January 2021 - devel - lists.centos.org

ksplice and CentOS
by Karanbir Singh 25 Sep '25

25 Sep '25

hi guys, lots of people on this list are keen on contributing to the CentOS effort - and one place where we could, as a group of people, make a massive difference is being able to deliver a ksplice upgrade model. A couple of people have started in silo's to try and get something together but I feel it might be a good time to try and see if we can do somethng as a group. Do we have people on the list who find the idea of rebootless kernel upgrades interesting ? Is there some desire to try and make that happen within the CentOS Ecosystem ? - KB

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anaconda dependency calculation?
by Nicholas Byrne 04 Aug '25

04 Aug '25

Hi all, I'm trying to find a tool that calculates all dependencies for a specific package or group of packages for use with CentOS 5 (beta) with the intention of putting together a custom single CD build of CentOS 5. With CentOS 4 i used a python script that used the hdrlist module to find all dependencies which borrowed code from a number of sources. I've looked at yumdownloader and how it checks dependencies (using the --resolve option) but if i pass it the list of packages defined in say the Base and the Core yum groups which generally form an absolute minimal install i end up with about 200 packages. If i do a custom install (using beta 1 disks) and deselect everything i end up with over 300 packages. So i'm guessing anaconda calculates dependencies in a slightly different way, can anyone point me to files/code where i should be looking to find out? Thanks very much in advance for help Nick This e-mail is the property of Quadriga Worldwide Ltd, intended for the addressee only and confidential. Any dissemination, copying or distribution of this message or any attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Messages sent to and from Quadriga may be monitored. Quadriga cannot guarantee any message delivery method is secure or error-free. Information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. We do not accept responsibility for any errors or omissions in this message and/or attachment that arise as a result of transmission. You should carry out your own virus checks before opening any attachment. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Quadriga.

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forums + portal for {lang}.centos.org sites
by Karanbir Singh 16 Aug '24

16 Aug '24

Hi, Earlier in the evening today Ralph, Fabian and I had a chat about the present state of the language subsites. This email sort of summarises the main issue ( s/w ). We seem to have run into a slight technical hitch with punbb/fluxbb. They dont support LDAP as a backend. And we had decided a few months back that all new rollouts must have ldap backend so we can rollin CentOS-DS / openldap based backend. So we need to look at alternatives, and since the primary focus of these international sites is going be forums : Here is a shortlist ( if there is anything else that people are aware of, please add to this list ) - phpBB - SMF - Fudforum - phorum - fluxbb Requirements: - Must be able to scale ( couple of hundred thousand msgs ) - Must be able to handle ldap auth ( if it cant, whats involved in writing the ldap-auth portion ) - Must address the specific requirements raised by the present www.centos.org forum users ( Can you please fill this section in ? ) - Must support all languages we need ( pure utf8 support would be good ) - Secure - Skin'able Nice to have: - Capable of running multiple instances from a single deployment - responsive community :D Things we will need to do: - Decide on what s/w to use. - Give the ArtWork people enough time to get the look & feel sorted. - Migrate newbb forums from www.centos.org to $system ( hey, english is a language too :D ). - Migrate fr.centos.org into the final s/w - setup {de/es/ja/it/pt_br}.centos.org Actions: Ralph and Fabian are going to work on setting up a test ldap server, once that is online we will then start by installing into our test-vm-farm the various s/w to eval them. If anyone would like to help, please feel free to jump right in. I'll setup a wiki page for this issue, which might be a good place to track progress. -- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219@icq

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RFC: Stream Kernel SIG Proposal
by redbaronbrowser 19 May '21

19 May '21

There are four main goals of this SIG: First, break down changes in the Stream version 4.18.0 kernel into individual patches. When possible, document the source the patch is from and the purpose of the patch. Moving forward also document which Stream kernel package revision introduced the patch. Second, build CentOS Plus kernel for Stream. Third, package newer LTS kernels during the LTS lifespan. These would be available as alternative kernels for Stream similar to the CentOS Plus kernel. Fourth, work on tools for better delivery of live security patches to be applied via kpatch. The reasoning for this SIG is to improve the openness of kernels available through Stream. Normally a distribution upstream would have access to which patch or commit each addition to the kernel belongs to. The patch name or commit comment would also give information as to the purpose of the patch. Stream's kernel reports to be 4.18.0 but uses a tar that is 110% the size of a true 4.18.0 tar. A breakdown of the additional 10% is not provided. Hence Stream's kernel still functions similar to a downstream rather than providing what is expected for a successful upstream project. This SIG would help close the kernel openness gap by documenting the changes. Stream users would then be in a better position to track down individual patches that cause regressions or bugs. This SIG would also help smooth the adoption of Stream for users that depend on CentOS Plus kernel features. Next, this SIG should help improve feedback to the LTS kernel developers. Tracking LTS kernel changes may also help with documenting some changes in the primary Stream kernel. Lastly, this SIG should help improve kernel security by promoting methods to enable kernel security updates even when a reboot of the system is not possible.

