One small point about Princeton, as clearly pointed out to me by the
Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). The Springdale EL distro is NOT from
nor supported by Princeton University -- IAS is a separate entity. It
appears from what I can garner that Springdale is not a project to which
IAS staff are assigned as part of employment work, unlike SL for which
there are employed professional staff at both Fermilab and CERN (some of
the Fermilab persons so employed, e.g., Pat, Bonnie, have posted to this
list).
As for what myself or others are looking for that is "free" -- "free" is
of necessity. At least for many university-based and shoestring
non-profit operations, it is discretionary budget constraints that force
"free". At my institution, the university admin IT unit will not
install anything that the unit does not control -- if I want root, it
must be my own equipment. The IT unit will pay enormous amounts of
money for cradle-to-grave vendor supported software and systems with
effectively outsourced support, but only to the vendors that either are
dictated to them by the university system or by the local campus
administration (administration Vice Presidents./ Vice Provosts or
higher). Thus, we are not allowed to have a usable Moodle, but only
Blackboard now and being forced to convert to Canvas; likewise, all
systems must be Microsoft, Apple, or Google, etc. No linux, no BSD, not
even IBM RH EL. (The latter may change if IBM can convince the
university system admins, etc., that IBM is a better "partner".)
On 5/4/21 12:51 PM, James M. Pulver wrote:
Honestly, I've seen a lot of the FLOSS community prefer Rocky over Alma, and I think it's
because Rocky is actually not backed by any company. However, we see how that went
before, and I just think Rocky as described is ripe for CENTOS 2.0 to me. It's even run
by one of the CENTOS founders, so -- maybe he's learned his lesson, but I don't see that
as a positive for Rocky - it's neutral at best. I mean, CENTOS was bought by Red Hat and
then "killed". Oracle? not even a blip. CloudLinux? Not a blip. Princeton, not
a blip. I.e. all the rebuilds with a organization behind them that isn't dependent
totally on community funding were basically unaffected here. The major distros that are
going strong are company backed (Including SuSE, Ubuntu, RHEL, etc), except for Debian
that seems to be the exception that proves the rule to me. And most of what Yasha et al
seem to be looking for is a professional rebuild that is free - which might be a
contradiction in terms, except for communities maintaining what they need for their use.
This is why I (and I guess Yasha etc) are so disappointed that all the HEP labs
can't get together to fund what? 5 FTE across all of them to re-create SL for
the HEP community? Or some sort of Internet2 license that is affordable of RHEL
(maybe that's the secret goal). Is that really a huge part of the CERN,
Fermilab, etc all the labs budget? I imagine it's less than the commercial RHEL
license costs. But we do have Alma (and others, including Oracle - wish I
trusted them even a little) donating that rebuild to the world at large, so
there's some people interested in putting donations out there.
Anyway, digression aside, it's hard to do more than wait and see I guess - and
much of that waiting is maybe for EL9 and to see if Rocky releases something
that creates a better community than Alma has managed. Though I'm still betting
on a company backed project getting going and keeping going much better in the
short term anyway.
--
James Pulver
CLASSE Computer Group
Cornell University
________________________________________
From: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov
<owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov> on behalf of Jack Aboutboul
<j...@almalinux.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 4, 2021 2:39 PM
To: Dave Dykstra
Cc: Bonnie King; Konstantin Olchanski; scientific-linux-users
Subject: Re: any update on CERN Linux and CentOS-8 situation?
Dave,
Thanks for your response. My message was going to everyone on the list, not
necessarily just the decision makers. To me/us it’s important to involve the
whole community not just any specific decision makers.
Thanks for your feedback. If you don’t mind, can you just give me more
insight/feedback as to why you think that Rocky is better positioned? I’m
curious to hear your opinion.
Thanks,
Jack
On May 4, 2021, at 11:30, Dave Dykstra <d...@fnal.gov> wrote:
Hi Jack,
I am not involved in the decision-making regarding Linux here at
Fermilab, so I'm just a community member as well. I think it's good
to have options but in my opinion the Rocky Linux effort is better
positioned for long term support by the community than AlmaLinux is.
Dave
On Mon, May 03, 2021 at 05:54:35PM -0400, Jack Aboutboul wrote:
Hi Bonnie, Dave, et. al.
I am a long time Fedora person and now the community manager of AlmaLinux.
We certainly understand the quandary you are now in and we deeply value the
work that you and the scientific (both capital S and lower-case) community do.
It is of utmost importance to humanity. Likewise, we can only begin to image
the loop that the CentOS EOL announcement must have caused you.
We are ready, willing and able to help. We released our x86_64 STABLE a drop
over a month ago and are working on other architectures now. We are also in the
process of opening up our-next generation build system, amongst other things.
I extend a hand to the Scientific community-at-large to work together with you
all to build whatever it is that you need. We are even open to offering a board
seat (yes despite what FUD people try and spread, we are community-governed) to
someone from fermilab/cern (or some other representative) to ensure that the
relevant voices are heard and acted upon.
I'm reaching out to you out of my own volition, because I respect you and the
work you do and its vital impact in the humanity both present and future.
Seriously, anything we can do for you guys, any way we can help in order to
promote and foster scientific research, we stand at the fore ready to get it
done.
I am sure there may be questions and I would be glad to answer anything anyone
would like to know more about.
Thanks
Jack
On May 3, 2021, at 07:25, Bonnie King <bonn...@fnal.gov> wrote:
Hi Konstantin,
There hasn't been any official statement. On the Fermilab side we are holding
discussions and gathering feedback from experiments and other collaborators.
We are working on it and will make an announcement soon.
Bonnie King
________________________________________
From: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov
<owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov> on behalf of Konstantin Olchanski
<olcha...@triumf.ca>
Sent: Saturday, May 1, 2021 9:27 AM
To: Dave Dykstra
Cc: scientific-linux-users
Subject: Re: any update on CERN Linux and CentOS-8 situation?
On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 09:35:02PM +0000, Dave Dykstra wrote:
Both Fermilab and CERN have stated that they plan to use CentOS 8 stream
for now (or Scientific Linux 7 or CentOS 7) and will evaluate later
whether or not to switch to one of the clones.
Interesting. I do not see any information about this and I believe
I receive both internal and external official communications from CERN.
Do you know who and when made this "centos stream" statement?
K.O.
Dave
On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 10:35:18AM -0700, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
Any news or updates on the status of CERN Linux?
Per https://linux.web.cern.ch/centos8/ CERN users are strongly encouraged
to use CentOS-8 while the same page states that support for CentOS-8 will
end at the end of this year. Update is promised "during Q1 2021", today
we are 1/3 into Q2 2021, and there is no new information.
The CentOS forums are graveyard quiet. (censored?)
Any information from the FermiLab side of things? Any information from the SL
side
of things? Any rumours?
I opened a support ticket with CERN about this, let's see what they say.
--
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
--
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
