Interesting reading. The new Centos stream really puts a spanner in the works.
On 18/01/2021 18:18, neil watson wrote:
Hi
Firstly thanks for all the work you do to support older kit (eg older Dell RAID controllers!)
I've had a look through the archive and can't spot any comments on the widely reported discontinuation of Centos 8 from the end of the year...
I really hope that ElRepo will continue to support Centos-8-type releases are that built to fill the gap - I know there are some in the pipeline - as I can believe that, like Centos, other RHEL derived distributions still won't have the "older" drivers that ElRepo provides
Maybe there's a place for a notice on the website / Blog explaining what you are planning?
Regards
Neil.
Hi Neil,
Thank you for your kind words!
We are still in the phase of trying to figure out what these changes mean for us and how they will impact ELRepo users.
ELRepo has always taken the stance that we support RHEL, and by extention that includes all RHEL compatible clones. Traditionally, this has included distributions such as CentOS and Scientific Linux (and any new clones assuming they retain compatibility), whilst other distributions such as ClearOS, although based on RHEL, make modifications to their kernel which renders many of our packages incompatible. This highlights just how important binary compatibility of the kernel is for ELRepo packages/users.
Red Hat have chosen to discontinue CentOS Linux 8 at the end of 2021. Red Hat have proposed CentOS Stream as it's replacement in many environments. Unfortunately for us, CentOS Stream, now being upstream of conventional RHEL releases, gets changes to the kernel which are scheduled for the next RHEL minor point release (their kernels diverge). These changes often break kernel ABI (kABI) compatibility and may cause ELRepo packages to no longer work.
At present, kernel releases to Stream are relatively few (maybe once per month) but the intention is for them to significantly increase to maybe weekly and potentially even daily. The kmod standard that ELRepo uses to package and deliver drivers for RHEL is totally dependent on the stable kABI that RHEL affords.
So what does this mean for ELRepo users in practice? Well, preliminary testing of the first kernel update to EL8.3 in CentOS Stream indicates that 13 out of 44 kmod packages tested were broken by the kernel update. I have not bothered testing the second updateas it's only going to get worse. It is simply not possible (for ELRepo) to deliver kmod packages against a constantly moving target such as the CentOS Stream kernel, and even if we could, these newly fixed packages would likely no longer be compatible with RHEL. We would be looking at a whole new repository or project for ELRepo-Stream and we do not have the resources to do that.
ELRepo will continue to support RHEL and compatible clones. Unfortunately it does not look like CentOS Stream falls into that category at present. I have suggested that CentOS make the conventional RHEL kernels available in Stream alongside the newer Stream kernels for those who need that kABI stability and others have proposed other solutions. People who need that kABI compatibility also have the option of rebuilding the RHEL kernel for themselves for use on Stream. But for now, ELRepo are unable to officially support CentOS Stream kernels. In reality your package may continue to work but if/when it breaks, we will not be able to officially support it. Hopefully CentOS will be able to offer a solution that allows ELRepo packages to continue to work on CentOS Stream.
ELRepo also offers kernel-ml and kernel-lt packages for EL8 and these can be used on CentOS-Stream to provide a conveniently packaged modern kernel (mainline or LTS) with native support for the legacy hardware Red Hat removed. These newer kernels may provide a convenient solution for some users whose hardware is not natively supported on CentOS Stream.
Phil
Can I please make a slight correction? Since about ClearOS 7.7, ClearOS reverted to the upstream kernel unmodified so the ElRepo packages are now normally directly installable. The only one I compile differently is the kmod-r8168 where I remove your blacklisting of the r8169 drivers, but then I request the users also install the kmod-r8169 driver which removes r8168 compatibility. We've had that debate before.
Nick
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