CentOS 7 released on x86_64

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-July/020393.html

by priteau • 12 years ago

207 120 12 years ago

lists.centos.org

freehunter• 12 years ago

Is there something notable about this beyond just a new version?

RHEL 7 was released on June 10[1], but many people (myself included) don't have a RedHat subscription and run CentOS, the 'community' edition of RedHat.

Up until today, CentOS 6.5 was the latest release... so I can start using CentOS 7 now and enjoy the benefits that RedHat introduced in RHEL 7. You can see that the delay before CentOS releases a community version of RHEL has been much improved in recent years in this Wikipedia chart[2].

Also, iirc, this is the first major CentOS release with the CentOS project more or less under RedHat's wing[3].

[1] http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2014/6/red-ha...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentOS#Versioning_and_releases

[3] http://www.infoworld.com/t/linux/red-hat-stamps-its-influenc...

loudmax• 12 years ago

CentOS/RHEL 7 uses systemd. That's a notable change. Also, LXC and docker should work out of the box. And xfs now instead of ext4 by default.

Release notes: http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS7

stock_toaster• 12 years ago

Major changes: http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS7#head-b02...

facorreia• 12 years ago

For a description of new features see:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterp...

priteau2• 12 years ago

You can go to https://git.centos.org which is hosting all the sources used to build the system. Of course for RPM packages that is only metadata, not the actual upstream software source.

justin662• 12 years ago

Just out of curiosity, since it sounds like you might know: on ubuntu I can do something like sudo apt-get source packagename and the system will just download the associated source code if a source repo is setup in the system's sources list. Does RHEL/CentOS have a similar capability?

priteau2• 12 years ago

Yes it does. "yumdownloader --source package_name" will download the source RPM. yumdownloader is part of the yum-utils package.

nailer5• 12 years ago

Woo. Have been using the RHEL 7 Amazon AMI images, and it's nice not to worry about shell scripts / custom supervisord stuff for your web services anymore.

My node app is deployed with a single `myapp.service` file thanks to systemd:

    [Service]
    ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node --harmony /var/www/myapp/server.js
    Restart=always
    User=nobody
    Group=nobody
    Environment=PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
    Environment=NODE_ENV=production

    [Install]
    WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then:

  iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3000

(since I run my app on a low port so it can run as nobody, and 3000 isn't visible to the outside)

  cp myapp.service /etc/systemd/system

  systemctl enable myapp.service

  systemctl start myapp.service

This has all the stuff you expect:

- Not restarting repeatedly if the app is bouncing up and down.

- I can see how it goes with `journalctl` which reads journald messages, and those messages come from a source called `myapp` rather than the old ancient syslog facilities (local0, uucp, lpd) which everyone just ignored in favour of grepping.

netcraft3• 12 years ago

that looks so much cleaner than init.d scripts. I have heard some people refer to systemd as not very linux-esque - can someone comment on what that might mean?

bitJericho• 12 years ago

http://boycottsystemd.org/

vezzy-fnord3• 12 years ago

Linux did kind of get the short end of the stick with System V initialization. BSD rc scripts are also written in shell, but much cleaner (particularly when you make use of rcorder(8) dependencies).

systemd's declarative unit file syntax is easier to reason with, but comes at the expense of having to memorize a ton of options and being fundamentally dependent on the toolbox provided to you by systemd, since you can't code your way out of unconventional corner cases as easily.

The unit file syntax isn't the reason people complain, though.

mackal4• 12 years ago

1) Lennart Poettering

2) MAH FREEDOMS!

There are technical reasons people don't like systemd that are valid, but usually the die hard anti-systemd people boil down to hating Lennart Poettering and complaining about how the US Constitution must some where say they never have to use systemd.

There are some valid concerns (big scope, bloat, feature creep, etc) but they really haven't come to fruition, although are still valid concerns.

At the end of the day, without much effort or trouble of switching to systemd from OpenRC, my system boots faster, which is great.

keeperofdakeys• 12 years ago

Systemd isn't just replacing the init process and service manager, it encompasses many other boot and session related features. As an example, Gnome now uses parts of systemd for session management (replacing consoleskit, and others). While there are workarounds, this means no one can really use any other init system besides systemd, or things won't work correctly.

This is what many people view un-unix like, a big dependency, that can't be replaced in the chain. The systemd developers also develop udev (which actually builds out of the same source tree as systemd), and there have been a few arguments about whether certain responsibilities are that of the kernel, or udev/userspace http://lwn.net/Articles/518942/, http://lwn.net/Articles/593676/. Systemd also touts its cgroup usage, though they view that they should be the only user of cgroups, since they are in a spot to "manage things properly" (which is partially true). (Some services have also started relying on systemd's cgroups to clean up orphan processes, which is bad for other init systems that don't do this).

So no one really hates how systemd works, just how its managed, and what it aims to do. If it were a simple init system and service manager, there would probably have been no arguments.

jftuga• 12 years ago

It looks like your node deployment is very clean. For your application, are you simply using npm and a package.json file?

nailer5• 12 years ago

Yes. I commit node_modules though.

jfindley2• 12 years ago

You could potentially register your application with firewalld to make the iptables part even more elegant - then the port would only be open when the service was running.

That said I'm somewhat on the fence about firewalld in a server context - the zones are really designed around mobile computing use-cases, and I'm not a fan of xml as a configuration language.

Alupis• 12 years ago

I gave CentOS 7 a spin last night (been waiting for the release!).

I installed it on VirtualBox (using a Windows host pc). I must say, my first impressions are that this is a very nice release.

They implemented the same new installer from Fedora, which I really like. It makes for 2 clicks (Language and Keyboard) and then it's installing in the background while you can setup your passwords and accounts. This makes for a very fast install.

The system just seems to feel "faster". I know that is completely objective, but mind you, I did not have the VirtualBox Guest Tools installed on the VM, and it still felt "native". I'm not sure what about it specifically feels faster, just everything I guess... especially booting.

eth0 was set to "ONBOOT=no" by default, which tripped me up for a half second (since all previous releases came with all adapters up). A quick config change and restart the network service, and up and running. I was surprised there was already update packages available, including a kernel update.

VirtualBox did not want to install it's Guest Additions/Tools on the VM, due to some change with "numa", from my understanding it's memory allocation related (could be wrong). In any event, I got the "struct mm_struct has no member named numa_next_reset" error.

Some digging around and I located this patch: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12638

Applied it to the VirtualBox src once it unpacked itself to the /opt directory. After the patch, the Virtualbox Tools compile ok and installed.

I have a lot more playing around to do this evening... but so far, happy to say, this is shaping up to be a great release.

nailer5• 12 years ago

Er 'low port' should be 'high port', ahem.

ck24• 12 years ago

How do you do "configtest" and "graceful" with systemd/systemctl

(trick question, you cannot, use old init.d scripts)

Shish2k• 12 years ago

How do you do "configtest" and "graceful" with old init.d scripts?

    # /etc/init.d/mysqld configtest
    Usage: /etc/init.d/mysqld {start|stop|status|restart|condrestart|try-restart|reload|force-reload}

    # /etc/init.d/mysqld graceful
    Usage: /etc/init.d/mysqld {start|stop|status|restart|condrestart|try-restart|reload|force-reload}

nailer5• 12 years ago

I'm not a systemd expert, but for configtest, you could add a 'Config' parameter and patch systemd to record the hash of each config file at start time. From then on, all .services, ever, that supplied their Config would be able to do a configtest and condrestart. DRY.

What's 'graceful'? A particular signal?

jrslack4• 12 years ago

trick question, you cannot

  [Unit]
  Description=The Apache HTTP Server
  After=remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target
  [Service]
  Type=notify
  EnvironmentFile=/etc/sysconfig/httpd
  ExecStart=/usr/sbin/httpd $OPTIONS -DFOREGROUND
  ExecReload=/usr/sbin/httpd $OPTIONS -k graceful
  ExecStop=/usr/sbin/httpd $OPTIONS -k graceful-stop
  KillSignal=SIGCONT
  PrivateTmp=true
  [Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target

and 'apachectl configtest' or 'nginx -t' iirc

frio• 12 years ago

Why would I do a `configtest` with a thing that starts or stops a service in the first place? That's what `apachectl configtest` or whatever is for.

I wouldn't expect to go to Windows' list of services, right click one and run arbitrary commands either.

sliverstorm4• 12 years ago

512MB is the minimum memory requirement for CentOS-7

Well. Dangit. Grumble grumble...

topbanana2• 12 years ago

There are quite a few choices of lightweight Linux distro. This isn't aimed at that market

sliverstorm4• 12 years ago

Oh, I know, but I've been happily using CentOS 6 on my 128MB box, and was looking forward to CentOS 7.

dimitar• 12 years ago

"CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by Red Hat." ?

It used to be from a "Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor". Something changed at some point.

justin662• 12 years ago

Redhat employs some of the CentOS people now, although their build process still seems to be pretty separate.

andcase• 12 years ago

They got official support is what changed.

http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2014/1/red-ha...

nandhp• 12 years ago

Back in January there was a "[blank] is joining [blank]!" type of announcement.

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-Janua...

topbanana2• 12 years ago

I've never used RHEL. It doesn't seem prohibitively expensive. What advantages are there over Centos, other than support?

TallGuyShort4• 12 years ago

Nicer default wallpaper

dtech• 12 years ago

CentOS is a repackaged RHEL, with all the Red hat IP (logo's, artwork etc.) stuff stripped out. So it's almost the same distribution.

As such, the only advantage RHEL probably offers next to support are slightly faster updates.

jerven3• 12 years ago

And actually being able to call redhat can be very useful once in while when you are having a really bad day.

derekp73• 12 years ago

The support goes both directions. It is a way to get the organization you work for to indirectly donate to a variety of free software projects, and your company also gets the contractual safety net that they want.

Ologn• 12 years ago

Yes. If you have RHEL installed on hundreds (or thousands) of HP/Dell servers at a Fortune 1000 company, you'll have someone to call if the kernel on some production machine keeps dumping.

I can see a bootstrapped company using CentOS, or a company running on angel/seed money. Once a company gets Series A funding though, you have to start wondering why they wouldn't upgrade to Red Hat. The message from the company basically is they'd prefer the sysadmin to spend their nights and weekends figuring out problems, instead of making a small payment for support service. This is the type of position you want to run, not walk from.

On a job interview, a good question for a sysadmin to ask an interviewer when they say "do you have any questions to ask me?", is, "Will I support any machines, operating systems or applications that are not under a vendor support contract?" Inevitably there will be one or two legacy machines or applications, but if you get a laundry list in response, run.

csus• 12 years ago

The main benefit is support. Both in package updates and longevity.

Also you may want things like their software collections (which have had a hard time making it into centos).

Cost can be a little much especially if you don't need support other than package updates.

Also workstation in the minimum if you are going to do any development as desktop doesn't come with dev tools as far as I remember.

SEJeff2• 12 years ago

They'll prioritize fixing your bugs with their product management team, but that is basically support. You pay for RHEL for support, that is all it ever was for.

The code is 100% open source.

qstyk• 12 years ago

Am I missing something? This was submitted two hours ago, yet the images (CentOS-6.5-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso) are the same that I had downloaded on 6/20/2014. The release notes list the new image names, but they don't appear to be pushed out to the mirrors.

pgl• 12 years ago

Check here: http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/7/isos/x86_64/

There's quite a few mirrors with images. However, they do recommend torrenting the images:

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-July/...

kureikain• 12 years ago

I always scare of CentOS/Fedora. Whenever I updated something, it will be very old packages. Leading to use 3rd repo, and without any kind of document, the next sysadmin will be in trouble. I used to install Gearman on Centos 5.9 and it was a nightmare: the original 3rd repo didn't have gearman and I have to use other repo which is complain about PHP-Common conflicting. Remi and webtactic did help at the end.

It's hard to keep Centos Update to date with latest software IMHO.

I'm not an SysAdmin but I think the idea of APT and YUM is same but why it's so hard/trouble to use YUM?

TallGuyShort4• 12 years ago

Perhaps it's what you're familiar with and the intended use case. I personally can't stand the way APT won't let you override certain behavior. RHEL / CentOS have always favored stability over being bleeding-edge, and in my experience EPEL provides enough newer software to make the system usable for most cases, although if you're wanting the latest frameworks, etc.. I can see that being incompatible with your needs. I have very rarely had any problems with broken dependencies in Red Hat repositories except for the occasional 15-minute hiccup. SUSE seems to have more problems, but still has never been enough of a problem to make me question using it in production.

derekp73• 12 years ago

I think the third-party frameworks issue can be solved with LXC / Docker. If app x requires library y and supporting utility z, this can all be put into a container without having to update the OS's versions of y and z.

jamescun• 12 years ago

Fedora is the RedHat "testbed" and has regular updates similar to the debian/ubuntu universes.

