[CentOS] Is it a way to upgrade CentOS 7 to 8?

Sat Oct 12 18:49:18 UTC 2019
Ljubomir Ljubojevic <centos at plnet.rs>

On 10/12/19 8:19 PM, Pierre Malard wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I’m looking for a method to upgrade my centos 7 servers to 8 and I don’t find anything to do that!
> 
> I’m a very newbie with CentOS? My choices where gone to Debian or Ubuntu and it was very simple. Just some files must be changed (/etc/apt/source.list). My search suggest a RELH subscription. Is it the only way?
> 

Hi Pierre.

RHEL/CentOS are different then Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora. RHEL/CentOS 6.x
was based on Fedora 12 packages, RHEL/CentOS 7.x on Fedora 19 and
RHEL/CentOS 8.0 on Fedora 28 packages. As you can see, Upgrading from
CentOS 7 to 8 is like directly updating from Fedora 19 to Fedora 28, gap
of whole 9 versions, and Ubuntu from 14.04 to 19.04 (skipping 14.10,
15.04, 15.10, 16.04, 16.10, 17.04, 17.10, 18.04 and 18.10). This happens
because CentOS becomes EOL after 10 years and it's replacement 5 full
years after initial release. In whole that time, main packages like
glibc do not change version (except bugfixes).

So, differences between packages versions are VERY large, and simple
"upgrade" would most likely mess things up.

Red Hat did release a RHEL tool for upgrade, but there is no interest in
community to work to convert it for CentOS, so trying to upgrade CentOS
7 to 8 is risky at least.

I do not even think about upgrading my servers from 7 to 8, only clean
install is option for me (with backup before it of course).

On another note, if you do not have a pressing need to upgrade CentOS to
8, I would argue you can stay on 7 for next 3-5 years, or maybe upgrade
one at the time.

Many packages like php can be upgraded on CentOS 7. If you tell us why
you NEED to upgrade your servers to 8, maybe we can dirrect you to
solution like Software collection or IUS repository.



> Best regards
> 
> --
> Pierre Malard
> 
>    «La France n'est pas schismatique, elle est révolutionnaire»
>                                                                       Jean Jaures - 1905
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>         )`,_ ,'_,'  \_;)
> ('_  _,'.'  (___,))        πr
>  `-:;.-'
> 
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-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant