The Novell-sponsored openSUSE Build Service recently added support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS. This community project provides a development platform for future openSUSE Linux distributions . This is in addition to distributions including Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and others. With this build service framework, developers can make packages with increased compatibility across distributions. The openSUSE build service with additional distribution compatibility is available now.

The management of the openSUSE Build Service has a direct line to Novell for influence of future releases. More information on the new compatibility can be found at the openSUSE news site.

When you need to keep files on a remote system synchronized, you want to protect its contents should it end up in the wrong hands. You can use rsync to keep the contents up to date, but natively no encryption method is used. Rsyncrypto is an encryption package aimed at transferring the changed blocks of a file with encryption, making for a more efficient transfer during the synchronization operations when using rsync.

Installing is quite easy by downloading the tar file, then extracting and running the ./configure script. I used a C++ compiler and argtable2 on a CentOS 4.2 system during a test implementation.

Once you have installed rsyncrypto, you can set up encryption for files to be synchronized as they change, with the encryption on blocks of the file with a specified key. Please note, this encryption within rsyncrypto is not as robust as some of the newer PGP encryptions (like GnuPG) when using rsync for an entire file. Rsyncrypto is currently at version 1.06 and is currently available for download from SourceForge.

The gang at howtoforge.com has posted another good guide. This one is a step-by-step for setting up a CentOS 4.6 based server for ISPs and Web hosters. LAMP, email, DNS, FTP and ISPConfig are all included.

If you use it, tell us about your experience. Or, if you have a Linux tutorial that you think might be helpful and would like to share it with our users, send us an email.

CentOS continues to assert itself as a strong but free equivalent to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the release of CentOS 4.6 on December 16, 2007.  CentOS distributions are spaced approximately 1 month later than the RHEL equivalent (RHEL 4.6 was released on November 15, 2007.) While this update of the 4.x series is new, both RHEL and CentOS concurrently release updates to the 5.x series as well. CentOS 5.1 and RHEL 5.1 were released in early December, indicating concurrent development for the 4.x and 5.x products simultaneously. The4.x and 5.x releases are different in that the 4.6 releases do not update all the modules as far in advance as their 5.1 counterparts.

Under the Hood

CentOS 4.6 is modeling RHEL 4.6 in all major categories, such as kernel, bind, gcc, mysql and perl. A few differences in package version details can be found, with CentOS 4.6 being slightly newer (e.g. evolution package). The upgrade is available as a new install from downloadable .ISO images or a yum-based upgrade described in the release notes. RHEL 4.6’s release notes are located here for i386 and x64 platforms.

RHEL Version Matching

With CentOS keeping compatability in parallel with RHEL, enterprises are provided a free development environment for new concept systems for enterprise Linux distributions. The two platforms offer a benefit of having one for testing and quality assurance purposes that can be provided in situations where an operating system environment may be the potential for the issue. The Microsoft world cannot offer this, but it is quite common in mission critical systems where a totally different platform (and possibly the program and code) are ported to fully meet operational requirements with nothing in common among member systems. 

CentOS continues to assert itself as a strong selection for its RHEL compatability, minus the commercial support. 

Many IT shops have strict policies prohibiting the storage of multimedia content on shared systems. Issues over copyrighted content and inappropriate material pose many problems. However, more business products offer various content in audio or video media. These can be training videos, quality assurance audio recordings, company commercials for employee viewing, bandwidth abuse or even music for lobby purposes.  Several options for a streaming multimedia server are available in Enterprise Linux environments.

Streaming multimedia storage

Some of these options include icecast, gnump3d, jinzora and shoutcast. I had an opportunity to configure GNUMP3d on my CentOS linux system and found it quite a good solution. For GNUP3d, the install was obtaining a tar file and a simple extraction, then running the following command:

make install

The GNUMP3d server configuration file is located at /gnump3d-3.0/etc/gnump3d.conf in the path where you extracted your tar file. Reading through this file is fairly intuitive and you can point your media path, some basic performance options, host server configuration, and security settings. Once it is saved and index operation is performed and the service started as /gnump3d-3.0/bin/gnump3d2 to start the service. From there, a website is up and running with your indexed media.

Some further customization of the interface to brand it to your Intranet would be a good idea as it is fairly basic and looks like free software. The various packages offer different levels of functionality and levels of the look and feel. GNUMP3d gets a star because it can be configured and running in a matter of five minutes.

Client streaming strategy

Virtual Linux environments can host these systems, especially if there is any concern about the bandwidth required if rolling this solution into existing Linux systems. Some bandwidth throttling and front-side firewalling may also be a good idea to ensure the intended audiences — even internally — are able to access this content for all configurations. For example, if you have many remote sites on limited bandwidth, the streaming media would not be appropriate.

CentOS released version 5.1 of its increasingly popular distribution, which is celebrating its fourth birthday this month. Version 5.1 includes 70 new packages native to the distribution including 17 in the series of the Yellow dog Updater, Modified (yum) package updater tools, 11 in the Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability (sblim) management tools and an assortment of various other packages. Updates in the distribution include Apache, php, kernel-2.6.18, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Firefox-1.5 and PostgreSQL. The full release notes of the build of the distribution are available at CentOS.org.

CentOS 5.1 is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It remains completely free and offers the compatibility and reliability of RHEL without the costs of build certification and support contracts. This makes CentOS a wonderful test bed or quality system that does not require the full resources (hardware, software costs, support costs) of the enterprise production builds.

First, a disclaimer: I’m citing an anonymous comment from “Tech Source from Bohol” with that blog post headline. It is not a Jack Loftus original and I would never attempt to pass off another’s snazzy Internet snark as my own.

The comment may be a bit snotty, but it serves as a good lesson for other blogs or media outlets that are trying to review Linux distros and post their results into the ether of the Internet. The review in question in this case is one for CentOS 5. Or, I should say, it is a review for the CentOS 5 LiveCD that proclaims to be a review for the enterprise release of CentOS. It’s an important distinction to make and, if you’re trying to catch a break as a Linux review site, you should probably know the difference before your fingers hit the keys to type out a headline.

First, the juicy bit, or “controversy” regarding CentOS 5 Live CD, for reference:

Conclusion: So is CentOS 5.0 worth every penny? Not really. A live CD of its size should have been a little more complete. Even the smaller-sized Zenwalk can do much better than CentOS live. If its main purpose is merely for testing or for rescuing a broken system, lots of Mini distributions can do the job just the same. CentOS 5.0 live CD edition shouldn’t have been released in the first place because it is not ready yet. For now, I wouldn’t recommend downloading it because it’s just a waste of time. But to those who are really eager to try CentOS, perhaps the DVD installer version will do just fine based on the good things I’ve heard about it in some reviews. Maybe I will download that version also, that is after I have fully recovered from my disappointment with the Live CD.

Now, back to what I said about knowing the difference. The CentOS 5 DVD is something we’ve touched upon here at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com a number of times in the past, more recently for a series of Linux support articles where CentOS was featured thanks to its update sans subscription support model (which we compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5). We spoke with enterprise level customers doing enterprise level things in their enterprise level data centers, and they provided us with real world examples of how this OS was helping keep their businesses running. The LiveCD, on the other hand, is a recovery tool usually found right at home on a workstation. If comparing it to the DVD seems like a venture in comparing spherically shaped orange and red types of fruit, you are not alone in your thoughts.

A Live CD definition via Wikipedia:

LiveDistro or Live CD is a generic term for an operating system distribution that is executed upon boot, without installation on a hard drive. Typically, it is stored on a bootable medium, such as a CD-ROM (Live CD), DVD (Live DVD), Floppy (Live floppy), USB flash drive (Live USB), among others. The term “live” derives from the fact that these distributions are a complete, runnable—i.e., “live”—instance of the operating system residing on the distribution medium, rather than the typical case of a collection of packages that must first be permanently installed to a hard drive on the target machine before using the OS. A LiveDistro does not alter the current operating system or files unless the user specifically requests it.

Used incorrectly, I would assume any piece of technology, no matter how masterfully designed, would yield less than stellar results (well, except maybe Mac OS x ;-P). That said, if we’re talking about CentOS as an enterprise distribution, the facts we’ve assembled here at SEL would appear to show this OS has the chops to run a business as long as the user is willing and able to independently handle support. There are handful of other OS’s out there too that we’ve covered with similar results (Debian and Ubuntu come to mind).

But as far as CentOS goes, it is “the” clone right now, says Beranger.org (who laced into Bohol’s post on CentOS, naturally):

Being the most popular of the rebuilds of RHEL, you have a very good chance to benefit enormously from their mailing lists. Also, if some blunder occurs upstream, you might find a workaround in the CentOS community even before the upstream comes with a fix!

Installing CentOS 5.0 right now has a slightly annoying downside: you’ll have to pull tons of updates right away. Note that CentOS 5.0 issued “already obsoleted” media, for they understood the binary compatibility ad litteram: they have included the exact same versions of the packages as per the upstream RHEL 5.0 install media. It’s just they released several months later, and updates were quite a lot…

CentOS also has some extra repos you might benefit of. However, they were much more consistent with version 4 than with version 5. Last but not least, Karanbir Singh does a great job with his extra packages too.

CentOS is simply a different approach to the whole Linux support puzzle. Some people pay a subscription because it fits their needs, and others use IRC and mailing lists to fill in the holes. My highly unscientific opinion says that there are more people happy with CentOS in their environments than not,so any budding reviewer should probably get in contact with a few of them before writing any articles. I know we did at SEL.com.

Of course, we mustn’t be completely negative with this post, and as I write it I realized there could be an issue out there worth looking into that stems directly from this little parlay into the world of OS reviews. Do a majority of users understand the difference? Instead of attacking the review, which gets its CDs and DVDs crossed up, could we instead ask if there’s an issue in how the two are defined? I find that, unfortunately, in cases like this, the Linux community attacks the messenger, instead of addressing the overall problem: Not everyone on the planet Earth understands, uses or even likes Linux. Instead of labeling them an idiot, or a noob or whatever, maybe some hand holding is in order. Who knows, you could ultimately be adding another member to your ranks.

Regardless, this whole exercise is a lesson in headline writing; when you post a headline that promises a review of an operating system, make sure it’s the right one!