Red Hat Pushes Out Enterprise Linux 6.1 90
wiredmikey writes "Red Hat today released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, the first update to the platform since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 back in November 2010. The latest version brings improvements in system reliability, scalability and performance, and support for upcoming system hardware. The latest version also delivers patches and security updates as well as enhancements in virtualization, file systems, scheduler, resource management and high availability." The Register, too, outlines the new release.
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It's his first post ever, obviously created to troll this thread.
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Forget to log off? He created the account just to post to this very story.
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Other than the fact that apt is probably hands down the best package manager out there. I've never run into dependency hell with Debian. Never ended up with a 1/2 broken system.
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Dependency hell only happens if you don't know what you're doing. That rule applies to any package manager, and is not limited to RHEL.
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Actually, apt is (deliberately) missing a vital system verification tool - a way to verify the consistency of packages. rpm -qv will tell you what files have been changed since a package was installed. The debian way to do it is 'reinstall the package and see what breaks'.
I am not making this up.
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md5sum -c var/lib/dpkg/info/foo.md5sums
There's also a tool called debsums which does roughly the same. So that gets you at least half way there.
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Sure, best practices weren't employed in my scenario, but when I saw that yum has a method to downgrade, I realized they build their systems around the concept that people make mistakes sometimes,
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If they wanted James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, or Patrick Naughton, they should've just said so. I think those are about the only three people who can claim 20 years of Java experience in 2011 :)
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Yep. For a name like "rubycodez" you certainly know your Java history! :-)
Something's missing (Score:1)
They're moving to 6.1 after point releases used to take them years. Case in point, 5.4 to 5.5 and then 5.5 to 5.6.
And yet, where's the long awaited Centos 6? It's been more than 6 months, and checking distrowatch, it's the longest in more than 5 years for any "de-branding" effort.
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Re:Something's missing (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Intern,
Get back to work and stop posting on Slashdot. That's what our PR department is for.
Signed,
Jim Whitehurst
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How can you steal something when Redhat make it available for free? You pay for Redhat if you want support and their management tools. They probably consider CentOS a loss leader, a lot of their business is likely "won" by converting sysadmins from the free distro.
Re:Something's missing (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why we use it.
We use CentOS on the boxes where support doesn't matter and RHEL on the boxes where it does matter. It didn't cost us anything to dip our toes in the water and get comfortable with how CentOS does things. And that knowledge transferred right over when we started using RHEL for the important stuff.
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I'm puzzled. How can you "steal" GPL software if you make your source available upon distribution as the license requires?
By your standard, RedHat should shut down because they "stole" work from Linus Torvalds, Novell, Caldera/SCO, SGI, IBM, HP, and many, many others who have contributed to various parts of the overall "linux" software stack,. including of course Linux itself (the kernel). Thanks to the magic of the GPL, Red
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In fact you would be well within your rights to re-brand RedHat, brand it as "myEnterpriseOS" and charge ONE BILLION DOLLARS if you so desire (good luck finding someone willing to pay for it though)
Maybe not a billion, but yeah there's been quite a few cases of open source software getting a different logo slapped on, obscuring that it's GPL and bundled with ad/mal/crapware or sold as if it was payware. Generally frowned upon, but grayishly legal enough they mostly get away with it.
I'm all for the "standing on shoulders of giants" thing, but the whole "let someone else do all the work, slap on a new logo and ship as our own" is more taking the bad with the good. Otherwise you'd run into a ton of legal
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Centos is a wonderful project that takes GPL software (most of it *not* from Red Hat), plenty of huge corporations use it as well as small ones. If that bothers you, migrate to Windows or HP/UX or something. They turn around critical
Re:Something's missing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd recommend giving Scientific Linux a shot - their version of EL6 came out not too far behind RH.
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But their 5.6 is not out yet. CentOS has 5.6 out and lagging on 6. Since they were released very closely, there was a vote on the CentOS lists on priorities. For example, RHEL 6 is still not certified by Oracle for RDBMS so a lot of people prefer still installing 5.6. Hence majority preferred to get the updates instead of trying out something new.
Re:Something's missing (Score:5, Informative)
problem with Scientific Linux (Score:1)
Re:problem with Scientific Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, there are hundreds of people willing to help with CentOS 6, but the team has just ignored them. There was a 'list of outstanding bugs' that was linked to in the 'When will CentOS 6 be released' thread, and a couple of days after that was posted, every bug had a patch against it.
They ignored that for another couple of months, wrote their own patches, and then went off and did other things.
