Linode,

I'm asking that Scientific Linux be added to the distributions you support. As we have seen CentOS has become more unreliable in their release process. Along with that the fighting on the mailing list has increased as the CentOS maintainers refuse to release their build process.

Important people such as DAG have quit the mailing list and have recommended scientific linux.

http://www.scientificlinux.org/

I would also like to see Scientific Linux as an option. SL seems to be a much more stable organization.

Jeff

Any "official" news please Linode staff?

FYI, but CentOS 6 and Scientific Linux 6 are fully compatible. Just change repos and update, and your CentOS 6 installation becomes a Scientific Linux 6 installation.

Install the yum repository:

rpm -ivh http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/i386/os/Packages/yum-conf-sl6x-1-1.noarch.rpm

Then install the keys, for a 32bit installation:

rpm -ivh --force http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/i386/os/Packages/sl-release-6.1-2.i686.rpm

and for a 64bit installation:

rpm -ivh --force http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/x86_64/os/Packages/sl-release-6.1-2.x86_64.rpm

A simple

yum erase centos-release
yum clean all
yum distro-sync

makes your CentOS installation pull all the updated packages from the SL repositories.

rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME} %{VENDOR}\n"|grep CentOS

Lists all the packages that still are installed from the CentOS repositories. If you want to replace them all, run:

yum reinstall `rpm -qa --qf "%{NAME} %{VENDOR}\n"|grep CentOS|awk '{print $1}'`

But seeing as how everything should work just fine without doing it. No real need to bother unless you prefer to keep stuff a bit cleaner.

tolle, your second and third commands -- one allegedly for 32-bit, and one for 64-bit -- are exactly the same. Is that correct?

_________________
Matt Nordhoff (aka Peng on IRC)

Ah no of course not. I posted at round 05:00 in the morning. So I use that as an excuse. Fixed now.

Very nice information!

Thank you, I will keep it in mind.

Jeff

I just ran this on a test vm on a local server, I had to edit /etc/yum.conf and change

distroverpkg=centos-release

to

distroverpkg=sl-release


before the distro-sync would work

Ok. I don't even have any references to distroverpkg on my system. But good to know!

Please count me in the Scientific Linux camp too! I've been using CentOS for years, but the sad reality is that they keep dropping the ball. The slow releases are frustrating, but what really scares me are the important security updates which have sometimes come months late. I'd love to have a Scientific Linux option front and center with the others offered by Linode.

I realize I could install it myself or even try one of the hackes mentioned in this thread to convert a CentOS instance to SL (thanks, Tolle!). But I'd much rather have an official and tested image that has at least been tested by many other Linode users.