On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 2:42 AM, James Hogarth james.hogarth@gmail.com wrote:
On 7 Dec 2015 23:43, "J Martin Rushton" martinrushton56@btinternet.com wrote:
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On 07/12/15 22:37, Warren Young wrote:
On Dec 7, 2015, at 1:52 PM, Greg Lindahl lindahl@pbm.com wrote:
On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 08:57:01PM +0100, Zdenek Sedlak wrote:
AFAIK, the 7(1503) format is used only on the websites, and internally CentOS uses 7.1.1503. Do you see this as an issue?
Yes. It confuses humans. There have been a bunch of examples given of how it confuses humans. A simple fix for this human issue is to use 7.1.1503 on the website, here on the mailing list, etc.
And then we’re right back in the same old boat: With every new release, the same old thread will pop up, “How do I make my servers stay on CentOS 7.1?”
Give up on the point release idea. It’s CentOS 7; there is no CentOS 7.1. The only reason there’s a YYMM part is that it’s a media respin. Best ignore that wherever practical.
So if we are to give up on the point release does that mean I don't have to update my machines until CentOS 8 comes along? ;-)
Seriously though, since I have to build my own repos (air gap) and build the images for the diskless machines the point releases are important in tracking roughly which version particular nodes are on. Running yum update on a regular basis is just not an option.
You should be updating during the lifecycle to each milestone though... To not do so is to leave yourself open to numerous bugs and attacks.
As it is, as pointed out, you can still check the installed files from the centos-release package for the upstream it's based on and the YYMM respin date...
Common configuration management systems (you should be using one of these given you say you have many systems) will also report the relevant details correctly.
On top of this if you are maintaining your own internal air gapped repo you should be paying attention to announcements which will inform you at these milestone points...
Given the workflow you state nothing has changed for you with the EL7.X releases...
What I want to know is, why is CentOS doing things differently than RedHat? Who made this decision, and was there any consideration given to making such a highly visible departure? When did CentOS decide to fork away from RHEL? It doesn't matter if this is truly the case, or not. Perception is reality here; CentOS is now no longer "the same" as RHEL and this turns it into a whole different, new, distro of Linux. That affects things like software certification, hardware support, security certification, etc. etc. It is now a stupendous burden on those of us who chose to implement it because it was "the same" as RHEL.
Was this an edict resulting from the RedHat acquisition of CentOS?
I can hear people saying, "Well, why don't you just use RedHat then?" I probably will have to now. But, we chose CentOS because it *was* RHEL, but it gave us more control (the ease of air-gapped repositories is a good example).
I just think this whole thing was a highly unnecessary, and bad idea. And it has a lot of really serious repercussions that nobody seems to have thought of before plowing ahead.
And, obviously, that angers me. I am asking for more than just consistency between the web site and /etc/centos-release, I am asking that, starting with RHEL 7.3, that CentOS stop using YYMM in its version numbers completely.