CentOS - Mar 2005 - [cAos] cAos and CentOS Reorganization

cAos and CentOS administration

20 March 2005

1 Executive Summary
   The cAos project, and the CentOS project are being separated into two 
   trees; Changes which facilitate DNS and mirror master administration 
   process for easier load management are already complete.

2 Announcement 
   In the past two years, the concept of truly community based, locally 
   rebuildable distributions, packaged with full sources and build 
   specifications released using the tool RPM and maintained by YUM, has 
   been adopted and taken off. Recently the cAos-1 and CentOS distributions 
   have become stable, reliable and very usable, and so attracted user 
   communities.

   The wide adoption of the more recent CentOS 'point' releases has
   strained the mirror structure, in managing transfer load, in back-end
   administration of synchronization, in stale mirror element management,
   and in other ways. With the impending release into general distribution
   of the final cAos-2 the need for some rework has been clear, and for
   the several weeks, an ad hoc team has gathered to plan for growth.

   With the new domains in effect, Mailing lists, websites and site
   management and bug reporting methods will be separated.

3 Action required
   Explicit instruction for End Users, and Mirror Administrators will be 
   posted to the appropriate Mailing Lists, and on the project websites.
   Please see either [ http://www.caosity.org/ ] or 
   [ http://www.centos.org/ ] in advance of cut-overs; problems reported in 
   Bugzilla, to the mailing lists, or in IRC will be addressed. If you are 
   not subscribed to the cAos or CentOS mailing lists, this would be a good 
   time to do so.

3.1 End Users
   The root domain for your 'yum' updates in your /etc/yum.conf files
may
   need to be adjusted to reflect mirror.{caosity|centos}.org, and the 
   directory path will likely change, as an intermediate directory is 
   grafted in.

3.2 Mirror Administrators
   The rsync configuration of your mirror will probably need to be twinned 
   into two processes, one for each project, pointing to the top of the new 
   directory structure.

4 DNS, Mirrors changes
   DNS and mirror structures and mirroring processes will need to be adjusted:

4.1 DNS 
   The separate dns structures are in place; all CentOS sites will be 
   referenced as .centos.org and cAos sites as .caosity.org. No direct
   external user action is required.

4.2 Mirror layout and rsync changes
   Hardlinks will be used to facilitate splitting mirrors into two separate 
   trees, and subsequently each tree will be mirrored by a separate RSYNC 
   process: ::CentOS and ::cAosity

   The current ::cAos will continue to function unchanged until all mirrors
   are synced to the new trees.

4.2.1 Public Mirrors
   Mirror administrators will be contacted individually to ensure that they 
   are aware of the required changes.

4.2.2 Private and Site mirrors
   Users with site local private sub-mirrors (largely this is Developers and 
   large corporate users) will need to consider their local setup, and 
   Change Control requirements, and to manually update their yum.conf 
   setups.

5 Acknowledgments
   Many volunteers toil in the background to help projects like these grow
   and remain reliable, secure and available. We wish to recognize the 
   contribution and comment from several members of the community and of the
   transition planning team members who participated in IRC and back-end
   administrative brainstorming and planning, including: Donavan Nelson,
   Michael Jennings, John Newbiggin, Maarten Stolte, Rick Graves, Denis
   Pilon, Karanbir Singh, Dag Wieers, David Parsley, Jacob Wilkins, Johnny 
   Hughes and more. Some may be surprised to find them-self listed, but each 
   has been a valued sounding board or contributor.

   Please direct requests for authoritative clarification to any of the
   project leads for going forward, or for this transition:

   1. gmk@runlevelzero.net - cAos,
   2. lance@centos.org - CentOS, or
   3. herrold@owlriver.com - either project

- Greg Kurtzer, Lance Davis, Russ Herrold


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