[CentOS-devel] Documenting the CentOS Linux 8 EOL process

On Sun, Jul 11, 2021 at 7:25 PM Phil Perry <pperry at elrepo.org> wrote:
>
> On 08/07/2021 21:22, Rich Bowen wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 7/8/21 4:08 PM, Neal Gompa wrote:
> >>> 1. 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.
> >>>
> >>> 2. 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.
> >>
> >
> > While I agree with you, that it's an upgrade, I anticipate that moving
> > people from CentOS Linux 8 to CentOS Stream 8 automatically will result
> > in a lot of backlash from people who continue to believe that Stream is
> > a alpha/beta/testing/buggy/unstable/[pick your favorite complaint]
> > distribution. Y'know, once they noticed that it had happened.
> >
> > Surprising users seldom goes well, even if it's an overall positive
> > surprise.
> >
>
> Sorry for the slow reply - I've been away for a few days.
>
> Whilst I completely understand the desire to take this approach, I would
> respectfully request you don't as it's already creating extra support
> load for us with users switching to the Stream kernel and finding out
> their el8 kmod packages no longer work. If you switch all C8 users en
> mass at EOL, you run the risk of creating a potentially huge support
> burden that we are simply not in a position to manage.

I think this is a good point.  Transition to CentOS Stream should be
an opt-in choice made by the users.  There are too many situations
like the kernel, or internal policy compliance, or other reasons make
automated migration problematic.  We should encourage and advocate for
people to switch to CentOS Stream, and focus on making tools and
documentation for that easy to use and easily accessible, but we
should not be doing that kind of migration unilaterally.

I would advocate for a form of Carl's option 3.  Release the 8.5.0
content when it is ready, give people a grace period for one last
update, and then either return 404s for mirror requests or simply do
nothing else.

josh