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centos-release-stream.x86_64 VS centos-stream-release.noarch
by lejeczek 13 Feb '21

13 Feb '21

Hi devel Is that not something that needs looking into? -> $ dnf search release | grep -i strea Last metadata expiration check: 0:07:24 ago on Thu 28 Jan 2021 09:46:52 GMT. centos-release-stream.x86_64 : CentOS-Stream release file centos-stream-release.noarch : CentOS Stream release files Installing one package and not the other messes things a bit. regards, L.

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CBS default maven module for virt8-ovirt-44-el8
by Sandro Bonazzola 05 Feb '21

05 Feb '21

Hi, I'm seeing the following error: Executing: xmvn --batch-mode --offline -Dmaven.test.skip=true -Dworkspace.root.dir=/builddir/build/BUILD/apache-sshd-2.6.0 package org.fedoraproject.xmvn:xmvn-mojo:install org.fedoraproject.xmvn:xmvn-mojo:javadoc org.fedoraproject.xmvn:xmvn-mojo:builddep ['xmvn', '--batch-mode', '--offline', '-Dmaven.test.skip=true', '-Dworkspace.root.dir=/builddir/build/BUILD/apache-sshd-2.6.0', 'package', 'org.fedoraproject.xmvn:xmvn-mojo:install', 'org.fedoraproject.xmvn:xmvn-mojo:javadoc', 'org.fedoraproject.xmvn:xmvn-mojo:builddep'] /usr/share/maven/bin/mvn: line 36: /etc/java/maven.conf: No such file or directory error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.QeIPBF (%build) Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.QeIPBF (%build) RPM build errors: which is a known bug of maven 3.6 shipped in RHEL 8.3 ( https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1897375) There's a build in koji ( https://koji.mbox.centos.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=207396) which should have the fix for this issue. Can we get that build in CBS build root? If not, can we get maven:3.5 module enabled instead of maven:3.6? thanks, -- Sandro Bonazzola MANAGER, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, EMEA R&D RHV Red Hat EMEA <https://www.redhat.com/> sbonazzo(a)redhat.com <https://www.redhat.com/> *Red Hat respects your work life balance. Therefore there is no need to answer this email out of your office hours.*

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First round of RHEL programs announced
by Mike McGrath 04 Feb '21

04 Feb '21

Hi all, I know this was a hot topic on the list so I thought I'd share today's blog post which covers no-cost RHEL for small production workloads and no-cost RHEL for customer development teams. Keep in mind there are other programs coming, these just got done first. https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/new-year-new-red-hat-enterprise-linux-progra… Bullet Points: - Self-Support RHEL for no-cost in production use cases of up to 16 systems. - No-cost RHEL for customer development teams (larger number of systems for non-production cases). - Available no later than February 1 - Single Sign-on via a Red Hat account, or Github, Twitter, Facebook or other accounts (You'll soon not need to provide all kinds of personal information like you used to). -- Mike McGrath Linux Engineering - Chicago Red Hat mmcgrath(a)redhat.com T: (312)-660-3547

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CentOS/Fedora authentication system merge (Please Read)
by Fabian Arrotin 03 Feb '21

