Blog.CentOS.org - News, views and reports on CentOS

CentOS Atomic Host 7.1805 Available for Download

Friday , 15, June 2018 Jason Brooks announcement Leave a comment

The CentOS Atomic SIG has released an updated version of CentOS Atomic Host (7.1805), a lean operating system designed to run Linux containers, built from standard CentOS 7 RPMs, and tracking the component versions included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host.

CentOS Atomic Host includes these core component versions:

atomic-1.22.1-3.git2fd0860.el7.x86_64
cloud-init-0.7.9-24.el7.centos.x86_64
docker-1.13.1-63.git94f4240.el7.centos.x86_64
etcd-3.2.18-1.el7.x86_64
flannel-0.7.1-3.el7.x86_64
kernel-3.10.0-862.3.2.el7.x86_64
ostree-2018.1-4.el7.x86_64
rpm-ostree-client-2018.1-1.atomic.el7.x86_64

Download CentOS Atomic Host

CentOS Atomic Host is available as a VirtualBox or libvirt-formatted Vagrant box, or as an installable ISO, qcow2 or Amazon Machine image. For links to media, see the CentOS wiki.

Upgrading

If you’re running a previous version of CentOS Atomic Host, you can upgrade to the current image by running the following command:

# atomic host upgrade

Release Cycle

The CentOS Atomic Host image follows the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host cadence. After sources are released, they’re rebuilt and included in new images. After the images are tested by the SIG and deemed ready, we announce them.

Getting Involved

CentOS Atomic Host is produced by the CentOS Atomic SIG, based on upstream work from Project Atomic. If you’d like to work on testing images, help with packaging, documentation – join us!

You’ll often find us in #atomic and/or #centos-devel if you have questions. You can also join the atomic-devel mailing list if you’d like to discuss the direction of Project Atomic, its components, or have other questions.

Getting Help

If you run into any problems with the images or components, feel free to ask on the centos-devel mailing list.

Have questions about using Atomic? See the atomic mailing list or find us in the #atomic channel on Freenode.

CentOS Atomic Host 7.1804 Available for Download

Wednesday , 23, May 2018 Jason Brooks announcement Leave a comment

The CentOS Atomic SIG has released an updated version of CentOS Atomic Host (7.1804), a lean operating system designed to run Linux containers, built from standard CentOS 7 RPMs, and tracking the component versions included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host.

This release, which is based on the RHEL 7.5 source code, now ships without any baked-in Kubernetes rpms, which makes it simpler for users to layer their preferred Kubernetes or OpenShift packages onto the host.

CentOS Atomic Host includes these core component versions:

atomic-1.22.1-3.git2fd0860.el7.x86_64
cloud-init-0.7.9-24.el7.centos.x86_64
docker-1.13.1-63.git94f4240.el7.centos.x86_64
etcd-3.2.18-1.el7.x86_64
flannel-0.7.1-3.el7.x86_64
kernel-3.10.0-862.2.3.el7.x86_64
ostree-2018.1-4.el7.x86_64
rpm-ostree-client-2018.1-1.atomic.el7.x86_64

Download CentOS Atomic Host

CentOS Atomic Host is available as a VirtualBox or libvirt-formatted Vagrant box, or as an installable ISO, qcow2 or Amazon Machine image. For links to media, see the CentOS wiki.

Upgrading

If you’re running a previous version of CentOS Atomic Host, you can upgrade to the current image by running the following command:

# atomic host upgrade

Release Cycle

Getting Involved

CentOS Atomic Host is produced by the CentOS Atomic SIG, based on upstream work from Project Atomic. If you’d like to work on testing images, help with packaging, documentation – join us!

Getting Help

If you run into any problems with the images or components, feel free to ask on the centos-devel mailing list.

Have questions about using Atomic? See the atomic mailing list or find us in the #atomic channel on Freenode.

Updated CentOS Vagrant Images Available (v1804.02)

Saturday , 19, May 2018 Laurențiu Păncescu announcement 20 Comments

We are pleased to announce new official Vagrant images of CentOS Linux 6.9 and CentOS Linux 7.5.1804 for x86_64 (based on the sources of RHEL 7.5). All included packages have been updated to 12th May 2018.

Notable Changes

The IO scheduler is now set to noop, according to Red Hat recommendations.

