Can’t Move To CentOS 8

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Folks

I’ve been trying to convert my systems to CentOS 8, seeing the EOL on the horizon a few years away. One of my systems is a Mac-Mini, and support for that has been discontinued. I’m wondering what the community suggests among these alternatives:

1) Stay with CentOS 7 even after EOL hoping market pressures will add Mac-Mini support

2) Spend a few hundred dollars on a small, **quiet** replacement (ugh)

3) Convert to the Debian/Ubuntu distro.

4) Hope someone figures out a solution.

By the way, the same issue exists, I believe, also for other Mac products, such as the newer laptops and servers.

David

11 thoughts on - Can’t Move To CentOS 8

  • Hi,

    I can’t speak for Macs as I never had or used something from Apple. But, CentOS 8 also doesn’t support a lot of other older hardware and you may find support for the hardware in the ElRepo repository.

    Regards, Simon

  • I can’t be specific since you didn’t say how you’re using the Mini. You don’t even say if the Mini is PPC, i386, or x86_64.

    My guess is that RH will focus on the server market.

    2a) Stay on C7 until EOL (in 4 years). Then re-evaluate your hardware needs and availablilty.

    Beware. This might end up being very fragile.

    5) Switch to Fedora which has better hardware support and more software.

    Jim

  • I run CentOS 7 in production, but use Ubuntu for my development desktop. Ubuntu is much more geared to desktop, but I would not use it in a server environment.

    Todd Merriman Software Toolz, Inc.

  • Le 13/05/2020 à 22:30, MAILIST a écrit :

    Similar setup here, with CentOS 7 on production servers, and OpenSUSE Leap on all desktop clients.

    Happy camper. :o)

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  • At 01:25 PM 5/13/2020, James Szinger wrote:

    Jim Sorry that I omitted those details, so… Intended use: Gateway to my in-house network, providing DNS
    (internal only), DHCP, Mail server, and web server, backup storage for some systems

    As a web server, the load is low, so large USB-connected disk works just fine. As a backup device, I am using ZFS and it works well. As a mail server, it’s my personal mail primarily, likely running sendmail or postfix.

    Mac-mini is an x86_64.

    For use as a gateway, I use the Ethernet connect as a link to a gigabyte switch and WiFi access point, and use a usb-connected dongle for the ethernet connect to the modem/internet.

    David

  • Two thoughts:

    1) Have you considered moving the storage business to another host so not to have a single point of failure?
    2) Would a $60 Raspberry Pi 4GB be a good replacement? 2 USB3 ports and 1 GB ether port. My Synology storage appliance thingie is much dumber than that and has not missed a beat in years.

  • At Wed, 13 May 2020 19:22:06 -0400 CentOS mailing list wrote:

    There are some Chinese 64-bit ARM boards (Cubitruck, Banana Pi) that include SATA interfaces. There also various Allwinner A64 boards out there. There are some people in Bulgaria that have an ARM-based (Allwinner A64) “laptop”
    kit, and sells the parts separately, so one can build a custom “box” with a
    64-bit ARM that is not specificly a laptop.

    Some of the Chinese 64-bit ARM boards have multiple network ports, mini-PCI, built in Ethernet switches — these are intended as the guts for a router
    (some can also be used as WiFi access points). And some of these also have SATA ports.

    I don’t know if *CentOS* is supported, but there are Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora images available for these.

  • –I’m using CentOS 7 and 8 for internal servers but use OpenWrt on a consumer router to do the fancy traffic balancing with the “cake” traffic control module, something the old kernel in CentOS 7 lacks.

    I’m running an email server with Dovecot IMAP, Spamassassin, and ClamAV and that’s a bit of a load so I suspect a Pi would be underpowered for that.

  • Funny you mentioned the OpenWrt: I have been using one as access point and realized I not only forgot how to but cannot find info (I
    remember seeing it years ago) on how to run the 2.4 and 5GHz as separate networks. Well, I can’t even get the internal dhcp to work, having to forward all that to my bind/dhcp vm guest. Shame on me, as if I get that working I can then think on putting a vpn between wireless and internal networks which is something I really should be doing.

    I really think it depends on the load, and only you have access to the performance info to answer that. There are people running all that in docker containers (I could swear I read about an “official” or
    “officially blessed” postfix container in the postfix mailing list).

  • The big load is that I have a couple hundred IMAP folders and any can receive new mail via server-side filters (procmail, but it could be sieve in the future). The client-side check for new mail anywhere in the tree is a pretty big hit. I’m using Thunderbird and Mulberry on Win10 at the same time for clients. (Each has its advantages and disadvantages, hence my use of both.)