CentOS-8 (1911) Release Notes

Last updated: February 9, 2020

1. Translations

Translations of these release notes are available for the following languages:

2. Introduction

The CentOS Project does not provide any verification, certification, or software assurance with respect to security for CentOS Linux. The Security Profiles provided in the CentOS Linux installers are a conversion of the ones included in RHEL Source Code. If certified / verified software that has guaranteed assurance is what you are looking for, then you likely do not want to use CentOS Linux. See this link if you plan to use Security Profiles.

Hello and welcome to the second CentOS-8 release. The CentOS Linux distribution is a stable, predictable, manageable and reproducible platform derived from the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)1. You can read our official product announcement for this release.

CentOS conforms fully with Red Hat's redistribution policy and aims to have full functional compatibility with the upstream product. CentOS mainly changes packages to remove Red Hat's branding and artwork.

We have decided not to follow Red Hat's usage of Installation Roles. In CentOS Linux all content from every distribution 'channel' is made available to the user at time of installation.

Please read through the other sections before trying an install or reporting an issue.

This is the second release of a new distribution from the CentOS Project: CentOS Stream. CentOS Stream is a rolling-release Linux distro that exists as a mid-stream between the upstream development in Fedora Linux and the downstream development for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It is a cleared-path to contributing into future minor releases of RHEL while interacting with Red Hat and other open source ecosystem developers. This pairs nicely with the existing contribution path in Fedora for future major releases of RHEL. You can read more on the CentOS Stream release notes page.

3. Install Media

Various installation images are available for installing CentOS. Which image you need to download depends on your installation environment. All of these images can either be burned on a DVD or dd’ed to an USB memory stick.

If you are unsure which image to use, pick the DVD image. It allows selecting which components you want to install and contains all packages that can be selected from the GUI installer.

The boot image can be used for doing installs over network. After booting the computer with this image, the installer will ask from where it should fetch the packages to be installed.

Attention

At least 2 GB RAM are required to install and use CentOS-8 (1911). At least 4 GB RAM is recommended. Bug 8353

4. Verifying Downloaded Installation Images

Before copying the image to your preferred installation media you should check the sha256sum of the downloaded installation images.

# CentOS-8.1.1911-aarch64-boot.iso: 551677952 bytes SHA256 (CentOS-8.1.1911-aarch64-boot.iso) = e693b670b841d0270a393ed27b97c7efc054dc791e9e0fd77fb813c9cf4b760b # CentOS-8.1.1911-aarch64-dvd1.iso: 5449809920 bytes SHA256 (CentOS-8.1.1911-aarch64-dvd1.iso) = 357f34e86a28c86aaf1661462ef41ec4cf5f58c120f46e66e1985a9f71c246e3 # CentOS-8.1.1911-ppc64le-boot.iso: 597186560 bytes SHA256 (CentOS-8.1.1911-ppc64le-boot.iso) = 4de170f8f3673dc5cacbf250827f4c408f0e731cbc665eb98db31fec10ea01e7 # CentOS-8.1.1911-ppc64le-dvd1.iso: 6712031232 bytes SHA256 (CentOS-8.1.1911-ppc64le-dvd1.iso) = eacb40e7c721517ee6ebd188f7bbd04db0bba373afe919d73639af10613f0a1d # CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-boot.iso: 625999872 bytes SHA256 (CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-boot.iso) = 7fea13202bf2f26989df4175aace8fdc16e1137f7961c33512cbfad844008948 # CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-dvd1.iso: 7554990080 bytes SHA256 (CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-dvd1.iso) = 3ee3f4ea1538e026fff763e2b284a6f20b259d91d1ad5688f5783a67d279423b

5. Major Changes

See the Overview section of upstream Release Notes.

6. Deprecated Features

See upstream documentations for Deprecated functionality and Removed security functionality.

7. Known Issues

A list of known upstream issues can be found in the RHEL 8.1 release notes. Given that we build from the same sources, many, if not all, of those issues will likely also apply to CentOS Linux.

If you are planning to install CentOS-8 in a VirtualBox guest, you should not select "Server with a GUI" (default) during the installation. See this Red Hat article for details.

Support for some adapters has been removed in CentOS-8. You can find the device IDs of those adapters in this upstream documentation. ELRepo offers driver update disks (DUD) for some of those that are still commonly used. For the list of the device IDs provided by the ELRepo packages, please see here. Some more details are in this blog. Note also that, once CentOS-8 is installed, you can use the centosplus kernel (kernel-plus) which has support for those devices.

If you are using the boot.iso and NFS to install, the automatic procedure for adding the AppStream-Repo will fail. You have to disable it and add the right NFS-path manually.