Whilst Scientific Linux 5.6 is easily installable. Install 5.5 and then run 'yum update'. There's an alpha ISO around, and I think there was a beta due out shortly.
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I've reviewed it for a recent partner: the SL update repository has _all_ the RHEL 5.6 components and ongoing updates. CentOS held up all updates for months until they completed their CentOS 5.6 release, which left their users with significant security risks and compatibility problems with use or bundling of upstream RHEL freeware components. SL is also cooperating with links to very useful 3rdparty repositories contained in their core distribution, such as EPEL and RPMforge and altrepo. These are component
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http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/ [centos.org]
,br/>
I get their update emails, haven't noticed any hole in the stream in the last year....
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January 6 through April 14. CentOS patches for version 5 were nonexistent.
Take a look at the RHEL watch list for the same period and compare.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/enterprise-watch-list/ [redhat.com]
There has been some strong criticism of the CentOS team recently and frankly, some of it is deserved.
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That's a mailing list archive: not helpful to this question. Go directly to the CentOS 5.5 archive, now set aside to the "vailt.centos.org" site, and viewable sorted by date at
http://vault.centos.org/5.5/updates/SRPMS/http://vault.centos.org/5.5/updates/SRPMS/?C=M;O=A [centos.org]. Then compare it to the CentOS 5.6 release packages, and the dozens if not hundreds of published RHEL 5 updates for the time from the day _before_ the release of RHEL 5.6 and the advent of CentOS 5.6. . This kind of 4 month "pause" and the foc
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How fast did SL 5.6 come out? Oh, wait.. it hasn't.. So if you have stuff running on SL 5.5, that you don't want/can't move to 6 yet your sitting and waiting...
4.9, 5.6, and 6.0 were all released in a very short time.. CentOS decided to do the ones that were currently being used first. SL decided to go with the new shiny one (which is nice about being small, and not having many people using your software on externally facing things)
CentOS 6 is looking to be another week or two.
something missing between your ears (Score:1)
What do you imagine "debranding" is? they have to compile everything from source and test, not a trivial process.
The distro is getting bigger, building and testing "debranded" version will take longer unless more volunteers, money and hardware are donated. they give the world their work free of charge, but turds like you sit on your ass helping no one but bitch.
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Funnily I don't see anyone complaining about Oracle Enterprise Linux. Weird. Their main aim is undercutting RedHat and making them go bankrupt by selling the same(NOT!) product.
The same product - OEL bundles Unbreakable Linux Kernel. It might be a good thing but breaks compatibility with RHEL/CentOS and caused headaches for me.
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the clients of my employer are huge operations with budgets in the tens of millions to over a billion; they all run Oracle DBMS and related products but I have yet to see anyone using Oracle Enterprise Linux. It's all RedHat for the choice of Linux, and Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, and even some Windows for the rest.
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http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa [centos.org]
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The 5.6 boxes are running fine and will be for a few more years [redhat.com]. RHEL5 doesn't exit the normal life cycle until March 31, 2014, and the extended life cycle runs until March 31, 2017. So we have until 2014 for regular patches and 2017 for critical security patches.
Which means that CentOS will still be shipping critical security patches until 2017 as well.
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http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa [centos.org]
ISOs of 6.0 should be available in a week. I doubt that 6.1 will be too far behind.
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Re:Now where CentOS 6? (Score:5, Insightful)
ISOs of Centos 6.0 are worthless at this point because security fixes from RedHat going forward will be based on 6.1.
Centos has big issues. I can't see how anyone would commit to it at this point.
Re:Now where CentOS 6? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the way I see it. I currently run a company with a very very large install base of machines.
My machines are all running Centos 5.x. For me, getting 5.6 out to production is the HIGHEST priority. I could give a crap about 6.0, especially since everyone knows that the first RHEL x.0 release will be completely buggy anyway. For deploy-able stable products, RHEL 4.3 and RHEL 5.1 were the first in their series to be decent enough to run in production from our testing and bug reports back to Redhat's bugzilla. I completely expect RHEL 6.0 to be completely unstable and bug ridden, and hopefully 6.1 has ironed most of them out.
I'd be perfectly happy if CentOS never released a RHEL x.0 release.
I personally think Scientific Linux has their priorities backward, and CentOS is in the right. I'd rather have 5.6 before 6.0.
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Well I may not administer as many servers as you, but I am in the process of putting up infrastructure that will have a lifetime past the end of Centos 5. As such not having Centos 6 available is going come back and bite me in a couple of years.
Having backports of security patches to 5.5 and 6.0 would have been a better result than the current situation.
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Your putting up a set of servers that will be used past 2017? Wow!
Thats how far 5.6 will continue to get security patches.. 2014 for regular errata updates...
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Even with only a single machine running with Centos5, I would have felt much more uncomfortable with that one with all the security updates from the upstream-vendor waiting for testing and release in the Centos domain, while ScientificL had them all out in-time (as quick as they usually offer them to the users). This inexplainable hiatus of bug fix and security update releases hasn't occurred for the first time. I always wonder how this behavior is overlooked by many of Centos' vocal supporters, many of the
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ISOS of RHEL 6 are worthless at this point because major kinks and bugs in the new release will be worked out over the next 6 months. RHEL 6 has big issues. I can't see how anyone would commit to it at this point
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http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa [centos.org]
ISOs of 6.0 should be available in a week. I doubt that 6.1 will be too far behind.
You missed the next month:
http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa/calendar/view/2011-6 [centos.org]
"6.0 begin sync to external mirrors" is June 6.
Maybe a release within a week of that.
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Cool beans.
Where's CentOS 6? I don't understand what's taking them so long. Don't they just remove the RedHat branding and re-package?
According to this thread [centos.org] on the CentOS bulletin board they are about to begin the QA, which means that it will probably be released soon.
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QA? Redhat already provided it. If it needed QA it would be called Fedora
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Please enlighten us! I don't understand what takes so long and neither does anybody else it seems. I always assumed that it was just yanking copyrighted stuff & recompiling, with no testing necessary.
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Cent OS ... 6.0 yet! (Score:2)
Many places use Redhat and I had to downgrade to Fedora as 5.x is way too old.
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nope, there is no Scientific Linux 5.6 yet, but CentOS has it because they do things properly. Some people need 5.x
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No, SL has all the *components* of RHEL 5.6 in their rolling updates, which were updated continuously since the release of RHEL 5.6. CentOS buggered themselves by holding up all updates until after they completely bundled RHEL 5.6, which was pretty useless. Rolling updates are the way Red Hat publishes them for already installed machines: you can install with any of the RHEL 5.x media and update to the current release on line, and this is what SL does. The only use fo the the RHEL 5.6 media, or bundle, is t
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Centos 6 just went to the QA team, you are talking out of your ass.
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Just went to the QA team... after how many months of rude responses by members of the team, delays, uncertainty in what would happen and when?
Even the 5.6 release was a long delayed process leaving people with open security issues.
I've moved to Debian for my home machines, and we've moved from CentOS to RHEL at work, just to be able to get updates in a reasonable timeframe.
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Then you're using the wrong distro in the first place. 5.x is in no way outdated, it's well within it's supported lifetime.
If you want a rapid update cycle, then Fedora is where you're supposed to be anyway, that's it's purpose.
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After they shafted the desktop users who help make them successful, and get them into the enterprise in the first place; by relegating them to guinea pigs for the half baked trial balloons in Fedora, RedHat earned the right to reset the version numbering system.
Again ships with unsupported Perl (Score:3, Informative)
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And if you pull from CPAN.. (Score:2)
You already are going outside the realm of supported things from RHEL. Might as well install perl yourself while you are at it.
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This would be really great... (Score:2)
...if there were a single VM hosting provider on earth offering RHEL 6 images. I know they pissed some people off with the new pricing structure, but Red Hat has always cut special deals with hosting providers, so I'm forced to wonder what they hell they've done to piss them off so much that nobody is offering it more than 6 months after release.
There are an awful lot of people who need the kinds of data center reliability that need million-dollar investments, but don't have the economies of scale to do it
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This is so true - it makes me laugh even more at the monkeys who are clamouring for centos 6.0.
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You should really take a step back from the keyboard and look at the history. .0 releases are, without fail, a major step forward in the technologies that Red Hat want to put in their distro. New kernel base, new packages, new security, new authentication etc. The list goes on. To call it "half-baked crap" is really little short of a half-baked comment. You can demand a flawless OS all you like, but without early adopter customers (of whom I've worked for several), these things don't stand a chance of g
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I worked in Red Hat Support when both RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 were released. Yes, each one had growing pains that made it unsuitable for many users. Most of those problems involved:
1) 3rd-party kernel modules
2) combinations of motherboards/BIOSes/peripherals/firmwares that each individually worked fine, but interacted in a way that caused undefined behavior that just happened to work correctly on the previous release
3) hardware that wasn't available for QA prior to release
4) entirely new features that had never