankush Das
CentOS is a fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and
undoubtedly a popular choice to deploy on production servers
because of its rock solid stability and compatibility.
But, now with CentOS Stream, Red Hat just killed CentOS
as we know it. And as expected, people started to fork
Red Hat to give a viable community based alternative to RHEL.
A Brief Recap of the “CentOS Stream” Episode
In case you didn’t know, let me give you a quick overview:
CentOS was a community-driven project which was the
fork of RHEL and acted as a downstream for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Soon after IBM acquired Red Hat,
a CentOS Stream distribution was introduced as an
upstream for RHEL. More information at the URL below.
<https://news.itsfoss.com/rocky-linux-announcement/>"
I have heard good things about the former CentOS
developer and as one person points out Springdale
Linux will do the same work as CentOS.
I wonder if Rocky Linux will give it a challenge.
bliss - “Nearly any fool can use a computer. Many do.” After all here I am...
11 • other RHEL clones (by Alexis de Tocqueville on 2020-12-14 06:37:51 GMT from United States)
In addition to the aforementioned Springdale, there's Oracle and Scientific Linux.
Oracle and Larry Ellison are, of course, twirl-the-moustache evil. But if you need somebody to sponsor a tennis tournament in California, go for it.
Many observers, including Distrowatch, think Scientific has lost its way. That's a shame, for at one time it had appeal to an audience wider than the scientific and research communities it was originally aimed at.
12 • Moving from CentOS to Oracle (by Microlinux on 2020-12-14 07:01:47 GMT from France)
I've decided to move my company's servers from CentOS to Oracle. Since the CentOS announce, I've spent quite some time experimenting, and I published a detailed blog article about it.
https://blog.microlinux.fr/migration-centos-oracle-linux/
tl;dr: Oracle has done evil things, but Oracle Linux is excellent.
13 • Oracle Linux? (by Pjo on 2020-12-14 08:52:17 GMT from Ireland)
Not being a Red Hat or Centos user I never considered it. Curious to know more I searched. Found this
https://www.itcentralstation.com/questions/what-is-the-biggest-difference-between-oracle-linux-and-redhat
Dumping Centos immediately seems a bit precipitate given the prospects for Rocky Linux appear bright.
14 • Rocky Linux (by Any on 2020-12-14 10:32:59 GMT from Spain)
Too rocky the name. They (he) should've paid the tribute by other way e.g. the logo.
15 • CentOS and commerce with Linux (by Random Thought on 2020-12-14 10:45:03 GMT from India)
I think it's a good beginning.
IBM wants an useful server software to replace it's ancient AIX business. RHEL is a good choice. CentOS is taking away some share free of cost.
What is for client now ? Well there are Windows, Android, Chrome OS, Mac, iOS already in good shape and no need to compete in that flooded sector, so forget GNOME. At least IBM doesn't suffer from NIH syndrome or any sentimental issue as far as I know unlike Red Hat.
Now, we the general GNU Linux desktop/laptop users will no more get surprising & disturbing UX experiences any more. No more Pot... or similar creature will come up to show it's talent now & then and disturb our talent growth.
We are better with natural development process than development for the sake of development (on a rocket engine to entice the financial investors).
Peace be hold on the GNU Linux world.
Now what about the Linux? Let us see ...
16 • RHEL clones (by whoKnows on 2020-12-14 11:51:28 GMT from Switzerland)
@11 • other RHEL clones (by Alexis de Tocqueville)
"In addition to the aforementioned Springdale, there's Oracle and Scientific Linux."
Scientific Linux is no more.
"Scientific Linux (SL) is a Linux distribution produced by Fermilab, CERN, DESY and by ETH Zurich.
In April 2019, it was announced that Scientific Linux would be discontinued, but that maintenance will continue to be provided for the 6.x and 7.x releases through the end of their lifecycles. Fermilab will utilize CentOS for its deployment of 8.0 instead."
https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-ANNOUNCE;11d6001.1904
And Oracle ... I don't know ... many of those who played with fire got burned ...
