CentOS Replacements For Your Production Linux Servers

If you are currently using CentOS 8, you will have to find an alternative operating system. This is because its end-of-life cycle has been cut short in December 2021. But if you use CentOS 7, you do not have to take any action right now. This is because CentOS 7 will reach its End-of-Life on June 30th, 2024.

Source: CentOS Replacements For Your Production Linux Servers

Stupid me installed CentOS 8 in December 2020 instead of 7 without reading the news about this.

CentOS Linux 8 is about to die. What do you do next?

The end of CentOS 8 Linux has been coming for awhile now, and the day is finally here. On December 31, 2021, Red Hat‘s CentOS Linux 8 will reach End Of Life (EOL). Since that falls right in the heart of the holiday season, Red Hat will extend CentOS Linux 8 zero-day support until January 31, 2022. Indeed, there will be one last CentOS Linux 8 release — perhaps even after CentOS 8’s official EOL. After that, it’s all over for CentOS Linux.

Source: CentOS Linux 8 is about to die. What do you do next? | ZDNet

Yikes!  Just heard about this.  Last year I chose CentOS 8 over 7 for this server so I would not have to deal with end of life issues for awhile.  It appears CentOS 7 will be good until 2024 and 8 ends today.  Ugh.

CentOS 8 is finally here

CentOS offers a bit of a different take on installing and updating packages. First off, the default package manager has migrated from YUM to DNF. The command structure for each is quite similar, so instead of running a command like:

sudo yum install httpd

You’d issue the command:

sudo dnf install httpd

For more information on DNF, see How to use the DNF package manager.

Source: CentOS 8 is finally here – TechRepublic

Giving perspective on systemd’s “usernames that start with digit get root privileges”-bug

So in order to trigger this behaviour, someone with root-level privileges needs to edit a Unit file and enter a “invalid username”, in this case one that starts with a digit.

But you need root level privileges to edit the file in the first place and to reload systemd to make use of that Unit file.

Source: Giving perspective on systemd’s “usernames that start with digit get root privileges”-bug

It’s an obvious bug (at least on RHEL/CentOS 7), since a valid username does not get accepted by systemd so it triggers unexpected behaviour by launching services as root.

However, it isn’t as bad as it sounds and does not grant any username with a digit immediate root access.

SME Server

Exceptionally reliable and easy to use, SME Server can be installed and configured in less than 20 minutes – yet it’s powered by a secure and open Linux platform that’s fully upgradeable and customizable. Simply install it on any standard PC and in minutes you’ll have a robust Linux-based LAMP server capable of fully replacing those expensive Windows server licenses and providing a full range of services – including e-mail, firewall, file and print-sharing, web hosting, remote access and more.

via SME Server:About – SME Server.

Oracle Linux: A better alternative to CentOS

We firmly believe that Oracle Linux is the best Linux distribution on the market today. It’s reliable, it’s affordable, it’s 100% compatible with your existing applications, and it gives you access to some of the most cutting-edge innovations in Linux like Ksplice and dtrace.

via Oracle Linux: A better alternative to CentOS.

Hmmm.  We’ll see about that.

How is this better than CentOS?

Well, for one, you’re getting the exact same bits our paying enterprise customers are getting. So that means a few things. Importantly, it means virtually no delay between when Red Hat releases a kernel and when Oracle Linux does:

CentOS 64 bit bad ELF interpreter

You’re on a 64-bit system, and don’t have 32-bit library support installed.

sudo yum install glibc.i686

via linux – CentOS 64 bit bad ELF interpreter – Stack Overflow.

Also had to yum install gtk2.i686.  Here’s the solution from the above link for  Debian based systems:

Updated: Since it seems this answer is still getting viewed, and occassionally up-voted, note that the solution above works on CentOS, Fedora, or Red Hat derived operating systems; on a Debian or Ubuntu derived system, however, one would instead use

 sudo apt-get install ia32-lib 

For some reason, after all these years of using 64 bit OSs, and still having an active, running FC10 installation, this was the first time I had no choice but to run a 32-bit app on a 64 bit machine.
The above solution worked