The dotnet2.1 component is incomplete on the DVD ISO and in the kickstart/ repo. A system upgrade from 8.0.1905 should result in a complete upgrade, but new users of dotnet should avoid installing dotnet from the distribution installer.

After updating to CentOS 8.1.1911, EIO errors with cifs signing "CIFS VFS: SMB signature verification returns error = -5". This is a known issue upstream. There is a patch that fixes the issue and will be included in a future release of CentOS.

The glibc32.x86_64 package was erroneously included in CentOS 8. This will be removed in a future update. However the kickstart repos cannot be fixed at this time bug #16947.

Installing the VirtualBox Addons will produce an error if your version is 6.0.12/5.2.32 or lower. This is fixed with versions 6.0.14 and 5.2.34

PackageKit is unable to resolve local DNF/YUM variables. As a result PackageKit will not function if these variables are in use. We are tracking this bug.

Installing CentOS 8 in VirtualBox 5.2.32 (maybe other versions too) will do weird things with the graphical install screen towards the end of the installation. This makes it impossible to see the install status or press the reboot button and you have to guess when the install is finished. The screen corruption can be cleared by switching to a different terminal and back using the vbox Host key + 2 to switch to VT 2 and then vbox Host key + 6 to switch back to the graphical install screen.

8. Fixed Issues

A list of known fixed issues upstream can be found in the RHEL 8.1 bug fix notes. Given that we build from the same sources, many, if not all, of those issues will likely also apply to CentOS Linux.

9. Packages and Applications

9.1. Packages modified by CentOS

abrt

anaconda

apache-commons-net

basesystem

cloud-init

cockpit

compat-glibc

dhcp

firefox

fwupdate

grub2

httpd

initial-setup

ipa

kabi-yum-plugins

kernel

kde-settings

libreport

oscap-anaconda-addon

PackageKit

pcs

plymouth

redhat-lsb

redhat-rpm-config

scap-security-guide

shim

shim-signed

sos

subscription-manager

system-config-date

system-config-kdump

thunderbird

xulrunner

yum

9.2. Packages removed from CentOS that are included upstream

insights-client

Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-Release_Notes-8-*

redhat-access-gui

redhat-bookmarks

redhat-indexhtml

redhat-logos

redhat-release-*

subscription-manager-migration

subscription-manager-migration-data

9.3. Packages added by CentOS that are not included upstream

centos-indexhtml

centos-logos

centos-obsolete-packages

centos-release

centos-backgrounds

elrepo-release

epel-release

10. Sources

All CentOS-8 sources are hosted at git.centos.org. All code released into the distribution originated from git.centos.org.

Source RPMs will also be published once the release is done, in the usual location at http://vault.centos.org/centos/8/

From a CentOS machine you can easily retrieve sources using the yumdownloader --source <packagename> command.

11. How to help and get help

As a CentOS user there are various ways you can help out with the CentOS community. Take a look at our Contribute page for further information on how to get involved.

11.1. Special Interest Groups

CentOS consists of different Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that bring together people with similar interests. The following SIGs already exist (among others):

Artwork - create and improve artwork for CentOS releases and promotion

Promotion - help promoting CentOS online or at events

Virtualization - unite people around virtualization in CentOS

And we encourage people to join any of these SIGs or start up a new SIG, e.g.

ARM, PPC and i386 port - help with porting CentOS to other architectures

Hardware compatibility - provide feedback about specific hardware

RPM Packaging - contribute new useful RPM packages

Translation - help translating the documentation, website and Wiki content

11.2. Mailing Lists and Forums

Another way you can help others in the community is by actively helping and resolving problems that users come up against in the mailing lists and the forums.

11.3. Wiki and Website

Even as an inexperienced CentOS user we can use your help. Because we like to know what problems you encountered, if you had problems finding specific information, how you would improve documentation so it becomes more accessible. This kind of feedback is as valuable to others as it would have been to you so your involvement is required to make CentOS better.

So if you want to help out and improve our documentation and Wiki, register on the Wiki or subscribe to the centos-docs mailing list.

11.4. IRC Presence

The CentOS project maintains a presence on the freenode IRC network as an additional venue for community support and interaction. Please see our IRC wiki article for more information.

12. Further Reading

The following websites contain large amounts of information to help people with their CentOS systems:

Upstream release notes and documentation : https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/

https://www.centos.org/

https://wiki.centos.org/

https://lists.centos.org/

13. Thanks

We thank everyone involved for helping us produce this product and would like to specifically acknowledge the extra effort made by the QA Team. Without them working lots and lots of hours in evenings, nights, weekends and holidays, we couldn't have released this Release in the time we did. A special thanks also goes to the CentOS-community. A more complete list of the contributors to this release can be found at /usr/share/doc/centos-release/Contributors of your new CentOS-8 installation.

Copyright (C) 2020 The CentOS Project