Anyway, the only place I know where one can download it for FREE is here:
https://mirror.netcologne.de/oracle-linux/OL8/
17 • fstab (by James on 2020-12-14 11:59:39 GMT from United States)
The only time I have had to edit fstab was when putting a second OS on my computer, which changed the UUID for swap. The first tutorial I read on fsab said to always back it up before editing it, which I have always done.
18 • Rocky Linux vs. Oracle Linux (by Microlinux on 2020-12-14 12:17:28 GMT from France)
Right now, Rocky Linux is a README file on Github. Oracle Linux is a full-blown free-as-in-speech-and-beer Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone with a few nifty extras that's been alive and kicking for the last 14 years.
19 • @11 Oracle: (by dragonmouth on 2020-12-14 12:48:10 GMT from United States)
"if you need somebody to sponsor a tennis tournament in California, go for it."
Not for much longer. Larry Ellison has announced that he will be moving his HQ from Silicon Valley to Texas. Of course, he could be only trying to extort concessions from the California.
20 • TTOS, fstab, and CentOS (by cykodrone on 2020-12-14 13:39:45 GMT from Germany)
Re:TTOS, "The website offers very little information about the distribution or its add-on sync product".
I use a distro based on Debian (TTOS is based on Debian), and loaded it to the breasts with internet programs, games, multimedia, workhorse applications (office, etc), utilities, hack/crack tools, monitors, etc. I'd be lucky to max out at 3,000 PACKAGES, that includes the supporting libs, base OS, etc. This is from the TTOS webpage, "59,000+ Applications Available", wrong, that's the count of packages in their ("Our in house repositories") repo, nowhere near the number of actual user-space "application" options. I'm not fond of deception (blatant or accidental), that's why I'm mentioning it. While all packages are software, not all packages are applications, far from it.
Re: fstab, I can write an fstab from scratch, by hand, and I know the commands to discover the drives' UUIDs, and attributes. Depends on the machine, my PC has multiple SSDs, and even more storage HDDs (NTFS, and 'Trash' configged, by me, but prefer to just 'delete' in Thunar though, which bypasses 'Trash'). This is why I buy dependable PSUs ('Gold' or higher), with plenty of power overhead, I never know what extra junk might get stuffed in to the PC, aside from making sure the CPU has plenty of oomph, when it needs it.
Sad to see CentOS fade to oblivion, flirted with it back in the day. I liked it, but because it was the 'free' version of RH, it was a bit too locked down and restrictive. I did 'unlock' it for 'unapproved' apps and repos, but like any other distro with the same 'model', things started to get messy.
Thanks for reading my comment, and have a nice day. :)
21 • fstab and UUID (by jinnicky on 2020-12-14 14:45:48 GMT from United States)
grep "^/" /proc/mounts does not list the NFS mounts which are vital for me.
Like @17, I have had problems with the UUID on swap files when I added another distribution to the system. When a new version of the distribution I'm using comes out, I generally install it in new partitions. That way I can access old config files etc or switch back to the old version to check something.
I'm not sure what the point is of the UUID when they are changed that way. I generally edit my fstab back to the drive and partition number which doesn't change.
22 • adding distro re: swap (by wally on 2020-12-14 16:13:37 GMT from United States)
Distro install options differ some but when possible, I always manually set the partitions and do NOT format the swap partition (except when I forget). That keeps the UUID constant and does not require updating the other OS fstabs.
Obviously, I share one swap partition among all my distros.
23 • Centos (by Robert on 2020-12-14 16:54:56 GMT from United States)
Too bad about the date of Centos. I wasn't a user myself, but RH/IBM just pulled the rug out from under a lot of people and businesses. The profit motive is understandable, but this short notice is just burning bridges unnecessarily. Hopefully the new Rocky linux can provide a seamless transition.
I do wonder if the panic is slightly overstated though. I've seen sentiments along the lines of "if centos stream is rolling, I might as well just run fedora." I really doubt it will be that bleeding edge. Probably more along the lines of Debian testing than Debian unstable.
24 • So you accidentally wiped out a critical system file (by Kingneutron on 2020-12-14 17:20:08 GMT from United States)
--The tips contained in the article are gold, but the bigger question is:
WHY are you not doing at least weekly tar backups of critical system files??
--If you had that, it would be easy-restore.
25 • CentOS is Dead, Long live Rocky Linux (by superjc710e on 2020-12-14 18:09:20 GMT from Canada)
Just another shoutout to Rocky Linux (https://rockylinux.org/). It's been thrilling to watch the community rally and coalesce around this new replacement headed by the one of the original founders of CentOS. If the momentum continues at this pace, we should see something tangible real soon!
Forums: https://forums.rockylinux.org/
Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/hpcng/shared_invite/zt-k29vv4ab-yj1ksbHK_ZkXYi6HGtTYfw
26 • Yes, go to Oracle Linux... (by ohnoo on 2020-12-14 18:32:47 GMT from Puerto Rico)
... and see it transforming into Oracle Stream.
27 • CentOS Stream replacing CentOS (by Raphael Mendes on 2020-12-14 19:35:41 GMT from Brazil)
@15 (by Random Thought):
If I understood the meaning of your comment, you welcomes the IBM's decision to make "CentOS Stream" a kind of "Debian Testing" or "Slackware Current" for RHEL development. You even seem to believe it could exorcise evil spirits like Mr. Poettering...
But any giant corporation is just a serious business trying to be profitable, not trying to "make Linux great again". So IBM keeps fighting to be ahead of their competitors. And it certainly bought Red Hat for pure convenience, not for love to Linux. By the way, what "amazing and non-proprietary technology" IBM brought to RHEL?
GRUB2 (an ugly script jungle), Systemd (the plague of binary blobs), and many other abominations, are still there. Do you really think "CentOS Stream" will get better by the influence of IBM? I think the ever growing insanity in the corporate world will end up destroying the Linux world. Then we should now jump on the BSD ship to save our geeky lives from that crapware flood.
Corporations want power and money, and nothing else. Not a single one of them, no matter how "benevolent" it be, will put the fun back to computing!
28 • Shame about CentOS (by CS on 2020-12-14 19:49:20 GMT from United States)
Red Hat honeymoon at IBM is officially over. I'm not optimistic about the community-driven approach, this is not a Jenkins vs. Hudson type situation, it takes way more time and money to keep an OS secure and current with new hardware and RHEL development will continue fast and furious. Hope I'm proven wrong so good luck to those teams.
I answered "0" for fstab entries, just for the giggles. To be fair though I haven't looked at an fstab in many many years. I agree with Kingneutron here - the real tip here is to set up Timeshift or something like it.
29 • dual OS fstab and swap (by cykodrone on 2020-12-14 19:52:42 GMT from France)
I had to lay out (partition edit) my lappy's SSD to accommodate two OSes, and a single swap. The first OS on the drive demanded a separate root/home, then the second OS (single partition, home in root), then swap at the end of the drive (just over the physical RAM size). Purposely locating partitions is a leftover habit from partition editing magnetic media HDDs, and swinging read/write head arms access times, lol. So 'Model T', lol.
So it was like, total size minus 9GiB, remainder divided by 2, then the first half subdivided (1/3root+2/3home). Both OSes are fine with the one swap, but, kernel 4.9.x was not, had to upgrade to 4.19.x to fix the problem (did both OSes, just to keep them consistent), then the partition 'discovery' stalling during boot disappeared.
My fstab's swap entry (last entry at bottom)...
UUID=big-long-private-random-number none swap sw 0 0
grub/OS1-root/OS1-home/OS2/swap, eezy peezy
30 • IBM/RH eating its young (by mikef90000 on 2020-12-14 20:44:31 GMT from United States)
The huge factor that the Centos change ignored was the ability to learn and get sysadmin 'production level' experience for RHEL Now building that base may require (much?) more paid RH training. Shades of old school Cisco CCNA ..... grrrr ....
31 • my ideal disk layout (by Matt on 2020-12-14 20:53:34 GMT from United States)
My main workstation has a solid state drive with root filesystem, boot and swap partitions. Then I have two identical traditional spinning platter drives set up in RAID 1 configuration that are used for mirroring /home. The RAID drives are high quality ones built for NAS.
The data in my home directory is always mirrored by RAID to protect against drive failure. Since I use free software exclusively, a failure of my SSD is just a matter of reinstalling the Debian operating system, so I am less concerned about that drive failing.
32 • Did someone mention Timeshift?? (by Friar Tux on 2020-12-14 23:11:03 GMT from Canada)
I have tried/tested so many of the backup/system snapshot options out there and have found that all of them (so far) are more bother than they are worth (Timeshift included). I simply copy my 'home' directory to a couple of external drives and keep my favourite OS on a USB stick. The amount of time it takes to reinstall a Linux OS is well worth the time. My go-to OS takes, at the most, 15 minutes - the same time it takes me to make and drink a hot cuppa tea. About the only thing that would make it any easier would be if someone added "Sync This Folder With..." to the system context menu.
To be fair to Timeshift, it does work better if you do manual snapshots to a USB and then restore from there.
33 • CentOS Stream replacing CentOS (by Random Thought on 2020-12-14 23:17:21 GMT from India)
@27 (by Raphael Mendes)
You missed the sarcasm.
Actually, it's not sarcasm, it's reality.
And I'm not contradicting with you, just my words are little cryptic.
Although, discontinuing CentOS doesn't mean IBM ditching GNU Linux as a whole,
I do wish sincerely, that "commercial" Linux distros better leave us alone. Linux was supposed to be community project, it better be that. No disturbing commercial interference is expected. We are not money making Machine.
34 • CentOS Thoughts (by M.Z. on 2020-12-15 00:30:58 GMT from United States)
I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with the CentOS situation, because while I may have never used really used it, I thought it was worthwhile & did good things for both RHEL & the Linux community. I can't imagine that the folks high up at Red Hat wouldn't have known that a fork would be caused & it would be bad for corporate relations with the Linux community. Perhaps finding a quick & easy way to create a more stable step between RHEL & Fedora was always the point of taking over CentOS & getting the Devs form the project was the main goal, but it was bad move regardless of how planned out it was. I thought the RHEL team had higher regard for the Linux community than this & would have tried to discourage this sort of behaviour from within IBM.
At any rate, Oracle is a farcically bad alternative if you have half a clue about how they are & just got a bit burned by IBM/RHEL with CentOS; however, Prinction University seems to have been supporting the Springdale Linux project based on RHEL for a while. If Springdale works anywhere near as well as CentOS I would think the smart users of CentOS would start there for testing alternatives while community forks are sorted out. It might even be worth staying there if its good enough, because no one is buying Princeton University anytime soon & big university like them would seem to want such a project for a variety of reasons, IE a test bed & training ground for IT students based on popular real world OS, a customizable OS for special research projects, etc. They don't give much documentation, but claim to have been doing their thing since before CentOS was a thing.
Worth a try for those interested in such things. Regardless Linux is owned by it's users & it's hard to see anything like the CentOS changes not leading to a movement of users to some other community version, forked or existing.
35 • TTOS - waste of a review (by Andy Figueroa on 2020-12-15 04:33:04 GMT from United States)
Seems to me that reviewing TTOS was a huge waste of electrons. From the web site it looks like the objective is to sell PCs and services, and even that is unfinished and not working.
36 • A21 • fstab and UUID by jinnicky (by James on 2020-12-15 11:47:46 GMT from United States)
Swap having the wrong UUID is not a killer, just a pain. It slows your boot down.
Fix Slow Boot “A start job is running …” in Ubuntu 18.04
http://ubuntuhandbook.org/?s=start+job
“A start job is running for dev-disk-by\x2uuid …(35s \ 1min 30s)”
37 • CentOS (by Otis on 2020-12-15 13:32:49 GMT from United States)
Relevant to me only in that I have been glad such a distro was there, similar to most Linux distros. Indeed, since 1996, when I first encountered Linux, I tried them all. But back then "all" meant just seven or eight.