03 Feb '21

# Introduction and background As it was preannounced some time ago , the CentOS Board agreed to merge the CentOS accounts (https://accounts.centos.org) with the Fedora FAS (https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/) As both projects were running their own instance of FAS (running on el6/CentOS 6, so coming to EOL, so that needed to be migrated to new solution/platform), but that there are a lot of contributors common to both projects, it made sense to "migrate and merge" both into one, and so having only one account that can be used for both. The AAA/Noggin team worked in the last months on the new authentication system that will be used as foundation. The core block will be (Free)IPA (https://www.freeipa.org , already available in the distribution) and the community portal feature will be provided by noggin (https://github.com/fedora-infra/noggin) If you want to know more about noggin, consider watching the presentation given at last Fedora Nest event (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SevUmkE60) # What does it mean for you, contributors and SIG members ? Fedora already had an IPA infra, but "hidden" behind FAS, so accounts were already created in IPA backend. For CentOS, we were just using plain FAS, so users in our own backend (fas db). The "Merge" operation will go like this : - Fedora will kick fas2ipa script (https://github.com/fedora-infra/fas2ipa) synchronizing FAS attributes back into IPA, including group memberships coming from FAS/Fedora - Then the same process will be ran but importing from ACO (https://accounts.centos.org) into the same IPA backend. That's where the "fun" begins: * If the same nick/account exists at both side, the script is considering FAS as authoritative (remember, the FAS user *already* exists there, and is only modified for group[s] membership and attributes) * What is used to consider same nick/account being the same person ? the email (validated when registering account) will be used as primary key. So that means that you should *now* verify/update your email address in FAS and ACO so that they match * in case of a email address mismatch, the ACO account isn't migrated (group membership) but put in a queue to be verified * in case of matching email address, existing account is added to imported ACO groups The "open" question is about what to do for same account but in fact being different people (question is debated between Fedora and CentOS through the AAA initiative) # What has been already done ? You can follow publicly the status through dedicated tracker ( https://github.com/orgs/fedora-infra/projects/6 ), but let me focus on the CentOS Side (sending this to centos-devel so centos contributors) In the last months, Fedora already deployed a staging (.stg.) IPA instance, as well as a noggin community portal. For CentOS, we deployed (to be able to test integration) the following components in front of the Fedora IPA: * https://accounts.stg.centos.org (using noggin, with a centos visual theme applied) * https://id.stg.centos.org (ipsilon, used for openid/openidc IdP) We then reached out to some "key users" to validate that some applications migrated to new authentication system were working fine. We tested with : * pagure (https://git.stg.centos.org) * koji * openshift/OCP * some other apps using openid In December 2020, there was a first ran of the fas2ipa script, so (consider this a snapshot) existing accounts in both FAS and ACO were merged. >From that import, there were 123 accounts that were duplicates ones, but as said, it can be that they are the same account but using different email addresses. # What do you have to do ? You can try to login through https://accounts.stg.centos.org and see if you can login. Important remark: if you *didn't* have a FAS account , your account was imported/created for the first time in IPA, so that means that you'll have to use the "Forgot Password ?" feature on portal to reset your account (mail will be sent to email address tied to your account) # When will the real migration happen ? We'll wait on AAA/noggin team to give us estimated date, and when they'll migrate Fedora first. Once that will be done, we'll migrate ACO to the new setup (probably fas2ipa script ran during a week-end, but to be announced) # How will that impact my workflow for CentOS as SIG member ? Worth knowing that all deployed services using ACO will have to be reconfigured for AAA. That currently means : * https://git.centos.org (and also the MQTT bus for git push notifications) * https://cbs.centos.org (and also non public signing service) * other small services using OpenID/OpenIDC for authentication (https://blog.centos.org, some jenkins instances used by QA team, etc) As said, we have already staged all changes to support new auth in our ansible roles. When we'll have rolled out these changes, your existing TLS certificate that you use to authenticate with for cbs.centos.org *will not* work anymore (important) That means that you'll have to retrieve a new TLS cert, signed by the IPA CA cert. How to do that ? I'll see about how porting this to know repository, but for now, there is a copr repo that you can use : https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/arrfab/fasjson-client/ IMPORTANT : do *not* use this pkg now, or do this from another workstation/vm/account/whatever : the new 'centos-cert' util would replace your currently working TLS cert (from ACO) . (Well, as fasjson for prod *isn't* deployed yet, that would not work at all, but it would when deployed If you have questions, feel free to ask in this thread, or join #fedora-aaa on Freenode. -- Fabian Arrotin The CentOS Project | https://www.centos.org gpg key: 17F3B7A1 | twitter: @arrfab

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CentOS Stream 8 kernel
by Gena Makhomed 01 Feb '21

01 Feb '21

Hello All, I found regression in the CentOS Stream 8 kernels, and create bug report https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1913806 After reading https://wiki.centos.org/Contribute/CentOSStream I try to download kernel sources and look for root cause of bug, but dist-git and source-git repos does not contain kernel sources, even if I try to execute %prep phase. For this reason I can't even try to find root cause of this bug by myself. This bug is critical for me, because currently I try to use systemd-nspawn for containers virtualization in production. If future CentOS 8.4 will contain this bug - it will be disaster. What else I can do (as user or developer) for fixing this bug? P.S. https://centos.org/distro-faq/ Q5: Does this mean that CentOS Stream is the RHEL BETA test platform now? A: No. CentOS Stream will be getting fixes and features ahead of RHEL. Generally speaking we expect CentOS Stream to have fewer bugs and more runtime features as it moves forward in time but always giving direct indication of what is going into a RHEL release ================================== But currently I hit the bug, which is absent in CentOS 8.3 but present in CentOS Stream 8. Looks like CentOS Stream 8 is really the beta version for future RHEL minor release, despite the CentOS FAQ. Sorry, but this is true. -- Best regards, Gena

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SIGs need to designate a "sponsor" (Re: Upcoming authentication changes)
by Rich Bowen 29 Jan '21

29 Jan '21

Hopefully you have seen Fabian's email earlier today with details about the upcoming changes to the authentication system. If you participate in a SIG, we need for you to identify someone who is the SIG lead, who will manage (the term FreeIPA uses here is "sponsor") the authentication (ie, SIG membership) for your particular SIG. For SIGs that don't speak up, we'll be using the information that's on your SIG wiki page, but I'm pretty sure that a lot of those are incorrect, and I'll be reaching out to some of you individually. Meanwhile, if you can update that information, we'll save everyone some time. Thanks.

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[Cloud SiG] CentOS Cloud SIG meeting (2021-01-28)
by Amy Marrich 28 Jan '21

28 Jan '21

====================================================== #centos-meeting: CentOS Cloud SIG meeting (2021-01-28) ====================================================== Meeting started by spotz at 15:01:58 UTC. The full logs are available athttps://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-28-15.… Meeting summary --------------- * LINK: https://etherpad.opendev.org/p/centos-cloud-sig (spotz, 15:02:09) * ROll Call (spotz, 15:02:15) * Mission (spotz, 15:06:35) * LINK: https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/Cloud (amoralej, 15:11:48) * LINK: https://www.centos.org/community/calendar/ I found to be more helpful (spotz, 15:13:19) * Chair/CO-Chair (spotz, 15:17:22) * Board Attendee (spotz, 15:39:40) * Sponsor for authentication (spotz, 15:42:45) * LINK: https://accounts.centos.org/group/view/sig-cloud (amoralej, 15:50:54) * Meeting Frequency (spotz, 15:55:49) Meeting ended at 16:01:42 UTC. Action Items ------------ Action Items, by person ----------------------- * **UNASSIGNED** * (none) People Present (lines said) --------------------------- * spotz (77) * amoralej (70) * ykarel (9) * jcapitao (6) * jpena (6) * centbot (4) Generated by `MeetBot`_ 0.1.4 *Amy Marrich* She/Her/Hers Principal Technical Marketing Manager - Cloud Platforms Red Hat, Inc <https://www.redhat.com/> amy(a)redhat.com Mobile: 954-818-0514 Slack: amarrich IRC: spotz <https://www.redhat.com/>

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Virtualization SIG meeting minutes - 2021-Jan-27
by Sandro Bonazzola 27 Jan '21

27 Jan '21

#centos-meeting: Virtualization SIGMeeting started by sbonazzo at 16:05:16 UTC (full logs <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…> ). Meeting summary 1. 1. ACTION: look through CentOS Virt SIG wiki and update anything that needs updating (sbonazzo <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:09:18) 2. *Advanced Virtualization* (etrunko <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:09:59) 1. Reports of libvirt crashing with latest build (etrunko <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:10:35) 2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1915601 (etrunko <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:10:39) 3. https://cbs.centos.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=31798 (etrunko <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:11:54) 4. Fix has been officially released last Monday. The libvirt package has just been built for the Virt SIG. (sbonazzo <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:12:07) 3. *oVirt updates* (sbonazzo <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:12:56) 1. having troubles building apache-sshd within CBS, opened a ticket on it: https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=18036 (sbonazzo <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:13:31) 2. upstream working on getting CentOS Stream as default platform for oVirt, still having some troubles there (sbonazzo <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:14:14) 3. looking into having better collaboration and adding some oVirt test within CentOS Stream CI (sbonazzo <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:14:59) 4. *Xen updates* (anthonyper <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:17:32) 1. Xen 4.12 package only missing one XSA release recently (anthonyper <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:18:16) 2. Nearly done with 4.13 packaging, I just need to check if packages are missing. (anthonyper <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:19:31) 5. *AoB* (sbonazzo <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…>, 16:20:15) Meeting ended at 16:21:29 UTC (full logs <https://www.centos.org/minutes/2021/January/centos-meeting.2021-01-27-16.05…> ). Action items 1. look through CentOS Virt SIG wiki and update anything that needs updating -- Sandro Bonazzola MANAGER, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, EMEA R&D RHV Red Hat EMEA <https://www.redhat.com/> sbonazzo(a)redhat.com <https://www.redhat.com/> *Red Hat respects your work life balance. Therefore there is no need to answer this email out of your office hours. <https://mojo.redhat.com/docs/DOC-1199578>*

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CentOS related article at The Register
by redbaronbrowser 27 Jan '21

27 Jan '21

The Register has an article about CentOS: https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/26/killing_centos/ My best guess is the title and how the quotes form the interview was framed in the article wasn't what Red Hat expected. Maybe the reader should be taken with a grain of salt. I am posting it here for a number of reasons: First, my guess is the majority of members of centos-devel mailing list have already seen the article or would have seen it regardless of if I posted the link to it here. Second, I think it would be good to give someone from Red Hat a chance to respond to if there is inaccuracies in how the article characterizes things. Third, is this how we expect governance of Stream to work moving forward?

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CentOS Dojo @FOSDEM, Next Week
by Rich Bowen 26 Jan '21

26 Jan '21

Reminder: we will be holding our annual FOSDEM CentOS Dojo next week on Thursday and Friday. It will of course be online. Details, schedule, and registration, are available at https://wiki.centos.org/Events/Dojo/FOSDEM2021 Registration is free. Please come, and tel your colleagues!

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Balancing the needs around the RHEL platform
by redbaronbrowser 25 Jan '21

25 Jan '21

Karsten Wade has indicated the centos-devel mailing list is the place to talk about why he thinks things are going to turn out okay. He implied on the CentOS blog there is balancing of the needs of CentOS. Mostly the article is about the “openness gap” (which is brought up seven times). He goes through a very selective stroll through history to present his point leaving out anything that doesn’t fit his agenda. So, let’s go back to 2002. The most polished version of pre-RHEL Red Hat Linux, code named Valhalla, was released in March 2002. It was the result of years of refining the Red Hat packages in a repository called Rawhide and then a branch was released only when it passed quality assurance. Around the same time, a branch of Valhalla was also released as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2. Then in September 2002, code name Psyche replaced Valhalla. Security updates for Valhalla ended unless you became a RHEL 2 customer. Psyche was a problem for a couple reasons. While Red Hat pointed out that it had more features than RHEL, it wasn’t just the “good” features. Psyche contained several regressions and bugs that should have never passed quality assurance. Rather, it appeared whatever was the latest packages in Rawhide just got dumped as Psyche since it was just the free community version and RH QA was focused on just RHEL. If I recall correctly, at the time Red Hat apologized for Psyche and tried to reassure the community the problems were not intentional. Red Hat 9 (Shrike) was released in March 2003 and the first Fedora Core released in November 2003. The continued development under FC addressed several of the bugs. But two new issues came up. First new issue was Red Hat’s creation of the openness gap. There were now two Rawhide repositories. The public Rawhide moved to Fedora. But also a Rawhide branch that RHEL work from was kept private. Second new issue was a COMPATIBILITY gap. Fedora wasn’t designed to be 100% API or ABI compatible with RHEL. Several times a binary built on Fedora could not be run on RHEL 2. A statically linked binary might temporarily address the issue but then security updates to the RHEL 2 libraries would not fix issues with the statically linked binary. To build a dynamically linked binary for RHEL 2 without paying for RHEL 2 required using Valhalla which was no longer getting security updates. In May 2004, a solution to the COMPATIBILITY gap was released. The Community ENTerprise OS. As stated in it’s FAQ: > “Does CentOS change the upstream Source RPMs?” > “No. CentOS' key mandate for our base and updates repositories is NOT extending or enhancing packages or features beyond those supplied by the upstream Source RPM's. CentOS strives intentionally to provide binary functionality for our users.” Now the community had two options. Fedora for features or CentOS for compatibility. It is important to remember, CentOS strived for COMPATIBILITY by *avoiding* additional features as this fundamental concept will come up later. In October 2004, Ubuntu would be released. This would be a challenge for CentOS. While CentOS *strive* for being 100% compatible with the commercially supported RHEL, Ubuntu LTS community edition is able to prove it is 100% identical to Ubuntu LTS with commercial support. Over time another openness gap was created. The Linux kernel is under the General Public License v2 which requires openness including notices of what files are modified and when. The Linux kernel development team accomplishes this with a public git repository. The majority of distributions (including Fedora) do this by providing the vanilla kernel source code and then each of the patches separately. RHEL/CentOS instead violated the spirit of the GPL v2 and the spirit of openness. CentOS users are given a kernel tar-ball with all the patches already applied and a changelog. The changelog does not indicate which files are modified per item but I am willing to guess that Red Hat legal has written off that they can defend this as compliant with the legal language of the GPL v2. This violation of openness also has technical downsides. If a newer Fedora kernel breaks something, you can rebuild the kernel RPM with select patches unapplied until you locate which specific patch in the new kernel causes the bad behavior. But performing a roll-back of patches on CentOS was made difficult because by design RH provides no clear indication exactly what each patch changes. Instead, CentOS users can open a bugzilla issue to try to get a Red Hat employee to trace down which individual patch caused the issue. But from what I can tell that usually doesn’t work out well. Maybe someone will take notice and ask for more information. However, from what I can tell, several times a project manager just closes the ticket with a statement a new version of RHEL has been released and to start back at square one with a new ticket (to be ignored again). So, fast forward to 2013. Karsten Wade has stated at this point he led the Red Hat team to assimilate CentOS and took a seat at the CentOS Governing Board. In 2014 the joining was announced which included this statement of reassurance to the CentOS community: > “The Red Hat Enterprise Linux to CentOS firewall will also remain. Members and contributors to the CentOS efforts are still isolated from the RHEL Groups inside Red Hat, with the only interface being srpm / source path tracking, no sooner than is considered released. In summary: we retain an upstream.” Then fast forward to October 2018, the Linux kernel development team releases 4.19 as a long term support kernel. In May 2019, RHEL 8 was released