The CentOS Team is pleased to announce the official release of CentOS 3.4 for x86_64 and EM64T.
This release includes all RHEL 3 updates (for U4) and errata up to January 19th, 2005. New ISO images are available as well as an installable DVD edition. In addition this release is available via BitTorrent.
Downloading -- Bittorrent
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Bittorrents of a DVD image, binary iso's, and source iso's are available as follow:
dvd iso http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3.4/isos/x86_64/CentOS-3.4-x86_64-final-dvd.torrent
4 binary iso's http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3.4/isos/x86_64/CentOS-3.4-x86_64-final-bin1to4.torrent
3 source iso's http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3.4/isos/x86_64/CentOS-3.4-i386-src1-3.torrent
As CentOS 3.4 x86_64 is built from the same source as CentOS 3.4 (i386) we are not duplicating the torrent tracker to provide identical copies of discs with different names. This will also improve performance as seeds aren't split for the same content.
Please use bittorrent and keep your downloader running for others to use even after your download completes.
Please see this FAQ Entry for additional BiTTorrent information.
Downloading -- .iso images
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iso images are available from your favorite CentOS mirror as well. A current list of mirrors can be obtained from http://www.centos.org/mirrors
Purchasing
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isos are available to purchase from www.cheeplinux.com (UK) and should also be available from a number of other online vendors.
Upgrade Notes
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Initially CentOS 3.3 x86_64 systems will not be automatically upgraded to CentOS 3.4 x64_64. However at some point in the near future the centos-release rpm for 3.4 x86_64 will be added to the 3.3 x86_64 tree and this will force automatic upgrades when using yum. Email will be sent via the CentOS mailing list prior to 3.3 to 3.4 tree migration.
If you do NOT want to upgrade then exclude centos-release from updates in your yum.conf. We will try to maintain security updates for CentOS 3.3 x86_64 for as long as there are no issues that mean they cant be used (eg 3.4 x86_64 specific dependency issue) -- but as soon as that happens we will have to close the CentOS 3.3 x86_64 tree.
From this point forward $releasever will stay at 3. When 3.5 x86_64 is released systems will automatically get updated. To prevent this you will need to hard code 3.4 in yum.conf in place of $releasever.
To manually upgrade to CentOS 3.4 x86_64 (now)
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first
rpm -ivh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3.4/os/x86_64/RedHat/RPMS/centos-yumcache-3.1-0.20050127.3.noarch.rpm
(to avoid the header downloads)
rpm -Fvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3.4/os/x86_64/RedHat/RPMS/centos-release-3-4.2.x86_64.rpm
(to get the new releasever)
then
yum update
To automatically upgrade to CentOS 3.4 x86_64
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We recommend that you install centos-yumcache before updating as it will save all the header downloading.
yum install centos-yumcache
yum update centos-release
yum update
Otherwise yum will take two update cycles to perform the update, the first will update centos-release and the second will download all the headers and then update all the packages.
CENTOSPLUS
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The new CentOSplus repository is designed to allow us to provide extended functionality to CentOS without compromising compatibility with Redhat Enterprise Linux. Packages that will live in CentOSplus - such as MySQL-4 - would update packages in the base distro, so it is only recommended that you enable CentOSplus in yum.conf when you are sure that is what you want. The difference between CentOSplus and 'extras' is that 'extras' are additional packages that are not already installed and would not update existing packages beyond RHEL-3, but provide extra functionality. It is hoped that there will be a wide range of CentOSplus packages provided in the future.
RELEASE NOTES & CAVEATS
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-- YUM --
Your yum.conf should not get overwritten by the upgrade, but the new version may get written as yum.conf.rpmnew
If your /etc/yum.conf file is a symlink to centos-yum.conf and you have manually edited centos-yum.conf, your centos-yum.conf file will be replaced by a new centos-yum.conf from the centos-yumconf rpm file in CentOS 3.4. Your existing centos-yum.conf file will be saved as yum.conf-SAVE.
The following changes have been made to the default centos-yum.conf:
Reference to the CentOSplus repository has been added (see above) but is not activated.
The download path has changed from /centos-3/$releasever to /centos/$releasever to allow for update to CentOS-4 and later versions without having to change the configuration file.
If you have edited yum.conf then neither of these changes will prevent it working but you would be advised to make them to avoid future problems.
-- CENTOS-RELEASE RPM --
In order to accommodate compatibility with Dag's and other 3rd party repositories, the naming convention of centos-release has been changed. The version is now 3 (rather than 3.3) and will remain fixed $releasever used by yum) for the life of CentOS 3. The first number of the release will now carry the designation of the edition.
For example, CentOS 3.4 ships with centos-release-3-4.2. The version is 3 and the release is 4.2. Compare this with the centos-release from the prior version: centos-release-3.3-1. yum detected $releasever as 3.3.
Dag's excellent repository of Enterprise Linux RPMS can be found at http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/
-- RPM --
Due to an upstream bug that causes RPM to fail and requires manual elimination of the RPM database, CentOS 3.4 x86_64 ships with the RPM used in CentOS 3.3 x86_64. When the upstream provider releases a patched RPM the CentOS team will follow suit. CentOS 3.4 x86_64 ships with rpm-4.2.3-10 as did CentOS 3.3 x86_64 rather than rpm-4.3.3-13 provided with rhel3 U4. (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=143532)
-- MAILMAN --
CentOS 3.4 x86_64 now ships with mailman as released by RedHat with quarterly Update 4 (U4). However the CentOS 3.4 x86_64 version is NOT compatible with the version available via CentOS 3.3 x86_64 Extras. Since you can't read the Mailman upgrade documentation prior to installing the upgrade, we have made the upgrade notes available on the CentOS website. Read them here http://www.centos.org/mailman
Databases will need to be manually updated per the instructions above. If want to avoid upgrading Mailman at this time, then temporarily exclude mailman from updates in your yum.conf until you are happy with the upgrade.
No further updates to the 3.3 x86_64 version of mailman will be released by the CentOS team.
-- caching-nameserver --
Due to the caching nameserver package causing problems for misconfigured machines, the caching-nameserver package from CentOS 3.3 x86_64 is included for upgraders. Fresh installs work fine with the new caching-namesever. The updated caching-nameserver is available from the CentOS Testing Repository would you like to use it.
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To stay up to date with CentOS join the CentOS mailing list at http://lists.caosity.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Participate on the web forums at www.centos.org
Join #centos at irc.freenode.net
Please add any errors or bugs you encounter to bugzilla on http://www.centos.org/bugs
Enjoy,
The CentOS Team