It's been fun, interesting, and educational, trying different distos since then. But now the list is so long.. ah choices.. yes. But, along with all that fun and interesting education comes growing areas of irrelevancy for each of us, I'm thinking.
38 • Wrong fstab UUID (by cykodrone on 2020-12-15 13:39:43 GMT from Netherlands)
My fstabs have always had the right swap (and other partitions) UUIDs, in my case, the kernel upgrade fixed it. This is a really old glitch, take note of the thread date... https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/waiting-for-device-sda1-to-appear-timeout-1-min-835730-print/
39 • Migrate from CentOS to Debian (by LiuYan on 2020-12-16 07:13:43 GMT from United States)
The decision made by Red Hat or IBM for CentOS is understandable, and it looks like the situation of MySQL in Oracle.
The purpose of this decision is try to turn CentOS users to RHEL users, or, try to turn CentOS users to white rat users of RHEL, or in general: try to make more money.
The impact to CentOS users is that, the free cake is not delicious anymore. But you can still use CentOS, or you can try to migrate to other OS (including RHEL).
Several years ago, I had already started to migrate from CentOS to Debian Unstable for non-critical mission servers due to the lack of packages (ffmpeg, asterisk, media players, media codecs, etc) or package version is too old in CentOS. And Debian seems to be a good replacement for CentOS.
40 • CentOS and Red Hat (by Simon on 2020-12-16 07:52:46 GMT from New Zealand)
Red Hat have done something that may turn out to be quite foolish but is certainly very typical (in business) by sabotaging CentOS. In the short term, by destroying the free version of their product they will indeed push a significant number of CentOS users into RHEL (because people running critical stuff on CentOS will often be prepared to pay to continue with a nearly identical system rather than shift to something like Debian or Ubuntu LTS with the learning curve involved in that). Effectively Red Hat have managed to fulfill their legal (GPL) obligations by releasing the source code...and then while posing as friends, deliberately dismantled the project that had grown up around that code, as many predicted they would do.
It's foolish though, because other users will simply replace CentOS with something like Oracle Linux from Red Hat's commercial competitor. Oracle Linux is, like CentOS, a completely free Red Hat clone....however, whereas CentOS were a Red-Hat-friendly community project that happily pointed their users to Red Hat if they needed commercial support, Oracle is a direct competitor who are now likely to catch the interest of a growing number of community projects who (like most CentOS users) need a *stable* enterprise OS, not some unsupportable rapidly changing half-baked testing OS like Stream. CentOS had a very large user base: if that becomes an Oracle Linux community, steering projects into Oracle's paid support and other products, Red Hat's greed may backfire.
41 • They're helping Canonical too (by Simon on 2020-12-16 08:04:56 GMT from New Zealand)
Of course many others *will* bite the bullet and engage with the learning curve necessary to switch to Debian or (perhaps more likely, as it's a closer fit both in terms of predictable support cycles and availability of commercial support) Ubuntu LTS. If I were a CentOS user there ain't a snowball's chance in hell I'd be thanking Red Hat for sabotaging my free OS by paying them and switching to RHEL, when there are perfectly good free alternatives available. Yes, "my free OS" would have been nearly 100% rebranded Red Hat product anyway...but that's how free software works: they've built Red Hat on and with free software, enjoying the benefits of that, and it's simply their legal obligation to pass that along...so dismantling the most active free distribution of their code was a cynical move that I wouldn't be rewarding out of some misguided (and anti-FOSS) sense of owing them money for developing it.
42 • @39 (by Simon on 2020-12-16 08:26:15 GMT from New Zealand)
Yes indeed, Debian (and Ubuntu LTS) is already a vastly superior alternative to CentOS for desktop stuff like media playback. With the Red Hat family you either have to build your own rpms from source or start injecting packages from third party repos. With Debian and Ubuntu you have a good stable server OS, *and* you can deploy fully functional modern desktops using purely the official packages. Of course you can still do the PPA thing if you don't mind installing stuff from all over the show, but you don't have to: unlike the Red Hat family, the Debian family has enough official packages to put together a decently fully functional modern desktop.