with a 4.18 kernel. RHEL doesn’t get the benefit of the community effort to support the LTS kernel for 6 years and the LTS kernel community doesn’t get the benefit of RHEL supporting a kernel for 10 years. Instead, RHEL continues a policy of releasing a monolithic tar-ball that obscures what each patch changes in violation of the spirit of openness (again, by design). Then continuing on to 2020. CentOS 6 is reaching the end of life at the end of November with no plans to continue providing security updates. RHEL Extended Life Cycle subscribers will get some select security updates but under an openness gap by RH design none will be shared through CentOS. At the same time, it appears “state level actors” are leveraging security holes more than ever before. CentOS users are given two options. First is to upgrade to CentOS 7 but then reach the end of life again in June 2024. Or skip from CentOS 6 to CentOS 8 which is stated to be supported until 2029. Then Red Hat announces after CentOS 6 users have performed their upgrades that the real end of life that CentOS was committed to for CentOS 8 is December 2021. It is really CentOS 7 that has a longer commitment by 2.5 years. To reassure the community there is an FAQ with the following: > “CentOS Stream will be getting fixes and features ahead of RHEL. Generally speaking we expect CentOS Stream to have fewer bugs and more runtime features as it moves forward in time but always giving direct indication of what is going into a RHEL release” This is a complete reversal on a fundamental concept stated earlier by CentOS. Previously the mission was to close the COMPATIBILITY gap by *NOT* “extending or enhancing packages or features.” But Red Hat is clever enough to rename “Rawhide” to “Stream” to make it sound better. However, at the end of the day this is the same behavior and problems that gave us Red Hat Psyche, only now it is CentOS edition of Psyche that is coming. Karsten Wade’s main sales pitch for this is addressing the openness gap. I agree that RHEL Rawhide should never have been made private. But based on the “firewall” established between CentOS and RHEL, it should be up to the RHEL team to make their Rawhide public and not involve CentOS at all. RH self-imposed openness gaps shouldn’t be used as the basis to violate the previous assurances provided to the community. But it turns out Red Hat was not being honest about the “firewall” from the RHEL group. In fact, one of the members of the CentOS Governance Board includes a member of a RHEL group. Also, this is not any old RHEL group member, it is Brain “Bex” Exelbierd, the RHEL member that establishes the roadmap for RHEL. WIth CentOS going from downstream provider to upstream provider, the roadmap for CentOS stops being focused on the community and comes instead from Bex for the benefit of RHEL. Exactly what CentOS users feared would happen in 2014 is now taking place. And this is being done in the name of openness? Where is the improved openness for CentOS users? Where is an open transcript, chat log or voice recording of the CentOS Governance Board meeting that selected to kill CentOS 8 in favor of CentOS Rawhide? Where is the openness in the statement there will be a firewall between CentOS and the RHEL group? Was Bex only interfacing at governance meetings via SRPMs? Was the firewall always a lie? Where is the openness in CentOS’ commitment to support CentOS 8 to 2029? Where is the openness in the CentOS kernel patches? Where is the openness in having one CentOS FAQ indicating extending features beyond upstream is *NOT* part of CentOS and at the same time have another FAQ stating CentOS features will be coming ahead of RHEL? The nicest way I can think of to put it regarding the assertion that this closes the openness gap as a benefit to CentOS users is at this point that I believe that Karsten Wade must have an intestinal tract full of copious amounts of matter. The most insane part is this change should be bad for Red Hat itself in the long run. CentOS should be helping attract market share for RHEL by encouraging developers to build/test on a RHEL compatible system and giving potential RHEL customers a try before you buy method. But CentOS hasn’t been competing well as it is. Majority of AWS instances are running Ubuntu. Several Azure instances are running Ubuntu. There are several Docker Hub images that use Ubuntu as a base image and much fewer using CentOS/RHEL. CentOS/RHEL is no longer the preferred runtime environment to develop for and where the developers go the users will eventually follow. Bringing back the COMPATIBILITY gap is not the solution to that. It is how to make things worse. Several of the projects Karsten Wade selected to highlight seems to suggest that Red Hat sees itself as expanding into ESXi’s market share. That is a worthy goal but should not replace promoting RHEL as a preferred runtime environment. Having a RHCE should not be reduced to knowing the next generation hypervisor and modern day BIOS. The test requires knowing much more than that and RH should continue to provide maximum possible value to the people with a RH certification. With CentOS Rawhide (or CentOS Stream if you prefer calling it that) replacing CentOS 8, the try before you buy will go to companies like Oracle and CloudLinux. But once someone resolves the COMPATIBILITY gap by going to either of those solutions for the community edition, chances are better they will go back to the same source for commercial support later as well. This is a roadmap for RH giving up more market share. Why? For claims of openness that ring empty? It would be nice to hear from Paul Cormier why he would allow this type of behavior and insanity on the part of Red Hat but I doubt we will ever get that level of openness.

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May we get all subpackages in C8S repos?
by Alfredo Moralejo Alonso 24 Jan '21

24 Jan '21

Hi, With the refocus of CentOS to Stream, i think it'd make sense to open the discussion about the missing subpackages (mainly devel ones) in the repos. While I understand that this was part of the idea of a "pure clone" of RHEL when working with CentOS Linux, now that stream is more intended to be used by devel community and not as a pure rebuild, I think there are reasons to change this policy. What'd be the best way to open this discussion?, is it being discussed already?, should this be a topic for the board? Best regards, Alfredo

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RDO and CentOS AMA Recording
by Amy Marrich 22 Jan '21

22 Jan '21

If you were unable to attend yesterday's session the recording is now available on You Tube[0]. Related links and questions were captured on an Etherpad[1]. If you have any questions, please reach out on the mailing list or in the #RDO channel. Thanks, Amy (spotz) 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlhAhClVaEI&feature=youtu.be 1- https://etherpad.opendev.org/p/RDO-Stream-AMA *Amy Marrich* She/Her/Hers Principal Technical Marketing Manager - Cloud Platforms Red Hat, Inc <https://www.redhat.com/> amy(a)redhat.com Mobile: 954-818-0514 Slack: amarrich IRC: spotz <https://www.redhat.com/>

1 0

how do we create CentOS' comps.xml
by Ken Dreyer 22 Jan '21

22 Jan '21

Hi folks, When I look at a commit like this: https://git.centos.org/centos/comps/c/5251f94b374cd9cf527f85a0a82245c0a8381… it's adding over 10,000 lines of configuration. I'm wondering how that relates to RHEL's comps. Do the CentOS developers have a tool that generated that XML from a data source elsewhere? Did someone write that XML by hand? - Ken

5 8

Centos Stream 8 installation fail...
by André Verwijs 21 Jan '21

21 Jan '21

I've installed Centos Stream 8 with Network install and install dvd, but with both Centos Stream doesn't statrup correctly. "gnome-initial-setp" account (first time run) doesn't close properly, so i don't get login screen to first non-root user .... when i instal Centos 8(not stream) everything works great..!! i have to upgrade to stream after installation... André -- ______________________________________________________________________________________ My Twitter Page: twitter.com OpenSimFan <http://twitter.com/OpenSimFan> My Instagram page: instagram.com dutchglory <http://instagram.com/dutchglory> My Facebook page (be my friend, please) facebook.com André Verwijs <http://www.facebook.com/andre.verwijs> My Google+ page (follow me please ) André Verwijs - Google+ <https://plus.google.com/111310545842863442992>

2 1

RHEL IdM update in CentOS 8 Stream
by Alexander Bokovoy 21 Jan '21

21 Jan '21

Hi, thanks for Carl and Brian, yesterday's compose of CentOS 8 Stream now includes RHEL IdM bits slated for RHEL 8.4. Several components were rebased to their upstream versions and are worth noting to those who want to test them in advance of RHEL 8.4. Note that these are not final RHEL IdM updates for RHEL 8.4. While RHEL builds already passed through a comprehensive QA cycle, there are still few improvements that will come during next month or so. Bugs found by CentOS 8 Stream users would in general be seen in the same way as those found by RHEL QE teams during the RHEL minor release development, so it is your opportunity to help. Also improvements in form of upstream patches are welcome too. There are many small and large fixes and improvements in FreeIPA 4.9.0. For more detailed information I'd point to FreeIPA 4.9.0 release notes: https://www.freeipa.org/page/Releases/4.9.0#Highlights_in_4.9.0 Among those changes, we are looking for a feedback to following features of RHEL IdM in CentOS 8 Stream: == ACME CA integration With FreeIPA 4.9 and Dogtag 10.10 it is now possible to deploy ACME support in FreeIPA CA and issue certificates using ACME protocol. For more details please look at https://www.freeipa.org/page/V4/ACME for general design overview and Fraser's blogs around the feature: https://frasertweedale.github.io/blog-redhat/tags/acme.html CentOS 8 Stream includes mod_md Apache module as one of ACME clients. Fedora and EPEL do also have a certbot, so there are multiple clients to use. Interoperability testing with other clients would also be great to see reported. == Active Directory integration improvements There are enhancements for services for user (S4U) feature of Kerberos protocol extensions in Active Directory. In particular, it is now possible to run MS SQL server on a server enrolled into RHEL IdM domain and allow access to it to users of trusted Active Directory forests, along with IPA users. MS SQL does certain operations that required functionality not supported by RHEL IdM. This was fixed in RHEL 8.3. More improvements are available in CentOS 8 Stream, including performance improvements when creating Kerberos tickets for Active Directory users with a large AD group membership. == Non-FQDN host support FreeIPA requires uniform hostname support -- either all systems defined with fully-qualified hostnames or they all are using non-FQDN. In practice, there are checks in the installers to always force FQDN host names. There are many applications that insist on seeing hostnames as non-fully qualified. FreeIPA 4.9.0 adds ability to enroll non-FQDN hosts to otherwise FQDN-based IPA deployment. In addition, this allows to enroll clients with hostnames of total FQDN length longer than 64 characters on Linux. == FIPS support RHEL IdM in CentOS 8 Stream is now capable to be deployed and operated in FIPS mode. One notable omission is the support for trusted Active Directory domains. We are working on FIPS support for trust to AD upstream and already have a good progress. Hopefully, this work will be completed in upcoming weeks and will also land in CentOS 8 Stream. == DNS support improvements PTR records now supported in any zone type to facilitate DNS-SD [RFC6763] operations, for example, publishing printers. -- / Alexander Bokovoy Sr. Principal Software Engineer Security / Identity Management Engineering Red Hat Limited, Finland

