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Oracle Linux (formerly called Oracle Enterprise Linux, which was released in 2006, two years after CentOS) is a Red Hat clone available under GPL. It also provides its own kernel (called unbreakable kernel), which is more recent recent and better patched version of the Linux kernel; then used in Red Hat and CentOS.
CentOS started as an external project, that was acquired by Red Hat 7 or 8 years ago. Not IBM/Red Hat management team decided to destroy it by converting essentially into Red Hat beta release. Most probably due to fears that CentOS cuts into Red Hat licenses sales.
But in this case Red Hat can't have the cake and eat it too. This announcement gave Oracle Linux tremendous shot in the arm. Like no multimillion advertizing campaign could ever do. Possibility of converting from CentOS6 and CentOS8 to Oracle Linux (CentOS7 end of life remains unchanged at June 2024) instantly became a hot topics in forums. Amount of people who downloaded and experimented with centos2ol.sh conversion script was probably hundreds time more than before the announcement. See centos2ol_wrapper written to provide some sanity checks for it.
ISOs are downloadable from Oracle Linux Downloads
Oracle Linux can be viewed as "CentOS done right" -- it provides great stability and better organization of repositories (without force obsolesce that Red Hat enforced on CentOS) at the cost of a some loss of compatibility with exotic drivers (if you chose to use Oracle unbreakable kernel; Oracle provide both Red Hat kernel and its own). Currently it represents the best platform for Oracle database and related application among commercial Linuxes. Historically it was always a higher quality OS than CentOS while valuable on the same terms. As one commenter put it is "CentOS done right". It provides unique opportunity to switch particular server from free version to any of the paid version and back. This flexibility was never achievable with Red Hat. Oracle supports each version for 10 years, unlike Debian, where the support cycle is just one year after the release of a new version. Moreover it has extensive documentation, although you can reuse CentOS documentation too (and Red hat documentation is accessible with free account).
In this sense Oracle's business model is identical to Canonical's: users are offered a fully free enterprise-quality OS. And if the customer wants paid technical support, you don't need to reinstall OS like is the case with Red Hat. Just sign up for a contract, and you're done.
For many years Oracle Linux lingered in semi-obscurity, despite being a higher quality clone than CentOS with quicker supply of patches and the availability of alternative kernel. Now it attracted a lot of attentions and many new installations. Red Hat now brought it into the bright light.
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Oracle Linux was instantly raised to the level of No.1 alternative to Red Hat in December 2020 by CentOS8 fiasco. It is strongly preferable for RHEL8. It also has slightly longer (till March 2021) support policy for RHEL6 (as many systemd haters plan to stay with this version for at least a couple of more years). For paying customers Red Hat has obnoxious, IBM-style policy toward KVM images which alone provide strong impulse to leave Red Hat for good. |
It was instantly raised to the level of No.1 alternative to Red Hat RHEL8 in December 2020 by CentOS8 fiasco. Oracle provided a good, viable for production environment conversion script (which requires senior sysadmin level of skills but still works well in most not very complex cases). It scalability can be enhanced by centos2ol_wrapper which provides some sanity checks and is designed for mass conversion.
It is also preferable is you want to stay on RHEL6 (as many systemd haters plan to stay with this version for at least a couple of more years) because Oracle does not "systematically eliminate" older repositories like CentOS do. For critical servers extended support can be bought, but here Oracle does not have a price edge over Red Hat, unless you are deploying many VMs.
But generally for those who plan to stay with Re Hat/CentOS6 Oracle Linux is a natural choice -- just try to get security patches for CentOS86.8 or CentOS6.9, if you server has drivers that are unsupported on CentOS 6.10 (for example old IBM GPFS drivers) and you will understand what I am talking about.
| Generally for those who plan to stay with Re Hat/CentOS6 Oracle Linux is a natural choice -- just try to get security patches for CentOS86.8 or CentOS6.9, if you server has drivers that are unsupported on CentOS 6.10 (for example old IBM GPFS drivers) and you will understand what I am talking about. |
The main and unsurpassed attraction of Oracle linux is that you can change level of licensing of the server from free to Premium at any time. As the value of the server in corporate datacenter fluctuate greatly and servers that yesterday required premium support in two or three years are simply circulating air that an important advantage that Red hat never had. In Red Hat the lowest level of support you can downgrade you server or KVM instance is not free by self-support which cost you around $400 a year. If you multiply 400 on 100 or 200 you see what I am talking about.
| The main and unsurpassed attraction of Oracle Linux is that you can change level of licensing of the server from free to Premium at any time. As the value of the server in corporate datacenter fluctuate greatly and servers that yesterday required premium support in two or three years are simply circulating air that an important advantage that Red hat never had. In Red Hat the lowest level of support you can only downgrade your server to self-support which still will cost you around $400 a year. |
Four levels of support are available:
One way to download Oracle Linux ISO us from your Oracle account (which can be opened even if you do not have paid subscription, much like with RHEL). Oracle provide two way to download images -- individually or using Oracle download manager -- a small exe file that you download and run on your computer. My impression is that down load manager provides slightly higher speed of download of multiple images.
It is not that easy to find where images are stored on Oracle site. One useful link is Search Software (oracle.com). After you see the product you want, in this example Oracl Linux 6.10 you click on the collection icon and get a set of ISO files from which you need to select those that you want:
Cost of patches (network support) is dramatically lower with Oracle linux ($119 per year), which is the lowest price for which you can get patches for commercial linux distribution. Cost of Basic support is $499, on par with Suse and twice lower then for Red Hat. Red Hat is priced, per year, at $349 for a basic support plan (patches), $799 for a standard support plan and $1,299 for a premium support plan.
Oracle support program includes both Red Hat and Oracle Enterprise Linux which permits to have support from Oracle, while having basic license from Red Hat, if you thing that Oracle support is better. You can also switch from Red Hat to Oracle Linux by upgrading to the next minor release from Oracle ISO without full reinstallation. Oracle has large internal deployment of Linux servers so there is a synergy in supporting this farm, instead of paying for support to Red Hat. Support the Oracle provides is more Spartan then in case of Red Hat and it is more difficult to get to real human even for high priority tickets, but generally it is OK.
Being the main commercial clone of Red Hat, Oracle Linux offers two Linux kernels to choose from: The Red Hat Compatible Kernel and The new Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. The latter is available only for 64-bit version of Linux. Available since Sept. 19, 2010, this kernel that is optimized for Oracle software and hardware (and that means for Sun Intel servers). Oracle recommends it for use for all enterprise applications running on Linux.
Oracle claims that Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (this is for RHEL5 vs. Oracle Linux 5 so the data are outdated):
We can easily believe in (4); other claims still need to be verified :-). Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel is free upgrade available both for customers with support contract and without them:
The sad CentOS8 fiasco show us who won the culture wars when IBM bought Red Hat. Oracle provides an opportunity to convert Red Hat and CentOS installations to Oracle Linux via script called centos2ol. The script works for RHEL/CentOs8,7 and 6. BTW Oracle provides support for Oracle Linux 6 till March 2021, not till November 2020 as Red Hat.
For CentOS8, the issue for enterprise customers who deployed or started to deploy Red Hat 8 (probably prematurely ;-) is the Red Hat cut its support to one year (2021). See CentOS8 fiasco. That fiasco also creates incentives to convert some Red Hat 7 installations to Oracle. that also allows enterprise users to get more flexibility and escape clutches of Red Hat licensing scheme and paying to Red Hat for the second rate support. Not all servers in the datacenter are created equal and only a few deserve Premium support.
This move by Red Hat brass reminds me the move made by Red hat in 2004 when they introduced Red Hat Enterprise Linux (slashdot.org) :
Remember that back in 2004, RedHat discontinued their common distribution for paid and community users and moved them to two different tracks, with the community being dev and test for the paid users. When their generally friendly to paying customer strategy of 'treat everything as if it were GPL' and provided source rpms and community driven clones started, RedHat went after them hard anytime they alluded to 'RedHat', as while RedHat could not block the cloning, they did own the brand and used it to intimidate the clones such that they didn't publicly make clear what everyone knew: that they were rebuilds from RedHat source and therefore equivalent from a technology standpoint.
In 2014, they seemingly did a *partial* reversal, probably amidst recognized mounting pressure from Ubuntu, where there weren't all these complicated brand games going on between paid and free users, and publicly endorsed CentOS project and took it over so they had a clearer story.
Over the years, that has probably not yielded the result they wanted, to displace Ubuntu's share. What they failed to understand was that RedHat's blessing wasn't particularly valuable, and/or presumed the CentOS *brand name* inherently had value, and maintained a confused branding status quo where two technically equivalent clones were subtly different and without a clear upsell path to paid support.
It seems the lesson they took from this instead was 'Ok, that didn't grab share from Ubuntu, let's force that sweet ~20% CentOS share to all buy RHEL, that will fix it'. Of course, that apparent strategy will in all likelihood increase Ubuntu's share (I already know companies that were reluctant about investing resources in formal Ubuntu support turning around and investing rapidly due to the CentOS situation).
What they could pull off is to replace the whole concept of RHEL 'clones' with plain old RHEL. If RHEL was made available in the same way Oracle makes Oracle Linux available, then they win. Well, they at least mitigate the scenario of a mass migration to Ubuntu. Then they won't look as bad in the Canonical sales decks that show RHEL as having practically no share, which is *technically* correct so long as they keep that CentOS brand in there. And Canonical ignores CentOS in those decks by saying 'share of distributions that offer paid support'.
As you can see from comments in forums this time the "protest movement" probably will be bigger and more vocal but as toothless as in 2004. Red Hat will remain the king of enterprise linux. It will not be displayed. And Systemd will stay, despite mostly negative effect on server installations. For some the main stimulus to move away from Red hat is the protest against the adoption of systemd. Although in this case moving RHEL installations to Oracle Linux only punished Red Hat financially, you still have systemd in Oracle Linux. Generally Red Hat customers had eaten this frog without much complaining, so only a few might take this opportunity to punish Red Hat financially.
Still I hope that CentOS8 fiasco can slightly affect Red Hat sales, and unlike the expectations (and the key motive behind the move) for Red Hat brass, the net effect will be negative. This is just "yet another reason" to leave Red Hat for good.
Oracle has a short marketing document Oracle Linux- A better alternative to CentOS which explains advantages of Oracle Linus as seen by Oracle team..
Oracle Linux: A better alternative to CentOS
We firmly believe that Oracle Linux is the best Linux distribution on the market today. It's reliable, it's affordable, it's 100% compatible with your existing applications, and it gives you access to some of the most cutting-edge innovations in Linux like Ksplice and DTrace.
