Hyperscale SIG update

Davide Cavalca Neal Gompa

Update on what the Hyperscale SIG has been working on, what deliverables are available and how to use them, and what's coming up next.

State of EPEL

Troy Dawson

Troy Dawson, the EPEL Steering Committee chair, presents the State of EPEL. What has EPEL done, what it's currently working on, and what to expect in the future.

EPEL 10 Overview

Carl George

Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) is a yum repository of community maintained packages for use on CentOS Stream and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). In EPEL 9, package maintainers were able to build against CentOS Stream 9 early to have packages ready before the RHEL 9.0 launch. For EPEL 10, the EPEL Steering Committee is planning on expanding that strategy to all minor versions of RHEL 10. Attend this talk to learn more about this initiative and the progress towards it so far.

AlmaLinux: How we automated testing without inventing the wheel and instead improving it

Elkhan Mammadli

As the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, we take the testing seriously while pioneering on the speed of the delivery. When you have multiple major versions with the support of multiple architecutes, testing of a GNU/Linux distribution can be exhausting. One of the phase on our journey of testing was the automation. We will talk about the openQA and Testinfra as the technologies choice of us, the challenges we faced while adopting them and how we handled them with contributing back to upstream and Enterprise Linux ecosystem.

Bridging the Gap: Packit automation for CentOS and upstream projects

František Lachman Evgeny Fedin

Are you a package maintainer striving for a seamless integration with upstream projects? Are you an upstream project developer aiming to ensure your software functions flawlessly on CentOS Stream? Look no further – Packit is your solution!

Since the beginning of CentOS Stream, Packit has allowed developers to execute CentOS Stream RPM builds directly from their upstream changes. But that's just the beginning – delve into the possibilities of running tmt-based tests on a pristine virtual machine with the newly-built RPMs installed. This approach enables you to identify and address potential issues as they are introduced to the codebase, ensuring robust and reliable software when the new code reaches the user.

More and more projects are using Packit to automatically synchronise upstream releases to Fedora. And we are pleased to announce that the very same is now available for CentOS Stream as well!

In this talk, we will guide you through the functionalities Packit brings to the table specifically tailored for CentOS Stream. Discover how you can effortlessly enhance collaboration between upstream projects and CentOS Stream, fostering a more efficient and reliable development process.

Alternative Image SIG - Let's Talk About It

Troy Dawson

An update on the CentOS Alternative Images SIG. What are our goals. What progress have we made. What do we see in the near, and far future.

Discuss your identity: how FreeIPA helps running CentOS community infrastructure

Alexander Bokovoy

It is time to gather a feedback!

CentOS Stream upstream and downstream communities rely on infrastructure bits provided by FreeIPA project. Fedora uses FreeIPA since 2017, providing the shared infrastructure together with the CentOS project.

FreeIPA team would like to hear a community feedback! At this session let us dive into what is working and what could be improved in CentOS community's usage of FreeIPA.

Open Secrets of CentOS Stream

Troy Dawson

CentOS Stream has a goal of being as open as possible. Even though it has been around for several years, many people think it is still keeping secrets. Join Troy, from the CentOS Stream team at Red Hat, as he works through the whole development workflow, showing how everything is hidden in plain site.

Promo SIG and Docs SIG Updates

Shaun McCance

Did you know we have SIGs for Promo and Docs? The Promo SIG has been recently revitalized, while Docs has finally been officially recognized as a SIG. This talk will showcase the work being done in both SIGs, and show you how you can get involved. Spoiler: we're having a working day on Monday after FOSDEM, and you're invited!

Ansible usage in CentOS Infra

Fabian Arrotin

CentOS Infrastructure is heavily relying on Ansible for automation. Let's summarize how we use it, where to find the roles, describe the modular approach with multiple inventories (why and how) and how we maintain these. Also how we use ARA to browse the ansible logs/reports.

