There are still a bunch of CentOS 7 users out there, and they need all the help they can get to migrate to a modern, secure Linux distribution. The AlmaLinux OS Foundation can help.
If you’re a Linux administrator, you almost certainly know that CentOS 7, once one of the most popular enterprise Linux distros around, stopped being supported on June 30. You’d also not be surprised in the least to find out that many people are still using CentOS 7. In fact, by Orca Security’s count, 49% of organizations are still running CentOS 7. Fortunately, the AlmaLinux OS Foundation can help with recent advances in its ELevate project.
These new features enable users to upgrade in-place from CentOS Linux 6 or 7 and Scientific Linux 7 to AlmaLinux OS or other Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone distros.
ELevate to Migrate to Distributions
Specifically, you can use ELevate to perform in-place migrations from CentOS 6 to CentOS 7 and from CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8, CentOS Stream 8, EuroLinux 8, Oracle Linux 8 or Rocky Linux 8. It also supports migration from AlmaLinux 8 to 9, EuroLinux 8 to 9, or Rocky Linux 8 to 9.
The latest release of ELevate now supports in-place upgrades for CentOS 6, Scientific Linux 7 and CentOS Stream 8 users. Additionally, it includes expanded repository support for EPEL, MariaDB, NGINX, PostgreSQL, Imunify, and KernelCare. In short, besides enabling you to upgrade the operating system, you can also use it to upgrade many business-critical, back-end software programs.
In addition, a notable new feature is the automatic scanning and alerting for unsupported hardware in the destination operating system. This increases the likelihood of successful upgrades. This is particularly important since AlmaLinux versions 8.10 and 9.4 come with support for older hardware. This includes support for 150 storage and network devices previously disabled in Red Hat distributions.
“It’s exciting to help simplify the upgrade process for users facing difficult updates on otherwise languishing devices,” said Andrew Lukoshko, lead architect at AlmaLinux and member of the AlmaLinux Engineering Steering Committee, in a press statement.
“AlmaLinux sees this latest move toward added convenience for users as a formidable contribution to the health of the overall ecosystem,” benny Vasquez, chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, told The New Stack. “Complementing what Red Hat provides, we’re always pleased to help streamline the path toward a stable and secure operating system – and today’s announcement is simply the latest example of that ongoing effort.”
A New Patch for the glibc Package
Originally introduced by AlmaLinux in 2021, the ELevate project integrates updates to Red Hat‘s open-source Leapp project and leapp-data data library. These components facilitate seamless in-place upgrades from older RHEL-family Linux distros to contemporary ones.
The Leapp scripts and leapp-data are open for community contributions and are hosted on the AlmaLinux GitHub project. The AlmaLinux community actively participates in the development, documentation, testing and support of the ELevate project, ensuring its continued success.
“These latest ELevate improvements also play an important role in ensuring overall online safety,” Luksoshko said in the press statement. Thinking of safety and stability, AlmaLinux has also just released a patch to the glibc package, which had been causing the 3D animation software application Houdini to crash. While the problem has been fixed in CentOS Stream 9, Red Hat has yet to release the patch to RHEL. So, loathe to wait, AlmaLinux’s developers tested the patch and have issued it themselves.
AlmaLinux is continuing to do the small things that can make big differences to RHEL-family users.
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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting-edge PC operating system, 300bps was a fast internet connection, WordStar was the state-of-the-art word processor, and we liked it.
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