Latest news¶
AlmaLinux focuses on Application Binary Interface compatibility¶
In response to Red Hat's recent announcement to restrict public source code releases to CentOS Stream, the AlmaLinux Foundation has announced that they will drop the aim to be "bug-for-bug compatible" with RHEL, and instead focus on Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatibility. They will work to ensure that applications built to run on RHEL can run without any issues on AlmaLinux, even in situations where package versions deviate slightly from those available in RHEL.
The CERN IT Linux Team and others in the WLCG community continue to be in close contact with the AlmaLinux Foundation to express our needs and they have been very receptive. At this time, our commitment to support AlmaLinux and RHEL remains unchanged. We will continue to monitor the situation and work with our users, Fermilab and the rest of our WLCG partners to ensure we maintain a stable base for our services. We will share further updates as more developments arise.
Changes to how Red Hat releases source code¶
Following the recent announcement of Red Hat to restrict public source code releases to CentOS Stream, the CERN IT Linux team is in close contact with the AlmaLinux team to understand the implications for AlmaLinux. They are already implementing short-term solutions and working with Red Hat to identify the best path forward. We will post updates as soon as we have more news.
AlmaLinux 8.8 is available for testing¶
We are pleased to announce that AlmaLinux 8.8 is available for testing as of today.
AlmaLinux 8.8 will be available in production on 2023-05-31.
The list of updated packages can be found here.
The release notes can be found here.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 is available for testing¶
We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 is available for testing as of today.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 will be available in production on 2023-05-31.
The list of updated packages can be found here.
The release notes can be found here.
AlmaLinux 9.2 is available for testing¶
We are pleased to announce that AlmaLinux 9.2 is available for testing as of today.
AlmaLinux 9.2 will be available in production on 2023-05-24.
The list of updated packages can be found here.
The release notes can be found here.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 is available for testing¶
We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 is available for testing as of today.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 will be available in production on 2023-05-09.
The list of updated packages can be found here.
The release notes can be found here.
Fermilab/CERN recommendation for Linux distribution¶
CERN and Fermilab jointly plan to provide AlmaLinux as the standard distribution for experiments at our facilities, reflecting recent experience and discussions with experiments and other stakeholders. AlmaLinux has recently been gaining traction among the community due to its long life cycle for each major version, extended architecture support, rapid release cycle, upstream community contributions, and support for security advisory metadata. In testing, it has demonstrated to be perfectly compatible with the other rebuilds and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
CERN and, to a lesser extent, Fermilab, will also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for some services and applications within the respective laboratories. Scientific Linux 7, at Fermilab, and CERN CentOS 7, at CERN, will continue to be supported for their remaining life, until June 2024.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 available¶
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 is now available for installation at CERN.
AIMS2 PXE boot targets:
RHEL_9_0_X86_64
RHEL_9_0_AARCH64
Installation path:
http://linuxsoft.cern.ch/cern/rhel/9/baseos/x86_64/
For more information about RHEL, please refer to this page.
CentOS Stream 9 available¶
We are pleased to announce that CS 9 is available for production as of Wednesday 2022-02-09.
The list of updated packages can be found here.
CS9 can be installed using the following Openstack image:
CS9 - x86_64 [2022-02-01]
or via AIMS2, using one of these images:
CS9_X86_64
CS9_AARCH64
The repositories to use are available here.
Please note that due to the very early support of CS9, some additional CERN tools or services may not yet be ready. If you encounter any such issues, please raise a ticket with the relevant services.
CentOS 8.5 testing available¶
We are pleased to announce that the updated CentOS 8 version 8.5 is available for testing as of Wednesday 2021-11-17.
This version will become the default C8 production version on Wednesday 2021-11-24.
The list of updated packages can be found here.
For information about C8, including installation instructions please visit this page.