Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Mark Rousell]

On 22/02/2020 02:15, Yasha Karant wrote:
Two comments.

I am not pursuing the IBM FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)
[...]

For the avoidance of doubt, I do not think you are pursuing FUD about IBM. I 
was not the person who accused you of that. Indeed, I think you are being 
sensibly cautious.

I just said that it seems to me that IBM does have a profit motive to keep 
CentOS (or some other free access to Red Hat or a functional equivalent) 
available for the foreseeable future.

I understand the current for-profit business arguments that IBM will continue 
to make CentOS viable and stable.  I also do not trust these for the long term 
unless there are some strong fiscal reasons to do so for the long term (e.g., a 
change in taxation policy and enforcement).

Sure, things might change but it seems to me that longer term changes are not 
easily predictable no matter what. I can only say that it seems to me that, for 
the foreseeable future, IBM and Red Hat have no good reason as far as I can see 
to shut down CentOS. In the current world, maximising profits from Red Hat is 
overall facilitated by there being what amounts to a free version of it easily 
available.

Second, the issue of support.  "My" university has changed dramatically under 
the current campus President.  Even under the previous campus administrations, 
the only supported entities were those for administrative computing controlled 
by the administration and that has, and had, no academic freedom.  Worthless 
for any research that interested me.  Most of these functions have been 
outsourced at this time.  The administrators in these areas have no background 
in science or engineering, but rather "management".  I am not deprecating 
anyone, merely putting things into perspective.  There is no internal support 
at my campus for academic freedom curiosity-directed disciplinary research, 
with some support for some persons to secure external funding.  My funding to 
do any of this was external, not internal.

It's a shame that your university computing environment has become so 
commoditised (although it is increasingly the way of things for most 
institutional computing services). It sounds like it's being run purely as a 
business, not as an education/research establishment per se.

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Yasha Karant]

Two comments.

I am not pursuing the IBM FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) marketing and 
business strategy that made IBM the dominant business, accounting, and 
the like, computer systems service, software, and hardware supplier in 
the USA for many years.


The research and scientific market was dominated by DEC (since absorbed 
by other for profit corporations), Control Data, Cray, and Sun (also 
absorbed, currently Oracle as I recall).  Of these, only Sun was 
strongly unix (BSD that was SunOS then Solaris and then left BSD for the 
descendant of ATT System V Release 4 -- the old "original" ATT of unix, 
C, C++, etc., not the current ATT that bought the name, etc., but not 
Murray Hill Bell Labs, etc.). Linux is a relatively new "unix", but the 
history is irrelevant to this reality -- most of the major servers run 
Linux or on a open systems "bare iron" hypervisor for "cloud services" 
that shares much history with other open systems.


Indeed, this list did suffice for support -- the personnel from SL at 
Fermilab would reply with some detail, but not for those who need 
detailed key-stroke "hold the hand and fingers" support.


I understand the current for-profit business arguments that IBM will 
continue to make CentOS viable and stable.  I also do not trust these 
for the long term unless there are some strong fiscal reasons to do so 
for the long term (e.g., a change in taxation policy and enforcement).


Second, the issue of support.  "My" university has changed dramatically 
under the current campus President.  Even under the previous campus 
administrations, the only supported entities were those for 
administrative computing controlled by the administration and that has, 
and had, no academic freedom. Worthless for any research that interested 
me.  Most of these functions have been outsourced at this time.  The 
administrators in these areas have no background in science or 
engineering, but rather "management".  I am not deprecating anyone, 
merely putting things into perspective.  There is no internal support at 
my campus for academic freedom curiosity-directed disciplinary research, 
with some support for some persons to secure external funding.  My 
funding to do any of this was external, not internal.


Yasha Karant

On 2/21/20 5:49 PM, Mark Rousell wrote:

Andrew Z wrote on 2/21/20 1:57 PM:


> It is odd that you have no budget to support critical systems
for your
> department,  Yasha.
>
> What if you power servers down and see how "critical " they
indeed are? And if
> they are not - then get fedora and be done with it.



I don't think Yasha said that he has no budget, did he, only that he 
in effect has a limited budget. Why is it limited? Could it be because 
it was possible to do what was needed within that limited budget?

Re: EL 8

[Mark Rousell]

On 03/02/2020 21:39, Stephan Wiesand wrote:

On 3. Feb 2020, at 22:23, ONeal, Miles 
<0be99a30c213-dmarc-requ...@listserv.fnal.gov>
 wrote:

 And there's no real reason to get the source from anywhere but RHEL, since 
it's freely available.



Care to share a pointer to the freely available SRPM for one of today's 
updates, like gnome-settings-daemon-3.28.1-3.el7_6.src.rpm?
.


I can't speak for the specific update you mention but in order to get Red Hat 
source all you need is legitimate access to it. One can of course buy a Red Hat 
licence (presumably Oracle can afford this) but access to the source code is 
also freely available. Just sign up for a Red Hat dev licence and, as per GPL 
requirements, you get access to the source RPMs (in a 9.8GB ISO).

The dev licence limits you to running Red Hat for development and test purposes 
as I recall but, as I understand it (I am not a lawyer), none of that prevents 
you from exercising your GPL rights with the source code.

Naturally, certain parts of all that code and associated files contain Red 
Hat's trademarked intellectual property and branding which is not covered by 
GPL, so if one wishes to redistribute the code then one has the easy little job 
of removing all the IP/branding first. ;-)

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Mark Rousell]

Andrew Z wrote on 2/21/20 1:57 PM:
> It is odd that you have no budget to support critical systems for your
> department,  Yasha.
>
> What if you power servers down and see how "critical " they indeed are? And if
> they are not - then get fedora and be done with it.

I don't think Yasha said that he has no budget, did he, only that he in effect 
has a limited budget. Why is it limited? Could it be because it was possible to 
do what was needed within that limited budget?

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Mark Rousell]

On 21/02/2020 19:21, Yasha Karant wrote:
In the simplest terms. I trust IBM to maximize overall return-on-investment 
(e.g., profit), and a "free" CentOS that truly competes with licensed-for-fee 
products does not fit that for-profit model.

Whilst I don't disagree that one should be cautious, it seems to me to be 
strongly in Red Hat's interest (and thus IBM's interest now) to maintain a 
free-to-access distribution that whets people's appetites for the paid version. 
This could change but, for the time being, it does seem to me that the profit 
motive works in users' favour with this particular open source operating system 
and its ecosystem.

Also, while Red Hat remains open source (which looks very unlikely to change) 
then there is nothing to stop another group replicating what CentOS, SL, Oracle 
and others have done. I admit that doing this from scratch today would probably 
be much harder than in the past but it's still technically feasible. Of course, 
to make it realistically sustainable might still require a profit motive and 
business plan of some sort.

Having said all that, I must admit that I can't see why Red Hat (and now IBM) 
really needs CentOS. If they are happy to make CentOS available for free why 
not just make Red Hat available for free but without the support?

Re: comps, primary, other, filelists

[Orion Poplawski]

On 2/21/20 7:36 AM, Ken Teh wrote:
> I've been using the comps file to construct the packages list for my kickstart
> installs, ignoring the other files (primary, other, and filelists) that are in
> repodata folder.
> 
> Can someone explain what the other files are and if I need to review them for
> "other" packages? I notice that for centos 8, the comps file is called
> comps-baseos, suggesting that there are more (?) package groups listed 
> elsewhere.
> 
> Thanks.

I believe primary holds the full list of all packages and much associated
metadata.  filelists has the list of all of the files in all of the packages.
Not sure what other has.

I don't think that there are other "comps" like files other than ones with
comps in the name.  Note though that there can be packages that are not listed
in comps at all.

HTH,
  Orion

-- 
Orion Poplawski
Manager of NWRA Technical Systems  720-772-5637
NWRA, Boulder/CoRA Office FAX: 303-415-9702
3380 Mitchell Lane   or...@nwra.com
Boulder, CO 80301 https://www.nwra.com/



smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Andrew Z]

Thats why we r losing to china..

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 16:17 P. Larry Nelson  wrote:

> Not at all odd in academia.  On the contrary, it is the norm.
>
>
> Andrew Z wrote on 2/21/20 1:57 PM:
> > It is odd that you have no budget to support critical systems for your
> > department,  Yasha.
> >
> > What if you power servers down and see how "critical " they indeed are?
> And if
> > they are not - then get fedora and be done with it.
>
> --
> P. Larry Nelson (217-693-7418) | IT Administrator Emeritus
> 810 Ventura Rd.| High Energy Physics Group
> Champaign, IL  61820   | Physics Dept., Univ. of Ill.
> MailTo: lnel...@illinois.edu   |
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__hep.physics.illinois.edu_home_lnelson_=DwIBaQ=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=_9v30Q-ddy2sbdwT8piZCFYKkgfLFLHBy40YdM7UDvc=2Bnqtes6qFjjlk8EvWyothw0Fi4yhzsrYAV6DEizrGM=
>  
>
> --
>   "Information without accountability is just noise."  - P.L. Nelson
>

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[P. Larry Nelson]

Not at all odd in academia.  On the contrary, it is the norm.


Andrew Z wrote on 2/21/20 1:57 PM:
It is odd that you have no budget to support critical systems for your 
department,  Yasha.


What if you power servers down and see how "critical " they indeed are? And if 
they are not - then get fedora and be done with it.


--
P. Larry Nelson (217-693-7418) | IT Administrator Emeritus
810 Ventura Rd.| High Energy Physics Group
Champaign, IL  61820   | Physics Dept., Univ. of Ill.
MailTo: lnel...@illinois.edu   | https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__hep.physics.illinois.edu_home_lnelson_=DwIDaQ=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=xMvnjGKdYon7qCS8RwTK4EtHUUi1_l0sq3l2lt4iddU=LMYZGwwYk-up60pKrnQrswyT6KIrbewHccwTTiyyoxQ= 
--

 "Information without accountability is just noise."  - P.L. Nelson

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Andrew Z]

It is odd that you have no budget to support critical systems for your
department,  Yasha.

What if you power servers down and see how "critical " they indeed are? And
if they are not - then get fedora and be done with it.


On Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 14:46 ONeal, Miles <
0be99a30c213-dmarc-requ...@listserv.fnal.gov> wrote:

> SL didn't have "support", but the mailing list provided excellent,
> real-world support. At least during the SL 3-5 timeframe, CentOS had
> nothing even close that I could find.
>
> There's obvious value in the broader community involvement that comes
> through CentOS, and in providing a free alternative for those who don't
> need / can't afford RH licensing. Wiping out CentOS would hurt the
> ecosystem. That doesn't mean it can't happen, but it seems unlikely.
>
> One company I worked for never bought RHEL because it would have been too
> pricey under the circumstances. We found a cou0ple of bugs that got
> reported back upstream. Another company I worked for moved to RHEL from
> CentOS as soon as it could afford to, because we needed the support. Both
> companies made the right decision for their situation, and both were good
> for RedHat, just in different ways.
>
> RedHat has been fine with CentOS and SL. I see no reason for that to
> change. IBM is not micro-managing RedHat. Hopefully that won't change,
> either.
>
> -Miles
> --
> *From:* owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov <
> owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov> on behalf of Yasha Karant
> 
> *Sent:* Friday, February 21, 2020 13:21
> *To:* SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS@fnal.gov 
> *Subject:* Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?
>
> Caution: EXTERNAL email
>
>
> As we could not afford the license-for-fee model that RedHat started a
> number of years ago (prior to which, one could download and install
> production RedHat -- not the "Fedora" equivalent -- licensed for free but
> without RedHat support -- but updates, etc., were available without fee),
> we too went with CentOS.  Before RH, I used Debian, but there were issues
> of stability.  RH was stable.  The problem with CentOS was that it was more
> or less a volunteer deployment, and we did not have the personnel to join
> the effort as our internal and external funding could not be used for that
> purpose.  Once SL became a more-or-less "stock" version of RHEL, and given
> that SL had professional funded employed personnel (as required by HEP and
> funded by the various governments that support Fermilab or CERN), this was
> the logical choice.  SL came with no support, but as several of us (myself
> included) were at one epoch "kernels internals" persons, and were "systems
> persons", and not as "IT" but as scientists and engineers, with the SL
> users list for "help", we had no significant issues -- see the recent
> exchange concerning a bug in EPEL that prevented an "easy" upgrade of the
> MATE desktop GUI environment.
>
> However, RedHat is now owned by IBM, and CentOS is the RedHat "licensed
> for free" distro front end.   The only reason IBM exists is not to support
> the goals of the Freesoftware Foundation (GPL), but to support profit -- it
> is a major for-profit (effectively, trans-national) corporation.  Thus, one
> cannot rely upon entities within such a corporation to do anything that
> will undermine or reduce the profits of the corporation (including the
> overall compensation package of the CEO and the like), except in those
> nation states that have enforced regulations controlling the product
> deployments.  The USA has very little compared to much of the EU.  As
> Fermilab/CERN do not exist for the same purpose as IBM (individual
> scientists who may be the group leaders, etc., at such entities
> notwithstanding), SL was a viable alternative.  There is absolutely no
> reason to assume that IBM will be such an alternative unless one wants to
> pay.  I am not going to argue with those who claim we are "freeloaders"
> despite paying the taxes that in part support Fermilab and CERN, but not
> CentOS -- if we cannot pay, we should not use -- but the realities of much
> university-based academic research is that there is no money and we do what
> we can.
>
> In the simplest terms. I trust IBM to maximize overall
> return-on-investment (e.g., profit), and a "free" CentOS that truly
> competes with licensed-for-fee products does not fit that for-profit model.
>
> Yasha Karant
>
> On 2/21/20 7:41 AM, Michel Jouvin wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a great
> project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by Red Hat. I
> see no official sign that it should change. Moving from SL to CentOS is
> straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as a migration as it
> is exactly the same product. And staying with CentOS will give you a chance
> to meet the DUNE people at some point and more generally the HEP community
> if you liked 

