CentOS 8 compatibility

[airbusman5514]

Is AWIPS compatible with CentOS 8? I built a computer recently and it appears the hardware is too advanced for the CentOS 7 installer to launch, but CentOS 8 installation launches with no issue.

[srcarter3]

Hi there, our distribution of AWIPS is currently only guaranteed to work on CentOS7. CentOS8 actually reached its End of Life (EOL) Dec of 2021 (last year).
CentOS is in a weird state right now because I believe the people supporting/managing it are moving on, but CentOS7 has an EOL of June 2024 because of an agreement with RedHat, I believe? So, we'll be staying with CentOS7 for at least the next year or more, and the next OS we transition to will probably be Rocky Linux, or some other free distribution of RHEL.

You are more than welcome to try and install AWIPS on CentOS8 and let us know what problems you encounter, but we can't guarantee we'll be able to resolve them for you.

[airbusman5514]

Seems awips_install.sh requires CentOS 7. It throws an error stating that when I try to install it. Is there any compatibility with AlmaLinux? From what I understand, that's basically a CentOS/RHEL clone.

[srcarter3]

I haven't heard of AlmaLinux, do you know what version of RHEL it's supposed to replicate/be similar to?

[srcarter3]

I can show you how to modify the install_awips.sh script to not "complain" if the OS is not CentOS/RHEL 7, but I'm not convinced the install will go smoothly on a RHEL8-flavor OS.

[airbusman5514]

That would be cool! It's worth a shot. If nothing else, I'll run it in VMs until AWIPS moves to another OS.

I think AlmaLinux is suppose to be a clone of RHEL 8/9.

[srcarter3]

Modify install_awips.sh

If you'd like to try on one of the other OS's you'll need to comment out (use #) or remove lines 360 if you're trying to install EDEX, and/or 382 if you're trying to install CAVE.

This will get you passed the "You need to be running CentOS7 or RedHat7" message, but I'm still thinking you may encounter more errors shortly after. Please report back on what the errors are though, if you do try this?

CentOS7/CentOS8 Background

I did get some more information from a colleague, regarding the OS's and their use/support that I thought I'd share:

Here's an attempt to add some clarity to the following;

While RedHat, who is the owner of CentOS, did sunset CentOS 7 development, the functionally equivalent RHEL RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 lives on via patch support through June 2026 if one has software support;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux

Starting with CentOS 8 (now called "Streams"), RedHat is positioning CentOS between RHEL and Fedora, so it's unlikely CentOS 8 or newer will ever serve as a good choice for AWIPS2
Since NOAA uses RHEL, it's reasonably safe to assume anything that parallels RHEL versions will also be safe to use. Those could include the following;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_derivatives

Two of the most used RHEL variants are Rocky which we chose to use, and Alma that many others chose as well, essentially splitting the old CentOS community.

I hope that helps.

[airbusman5514]

This is what I ended up getting. I had to comment out lines 382-390 and then remove Line 399.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, any RHEL copy that's based on RHEL8 or 9 likely won't work? I ended up installing CentOS 7 to a virtual machine using VirtualBox since I'm unable to install CentOS 7 on my actual computer. When I built the computer I think I chose hardware that was too advanced for CentOS 7's installer. It seems the earliest release of Rocky Linux is 8.

[srcarter3]

Okay a couple of quick clarifications:

• If you're now wanting to use a VM (of CentOS7), you should/could just use the VM we build and distribute already. It's for a software called VMWare Workstation Player (different from Virtual Box), but is also available for download on CentOS (scroll down to the Linux download on this link).

  • Once you have VMWare Player installed, simply follow our Windows instructions for the VM installation.

• If you're still wanting to try and run/install CAVE on a RHEL8-flavor OS, then the only line you need to comment out in the install_awips.sh is line 382. But then I'm assuming it will complain about dependent packages (that may not exist on that OS).

You should not comment out 383-390.

Let me know if that makes more sense?

[airbusman5514]

Commenting out Line 382 still returns a check for CentOS 7.

[srcarter3]

Can you please upload the file you have? (I assume you have a slightly different version than what I've been looking at)

[airbusman5514]

I'll have to do that when I go back home. I'm away for work at the moment and won't be back til later this month.

In the meantime, I did have a question about CAVE as a whole. The NWS has three- and five-pane layouts. Would it be possible to put 3-pane layouts in Unidata's CAVE? I used to be able to close the left-side panes that I wasn't using, but I can't remember how to do that.

[srcarter3]

Okay sounds good.
We do still support 5-pane layouts, if you go to the "View" menu > "5 Pane Layout".

While we don't have a "3-pane" layout, you can create something similar, if you open new map editors (usng Ctrl+n), you can drag and drop them in the screen. I think this might look similar to what the 3 Pane layout looks like:

Would that do what you're trying to accomplish?

[airbusman5514]

That's about what I was looking for. Thanks!