But if you're here, you're a CentOS user. Which means that you don't pay for a distribution at all, for at least some of your systems. So even if we made the best paid distribution in the world (and we think we do), we can't actually get it to you... or can we?
We're putting Oracle Linux in your hands by doing two things:
We've made the Oracle Linux software available free of charge
We've created a simple script to switch your CentOS systems to Oracle Linux
We think you'll like what you find, and we'd love for you to give it a try.
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Jan 02, 2021 | access.redhat.com
Ensure that you have an access to RHEL packages through custom repositories configured in the
/etc/yum.repos.d/directory and pointing, for example, to RHEL ISO , FTP, or HTTP. Note that the OS will be converted to the version of RHEL provided by these repositories. Make sure that the RHEL minor version is the same or later than the original OS minor version to prevent downgrading and potential conversion failures. See instructions on how to configure a repository .Recommended: Update packages from the original OS to the latest version that is available in the repositories accessible from the system, and restart the system:
Raw# yum update -y # restartWithout performing this step, the rollback feature will not work correctly, and exiting the conversion in any phase may result in a dysfunctional system.
IMPORTANT:
Converting the system
Before starting the conversion process, back up your system.Troubleshooting Logs
Start
RawConvert2RHELusing custom repositories:# convert2rhel --disable-submgr --enablerepo <RHEL_RepoID> --debugReplace RHEL_RepoID with your custom repository configured in the
/etc/yum.repos.d/directory, for example,rhel-7-server-rpms.To display all available options, use the
Raw-h,--helpoption:# convert2rhel -hNOTE: Packages that are available only in the original distribution and do not have corresponding counterparts in RHEL repositories, or third-party packages, which originate neither from the original Linux distribution nor from RHEL, are left unchanged.
Before
RawConvert2RHELstarts replacing packages from the original distribution with RHEL packages, the following warning message is displayed:The tool allows rollback of any action until this point. By continuing all further changes on the system will need to be reverted manually by the user, if necessary.Changes made by
Convert2RHELup to this point can be automatically reverted. Confirm that you wish to proceed with the conversion process.Wait until
Convert2RHELinstalls the RHEL packages.NOTE: After a successful conversion, the utility prints out the
convert2rhelcommand with all arguments necessary for running non-interactively. You can copy the command and use it on systems with a similar setup.At this point, the system still runs with the original distribution kernel loaded in RAM. Reboot the system to boot into the newly installed RHEL kernel.
Raw# rebootRemove third-party packages from the original OS that remained unchanged (typically packages that do not have a RHEL counterpart). To get a list of such packages, use:
Raw# yum list extras --disablerepo="*" --enablerepo=<RHEL_RepoID>If necessary, reconfigure system services after the conversion.
The
Convert2RHELutility stores theconvert2rhel.logfile in the/var/log/convert2rhel/directory. Its content is identical to what is printed to the standard output.The output of the
rpm -Vacommand, which is run automatically unless the--no-rpm-vaoption is used, is stored in the/var/log/convert2rhel/rpm_va.logfile for debugging purposes.Stefan Vtr 1 July 2020 6:24 AM
Michal Bocek 1 July 2020 8:30 AMThe Link to "instructions on how to configure a repository." is not working (404). Also it would be great if the tool installs the repos that are needed for the conversion itself.
Thanks, Stefan, for pointing that out. Before we fix that, you can use this link: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/system_administrators_guide/ch-yum#sec-Setting_repository_Options
Regarding the second point of yours - this article explains how to use convert2rhel with custom repositories. Since Red Hat does not have the RHEL repositories public, we leave it up to the user where they obtain the RHEL repositories. For example, when they have a subscribed RHEL system in their company, they can create a mirror of the RHEL repositories available on that system by following this guide: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/23016.
However, convert2rhel is also able to connect to Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM), and for that you need to provide the subscription-manager package and pass the subscription credentials to convert2rhel. Then the convert2rhel chooses the right repository to use for the conversion. You can find the step by step guide for that in https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/converting-centos-rhel-convert2rhel-and-satellite.
We are working on improving the user experience related to the use of RHSM.
Ari Lemmke 10 September 2020 12:31 AM
- This system could have been done much much much much better.
- I do not see any point for this utility if it does not work .. i.e. is "working" like this.
- Nice that it rollbacks everything. For rollbacking feature it gets 1 out of 10 points.
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Jan 01, 2021 | forums.centos.org
What do you think of the recent Red Hat announcement about CentOS Linux/Stream?
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Jan 01, 2021 | www.oracle.com
... DTrace gives the operational insights that have long been missing in the data center, such as memory consumption, CPU time or what specific function calls are being made.
- Designed for use on production systems to troubleshoot performance bottlenecks
- Provides a single view of the software stack - from kernel to application - leading to rapid identification of performance bottlenecks
- Dynamically instruments kernel and applications with any number of probe points, improving the ability to service software
- Enables maximum resource utilization and application performance, as well as precise quantification of resource requirements
- Fast and easy to use, even on complex systems with multiple layers of software
Developers can learn about and experiment with DTrace on Oracle Linux by installing the appropriate RPMs:
- For Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 (UEK5) on Oracle Linux 7
dtrace-utilsanddtrace-utils-devel.- For Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 6 (UEK6) on Oracle Linux 7 and Oracle Linux 8
dtraceanddtrace-devel.
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Jan 05, 2019 | www.centroid.com
... ... ...
Here's what we found.
- Stability
It's well known that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is created from the most stable and tested Fedora innovations, but since Oracle Linux was grown from the RHEL framework yet includes additional, built-in integrations and optimizations specifically tailored for Oracle products, our comparison showed that Oracle Linux is actually more stable for enterprises running Oracle systems , including Oracle databases.
- Flexibility
As an industry leader, RHEL provides a wide range of integrated applications and tools that help tailor fit the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system to highly specific business needs. However, once again Oracle Linux was found to excel over RHEL because OL offered the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK), option, which enables any RHEL-certified app to run on Oracle Linux . In addition, OL offers its own network of ISVs / third-party solutions, which can help personalize your Linux setup even more while integrating seamlessly with your on-premises or cloud-based Oracle systems.
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Dec 15, 2020 Simon Coter Blog
... ... ...
We published a blog post earlier this week that explains why , but here is the TL;DR version:
- Oracle Linux is free to download, distribute and use (even in production) and has been since its release over 14 years ago
- Installation media, updates and source code are all publicly available on the Oracle Linux yum server with no login or authentication requirements
- Since its first release in 2006, Oracle Linux has been 100% application binary compatible with the equivalent RHEL version. In that time, we have never had a compatibility bug logged.
For these reasons, we created a simple script to allow users to switch from CentOS to Oracle Linux about five years ago. This week, we moved the script to GitHub to allow members of the CentOS community to help us improve and extend the script to cover more CentOS respins and use cases.
The script can switch CentOS Linux 6, 7 or 8 to the equivalent version of Oracle Linux. Let's take a look at just how simple the process is.
Download the centos2ol.sh script from GitHubRun the centos2ol.sh script to switch to Oracle LinuxThe simplest way to get the script is to use curl :
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oracle/centos2ol/main/centos2ol.sh % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 10747 100 10747 0 0 31241 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 31241If you have git installed, you could clone the git repository from GitHub instead.
Switching the default kernel (optional)To switch to Oracle Linux, just run the script as root using sudo :
$ sudo bash centos2ol.shAs part of the process, the default kernel is switched to the latest release of Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) to enable extensive performance and scalability improvements to the process scheduler, memory management, file systems, and the networking stack. We also replace the existing CentOS kernel with the equivalent Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) which may be required by any specific hardware or application that has imposed strict kernel version restrictions.
Once the switch is complete, but before rebooting, the default kernel can be changed back to the RHCK. First, use grubby to list all installed kernels:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --info=ALL | grep ^kernel [sudo] password for demo: kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.17-2036.101.2.el8uek.x86_64" kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64" kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-193.el8.x86_64" kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-0-rescue-0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366"In the output above, the first entry (index 0) is UEK R6, based on the mainline kernel version 5.4. The second kernel is the updated RHCK (Red Hat Compatible Kernel) installed by the switch process while the third one is the kernel that were installed by CentOS and the final entry is the rescue kernel.
Next, use grubby to verify that UEK is currently the default boot option:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --default-kernel /boot/vmlinuz-5.4.17-2036.101.2.el8uek.x86_64To replace the default kernel, you need to specify either the path to its vmlinuz file or its index. Use grubby to get that information for the replacement:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --info /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64 index=1 kernel="/boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64" args="ro crashkernel=auto resume=/dev/mapper/cl-swap rd.lvm.lv=cl/root rd.lvm.lv=cl/swap rhgb quiet $tuned_params" root="/dev/mapper/cl-root" initrd="/boot/initramfs-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64.img $tuned_initrd" title="Oracle Linux Server (4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64) 8.3" id="0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64"Finally, use grubby to change the default kernel, either by providing the vmlinuz path:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --set-default /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64 The default is /boot/loader/entries/0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64.conf with index 1 and kernel /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64Or its index:
[demo@c8switch ~]$ sudo grubby --set-default-index 1 The default is /boot/loader/entries/0dbb9b2f3c2744779c72a28071755366-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64.conf with index 1 and kernel /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3.x86_64Changing the default kernel can be done at any time, so we encourage you to take UEK for a spin before switching back.
It's easy to access, try it out.
- Switch from CentOS to Oracle Linux
- Installation media and updates freely available from the Oracle Linux yum server .
- UEK source code on GitHub
For more information visit oracle.com/linux .
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Dec 30, 2020 | blog.microlinux.fr
In 2010 I had the opportunity to put my hands in the shambles of Oracle Linux during an installation and training mission carried out on behalf of ASF (Highways of the South of France) which is now called Vinci Autoroutes. I had just published Linux on the onions at Eyrolles, and since the CentOS 5.3 distribution on which it was based looked 99% like Oracle Linux 5.3 under the hood, I had been chosen by the company ASF to train their future Linux administrators.
All these years, I knew that Oracle Linux existed, as did another series of Red Hat clones like CentOS, Scientific Linux, White Box Enterprise Linux, Princeton University's PUIAS project, etc. I didn't care any more, since CentOS perfectly met all my server needs.
Following the disastrous announcement of the CentOS project, I had a discussion with my compatriot Michael Kofler, a Linux guru who has published a series of excellent books on our favorite operating system, and who has migrated from CentOS to Oracle Linux for the Linux ad administration courses he teaches at the University of Graz. We were not in our first discussion on this subject, as the CentOS project was already accumulating a series of rather worrying delays for version 8 updates. In comparison, Oracle Linux does not suffer from these structural problems, so I kept this option in a corner of my head.
