Von Royce Wallace wrote:

Even the main MariaDB is from upstream. If they upgrade it, we get it.

So they have not updated it from 5.x yet?

Correct. They just backport security and stability fixes from later releases. This is the Redhat way of doing things.
There is something called Software Collections and they have repos with all sorts of things and that is where we get PHP7.x from. Those repos are enabled in ClearOS and there are rh-mariadb10.1/2/3/5 packages available but they are not direct drop in replacements. I have a feeling you can use them if you stop mariadb. They will not integrate with the webconfig as they have a different service name - see https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/rhscl/rh-mariadb103/. With luck it just binds to the socket on port 3306 so most things should continue to work if they use the socket. To work with it from the command line, I think you have to open an scl enabled bash session "scl enable rh-mariadb103 bash" or you can use a whole set of commands "scl enable rh-mariadb103 some_script" or you can call the executable by its full path which will be somewhere under /opt/rh.

Even the main MariaDB is from upstream. If they upgrade it, we get it.

So they have not updated it from 5.x yet?

Nick Howitt wrote:

Nextcloud has a bigger problem. It also requires an upgrade to mariadb. We roll our own version for the system-database which NC uses, but if we are to use it we would have to test every app which uses the system-database. If we switch to the plain mariadb and upgrade that, we risk breaking apps which users have set up with the main database.

Just to add, we roll very little of the background apps and just pull from upstream. All PHP just comes untouched from Redhat. If they supply PHP 7.4 then we get it. All we do is a bit of integration magic in the PHP Engines app. We don't do kernels, firewall and so on. Even the main MariaDB is from upstream. If they upgrade it, we get it. Mainly what we do is the integration, graphical front end and the background magic so, for example, a change to the interfaces gets rippled through to the firewall, Attack Detector, Samba (Windows networking), IDS/IPS and the list goes on.

Georgina wrote:

Thanks for the reply Nick. Really sad. So stagnation for probably the better part of the next 2 and a bit years. I wonder how many other users will start considering jumping ship as ClearOS treads water while more and more applications requiring newer software versions are not able to be installed, as is already being reported.

Regarding IPv6, even Windows XP had IPv6 support except for the ability to query v6 name-servers. Have an IPv6 address which allows me to have more 'real' internet addresses than I could possibly use, and make use of it.

Ipv4 is becoming increasingly problematic. With the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses more and more ISPs cannot buy v4 addresses at a reasonable cost. They are therefore resorting to techniques like setting up CGNAT servers so multiple users share a single unique public IP address, with all the problems that introduces.

I am "stagnation" is the same for anyone on Centos7/EL7. When 7.9 was released they went into maintenance mode with critical fixes only.

IPv6 is a huge amount of work for ClearOS7 as none of the webconfig or the automatic configuration magic which goes on in the background is IPv6 aware so it all has to be modified. That effort is much better placed in ClearOS8.

Dries Dokter wrote:

Nick Howitt wrote:

ClearOS7 itself is fine and like EL7 and Centos7 will receive updates until July 2024. What is now needed is development of the next version in time for the users to test and migrate before the ClearOS 7 EoL.

For me the lack of PHP 7.4 support is becoming an issue , wordpress recommends it, next version of Nextcloud will need it. It appears Centos will not be adding it....

Nextcloud has a bigger problem. It also requires an upgrade to mariadb. We roll our own version for the system-database which NC uses, but if we are to use it we would have to test every app which uses the system-database. If we switch to the plain mariadb and upgrade that, we risk breaking apps which users have set up with the main database.

Thanks for the reply Nick. Really sad. So stagnation for probably the better part of the next 2 and a bit years. I wonder how many other users will start considering jumping ship as ClearOS treads water while more and more applications requiring newer software versions are not able to be installed, as is already being reported.

Regarding IPv6, even Windows XP had IPv6 support except for the ability to query v6 name-servers. Have an IPv6 address which allows me to have more 'real' internet addresses than I could possibly use, and make use of it.

Ipv4 is becoming increasingly problematic. With the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses more and more ISPs cannot buy v4 addresses at a reasonable cost. They are therefore resorting to techniques like setting up CG-NAT servers so multiple users share a single unique public IP address, with all the problems that introduces.
Edit: Fixed typo

Nick Howitt wrote:

ClearOS7 itself is fine and like EL7 and Centos7 will receive updates until July 2024. What is now needed is development of the next version in time for the users to test and migrate before the ClearOS 7 EoL.

For me the lack of PHP 7.4 support is becoming an issue , wordpress recommends it, next version of Nextcloud will need it. It appears Centos will not be adding it....

