At work, we use some commercial software, that names RHEL6 as a supported OS, but not Centos6. I would like to know the difference between Centos and RHEL, in order to claim (or not) that we can support our users on Centos instead of RHEL. I see the release notes, that say "Packages modified by CentOS," but it's not clear what the modifications are. I have been browsing around for these details, and have not yet found specifics of *what* was modified in those packages. Can anyone please direct me toward details of what's modified in the packages that centos modifies?
On 11/11/2015 09:03 AM, Edward Ned Harvey (centos) wrote:> At work, we use some commercial software, that names RHEL6 as a > supported OS, but not Centos6. I would like to know the difference > between Centos and RHEL, in order to claim (or not) that we can > support our users on Centos instead of RHEL. > > I see the release notes, that say "Packages modified by CentOS," but > it's not clear what the modifications are. I have been browsing > around for these details, and have not yet found specifics of *what* > was modified in those packages. > > Can anyone please direct me toward details of what's modified in the > packages that centos modifies?Mainly branding changes, as well as other minor changes to make things work with the CentOS infrastructure, eg replacing redhat-release with centos-release to point to CentOS package repositories instead of the RedHat ones. You can tell which packages were modified because they have the word "centos" in the release number, eg: "rpm -q httpd" (use repoquery instead of rpm if you don't have the package installed yet) shows this: httpd-0:2.4.6-31.el7.centos.1.x86_64 You can see better details of what has been changed by looking at the changelog for a particular package. CentOS changes will be at the top of the changelog, so again using httpd as an example: $rpm -q --changelog httpd * Mon Aug 24 2015 CentOS Sources <bugs at centos.org> - 2.4.6-31.el7.centos.1 - Remove index.html, add centos-noindex.tar.gz - change vstring - change symlink for poweredby.png - update welcome.conf with proper aliases ... Note that it is possible for there to be changes that aren't listed in the changelog, nobody's perfect. If you want to know for sure exactly what has changed then look up the package on git.centos.org. Peter
On 11/10/2015 12:03 PM, Edward Ned Harvey (centos) wrote:> At work, we use some commercial software, that names RHEL6 as a supported OS, but not Centos6. I would like to know the difference between Centos and RHEL, in order to claim (or not) that we can support our users on Centos instead of RHEL.That depends on what you mean by "support." It's almost certainly possible to run the binaries on CentOS, but if you need any technical support from the vendor of that application, they might not provide it. Your first step should be to talk to them directly and find out what level of support is available for CentOS. Then decide whether or not that's a deal breaker.
On 11/10/2015 02:03 PM, Edward Ned Harvey (centos) wrote:> At work, we use some commercial software, that names RHEL6 as a supported OS, but not Centos6. I would like to know the difference between Centos and RHEL, in order to claim (or not) that we can support our users on Centos instead of RHEL. > > I see the release notes, that say "Packages modified by CentOS," but it's not clear what the modifications are. I have been browsing around for these details, and have not yet found specifics of *what* was modified in those packages. > > Can anyone please direct me toward details of what's modified in the packages that centos modifies?CentOS changes branding (in the source code) to comply with Red Hat's trademark requirements. In general we do not make changes to the base os other than those branding changes before we rebuild the source code. We also take out links to their Red Hat Network and instead do updates from our CentOS Mirrors. However, we build the source code in our closed build system on CentOS. Red Hat has their own closed build system that contains RHEL packages in which they build. This means that CentOS is not 'exactly' the same as RHEL .. so, not a clone. It SHOULD be functionally equivalent (ie, same commands, same services). CentOS also rebuilds the source code for updates that are released by Red Hat .. however we do not provide any 'software assurance' or guarantees for fitness of the software. We just rebuild the source code in the order it is released .. nothing more. If you require commercial support from an entity that releases software certified to run on RHEL, you need to ask them if they support said software on CentOS. Regardless of if they support it .. CentOS provides NO guaranteed support of any kind. If you require Service Level Agreement type support (updates within a certain amount of time, bugs fixed, etc.) then that is what RHEL is for. If CentOS works for you and you want to use it, that's why we build it .. but if you require some sort of assurance of fitness, especially some sort of guarantee of timeliness for response to bugs, etc .. then CentOS might not be what you are looking for. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20151110/50e78425/attachment-0001.sig>
--On Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:53:20 PM -0800 Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at gmail.com> wrote:> That depends on what you mean by "support." > > It's almost certainly possible to run the binaries on CentOS, but if you > need any technical support from the vendor of that application, they > might not provide it. Your first step should be to talk to them directly > and find out what level of support is available for CentOS. Then decide > whether or not that's a deal breaker.The above answer is right-on. From a technical perspective, you can probably expect the 3rd party software to work exactly the same on RHEL and CentOS (barring some implausible edge cases), however your 3rd party vendor may refuse to support you at all if you're using something that's not on their supported platforms list. That is assuming you're using mostly base CentOS or only repositories that are known to not conflict with base. See the CentOS wiki for details. If they sign off on it, get it in writing (or save and print off that email). Even if they do, you should still be using a UAT environment to satisfy yourself and provide due diligence. Devin
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On > Behalf Of Peter > > You can see better details of what has been changed by looking at the > changelog for a particular package. CentOS changes will be at the top > of the changelog, so again using httpd as an example: > $rpm -q --changelog httpdThanks, this gives me a fair bit of work, but it's as reasonable as I could possibly expect. That works. :-)
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On > Behalf Of Johnny HughesThanks for the explanation. Of course what I want to do is evaluate centos fitness for our purposes, without the effort of evaluating all the changelogs, and I think this answer is the best possible way to approach that.