One of the core features of CentOS/RedHat/Scientific Linux/etc is their longterm support and package freeze (excluding critical security updates). If you are reliant on a different version of software from the default repositories (both newer or older) then you are encouraged to build and package them yourself. Additionally in the RedHat-derivative universe there is the EPEL package repository which contains a wider range of software and is kept more readily updated in addition to being maintained by the Fedora Project (essentially RedHat).

devicenull• 12 years ago

The issue is not the package manager, the issue is the repositories you're enabling. See https://iuscommunity.org/pages/TheSafeRepoInitiative.html for details.

veeti• 12 years ago

Huh? Fedora is probably the closest you get to a bleeding edge distro without going rolling release.

rplnt• 12 years ago

Only if you upgrade regularly. Support is very short and you'll get stuck without updates.

heroprotagonist2• 12 years ago

Besides using third party repos, you can also use Red Hat Software Collections for the official Red Hat offering of more recent packages (requires RHN, not available for CentOS).

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Softwa...

As another approach to mitigating dependency hell, you might consider using Docker containers for your services.

sciurus• 12 years ago

Software Collections are available for CentOS.

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/SCL

ck24• 12 years ago

I can learn to adjust to systemd

But wow I cannot stand grub2, what a mess.

rando289• 12 years ago

Agreed. Config files 100 times bigger and more complicated. Why? Go to it's home page and find a link that says "differences between GRUB Legacy and GRUB" which simply goes to the grub .97 manual which says absolutely nothing about differences between the 2 versions. They really care about their users, that's for sure.

mercurial• 12 years ago

On Debian you usually stick to changing options in /etc/default/grub and don't touch anything in /etc/grub.d.

scurvy3• 12 years ago

Aye, and now grub2 requires a 1MB partition to boot a GPT labelled disk on a BIOS (non-EFI) system. Well, looks like we're out of primary partitions. Adios swap.

tacticus• 12 years ago

GPT labelled disks don't have a limit on the number of primary partitions

reality_czech• 12 years ago

grub2 is pretty much the textbook definition of "overdesigned." All it has to do is transfer control to the OS... that's it. But somehow it grew code to parse filesystems, set up graphical user interfaces, load modules, and do half a dozen things that it really has no reason to do. Half the time this hairball won't even boot after you change something, because you forgot to run the correct script to refresh the other scripts, or you moved something on the disk.

Just install elilo and enjoy having a system that actually works.

btbuilder• 12 years ago

I must say that compared with the CentOS 6 release CentOS 7 is a breath of fresh air. I'll assume for the moment that this is because of Red Hat's involvement in the process. Specically the availability of build scripts and the openness of communication throughout the process.

The delay in releasing CentOS 6 and the delays in updates had me worried about the future of CentOS.

greglindahl• 12 years ago

The CentOS team completely re-did their build system at the start of CentOS 6, and that was cause of the delay. This build system still has nothing in common with Red Hat's build system, and it worked pretty well for CentOS 7!

pippop2• 12 years ago

I have loaded centos 7 onto laptop and I can't get into it its asking for localhost and password when I put it in it repeats

keithpeter2• 12 years ago

Post the link to the ISO you installed from.

pippop2• 12 years ago

Can't get into cent is 7

scurvy3• 12 years ago

Now there are 2 kernel boot parameters required to get old style "eth#" interface names. net.ifnames=0 and biosdevname=0

CentOS 6 only required biosdevname=0

ck24• 12 years ago

Thank you for this! I was going crazy trying to figure out how to get "eth0" back. Works perfect.

yum install net-tools is also a must

I think I've spent the first dozen hours with centos 7.0 just trying to get it to behave more like 6.5

Having to remember to run a script every time I edit grub configuration is annoying as hell too.

    grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

I mean that is so natural and easy to remember, lol - I had to make "update-grub" (like debian) an alias for it

stplsd• 12 years ago

Will I still be able to run commands like service mysqld start, etc?

CentOS 7 released on x86_64

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