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[ONeal, Miles]

SL didn't have "support", but the mailing list provided excellent, real-world 
support. At least during the SL 3-5 timeframe, CentOS had nothing even close 
that I could find.

There's obvious value in the broader community involvement that comes through 
CentOS, and in providing a free alternative for those who don't need / can't 
afford RH licensing. Wiping out CentOS would hurt the ecosystem. That doesn't 
mean it can't happen, but it seems unlikely.

One company I worked for never bought RHEL because it would have been too 
pricey under the circumstances. We found a cou0ple of bugs that got reported 
back upstream. Another company I worked for moved to RHEL from CentOS as soon 
as it could afford to, because we needed the support. Both companies made the 
right decision for their situation, and both were good for RedHat, just in 
different ways.

RedHat has been fine with CentOS and SL. I see no reason for that to change. 
IBM is not micro-managing RedHat. Hopefully that won't change, either.

-Miles

From: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov 
 on behalf of Yasha Karant 

Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 13:21
To: SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS@fnal.gov 
Subject: Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

Caution: EXTERNAL email



As we could not afford the license-for-fee model that RedHat started a number 
of years ago (prior to which, one could download and install production RedHat 
-- not the "Fedora" equivalent -- licensed for free but without RedHat support 
-- but updates, etc., were available without fee), we too went with CentOS.  
Before RH, I used Debian, but there were issues of stability.  RH was stable.  
The problem with CentOS was that it was more or less a volunteer deployment, 
and we did not have the personnel to join the effort as our internal and 
external funding could not be used for that purpose.  Once SL became a 
more-or-less "stock" version of RHEL, and given that SL had professional funded 
employed personnel (as required by HEP and funded by the various governments 
that support Fermilab or CERN), this was the logical choice.  SL came with no 
support, but as several of us (myself included) were at one epoch "kernels 
internals" persons, and were "systems persons", and not as "IT" but as 
scientists and engineers, with the SL users list for "help", we had no 
significant issues -- see the recent exchange concerning a bug in EPEL that 
prevented an "easy" upgrade of the MATE desktop GUI environment.

