[BlueOnyx:24879] AlmaLinux: Release day!

[Michael Stauber]

Hi all,

AlmaLinux 8.3 (open-source RHEL8 fork) has been officially released
today. Updated BlueOnyx 5210R ISOs and OS templates are available.

After a period of rigorous testing, a Beta and a Release Candidate phase
the team over at CloudLinux has finally released AlmaLinux 8.3 amd it is
no ready for production and general usage.


5210R ISO Image based on AlmaLinux 8.3
=======================================

We already had released BlueOnyx 5210R ISOs and OpenVZ OS template
caches for the AlmaLinux Beta and the RC-1 and have now rolled up a
production ready BlueOnyx 5210R ISO using AlmaLinux 8.3.

It allows easy and trouble free installation of BlueOnyx 5210R on
AlmaLinux 8.3 in the same way as any of our other ISO images.


OS template cache for Aventurin{e} 6109R and OpenVZ 7
======================================================

Additionally our OpenVZ 7 and Aventurin{e} 6109R OS template cache
('blueonyx-5210R-x86_64') for BlueOnyx 5210R has been updated to switch
it from CentOS 8 over to AlmaLinux 8.3.

We chose to outright replace CentOS 8 with AlmaLinux 8 in the OS
template cache to avoid naming conflicts. After all, it is a "blueonyx"
template first and foremost and not really married to a specific OS.

If you already had the OS template cache 'blueonyx-5210R-x86_64'
installed on Aventurin{e} 6109R, be sure to run a "yum update" to get
the new version and then click on the button next to the
'blueonyx-5210R-x86_64' OS template cache in the "OS Templates" menu in
the GUI.

That will build a new version of the OS template cache for 5210R based
on AlmaLinux 8.3. Once the cache has been built, the description will
show that it's using AlmaLinux and no longer uses CentOS 8.

The BlueOnyx 5210R ISO image using AlmaLinux 8.3 can be found at
https://www.blueonyx.it/downloads and the updated OS template cache can
easily be installed via "yum update" on Aventurin{e} 6109R. If you have
a regular OpenVZ 7 without Aventurin{e} 6109R, then you can find the RPM
for the 5210R OS template cache here:
http://updates.aventurin.net/pub/Aventurin/6109R/EL7/aventurin/x86_64/RPMS/blueonyx-5210R-x86_64-ez-7.0.0-4.vl7.noarch.rpm


CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8 conversion
===================================

Within the next week or two we will release a free and optional BlueOnyx
5210R PKG file on NewLinQ that will allow you to convert an existing
BlueOnyx 5210R on CentOS 8 to a BlueOnyx 5210R that uses AlmaLinux 8
instead.

As CentOS 8 will eventually (31st December 2021) become 'CentOS stream'
with most likely incompatible and unpredictable rolling releases we will
eventually push an RPM to the BlueOnyx 5210R YUM repository that
performs a mandatory conversion of BlueOnyx 5210R from CentOS 8 to
AlmaLinux 8. In the same way that the PKG will soon allow you to
voluntarily make that switch ahead of time. As there is no reason to
remain on CentOS 8 until the lights literally go out this mandatory
conversion to AlmaLinux 8 will happen sometime in summer or early fall
of 2021. A more precise date for this mandatory switch will be published
with sufficient advanced warning.

If you perform new BlueOnyx 5210R installs, please use the BlueOnyx
5210R ISO image based on AlmaLinux to avoid having to do a conversion
from CentOS 8 to AlmaLinux 8 later on.

The HTML version of this message can be found here:

https://www.blueonyx.it/news/285/15/AlmaLinux-Release-day/

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber