Why I'm choosing AlmaLinux | R.I.P. CentOS | Legacy LSI driver support

[@GeoffSeeley]

I dumped CentOS back when the BS started as I knew was that coming down the road... Switched to Ubuntu but they have been going in directions I'm not happy with so I'm currently favoring Debian 12 which is quite good IMHO. Guess I'll fire up an AlmaLinux VM and see how that compares as I didn't know about it (heard about Rocky though). Thanks!

[@ArtofServer]

Yeah, Debian is a very good distro too. Probably why so many others are based on it.

[@j_taylor]

We are moving onto Alma Linux 8 at work. No problems at all. I, too, am sad that CentOS got Borged. It takes a lot to make Oracle look good.

[@ArtofServer]

LOL... I'm not sure it makes Oracle look good, but yeah... I think I'm going straight to AlmaLinux 9.x though... just going to skip 8 altogether at this point.

[@LobanzTheGreat]

On the dmesg, there was a difference between unmaintained driver and unmaintained hardware. Wonder if it's just saying warning that it sees some old hardware. New to your channel and loving it. Big help getting Dell R720 and R720xd servers up in my homelab. Hey, "unmaintained hardware" is cheap and great stuff!

[@jonathanbuzzard1376]

What 12th gen aka Rx20 series hardware is not supported in RHEL8/9? Last time I checked (and we have a lot of Dell servers) it was the 11th gen aka Rx10 series that was hit with the driver support and even then the the H700 card was added back in either 8.3 or 8.4. I have a bunch of 12th gen servers that run Alma 9 and genuine RHEL9 just fine from the outset. The only hardware we have that doesn't work is the 1GbE on the R710's and then only on RHEL9 derivatives. However we don't actually use those so don't care as everything is 10Gbps or better. We did have a 10th gen R300 that we had to ditch but frankly, it was long past viable even though it was pimped to the max.

[@ArtofServer]

The "unmaintained driver" message was for "ip_set" which I believe is part of the Linux packet filtering/firewall code, so that's a software only thing. For the LSI cards, it was all "unmaintained hardware." Although, I think more accurately they are referring to the driver code. Regardless, this stuff has been very stable for the most part. The only unfixed bug I know of is in the firmware for off-by-one count of sectors for blkdiscard.

[@jirehla-ab1671]

@@ArtofServer did rocky also offer the same set of deprciated drivers?

[@Jamesaepp]

Thanks for sharing. This won't affect me directly but at the very least it's an indication of what one "branch" of the GNU/Linux space is doing with regard to hardware support. I've been thinking about upgrading my home NAS for giggles but long term driver/card compatibility is definitely not something I'd considered prior to watching.

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks for watching!

[@jefbarnhart3363]

Thanks. I have been looking for a replacement for CentOS 7. Sucks that they decided to remove hardware that is still usable.

[@ArtofServer]

Yup! I was considering Rocky at first, but this made up my mind. They removed those drivers not for any real technical reasons because they still have them in Fedora, but remove them for RHEL. So glad AlmaLinux folks have some common sense to revert that silliness.

[@lpseem3770]

I guess they sat with an old HP server on the table and wondered if they really want to support that for 14 upcoming years.

[@bolek2]

Thanks, this is good info. I don't doubt that the drivers work, but note that the devices showing up in lspci output (6:17s) does not mean much. They would show up even if there are no drivers at all, as long as the PCI IDs are in the database (which is not something that RH would dare to muck with).

[@ArtofServer]

you know, you're right. i should have checked to see what kernel module was loaded for those PCIe devices. however, when looking at dmesg output, we can clearly see the mpt3sas and megaraid_sas loading (and printing the warning message) for each of those PCIe addresses so I think it is safe to say the mpt3sas driver was loading for those cards and the megaraid_sas for the H700/SAS2108 card too. thanks for pointing that out! :-)

[@PhillipRhodes]

I just built a new machine for dedicated AI/ML use, and my original intent was to run Alma on it. But the installer would not even launch when I tried it. To be fair, the hardware is pretty cutting edge, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. But in the end, I switched to PopOS, and then Ubuntu after PopOS proved to be hard to get working with ROCm due to kernel version issues.

[@ArtofServer]

interesting. what type of machine was that?

[@PhillipRhodes]

@@ArtofServer - the combo of an MSI MEG X670E "Godlike" motherboard, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPU, and MSI Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU.

[@jonathanwright2888]

What do you mean by "would not even launch"? I run Alma 9 on 7950x without issue.

[@PhillipRhodes]

@@jonathanwright2888 - I mean exactly what I said. On my machine, the Alma installer would not launch (eg, do anything noticeable at all). Nothing was rendered to the screen nor was any other sign of activity apparent. No idea why, other than what I said above - this is pretty cutting edge hardware. Maybe if I'd spent time tweaking BIOS settings, re-flashing the BIOS, etc., I could have gotten it to work. But I really didn't feel like investing time in a lot of experimenting so I just went with Ubuntu. *shrug*

[@billycroan2336]

One of my favorite customers, an Asian guy, pronounced it like mentos mints. I never corrected him, and my coworkers never knew why i pronounced it differently sometimes

[@ArtofServer]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/h4mydn5_gqd9jLcsi=8DEMwns-3vA9frS1

[@billycroan2336]

@@ArtofServer Centos, the freshmaker

[@Felix-ve9hs]

I don't use Linux (I use FreeBSD), but it always pisses me off when an "open source" company pulls crap like this. I can understand deprecating 20-30 year old hardware, but removing support for widely used hardware? no thanks.

[@ArtofServer]

Exactly! No other Linux distro I know of did this. In fact, Red Hat doesn't do it for Fedora, but the apply the patch to disable those drivers when it gets to RHEL.

[@jakubsindelar822]

Why do you prefer migrating to one version before latest version for example: centos 7 => Alma 8 and not Alma 9 ? Same with RHEL for customers RHEL7=RHEL8 and not RHEL9. Just curious. Newer kernel with latest version, newer package (I know this can be double edge sword), longer support.

[@ArtofServer]

Actually, my plan is to migrate from CentOS 7 straight to AlmaLinux 9.x once 9.4 is GA. I need to test some things out and workout any issues with any of the software I am using, but that's the plan. In the past, I migrated sequentially because I would migrate soon after a x.0 or x.1 release and the next version wouldn't be available yet. I was originally going to go CentOS 8 in early 2021...

[@jakubsindelar822]

@@ArtofServer Thanks for the answer. Now everything is clear.

[@DrMarcArnoldBach]

Maybe I missed that part but was it not possible to build a new kernel with missing modules all the time?? Why should distro keep all old things in default kernel?

[@ArtofServer]

The real question, which RHT has never answered publicly, is why they specifically applied a patch to their kernel build to disable those drivers? They don't do it for Fedora. No other Linux distro (that I know of) does that.

[@billycroan2336]

Si señor! El Repó!!! Arriba arriba! I miss those days. It's pronounced with a soft e and emphasis on the last syllable, El RehPOAH btw. Gotta give those Mexicans credit for all that fine kernel development work under the sun all day. Americans just don't work that hard any more

[@dungeonlord]

Do you know if the intel x520 nic works with alma? Just figured out my ubuntu 22.04 install doesnt like it.

[@ArtofServer]

It does, but I see no reason why Ubuntu, based on Debian would have a problem.

[@dungeonlord]

@@ArtofServer my mx21 desktop (also based on debian) has no issues with them either, and from google it seems to only affect 20.04 and 22.04 versions of ubuntu. I didnt see anything about 24.04

[@bandit8623]

GREAT VID

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks!

[@setoman1]

Which is more compatible with RHEL, Rocky or Alma?

[@ArtofServer]

I think both are close enough. But Rocky maintains they will match bug for bug while Alma will not.

[@setoman1]

@@ArtofServer Thanks for the info! I wanna do some tinkering with an unlicensed copy of RHEL, and having a reference system is very helpful.

[@tracyrreed]

I've been pondering what my next distro would be. I've been looking at Rocky Linux since it seems to be the most popular. Still haven't decided either way.

[@ArtofServer]

I was indeed considering Rocky Linux and have been testing it. But this change in AlmaLinux changed my mind.