However, RedHat is now owned by IBM, and CentOS is the RedHat "licensed for 
free" distro front end.   The only reason IBM exists is not to support the 
goals of the Freesoftware Foundation (GPL), but to support profit -- it is a 
major for-profit (effectively, trans-national) corporation.  Thus, one cannot 
rely upon entities within such a corporation to do anything that will undermine 
or reduce the profits of the corporation (including the overall compensation 
package of the CEO and the like), except in those nation states that have 
enforced regulations controlling the product deployments.  The USA has very 
little compared to much of the EU.  As Fermilab/CERN do not exist for the same 
purpose as IBM (individual scientists who may be the group leaders, etc., at 
such entities  notwithstanding), SL was a viable alternative.  There is 
absolutely no reason to assume that IBM will be such an alternative unless one 
wants to pay.  I am not going to argue with those who claim we are 
"freeloaders" despite paying the taxes that in part support Fermilab and CERN, 
but not CentOS -- if we cannot pay, we should not use -- but the realities of 
much university-based academic research is that there is no money and we do 
what we can.

In the simplest terms. I trust IBM to maximize overall return-on-investment 
(e.g., profit), and a "free" CentOS that truly competes with licensed-for-fee 
products does not fit that for-profit model.

Yasha Karant

On 2/21/20 7:41 AM, Michel Jouvin wrote:

Hi,

I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a great 
project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by Red Hat. I see 
no official sign that it should change. Moving from SL to CentOS is 
straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as a migration as it is 
exactly the same product. And staying with CentOS will give you a chance to 
meet the DUNE people at some point and more generally the HEP community if you 
liked interacting with it!

Cheers,

Michel

Le 21/02/2020 à 16:32, Peter Willis a écrit :

Hello,

Thanks to everyone for clarifying the future status of SL.

I guess it’s time to start researching he docs for Ubuntu/Debian or something.



Looks like we need to revise our computing cluster plan.

The computer here is pretty small with only two nodes and a controller 
totalling 112 CPUs.

We use it for numerical modelling of ocean and river currents and sediment 
transport 

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Jon Pruente]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 1:21 PM Yasha Karant  wrote:

> In the simplest terms. I trust IBM to maximize overall
> return-on-investment (e.g., profit), and a "free" CentOS that truly
> competes with licensed-for-fee products does not fit that for-profit model.
>

The amount of anti-IBM FUD in these kinds of threads is staggering. IBM has
supported Linux for literal decades, even on their mainframe hardware.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ibm.com_ibm_history_ibm100_us_en_icons_linux_=DwIBaQ=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A=CVEqyWX2tM2UdAysPgM_G95hgpoVNM-YyXhIDY6lhCQ=2hr7BD-hdfyYkJk3dI3pBx7erjqgUanUk5wDUZ7FtRo=
 

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Yasha Karant]

As we could not afford the license-for-fee model that RedHat started a 
number of years ago (prior to which, one could download and install 
production RedHat -- not the "Fedora" equivalent -- licensed for free 
but without RedHat support -- but updates, etc., were available without 
fee), we too went with CentOS.  Before RH, I used Debian, but there were 
issues of stability.  RH was stable.  The problem with CentOS was that 
it was more or less a volunteer deployment, and we did not have the 
personnel to join the effort as our internal and external funding could 
not be used for that purpose.  Once SL became a more-or-less "stock" 
version of RHEL, and given that SL had professional funded employed 
personnel (as required by HEP and funded by the various governments that 
support Fermilab or CERN), this was the logical choice.  SL came with no 
support, but as several of us (myself included) were at one epoch 
"kernels internals" persons, and were "systems persons", and not as "IT" 
but as scientists and engineers, with the SL users list for "help", we 
had no significant issues -- see the recent exchange concerning a bug in 
EPEL that prevented an "easy" upgrade of the MATE desktop GUI environment.


However, RedHat is now owned by IBM, and CentOS is the RedHat "licensed 
for free" distro front end.   The only reason IBM exists is not to 
support the goals of the Freesoftware Foundation (GPL), but to support 
profit -- it is a major for-profit (effectively, trans-national) 
corporation.  Thus, one cannot rely upon entities within such a 
corporation to do anything that will undermine or reduce the profits of 
the corporation (including the overall compensation package of the CEO 
and the like), except in those nation states that have enforced 
regulations controlling the product deployments.  The USA has very 
little compared to much of the EU.  As Fermilab/CERN do not exist for 
the same purpose as IBM (individual scientists who may be the group 
leaders, etc., at such entities  notwithstanding), SL was a viable 
alternative.  There is absolutely no reason to assume that IBM will be 
such an alternative unless one wants to pay.  I am not going to argue 
with those who claim we are "freeloaders" despite paying the taxes that 
in part support Fermilab and CERN, but not CentOS -- if we cannot pay, 
we should not use -- but the realities of much university-based academic 
research is that there is no money and we do what we can.


In the simplest terms. I trust IBM to maximize overall 
return-on-investment (e.g., profit), and a "free" CentOS that truly 
competes with licensed-for-fee products does not fit that for-profit model.


Yasha Karant

On 2/21/20 7:41 AM, Michel Jouvin wrote:


Hi,

I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a 
great project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by 
Red Hat. I see no official sign that it should change. Moving from SL 
to CentOS is straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as 
a migration as it is exactly the same product. And staying with CentOS 
will give you a chance to meet the DUNE people at some point and more 
generally the HEP community if you liked interacting with it!


Cheers,

Michel

Le 21/02/2020 à 16:32, Peter Willis a écrit :


Hello,


Thanks to everyone for clarifying the future status of SL.

I guess it’s time to start researching he docs for Ubuntu/Debian or 
something.


Looks like we need to revise our computing cluster plan.

The computer here is pretty small with only two nodes and a 
controller totalling 112 CPUs.


We use it for numerical modelling of ocean and river currents and 
sediment transport (OpenMP/MPICH/FORTRAN).


The changeover will be pretty small. We are still waiting for the OK 
for a new node or two.


The current nodes are ten years old. The update to a controller and 
SL7 was a last ditch effort to join the two nodes and increase the 
scale of the models without costing too much more.


In other news, the link you shared has an article about ‘DUNE’ which 
seems like an interesting project.


I’d certainly frostbite a few toes to just stand around and watch 
that thing run experiments.


Thanks for the info,

Peter

>Hello Peter,

>

>> Is Scientific Linux still active?

>Scientific Linux 6 and 7 will be supported until they are EOL, but 
there will be no SL8.


>

>Here is the official announcement from last April:

>

>https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1904=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS=817 



>

>Bonnie King

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Marcelo Ferrarotti]

Hello there,

I'm quite sad about SL EoL.

I'm no scientist, just an electronics guy who do a lot of research in RF
(as hobby, mostly testing antennas for ham radio in VHF bands) from
Argentina.

Fot SL the most "well done" linux distribution, for people who simply knows.

Will look forward to move to another distribution.

Cheers from Argentina

Marcelo


El vie., 21 de feb. de 2020 a la(s) 13:03, Peter Willis (pwil...@aslenv.com)
escribió:

> Hello,
>
>
>
> I can’t say I’m negative toward CentOS, I used it back in the late 90s (?
> Maybe early 00s), as an alternative to RedHat at that time.
>
> It’s more a familiarity thing.  I have used more Debian based Linux
> distros since the mid 1990s than anything else.
>
> I will certainly look into CentOS as an option. Could be a shorter path
> to completion.
>
> Thanks for reminding of that as an alternative.
>
>
>
> My friend just toured Fermi Lab and brought me back a lapel pin. I was
> thankful but very envious of her visit there.
>
> It’s certainly on my list.
>
>
>
> I could probably just retire and, quite happily,  tour all the worlds
> particle accelerator facilities.
>
> Make a nice scrapbook of blueprints.
>
>
>
> Peter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Hi,
>
> >I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a great
> project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by Red Hat. I
> see no >official sign that it should change. Moving from SL to CentOS is
> straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as a migration as it
> is exactly the same >product. And staying with CentOS will give you a
> chance to meet the DUNE people at some point and more generally the HEP
> community if you liked >interacting with it!
>
> >Cheers,
>


-- 
Marcelo Ferrarotti

RE: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Peter Willis]

Hello,
 
I can't say I'm negative toward CentOS, I used it back in the late 90s (? Maybe 
early 00s), as an alternative to RedHat at that time.
It's more a familiarity thing.  I have used more Debian based Linux distros 
since the mid 1990s than anything else.
I will certainly look into CentOS as an option. Could be a shorter path to 
completion.
Thanks for reminding of that as an alternative.
 
