CentOS 6, Scientific Linux 6, and RHEL 6 support added to Virtualmin installer

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#1 Thu, 08/11/2011 - 20:36
Joe
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CentOS 6, Scientific Linux 6, and RHEL 6 support added to Virtualmin installer

Howdy all,

I've just completed the first fully successful test install of Virtualmin on a CentOS 6 i386 system. I haven't done a full test install on x86_64 yet, but will in the next day or two (I don't expect any issues, but until tested, I don't know for sure).

This means that for new deployments of CentOS, RHEL, or Scientific Linux, we recommend you use the latest version of the OS available. Version 6 has much newer components in a number of areas, and it actually makes it possible to use several Install Scripts that cannot be used on version 5. In particular, Ruby on Rails begins to be usable again on version 6, as do several PHP apps that only support 5.2.x.

There are no known issues that I've spotted in my testing, but because it is a new OS, I highly recommend you plan for some delays in deploying any systems on this OS version, both for the sake of problems in Virtualmin's installation that we haven't identified yet, and for unanticipated problems in the OS itself (we found an interesting issue with the CentOS 6 kernel when running in virtual machines, for instance, which cost us a couple of days of troubleshooting when working on Virtualmin installer support).

As always, if you run into any problems, let us know in the ticket tracker.

Thu, 08/11/2011 - 21:25
yngens

Congrats and thanks Joe for the excellent work and so much anticipated release. Unfortunately, because I did not know when exactly this release would take place I have installed CentOS 5.6 on my server and have to stick with it.

Fri, 08/12/2011 - 03:50
Locutus

I recently installed both CentOS 6 and a 5.6 in a virtual machine, and noticed that CentOS 6 - unlike 5.6 - has kernel-built-in drivers for the VMWare virtual network and SCSI adapters "VMXNET 3" and "Paravirtual SCSI". Which means it can be installed and booted directly using those virtual hardware modes, and no fiddling with kernel modules is necessary.

So, also from that point of view CentOS 6 is recommended.

Fri, 08/12/2011 - 14:22 (Reply to #3)
yngens

Interesting, but after long tuning of CentOS 5.6 with Virtualmin, I really do not want to mess it up again. I am afraid some kind of conflicts could arise between two versions.

Fri, 08/12/2011 - 21:51 (Reply to #4)
Joe
Joe's picture

Virtualmin will be supported on CentOS 5 for the life of that OS, though as the user-base shrinks, the level of testing it receives for new versions will decline. So, assuming you don't need newer versions of Ruby or PHP (i.e. you don't run apps that require newer versions), you'll have a year or two, at least, before you'd need to start considering the tradeoff between how aggressively new Virtualmin features are being tested on your particular OS and how predictable the existing functionality is and how familiar you are with the existing system.

But, I will mention that RHEL/CentOS/SL are extremely good about maintaining backward compatibility, and very rarely make arbitrary changes (which cannot be said of some distros; Ubuntu comes to mind). So, version 6 is strikingly similar to version 5, and we have experienced no serious problems in migrating our CentOS 5 Virtualmin websites and applications over to Scientific Linux 6 systems, thus far. I doubt you'd notice much difference, except the software would mostly be newer/better.

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Fri, 08/12/2011 - 23:35 (Reply to #5)
yngens

Thanks for the explanations, Joe. However on Release Notes of CentOS 6.0 (http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS6.0) it is clearly noted:

Similar to the practice of the upstream vendor, there is no supported path to 'upgrade' an installation of a prior major CentOS release (presently CentOS 5 or CentOS 4) to a new major release. This is not a CentOS imposed limitation, but rather reflects the upstream's approach on this matter.

The same confirmed on forum discussions: http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=29670&forum=14

And I am not familiar with Scientific Linux 6, but I guess the same risks are there when upgrading from CentOS 5.6 to Scientific Linux 6. So I prefer not to risk and live with my CentOS 5.6.

Fri, 08/12/2011 - 09:50
helpmin

Great work. Thanks!

I tested quite a bit already. Basically restored my websites from CentOS 5.6 PHP 5.2 (bleeding etc) to Scientific Linux 6.1 and everything has been working great so far.

Good move to support SL as well. SL seems to be a better managed than CentOS. At least the releases for 6.x came out much quicker.

Fri, 08/12/2011 - 21:45 (Reply to #7)
Joe
Joe's picture

Good move to support SL as well. SL seems to be a better managed than CentOS. At least the releases for 6.x came out much quicker.

On this count, I'll mention that I kinda now consider SL6 to be the recommended OS choice for folks who don't have an opinion. It's what we're running on all of our new servers, so it'll be the best tested OS going forward (where we have CentOS 5 on the current servers, and it has been the best tested to date), since it's what we'll be interacting with on a daily basis on production machines for the foreseeable future.

Popularity-wise, CentOS 5 is obviously still the most popular OS we support, but Ubuntu has been rising pretty rapidly. but I suspect inertia will keep CentOS on top for quite some time.

I don't have enough experience to recommend Scientific over CentOS with confidence, but the faster release, and better update response time, thus far, seems to indicate a more responsive team...which is a good thing to have on a server OS.

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Sat, 08/13/2011 - 00:28
helpmin

I migrated from CentOS 5.6 to Scientific Linux (may be a bit risky, but did it anyway). Works great so far.

Noticed a few minor issues

  • Bind needed a few adjustments, like rndc, remove allow-query and a couple of other small things (basically compared old and new config)
  • System log module in webmin doesn't work
  • Deleting an Alias Domain did not remove the corresponding zone entry

Postfix warnig messages:

doveconf: Warning: Obsolete setting in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf:21: protocols=imaps is no longer necessary, remove it
doveconf: Warning: Obsolete setting in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf:21: protocols=pop3s is no longer necessary, remove it
Sat, 08/13/2011 - 02:51 (Reply to #9)
Joe
Joe's picture

I'd recommend filing tickets about bugs rather than commenting on them here, so Jamie can see them and respond (also, it's more difficult to triage and resolve bugs without the ticket tracker features).

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Wed, 08/17/2011 - 19:36
mdtiberi

Any word on x86_64 support for Centos 6? The installer text said it only supports Centos 5.

Thanks

Wed, 08/17/2011 - 19:55 (Reply to #11)
andreychek

Howdy,

Yeah, that's a bug in the install script... although it supports both CentOS 6 and Scientific Linux 6 just fine, they aren't listed in there :-)

It is listed here though:

http://www.virtualmin.com/os-support

The problem is fixed in our development systems, it'll be showing up in the install.sh you get from the Downloads link soon.

Thanks!

-Eric

Thu, 11/17/2011 - 15:49
rulez22

Would you recommend installing Centos 6 as of today? Or use Centos 5.7 instead as more stable and reliable?
I've got a new server (refurbished) HP DL380 G5 (2 Dual Core Xeon 3.2Ghz/4Gb Ram/4x73Gb in hardware RAID 1) and ready to install Virtualmin/Webmin/Centos
Questions are:

1) would this Server be compatible with Centos? If so - which one (32bit or 64bit)?
2) which installation would you recommend? I ve got:
-minimal desktop
-minimal
-basic server
-database server
-web server
-virtual host
-software development workstation

Plan to move all currently working domains/mail/databases from working server on Centos 5.7 (worked for like 4 years)
Requirements are - regular server with mail/ftp/web/mysql/no postgres/firewall/X system for easy administration
Would like to use X system with KDE or Gnome and have it run automatically with every boot.

Could someone help answering these questions please?
Thanks!

Thu, 11/17/2011 - 16:23 (Reply to #13)
andreychek

Would you recommend installing Centos 6 as of today? Or use Centos 5.7 instead as more stable and reliable?

Both CentOS 6 and CentOS 5.7 work well, that would come down to personal preference.

would this Server be compatible with Centos? If so - which one (32bit or 64bit)?

I can't speak to the specific hardware you have there and it's compatibility with CentOS, that's something you'd need to research. However, with 4GB of RAM, I'd suggest using a 64bit OS install.

which installation would you recommend? I ve got:

I would do a minimal install.

Would like to use X system with KDE or Gnome and have it run automatically with every boot.

I highly recommend against using GNOME or KDE on a server -- they use a significant amount of resources, and open additional security holes.

You can use the Webmin/Virtualmin GUI for administering your system, rather than GNOME/KDE.

-Eric

Tue, 12/27/2011 - 16:20
katir

We are migrating up to a new server at ServePath. CentOS recently announced release of 6.2. Since I'm not hearing any issues, It would tend to want to install the latest version, if ServePath will support it.

Will there be any issues with installing Virtual/Web Min on CentOS 6.2?

Tue, 12/27/2011 - 20:26
andreychek

CentOS 6.2 should work just fine... if you run into any issues, be sure to let us know!

-Eric

Tue, 12/27/2011 - 21:02
katir

Hmmm, ServePath says they only offer 6.0... I'm not sure what 6.2 brings to the table if the features are important or not...

Tue, 12/27/2011 - 22:08
andreychek

In general -- if you're using CentOS version N, and N.1 comes out -- you'll upgrade to N.1 automatically simply by running a "yum update" and updating all your packages.

So, I'd suggest installing CentOS 6, and just do a package upgrade -- that'll have you at the latest version of things :-)

-Eric

Wed, 12/28/2011 - 07:01
khinton

Hello Joe. I'm a rather new Virtualmin user, primarily because I was looking for a new control panel that I could try out, and so far Virtualmin has been pretty nice to run on CentOS6. I've encountered some issues, but what I'm wunning into are probably configuration issues I've caused rathe than CentOS related issues. However, I did notice and relate some concerns here, the version of Apache used by Virtualmin at least on my CentOS system is Apache version 2.2.15 built on August 2011. I have heard that a newer version of Apache exists, do yout hink Virutalmin's stack components will ever upgrade the httpd version at some point? Just curious. Thanks.

Wed, 12/28/2011 - 09:43
andreychek

Yup, it's on Joe's todo list to upgrade Apache to the latest version -- that should be done here shortly.

-Eric

Wed, 01/11/2012 - 17:32
danielUTCFS

eric,

i just ran into an install issue with my load of CentOS 6.2, we did minimal install as suggested and ran updates after. the problem was virtualmin and the current httpd version. i had to uninstall httpd before virtualmin would continue its install. not sure of the exact version for httpd its was, but that is what fixed the problem.

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