Georgina wrote:

Nick Howitt wrote:
ClearOS7 itself is fine and like EL7 and Centos7 will receive updates until July 2024. What is now needed is development of the next version in time for the users to test and migrate before the ClearOS 7 EoL.

Fine? I evaluated ClearOS 7 some time ago, and the killer for me is the lack of IPv6 support. Webconfig has no panels for IPv6 network, firewall or dns details despite the IPv6 protocol being standardized about at the end of 1998 and CentOS 7 having support for IPv6.

Returned recently expecting to find progress. However, nothing has changed for the better in the interim.

I am afraid ClearOS 7 will not be getting IPv6. For that we will need the next major release. ClearOS 7 is pretty much feature complete although it has been getting new Decentralized apps. I've also been doing minor feature upgrades, maintenance and bug fixing.

Nick Howitt wrote:
ClearOS7 itself is fine and like EL7 and Centos7 will receive updates until July 2024. What is now needed is development of the next version in time for the users to test and migrate before the ClearOS 7 EoL.

Fine? I evaluated ClearOS 7 some time ago, and the killer for me is the lack of IPv6 support. Webconfig has no panels for IPv6 network, firewall or dns details despite the IPv6 protocol being standardized about at the end of 1998 and CentOS 7 having support for IPv6.

Returned recently expecting to find progress. However, nothing has changed for the better in the interim.

Nick Howitt wrote:

ClearOS7 itself is fine and like EL7 and Centos7 will receive updates until July 2024. What is now needed is development of the next version in time for the users to test and migrate before the ClearOS 7 EoL.

Reading about Almalinux and their ELevate makea me hopefull as it appears that some of the heavy lifting has been done by others already. (not expecting this to be a walk in the park but does show that it has been done before).

Nick Howitt wrote:

I have been promised a statement from the CEO this week.

ClearOS7 itself is fine and like EL7 and Centos7 will receive updates until July 2024. What is now needed is development of the next version in time for the users to test and migrate before the ClearOS 7 EoL.

That is awesome and faster than I thought after the last answer I received. Looking forward for this announcement!

I have been promised a statement from the CEO this week.

ClearOS7 itself is fine and like EL7 and Centos7 will receive updates until July 2024. What is now needed is development of the next version in time for the users to test and migrate before the ClearOS 7 EoL.

I know this is an open source project like many others, however - as long as it is also the basis for several commercial products (as is, for example, Fedora to RHEL), one would expect there to be a solid plan in place to deal with situations like this.

I have had several customers that are testing out firewall devices I built them using ClearOS 7 (to test and see if they would like to purchase the Business version); but, like me, they are very trepidatious about moving to a commercial version unless they have some idea what is going on with the product since CentOS became a stream.

It has been quite some time now (months), and we've seen the Phone, and other commercial products release - can someone over there throw us a bone, already?

Otherwise I agree - we'll have to come up with another solution. It's January 2022. We need direction.

[BTW - the hardware platform I built for them, using Supermicro and Gigabyte EPYC-based servers, is solid as a rock. Now, if only we had a clue whether we could use ClearOS as a platform...]

Okay, so we know that CentOS Stream is not a very good base for ClearOS. So does ClearOS have a roadmap for switching to something that will be?

Or maybe the issue is "why isn't this 'Community' being kept up to date on ClearOS's plans"?

I am not terribly interested in putting a new machine on 7.9 without knowing what is going to happen in a few short months. If I don't hear something soon, I'll have to move to a different distro.

Any news about ClearOS 8?

I think that the delay to the phone shipping is having a knock on effect on the decision timeframe.

Nick

ClearOS8 is on hold for the moment because of the tie up between IBM and RedHat. The decision is expected to be revisited in Q3

Well Q3 has come and gone and still absolutely nothing, or did you mean Q3 2021 or maybe 2022
Redhat Version 8.3 is now in Beta - if ClearOS wait long enough and eventually decide to stay with CentOS they can jump straight to version 9 when it is released and miss out 8 altogether...

Ciao!

Any news about clearos 8?

In my company we are so entusiast about the use of cockpit. We already have good knowledge.

There are some High level ETA?

Tony Ellis wrote:
As I understand it CentOS has six developers on its staff. In addition they receive significant help direct from the RHEL developers plus the CentOS community at large. There is another RHEL clone, "Scientfiic Linux" create by Fermilab, but they have announced this... here

Toward that end, we will deploy CentOS 8 in our scientific computing
environments rather than develop Scientific Linux 8.