My friend just toured Fermi Lab and brought me back a lapel pin. I was thankful 
but very envious of her visit there.
It's certainly on my list. 
 
I could probably just retire and, quite happily,  tour all the worlds particle 
accelerator facilities.
Make a nice scrapbook of blueprints.
 
Peter
 
 
 
>Hi,
>I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a great 
>project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by Red Hat. I 
>see no >official sign that it should change. Moving from SL to CentOS is 
>straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as a migration as it is 
>exactly the same >product. And staying with CentOS will give you a chance to 
>meet the DUNE people at some point and more generally the HEP community if you 
>liked >interacting with it!
>Cheers,

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Michel Jouvin]

Hi,

I'm surprised by the so negative feeling against CentOS which is a great 
project too and has been working well since it was "acquired" by Red 
Hat. I see no official sign that it should change. Moving from SL to 
CentOS is straightforward, I don't think you can speak about it as a 
migration as it is exactly the same product. And staying with CentOS 
will give you a chance to meet the DUNE people at some point and more 
generally the HEP community if you liked interacting with it!


Cheers,

Michel

Le 21/02/2020 à 16:32, Peter Willis a écrit :


Hello,


Thanks to everyone for clarifying the future status of SL.

I guess it’s time to start researching he docs for Ubuntu/Debian or 
something.


Looks like we need to revise our computing cluster plan.

The computer here is pretty small with only two nodes and a controller 
totalling 112 CPUs.


We use it for numerical modelling of ocean and river currents and 
sediment transport (OpenMP/MPICH/FORTRAN).


The changeover will be pretty small. We are still waiting for the OK 
for a new node or two.


The current nodes are ten years old. The update to a controller and 
SL7 was a last ditch effort to join the two nodes and increase the 
scale of the models without costing too much more.


In other news, the link you shared has an article about ‘DUNE’ which 
seems like an interesting project.


I’d certainly frostbite a few toes to just stand around and watch that 
thing run experiments.


Thanks for the info,

Peter

>Hello Peter,

>

>> Is Scientific Linux still active?

>Scientific Linux 6 and 7 will be supported until they are EOL, but 
there will be no SL8.


>

>Here is the official announcement from last April:

>

>https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1904=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS=817

>

>Bonnie King

RE: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Peter Willis]

Hello,

Thanks to everyone for clarifying the future status of SL.
I guess it's time to start researching he docs for Ubuntu/Debian or something.
 
Looks like we need to revise our computing cluster plan.
The computer here is pretty small with only two nodes and a controller 
totalling 112 CPUs.
We use it for numerical modelling of ocean and river currents and sediment 
transport (OpenMP/MPICH/FORTRAN).
The changeover will be pretty small. We are still waiting for the OK for a new 
node or two.
The current nodes are ten years old. The update to a controller and SL7 was a 
last ditch effort to join the two nodes and increase the scale of the models 
without costing too much more. 
 
In other news, the link you shared has an article about 'DUNE' which seems like 
an interesting project.
I'd certainly frostbite a few toes to just stand around and watch that thing 
run experiments.
 
Thanks for the info,
 
Peter
 
 
>Hello Peter,
> 
>> Is Scientific Linux still active?
>Scientific Linux 6 and 7 will be supported until they are EOL, but there will 
>be no SL8.
> 
>Here is the official announcement from last April:
> 
>https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1904 
>
> =SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS=817
> 
>Bonnie King

Re: Is Scientfic Linux Still Active as a Distribution?

[Bonnie King]

Hello Peter,

> Is Scientific Linux still active?

Scientific Linux 6 and 7 will be supported until they are EOL, but there will 
be no SL8.

Here is the official announcement from last April:

https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1904=SCIENTIFIC-LINUX-USERS=817

Bonnie King

comps, primary, other, filelists

[Ken Teh]

I've been using the comps file to construct the packages list for my kickstart 
installs, ignoring the other files (primary, other, and filelists) that are in 
repodata folder.


Can someone explain what the other files are and if I need to review them for 
"other" packages? I notice that for centos 8, the comps file is called 
comps-baseos, suggesting that there are more (?) package groups listed elsewhere.


Thanks.