How to Migrate from CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8

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CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8
CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8

If you are reading this post to migrate your system from CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8, you might be aware of the CentOS announcement, making CentOS an upstream build for RHEL. Whereas previously, CentOS was a downstream build of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Since CentOS will end its support for CentOS 8 at the end of 2021, only a few options come in front of us.

  1. Switch to CentOS 8 stream
  2. Migrate to Rocky Linux or other compatible distributions

Rocky Linux, the most anticipated Linux distribution from the Rocky Linux community led by Gregory Kurtzer, founder of the CentOS project. It is 100% binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Rocky Linux community has announced the general availability of Rocky Linux 8.4 “Green Obsidian” on June 21, 2021. It also offers a conversion tool to support the conversion to Rocky Linux 8.4 from other EL systems.

Follow the below procedure to migrate from CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8.4 without any struggle. Use this procedure at your own RISK.

You can also download Rocky Linux 8 VirtualBox or VMware images to try it before planning the migration.

Update CentOS 8

Bring up your system to the latest release of CentOS 8 (8.4.210).

dnf update -y

Reboot the system to complete the update.

reboot

Check the OS version post the reboot.

cat /etc/centos-release

Output:

CentOS Linux release 8.4.210

Migrate from CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux

Download the official conversion tool from Github.

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rocky-linux/rocky-tools/main/migrate2rocky/migrate2rocky.sh

Run the below command to perform pre-check.

bash migrate2rocky.sh -V

Output:

Creating a list of RPMs installed: begin
Verifying RPMs installed against RPM database: begin

A log of this installation can be found at /var/log/migrate2rocky.log

If there are no errors in pre-check, proceed to convert your system to Rocky Linux 8.

bash migrate2rocky.sh -r

This conversion would take some time to complete, and it depends on the speed of your internet connection. Wait for the update to complete.

Output:

Preparing to migrate CentOS Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 8.

Determining repository names for CentOS Linux 8.....

Found the following repositories which map from CentOS Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 8:
CentOS Linux 8  Rocky Linux 8
appstream       appstream
baseos          baseos
extras          extras

Getting system package names for CentOS Linux 8.........

Found the following system packages which map from CentOS Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 8:
CentOS Linux 8        Rocky Linux 8
centos-backgrounds    rocky-backgrounds
centos-gpg-keys       rocky-gpg-keys
centos-logos          rocky-logos

.    .    .
.    .    .

  xkeyboard-config-2.28-1.el8.noarch                                            
  yum-4.4.2-11.el8.noarch                                                       
  zlib-1.2.11-17.el8.x86_64                                                     
Removed:
  kernel-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64              kernel-core-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64     
  kernel-modules-4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64     

Complete!


Done, please reboot your system.
A log of this installation can be found at /var/log/migrate2rocky.log

Reboot the system post-migration.

reboot

Validate the OS release after the reboot.

cat /etc/rocky-release

Output:

Rocky Linux release 8.4 (Green Obsidian

Conclusion

That’s all. Now, you have successfully migrated your system from CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8.

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