Fermilabs will continue support for their Versions 6 and 7 until their lifecycle is over. Apparently CentOS hired Fermilabs lead developer

Hmm, that is positive news and good for the future of ClearOS.

In my opinion it is best to stick with CentOS as base distro for ClearOS. The most stable distro and less work has to be done for make ClearOS 8 reality.

I also give it some thoughts some time ago and the plans to use Cockpit for ClearOS 8 is in my opinion not a good idea. That ClearOS is using a framework to gives it's own identity is a really big plus. I'm not sure what the status is of the current web framework what ClearOS 7.x is using. ClearOS 7.x is using Codigniter web framework? That is now on version 4.0.3. So it is still actively developed. Sticking with the current framework is also a big plus, less work have to be done, Just upgrade to the latest version. Maybe the devs of codigniter have implemented some nice features what gives ClearOS 8.x a fresh look.

Marcel write

I haven't the slightest idea how much work it is to re-brand for example RHEL.

As I understand it CentOS has six developers on its staff. In addition they receive significant help direct from the RHEL developers plus the CentOS community at large. There is another RHEL clone, "Scientfiic Linux" create by Fermilab, but they have announced this... here

Toward that end, we will deploy CentOS 8 in our scientific computing
environments rather than develop Scientific Linux 8.

Fermilabs will continue support for their Versions 6 and 7 until their lifecycle is over. Apparently CentOS hired Fermilabs lead developer

Nick Howitt wrote:

Remember it is only one journalist's view. It could be right or wrong. As a thought, could Oracle Linux be used as a base instead?

It is a bit dangerous to be dependent from another company but that is also now the case. I haven't the slightest idea how much work it is to re-brand a for example RHEL. I can imagine with the current line-up of developers and community members it is not possible. Although it is a interesting direction.

Remember it is only one journalist's view. It could be right or wrong. As a thought, could Oracle Linux be used as a base instead?

That is indeed bad news. So CentOS 8 as base for ClearOS 8 is probably a no go. By saying "this has a big impact for ClearOS 8" I'm right?

Nick Howitt wrote:

Ouch! That is not nice reading. Having said that, it may be worth remembering that ClearOS 6.x was built directly off EL6.

With current amount of developers is that possible?

Ouch! That is not nice reading. Having said that, it may be worth remembering that ClearOS 6.x was built directly off EL6.

The following is an extract from the CentOS Mailing list just addedd y "Niki" Nicholas Kovacs...

The author's theory ("unspoken truth"): while it's a positive thing that Red
Hat is sponsoring CentOS, the amount of sponsoring is just insufficient enough
so that the product is "starved to death" by Red Hat (e. g. IBM) to encourage
users to move to RHEL.

The author's conclusion is quite severe: in the current state of things, CentOS
8 is not recommendable for production as updates are lagging too much behind.
While CentOS 7 may be usable, CentOS 8 has been "degraded to teaching and
testing purposes".

Still according to Mister Kofler, this "sorry state of things" will probably
encourage users to move to Oracle Linux, the other big RHEL clone.

For the whole thing read Original blog Article (in German)

Nick Howitt wrote:

As Centos 7.8 has now just been released, it may be possible to review how the IBM/RedHat partnership affected it so, perhaps, an earlier decision may be possible, but I am not involved in the process.

Thanks you for your replay.
I am so happy to work whit ClearOS (as my first work), hope that all will goes fine.

As Centos 7.8 has now just been released, it may be possible to review how the IBM/RedHat partnership affected it so, perhaps, an earlier decision may be possible, but I am not involved in the process.

Un my company we are updating our infrastructure.

Our choice would fall on ClearOS but if there aren't evolutionary we cannot focus on a dead project.

Please update us.

I'm quite curious about the ClearOS 8 situation as well.

Currently we have quite a fleet of ClearOS 6 units that I'd like to replace with ClearOS 8 units. Thanks!

Hi Nick,

Are you able to expand a little on the issues from the IBM/RedHat tie up that have put ClearOS8 on hold. We have a significant base of ClearOS 6 & 7 clients and it's a little concerning to hear that development is on hold.


Thanks.... Andy

I'm trying to pension off the tracker, slowly migrating the issues to GitLab. Only 400+ to go ....

ClearOS8 is on hold for the moment because of the tie up between IBM and RedHat. The decision is expected to be revisited in Q3. Can't help with JRiver. Perhaps a docker image, but even integrating any docker image on ClearOS with a firewall is tricky.

I've mentioned the spam to people who know. I never look at the page.