OpenELA announced a new branch of the Leapp open source project which provides upgrade tooling for all Enterprise Linux variants. Leapp is an existing open source project that aims to serve as an expert advisor for moving operating systems (OS) workloads to newer Enterprise Linux OS versions by generating suggested actions, identifying risks, producing checklists, and automating steps for users.
In addition to unifying and streamlining collaboration across the OpenELA community for the Leapp project, OpenELA is also announcing several key updates to Leapp. This includes enhancements such as verifying kernel compatibility for enabled features, providing additional logic to detect additional unsupported configurations, and identifying extra mandatory and suggested pre- and post-upgrade steps.
According to Oracle, these updates will also provide mission-critical features for enterprise users, including built-in SELinux support, support for upgrades with FIPS mode enabled, enhanced support for configurations with network storage, and support for upgrades via kexec fast reboots—instead of requiring a full system reboot with hardware reinitialization.
“OpenELA aims to help enterprise customers navigate the challenges of upgrading their operating systems to modern versions,” said Greg Marsden, senior vice president of Linux development, Oracle. “Changes to core underlying frameworks like SELinux and systemd can impact upgrades, so it is important for customers to be able to upgrade their operating systems safely between major versions. Previously these capabilities were only available for Oracle Linux customers, and I’m pleased that Oracle is contributing these features—and several new enhancements—to the broader OpenELA community.”
These enhancements help meet upgrade needs of all Enterprise Linux compatible users, expanding on the upstream version which only supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems. OpenELA will continue to explore additional use cases and enhancements for the manageability of OpenELA-compatible distributions.
"Leapp has been an essential tool for system administrators handling system upgrades and migrations to other Enterprise Linux variants," said Gregory Kurtzer, CEO and founder of CIQ, and creator of Rocky Linux. "At OpenELA, we are all committed to vendor-neutral open-source collaboration. CIQ is excited to support this initiative and looks forward to contributing to its success."
For more information about this news, visit www.oracle.com.