Oracle Linux and Linode

This is a great suggestion!

Oracle Linux isn't currently one of our supported distros, but I've documented your interest in it and added it to our internal tracker.

In the meantime, Oracle provides a script to convert a CentOS install to Oracle Linux:

• https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/
• https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol

We screwed around with it earlier this week - it worked!

-Chris

In the meantime, Oracle provides a script to convert a CentOS install to Oracle Linux:

• https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos/
• https://github.com/oracle/centos2ol

We screwed around with it earlier this week - it worked!

Good to hear. Does the script affect data or config files? I have regular backups but I would really like it if I could switch without losing any of my data. Not that there is all that much…

I would like to see this become a supported version on linode also.

It doesn't seem to break any configs or data, I have converted 3 machines using the script, one centos 6, one 7 and one 8 and they all kept on ticking no issues.

One thing to note since Linode Network Helper is too specific in it's checks of supported OS's before it will attempt to modify /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0. It won't switch an ip or allow you to restore from a backup to a new linode for example because they believe we have an unsupported OS eventhough the OS's are bug for bug the same. The work around is simple.

Create /etc/centos-release containing
CentOS Linux release 8.4.2105

I use the linode kernel with my Oracle 8 instances which I created using centos2ol.sh from centos 8 linodes. I also hope they will support this officially in the future once centos 8 is EOL. It would be nice to have RHEL 8 support given that many commercial packages support this.

For linode maintainers of their network helper… perhaps just look at /etc/redhat-release and check for centos | redhat and eliminate this small problem. Centos 8 makes /etc/redhat-release a symlink to /etc/centos-release and RHEL8 of course doesn't have /etc/centos-release.

Here is something that would be more general that would work for more cases.

IsRHEL8() {
egrep '(CentOS Linux.release 8|Red Hat Enterprise Linux.release 8)' /etc/redhat-release > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? = 0 ]; then
#echo "RHEL8${i}"
RHEL8=1
else
RHEL8=0
fi
}

A year has passed.

I hope Linode has a native Oracle Linux image.

+1 vote to provide support for Oracle Linux. This is a mature and stable distro.

one month left to turn two years and Oracle Linux is not yet.

On the bright side, they now have Rocky Linux which is the successor to CentOS.

With the recent changes in the RHEL/CentOS/etc. space, it might be a good time to revisit this as OracleLinux seems to be one of the few who isn't planning to change a darned thing, it doesn't seem like (them probably having the financial resources to stare down IBM in the game-of-chicken vis a vis IBM's violation of the GPL in restricting access to SRPMs).