Building And Utilizing Purpose-Built GNU/Linux Distribution Images Using Mkosi

Akashdeep Dhar

Mkosi is a tool in the Systemd software suite, facilitating the creation of customized distribution images for various Linux bases like Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Red Hat, Rocky, Alma, Gentoo, etc. It supports multiple system architectures and deployment methods, offering finer control than alternatives like Cloud-init and Ignition, using an INI-styled format for configuration.

How SIGs can facilitate contributions to the CentOS Stream kernel

Paolo Bonzini

The CentOS Stream kernel receives backports for thousands of upstream commits every month. In this talk, I will show how CentOS SIGs can be used to help testing and tracking future contributions to CentOS Stream, helping to structure them into multiple merge requests for the CentOS Stream kernel project on GitLab. The content of this talk are based on the experience gained when developing a TDX-enabled kernel variant within the Virtualization SIG.

The self-abolition of Enterprise Linux Distributions

Dan Čermák

Enterprise Linux Distributions have been caught in a downward spiral for the past decade. The distributions have been steadily reducing their package sets, as it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain packages in a faster moving ecosystem. This in turn renders enterprise distributions less desirable as a deployment or a development target and especially as a workstation. There is a growing realization that the current release cadence and package maintenance workflow become less suitable for the world where workloads are run as containers based on non-enterprise distributions.

What is the way out of this? How can enterprise vendors solve the problem to remain relevant in a cloud native world? Will a more modular distribution be the solution? Or perhaps the container ecosystem, where everything is containerized, is the answer?

Testing the CentOS Hyperscale systemd backport with mkosi

Daan De Meyer

The CentOS Hyperscale SIG maintains a backport of the latest systemd. This talk will discuss how we use mkosi to test this backport. mkosi is the image building sister project of systemd (https://github.com/systemd/mkosi). We'll start with a brief introduction to mkosi before moving on to discussing how we use it to test the backport. This involves locally building the systemd rpm locally from the systemd and Hyperscale systemd rpm sources within mkosi, building initrd and system images including the newly build systemd rpms and finally booting the resulting image with qemu. If there's time left, we'll also discuss the SELinux policy module we maintain for the systemd backport.

My previous talk on mkosi at ASG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EelcbjbUa8

Using PoI Tracker for Enterprise Linux preparedness and to audit your dependencies

Michel Lind

PoI Tracker is a tool intended to improve organizations' readiness to adopt the next major Enterprise Linux release, and also make it easier to track the packages they need - especially those community-maintained in the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux repository as well as projects such as the Hyperscale SIG - and the dependency graph of these packages. This talk will cover both the rationale, the development of the tool itself, and some of its use cases.

In addition, having this information about not only the leaf packages organizations care about but also their dependencies, PoI tracker can be used to analyze the health of these dependencies (e.g. surfacing dependencies that have major unfixed bugs, have only a single maintainer) as well as their criticality (e.g. surfacing packages that it turns out is used by many leaf packages) - organizations can then hopefully use this information to invest resources in this (e.g. helping with packaging, contributing code fixes, or funding the development)

OpenStack RDO deployment on Community Distribution of Kubernetes (OKD)

Karolina Kula Alfredo Moralejo Alonso

During the last year a new mechanism to deploy OpenStack has been created in the OpenStack Kubernetes Operators project (https://github.com/openstack-k8s-operators/). In this session we are going to share update about our ongoing work on adopting this project for testing and deploying RDO repositories. We will provide a high level overview of the architecture and concepts behind this model and also share some ideas about CI usage and community-friendly way of deploy full stack RDO.

CentOS Automotive SIG update

Eric Curtin Pierre-Yves Chibon

It's going to be similar to the CentOS Connect talk at flock, but with new content with updated information.

We will speak about newer projects such as initoverlayfs, maybe our work with Texas Instruments.

In the new year, we will meet with Red Hat Automotive people internally and the CentOS Automotive SIG community externally to decide what content we present.

CentOS Integration SIG: current state and future plans

Aleksandra Fedorova

In this talk I would like to introduce the CentOS Integration SIG.

