There's even a thing called GRS (Gentoo Reference System) - a predefined Gentoo configuration that predictibly generates identical Gentoo installations. It's probably a chore to set up (that is, more than an ordinary Gentoo), but I expect it would make it very easy to maintain hundreds of installations based on that GRS.
I believe NetBSD would be better for these machines. NetBSD supports old systems quite well and have a release cycle that in cases are longer than Debian.
But, CERN may have some proprietary applications on those systems that force them to use a specific setup which is hard to replicate in other distros.
> CERN engineers had considered moving to CentOS Stream as a more natural pathway but ultimately they say "the straw that broke the camel's back" to abandon Red Hat Enterprise Linux for their industrial accelerator-control computers was the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag default as "forced obsolescence" for old hardware.
Incompatibility with x86-64-v2 means that CERN is running some older machines, over 15 years old:
> CERN has clarified that their focus with the migration is on their industrial accelerator-control computers while data centers and experimental computing remain on RHEL/AlmaLinux.
For control systems, it’s perfectly reasonable to be using old stuff. Other than power consumption, you aren’t really losing anything, and I think that they famously have some other equipment there that consumes a touch more power than some old servers.
That's a good thing, it means CERN is getting a lot of mileage out of their IT purchases. Buying new machines and deploying them at todays RAM prices? Looks like they are managing their budget responsibly.
In other engineering fields systems are supposed to be supported for at least 60 years. Now that IT stuff has matured, it might be time to hold it to similar standards of longevity.
They could have used gentoo with their own binary package server. Maximum flexibility, including all compiler flags.
I had the exact same thought! One guy could maintain their OS. No forced compiler flags, internal binhost, everything else same as what they had.
There's even a thing called GRS (Gentoo Reference System) - a predefined Gentoo configuration that predictibly generates identical Gentoo installations. It's probably a chore to set up (that is, more than an ordinary Gentoo), but I expect it would make it very easy to maintain hundreds of installations based on that GRS.
I believe NetBSD would be better for these machines. NetBSD supports old systems quite well and have a release cycle that in cases are longer than Debian.
But, CERN may have some proprietary applications on those systems that force them to use a specific setup which is hard to replicate in other distros.
> CERN engineers had considered moving to CentOS Stream as a more natural pathway but ultimately they say "the straw that broke the camel's back" to abandon Red Hat Enterprise Linux for their industrial accelerator-control computers was the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag default as "forced obsolescence" for old hardware.
Incompatibility with x86-64-v2 means that CERN is running some older machines, over 15 years old:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Microarchitecture_level...
> CERN has clarified that their focus with the migration is on their industrial accelerator-control computers while data centers and experimental computing remain on RHEL/AlmaLinux.
For control systems, it’s perfectly reasonable to be using old stuff. Other than power consumption, you aren’t really losing anything, and I think that they famously have some other equipment there that consumes a touch more power than some old servers.
That's a good thing, it means CERN is getting a lot of mileage out of their IT purchases. Buying new machines and deploying them at todays RAM prices? Looks like they are managing their budget responsibly.
In other engineering fields systems are supposed to be supported for at least 60 years. Now that IT stuff has matured, it might be time to hold it to similar standards of longevity.
15 years is not old at all for a lot of applications!
Is 15 years a lot?
In computer terms it certainly is.
What's your point?
Good, I wonder how much money they’ve wasted over the years paying for RHEL.
Eh? Didn't they come up with CentOS initially to not have to pay for RHEL?
I was ready irritated by the title but then again, phoronix has been a joke site for at least a few years.
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