A problematic reputationOracle suffers from a problematic reputation within the free software community, for a variety of reasons. It was the company that ruined OpenOffice and Java, put the hook on MySQL and let Solaris sink. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been the center of his name because of his unhinged support for Donald Trump. As for the company's commercial policy, it has been marked by a notorious aggressiveness in the hunt for patents.
On the other hand, we have free and free apps like VirtualBox, which run perfectly on millions of developer workstations all over the world. And then the very discreet Oracle Linux , which works perfectly and without making any noise since 2006, and which is also a free and free operating system.
Install Oracle LinuxFor a first test, I installed Oracle Linux 7.9 and 8.3 in two virtual machines on my workstation. Since it is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux-compliant clone, the installation procedure is identical to that of RHEL and CentOS, with a few small details.
An indestructible kernel?
Normally, I never care about banner ads that scroll through graphic installers. This time, the slogan Free to use, free to download, free to update. Always still caught my attention.
Oracle Linux provides its own Linux kernel newer than the one provided by Red Hat, and named Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK). This kernel is installed by default and replaces older kernels provided upstream for versions 7 and 8. Here's what it looks like oracle Linux 7.9.
$ uname -a Linux oracle-el7 5.4.17-2036.100.6.1.el7uek.x86_64 #2 SMP Thu Oct 29 17:04:48 PDT 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/LinuxWell-crafted packet depositsAt first glance, the organization of official and semi-official package filings seems much clearer and better organized than under CentOS. For details, I refer you to the respective explanatory pages for the 7.x and 8.x versions.
Well-structured documentationLike the organization of deposits, Oracle Linux's documentation is worth mentioning here, because it is simply exemplary. The main index refers to the different versions of Oracle Linux, and from there, you can access a whole series of documents in HTML and PDF formats that explain in detail the peculiarities of the system and its day-to-day management. As I go along with this documentation, I discover a multitude of pleasant little details, such as the fact that Oracle packages display metadata for security updates, which is not the case for CentOS packages.
Migrating from CentOS to Oracle LinuxThe Switch your CentOS systems to Oracle Linux web page identifies a number of reasons why Oracle Linux is a better choice than CentOS when you want to have a company-grade free as in free beer operating system, which provides low-risk updates for each version over a decade. This page also features a script that transforms an existing CentOS system into a two-command Oracle Linux system on the fly.
centos2ol.shSo I tested this script on a CentOS 7 server from Online/Scaleway.
# curl -O https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos2ol.sh # chmod +x centos2ol.sh # ./centos2ol.shThe script grinds about twenty minutes, we restart the machine and we end up with a clean Oracle Linux system. To do some cleaning, just remove the deposits of saved packages.
# rm -f /etc/yum.repos.d/*.repo.deactivatedMigrating a CentOS 8.x server?At first glance, the script only predicted the migration of CentOS 7.9 to Oracle Linux 7.9. On a whim, I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the page, asking if support for CentOS 8.x was expected in the near future.
centos2ol.shA very nice exchange of emails ensued with a guy from Oracle, who patiently answered all the questions I asked him. And just twenty-four hours later, he sent me a link to an Oracle Github repository with an updated version of the script that supports the on-the-fly migration of CentOS 8.x to Oracle Linux 8.x.
So I tested it with a cool installation of a CentOS 8 server at Online/Scaleway.
# yum install git # git clone https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol.git # cd centos2ol/ # chmod +x centos2ol.sh # ./centos2ol.shAgain, it grinds a good twenty minutes, and at the end of the restart, we end up with a public machine running oracle Linux 8.
ConclusionI will probably have a lot more to say about that. For my part, I find this first experience with Oracle Linux rather conclusive, and if I decided to share it here, it is that it will probably solve a common problem to a lot of admins of production servers who do not support their system becoming a moving target overnight.
Post Scriptum for the chilly puristsFinally, for all of you who want to use a free and free clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without selling their soul to the devil, know that Springdale Linux is a solid alternative. It is maintained by Princeton University in the United States according to the principle WYGIWYG (What You Get Is What You Get ), it is provided raw de-cluttering and without any documentation, but it works just as well.
Writing this documentation takes time and significant amounts of espresso coffee. Do you like this blog? Give the editor a coffee by clicking on the cup.
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Dec 21, 2020 | distrowatch.com
• And what about Oracle Linux? (by Microlinux on 2020-12-21 08:11:33 GMT from France)
If you want a free-as-in-beer RHEL clone, you have two options: Oracle Linux or Springdale/PUIAS. My company's currently moving its servers to OL, which is "CentOS done right". Here's a blog article about the subject:
Currently Rocky Linux is not much more than a README file on Github and a handful of Slack (ew!) discussion channels.
Each version of OL is supported for a 10-year cycle. Ubuntu has five years of support. And Debian's support cycle (one year after subsequent release) is unusable for production servers.
9 • @Jesse on CentOS: (by dragonmouth on 2020-12-21 13:11:04 GMT from United States)
"There is no rush and I recommend waiting a bit for the dust to settle on the situation before leaping to an alternative. "
For private users there may be plenty of time to find an alternative. However, corporate IT departments are not like jet skis able to turn on a dime. They are more like supertankers or aircraft carriers that take miles to make a turn. By the time all the committees meet and come to some decision, by the time all the upper managers who don't know what the heck they are talking about expound their opinions and by the time the CentOS replacement is deployed, a year will be gone. For corporations, maybe it is not a time to PANIC, yet, but it is high time to start looking for the O/S that will replace CentOS.
"This looks like the vendor equivalent..." (by Ricardo on 2020-12-21 18:06:49 GMT from Argentina)
[Red Hat looks like ]... of a cartoon character sawing off the tree branch they are sitting on."
Jesse, I couldn't have articulated it better. I'm stealing that phrase :)
Cheers and happy holidays to everyone!
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Dec 09, 2020 | centosfaq.org
Is Oracle A Real Alternative To CentOS?Home " CentOS " Is Oracle A Real Alternative To CentOS? December 8, 2020 Frank Cox CentOS 33 CommentsIs Oracle a real alternative to CentOS ? I'm asking because genuinely don't know; I've never paid any attention to Oracle's Linux offering before now.
But today I've seen a couple of the folks here mention Oracle Linux and I see that Oracle even offers a script to convert CentOS 7 to Oracle. Nothing about CentOS 8 in that script, though.
https://linux.oracle.com/switch/ CentOS /
That page seems to say that Oracle Linux is everything that CentOS was prior to today's announcement.
But someone else here just said that the first thing Oracle Linux does is to sign you up for an Oracle account.
So, for people who know a lot more about these things than I do, what's the downside of using Oracle Linux versus CentOS? I assume that things like epel/rpmfusion/etc will work just as they do under CentOS since it's supposed to be bit-for-bit compatible like CentOS was. What does the "sign up with Oracle" stuff actually do, and can you cancel, avoid, or strip it out if you don't want it?
Based on my extremely limited knowledge around Oracle Linux, it sounds like that might be a go-to solution for CentOS refugees.
But is it, really?
Karl Vogel says: December 9, 2020 at 3:05 am
Gianluca Cecchi says: December 9, 2020 at 3:30 am... ... ..
Go to https://linux.oracle.com/switch/CentOS/ , poke around a bit, and you end up here:
https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-downloads.htmlI just went to the ISO page and I can grab whatever I like without signing up for anything, so nothing's changed since I first used it.
... ... ...
[snip]
Only to point out that while in CentOS (8.3, but the same in 7.x) the situation is like this:
[g.cecchi@skull8 ~]$ ll /etc/redhat-release /etc/CentOS-release
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 30 Nov 10 16:49 /etc/CentOS-release lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Nov 10 16:49 /etc/redhat-release -> CentOS-release
[g.cecchi@skull8 ~]$[g.cecchi@skull8 ~]$ cat /etc/CentOS-release CentOS Linux release 8.3.2011
in Oracle Linux (eg 7.7) you get two different files:
$ ll /etc/redhat-release /etc/oracle-release -rw-r–r– 1 root root 32 Aug 8 2019 /etc/oracle-release -rw-r–r– 1 root root 52 Aug 8 2019 /etc/redhat-release$ cat /etc/redhat-release Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.7 (Maipo)$ cat /etc/oracle-release Oracle Linux Server release 7.7This is generally done so that sw pieces officially certified only on upstream enterprise vendor and that test contents of the redhat-release file are satisfied. Using the lsb_release command on an Oracle Linux 7.6 machine:
# lsb_release -a LSB Version: :core-4.1-amd64:core-4.1-noarch Distributor ID: OracleServer Description: Oracle Linux Server release 7.6 Release: 7.6 Codename: n/a #Gianluca
Rainer Traut says: December 9, 2020 at 4:18 am
Rainer Traut says: December 9, 2020 at 4:26 amAm 08.12.20 um 18:54 schrieb Frank Cox:
Yes, it is better than CentOS and in some aspects better than RHEL:
– faster security updates than CentOS, directly behind RHEl
– better kernels than RHEL and CentOS (UEKs) wih more features
– free to download (no subscription needed):
https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html
– free to use:
https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-8.html
– massive amount of extra packages and full rebuild of EPEL (same link): https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-8.html
Hi,
Am 08.12.20 um 19:03 schrieb Jon Pruente:
KVM is a subscription feature. They want you to run Oracle VM Server for x86 (which is based on Xen) so they can try to upsell you to use the Oracle Cloud. There's other things, but that stood out immediately.Oracle Linux FAQ (PDF): https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/027617.pdf
There is no subscription needed. All needed repositories for the oVirt based virtualization are freely available.
Rainer Traut says: December 10, 2020 at 4:40 am
Am 09.12.20 um 17:52 schrieb Frank Cox:
I'll try to answer best to my knowledge.
- No Account needed.
Niki Kovacs says: December 10, 2020 at 10:22 amI have an oracle account but never used it for/with Oracle linux. There are oracle communities where you need an oracle account: https://community.oracle.com/tech/apps-infra/categories/oracle_linux
Ljubomir Ljubojevic says: December 10, 2020 at 12:53 pmLe 10/12/2020 à 17:18, Frank Cox a écrit :
That's it. I know Oracle's history, but I think for Oracle Linux, they may be much better than their reputation. I'm currently fiddling around with it, and I like it very much. Plus there's a nice script to turn an existing CentOS installation into an Oracle Linux system.
Cheers,
Niki
--
Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l'église – 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : [email protected] Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12Johnny Hughes says: December 10, 2020 at 4:10 pmThere is always Springdale Linux made by Princeton University: https://puias.math.ias.edu/
Niki Kovacs says: December 12, 2020 at 11:29 amAm 10.12.20 um 19:53 schrieb Ljubomir Ljubojevic:
I did a conversion of a test webserver from C8 to Springdale. It went smoothly.
Frank Cox says: December 12, 2020 at 11:52 amLe 08/12/2020 à 18:54, Frank Cox a écrit :
I spent the last three days experimenting with it. Here's my take on it: https://blog.microlinux.fr/migration-CentOS-oracle-linux/
tl;dr: Very nice if you don't have any qualms about the company.
Cheers,
Niki
--
Microlinux – Solutions informatiques durables 7, place de l'église – 30730 Montpezat Site : https://www.microlinux.fr Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr Mail : [email protected] Tél. : 04 66 63 10 32
Mob. : 06 51 80 12 12Peter Huebner says: December 15, 2020 at 5:07 amThat's a really excellent article, Nicholas. Thanks ever so much for posting about your experience.
Am Dienstag, den 15.12.2020, 10:14 +0100 schrieb Ruslanas Gžibovskis:
According to the Oracle license terms and official statements, it is "free to download, use and share. There is no license cost, no need for a contract, and no usage audits."
Recommendation only: "For business-critical infrastructure, consider Oracle Linux Support." Only optional, not a mandatory requirement. see: https://www.oracle.com/linux
No need for such a construct. Oracle Linux can be used on any production system without the legal requirement to obtain a extra commercial license. Same as in CentOS.
So Oracle Linux can be used free as in "free-beer" currently for any system, even for commercial purposes. Nevertheless, Oracle can change that license terms in the future, but this applies as well to all other company-backed linux distributions.
--
Peter Huebner
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Dec 6, 2010 | PCWorld
Oracle will port its Enterprise Linux distribution to Sun's Sparc processor, a move that could help it compete better against IBM and Hewlett-Packard in the high-end server business.
CEO Larry Ellison made the disclosure in response to a question about Oracle's Linux strategy at the company's Sparc systems launch last Thursday.
"We think Sparc will become clearly the best chip for running Oracle software. At that point we'd be nuts not to move Oracle Enterprise Linux there. We're a ways away, but I think that's definitely going to happen," Ellison said.
It's likely to happen in "the T4, T5 timeframe," he said, referring to the next two versions of Sun's Sparc processor. Oracle just released the Sparc T3 in September and the T4 isn't expected for a year or so.
Customers who buy Oracle's x86 servers today can run both Solaris and Oracle Enterprise Linux, but for Oracle's Sparc systems, Solaris is the only supported OS.
"Some customers have run Linux on Sparc, but it's mostly in the high-performance computing market and it's not a supported environment," said IDC analyst Jean Bozman.
That puts Oracle at odds with IBM and HP, whose customers can run both Unix and Linux on those companies' high-end servers.
"You have both HP and IBM ... being able to offer their customers Linux and their proprietary Unix on the same hardware, and that gives them additional opportunities for customers running virtual environments," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64.
IBM customers, for example, can take a single Power7 system and run Linux, AIX and IBM's System i software under a common hypervisor. "In the world of virtualized data centers, being able to run all your major OS environments on your major hardware platform gives end users a little bit more flexibility," Brookwood said.
Linux was Oracle's preferred OS before it acquired Sun. Ellison now calls Solaris "the leading OS on the planet," but he knows some customers want a choice. He wants that choice to be among Oracle products, however, not among different vendors.
"We want [customers] thinking, 'Should I go with Sparc or should I go with x86? Should I run it on Solaris or should I run it on Linux?' End of discussion," Ellison said. "We don't want them thinking, 'Should I move from Sparc to Power or Solaris to AIX.' We want to give them choice within our own family of products."
Ellison also introduced a new category of support, called Gold Standard Services, for customers who are willing to run their Oracle systems with exactly the configuration Oracle suggests.
Oracle will test each new software upgrade and big fix against the Gold configurations in its labs, Ellison said. That should allow it to guarantee higher levels of uptime for customers, he suggested.
The first "gold configurations" will be for the big integrated systems Oracle has announced recently -- the Exadata Database Machine, the Exalogic Elastic Cloud and the Sparc Supercluster.
It expects to include partner products too. "We're going to have IBM, Dell and Cisco join in and create those Gold Standard configurations," Ellison said. He didn't give any pricing information and Oracle didn't respond to a request for more details.
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"Red Hat on Wednesday released version 6 of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution. 'RHEL 6 is the culmination of 10 years of learning and partnering,' said Paul Cormier, Red Hat's president of products and technologies, in a webcast announcing the launch. Cormier positioned the OS both as a foundation for cloud deployments and a potential replacement for Windows Server. 'We want to drive Linux deeper into every single IT organization. It is a great product to erode the Microsoft Server ecosystem,' he said. Overall, RHEL 6 has more than 2,000 packages, and an 85 percent increase in the amount of code from the previous version, said Jim Totton, vice president of Red Hat's platform business unit. The company has added 1,800 features to the OS and resolved more than 14,000 bug issues."
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Yahoo! Finance
Oracle Corp. snapped up computer server and software maker Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.4 billion Monday, trumping rival IBM Corp.'s attempt to buy one of Silicon Valley's best known -- and most troubled -- companies.
... ... ...
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, predicted the combination will create a "systems and software powerhouse" that "redefines the industry, redrawing the boundaries that have frustrated the industry's ability to solve." Among other things, he predicted Oracle will be able to offer its customers simpler computing solutions at less expensive prices by drawing upon Sun's technology.
... ... ...
Yet Oracle says it can run Sun more efficiently. It expects the purchase to add at least 15 cents per share to its adjusted earnings in the first year after the deal closes. The company estimated Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun will contribute more than $1.5 billion to Oracle's adjusted profit in the first year and more than $2 billion in the second year.If Oracle can hit those targets, Sun would yield more profit than the combined contributions of three other major acquisitions -- PeopleSoft Inc., Siebel Systems Inc. and BEA Systems -- that cost Oracle a total of more than $25 billion.
A deal with Oracle might not be plagued by the same antitrust issues that could have loomed over IBM and Sun, since there is significantly less overlap between the two companies. Still, Oracle could be able to use Sun's products to enhance its own software.
Oracle's main business is database software. Sun's Solaris operating system is a leading platform for that software. The company also makes "middleware," which allows business computing applications to work together. Oracle's middleware is built on Sun's Java language and software.
Calling Java the "single most important software asset we have ever acquired," Ellison predicted it would eventually help make Oracle's middleware products generate as much revenue as its database line does.
Sun's takeover is a reminder that a few missteps and bad timing can cause a star to come crashing down.
Sun was founded in 1982 by men who would become legendary Silicon Valley figures: Andy Bechtolsheim, a graduate student whose computer "workstation" for the Stanford University Network (SUN) led to the company's first product; Bill Joy, whose work formed the basis for Sun's computer operating system; and Stanford MBAs Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy.
Sun was a pioneer in the concept of networked computing, the idea that computers could do more when lots of them were linked together. Sun's computers took off at universities and in the government, and became part of the backbone of the early Internet. Then the 1990s boom made Sun a star. It claimed to put "the dot in dot-com," considered buying a struggling Apple Computer Inc. and saw its market value peak around $200 billion.
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- 2. Steps to Get You Started
- 2.1. Upgrade or Install?
- 2.2. Is Your Hardware Compatible?
- 2.3. Do You Have Enough Disk Space?
- 2.4. Can You Install Using the CD-ROM or DVD?
- 2.4.1. Alternative Boot Methods
- 2.4.2. Making an Installation Boot CD-ROM
- 2.5. Preparing for a Network Installation
- 2.5.1. Preparing for FTP and HTTP installation
- 2.5.2. Preparing for an NFS install
- 2.6. Preparing for a Hard Drive Installation
- 3. System Specifications List
- 4. Installing on Intel® and AMD Systems
- 4.1. The Graphical Installation Program User Interface
- 4.1.1. A Note about Virtual Consoles
- 4.2. The Text Mode Installation Program User Interface
- 4.2.1. Using the Keyboard to Navigate
- 4.3. Starting the Installation Program
- 4.3.1. Booting the Installation Program on x86, AMD64, and Intel® 64 Systems
- 4.3.2. Booting the Installation Program on Itanium Systems
- 4.3.3. Additional Boot Options
- 4.4. Selecting an Installation Method
- 4.5. Installing from DVD/CD-ROM
- 4.5.1. What If the IDE CD-ROM Was Not Found?
- 4.6. Installing from a Hard Drive
- 4.7. Performing a Network Installation
- 4.8. Installing via NFS
- 4.9. Installing via FTP
- 4.10. Installing via HTTP
- 4.11. Welcome to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- 4.12. Language Selection
- 4.13. Keyboard Configuration
- 4.14. Enter the Installation Number
- 4.15. Disk Partitioning Setup
- 4.16. Advanced Storage Options
- 4.17. Create Default Layout
- 4.18. Partitioning Your System
- 4.18.1. Graphical Display of Hard Drive(s)
- 4.18.2. Disk Druid's Buttons
- 4.18.3. Partition Fields
- 4.18.4. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
- 4.18.5. Adding Partitions
- 4.18.6. Editing Partitions
- 4.18.7. Deleting a Partition
- 4.19. x86, AMD64, and Intel® 64 Boot Loader Configuration
- 4.19.1. Advanced Boot Loader Configuration
- 4.19.2. Rescue Mode
- 4.19.3. Alternative Boot Loaders
- 4.19.4. SMP Motherboards and GRUB
- 4.20. Network Configuration
- 4.21. Time Zone Configuration
- 4.22. Set Root Password
- 4.23. Package Group Selection
- 4.24. Preparing to Install
- 4.24.1. Prepare to Install
- 4.25. Installing Packages
- 4.26. Installation Complete
- 4.27. Itanium Systems - Booting Your Machine and Post-Installation Setup
- 4.27.1. Post-Installation Boot Loader Options
- 4.27.2. Booting Red Hat Enterprise Linux Automatically
- 5. Removing Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- 6. Troubleshooting Installation on an Intel® or AMD System
- 6.1. You are Unable to Boot Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- 6.1.1. Are You Unable to Boot With Your RAID Card?
- 6.1.2. Is Your System Displaying Signal 11 Errors?
- 6.2. Trouble Beginning the Installation
- 6.2.1. Problems with Booting into the Graphical Installation
- 6.3. Trouble During the Installation
- 6.3.1.
No devices found to install Red Hat Enterprise LinuxError Message- 6.3.2. Saving Traceback Messages Without a Diskette Drive
- 6.3.3. Trouble with Partition Tables
- 6.3.4. Using Remaining Space
- 6.3.5. Other Partitioning Problems
- 6.3.6. Other Partitioning Problems for Itanium System Users
- 6.3.7. Are You Seeing Python Errors?
- 6.4. Problems After Installation
- 6.4.1. Trouble With the Graphical GRUB Screen on an x86-based System?
- 6.4.2. Booting into a Graphical Environment
- 6.4.3. Problems with the X Window System (GUI)
- 6.4.4. Problems with the X Server Crashing and Non-Root Users
- 6.4.5. Problems When You Try to Log In
- 6.4.6. Is Your RAM Not Being Recognized?
- 6.4.7. Your Printer Does Not Work
- 6.4.8. Problems with Sound Configuration
- 6.4.9. Apache-based
httpdservice/Sendmail Hangs During Startup- 7. Driver Media for Intel® and AMD Systems
- 7.1. Why Do I Need Driver Media?
- 7.2. So What Is Driver Media Anyway?
- 7.3. How Do I Obtain Driver Media?
- 7.3.1. Creating a Driver Diskette from an Image File
- 7.4. Using a Driver Image During Installation
- 8. Additional Boot Options for Intel® and AMD Systems
- 9. The GRUB Boot Loader
- 9.1. Boot Loaders and System Architecture
- 9.2. GRUB
- 9.2.1. GRUB and the x86 Boot Process
- 9.2.2. Features of GRUB
- 9.3. Installing GRUB
- 9.4. GRUB Terminology
- 9.4.1. Device Names
- 9.4.2. File Names and Blocklists
- 9.4.3. The Root File System and GRUB
- 9.5. GRUB Interfaces
- 9.5.1. Interfaces Load Order
- 9.6. GRUB Commands
- 9.7. GRUB Menu Configuration File
- 9.7.1. Configuration File Structure
- 9.7.2. Configuration File Directives
- 9.8. Changing Runlevels at Boot Time
- 9.9. Additional Resources
- 9.9.1. Installed Documentation
- 9.9.2. Useful Websites
- 9.9.3. Related Books
- 10. Additional Resources about Itanium and Linux
- IV. Common Tasks
- 23. Upgrading Your Current System
- 23.1. Determining Whether to Upgrade or Re-Install
- 23.2. Upgrading Your System
- 24. Activate Your Subscription
- 24.1. RHN Registration
- 24.1.1. Provide a Red Hat Login
- 24.1.2. Provide Your Installation Number
- 24.1.3. Connect Your System
- 25. An Introduction to Disk Partitions
- 25.1. Hard Disk Basic Concepts
- 25.1.1. It is Not What You Write, it is How You Write It
- 25.1.2. Partitions: Turning One Drive Into Many
- 25.1.3. Partitions within Partitions - An Overview of Extended Partitions
- 25.1.4. Making Room For Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- 25.1.5. Partition Naming Scheme
- 25.1.6. Disk Partitions and Other Operating Systems
- 25.1.7. Disk Partitions and Mount Points
- 25.1.8. How Many Partitions?
- V. Basic System Recovery
- 26. Basic System Recovery
- 26.1. Common Problems
- 26.1.1. Unable to Boot into Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- 26.1.2. Hardware/Software Problems
- 26.1.3. Root Password
- 26.2. Booting into Rescue Mode
- 26.2.1. Reinstalling the Boot Loader
- 26.3. Booting into Single-User Mode
- 26.4. Booting into Emergency Mode
- 27. Rescue Mode on POWER Systems
- 27.1. Special Considerations for Accessing the SCSI Utilities from Rescue Mode
- VI. Advanced Installation and Deployment
- 28. Kickstart Installations
- 28.1. What are Kickstart Installations?
- 28.2. How Do You Perform a Kickstart Installation?
- 28.3. Creating the Kickstart File
- 28.4. Kickstart Options
- 28.4.1. Advanced Partitioning Example
- 28.5. Package Selection
- 28.6. Pre-installation Script
- 28.6.1. Example
- 28.7. Post-installation Script
- 28.7.1. Examples
- 28.8. Making the Kickstart File Available
- 28.8.1. Creating Kickstart Boot Media
- 28.8.2. Making the Kickstart File Available on the Network
- 28.9. Making the Installation Tree Available
- 28.10. Starting a Kickstart Installation
- 29. Kickstart Configurator
- 29.1. Basic Configuration
- 29.2. Installation Method
- 29.3. Boot Loader Options
- 29.4. Partition Information
- 29.4.1. Creating Partitions
- 29.5. Network Configuration
- 29.6. Authentication
- 29.7. Firewall Configuration
- 29.7.1. SELinux Configuration
- 29.8. Display Configuration
- 29.8.1. General
- 29.8.2. Video Card
- 29.8.3. Monitor
- 29.9. Package Selection
- 29.10. Pre-Installation Script
- 29.11. Post-Installation Script
- 29.11.1. Chroot Environment
- 29.11.2. Use an Interpreter
- 29.12. Saving the File
- 30. Boot Process, Init, and Shutdown
- 30.1. The Boot Process
- 30.2. A Detailed Look at the Boot Process
- 30.2.1. The BIOS
- 30.2.2. The Boot Loader
- 30.2.3. The Kernel
- 30.2.4. The
/sbin/initProgram- 30.3. Running Additional Programs at Boot Time
- 30.4. SysV Init Runlevels
- 30.4.1. Runlevels
- 30.4.2. Runlevel Utilities
- 30.5. Shutting Down
- 31. PXE Network Installations
- 31.1. Setting up the Network Server
- 31.2. PXE Boot Configuration
- 31.2.1. Command Line Configuration
- 31.3. Adding PXE Hosts
- 31.3.1. Command Line Configuration
- 31.4. TFTPD
- 31.4.1. Starting the
tftpServer- 31.5. Configuring the DHCP Server
- 31.6. Adding a Custom Boot Message
- 31.7. Performing the PXE Installation
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Available exclusively for Oracle Unbreakable Linux Basic and Premier support customers, the Oracle Management Pack for Linux provides an integrated and cost-effective solution for complete Linux server lifecycle management. Based on Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, the Oracle Management Pack for Linux delivers comprehensive provisioning, patching, monitoring and administration capabilities via a single, web-based user interface-the Enterprise Manager Console, significantly reducing the complexity and cost associated with managing Linux operating system environments.Using these rich Linux management features along with the complete Oracle Enterprise Manager product set, customers can take advantage of enterprise-scale service level management, automated change and configuration management, and comprehensive system and application performance management. Key Features
- Many-As-One Management: Group Management and ReportingDatasheet (PDF) January 2007
- Bare-metal provisioning of Linux servers Press Release January 2007
- Detailed configuration information collection and analysis
- Lights-out and ad hoc Linux operating system patching
- Out-of-box availability and performance monitoring
- Advanced monitoring and event management features (such as Notifications, Corrective Actions, Dashboards, etc.)
- Centralized Linux server administration
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And now, it seems, after ten years at the company, Cox is leaving Red Hat:
I will be departing Red Hat mid January having handed in my notice. I'm not going to be spending more time with the family, gardening or other such wonderous things. I'm leaving on good terms and strongly supporting the work Red Hat is doing.
I've been at Red Hat for ten years as contractor and employee and now have an opportunity to get even closer to the low level stuff that interests me most. Barring last minute glitches I shall be relocating to Intel (logically at least, physically I'm not going anywhere) and still be working on Linux and free software stuff.
I know some people will wonder what it means for Red Hat engineering. Red Hat has a solid, world class, engineering team and my departure will have no effect on their ability to deliver.
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Linux Format
A lazy sysadmin is a good sysadmin. Time spent in finding more-efficient shortcuts is time saved later on for that ongoing project of "reading the whole of the internet", so try Juliet Kemp's 10 handy tips to make your admin life easier...
- Cache your password with ssh-agent
- Speed up logins using Kerberos
- screen: detach to avoid repeat logins
- screen: connect multiple users
- Expand Bash's tab completion
- Automate your installations
- Roll out changes to multiple systems
- Automate Debian updates
- Sanely reboot a locked-up box
- Send commands to several PCs
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September 9, 2008 | http://itmanagement.earthweb.com
A few weeks ago, when I wrote that, "forced to choose, the average FOSS-based business is going to choose business interests over FOSS [free and open source software] every time," many people, including Mathew Aslett and Matt Assay, politely accused me of being too cynical. Unhappily, you only have to look at the relations between Red Hat and Fedora, the distribution Red Hat sponsors, during the recent security crisis for evidence that I might be all too accurate.
That this evidence should come from Red Hat and Fedora is particularly dismaying. Until last month, most observers would have described the Red Hat-Fedora relationship as a model of how corporate and community interests could work together for mutual benefit.
Although Fedora was initially dismissed as Red Hat's beta release when it was first founded in 2003, in the last few years, it had developed laudatory open processes and become increasingly independent of Red Hat. As Max Spevack, the former chair of the Fedora Board, said in 2006, the Red Hat-Fedora relationship seemed a "good example of how to have a project that serves the interests of a company that also is valuable and gives value to community members."
Yet it seems that, faced with a problem, Red Hat moved to protect its corporate interests at the expense of Fedora's interests and expectations as a community -- and that Fedora leaders were as surprised by the response as the general community.
Outline of a crisis
What happened last month is still unclear. My request a couple of weeks ago to discuss events with Paul W. Frields, the current Fedora Chair, was answered by a Red Hat publicist, who told me that the official statements on the crisis were all that any one at Red Hat or Fedora was prepared to say in public -- a response so stereotypically corporate in its caution that it only emphasizes the conflict of interests.
However, the Fedora announcements mailing list gave the essentials. On August 14, Frields sent out a notice that Fedora was "currently investigating an issue in the infrastructure systems." He warned that the entire Fedora site might become temporarily unavailable and warned that users should "not download or update any additional packages on your Fedora systems." As might be expected, the cryptic nature of this corporate-sounding announcement caused considerable curiosity, both within and without Fedora, with most people wanting to know more.
A day later, Frield's name was on another notice, saying that the situation was continuing, and pleading for Fedora users to be patient. A third notice followed on August 19, announcing that some Fedora services were now available, and providing the first real clue to what was happening when a new SSH fingerprint was released.
