This report covers work that happened between September 1st 2023 and January 26th 2024. For previous work, see the 2023Q2 report.
Purpose
The Hyperscale SIG focuses on enabling CentOS Stream deployment on large-scale infrastructures and facilitating collaboration on packages and tooling.
Membership update
Since the last update, the SIG gained one new member (Matteo Croce).
We welcome anybody that’s interested and willing to do work within the scope of the SIG to join and contribute. See the membership page in our user documentation for the current members list and how to join.
Releases and Packages
Unless otherwise specified, packages are available in our main repository, which can be enabled with dnf install centos-hyperscale-release. Please report any issues with these packages on our package-bugs tracker.
Documentation
We have continued streamlining our user documentation website and keeping its content up to date.
As previously mentioned, we would very much welcome any feedback and contributions you might have for this documentation.
systemd
The latest version in the Hyperscale SIG is systemd 253.7 for both CentOS Stream 8 and CentOS Stream 9. This will be the last major release of systemd we plan to tag for CentOS Stream 8.
Some improvements were made to the mkosi config for testing the Hyperscale systemd backport in preparation for the coming presentation about this work at CentOS Connect. We’re also preparing to start the release of systemd 254.
Kernel
The latest version in the Hyperscale SIG is kernel 6.7.1-0.hs1 for CentOS Stream 9. This new kernel is now based on upstream Fedora release kernel rather than the CentOS/RHEL kernel tree. For the foreseeable future, the Hyperscale SIG will be tracking Fedora kernels to build and release into CentOS. The kernel is still built with a RHEL-like configuration, modulo changes for CentOS Hyperscale specifically.
As the EOL draws close, kernels for CentOS Stream 8 have been discontinued and no further efforts around CentOS Stream 8 are planned.
Spin images
New experimental GNOME and KDE workstation live media images for CentOS Stream Hyperscale 9 are now available on the mirrors. These new images are built using kiwi in the CentOS Community Build Service (CBS) in collaboration with the CentOS Alternative Images SIG.
More information on our images can be found on our site.
Cloud images are blocked until updated Koji nodes for image builds are deployed.
Package updates
For CentOS Stream 9:
awscli2now shipped, allowing Hyperscale users who need to interact with AWS to do so while the RHEL packaging work for this is ongoing- Emacs has been updated to 29.1
- We now ship the modular
linux-firmwarefrom Fedora, reducing the on-disk footprint by allowing unused firmware packages to be removed. We also contribute enhancements to the Fedora package, starting with splitting off the AMD microcode package (the Intel microcode package was already removable in Fedora). From20231211the firmware are also compressed withrd-find, which is also shipped in Hyperscale now. socathas been updated to 1.7.4.4- A new
kpatchupdate backports several upstream bugfixes - Preliminary builds of
qemuandlibvirtare available in the testing tag; these are not yet recommended for general use, but feedback is be appreciated
For CentOS Stream 8:
sysstathas been updated to 12.5.4mstflinthas been updated to 4.24.0
DNF/RPM stack with CoW support
The Copy-on-Write stack was rebuilt on top of the latest packaging changes in upstream CentOS.
We’re still in the process of reworking the CoW patchset to address the latest upstream feedback; once the discussion has settled we will publish an updated version.
Health and Activity
The SIG continues to maintain a healthy development pace.
Meetings
The SIG holds regular bi-weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 16:00 UTC. Meetings are logged and the minutes for past meetings are available.
The SIG uses the #centos-hyperscale:fedoraproject.org Matrix room for ad-hoc communication and work coordination; this room used to be bridged to the #centos-hyperscale IRC channel, but the bridge is currently inoperative. For async discussions and announcements we generally use the centos-devel mailing list. The SIG also holds open monthly video conference sessions to promote collaboration and social interaction.
Conference talks
During the last quarter members of the CentOS Hyperscale SIG attended several conferences where they were able to share the work the SIG is doing and meet up in person. Among others, we had a presence at All Systems Go, LinuxFest Northwest and Linux Plumbers Conference.
We have a page tracking conference presentations around Hyperscale-related topics. You can find references there to all of our previous talks, including video recordings where available.
Next month we’ll be presenting an update on SIG activities at CentOS Connect at FOSDEM, where we will also hold a meetup (see below); several members of the SIG will also be attending FOSDEM itself. Later in the year we expect to have a presence at SCALE 21x, Texas Linux Fest, LinuxFest Northwest and Red Hat Summit, plus other events down the road. If you’d like to meet us in person at a future event please reach out.
Face-to-face meetup
The SIG will hold an in-person meetup in Brussels, Belgium on February 1st as part of CentOS Connect at FOSDEM. A number of SIG members will be present in person, and we will have a conference bridge setup for remote participants as well. Everyone is welcome to attend, see the Connect schedule for details and to register to the event.
Live streams
The SIG periodically does work live on Twitch from its official Twitch channel. Interested parties who want to watch and interact with us as we do work should follow us on Twitch to get notified for when we stream.
Planned work
The SIG tracks pending work as issues on our Pagure repository. Notable projects currently in flight include:
- productionizing the updated virtualization stack in Hyperscale
- shipping an updated QEMU package in EPEL
- integrating btrfs transactional updates as an optional feature
Issues for the Board
We have no issues to bring to the board’s attention at this time.