[BlueOnyx:07532] Re: New BlueOnyx ISO image available

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Chuck,

> Does the BlueOnyx group have any idea when CentOS6/BlueOnyx will be ready? 
> I've had a number of customers pestering me about upgrades to different
> packages (primarily PHP) that I know are coming with CentOS6.  We've been
> anxiously waiting on the CentOS group to go final - knowing that the
> BlueOnyx group experts are never far behind!

The guys over at CentOS6 have moved the release date a bit over the last 
couple of weeks. You can check on their calendar to see what's the schedule:

http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa/calendar/view/2011-6

Don't get your hopes too high, though, as each Monday this month already had 
the entry "Begin Sync to External Mirrors" and I'd be both happy and surprised 
if it finally would surface next Monday. ;o)

As for BlueOnyx on CentOS6: Most of the groundwork to prepare our code for 
CentOS6 was done last summer from June to August. Back then I had set up two 
development boxes with RHEL6 beta on it and that helped a lot to line up our 
ducks and to get the BlueOnyx GUI working alongside with PHP-5.3.

However, both development boxes died of old age while waiting for CentOS6. :o)

No, I'm not kidding there (one dead PSU, one toasted board), but not that it 
matters. All relevant data is in SVN and there are also backups of the 
original HDs, so nothing was lost. Like everyone else I'm waiting for the 
CentOS6 ISO's to hit the mirrors, so that I can set up a new box and can 
continue the development again in earnest.

There are still a few loose ends to tie up and (most) changes we made to the 
5106R code tree over the last year were published to the 5107R code tree as 
well. However, they didn't really get tested on that platform, which will 
probably cause some minor grief. Those tests need to be run and CMU needs a 
small overhaul to recognize the new platform. So yeah, there is a bit of work 
left to be done, but it's in manageable chunks and portions.

All in all I'm a bit reluctant to specify a tentative release date for 
BlueOnyx 5107R on CentOS6. You know, for four years Michelangelo spent most of 
his days and nights on his back painting the 5,074 square foot ceiling of the 
Sixtine Chapel in Rome. Many days Pope Julius walked in and hollered up to 
Michelangelo: "When will this be complete?" A usually frustrated Michelangelo 
then always replied: "When I'm done!"

Somehow I'm tempted to say the same. ;o)

Let me put it this way: If I had no other obligations and free reign over my 
schedule, then it ought to be possible to crank out a more or less working 
initial ISO four weeks after CentOS6 has been released.

But with such an early and first release there will always be some initial 
problems which need to be hammered out and some odd bugs will surface that 
eluded any testing efforts. Therefore I'd be a bit cautious to directly push a 
5107R box into productive usage freshly off the first ISO anyway.

So BlueOnyx 5107R *may* be available four weeks after the CentOS6 release at 
the soonest. But it could as well take longer than that.

Also note that RHEL 6.1 is out already. But what CentOS will release is 6.0 
and it's based on RHEL 6.0. So once they're past the bliss of the initial 
release, they'll have to play a lot of catch up to incorporate all the patches 
to roll out a CentOS 6.1 that's really fully up to date in all aspects.

That also would make me a bit reluctant to use a CentOS 6.0 box for productive 
usage, as it will have security issues that RedHat fixed already months ago in 
their upstream OS. 

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber