[BlueOnyx:25193] Re: RedHat 9 Beta released - BlueOnyx 5211R development started

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Dirk,

> oh I'm excited and I wish us that we hear you in any case not to grumble until here 😊

I already did some grumbling today. :p

I needed my "Swiss Army Knife" fuse-sshfs on RedHat EL9 and they have
"fuse", but not fuse-sshfs. No biggy, I just grab the SRPM and compile a
fuse-sshfs RPM, right?

Nope. Turns out: RedHat didn't release the fuse-devel RPM *and* the SRPM
they have for fuse doesn't build on EL9 due to a Glibc issue. They must
have built their fuse RPM against an older Glibc version. Grrrr. :-/

So: No devel RPM and the SRPM they have doesn't build anymore. It's like
bloody amateur hour. \o/

> I know you have always categorically ruled it out in the past. But maybe 
> technology is evolving at this point as well. Do you think there is a
> chance that there might also be a direct upgrade path from
> Almalinux/RockyLinux 8 to Almalinux/RockyLinux 9 ; that is, an upgrade
> without reinstalling and migrating?

Technology sure is evolving and in fact AlmaLinux recently announced
project "Elevate", which allows to upgrade from CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8.

More info about that here: https://almalinux.org/elevate

The short version:

WHAT OPERATING SYSTEMS DOES ELEVATE SUPPORT?
=============================================

Currently ELevate provides Leapp data for migration from CentOS 7 to the
following OS:

- AlmaLinux OS 8
- CentOS Stream 8
- Oracle Linux 8
- Rocky Linux 8

WILL MIGRATION BE "IN-PLACE?"
==============================

Yes. All your data, applications and settings will be kept.

IS THIS LIVE OR DOES IT REQUIRE A REBOOT?
==========================================

Migrations will require your system to reboot twice.


I looked at it in so far that I've read the documentation and gave their
code a quick look over to better understand how it's done. It's pretty
clever. A boot image is created and the Grub config is modified that the
next boot launches the system into the upgrade procedure instead of the
regular OS.

You then reboot the server and it boots into that mini-Linux that does
the upgrade. When that's done, you reboot yet again and it launches the
upgraded system.

Provided that everything worked well. If it doesn't, then you might have
a broken box.

Can you upgrade a 5209R to a 5210R that way? No, not yet. It will
perhaps work as far as that it upgrades the OS, but the box will still
be tied into the 5209R repo and will have all the EL7 related GUI RPMs
installed. Means: It'll break hard.

BUT: ELevate is modular and I'm sure we can figure out a way how to
possibly make it happen that a BlueOnyx can be upgraded that way as well.

However, it's not trivial. We're talking +1400 RPMs just for a "naked"
BlueOnyx and OS. And it gets more complicated if there are PKGs with
platform specific RPMs installed. That's a lot of room for errors and
glitches.

We can speculate that ELevate will eventually also allow to upgrade from
EL8 to EL9.

Now the thing is that I have sort of a full plate at the moment:

- The CentOS 8 -> AlmaLinux 8 converter needs to be done in a hurry

- BlueOnyx 5211R for EL8 is in development

- Easy-Backup is 90% done and I'm struggling to find the time to finish
  it.

- The new GUI template is cooking along on a small flame and every now
  and then I manage to push a few more pixels to where I want them to
  be. I hate CSS with a passion by now. :p

- There's about half a dozen of GUI glitches and feature wishes that
  need somewhat urgent attention. And more non-urgent stuff of the same.

- AV-SPAM: I've recently identified a Chinese owned US ISP that is
  behind an elaborate SPAM wave that has been ongoing for months.
  First they do ETRN/VRFY attacks against MTAs to harvest valid email
  addresses and then they hammer you with targeted SPAM from other
  network ranges under their management. As they've decided to stonewall
  complaints I'll have the next AV-SPAM tackle their ridiculous
  shenanigans. I might go as far as giving a quarter million of their IP
  addresses a special treatment via Milter-GeoIP. /shrug

I'll sure play around with ELevate to see get a better grasp on what
work would be needed to make it work for us, but I see some areas where
it'll get mightily complicated to pull it off right.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber