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What is the lifecycle of Oracle Linux for minor releases?
Hello, I'm discovering Oracle Linux and considering the move from other RHEL clones.
One question that's remains unanswered is: what's the lifecycle of minor releases on Oracle Linux? Do we get updates, on the free tier, when a new point release is available for the previous ones?
Exemple: I need to install an Enterprise Linux 7.7 server, on CentOS world we need to get the ISOs from CentOS Vault and there's only updates to the last day before CentOS 7.8 is released. In other hand on RHEL there will be some security updates for RHEL 7.7 even if 7.8 is already released for a period of time. So RHEL is a better fit than CentOS in this case.
So which is the policy on Oracle Linux in this case? Where I can read about it? How can I pin Oracle Linux to keep a point release and maintain it patched?
Thank you all.
Best Answer
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Avi Miller-Oracle Senior Solution Architect, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Developer Adoption Melbourne, AustraliaPosts: 4,824 EmployeeWe don't consider update levels "versions". We have Oracle Linux 7 and Oracle Linux 8 and essentially consider both as rolling releases, with the updates being points in time. You cannot ping Oracle Linux to a point release and keep in updated.
Answers
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Avi Miller-Oracle Senior Solution Architect, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Developer Adoption Melbourne, AustraliaPosts: 4,824 Employee
We don't consider update levels "versions". We have Oracle Linux 7 and Oracle Linux 8 and essentially consider both as rolling releases, with the updates being points in time. You cannot ping Oracle Linux to a point release and keep in updated.
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Hi @Avi Miller-Oracle thanks for the reply. As a last question: how do Oracle Linux stands when theres a requirement for pinning versions? For example, Ansys, a common engineering software requires pinned versions to get support from the vendor, and as far as I know, it runs on Oracle Cloud on top of Oracle Linux without issues. Is it with another lifecycle specific for the Cloud?
Here's additional info:
Supported Releases for Ansys software: https://www.ansys.com/-/media/ansys/corporate/files/pdf/solutions/it-professionals/platform-support/ansys-platform-support-strategy-plans-february-2021.pdf?la=en&hash=4AF557938A11E30188525096885511015FD5900C
Ansys Fluent with Oracle Linux and UEK on Oracle Cloud: https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/ansys-and-oracle-ansys-fluent-on-baremetal-iaas
Thank you!
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Avi Miller-Oracle Senior Solution Architect, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Developer Adoption Melbourne, AustraliaPosts: 4,824 Employee
That's a good question, but I don't have an immediate answer. I'll have to look into this for you.
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I would like to up this thread again. We have been using Oracle Linux for more than a year now and we are really lacking the existence of something like CentOS Vault.
You see, many times we need to use old releases of EL and Oracle only keeps latest up to date repositories. Which is non ideal.
The competing clones, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux both have an equivalent Vault available:
https://download.rockylinux.org/vault/rocky/
http://repo.almalinux.org/vault/
Would be possible to Oracle consider adopting a Vault too?
Thanks.
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Is it something like the section "Installation Media Packages" on https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-8.html?
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Hi @andreas.dijkman it's not the same thing. On Oracle side the Installation Media Packages are just what the name implies: copies of the packages available on the install media and not the updates that happened during the lifecycle of a given point release.
Take EL8.4 as example, if you look at Rocky Vault (http://repo.almalinux.org/vault/8.4/BaseOS/x86_64/os/Packages/) you see that kernel updates are available:
kernel-4.18.0-305.10.2.el8_4.x86_64.rpm 22-Jul-2021 14:24 6168492 kernel-4.18.0-305.12.1.el8_4.x86_64.rpm 11-Aug-2021 08:17 6172188 kernel-4.18.0-305.17.1.el8_4.x86_64.rpm 08-Sep-2021 10:16 6175968 kernel-4.18.0-305.19.1.el8_4.x86_64.rpm 16-Sep-2021 06:56 6180824 kernel-4.18.0-305.25.1.el8_4.x86_64.rpm 02-Nov-2021 18:46 6187888 kernel-4.18.0-305.3.1.el8_4.x86_64.rpm 02-Jun-2021 15:18 6161560 kernel-4.18.0-305.7.1.el8_4.x86_64.rpm 02-Jul-2021 07:44 6166064 kernel-4.18.0-305.el8.x86_64.rpm 20-May-2021 07:47 6159664
The same does not apply for Oracle (https://yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleLinux/OL8/4/baseos/base/x86_64/index.html): there's only the 8.4 day one released kernel available.
