RHEL 7.3 Released

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As a heads up RHEL 7.3 is released:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.3_Release_Notes/index.html

Pay careful attention when the CR repo starts churning out RPMs (if you have CR enabled) as there have been a few rebases in this –
notably firewalld, NetworkManager, freeIPA, libreoffice, samba, amongst others

If you have an ipv6 environment ping is now ipv6 aware and ping6 is removed (with a symlink to ping for compatibility).

On the SSL side of things pycurl now handles TLS 1.1 and 1.2 and openJDK8 can handle ECC.

With the NetworkManager rebase more complicated arbitrary layering of interfaces is possible (eg physical -> team -> vlan -> bridge), which I’ll be revisiting my old NM article to investigate soon, and Wi-Fi scanning will use a randomised MAC … this may affect some people. For a known BSSID the connect won’t be a randomised MAC though just when scanning.

The firewalld zones become a bit more usable with ipsets being usable to define the zone making management of which networks go in which zones a bit nicer – I’ll be revisiting my old firewalld article to investigate this too.

The deprecation of the old net-tools suite continues with bridge-utils no longer required in many circumstances as iproute2 gets improved bridge capabilties… this brings EL7 inline with the Fedora behaviour:

https://fedoramagazine.org/build-network-bridge-fedora/

On the network side of things be aware of a potentially breaking change to systems in how device names are created, this will only affect systems that have exceptionally long device names:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html-single/7.3_Release_Notes/index.html#bug_fixes_general_updates

For fresh installs using automatic partitioning the default /boot size has been bumped to 1G … for kickstarts and other automated installs you may want to tweak your setups to match.

The NSS bug that caused problems with reusing SSL sessions and was breaking owncloud setups has been resolved – I have not tested this yet and will be doing so this weekend. The impending owncloud 9.1.1
EL7 release in EPEL7 will be removing my workaround and require this for full correct functionality.

In the tech preview world nftables joins the testing group (I’ll have articles up exploring this new firewalling method in the coming weeks)
for networking. Whilst with storage overlayfs and btrfs remain in tech preview status – with cephfs joining them… as notable pieces. There’s also new pNFS stuff.

This is only a small snippet of things that jumped out relevant to me personally. As always make sure you read through the release notes in full. to be ready once CentOS starts producing the RPMs, and keep in mind this early in the lifecycle there are a fair few rebases and new features implemented that should be tested… unlike later on in the lifecycles (eg EL6) where no/minimal rebasing happens and changes at a feature level don’t happen.

17 thoughts on - RHEL 7.3 Released

  • –srh6wFtlL6F309pHfngFt5t79UQtB6Hfl Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

    1. Is CentOS-7.3 done yet? Answer: NO!

    And it is NOT CentOS-7.3 .. it is CentOS-7 (1611) based on RHEL-7.3
    Sources. The main tree will be labeled ‘7.3.1611’ on the mirrors (along side 7.0.1406 and 7.1.1503, and 7.2.1511, all of which are already there)

    2. When will it be done?
    a. Short Answer: No idea :) (when it is done!)

    b. Long Answer: We normally have CR out 7-14 days after a RHEL-7
    release. We normally have the full tree and ISOs out 14-28 days after the CR is out.

    Complicating this particular release, we have our annual CentOS Board Meeting (face to face) in Paris next week and I get on airplane(s) from Texas to Paris on Monday 9/7/2016, so there will be one full wasted day there. Obviously the rest of the team will also be traveling to the meeting as well.

    I will try to tweet updates (@JohnnyCentOS) and post updates here throughout the build period.

    Currently we are building gcc/glibc and modifying the packages that need mods and calculating the build order for the SRPM package set. There seem to be 602 SRPMs that need to be rebuilt on first look.

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

    –srh6wFtlL6F309pHfngFt5t79UQtB6Hfl

  • Obligatory objection to this version numbering scheme:

    Deviating from RHEL in such a basic way is crazy, dumb, stupid, annoying, wrong, etc, etc.

    There, done.

    2. When will it be done?

  • Obligatory addition – the RPM %{release} tag often includes the RHEL
    minor release, e.g. 7_2 currently, so I will just call it 7.2 and likely same when 1611 tree is released.

  • I’m with Matthew Phelps on this. If CentOS is built with the exact same sources as RHEL, why not keep the numbering scheme the same? That would make life easier for people like me who build CentOS RPMs from tarballs/SRPMS that run on RHEL and having to look up version numbers is just idiotic. I mean, that’s a Microsoft pet peeve of mine.

    This is also why I don’t deploy CentOS as much as I would like. I’d hoped the merger/acquisition/partnership with RH would eliminate some of that, instead it seems to be regressing. I don’t get it.

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  • That’s all well and good, but how about you actually include the minor number AND the release date? I.e. 7.3-1104 for CentOS 7.3 released today, for example. I’m all for the SIGs to keep track of their own upstreams, but surely there’s a better way to do this that doesn’t annoy the heck out of us Joe-Blows out here. A lot of us don’t have the time (or inclination)
    to deal with oddball version discrepancies when there really doesn’t need to be.

    I mean, there are dozens of Ubuntu distros and they all use the same basic versioning schemes. (Maybe not a completely fair example, but still.)
    Isn’t the idea with CentOS to be a method of generating a larger testing base and interest in RHEL and it’s products? If not, that’s how I’ve always seen it, incorrect or not.

    —

    Mark Haney ::: Senior Systems Engineer
    *VIF* *International Education*
    P.O. Box 3566 ::: Chapel Hill, N.C. 27515 ::: USA
    919-265-5006 office

    Global learning for all. http://www.viflearn.com Find VIF on Facebook <http://facebook.com/VIFInternationalEducation> |
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  • –aIhDwtAWvAu50Nh2K2L3QrBkiTdn39u9b Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

    I said on the tree it will be 7.3.1611 .. and I don’t get to make the call on this.

    This was battle was fought two years ago.

    We don’t have to like it.

    We also don’t need to fight it again.

    I do what I am told, and I have been told what to do …

    –aIhDwtAWvAu50Nh2K2L3QrBkiTdn39u9b

  • I for one am perfectly happy with whatever scheme you guys follow. And I
    am really grateful to you for the great job you are doing! As IMHO all of us should who enjoy using results of your work (and RedHat, and all open source projects – if I go deeper) without helping much ourselves (I don’t count mirrors some of us maintain as a big effort).

    Valeri

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

  • Il 04/11/2016 15:29, Johnny Hughes ha scritto:

    7.3 or 1611 or codename where is the problem? Many users will call the release 7.3 and other 1611, the result is the same, them all will use CentOS and the distro will works fine.

    I will call the new release 7.3 for non technician user and 1611 for technician user.

    Don’t waste your time.

    +1 Johnny.

  • Who made the call?

    How do we petition those who made the call to change the call?

    Perhaps you can register our complaints at the board meeting?

    And yes, thanks for all your efforts. I apologize for bringing this up every time, but as a non-developer, this is the only venue for me, and those who feel the same as I do, to express our complete and utter displeasure for this decision.

    Johnny, you have more important things to do than respond to this. I’d like someone above you to address this again.

    Thanks,

  • I don’t really mind any particular version scheme getting used but why not use it consistently? Right now the ISOs are named like this:

    CentOS-7-x86_64-NetInstall-1511.iso

    Why isn’t that name consistent with the tree versioning e.g.:

    CentOS-7.2.1511-x86_64-NetInstall.iso

    That would make things less ambiguous.

    Regards,
    Dennis

  • I have read that thread, and the backlash against changing the version numbering scheme is dominant there too. Including from one Johnny Hughes.

    Keep in mind that all of this discussion happened on the development list where very few of us who actually use CentOS are on.

    There was *no* solicitation of feedback from the general CentOS user community. I have checked.

    How can we, the actual users of CentOS, petition the board to abandon this scheme?

    Look, I know this is years old, but because of the above conditions we’ve had to simply endure a really bad decision and we keep being told “That’s the way it is. It’s been decided. Just deal with it.” Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to let this go.

    Can’t the CentOS board re-examine this issue?

    It’s not just cosmetic, all the reasons not to change the version from RHEL
    have been covered in the above thread. They *still* apply.

    I bet if a poll of actual CentOS sysadmins was taken, 80-90% would be against this thing, still.

    The horse is not dead,
    -Matt

    Thanks,

  • Il 04/Nov/2016 19:20, “Phelps, Matthew” ha scritto:
    [snip]

    The reason why I wrote “before” and not “instead” ;-)
    I thought it was important to read all that huge thread with many arguments already discussed and motivated.

  • –leOhqocW9fJuMW4wgPECmjm1ohRtrRXi2
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    Latest Update Tweet is:
    http://bit.ly/2eLVO3i

    First pass through on CentOS7 (1611) build: 559 SRPMs, 419 good, 140
    need work. Build results as we progress: http://bit.ly/2fsB95Q

    Getting back at it.

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

    –leOhqocW9fJuMW4wgPECmjm1ohRtrRXi2