Release For CentOS Linux 7 (1503 ) On X86_64)

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CentOS 4 Comments

Limiting the influence of the community to spectate and feedback seems less than I would expect. If community involvement in governance is to be improved, it needs to be seen to make a difference. OpenStack has ambassadors (https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Community/AmbassadorProgram) and elections to the 1/3 of the board from the community. This is probably too heavy for CentOS but some form of community representation with a genuine voice in governance would seem reasonable for an open source project.

However, with the board rules as defined in http://www.CentOS.org/about/governance/joining-the-project/, it is difficult for someone who is a user of CentOS as opposed to a developer to meet the merit criteria. The current CentOS board membership would benefit from more diversity and different outlooks to help identify changes which need further community input such as this one.

The challenge here is to find the appropriate people to help since many will be paid for delivering value to their companies rather than being paid to work on CentOS. Given their limited time, I do not feel that requiring operators to follow a development list is the right solution to encourage more interaction.

Tim

Release For CentOS Linux 7 (1503 ) On X86_64

Home » CentOS-Announce » Release For CentOS Linux 7 (1503 ) On X86_64
CentOS-Announce 93 Comments

We would like to announce the general availability of CentOS Linux 7
(1503) for 64 bit x86 compatible machines.

This is the second major release for CentOS-7 and is tagged as 1503. This build is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1

As always, read through the Release Notes at :
http://wiki.CentOS.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS7 – these notes contain important information about the release and details about some of the content inside the release from the CentOS QA team. These notes are updated constantly to include issues and incorporate feedback from the users.

– ——–

93 thoughts on - Release For CentOS Linux 7 (1503 ) On X86_64

  • We would like to announce the general availability of CentOS Linux 7
    (1503) for 64 bit x86 compatible machines.

    This is the second major release for CentOS-7 and is tagged as 1503. This build is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1

    As always, read through the Release Notes at :
    http://wiki.CentOS.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS7 – these notes contain important information about the release and details about some of the content inside the release from the CentOS QA team. These notes are updated constantly to include issues and incorporate feedback from the users.

    ——–

  • As a CentOS newbie, I’m not sure, will we still have CentOS 7.1 which derive from RHEL 7.1?
    or this is the new naming conversion for CentOS 7.

    Thanks!
    -Ryan

  • That was going to be my question as well. According to http://lists.CentOS.org/pipermail/CentOS-announce/2014-July/020393.html the convention (for the 7.0 release at least) says:

    “Numbering

    CentOS 7.0-1406 introduces a new numbering scheme that we want to further develop into the life of CentOS-7. The 0 component maps to the upstream realease, whose code this release is built from. The 1406
    component indicates the monthstamp of the code included in the release
    ( in this case, June 2014 ). By using a monthstamp we are able to respin and reissue updated media for things like container and cloud images, that are regularly refreshed, while still retaining a connection to the base distro version.”

    I would have assumed that this release would be “7.1.1503”, and the URL
    on at least one mirror has:

    http://mirror.fdcservers.net/CentOS/7.1.1503/

    Guess if that’s the new convention, I’ll need to keep my ISO files sorted out somehow, as this progression isn’t intuitive:

    CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD.iso CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1503.iso

    -Greg

  • Please take a look at the “Archived Versions”, and the Release Announcement:

    They both tell you that 7 (1503) is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 Sources. So, yes, this release, that you quoted in the Subject, is indeed exactly what you said.

    And yes, this is how we are now numbering CentOS releases for 7 and greater.

  • Isn’t that illogical ?

    If there is:-

    CentOS-7.0-1406-x86_64-DVD.iso

    then the next one should logically be named:-

    CentOS-7-1503-x86_64-DVD.iso

    assuming sub-version numbers have been abolished by CentOS.

    Jumbled confusion, like CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1503.iso, is messy and illogical.

    What is preventing CentOS adopting a simple, neat, tidy, sensible and logical approach ? For example:

    {major version}-{build number}-{architecture}-{media}.iso ?

    That is method I would use.

    Thank you.

  • Well, we are now using a new naming convention .. although, we have update /etc/cetnos-release/

    This naming convention was voted on by the CentOS Board and discussed on the CentOS-Devel mailing list. It is what we are using moving forward. Please become familiar with it,as we do not expect to change it again.

  • This was discussed on the CentOS-Devel mailing list and approved by the CentOS Board. It is what we are using in the future. I suggest you become familiar with it.

  • Can you please point me to the CentOS-devel thread that discussed changing the iso naming convention from CentOS-7.1-1503-x86_64-DVD.iso to CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1503.iso? I must have missed it because I saw no mention of this change until today.

    Peter
    —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—

  • Johnny Hughes wrote:

    Yes, it was discussed at great length on CentOS-devel. The core developers proposed a date-based versioning system which met with much opposition. I certainly wasn’t convinced by their arguments.

    You can call it what you like. I’ll still call it CentOS 7.1.

    Ron

  • as you should – the important thing is that we all know ( where ‘we’ is the community at large, the consumers and the SIGs ) all have a frame of reference that maps to the same target; different people have different goal posts – and if your’s involves a 7.1, please use it.