Best regards.
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Avi Miller-Oracle Senior Solution Architect, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Developer Adoption Melbourne, AustraliaPosts: 4,824 Employee
We only list the latest version on the HTML index, but the rest are all still there or in the associated
_archiverepo (OL7 only). You can check with dnf to see them:$ sudo dnf list --available --showduplicates --exclude '*.src' 'kernel-4.18*' Last metadata expiration check: 0:02:34 ago on Wed Jun 15 22:31:09 2022. Available Packages kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-80.el8 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-80.1.2.el8_0 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-80.4.2.el8_0 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-80.7.1.el8_0 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-80.7.2.el8_0 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-80.11.1.el8_0 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-80.11.2.el8_0 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-147.el8 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-147.0.2.el8_1 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-147.0.3.el8_1 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-147.3.1.el8_1 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-147.5.1.el8_1 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-147.8.1.el8_1 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-193.el8 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-193.1.2.el8_2 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-193.6.3.el8_2 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-193.13.2.el8_2 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-193.14.3.el8_2 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-193.19.1.el8_2 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-193.28.1.el8_2 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-240.el8 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-240.1.1.el8_3 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-240.8.1.el8_3 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-240.10.1.el8_3 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-240.15.1.el8_3 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-240.22.1.el8_3 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.el8 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.3.1.el8_4 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.7.1.el8_4 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.10.2.el8_4 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.12.1.el8_4 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.17.1.el8_4 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.19.1.el8_4 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-305.25.1.el8_4 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-348.el8 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-348.2.1.el8_5 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-348.7.1.el8_5 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-348.12.2.el8_5 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-348.20.1.el8_5 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-348.23.1.el8_5 ol8_baseos_latest kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-372.9.1.el8 ol8_baseos_latest
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Thanks @Avi Miller-Oracle but I'm failing to do the connection here. I see that on the main repo everything is there, but I cannot pin to a specific version, and that's the difference between Oracle Linux and Rocky/Alma (also CentOS when it used to be something).
I cannot point my repositories to a vault on Oracle Linux.
I may be missing something that I don't understand on Oracle Linux, I know that on RHEL in can pin the version with subscription manager, issuing the following command:
subscription-manager release --set=6.4
I'm not aware about anything similar on Oracle Linux. Again, on other clones, since they don't have subscription manager, they just point the repos to a vault.
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Just to add more info @Avi Miller-Oracle. I've enabled the BaseOS Installation Media packages that @andreas.dijkman talked about that was what I was expecting. It does not work since everything else (AppStream, Codeready and Addons) are not pinned.
Also on that repositories there's no updates at all:
[[email protected] yum.repos.d]# dnf list --available --showduplicates --exclude '*.src' 'kernel-4.18*' Last metadata expiration check: 0:07:21 ago on Fri 17 Jun 2022 06:12:22 PM -03. Available Packages kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-348.el8 ol8_u5_baseos_base [[email protected] yum.repos.d]# rpm -q kernel kernel-4.18.0-240.15.1.el8_3.x86_64 kernel-4.18.0-348.12.2.el8_5.x86_64
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Avi Miller-Oracle Senior Solution Architect, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Developer Adoption Melbourne, AustraliaPosts: 4,824 Employee
Update releases are not versions in Oracle Linux. We only have major versions, i.e. Oracle Linux 7, Oracle Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 9. Periodically we issue a new Update Release ISO so that the delta between current update package and installer aren't as far apart.
So, there is no concept of "pinning" to a update level in Oracle Linux. We maintain backwards compatibility for the life of the distro for the packages in each major version's latest repo.