[@84Actionjack]

What is that boot drive you're using? Thanks

[@ArtofServer]

I've demonstrated the USB mSATA boot drives here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rnWwoa2vbc2BqdU And you can buy them here: ebay.us/zgprPv

[@84Actionjack]

@@ArtofServer Thanks

[@NetBandit70]

Debian is the only real choice if you value freedom. Rocky and Alma are one Nintendo lawsuit away from having to stop existing. Ubuntu exists in the perpetual "Microsoft is going to buy them" situation. With applications moving to containers, the need for specific distributions is evaporating. And just like piracy of their software benefits Microsoft, staying with 'work-alike' distros like Alma, Rocky or even Oracle Linux continues to prop-up IBM/Redhat. Moving to a community distro is the only move that undermines the ivory tower. We don't need self anointed 'Enterprise' distros to own the computing and corporate mindshare.

[@ArtofServer]

You may be right. And Debian is a great Linux distro regardless. I miss the days of early Red Hat, but I haven't liked the direction they've been going the last few years. I enjoyed the desktop+server combo of using Fedora+CentOS for my environment. But it may be time to adapt and make some changes.

[@kelownatechkid]

I've been migrating all my VMs to Debian 12 from Ubuntu 20.04/Centos 7. And thus far it has been actually not just painless but a breath of fresh air lol

[@thomaslindell5448]

Well said. I’m a arch user myself

[@setoman1]

Alpine, Arch, and Void offer a vastly greater degree of freedom that Debian 😂

[@sanvi4236]

​@@setoman1freedom of supported software is very different from legal and moral freedom. debian is probably the most stable "free" server distro out there

[@edwinkm2016]

Is this the same for Debian? (Aka truenas scale)

[@ArtofServer]

No, as far as I know, Red Hat was one only distribution to do this silliness. I don't know of any other distro that removed the older LSI drivers. Red Hat doesn't even remove them from their Fedora project, but only in RHEL. They let their lawyers have too much say in their technical decisions I speculate.

[@someusername1]

@@ArtofServer > They let their lawyers have too much say I may well be missing something but I can't see what legal reason they would have to remove the drivers. It seems more likely to me that they were removed simply to reduce support burden. They probably calculated that very few amongst their *target* customer base still used those drivers and so they could be removed with minimal risk. Of course, upsetting lots of smaller users, enthusiast users and hobbyists does not concern them. They, RH/IBM, have become disconnected with the non-corporate user space. Which is never a good thing in strategic terms. It would perhaps be a healthy thing if the 'Enterprise' Linux space came to be led by an organisation other than RH/IBM. With Alma moving away from bug for bug compatibility and adding back in removed features, this is perhaps a good thing.

[@oso2k]

Did you look at Fedora?

[@ArtofServer]

in what sense? as an OS choice for servers? I use Fedora on my desktop all the time and have done so for almost 20 years. for a server OS, I don't like it so much as their rate of change is too volatile as I've experienced on my desktop. If you're asking about legacy LSI driver issue... Fedora doesn't have that problem. RH only messes with the kernel and disables those drivers in RHEL and not Fedora.

[@billycroan2336]

I actually didn't notice IBM's meddling at all. I had my head more in the Fedora world than red hat. But I used centos on a lot of things. I decided to switch to Debian Linux because of fedoras insipid obsession with DEI. At least 40% of the traffic on fedoras mailing lists and forms was to do with diversity not about the damn software! Pronoun obsession was the straw that broke my back. I added email filters to immediately delete messages from anyone using pronouns in their signature.

[@ArtofServer]

LOL... wow, I am not that involved with the Fedora community so I didn't realize. I guess that explains the elimination of vim as default editor... i can understand your course of action though!

[@billycroan2336]

@@ArtofServer vim was probably seen as a symbol of oppression because it was written before the civil war or by a descendant of a slave owner or something. Maybe it's use of "escape" sequences was deemed insensitive. It's my speculation anyway. But I can tell you they were very nauseating threads in Fedora about avoiding the use of Master and Slave in computer software when talking about replication or synchronization, and I'm thinking can we just grow up and focus on making this shit work right?