Also, Oracle is basically another greedy corporation like Red Hat: the moment they thought they had enough people depending on it that it would be profitable to stop providing Oracle Linux for free, they'd likely follow Red Hat's example. With the Debian family you have a completely free project produced by volunteers who aren't going to start extorting money from you as soon as they can see your business depends on their product. Red Hat's killing CentOS may turn out to be the best thing that's happened in a long time for Canonical, pushing users right away from the commercially developed Red Hat distro family and into the wide open arms of the Debian family (from which Canonical rather than Red Hat products are the natural fit, when commercial support's necessary).
43 • Centos 8 (by Hoos on 2020-12-16 13:39:43 GMT from Singapore)
"Updates for the CentOS Linux 8 distribution continue until December 31, 2021. Updates for the CentOS Linux 7 distribution continue as before until June 30, 2024. "
I think the decision to cut short Centos 8's support to end 2021 is a really nasty move. It's normally a 10-yr support distro, and users would probably have planned on that when they chose to move to Centos 8. It was a clear expectation they would have had. To pull the rug from under them and give them such short notice to move or migrate away is essentially trying to blackmail them into moving onto RHEL. I suspect that for users running many and/or complex systems on Centos 8, 1 year is a blink of an eye, what with needing to test different alternatives, assess the financial impact of each, implement the chosen alternative, sort out any teething problems, etc.
I'm not saying RH/IBM is not entitled to make commercial decisions on something they own, but reasonable notice should have been something similar to the EOL date for Centos7 (or at least 2 years). Act reasonably and more people might consider moving to your paid platform. Instead they are destroying their goodwill with the potential customer base. Talk about burning bridges.
44 • Regarding Centos (by Matt on 2020-12-16 16:59:13 GMT from Singapore)
Personally I think it is botched messaging from Red Hat. However I believe it is not as big a problem as most people think.
I will state that I am not working for Red Hat and cannot speak for them. I am just somebody learning about Linux system admin.
Probably in Red Hat's perspective, it makes more sense to roll out patches and bug fixes first to Centos then to RHEL rather than the current way of doing things. Why offer Centos when they can offer you RHEL since it is the same code?
Some users use Centos to do testing to avoid Red Hat's license fee. With the previous Centos dev model downstream of RHEL, how will they know know the next RHEL update used in production will not break their application? With Centos Stream, They can test the same updates first before the updates are applied to RHEL.
For people arguing that Centos Stream is the beta testing for RHEL, from what I read in the web that is not exactly the case. The beta is Fedora Rawhide, similar to Debian's unstable. Every three years, the next RHEL and Centos Stream release will forked from Fedora release version. Red Hat developers will work on Centos Stream first before applying the patches to RHEL. This is similar to FreeBSD stable and release branches.
I think if you or your company already had a contract with Red Hat, it is unwise to recommend to advise migrating to another vendor like Oracle. They know you are migrating due to fear of Red Hat dropping support and will try to charge a higher price. Furthermore if the migration runs into problems, you will be taking the blame. It is better to make use of Red Hat's bad PR move to extract big discounts from their sales team.
45 • CentOS (by Cheker on 2020-12-16 17:54:39 GMT from Portugal)
Good ol' corporate arrogance. IBM will achieve nothing with this other than send more users to the Ubuntu family and erode whatever trust was left in them as a company.
46 • ...and SUSE! (by Simon on 2020-12-16 21:11:45 GMT from New Zealand)
Actually the decision to make OpenSUSE (the more stable “leap” editions) binary compatible with SLED going forward makes this another potentially attractive road away from Red Hat... as the alpha release announcement notes explicitly. @44, the repositioning of CentOS from a stable 100% RHEL compatible enterprise-grade release to an unfinished work in progress that may (in its current form on any particular occasion) differ from the eventual RHEL release is significant and a deal breaker for admins who choose a stable OS precisely in order to be able to forget about it and trust that it will continue to function without time wasting interventions. I wonder sometimes if the people who take stability so lightly have ever really been responsible for supporting hundreds of users? Every change is potentially a bunch of documentation to rewrite, scripts to edit, training sessions to develop and deliver... change is a freaking nightmare unless your entire company is staffed by tech savvy power users. CentOS was one of the few platforms you could trust to invest significant hours into documentation and training and customisations and so on in the knowledge that your work would function as expected for years to come. The fact that so many people now accept shoddy shifting software platforms that require you to hunt around the Internet for documentation (if you’re lucky) doesn’t mean admins who can choose between that circus and stability are going to opt for the circus. CentOS is off the table now, if you want long term stability. It’s pay Red Hat or find a new platform.
47 • Red Hat Shenanigans (by Friar Tux on 2020-12-17 03:54:23 GMT from Canada)
Hmmm, it seems as though we're all forgetting that CentOS code is open source, therefore it stands to reason we can just carry on developing it (maybe with a new name if the old name messes with some copyright). I mean if Oracle can take RH code and use it to become a competitor, surely the CentOS folks can split off and carry on - or am I missing something?
Also, it appears there is a noticeable absence of comments from anyone from Red Hat/IGM. Surely those folks read here, too. Let's hear it from their perspective. Anybody... anybody...
48 • The problem with alternatives (by whoKnows on 2020-12-17 12:14:04 GMT from Switzerland)
@41 • They're helping Canonical too (by Simon)
"[...] when there are perfectly good free alternatives available."
What you say because of CentOS and what all other people always say here, when one mentions Adobe, Avid ...
There is NO alternative.
Yes, there is another alternative in a sense: I can use Inkscape instead of Illustrator, GIMP instead of Photoshop, cut movies with OpenShot ... but ...
It's more than the basic set of functions - it's about the time (Open Source is missing all those tiny AI, 'intelligent' functions), about a collaboration (only the application that wrote a file, is 100 % compatible and only in the exact same version), about professional support ...
Oracle MySQL Enterprise DB is CERTIFIED to work only together RHEL and Oracle Linux - if you let it run on Debian, it might or might not run, but even if it does, you'll still have to pay the full price for it and will get NO SUPPORT in case of trouble.
Just as is with any other professional Windows only SW, there are alternatives, but they are no alternatives (for one or the other reason) even if they work.
49 • To migrate (by whoKnows on 2020-12-17 12:23:56 GMT from Switzerland)
@43 • Centos 8 (by Hoos)
"To pull the rug from under them and give them such short notice to move or migrate away is essentially trying to blackmail them into moving onto RHEL. I suspect that for users running many and/or complex systems on Centos 8, 1 year is a blink of an eye, what with needing to test different alternatives, assess the financial impact of each, implement the chosen alternative, sort out any teething problems, etc."
Well, if we can trust CentOS and Springdale to be "binary compatible" with RHEL, then the migration should be possible in a matter of minutes or hours, if there are many thousands of servers - namely, all it needs is to change the sources.
If they aren't all that "binary compatible" as they claim to be, then the migration might become a serious issue.
50 • The problem stays the same (by whoKnows on 2020-12-17 12:32:17 GMT from Switzerland)
@44 • Regarding Centos (by Matt)
You understood properly how the system works and what CentOS will become, however for many, it will still be a problem because of the certifications.
The certifications are valid only for RHEL and "binary clones" (CentOS, Oracle, Scientific and Springdale)!
Please see @48 • The problem with alternatives (by whoKnows)
51 • CentOS (by RHoagland on 2020-12-18 02:59:47 GMT from United States)
I sincerely hope that no business moves to Red Hat out of protest for IBM's repugnant decision to end support so abruptly.
52 • @9--NO one's memory is what it used to be. (by R. Cain on 2020-12-18 23:16:08 GMT from United States)
@9: "...My memory (the biological one, not the USB keys) "ain't" what it used to be. Trying to think of a suitable Mark Twain quote to insert here......"
Two come immediately to mind (there are probably lots more):
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
and
"When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not."
Number of Comments: 52
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