CentOS - Nov 2010 - CentOS vs. RHEL vs. Oracle Linux ?

Hi,

I've been contacted by a local training center specialized in Oracle 
databases, to train a group of four administrators to use Linux. They're 
supposed to use Oracle Linux (more exactly "OL5"), which I understand
is
some specialized version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I'm reasonably proficient with CentOS. I've been using it exclusively on
desktops and servers since 2007 (version 4.3 if I remember correctly), 
after a few years on Slackware and Debian. I've setup CentOS-based 
networks in small town halls, public libraries and schools, my dedicated 
webserver is running the latest CentOS, and I've published a book about 
basic Linux concepts entirely based on CentOS 5.3.

On the other hand, I've never got to work on the "real thing", so
to
speak. The only time I put my hands on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server 
was to retrieve the root password for a distracted client (add 
init=/bin/bash to the kernel line in GRUB, mount -o remount,rw /, passwd 
:oD). And I never came near a machine running Oracle Linux.

What differences can I expect between a server running Oracle Linux and 
my average server running CentOS ? As far as I can guess, their 
"unbreakable" Linux kernel will still be some package called
'kernel'
(with the according 'kernel-devel' and 'kernel-headers'
packages).
Probably Yum will be used as a dependency resolver (will it?), only with 
different repositories. And for the rest, I except it to work the same, 
in that I can still use chkconfig, ntsysv, rpm, etc. (what about 
system-config-securitylevel-tui or similar tools?)

In short, what differences/similarities can I expect? Is there some 
document stating these?

Cheers from the sunny South of France,

Niki Kovacs

-- 
http://www.microlinux.fr

> Hi,
>
> I've been contacted by a local training center specialized in Oracle
> databases, to train a group of four administrators to use Linux.
They're
> supposed to use Oracle Linux (more exactly "OL5"), which I
understand is
> some specialized version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I think they offer you a choice of kernels.
Their own kernel has performance enhancements.

It's also supposed to be cheaper in maintenance than RHEL.
But AFAIK, it's a re-engineering of RHEL in the same way CentOS is.
Just with commercial support (and geared towards running Oracle stuff).

I just looked and at the most basic level (patches only) it costs
94?/year/system.

Does anybody know how fast they implement the fixes from upstream?


Rainer

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 09:50:07AM +0100, Niki Kovacs
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> What differences can I expect between a server running Oracle Linux and 
> my average server running CentOS ? As far as I can guess, their 
> "unbreakable" Linux kernel will still be some package called
'kernel'
> (with the according 'kernel-devel' and 'kernel-headers'
packages).
> Probably Yum will be used as a dependency resolver (will it?), only with 
> different repositories. And for the rest, I except it to work the same, 
> in that I can still use chkconfig, ntsysv, rpm, etc. (what about 
> system-config-securitylevel-tui or similar tools?)
Well, it's pretty similar.  I'm not sure if I messed up the installation
or not, but I had to later download reops--it has yum, chkconfig,
service and so on. 

I didn't find a samba package, but as this was for one oracle developer
to transfer files, we just used winscp.  (I also didn't look hard for a
samba package, at present, this is just a test.)

Disk naming seems slightly different--we went with more standard
partitions rather than LVM, and rather than /dev/sda and so on, it was
/dev---arrgh, I'm not at work, and my mind just went blank--errm, xda
and xdb?  At any rate, it will be fairly obvious. 

As mentioned, this is a test, and while I don't know all the
circumstances, we're not entitled to support--if you do it officially,
as opposed to what is probably a trial version, there is support, and I
assume (but note, that's an assumption, not knowledge), one could call
and ask things like, Where can I find samba? 

(Samba client and samba common was available, but no smbd.  Again, I did
NO googling on this, just did yum provides */smbd, got no results, and
then used WinSCP.)

There won't be any major shocks.  On the other hand, in our case,
there's nothing at all tricky for my part of it--I just had to get a
basic server running for the oracle developers to use. 

-- 
Scott Robbins
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