On 08.07.21 22:08, Neal Gompa wrote:
On Thu, Jul 8, 2021 at 3:40 PM Carl George carl@redhat.com wrote:
One idea I've been noodling on is whether or not at some point after the EOL we should have mirrorlist.centos.org respond to requests for 8 repos with 8-stream repos, which effectively converts any remaining CentOS Linux 8 systems to CentOS Stream 8. I see this as a natural extension of how CentOS has never supported (to the extent CentOS "supports" anything) staying on old previous minor releases of a major release. CentOS Stream is still CentOS. 8-stream isn't that different from 8. CentOS Stream 8 is the latest CentOS 8. (Note: These are facts that I'm not interested in arguing with people about. If you feel the need to reply to those particular points, don't expect a reply from me.)
I can envision three possible scenarios.
- Change mirrorlist to respond to 8 repo requests with 8-stream repos
at the EOL date. This ensures that CentOS Linux 8 systems continue to get security updates by way of converting them to CentOS Stream 8. It also reinforces that CentOS Stream 8 is the latest CentOS 8. Obviously people who are not fans of the new project direction will view this negatively and lash out about Red Hat for supposedly forcing them to use CentOS Stream 8.
- Same as 1, but wait some period of time after the EOL date, such as
1-3 months. Waiting much longer than that would result in effectively updating from 8.5 directly to 8.7, which is less appealing.
I would prefer to do this change 1-2 months after December 31, though I'm quite fine with doing it on the EOL date. Having run CentOS Stream 8 for two years now, I feel that it's a solid experience and most people aren't going to have issues with it after upgrading from classic CentOS 8. And frankly, it's nice having people respond to my bug reports and actually *do* something about it. Strictly speaking, that's an upgrade from the experience with classic CentOS 8.
- Don't change mirrorlist to respond to 8 repo requests with 8-stream
repos, ever. This approach gives users the maximum amount of choice to migrate to either CentOS Stream 8, RHEL 8, or another RHEL 8 rebuild, when and only when they are ready. The downside is that many systems will be left without security updates for long periods of time, until users decide to take action. CentOS Linux 8 hits to EPEL are still growing [0], which makes me believe that many people still are unaware of the EOL change.
I think this is a terrible idea and does a disservice to the large "silent majority" of CentOS systems that would otherwise be fine with the upgrade.
Due the nature of this situation (it never had to be managed), I would prefer not seeing such repo change. It should be a active opt-in of the operator (dnf swap ...). Personally I will switch to stream but as mentioned elsewhere, forcing this change will backfire.
-- Leon