CentOS - Feb 2021 - Transition test report going from CentOS8 to Debian 10.

Hi,


On Thu, 4 Feb 2021, Warren Young wrote:
> On Feb 4, 2021, at 8:39 AM, Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I posted a pretty complete rundown on the scientific linux users
mailing
>> list, so I won't recap it all here.
>
> Link?
>
>> the transition was not any more difficult, really, than moving from
CentOS 7
>> to CentOS 8.
>
> That's not my experience.
>
> I keep several of my packages running on CentOS and Debian (and more) and I
> keep running into several common problems:
>
> 1. The package names are often different, and not always differing by an
> obvious translation rule.  For instance, it's openldap-devel on
> CentOS but libldap2-dev on Debian, where the normal rule would make
> it libopenldap-dev. Why the difference? Dunno, but I have to track
> such things down when setting up scripts that do cross-distro builds. If I
> automate that translation, now I'm setting myself up for a future
breakage
> when the package names change again.  (libldap3-dev?)
Yep!! It is a pita when trying to get things running for the first time.
I started this journey on a couple samba DC's before the Red Hat
announcement.
Libraries are almost always different names but even common packages like dhcp
and bind have different names, configuration files and commands to do the same
thing. Most of it is not that hard to figure out but it does take time to 
do it and it is a lot more work than going from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8.
> 2. Some packages simply won't??t be available.  Most often this happens
in
> the Debian -> CentOS direction, but I've run into cases going the
other
> way.  Just for one, I currently have to install NPM from source on Debian
> because the platform version won't work properly with the platform
version
> of Node, last time I tested it.  Why?  Same answer as above.
>
> 3. Debian adopted systemd, but it didn't adopt the rest of the Red Hat
> userland tooling.  For instance, it's firewalld on CentOS, UFW on
Ubuntu,
> and raw kernel firewall manipulation on Debian unless you install one of
those
> two.  And then, which?
Their systemd implementation is my biggest problem with Debian based systems.
Debian moved to systemd but only partially. Apparently Debian decided to only
kind of move to systemd. Tab completion on systemd commands does not work.
If you look in /etc/init.d there are a bunch of sysv init scripts. Converting to
systemd is a big enough pita without having a system that is half sysv and half
systemd. It would be nice if they would make up their minds. Either bite the
bullet and convert everything to systemd or stay with sysv :-(

Before somebody brings it up, yes, I know there is Devuan. I do not wish to go
even further back in time.
>
> 4. Network configuration is almost entirely different unless you turn off
all
> the automation on all platforms, in which case you might as well switch to
> macOS or FreeBSD for all the good your muscle memory and training will do
you.
+1 It is a whole different process. It takes me back about 15 years.
>
> I'm not saying don't do it, but to say it's as smooth as
> from CentOS 7 to 8?  Hard sell.
Agreed!!

Regards,

-- 
Tom			me at tdiehl.org

On 2/5/21 11:32 AM, me at tdiehl.org wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Feb 2021, Warren Young wrote:
>
>> ...
>> 1. The package names are often different, and not always differing by
an
>> obvious translation rule.? ...
>
> Yep!! It is a pita when trying to get things running for the first time.
> I started this journey on a couple samba DC's before the Red Hat 
> announcement.
> Libraries are almost always different names but even common packages 
> like dhcp
> and bind have different names, configuration files and commands to do 
> the same
> thing. Most of it is not that hard to figure out but it does take time 
> to do it and it is a lot more work than going from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8.
> ...

Maybe I'm just weird, but I don't find naming differences to be big 
differences.? Like I keep telling optical astronomers, radio astronomy 
is just observing at another wavelength; I get a lot of mean looks when 
I say that, too.? It's all light, why are humans so special that our 
three sensory passbands centered around 450nm, 540nm, and 575nm should 
be so important?? Why is the 400nm-700nm band more important than say 
1000nm to 1700nm other than human eyes' sensitivities?? Package naming 
is syntactic sugar, no more and no less, IMHO.

> Their systemd implementation is my biggest problem with Debian based 
> systems.
> ... It would be nice if they would make up their minds. Either bite the
> bullet and convert everything to systemd or stay with sysv :-( 
One of the contrasts between Debian and many others is the complete 
governance transparency.? In December 2019 they (where 'they' is the 
collective group of Debian Developers only, not users) voted on this 
issue; the process and results are documented here: 
https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002? In a nutshell, Debian moved 
closer to focusing entirely on systemd; people interested in 
alternatives have to provide the tooling and work themselves. Looking in 
unstable should show the current state of the systemd integration; 
stable is too old to reflect this vote.? So I would expect Bullseye 
(Debian 11) to have a more integrated systemd.