The release candidate of AlmaLinux 8.3 is now available for testing. AlmaLinux is a fork of RHEL from the developers behind CloudLinux and a drop in replacement for CentOS 8.

AlmaLinux 8.3 RC released

Thanks to the community feedback, we fixed most of the bugs. By all accounts, the beta release was pretty stable already, so the Release Candidate was the likely choice (instead of another beta).

We're pretty much on track for Q1 final release.

Installation instructions

There are three installation ISO images available:

• AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-boot.iso - a single network installation CD image that downloads packages over the Internet.

• AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-minimal.iso - a minimal self-containing DVD image that makes possible offline installation.

• AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-dvd1.iso - a full installation DVD image that contains mostly all AlmaLinux packages.

Select a mirror listed on the  mirrors.almalinux.org website (please, don't use repo.almalinux.org host directly) and download a suitable ISO image from the 8.3-rc/isos/x86_64/ directory, for example:

$ wget  https://mirror.interserver.net/almalinux/8.3-rc/isos/x86_64/AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-boot.iso

Download and import the AlmaLinux public key:

$ wget  https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux
$ gpg --import RPM-GPG-KEY-AlmaLinux

Download and verify a checksums list:

$ wget  https://repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/8.3-rc/isos/x86_64/CHECKSUM
# we are looking for “Good signature” 
$ gpg --verify CHECKSUM 
 gpg: Signature made Fri 19 Feb 2021 03:04:44 PM MSK
 gpg:                using RSA key 51D6647EC21AD6EA
 gpg: Good signature from "AlmaLinux " [unknown]
 gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
 gpg:          There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
 Primary key fingerprint: 5E9B 8F56 17B5 066C E920  57C3 488F CF7C 3ABB 34F8
      Subkey fingerprint: E53C F5EF 91CE B0AD 1812  ECB8 51D6 647E C21A D6EA

Verify the downloaded ISO image checksum:

# calculate the downloaded ISO SHA256 checksum
$ sha256sum AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-boot.iso 
1bf9bff6af3413f8f273e54c11fb45f7da63afea670eafc50dde22c45582be7a  AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-boot.iso
# compare it with expected checksum, it should be the same
$ cat CHECKSUM | grep -E 'SHA256.*AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-boot.iso'
SHA256 (AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-boot.iso) = 1bf9bff6af3413f8f273e54c11fb45f7da63afea670eafc50dde22c45582be7a

If you decided to use the AlmaLinux-8.3-rc-1-x86_64-boot.iso image, you will need to provide the 8.3-rc/BaseOS/x86_64/kickstart/ repository from the selected mirror as the Installation Source.

There are no extra Installation Sources required if you decided to go with either minimal or dvd ISO images.

Upgrade instructions

Upgrade the almalinux-release package to the 8.3-3.el8 version from the beta repositories:

$ dnf clean all && dnf upgrade -y almalinux-release

the new package contains updated repository URLs so that you can just run:

$ dnf upgrade -y

to update the rest of the packages.

Changelog

• The dnf package manager now uses AlmaLinux public mirrors by default. The current list of public mirrors can be found on the  mirrors.almalinux.org website.

• The HighAvailability repo is added. It’s disabled by default and can be enabled by dnf config-manager --set-enabled ha command ( ambz#16)

• The subscription-manager package and its dependencies added ( almbz#5).

• The satellite-5-client module moved from the BaseOS to the AppStream repository ( almbz#4).

• Fixed issues with the php:7.4 and nodejs:12 modules installation ( almbz#9).

• Added maven:3.6 and jmc:rhel8 modules.

• Completed the perl:5.30 module build.

• The /usr/lib/rpm/redhat/dist.sh utility is now aware of AlmaLinux ( almbz#17)

• Added the almalinux RPM macros ( almbz#22).

• The libreport-almalinux package is added to support automatic bug reporting to  bugs.almalinux.org ( almbz#2)

• All installation environments are now available during network install ( almbz#14)

• The debuginfo repositories are now populated

Known Issues

• There is no SecureBoot support in this release ( almbz#3). We are doing our best to have it in the stable release.

• The Minimal ISO proposes to install Server environment with GNOME but actually can only install Minimal Install environment ( almbz#14).

• The mirrors support implemented with help of the DNF fastestmirror plugin that is known to be a bit "quirky". We are going to switch to geo-location-based mirror selection in the stable version.

We need your feedback! Do report any unexpected behavior at  bugs.almalinux.org. Especially, anything that worked on CentOS and is different/not working now.

Alma Linux