1 0

Cloud SiG Reviatlization
by Amy Marrich 20 Jan '21

20 Jan '21

The Cloud SiG will be meeting next week to revitalize the group. We will meet January 28 at 15:00 UTC in the #centos-meeting room as outlined in https://www.centos.org/community/calendar/. Goals for the meeting are as follows: Election of Chair and Co-Chair Meeting frequency SiG Mission If you have an interest in Cloud and CentOS please join us! Thanks, Amy (spotz) *Amy Marrich* She/Her/Hers Principal Technical Marketing Manager - Cloud Platforms Red Hat, Inc <https://www.redhat.com/> amy(a)redhat.com Mobile: 954-818-0514 Slack: amarrich IRC: spotz <https://www.redhat.com/>

1 0

Thunderbird 78.6 for CentOS 8.3
by Chris Schanzle 19 Jan '21

19 Jan '21

Hi, It appears Thunderbird 78.6.0 was never released for CentOS 8.3. Could someone please check on it? Perhaps the Files->c8 section warning is a clue: Warning: This package was configured for automatic debranding, but the changes failed to apply. As a related topic, I have experience building RPM's/mock, superficial git user, but I'm still kinda lost how I might be able to get a .src.rpm out of the current state of https://git.centos.org/rpms/thunderbird/tree/404b3fff4f6bcc2c23e085b4ad2c1e… Any brief / terse tips would be appreciated. I did see Johnny's msg https://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2020-December/075681.html but it doesn't seem to apply to this situation as there is no koji build info. Thanks! Chris

4 4

Centos Stream 8 installation..
by André Verwijs 18 Jan '21

18 Jan '21

I've installed Centos Stream 8 with Network install and install dvd, but with both Centos Stream doesn't statrup correctly. "gnome-initial-setp" account (first time run) doesn't close properly, so i don't get login screen to first non-root user .... when i instal Centos 8(not stream) everything works great..!! i have to upgrade to stream after installation... André -- ____________________________________________________________________ Dank U - Thank You *Twitter:* http://twitter.com/OpenSimFan <http://twitter.com/OpenSimFan> *Facebook* http://www.facebook.com/andre.verwijs <http://www.facebook.com/andre.verwijs> *Instagram:* André Verwijs - Instagram <https://instagram.com/dutchglory>

1 0

Introducing the ARC sub-team in CPE - and first research topic
by Pierre-Yves Chibon 18 Jan '21

18 Jan '21

Good Morning Everyone, While planning work, the CPE team has realized that a number of our initiatives actually start with a research phase to find the most appropriate technical solution. This leads to some issues with planning as without knowing the technical solution we want to take, it's hard to evaluate the amount of work needed and thus the time it'll take to do it. In order to help with this, we're creating a small sub-team in CPE, called the ARC team for Advance Reconaissance Crew*. The goal of this team will be to investigate what we believe to be the possible technical solutions for initiatives and advise the team on what they believe would be the appropriate solution. To this end, we will reach out when we start looking for ideas as you may have ideas that we did not think about. The first investigation, led by Will Woods, Mark O'Brien and I, will be around datanommer and datagrepper. datanommer is an application listening to fedmsg and filling a (postgresql) database with all the messages passing on the bus. datagrepper is a web application exposing these messages and offering a way to filter or search them. available at: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/datagrepper/ Currently our ideas are: - for datanommer: - port it to fedora-messaging - adjust it to whichever solution we chose to replace datagrepper - for datagrepper: - keep it as is - Replace by - postgres https://postgrest.org/ - prest https://github.com/prest/prest - kinto https://docs.kinto-storage.org/en/stable/ - Swagger/OpenAPI https://swagger.io/ - Add support for Graphql - for the postgresql server - Split messages per year in different table - Unite them using a postgresql view - Kick out the old messages per year - Keep the current year + n-1 in the current DB - Kick the other to another DB? - Kick the other to a tarball somewhere? - Output the database daily dump to file / year - TimescaleDB a postgresql plugin for time-series data - https://alibaba-cloud.medium.com/postgresql-time-series-database-plug-in-ti… - https://dev.t-matix.com/blog/postgresql-as-a-time-series-database/ - https://docs.timescale.com/latest/introduction - Make the msg field in the message table be a JSON field Would you have any other ideas of things we could look at? Looking forward for your input, Thanks, Pierre, Will and Mark * Our notes and documentation are hosted at: https://fedora-arc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

1 0

Status of CentOS SIGs
by Rich Bowen 18 Jan '21

18 Jan '21

Hi, folks, In yesterday's board meeting, the board asked me to report on the status of all of our SIGs. I have put together this report - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e6Bw1x7ReDOuk4rrPz-Wl4EBaEicLG35rJb8P7_… - which covers all of the SIGs which are listed on https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup If you are involved in any SIG, please review what I have written there, and make any comments/corrections that you feel are warranted, so that I am passing the most accurate information possible to the board. Thanks!

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