  • It’s not surprising, it’s stunningly annoying.

    Those of us who manage large installations of CentOS aren’t involved in the development list or the board (we don’t have time).

    I urge the CentOS board to reconsider such a large departure from upstream. And I urge them to reach out far beyond the devel-list for opinions as that is a distinct, and quite separate, base of thought.

    And, it’s not just a matter of “calling it 7.1, or whatever you like.” We have many scripts and operations based on determining the “version number”
    and if it is inconsistent with RHEL, and logic for that matter, it is more work for those who don’t need it.

    Yes, I’m whining. I get that. But I think I’m not alone.


    Matt Phelps System Administrator, Computation Facility Harvard – Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics mphelps@cfa.harvard.edu, http://www.cfa.harvard.edu

  • The first thread along these lines starts at http://lists.CentOS.org/pipermail/CentOS-devel/2014-June/010444.html

    It is a long thread, as you should know, since you participated in it.

    The key post in the thread, in my opinion, is at http://lists.CentOS.org/pipermail/CentOS-devel/2014-June/010944.html

    My takeaway is that the ISO name for 7.1406 was an aberration, and that this is the new paradigm going forward. But I’ll also reserve the right to be wrong.

  • Are you supposed to download an iso image, install it, then read that file before you know which upstream base minor number you got? In the whole long thread where this naming was supposedly ‘discussed’, I
    can’t find a single user agreeing that dropping the minor number reference out of the name was a sane thing to do.


    Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell@gmail.com

  • Yes I did, which is why I find it strange that making this particular change to the ISO name format is considered to have come from that thread. I don’t recall seeing that exact change discussed, but I coudl be wrong, it was a long thread and I probably didn’t read the whole thing in detail.

    I still don’t see anything in that post about changing the iso name as mentioned above. Do feel free to point out specifics to me.

    My point is that there was a claim by the board that this particular change was discussed extensively on the -devel list. If it was then it should be quite easy to point out the post(s) in the archives where this particular discussion tool place.

    Peter

  • If someone at CentOS says put your hand in the fire, a wise person will ignore that command.

    If someone (currently anonymous) at CentOS says abandon sub-version numbers and introduce an illogical ISOs naming structure, a wise person will ignore that command.

    A simple policy revision will make millions of CentOS users smile. No apologies or excuses necessary – just the change will satisfy everyone.

  • The addition of a date reference makes sense to allow and identify respins within the life of a minor rev, but…

    There were alternatives proposed, like:
    http://lists.CentOS.org/pipermail/CentOS-devel/2014-June/010940.html but I can’t see any ‘discussion’ about why the weird concept of using the minor .0 in the initial iso name but dropping it out of subsequent versions was better or chosen.

    I see the directory created on vault.CentOS.org is surprisingly sane, though, retaining the useful minor rev number.

  • So, in essence you’re saying that the builders of the OS that you use and trust for daily tasks are unwise, right? Sounds to me like you might want to use something different.

    It is impossible to satisfy everyone.

  • It is only confusing if you let it confuse you. I’ve been around this thing long enough to remember when the distribution ISO’s carried wonderful names like ‘seawolf-i386-disc1.iso’ (study a bit and you’ll get the joke). I’m just experiencing a bit of disbelief that people are getting hung up over the file’s name being the slightest bit unexpectedly different, that’s all.

    And my comment that ‘it is impossible to satisfy everyone’ is a bit of a USA idiom, typically quoted as “You can’t please anyone all the time, nor can you please everyone any time” or similar.

    The issue of the content of redhat-release was a serious and valid one that actually broke stuff; the ISO name being different from expected doesn’t break stuff. If the ISO name broke stuff, then that would be different, and it would have already been fixed.

  • No I am not as can be conspicuously seen in what I wrote. Lamar your introduction of non-relevant matters can not detract from the essential point I made:-

    (1) removing sub-version numbers is wrong; and

    (2) changing the ISO naming structure from
    {major version}-{sub-version}-{build number}-{architecture}-{media}.iso is an illogical unwise change because anyone looking at

    {major version}-{sub-version}

    instantly knows, for example, that is CentOS 7.1 whereas

    CentOS-7-1503-x86_64-DVD.iso

    is baffling and one is then required to build and maintain a translation table to convert ‘1503’ into CentOS 7.1. That is frankly bonkers.

    Creating confusion where there was originally none is essentially silly.

    How many times has Johnny and others asserted that CentOS is the same as RHEL ? More puzzling is the complete absence of logic for this detrimental removal of the sub-version number.

    I do not remember reading on this list any criticisms of the former, now abandoned, practise of using:-

    {major version}-{sub-version}-{build number}-{architecture}-{media}.iso

  • 1. What is the logically reason for this alleged “improvement” ?

    2. How are users of all types, from all around the world, benefiting from this change ?

    R.s.v.p.

  • I agree with all of this. I’m more neutral to these changes merely because I don’t rely as much on Linux as I did in the past. Still making change where there is no need for one is a bad practice. Changing of naming structure from self explanatory to obscure is not clever either.