It was only on August 22 that Frields was permitted to announce that, "Last week we discovered that some Fedora servers were illegally accessed. The intrusion into the servers was quickly discovered, and the servers were taken offline . . . .One of the compromised Fedora servers was a system used for signing Fedora packages. However, based on our efforts, we have high confidence that the intruder was not able to capture the passphrase used to secure the Fedora package signing key."
Since then, plans for changing security keys have been announced. However, as of September 8, the crisis continues, with Fedora users still unable to get security updates or bug-fixes. Three weeks without these services might seem trivial to Windows users, but for Fedora users, like those of other GNU/Linux distribution, many of whom are used to daily updates to their system, the crisis amounts to a major disruption of service.
A conflict of cultures
From a corporate viewpoint, Red Hat's close-lipped reaction to the crisis is understandable. Like any company based on free and open source software, Red Hat derives its income from delivering services to customers, and obviously its ability to deliver services is handicapped (if not completely curtailed) when its servers are compromised. Under these circumstances, the company's wish to proceed cautiously and with as little publicity as possible is perfectly natural.
The problem is that, in moving to defend its own credibility, Red Hat has neglected Fedora's. While secrecy about the crisis may be second nature to Red Hat's legal counsel, the FOSS community expects openness.
In this respect, Red Hat's handling of the crisis could not contrast more strongly with the reaction of the community-based Debian distribution when a major security flaw was discovered in its openssl package last May. In keeping with Debian's policy of openness, the first public announcement followed hard on the discovery, and included an explanation of the scope, what users could do, and the sites where users could find tools and instructions for protecting themselves.
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August 22, 2008, redhat.com
Last week Red Hat detected an intrusion on certain of its computer systems and took immediate action. While the investigation into the intrusion is on-going, our initial focus was to review and test the distribution channel we use with our customers, Red Hat Network (RHN) and its associated security measures. Based on these efforts, we remain highly confident that our systems and processes prevented the intrusion from compromising RHN or the content distributed via RHN and accordingly believe that customers who keep their systems updated using Red Hat Network are not at risk. We are issuing this alert primarily for those who may obtain Red Hat binary packages via channels other than those of official Red Hat subscribers.
In connection with the incident, the intruder was able to get a small number of OpenSSH packages relating only to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (i386 and x86_64 architectures only) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86_64 architecture only) signed. As a precautionary measure, we are releasing an updated version of these packages and have published a list of the tampered packages and how to detect them.
To reiterate, our processes and efforts to date indicate that packages obtained by Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers via Red Hat Network are not at risk.
We have provided a shell script which lists the affected packages and can verify that none of them are installed on a system:
The script has a detached GPG signature from the Red Hat Security Response Team (key) so you can verify its integrity:
This script can be executed either as a non-root user or as root. To execute the script after downloading it and saving it to your system, run the command:
bash ./openssh-blacklist-1.0.shIf the script output includes any lines beginning with "ALERT" then a tampered package has been installed on the system. Otherwise, if no tampered packages were found, the script should produce only a single line of output beginning with the word "PASS", as shown below:
bash ./openssh-blacklist-1.0.sh PASS: no suspect packages were found on this systemThe script can also check a set of packages by passing it a list of source or binary RPM filenames. In this mode, a "PASS" or "ALERT" line will be printed for each filename passed; for example:
bash ./openssh-blacklist-1.0.sh openssh-4.3p2-16.el5.i386.rpm PASS: signature of package "openssh-4.3p2-16.el5.i386.rpm" not on blacklistRed Hat customers who discover any tampered packages, need help with running this script, or have any questions should log into the Red Hat support website and file a support ticket, call their local support center, or contact their Technical Account Manager.
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About: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd. Among others, it offers support for on-demand disk buffering, reliable syslog over TCP, SSL, TLS, and RELP, writing to databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and many more), email alerting, fully configurable output formats (including high-precision timestamps), the ability to filter on any part of the syslog message, on-the-wire message compression, and the ability to convert text files to syslog. It is a drop-in replacement for stock syslogd and able to work with the same configuration file syntax.
Changes: IPv6 addresses could not be specified in forwarding actions, because they contain colons and the colon character was already used for some other purpose. IPv6 addresses can now be specified inside of square brackets. This is a recommended update for all v2-stable branch users.
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InternetNews
Oracle claims that it continues to pick up users for its Linux offering and now is set to add new clustering capabilities to the mix.
So how is Oracle doing with its Oracle Unbreakable Linux? Pretty well. According to Monica Kumar, senior director Linux and open source product marketing at Oracle, there are now 2,000 customers for Oracle's Linux. Those customers will now be getting a bonus from Oracle: free clustering software.
Oracle's Clusterware software previously had only been available to Oracle's Real Application Clusters (RAC) customers, but now will also be part of the Unbreakable Linux support offering at no additional cost.
Clusterware is the core Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) software offering that enables the grouping of individual servers together into a cluster system. Kumar explained to InternetNews.com that the full RAC offering provides additional components beyond just Clusterware that are useful for managing and deploying Oracle databases on clusters.
The new offering for Linux users, however, does not necessarily replace the need for RAC.
"We're not saying that this [Clusterware] replaces RAC," Kumar noted. "We are taking it out of RAC for other general purpose uses as well. Clusterware is general purpose software that is part of RAC but that isn't the full solution."
The Clusterware addition to the Oracle Unbreakable Linux support offering is expected by Kumar to add further impetus for users to adopt Oracle's Linux support program.
Oracle Unbreakable Linux was first announced in October 2006 and takes Red Hat's Enterprise Linux as a base. To date, Red Hat has steadfastly denied on its quarterly investor calls that Oracle's Linux offering has had any tangible impact on its customer base.
In 2007, Oracle and Red Hat both publicly traded barbs over Yahoo, which apparently is a customer of both Oracle's Unbreakable Linux as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
"We can't comment on them [Red Hat] and what they're saying," Kumar said. "I can tell you that we're seeing a large number of Oracle customers who were running on Linux before coming to Unbreakable Linux. It's difficult to say if they're moving all of their Linux servers to Oracle or not."
That said, Kumar added that Linux customers are coming to Oracle for more than just running Oracle on Linux, they're also coming with other application loads as well.
"Since there are no migration issues we do see a lot of RHEL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux] customers because it's easy for them to transition," Kumar claimed.
Ever since Oracle's Linux first appeared, Oracle has claimed that it was fully compatible with RHEL and it's a claim that Kumar reiterated.
"In the beginning, people had questions about how does compatibility work, but we have been able to address all those questions," Kumar said. "In the least 15 months, Oracle has proved that we're fully compatible and that we're not here to fork Linux but to make it stronger."
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Learn how to work with RBAC in SELinux, and see how the SELinux policy, kernel, and userspace work together to enforce the RBAC and tie users to a type enforcement policy.
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cgipaf is a combination of three CGI programs.
- passwd.cgi, which allow users to update their password,
- viewmailcfg.cgi, which allows users to view their current mail configuration,
- mailcfg.cgi, which updates the mail configuration.
All programs use PAM for user authentication. It is possible to run a script to update SAMBA passwords or NIS configuration when a password is changed. mailcfg.cgi creates a .procmailrc in the user's home directory. A user with too many invalid logins can be locked. The minimum and maximum UID can be set in the configuration file, so you can specify a range of UIDs that are allowed to use cgipaf.
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The original sales estimates for Ubuntu computers was around 1% of the total sales, or about 20,000 systems annually. Have the expectations been met so far? Will Dell ever release sales figures for Ubuntu systems?
The program so far is meeting expectations. Customers are certainly showing their interest and buying systems preloaded with Ubuntu, but it certainly won't overtake Microsoft Windows anytime soon. Dell has a policy not to release sales numbers, so I don't expect us to make Ubuntu sales figures available publicly.
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CNET News.com
Szulik, who took over as CEO from Bob Young in 1999 just a few months after its initial public offering, said he's stepping down because of family health issues.
"For the last nine months, I've struggled with health issues in my family," and that priority couldn't be balanced with work, Szulik said in an interview. "This job requires a 7x24, 110 percent commitment."
Szulik, who remains chairman of the board, praised Whitehurst in a statement, saying he's a "hands-on guy who will be a strong cultural fit at Red Hat" and "a talented executive who has successfully led a global technology-focused organization at Delta."
On a conference call, Szulik said Whitehurst stood "head and shoulders" above other candidates interviewed in a recruiting process. He was a programmer earlier in his career and runs four versions of Linux at home, he said.
Moreover, Szulik said he wasn't satisfied with more traditional tech executives who were interviewed.
"What we encountered was in many cases was a lack of understanding of open-source software development and of our model," he said. During the interview, he added about the tech industry candidates, "When you take them out of the big buildings, without the imprimatur of Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle, or HP around them, they just didn't hold up."
The surprise move was announced as the leading Linux seller announced results for its third quarter of fiscal 2008. Its revenue increased 28 percent to $135.4 million and net income went up 12 percent to $20.3 million, or 10 cents per share. The company also raised estimates for full-year results to revenue of $521 million to $523 million and earnings of about 70 cents per share.
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InformationWeek
.. In fact, Coekaerts has to say this often because Oracle is widely viewed as an opportunistic supporter of Linux, taking Red Hat's product, stripping out its trademarks, and offering it as its own. Coekaerts says what's more important is that Oracle is a contributor to Linux. It contributed the cluster file system and hasn't really generated a competing distribution.
Yet, in some cases, there is an Oracle distribution. Most customers Coekaerts deals with get their Linux from Red Hat and then ask for Oracle's technical support in connection with the Oracle database. But Oracle has been asked often enough to supply Linux with its applications or database that it makes available a version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with the Red Hat logos and labels stripped out. Oracle's version of Linux has a "cute" penguin inserted and is optimized to work with Oracle database applications. It may also have a few Oracle-added "bug fixes," Coekaerts says.
The bug fixes, however, lead to confusion about Coekaert's relatively simple formulation of Oracle enterprise support, not an Oracle fork. And that confusion stems from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's attention-getting way of introducing Unbreakable Linux at the October 2006 Oracle OpenWorld.
When enterprise customers call with a problem, Oracle's technical support finds the problem and supplies a fix. If it's a change in the Linux kernel, the customer would normally have to wait for the fix to be submitted to kernel maintainers for review, get merged into the kernel, and then get included in an updated version of an enterprise edition from Red Hat or Novell. Such a process can take up to two years, observers inside and outside the kernel process say.
The pace of bug fixes "is the most serious problem facing the Linux community today," Ellison explained during an Oracle OpenWorld keynote a year ago.
When Oracle's Linux technical support team has a fix, it gives that fix to the customer without waiting for Red Hat's uptake or the kernel process itself, Ellison said.
Red Hat's Berman argues that when it comes to the size of the problem, Oracle makes too much of too little.
When Red Hat learns of bugs, it retrofits the fixes into its current and older versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. That's one of Red Hat's main engineering investments in Linux, Berman said in an interview.
Coekaerts responds, "There are disagreements on what is considered critical by the distribution vendors and us or our customers."
Berman acknowledges that several judgment calls are involved. Some bugs affect only a few enterprise customers. They may apply to an old RHEL version. "Three or four times a year" a proposed fix may not be deemed important enough to undergo this retrofit, he says.
But Coekaerts told InformationWeek: "Oracle customers encounter this problem more than three or four times a year. I cannot give a number, it tends to vary. But it does happen rather frequently."
Berman counters that when Oracle changes Red Hat's tested code with its own bug fixes, it breaks the certification that Red Hat offers on its distribution, so it's no longer guaranteed to work with other software. "Oracle claims they will patch things for a customer. That's a fork," he says.
What Red Hat calls a fork is what Oracle calls a "one-off fix to customers at the time of the problem. … If the customer runs version 5 but Red Hat is at version 8, and the customer runs into a bug, does he want to go into [the next release with a fix] version 9? Likely not. He wants to minimize the amount of change. Oracle will fix the customer's problem in version 5…" Coekaerts says.
I think it's fair to characterize what Oracle does as technical support, not a fork. There's no attempt to sustain the aberration through a succession of Linux kernels offered to the general public as an alternative to the mainstream kernel.
But the Oracle/Red Hat debate defines a gray area in a fast-moving kernel development process. Bugs that affect many users get addressed through the kernel process or the Red Hat and Novell (NSDQ: NOVL) retrofits. That still may not always cover a problem for an individual user or a set of users sitting on a particular piece of aging hardware or caught in a specific hardware/software configuration.
If Oracle fixes some of these problems, I say more power to it.
But if they are problems that are isolated in nature or limited in scope, as I suspect they are, that makes them something less than Ellison's "most serious problem facing the Linux community today."
Ellison needed air cover to take Red Hat's product and do what he wanted with it. In the long run, he's probably increasing the use of Linux in the enterprise and keeping Red Hat on its toes as a support organization. That's less benefit than claimed, but still something.
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Yet Another Setup Tool. Yast helps make system administration easier by providing a single utility for configuring and maintaining Linux systems. The version of Yast available here is modified to work with all Enterprise Linux distributions including Enterprise Linux and SuSE.
Special note to Oracle Management Pack for Linux users:
- Enterprise Linux and RHEL Users: Download the Yast rpm. The em-wrapper scripts are included and do not need to be downloaded separately.
- Suse Enterprise Linux Users: Download the em-wrapper scripts rpm and an additional remote access module for Yast.
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Oracle hasn't "talked about how our Linux is better than anyone else's Linux. Oracle has not forked and has no desire to fork Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintain its own version. We don't differentiate on the distribution because we use source code provided by Red Hat to produce Oracle Enterprise Linux and errata. We don't care whether you run Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Enterprise Linux from Oracle and we'll support you in either case because the two are fully binary- and source-compatible. Instead, we focus on the nature and the quality of our support and the way we test Linux using real-world test cases and workloads."
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data=writeback While the writeback option provides lower data consistency guarantees than the journal or ordered modes, some applications show very significant speed improvement when it is used. For example, speed improvements can be seen when heavy synchronous writes are performed, or when applications create and delete large volumes of small files, such as delivering a large flow of short email messages. The results of the testing effort described in Chapter 3 illustrate this topic.
When the writeback option is used, data consistency is similar to that provided by the ext2 file system. However, file system integrity is maintained continuously during normal operation in the ext3 file system.
In the event of a power failure or system crash, the file system may not be recoverable if a significant portion of data was held only in system memory and not on permanent storage. In this case, the filesystem must be recreated from backups. Often, changes made since the file system was last backed up are inevitably lost.
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August 7, 2007 | KernelTrap
Submitted by Jeremy on August 7, 2007 - 9:26am.
In a recent lkml thread, Linus Torvalds was involved in a discussion about mounting filesystems with the
noatimeoption for better performance, "'noatime,data=writeback' will quite likely be *quite* noticeable (with different effects for different loads), but almost nobody actually runs that way."He noted that he set O_NOATIME when writing git, "and it was an absolutely huge time-saver for the case of not having 'noatime' in the mount options. Certainly more than your estimated 10% under some loads."
The discussion then looked at using the
relatimemount option to improve the situation, "relative atime only updates the atime if the previous atime is older than the mtime or ctime. Like noatime, but useful for applications like mutt that need to know when a file has been read since it was last modified."Ingo Molnar stressed the significance of fixing this performance issue, "I cannot over-emphasize how much of a deal it is in practice. Atime updates are by far the biggest IO performance deficiency that Linux has today. Getting rid of atime updates would give us more everyday Linux performance than all the pagecache speedups of the past 10 years, _combined_." He submitted some patches to improve
relatime, and noted aboutatime:"It's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: 'For every file that is read from the disk, lets do a ... write to the disk! And, for every file that is already cached and which we read from the cache ... do a write to the disk!'"
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31 Jul 2007 | www.ibm.com/developerworks
If you manage systems and networks, you need Expect.
More precisely, why would you want to be without Expect? It saves hours common tasks otherwise demand. Even if you already depend on Expect, though, you might not be aware of the capabilities described below.
Expect automates command-line interactions
You don't have to understand all of Expect to begin profiting from the tool; let's start with a concrete example of how Expect can simplify your work on AIX® or other operating systems:
Suppose you have logins on several UNIX® or UNIX-like hosts and you need to change the passwords of these accounts, but the accounts are not synchronized by Network Information Service (NIS), Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), or some other mechanism that recognizes you're the same person logging in on each machine. Logging in to a specific host and running the appropriate
passwdcommand doesn't take long-probably only a minute, in most cases. And you must log in "by hand," right, because there's no way to script your password?Wrong. In fact, the standard Expect distribution (full distribution) includes a command-line tool (and a manual page describing its use!) that precisely takes over this chore.
passmass(see Resources) is a short script written in Expect that makes it as easy to change passwords on twenty machines as on one. Rather than retyping the same password over and over, you can launchpassmassonce and let your desktop computer take care of updating each individual host. You save yourself enough time to get a bit of fresh air, and multiple opportunities for the frustration of mistyping something you've already entered.This
passmassapplication is an excellent model-it illustrates many of Expect's general properties:
- It's a great return on investment: The utility is already written, freely downloadable, easy to install and use, and saves time and effort.
- Its contribution is "superficial," in some sense. If everything were "by the book"-if you had NIS or some other domain authentication or single sign-on system in place-or even if login could be scripted, there'd be no need for
passmass. The world isn't polished that way, though, and Expect is very handy for grabbing on to all sorts of sharp edges that remain. Maybe Expect will help you create enough free time to rationalize your configuration so that you no longer need Expect. In the meantime, take advantage of it.- As distributed,
passmassonly logs in by way oftelnet,rlogin, orslogin. I hope all current developerWorks readers have abandoned these protocols forssh, whichpassmasssdoes not fully support.- On the other hand, almost everything having to do with Expect is clearly written and freely available. It only takes three simple lines (at most) to enhance
passmassto respectsshand other options.You probably know enough already to begin to write or modify your own Expect tools. As it turns out, the
passmassdistribution actually includes code to log in by means ofssh, but omits the command-line parsing to reach that code. Here's one way you might modify the distribution source to putsshon the same footing astelnetand the other protocols:
Listing 1. Modified passmass fragment that accepts the -ssh argument
...
} "-rlogin" {
set login "rlogin"
continue
} "-slogin" {
set login "slogin"
continue
} "-ssh" {
set login "ssh"
continue
} "-telnet" {
set login "telnet"
continue
...
In my own code, I actually factor out more of this "boilerplate." For now, though, this cascade of tests, in the vicinity of line #100 of
passmass, gives a good idea of Expect's readability. There's no deep programming here-no need for object-orientation, monadic application, co-routines, or other subtleties. You just ask the computer to take over typing you usually do for yourself. As it happens, this small step represents many minutes or hours of human effort saved.
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This is will not affect the current Linux distributions (Suse 9, 10 and RHEL 4.x) as they forked the kernel and essentially develop it as a separate tree.
But it will affect any future Red Hat or Suse distribution (Suse 11 and RHEL 6 respectively).
How it will fair in comparison with Solaris 10 remains to be seen:
The main idea of CFS's design can be summed up in a single sentence: CFS basically models an "ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU" on real hardware.
Ideal multi-tasking CPU" is a (non-existent) CPU that has 100% physical power and which can run each task at precise equal speed, in parallel, each at 1/n running speed. For example: if there are 2 tasks running then it runs each at exactly 50% speed.
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Of course if you go with a cloned RHEL, while you get the code goodies, you don't get Red Hat's support. Various Red Hat clone distributions, such StartCom AS-5, CentOS, and White Box Enterprise Linux, are built from Red Hat's source code, which is freely available at the Raleigh, NC company's FTP site. The "cloned" versions alter or otherwise remove non-free packages within the RHEL distribution, or non-redistributable bits such as the Red Hat logo.
StartCom Enterprise Linux AS-5 is specifically positioned as a low-cost, server alternative to RHEL 5. This is typical of the RHEL clones.
These distributions, which usually don't offer support options, are meant for expert Linux users who want Red Hat's Linux distribution, but don't feel the need for Red Hat's support.
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With RHEL 5, Red Hat has shuffled its SKUs around a bit-what had previously been the entry-level ES server version is now just called Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This version is limited to two CPU sockets, and is priced, per year, at $349 for a basic support plan, $799 for a standard support plan and $1,299 for a premium support plan.
This version comes with an allowance for running up to four guest instances of RHEL. You can run more than that, as well as other operating systems, but only four get updates from, and may be managed through, RHN (Red Hat Network). We thought it was interesting how RHN recognized the difference between guests and hosts on its own and tracked our entitlements accordingly.
What had been the higher-end, AS version of RHEL is now called Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform. This version lacks arbitrary hardware limitations and allows for an unlimited number of RHEL guest instances per host. RHEL's Advanced Platform edition is priced, per year, at $1,499 with a standard support plan and $2,499 with a premium plan.
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There is more to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) than Xen. I, for one, think people will develop a real taste for YUM (Yellow dog Updater Modified), an automatic update and package installer/remover for RPM systems.YUM has already been used in the last few Fedora Core releases, but RHEL4 uses the up2date package manager. RHEL5 will use YUM 3.0. Up2date is used as a wrapper around YUM in RHEL5. Third-party code repositories, prepared directories or websites that contain software packages and index files, will also make use of the Anaconda-YUM combination.
... ... ...
Using YUM makes it much easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using RPM. Some of its features include:
- Multiple repositories
- Simple config file
- Correct dependency calculation
- Fast operation
- RPM-consistent behavior
- comps.xml group support, including multiple repository groups
- Simple interface
RHEL5 moves the entire stack of tools which install and update software to YUM. This includes everything from the initial install (through Anaconda) to host-based software management tools, like system-config-packages, to even the updating of your system via Red Hat Network (RHN). New functionality will include the ability to use a YUM repository to supplement the packages provided with your in-house software, as well as plugins to provide additional behavior tweaks.
YUM automatically locates and obtains the correct RPM packages from repositories. It frees you from having to manually find and install new applications or updates. You can use one single command to update all system software, or search for new software by specifying criteria.
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SeekingAlpha
Eric Savitz submits: Red Hat customers are mulling their options. But they can be bought.
That's one of the takeaways from a fascinating report today from Pacific Crest's Brendan Barnicle based on a survey he did of 118 enterprise operating system buyers, including 86 Red Hat support customers. The goal of the survey was to see how Linux users are responding to the new offerings from Oracle (ORCL) and the Microsoft (MSFT)/Novell (NOVL) partnership.
Reading the results of the study, you reach several conclusions. One, most customers are seriously considering the new offerings. Two, Red Hat can hold on to most of them, if they are willing to cut prices far enough. And three, customers seem a little more interested in the Microsoft/Novell offerings than those from Oracle.Here are a few details:
- Asked whether they would consider switching from their current Linux support provider to Oracle, 26% said they definitely would not; 29% said they definitely would consider it. For Microsoft/Novell, 17% would definitely not consider switching, 27% definitely would consider it.
- Asked who they would chose as a provider if they were to switch Linux support, 29% of Red Hat customers named Microsoft/Novell; 20% named Oracle.
- The survey asked, what price discount would your current provide have to offer to keep you as a customer. Among Red Hat customers, 31% said they would need a discount of 50%-74%; 37% said they want a discount of 25%-49%; 27% said they would stay for a discount of 1%-24%.
- The survey asked, how important would a discount be in order to keep you as a customer? Among Red Hat customers, 64% said "very important." Just 3% said "not at all important."
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We have suffered from that image in the past. And some of our competitors have played up the fact that the JBoss guys are behaving like a sect. When, in fact, if you look at the composition of our community, we have an order of magnitude more committers than our direct open-source competitors.
But the perception is still there. Bull even said something about that perception. And we'd been thinking about opening up the governance. So when Bull provided us with a great study case, we decided to put the pedal to the metal. But make no mistake this is not going to be a free-for-all. We care a lot about the quality of what gets committed. We invest very heavily in all our projects. We're serious about this so we expect the same level of seriousness from our collaborators.
There is going to be a hybrid model where there is an opening up of the governance. In terms of code contributions it's always been there. But now it's been made explicit instead of implicit and open to attacks of "closedness." JBoss has always been an open community, but we've hired most of our primary committers.
Well, you seem more willing to compromise and evolve your stance on things. Like SCA [Service Component Architecture]-initially you were against it, but it seems like you've changed your mind.
Well, yeah, the specific SCA stance today is there is no reason for us to be for or against it. If it plays out in the market, we'll support it. And I think Mark Little [a JBoss core developer] said it very well that the ESB implementations usually outlive standards.
So what you're seeing from us is mostly due to Mark Little's influence. Mark has been around in the standards arena and has seen all these standards come and go. So it's not about the standards, it's about our implementation in support of all these standards. And it's not our place to be waging a standards war. It's our place to implement and let the market decide and we'll follow the market.
So where I'll agree with you is that it's less of a dogmatic position in terms of perceived competition and more focus on what we do well, which is implementations.
Another thing is JBoss four years ago was very much Marc Fleury and the competitive stance against Sun and things like that. Today I don't do anything. In fact, I actively stay out in terms of not getting in the way of my guys.
So it's both a sign of maturity and of a more diverse organization. I'm representing more than leading the technical direction these days. And that's a very good thing.
You said you approached David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, to work at JBoss. What other types of developers are you interested in hiring?
Yeah, we did approach him. There is a lot of talent around the Web framework. One of the problems is it's a very fragmented community at a personal level. You have one guy and his framework. Though, this is not the case with Ruby on Rails. But there's a lot of innovation that's going on that would benefit from unification under a bigger distribution umbrella and bigger R&D umbrella. And I think JBoss/Red Hat is in a position to offer that. So we're always talking about new guys.
One of the things I like to do is talk to the core developers and say, "Where are you in terms of recruitment?" And we're talking to scripting guys. I think scripting is the next frontier as [Ruby on Rails] has showed. We have a unique opportunity of bringing under one big branded umbrella a diverse group of folks that today are doing excellent work, be it the scripting crowd, REST, Web framework, or the Faces, or the guys integrating with Seam. All of the work we're doing is going to take more people and we're always on the lookout for the right talent and the right fit.
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The goal of this IBM Redbook is to provide a technical planning reference for IT organizations large or small that are now considering a migration to Linux-based personal computers. For Linux, there is a tremendous amount of "how to" information available online that addresses specific and very technical operating system configuration issues, platform-specific installation methods, user interface customizations, etc. This book includes some technical "how to" as well, but the overall focus of the content in this book is to walk the reader through some of the important considerations and planning issues you could encounter during a migration project. Within the context of a pre-existing Microsoft Windows-based environment, we attempt to present a more holistic, end-to-end view of the technical challenges and methods necessary to complete a successful migration to Linux-based clients.
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I recently spent some time speaking with a popular Yankee Group analyst who covers the enterprise sector in the US, focusing in on open source and where the movement may go in the next few years.
Just to be clear, I differentiate, as most industry watchers do, between Linux and open source. While Linux is open source, the primary Linux distributors have caught on to how they need to position themselves for success and are starting to run their businesses just as any proprietary software company does.
Red Hat and SUSE make prime examples, realizing the path to long term success and revenue streams resided in proving themselves enterprise worthy to larger businesses and institutions, have shifted business models or been acquired by organizations with roots in the enterprise.
Her views, while not always popular in the open source community. are right on point if open source seeks widespread adoption and a permanent seat at the table for longer term financial success.
There are a few obstacles open source proponents need to accept and move forward on:
- It will be more costly for a company to migrate away from Windows to Linux, even in light of slightly reduced ongoing maintenance and improved security and uptime. While I have not always agreed that the costs are higher, having migrated corporate systems to Linux in the past, their research showed it to be true in many cases -- especially when migrating beyond standard web hosting and email systems. The costs are higher when factoring in re-certifying drivers, application integrity and training.
- To truly become entrenched as a viable financially-rewarding option (meaning open source companies make money and create jobs), a shift toward commercial software models is necessary. This does not mean forgoing open source, however, what it does mean is developing a structure for development, distribution, patching and support that passes muster with corporate IT managers who could be investing substantial amounts of money in open source.
What it boils down to is that while open source has definitely revolutionized software, and it is found internationally in companies large and small, businesses still pick software because it provides a solution not just because it is open source.
The fact that it is cheaper or free simply means the user will save money, but this does not win the favor of those buyers who could be injecting millions into open source projects rather than proprietary software makers.
I would use Firebird as a model. In an interview with Helen Borrie, forthcoming in my July column on SitePoint, she noted that since many Fortune 500 companies are using an open source database like Firebird speaks volumes to the maturing of their project and open source at large.
The reason as I see it, is due to the treatment of Firebird like an enterprise scale proprietary software project. They have a well managed developer community and active support lists, commercial offerings for support through partnerships with several companies, and commercial development projects for corporate clients.
If more open source projects looked at Borrie's team model and discipline in development and support, we just might see more penetration that attracts longer and more profitable contracts and work for those like us in the SitePoint community.
Comments
It will be more costly for a company to migrate away from Windows to Linux, even in light of slightly reduced ongoing maintenance and improved security and uptime.You mean relative to staying with Windows? Does this include recurring costs of Windows licensing / upgrades?
The costs are higher when factoring in re-certifying drivers, application integrity and training.On the drivers front, that assumes (if we're saying Linux cf. Windows) that systems need upgrades as frequently. There's generally less need to keep upgrading Linux, when used as a server.
Re application integrity, think thats very hard to research accurately - kind of a wooly comment that needs qualification.
On the training side, it's an interesting area where it's kind of like comparing Apples with Pears.
Windows generally hides administrators from much of what's really happening, so it's probably easier to train someone to the point where they're feeling confident but given serious problems, who do you turn to?
*Nix effectively exposes administrators to everything so more time is required to reach the point where sysadmins are confident. Once they reach that point though, they're typically capable of handling anything. The result is stable systems. I'd also argue that a single *Nix sysadmin is capable of maintaining a greater number of systems (scripts / automation etc.) although no figures to back that.
Firebird is an interesting example. The flip side of Firebirds way of doing things seems to be the Open Source "community" is largely unaware of it (compared to, say, MySQL).
Posted by: HarryF from phppatterns.com Jun 24th, 2004 @ 8:03 AM MDT
CommentYes - on costs - Linux was actually found to be more expensive in numerous cases compared to staying with Windows. This is unfortunate as I am a proponent of finding migration paths from Windows to Linux for stability and administration automation. However, the research did show the total cost of ownership eventually balances out, it simply is much more expensive at the outset than staying on a Windows upgrade path.
This survey (partially on site with staff and others via questionnaire) - 1000 companies with 5000 or more employees - found that they did have to certify drivers at the initial migration, certify all new disk images, provide training or certification to adhere to corporate policy, buy indemnification insurance, perform migrations, test, establish support contracts and finally, pay about a 15 percent premium when bringing in certified L:inux staff.
The benefit if the company decided to take the financial hit: over an extended period they experienced the benefits of Linux - uptime, experienced admins and flexibility of the platform.
Application integrity was ambiguous in the study - however - managers cited it constantly when trying to retire commercial Unix and move apps to Linux, needing certification that an entire applications runs exactly as before.
Perhaps it is time for the open source community to begin establishing central organizational points that act as clearinghouses - like Open Source Development labs does for Linux - to certify open source applications on a major scale.
Posted by: bwarrene from practicalapplications.net Jun 24th, 2004 @ 1:12 PM MDT
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