New subject: ANN: Experimental Workstation LiveDVDs from the Hyperscale SIG

28 Jun 2021


      Hello all,
Over the past month or so, I've been working on producing CentOS
images with Hyperscale content and customizations to showcase the
technologies we're working on to the broader community. The goal is to
make it easier for the community to get started with the technologies
we're working on and to encourage collaboration between the SIG and
the wider community on the things we're working on.
Today, I'm pleased to announce one of the first deliverables of that
effort: experimental live media! The SIG has produced an experimental
Hyperscale Workstation Spin that combines CentOS Stream 8 with the
Hyperscale SIG content to offer an early preview into some of the work
we're doing.
This spin is currently available here:
* ISO: https://ngompa.fedorapeople.org/centos/hyperscale/CS8-HS-WORK-LIVE-LATESTDEV...
* SHA512 checksum:
https://ngompa.fedorapeople.org/centos/hyperscale/CS8-HS-WORK-LIVE-LATESTDEV...
There are some limitations and known issues, though:
* UEFI boot is not supported. CBS does not support signing kernels
such that we can leverage the Secure Boot infrastructure, so UEFI is
not supported at all right now. The issue is tracked here:
https://pagure.io/centos-infra/issue/307
* The Anaconda installer icon is missing. This will be fixed with the
next release of centos-logos. Upstream issue here:
https://github.com/CentOS/centos-logos/issues/1
* SELinux denials with systemd-hostnamed and systemd-oomd. This is
being investigated, and fixes will become available in a future
systemd update provided by the Hyperscale SIG.
* SELinux denials with sssd and useradd. This happens with stock
CentOS Stream 8, and is not related to anything we're doing.
* All non-English locales aren't showing up in Anaconda despite all
locales being installed. This is being actively investigated and will
hopefully be resolved in a future release.
* "dnf upgrade" is broken due to package conflicts with the DNF stack.
This is because our custom version of the RPM+DNF stack has not been
refreshed to the latest version pushed into CentOS Stream 8. This is
ongoing and should be resolved soon.
* VDO is broken. This is a consequence of VDO being an out-of-tree
kernel module shipped by Red Hat for RHEL kernels only. The Hyperscale
SIG is building its kernels based on the ARK tree that's used by
Fedora, and thus lacks support for VDO.
If you find any other issues, we would definitely love to hear about
them! We have a dedicated issue tracker for Hyperscale spins where we
would appreciate bugs to be reported:
https://pagure.io/centos-sig-hyperscale/spin-bugs
The Hyperscale Workstation spin is built on the GNOME desktop. It is
my intent to also offer a KDE Plasma flavor once it becomes reasonably
possible. This is blocked on KDE Plasma getting rebuilt in EPEL-Next
for the updated Qt5 in CentOS Stream 8. Both desktops are capable of
leveraging the technologies being developed by the Hyperscale SIG and
we intend to use this to showcase that.
We hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making this!
Thanks and best regards,
Neal (on behalf of the CentOS Hyperscale SIG)
-- 
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!