    Here are examples of well known ones who do these (“wrong”) things:

    1. Microsoft: often re-shuffles names and locations of yet the same tools
    (making justifiable new Administrator certifications, and making Windows admins look smart as they learn by heart stupid things like new locations of tools…)

    2. Processor chip manufacturers with their chip notations (AMD was the first one who got me annoyed, even though I like them more than Intel)

    Somebody, continue the list.

    Does everybody think that CentOS with this change joins a good company (as I said I don’t care much, I’ll survive ;-)

    Valeri

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • That single sentence is the essence of the concern I share with others.

    I have always preferred AMD to Intel :-)

    Everyone makes mistakes, me too. Simply reverting the naming structure can be done without embarrassment. After all, we are all part of the same CentOS family.

  • That is a matter of opinion. In my opinion, assigning sub-version numbers to what was originally intended to be, by Red Hat, quarterly updates (almost Service Packs, if you will, much like SGI’s numbering of their Foundation and ProPack products for the Altix server line) is what is illogical. Of course, the updates aren’t quarterly any more, and other aspects of the versioning have morphed and changed over the years since the RHAS days (well, even back in certain branches of RHL 6.2, for that matter).

    So you could read ‘7.1’ as ‘version 7 service pack 1.’ My opinion is that sub-version numbers give a mistaken impression that the update number is a real ‘version’ when it was not originally so. Further, in reality the update number is meaningless for compatibility checks, as it is more than possible to have a fully updated CentOS x system that claims to be x.0 but has all the packages, save CentOS-release, of the latest x.y; further, it is easily possible to install the CentOS x.6
    CentOS-release package on a completely unpatched x.0 system, making the contents of andy of the /etc/*-release files not terribly useful for strict versioning.

    It is my opinion, although it’s not a vehement opinion, that beginning the x.y practice is what was illogical. But it was done, and it is over, and I have more important things to do than gripe over semantics such as that.

    I am not so easily confused by the new numbering; what the ISO is named is orthogonal to what it contains, at least in my mind.

    The assertion is that CentOS is functionally equivalent to the upstream product. It is not ‘the same as’ nor can it be and still remove the trademarked branding of the upstream release. It is binary compatible without being binary identical. And as the meaning of ‘binary compatible’ has also been hashed to death, I’ll not further clutter the traffic on this list about what it means. It’s easy enough to read the CentOS-devel archives to see for yourself.

  • Adding the date component means CentOS may release more than one iso per RH’s minor versions. There isn’t much of a consistent relationship between the RH release and the subsequent CentOS release other than ‘sometime later when it is ready’. So, given a set of CentOS isos or even just the most recent, how would you know which RH
    release it is based on? Download, install, and read the
    /etc/os-release file before finding out? Or look up some other source of the missing information?

  • Newsflash: they already are, just not in the main releases trees. Look in http://buildlogs.CentOS.org/rolling/7/isos/x86_64/

    I previously used the 20150228 CentOS 7 rolling Everything ISO to do a reinstall; worked great. Nice to not have to grab hundreds of MB of updates right out of the box. This was on the CentOS-Announce list, incidentally.

    Hmm, maybe the name of the directory it is in and the link in the release notes? I also notice that the rolling point in time images have the full four digit year as well as month and day, whereas the
    ‘functionally equivalent to a particular Red Hat update release’ image has a two digit year, the month, but no day.

  • Oh, one more minor point, and I know I’m probably in the minority here:
    for most of the cases where I use CentOS, I don’t actually care which RHEL release it is ‘based on.’ I just want ‘latest CentOS [567]’ for
    95% of my uses. Well, 5 not as much now, but definitely 6 and 7. I
    actually don’t even have a case in production right now that is strict release-number-bound, but I did have a couple at one point.

    So I don’t care which update the CentOS ISO most closely corresponds with; it’s CentOS, and the software I need to have work works, since it either works with or will soon work with latest RHEL. (the Dell Poweredge stuff, for instance, where I’m 100% fully updated CentOS 6 at the moment). Updates of course get vetted in testing first, but I try to not rely on software that is update-point-release-strict-number-bound. And if I were to need that kind of strict release number binding, that particular machine would probably get Scientific Linux installed, since they do backports of certain things to earlier releases and let you stay at a particular update level while getting certain other updates. Although there are changes in RHEL 7.1 that are challenging things in that respect; see the threads on the SL lists related to SL7x and EPEL, for instance.

    Of course, you can always trick out a release number bound setup by forcing a particular CentOS-release package to be the one that is installed, if it is a ‘paper’ requirement rather than a real requirement
    (which I have run into before).

    But I know others have other requirements; YMMV and all that. I’m just stating what the reality is for my uses at the moment.

  • Thank you for your considered response. If it is not an improvement, then there is no reason for the change, is there ?

    Whatever the original cause introducing sub-version numbering, that usage has become a clear progressive indicator of collections of updates within the major version.

    I image the vast majority of CentOS users will not risk doing non-standard updates on their production systems so your above concern is unlikely to occur.

    I can not look at something labelled CentOS 7.2169 and instantly know if it is CentOS 7.1, 7.5 or even CentOS 7.10. What’s the latest version of CentOS 6 ? Is it 6.32167 or 6.32782 or 6.32783 or should I be typing
    6.23783 instead ? Confusion is not clarity.

    If CentOS is “functionally equivalent” to RHEL then common sense must dictate that the sub-version numbers should be compatible too.

  • you guys sure get your panties in a bunch over something as silly as the iso file name.

    if you don’t like the name, rename it… sheesh.

  • The new version numbering is too.

    Because CentOS 7.1 7.2 etc do not exist. 7.1503 etc does. These are also dates so 6.23783 would never exist. Though assuming a valid date, the bigger number would be the latest (year first then month so it is sortable.)

    I don’t recall the thread or even where but I do remember a discussion that 7.1.1503 is not really semantic I think and potentially in itself confusing as you end up incrementing two numbers. The sub version becomes irrelevant as all the detail (point in time) lies with the date. The sub version becomes purely a remnant from RHEL with no specific purpose except to be a reminder.

    I disagree. It’s purely irrelevant in most cases.

    Though one thing I do agree on is how to tell (roughly) which sources the CentOS release is based on. In which case the sub version number would be useful for academic reasons. For instance the release notes don’t even mention RHEL 7.1 at all when I looked. Though you can usually match up the dates with the RHEL timeline so you can see when you’re about to receive hundreds of updates.

    So I can appreciate the concern somewhat on that regards. Maybe somewhere else needs to state it such as release notes and announcements (if those don’t already.)

    Jason

  • minor version vs rolling Everything – this implies that the origin base has one root – but thats not the case (pragmatically speaking). There is still a “rebase” or at least a incompatibility between the minor versions
    (as shown recently 7.0->7.1 for kernel modules) and stated in the list by Johnny (different context, for EL6):

    “As far as what kernel is designed for which release … every point
    release (minor version) will have its own kernel branch associated with
    it…”

    There exists more examples where this “borders” are important. So, breaking the borders between the minor releases will make the things more intransparent. Rolling it within a minor release is still great.

  • But only those on the devel list ever saw the discussion. Those of us whose job it is to be sysadmins, and run many systems, don’t tend to be on that list also.

    Had you, for example, made it release.subrelease.date (7.1.1503), it would have been less disruptive and annoying.

    mark

  • I’m not bothered so much by the actual name as by the justification of it having been discussed on the -devel list – where in fact pretty much all of the discussion was that the minor rev number was important and should stay in.

  • It’s not just the name of the ISO file. c.f. the VERSION_ID variable in
    /etc/os-release

  • In that particular place it is actually rather important, but that is orthogonal to the ISO name.

  • I agree, but this thread started off with a more general discussion of release/version numbering.

  • This is the key bit here – were not trying to break anything – we are trying to keep things sane for folks who are already invested in the platform while also allowing other people to do interesting things.

    You brought up the rolling builds, and yes – we’ve been doing it. Its been immense value ( over 100K downloads for the 2015 Feb builds as a point of reference ). for other process’s like the Atomic builds, needing the nightly, weekly builds has been key to their ability to get the technology moving. There are a lot of such examples around, but I
    will admit many of them are silo’d away slightly from this list – eg. the docker traction we have does not typically feedback here to this list and perhaps not into this audience. But should you want to move into container space, CentOS today represents one of the best all around experiences either on host or instance side.

    The story is similar on the Cloud side of things, we have a ver large cloud instance base – if i were to fancy a guess, I’d say 20% of the CentOS install base is today in cloud ( and this is largely only offprem, including onprem the numbers might go higher, but there is no way to tell since they could just be real machine instances ).

    Putting all that aside, the baseline assumption that we should all be mindful of is that in real terms there is no CentOS point release : any CentOS install, regardless of where it originated from, yum updated to the same point in time will have the same package manifest, and should deliver the same feature set ( with some exceptions, like environ specific workloads might have local flavour – you wouldnt expect cups on an GCE instance for example ).

    So what the changesets have done ( and lets be fair, these changes like the iso name changing to line up a date stream rather an an arbitary point in time isnt a huge deal, you can just rename the file locally if you so wish ), effectively line up and help deliver on that.

    Let me highlight this with two examples:
    – the Amazon instances we provide have been updated out of band, to cover for the security issues that have wider impact, heartbleed and poodle and all that stuff : labelling those as 7.0 makes no sense since it does not deliver on a 7.0 feature set, it delivers a CentOS-7/Dec
    2014 update set.

    – Second example is that when you look at a machine and it says 5.5 its hard to explain to the user that his machine might be 5 years out of date, there is a baseline cultural expectation that a release is either maintained or not – and having the conversations around CentOS-5 being maintained but not 5.5 isnt easy. Remember that this list represents the folks who really know, and know well, both the ecosystem and platform as well as their workloads and userbase – there are a lot ( a majority ? )
    of CentOS user who dont get this. For them to line up with a CentOS-7/2014-06 and CentOS-7/2015-03 immediately makes sense. it makes it easier for us to communicate the delta in security and bugfix that they dont have on there.