We will discuss our current work, plans and possibilities how you can join and use the

We will discuss the current work and the possibilities how the SIG can help you integrate CentOS Stream in your infrastructure or develop your own projects on top of it.

Provisioning hosts with Foreman

Shimon Shtein

I would like to introduce the Foreman project that deals with provisioning, configuration management and configuration monitoring aspects of datacenter management. This project allows to manage systems no matter the deployment architecture: physical, virtual or on-cloud. It allows a single pane of glass for most management aspects of the infrastructure.

Cloud SIG Update

Joel Capitao Christian Glombek

Please come join the chairs of the CentOS Cloud SiG as they provide a review of the SiG over the past year and where the SiG is going in the next. This review will include information on both RDO and SCOS as the two leading components of the SiG but will also provide information how you and your cloud related project can be a part.

Hyperscale SIG meetup

Davide Cavalca Neal Gompa

In-person meetup for the CentOS Hyperscale SIG. The meetup is open to everybody interested -- you don't have to be a member of the SIG to attend, and we'd welcome participation from anyone interested in this space.

The Hyperscale meetup will include virtual participants over Zoom.

• Join the Zoom meeting
• Meeting ID: 837 4502 1191
• Passcode: 069851

Alternative Images SIG meetup

Neal Gompa Troy Dawson

Meetup for face-to-face meeting and roadmap for the next year of Alternative Images. Primary focus on looking forward to CentOS Stream 10.

Packagers Meetup: Share your experience with packaging RPMs

Nicola Sella

Are you an RPM packager? Do you work with packages downstream? Do you have experience with automation and build systems, or are you just learning how to approach this world?

Whether you work with Fedora, CentOS, Enterprise solutions or other RPM environments, join me to discuss the state of packaging in the domain of RPM-based distributions. This will be an opportunity to connect with people involved in the creation, delivery, and maintenance of packages in different distributions.

Both beginners and experienced packagers will be able to introduce themselves, share their experiences with different RPM systems, and learn from each other. There is no set plan or schedule. Everybody is welcome, and we will have an open discussion. Bring a topic or question you would like to discuss and meet the people that work behind the spec files.

CentOS Integration SIG Meetup

Aleksandra Fedorova Adam Samalik

CentOS Integration SIG is a relatively new addition to the CentOS Special Interest Groups family, focused on making it easier to react on updates in the CentOS Stream and integrate third-party CI services to provide feedback and test results on changes.

This is the first meetup for the group and our main goals would be to learn about each others use-cases and brainstorm the work items.

The highlight of this year will be the introduction of the TMT tool to manage CentOS compose tests, see the MVP. But everyone is welcome to bring new questions and ideas to the table.

Rocky Linux Release Engineering - Meetup and Planning

Neil Hanlon

Join members of the Rocky Linux Release Engineering team as we work to plan the road ahead for Peridot, the build system built specifically to enable Rocky Linux and its Special Interest Groups (SIGs). This meetup offers a platform for the Peridot developers and release engineering teams, as well as other interested parties to come together to analyze, plan, organize, and pave the way for a more efficient and streamlined release process for the core Operating System and SIGs. All are welcome to join this conversation regardless of your familiarity with Peridot or the Rocky Linux project!

CentOS Cloud SIG Meetup

Christian Glombek

Let's talk about the CentOS Cloud SIG, OKD, OpenShift, ,Kubernetes, Operators, RDO, bootc and more!

Packaging Workshop

Carl George

In this workshop, attendees will learn how to package software using RPM, the native packaging format for Fedora, CentOS Stream, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They will write RPM spec files, build software from source code into RPM packages, run quality checks on RPM packages, and install the packaged software.

The only prerequisite for the workshop is basic command line familiarity, such as navigating directories and editing files. Attendees should bring their own laptop to the workshop. The hands-on portion of the lab is web-based and can be completed from any operating system with a web browser.