Known Issues

The VirtualBox Guest Additions are not preinstalled; if you need them for shared folders, please install the vagrant-vbguest plugin and add the following line to your Vagrantfile:
```
config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", type: "virtualbox"
```
We recommend using NFS instead of VirtualBox shared folders if possible; you can also use the vagrant-sshfs plugin, which, unlike NFS, works on all operating systems.
Since the Guest Additions are missing, our images are preconfigured to use rsync for synced folders. Windows users can either use SMB for synced folders, or disable the sync directory by adding the line
```
config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", disabled: true
```
to their Vagrantfile, to prevent errors on "vagrant up".
Vagrant 1.8.5 is unable to create new CentOS Linux boxes due to Vagrant bug #7610
Vagrant 1.8.7 is unable to download or update boxes due to Vagrant bug #7969.
Vagrant 1.9.1 broke private networking, see Vagrant bug #8166
Vagrant 1.9.3 doesn't work with SMB sync due to Vagrant bug #8404
The vagrant-libvirt plugin is only compatible with Vagrant 1.5 to 1.8
Installing open-vm-tools is not enough for enabling shared folders with Vagrant’s VMware provider. Please follow the detailed instructions in https://github.com/mvermaes/centos-vmware-tools (updated for this release).
Some people reported "could not resolve host" errors when running the centos/7 image for VirtualBox on Windows hosts. Try adding the following line to your Vagrantfile:
```
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--natdnshostresolver1", "off"]
```

Recommended Setup on the Host

Our automatic testing is running on a CentOS Linux 7 host, using Vagrant 1.9.4 with vagrant-libvirt and VirtualBox 5.1.20 (without the Guest Additions) as providers. We strongly recommend using the libvirt provider when stability is required.

Downloads

The official images can be downloaded from Vagrant Cloud. We provide images for HyperV, libvirt-kvm, VirtualBox and VMware.

If you never used our images before:

vagrant box add centos/6 # for CentOS Linux 6, or...
vagrant box add centos/7 # for CentOS Linux 7

Existing users can upgrade their images:

vagrant box update --box centos/6
vagrant box update --box centos/7

Verifying the integrity of the images

The SHA256 checksums of the images are signed with the CentOS 7 Official Signing Key. First, download and verify the checksum file:

$ curl http://cloud.centos.org/centos/7/vagrant/x86_64/images/sha256sum.txt.asc -o sha256sum.txt.asc
$ gpg --verify sha256sum.txt.asc

Once you are sure that the checksums are properly signed by the CentOS Project, you have to include them in your Vagrantfile (Vagrant unfortunately ignores checksum provided from the command line). Here's the relevant snippet from my own Vagrantfile, using v1803.01 and VirtualBox:

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "centos/7"

  config.vm.provider :virtualbox do |virtualbox, override|
    virtualbox.memory = 1024
    override.vm.box_download_checksum_type = "sha256"
    override.vm.box_download_checksum = "b24c912b136d2aa9b7b94fc2689b2001c8d04280cf25983123e45b6a52693fb3"
    override.vm.box_url = "https://cloud.centos.org/centos/7/vagrant/x86_64/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-Vagrant-1803_01.VirtualBox.box"
  end
end

Feedback

If you encounter any unexpected issues with the Vagrant images, feel free to ask on the centos-devel mailing list, or via IRC, in #centos on Freenode.

Ackowledgements

We would like to warmly thank Fabian Arrotin and Thomas Oulevey for their work on the build infrastructure, as well as Patrick Lang from Microsoft for testing and feedback on the Hyper-V images.

We would also like to thank the following people (listed alphabetically):

Graham Mainwaring, for helping with tests and validations;
Michael Vermaes, for testing our official images, as well as for writing the detailed guide to using them with VMware Fusion Pro and VMware Workstation Pro;
Kirill Kalachev, for reporting and debugging the host name errors with VirtualBox on Windows hosts.

CentOS Dojo at DevConf.us, August 16th in Boston

Thursday , 17, May 2018 Rich Bowen announcement Leave a comment

This year, DevConf.us will be held at Boston University, August 17th through 19th.

We've secured some space on the day before - Thursday, August 16th - and will be holding a CentOS Dojo. Further details will appear on the event website as they are available.

The call for papers is now open, and will close on June 17th, so that we have plenty of time to promote the schedule. We're particularly interested in presentations about the use of CentOS (or RHEL, or Fedora) in education and research, but we welcome all of your submissions related to CentOS.

CentOS Dojos are gatherings of CentOS (and Linux in general) enthusiasts, to share stories and techniques, and learn about the many technologies that are developed on this platform.

Testing armhfp devices

Tuesday , 15, May 2018 pgreco altarch, arm Leave a comment

7.5.1804 is a big one. For the first time, we have a release for armhfp completely lined up with x86_64, but that also means a lot of changes.
To make things a bit more complicated, the arm world is not exactly uniform, there are many vendors, chip manufacturers, chip versions and that makes testing an absolute mess.
This post is a call to share your experiences, tests and mainly, problems (it would be great if you also had the solutions, but that is rather optimistic). What we'd like is to know what device you use, which components work, which don't and what you've done so far.
Here's an example of what we'd like:

BananaPi M1: boots ok, with uboot from the rpm, ethernet works, SATA works.
BananaPi M3: has problems with the provided uboot, although it works ok with uboot version 2018.05 (this is actually true, and will be fixed shortly), ethernet not working (needs kernel 4.16+), multicore not working (needs kernel 4.18+), SATA untested.
BananaPi M2U: uboot works, but needs kernel 4.15+ to work

You can find us here, at the mailing list https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/arm-dev, at #centos-arm on irc, or if you want to read a bit before asking, check https://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/armhfp.
Thank you for helping us make CentOS Linux the best distribution we can.

Pablo

CERN Dojo, October 19th, 2018

Monday , 14, May 2018 Rich Bowen announcement 1 Comment

On October 19th, 2018, we will once again be hosting a CentOS Dojo at CERN, in Meyrin, Switzerland. This will be a full day of CentOS presentations, drawn both from CERN and from the broader CentOS community.

The call for papers is now open. We're looking for talks about anything CentOS related, but we're particularly interested in:

OpenStack, and other cloud platforms
Ceph, and other software defined storage solutions
Configuration management tools
HPC, and other aspects of research computing

CERN is one of the best-known research facilities on the planet, and the home of the Large Hadron Collider.

CentOS Dojos are the best place to meet other members of the CentOS community, and the various communities - such as OpenStack and Ceph - that have a large overlap with CentOS.

CentOS 7.5.1804 released

Thursday , 10, May 2018 Rich Bowen announcement 3 Comments

The CentOS community is pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 7.5.1804 to a mirror server near you.

CentOS 7.5.1804 is a rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 release on April 4th, 2018. For complete release notes, please see https://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS7.1804 You can also read the announcement on the CentOS-Announce mailing list.

To update your 7.4.1708 system to 7.5.1804, use the following procedure:

First, ask your system what version you’re on now:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)

Next, upgrade with:

$ sudo yum clean all
$ sudo yum upgrade
$ sudo systemctl reboot

Finally, once this is done, you can verify that you’re running the latest build with:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Core)

We would love to hear your feedback on this new release. There’s a lot of ways to to this:

Mailing lists: https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo
Twitter: @CentOSProject
Forums: https://www.centos.org/forums/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/centosproject/
IRC: #centos-devel on the Freenode IRC network

Thanks for using CentOS!

YUM4/DNF for CentOS 7 updates

Tuesday , 17, April 2018 mblaha announcement, General 8 Comments

I am pleased to announce some significant updates to our ConfigManagement Special Interest Group for YUM4. This provides YUM4, based on DNF technology, for testing on CentOS Linux 7/x86_64. These updates are based on feedback from our prior test release last October. It includes signed packages, core DNF plugins, and uses a version of RPM very similar to and compatible with the upcoming version of CentOS 7.5.

This initiative is based on a partnership with the upstream YUM and DNF maintainers for the future of package management. Our testing thus far indicates no major problems, but we would love to find out how it fits into your existing YUM 3 workflows. So please consider filling out the short survey - your feedback helps us all get better.

YUM 4 provides significant improvements such as fast dependency resolution and a stable, documented API. See the references below for detailed improvements. We have made every effort to preserve the existing end-user experience that is available with YUM 3. This is the primary reason for making YUM 4 available for testing now.

“What’s with the YUM4 name?”

We recognize that we need to enable users to test YUM4 (/usr/bin/yum4) within their existing workflows in order to fully understand compatibility while retaining YUM version 3 (/usr/bin/yum) as the default. Yes, they can both be used on the same system, switching back and forth. We do not recommend this behavior, but it should work with the only known issue being that each version retains its own separate history. So using the Rollback capability is not recommended as each version will not be aware of the other’s history. Note that the YUM4 name is temporary for the coexistence of versions 3 & 4.

“So, what all has changed?”

The documentation does a great job explaining the differences in great detail. In short, your existing experience using yum to install, remove, and update are identical. However, there are changes such as some of the plugins and yum utilities are now consolidated into `dnf-plugins-core`. Some of the yum CLI options changed and are either converted for you automatically or silently ignored when that behavior is automatically included. Existing custom plugins written for YUM 3 will not work with YUM 4. Please reference the DNF API Reference and Changes in DNF hook API compared to YUM 3 links for further information.

“I found a bug, what should I do?”

Please report any found bugs on Red Hat Bugzilla against Fedora/dnf component (make sure to mention versions and that you use package from CentOS).

And remember to submit feedback in the short survey to help us understand how it can be improved further.

“Three step install, get started right away”

# yum install centos-release-yum4
# yum install yum4
# yum4 install dnf-plugins-core

“I was already testing a previous version of YUM4. How do I update?”

# yum4 update centos-release-yum4
# yum4 update yum4

Many thanks to the CentOS Project team for their assistance in making this happen!

Updated CentOS Vagrant Images Available (v1803.01)

Tuesday , 10, April 2018 Laurențiu Păncescu announcement 12 Comments

We are pleased to announce new official Vagrant images of CentOS Linux 6.9 and CentOS Linux 7.4.1708 for x86_64 (based on the sources of RHEL 7.4). All included packages have been updated to 3rd April 2018.