    And I think the overall solution we have in place right now, really does this well in that we clearly communicate the upstream relationship, while still being able to deliver the common message on and around the CentOS-release spec. If there are tangiable situations where this change causes harm, then I am very willing to reach out and help find a solution : dont want to break existing installs nor reduce the info available.

    The other thing here in this conversation is also that there is a large emotional resistance to change. Folks expect the numbers to line up in a specific manner, and they dont – the contents of the images however still give you the metadata you need ( both ways, they should give you point in time, and release from rhel that we derived/built from ).

    Happy to pickup and work through individual concerns people might have around this. But in real terms, please note that there is no change in the content being delivered. We are only opening up options to line up various media and point-in-time images.

  • os-release has been at /7/ since the first CentOS 7 release – what extra value does having 7.1 in there bring ? At best it just says that your CentOS-release rpm has not been updated and/or there is no system level state change that required metadata in that file.

    Note that any CentOS machine, updated to the same point in time, regardless of where and how it was privisioned should give you the same functional package set. This is an important thing.

  • the revisions and differences between changes.

    After all I decide to add “” tag at the very beginning of my message instead of just assuming it. Bu before that:

    Thanks a lot to CentOS team for the great job you guys are doing!

    My guess is the lack of understanding of (and sympathy to) your, Mr. Always Learning, point stems from people missing the very basic thing. I’ll try to explain what I mean.

    Us, human, usually do consecutive counting as follows:

    A:

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 …

    Now, as portion of version identifier doesn’t follow this way of counting anymore, it is akin counting like:

    B:

    231 2735 2746 3458 5216 …

    This is still in ascending order, still:

    1. whereas in case A given you have [sub]version number 4 you definitely know that adjacent previous is 3 and adjacent following will be 5. Case B
    is different: unless you have the whole row of legal numbers in front of you, you will not be able to guess whether 2746 and 3458 are consecutive versions, or there is one or more versions between them.

    2. comparison of two version in case A easily reveals which is earlier and which is higher, in case B it is not quite so (you can try to time yourself on comparison of random natural number in 10000 range and compare that to the case of natural numbers 0-9, you will know what I mean), and hence prone to higher chance of error (and don’t second guess me: I always has A+ in mathematics in school and university ;-). This is just a trivial human psychology…

    Valeri

    PS I do realize that these big numbers are quite likely just a subset of indeed consecutive natural numbers, say, counting builds, and only the ones that are good enough to be released for public use are visible to public. Still, developers usually have their magic way to keep track of their consecutive builds and relation to still consecutively numbers
    “good” build released to public. Abandoning that is not wise at the very least. It converts product from being transparent to getting obscure for everybody. Which only serves the goal of diverting people to much poorer IMHO alternatives, MS Windows to name one (the only OS of many I know whose vendor tells you it is unsafe to use it without 3rd party software –
    antivirus).

    You should guess all I say is ran, so I decided to drop resemblig tag at the beginning ;-)

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • I believe your argument works fine since:
    CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1503.iso CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1507.iso CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1512.iso CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-1606.iso

    note, this is YYmm to indicate age, and not serial numbers.

  • If you know that some feature was added or bug fixed in RH 7.1, or more relevant, your boss or security officer or application developer knows that, there is very much value in being able to say that CentOS
    7.1-whatever includes the same features/fixes, and that your automated inventory database will show which machines have been updated to that version. Otherwise you’ll spend the rest of the day discussing how fix x is done in package-revs-n1 fix y is in package-rev-n2 and how to check for it. Sometimes you need the latter detail, but mostly not, especially for the application guys.

    Yes, but how do you explain that relationship to someone who only has a summary of the RH releases or where the CentOS release stands compared to it. For example, what would you have said a few days ago?

  • what does that have to do with an ISO name? Updates are not done via ISO except for some very small number of off line servers. Updates usually happen from the tree. And the default setup point to /7/ for updates. We have been going that for 10 years (pointing updates to /4/,
    /5/, /6/, /7/, and not 6.1 or 6.2 or 6.3, etc.

    Here is the default mirrorlist and baseurl info from CentOS-5:

    ===========================================
    mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.CentOS.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=os

    #baseurl=http://mirror.CentOS.org/CentOS/$releasever/os/$basearch/
    ===========================================

    It is the same for CentOS-5, CentOS-6, and CentOS-7 … if someone has something different, then they are making changes that they want to make. The name on the ISO has no impact on updates.

  • Which, combined with the possibility of releasing multiples per minor rev and no determinate time frame for the actual initial CentOS minor release, really means nothing.

  • Well…

    “Always use latest one” *plus* “look for the latest release announcement”.

    Like http://lists.CentOS.org/pipermail/CentOS-announce/2015-March/021005.html

    A cross-reference doesn’t really seem necessary because usually hardware enablement is additive. Either CentOS is up to the version you need, or it isn’t yet.

    If you really _need_ a specific minor release and want to _stay_ on it, to my knowledge, that’s not something CentOS has _ever_ done anyway. You can pay for Red Hat’s “EUS”, or, I think Scientific Linux actually does keep the “.y” releases separate (but I’m not sure of the details as to how that’s implemented).

  • This is the crux of the issue in my mind. The complete departure from the upstream naming conventions, weather they are “correct” or “relevant” or not, is a major change and is becoming a major hassle, maybe not from an engineering point of view, but from a practical, day-to-day one.

    Change is fine, but it requires work to deal with. And most of us don’t have time to deal with major changes. This is a major change from past practice for CentOS, and there are many operational implications of it that apparently haven’t been considered.

  • That last paragraph is EXACTLY the message we are trying to put out here. CentOS releases are NOT the same as EUS and have never been .. yet that seems to be what people expect. We want there to be no doubt on this issue.

  • But you are adding more confusion than you resolve if the designation does not indicate that a specified version is ‘at least’ up to the equivalent of some RH minor rev. Even for the people who might have incorrectly thought is was pinned there. And now there yet another arbitrary difference in what you need to know about one major number vs. another for the long interval they will co-exist.

  • I’m sorry, but I think you all have chosen a very poor way to put out a message.

    For me at least, this deviation from both the past conventions, and from the current naming conventions of the upstream vendor has real and annoying consequences.

    Soliciting our feedback *before* changing everything regarding release names would have been nice.

  • ………..

    Why not:

    CentOS 7.1.1502

    instead of

    CentOS 7.1502 ?

    on the basis revision 1502 has been applied to CentOS 7.1 ?

  • Les Mikesell wrote:

    Let me also add to Les’ argument, in that there *are* point releases –
    when we go from x.y to x.z, there are usually on the order of 300 packages
    (I believe when I upgraded two servers yesterday from 7.0 to 7.1, there were 267 or so packages updated, and I think a few installed. That’s *not*
    the same as yum update, and I get 10 or even 70 packages.

    And when you have to talk to Windowsiacs, who know nothing other than version and point, it works best to tell them we’re on that point, so go away, and don’t bother us….

    mark

  • That is called an arithmetic progression (from my school days)

    does not resemble a geometric progression.

    Lets have a LOGICAL numbering system. How about

    CentOS 6.6-1503 ……..

    derived from {major}{sub}{yymm}.

    But what happens when 2 or more revisions occur within the same month ?

    Will we have CentOS 7.1504 and 7.1504a and 7.1504c or will someone decide to use 7.1505 (= May 2015) whilst still in April ?

    Clarity is important in all things ‘computer’.

    Valeri

    Maths was my favourite school subject too.

  • Being a so-called ‘westerner’ where people read from Left to Right, it is illogical to read to the end of a string only to determine the version number.

    Arabs and Jews too (I think) read from right to left, but I am sure they will also appreciate the simply logic of having

    CentOS 7-nnnnn-x86_64-DVD.iso

    or even better

    CentOS 7-2-nnnnn-x86_64-DVD.iso

    Why change anything unless the new idea is better than the previous ?

  • WHY NOT?

    I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’RE YELLING ABOUT

    Seriously though, the change was brought up over a month ago on the
    -devel list. When we’re asking for feedback about possible changes, it’s on the -devel list, because it’s about the development of the distro. If you want to give input for the direction of the distro, that’s the place to do it. I would encourage anyone who’s interested to join.

  • I didn’t see any indication there that you were planning to turn the
    /etc/redhat-release file into a symlink. And even if I had I
    probably wouldn’t have thought specifically that it was going to break ocsinventory-ng, although pretty much every unnecessary and arbitrary change breaks something.

    And besides there’s not much reason to think that user comments are ever read on the -devel list. Like this one, for example:
    http://lists.CentOS.org/pipermail/CentOS-devel/2014-June/010940.html

  • Is there a commercial motive for this ‘unwelcome by most’ change ?

    If CentOS is the same as RHEL then RH can loose valuable sales income because customers, actual and potential, use free CentOS. However if CentOS version numbers are vastly different from RHEL version numbers and there is no reliable method of equating CentOS sub-versions with RHEL sub-versions, RH gains extra sales because of the uncertainty of CentOS being ‘just like’ reliable RHEL.

    Just a casual thought.

  • From the “Community” page:

    “CentOS-devel

    This list is a discussion list about the current and further development of CentOS. If you have questions regarding CentOS, please use the main CentOS
    list – this is strictly about development. “

    Most of us are not involved in development of CentOS, and don’t have the time to monitor such a mailing list for possible changes we might want to be aware of.

    Major changes that effect day-to-day operations should be vetted through the main list, in my opinion.

  • Do you have data to prove that it is unwelcome by most? It is unwelcome by you and a few others I’ve seen comment; what percentage of the list’s subscribers do you suppose that might be? (It is neither welcome nor unwelcome by me, as I’ve said before.)

    Feedback on the direction of the distribution’s development is taken on the -devel list; this list is for questions about using the distribution.

  • Although most people in the world will privately complain the vast majority do not complain in public. Where is your contrary evidence that this non-beneficial and illogical change is welcome by the majority of CentOS users ?

  • In CentOS, /etc/redhat-release has always been a symlink to
    /etc/CentOS-release.

    Steve

  • you’re the one claiming its ‘unwelcome by most’, qed, the burden of proving that statement lies entirely on you.

    I for one could care less what the ISO is called.

  • See my reply earlier. The description of the CentOS-devel list says “this is strictly about development.”

    I take that to mean it is for developers. I am not a developer for CentOS. I don’t know this, but I’m guessing there are many many users and admins of CentOS who are not on that list, like me. Even a “Please check out this thread for an important discussion about the future of CentOS release names.” would have been appreciated.

    Now it’s too late.

    (As I said earlier, it’s not just the ISO name either).

  • Well if you define ‘always’ as ‘for CentOS6 and later… So I guess I
    have redhat-lsb installed on all of my CentOS6 boxes and hadn’t noticed that particular breakage before. To be fair, I consider it to be a bug in OCSinventory to not follow a symlink to the contents, but it does point out that any arbitrary change is going to break something that trusted your previous version’s functionality.

  • Indeed. And some conspiracy theorist might add this happened after CentOS
    “marrying” RH (well, getting tighter relations that is) ;-)

    Just a joke to put down everybody’s fighting mood (or likely switching fire onto myself ;-(

    Valeri

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • I must be part of one the “by most”. Since I’m one of the mostly silent majority.

    I want to express my thanks to the team that does all of the work.

    Thank you guys!

    As far as the version numbering, just let me know what you are calling it (already done) and I’ll deal with it. If I am unhappy, then there is RedHat but there’s also SuSE, Ubuntu/Debian, Slack, Gentoo…

    sknahT

    vyS

  • Would it have made a difference? Yes, you asked on that list. And yes, nearly everyone who responded said no to the change, yet you did it anyway.

    If Matthew had been on the list, and had also responded against the change, would his voice have made the difference?

    Seriously, show me a post in that thread from someone not on the CentOS
    board speaking strongly in favour of the change. It’s a big thread.

    The point is, you asked and the community said no (at least those who were subscribed to the -devel list and took the time to respond). Yet you did it anyway.

    The damage is done now, you can’t take it back.

  • The burden of proof for your statement is on you, not me. I never said it was welcome by most, either. I might even agree with your statement, for that matter; but you made the statement; you have the burden of proof of that statement. I do not need to prove the converse.

  • Yes, you are right. I was relying on my obviously faulty and aged memory, so I checked on my two remaining CentOS 5 boxes. There is no
    /etc/CentOS-release file there at all, only an /etc/redhat-release, so obviously not a symlink at all. More coffee.

    Steve

  • I also noticed it happened after the take-over of CentOS by RH, the funding of CentOS people by RH, the legal ‘ownership’ of CentOS branding by RH’s legal department, the surprising increased interest on this list by Red Hat people (some using non-RH email addresses), ditto Fedora people.

    In business when one pays money, one inevitably expects a reward greater than the sum of money paid or invested.

    Like everyone else I am grateful for the efforts of the CentOS team which brings us a reliable CentOS product.

  • Matt, come join the contributor base – be a commnuity communication liason ( or, I am sure we can find a title to quantify this ).

    stretching this a bit futher : lets see if we can find 10 people who might be considered ‘community beacons’, who could / would act as commnuity comms and liason to make sure we are driving in the right directions and communicating things in the most impactful manner.

    I am willing to lobby the board to then allow this group to spectate and feedback into Board Meetings ( we meet once a month ).

    One data point I want to drop in here is that less than 0.1 % of the CentOS user base has any contact with the project ( wherein I imply, lists + forums + irc + bugs + wiki ), so we might need to spread the net wide to find a reasonable representation.

    thoughts ?

  • …………………………

    But they can revert to the normal system appreciated by the overwhelming quantity of CentOS users all around the world. Everyone makes mistakes and one one here wants grovelling apologies, just a change to the original and better system – even with dates,

    Example CentOS-7-1-1504 ………..

  • Lamar,

    You are a really great guy. Earlier you admitted the change was not beneficial and now you seem to agree the change was NOT welcome by most.

    Query …. why did CentOS bosses make the change ?

  • I prefer tea. On my C5 I have

    .l /etc/redhat-release
    -rw-r–r– 1 root root 28 Sep 19 2014 /etc/redhat-release

    However on C6

    .l /etc|.g release
    -rw-r–r–. 1 root root 27 Oct 23 12:41 CentOS-release lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 14 Dec 14 18:08 redhat-release -> CentOS-release lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 14 Dec 14 18:08 system-release -> CentOS-release

  • Hmmmmm. I wonder how the proposed 7.1.1503 became 7.1503 in practice. Bait and switch?

    Personally I do not care one way or the other what RH tells CentOS to call itself. The priests can decide and the faithful can either put up with it or change pews. But I find it somewhat distressing to view otherwise intelligent people for whom I have a great deal of personal regard debase themselves with patently inadequate, and frequently deliberately misleading, justifications for unpopular decisions.

    BTW. What happens if a bad ISO gets spun, released and then is replaced in the same month? Does it become: 7.1504_a?; 7.1504b?;
    7.1504_1?; 7.150403?

  • The versioning of the ISO’s is 7.1503 (in one way of reading the actual name; you could read it as 7 spin 1503 or whatnot), but my
    /etc/CentOS-release says:
    [lowen@dhcp-pool114 ~]$ cat /etc/CentOS-release CentOS Linux release 7.1.1503 (Core)
    [lowen@dhcp-pool114 ~]$

    Already happened; it had a -01 added.

  • I really think that if someone is actually interested in helping the project, rather than being a backseat driver and griping at every change from the Steeped Tradition of the Unix Protectors – In Training , a division of the National Organization of Whiners (STUP-IT / NOW)
    standards, that someone should be willing to take the initiative to follow the -devel list. (Yes, that contrived acronym is tongue-in-cheek and meant as a joke to lighten things up a bit…. no offense to any particular person intended; please take a good laugh, smile, and enjoy your Friday!)

    I am as pressed for time as anyone else on this list; I especially feel Matt Phelps’ pain, as part of an educational institution where funding and staffing is never enough. But there has to be a bar to meet so that feedback given is useful and not trollish.

    I would suggest that a periodic informational FAQ be added to the monthly mailman reminders for the CentOS lists that can give a pointer to those who would like to give feedback, or help out, or otherwise do something to benefit the project as a whole.

    I would also suggest that changes to the distribution that directly affect users and users’ expectations be more widely announced, and something like a request for comment be made for the proposed change, with replies to be sent to the -devel list. While I consider the very specific issue of the ISO naming to be a tempest in a teacup, I also appreciate the fact that mine is not the only opinion.

    But I believe that we would experience heavy turnover in such a go-between position as you describe.

  • But first one ought to know exactly where the “project” is going. In which direction is CentOS heading ?

    Am I mistaken in thinking, after reading recent postings, CentOS is slowly moving in a different direction to RHEL and the removal of useful and informative sub-version numbers is merely the first of many manifestations of the growing-gap, or eventual gulf, between “upstream”
    and CentOS ?

    Will CentOS versions eventually become incompatible, partially or wholly, with its parent’s RHEL versions ? I can understand why that would be commercially advantageous to RH.

  • Posted on behalf of Mark (m.roth@5-cent.us) who is currently experiencing technical difficulties with his Internet connection
    ——————————-

  • I am going to be on the move the next few days for personal reasons, and will catchup with the threads and comments as soon as i am able to.

    however, i want everyone to sit back and reflect on what they are doing here – make sure you are not creating noise for the sake of creating noise. As we all are well aware, there is a tendency on this list for people to get completely carried away and lose the ability to have a meaningful conversation.

    appreciate it,

    – KB

  • I will try to guess what upsets many people.

    I remember long ago one of sysadmins was explaining to his user what CentOS is: “it is binary replica of RedHat Enterprise Linux”. I hope, this doesn’t offend anybody. That was reasonably true, and CentOS was immediately carrying same trust, reliability and respect in person’s mind as RHEL does. (I remember my friend sysadmin whose machines run Debian was regenerating all keys and certificates after known flop when in Debian in random numbers generator significant portion of code was commented out for debugging and left like that in releases for years… A said then: what a good choice of system was the one I made: I never remember a flop like that made by RedHat).

    Now the change is happening (or already happened). CentOS grew out of being “binary replica”. Does it mean it became worse? By no means no! Does it mean it is what it was in the past and carries the same respect as RHEL
    has? No. But last doesn’t matter much to rather big crowd of people who think about RHEL after their release 7 differently (some quite differently).

    All in all CentOS seems to become distribution though based on RHEL, still having a bunch of extra nice stuff. Great thing all in all. Those who are upset may follow their former experience. I remember we were running RehHat (remember free RedHat, which lasted until version 9? You can buy a boxed set of CDs at a cost of CDs.) Then RedHat stopped doing that and we switched to Fedora (pilot project running in front of RedHat Enterprise). Not for long, as you wouldn’t like short life cycle of system for your machine. This last thing might have depleted the size of Fedora community, maybe in favor of CentOS. And it is a community effort that RedHat was always efficiently using to cook nice system on the basis of (and they were always extremely good in my recollection in following GNU license and releasing all source!). If my guess above is close to reality, then having CentOS as a pilot project running in front of RHEL will be very beneficial. (Not that Fedora outlived itself as such, it still is great project, but CentOS may be good addition in that respect).

    Again, all above is something I tried to speculate together just for my understanding of what I observe (and should be taken with a grain of salt, as neither my observations are good, nor my thinking is).

    Valeri

    PS I have to add the following in case someone recognizes me as one of CentOS public mirror maintainers. As such (a public mirror maintainer), no matter that some scepticism might sound in what I’m saying, I’ll keep maintaining CentOS public mirror (and vault mirror). I will keep maintaining the mirrors as long as the mirror machine (hosting multitude of other mirrors) exists, which will be while I have a sysadmin position at this university. We have benefited from CentOS for quite some time, and maintaining public mirror “forever” is that little that we can do for the great project (and yes, many of our machines still run CentOS, and will for quite some time to come…)

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • I think it would be commercially advantageous if they did just the opposite – that is, make it so you could run exactly he same product on all of your machines and pay for support on the ones where you need support. I think that is the way Oracle is handling it. And their download approach makes it pretty clear that you are getting 7.1.