[CentOS] Changing from RHEL to CentOS

Wed Jun 8 16:16:12 UTC 2011
Ljubomir Ljubojevic <office at plnet.rs>

Lamar Owen wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 08, 2011 11:03:14 AM Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>> Only changed packages (not binary compatible) are in CentOS marked with 
>> .centos. so those should be replaced without question. For others, 
>> running "yum reinstall \*" is advised but not necessary. You are allowed 
>> to run RHEL but are not allowed updates, so using base of RHEL and 
>> updates from CentOS should generally be OK.
> 
> I'm not sure about that.  At least not if you have valid entitlements and you want to continue to use them (go look at the agreement and see if I'm misreading a few clauses that imply that in order to legally use *any* subscription entitlements you must properly subscribe *all* systems running upstream binaries; but I'm not a lawyer).  To be safe I plan to do the full binary replacement dance, but that's just me.
> 
> And while CentOS does its best to be 100% binary compatible, I wonder how supportable a combined system (partial upstream binaries, partial CentOS or SL binaries) really will be over the complete release cycle, and what sort of oddball bugs you might run up against six years from now.

Well, only packages will remain with Red Hat signatures. All logos and 
trademarks will be replaced with CentOS made packages. System will be 
reported as CentOS.

I am not legal expert, nor do I have precise knowledge about those legal 
issues.

I wrote that reinstall is advised, but my view is that conversion can be 
done now, but full reinstall can wait a while when unit is not on full load.

Ljubomir