Hello,
referring to this post: FreePBX and CentOS base: CentOS is dead from now on
As RockyLinux is already here, are there any plans to use it for one upcoming Distro release? If yes, what version will it be?
Thanks & best regards,
Afox
Hey,
As mentioned before, RockyLinux is the leading candidate for a distro base for an updated version of the SNG distro. The specific version will probably depend on the timing of when the updated distro is released.
Matthew Fredrickson
1 Like
Thanks for the answer. Is there still a chance for Debian as the new base distro because the commercial modules now being encrypted with ioncube? Also Debian ships with PHP 7.4 by default and there already are instructions for a successful manual install. Not to forget the reliability of the distro itself regarding its development (no owner change with this kind of impact).
Sysadmin which controls the magic is written around EL and would have to be heavily rewritten. I don’t see the distro moving to Debian for that and several other reasons.
1 Like
No - I think all focus is on a CentOS/Rocky based distro.
2 Likes
As there has to be some work either way I thought now would be the best chance for a breaking change like this. Because once locked in again the chance for another change like this is quite low.
1 Like
Side note. Not sure if it matters but looks like micro$oft is throwing it’s weight behind Alma Linux which is an EL based distro.
2 Likes
Hey All. This is Jack the from AlmaLinux team here. I’m actually a long time FreePBX user and Sangoma customer (see the pic of my trusty Phone System 60 which is powering my voip and intercom at home. Own a few more pieces of Sangoma hardware too.) Would love to make AlmaLinux happen as the base for the future.
Please let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be glad to help. I can also help with any integration work that might needed to be done, but I’m assuming it may be pretty painless and/or any resources from our side.
Thanks!
5 Likes
For clarification: Is there already a final decision for any of those options? And will FreePBX 16 be released with the “old” CentOS 7.x base meaning that the earliest version with the new base will be FreePBX 17?
The developers and management at Sangoma are pretty far into the release of FreePBX 17 to be thinking about changing that particular horse. Not saying they won’t consider it - just saying that, from a Software Engineering perspective, I think it would be an unsafe choice to make at this time.
Do you mean FreePBX 16? Because that´s the one being Beta at the moment.
1 Like
FreePBX 16 is going to be based on the old CentOS 7 base at this point. Any potential distro changes will happen post FreePBX 16 release.
Matthew Fredrickson
1 Like
Which is completely stupid. Because this should have already been well underway on CentOS 8 prior to that being scrubbed. But the last CentOS 8 could have been kept as a base for whatever flavor replaces it had the project been moving and not stagnating.
There was a window where the uncertainty of what replacements were available demanded some stagnation. Without knowing how things would shake out, I don’t think it would have been wise to switch to what effectively would have be an unsupported, older CentOS8 release by the time any official FreePBX 16 version was released.
But…
The landscape has changed considerably in the past months. There are two perfectly acceptable RH alternatives released now. They should go ahead and make a comitment before a FreePBX 16 official release, even if that delays things a little.
Personally, I wish they had taken the opportunity to jump ship to Debian, but that would be a step too far for many of the current user base.
What’s so challenging about it?
I made the change several years ago and I’m no Linux genius.
I think the folks who “know” Linux will be able to make the change easily.
The people who don’t know Linux will just copy/paste commands as they always have done.
3 Likes
Somewhat related question for @mattf,
What would be Sangoma’s position if the community were to work out manual installation steps that permitted commericial modules, firewall, etc to work on Debian or other non-distro platform?
- For commercial modules to run on non EL systems the sysadmin module has to be completely reworked
- The reason the distro is requires is for supportability. A uniform platform removes a lot of variables. Everything is developed and in theory tested on the distro. This hopefully makes things reproducible.
- Migration/update path. While it is yet to be seen if there will be one for whatever platform they choose, in general the idea of having to do a clean install to update is undesirable. This would also affect every appliance.
I started on Linux with debian and derivatives and am a huge fan. For over a decade I have been in EL based distro because that was the formula used by trixbox/amp back in the day and everyone followed that. In turn a lot was written around that. FreePBX OSS modules also have solid BSD support thanks to one of the community members who enjoys being an edge case and contributes back BSD fixes.
In any case sangoma commercial modules on anything non distro is probably a pipe dream
I was thinking more along the lines of those that wanted/needed to upgrade in place from the v7 distro to the latest and greatest.
In place conversion from CentOS to Debian is probably doable, but assume it would be much more headache (never attempted myself).
CentOS7 to 8 is relatively straight forward (but still a lot more headache than Debian 10 to 11).
1 Like
I have really low confidence in success, but you could alien the sysamin package and install it and see what happens and what blows up
I did it in a very hacky way and was able to load sysadmin, register the deployment, install firewall, extension routes and Zulu. I loaded the ioncube loader by hand, incrond by hand, and installed the sysadmin rpm in a forced fashion on Debian.
That said the firewall didn’t work, incron is weird (didn’t have free time to figure it out; it sort-of works but forks a hundred processes) and I don’t have the resources to try out a bunch of commercial modules.
It would be fun to hack on it more at some point.
1 Like