Centos 7 out - Virtualmin release?

I have been doing some preliminary testing over the past few weeks with a few 3rd party wares, including Virtualmin, and it will take time to add support for this release properly. There are even more substantial changes with this major release than there was with Ubuntu's recent release - ensuring support is one of my main goals.

In my opinion, as a user, we are looking at about 3 months before support comes on the horizon. We can get started quicker if many users like yourself take the liberty of looking at the install code, package configurations, and virtualmin components, and start trying to setup a EL7 based system :)

Howdy,

We have been doing some preparation using RHEL7.

It's likely to take us longer than a few days to have support for that and CentOS 7.

But I also hope it takes us less than "months" to get that ready :-)

A few noteable large changes --

RHEL7 (and I assume CentOS 7) uses XFS as the default filesystem. We haven't done much testing with that yet, and we'd like to make sure that Virtualmin's quota support for that filesystem works well.

The Apache config files were moved around a bit.

And much to my surprise, the "ifconfig" command is no longer installed by default, and when it is installed, the output is different than previously.

We've updated the installer to make sure it supports those changes, and Joe and Jamie are currently at work updating our Virtualmin repository, as well as adding in support for the above changes.

We should have support out for all that soon!

-Eric

Great to hear that you are working towards making CentOS 7 a supported system.

Where would be the best place to watch to be aware of when it is supported fully?

Thanks for your work as always. Look forward to seeing the update, but happy to wait until everything is ironed out :)

Hi,

Historically, it's wise to wait up to 6 months beyond the date a new OS is released before giving it a try in a production environment as things tend to change rapidly, and/or bugs are found which need to be squashed.

Even as Joe and Jamie work hard to make Virtualmin capable of running on CentOS 7, you need to keep in mind that they too need time to work through any quirks related to the changes in CentOS and so my thought remains, you really should give up to 6 months to see where CentOS/Virtualmin are at before committing to it.

That's my two cents on the topic, and it seems to have worked well within our business :-)

Yeah, there are indeed a lot of changes, but we're hoping to have support for CentOS 7 available in the not-too-distant future. We'll post an update once it's ready for some beta testing :-)

-Eric

I am installing two or three new CentOS 7 servers in Q3/4 of this year.

One is a replacement for an older Zentyal server and we are quite sure we want "Centos7 / LAMP / usermin / webmin / virtualmin" as a relatively safe plan for the 'in case I get hit by a truck' worst case scenario.

The second is a high traffic web server and the third is an internal intranet server. Similar setups.

I am willing to beta test the CentOS 7 install script while setting up these units. I am new to systemd so parts of the setup are new to me, but so was MS-DOS 3.3 at one time.

Currently running Fedora, Ubuntu, and (yes it's old) Trustix.

• UnklAdM

here are my 0 cents, so I can subscribe to this thread ;)

jumping on eddieb's train :D

We're hoping to release a beta version of the CentOS 7 support very soon. Joe had hoped it would be as early as today, but that may have been a little too optimistic... but it will be soon :-)

The beta version is just for testing, and we're sure there will be some issues in it since so much has changed between CentOS 6 and CentOS 7.

But for anyone who wants to try it out and see how it goes, we'd welcome your input! I'll post an announcement here in this thread once it's ready.

-Eric

That'll be cool. Trying the set up a CentOS 7 box with puppet.

Is it available somewhere or still in progress?

I'm waiting on this too :)

Yeah, me too ;)

Is there already something like an alpha version?

Sorry guys, it's taking longer than we had hoped! Currently, Jamie is working on a screen in the post-install to (optionally) handle modifying the grub boot options.

Due to RHEL/CentOS 7's change to XFS as the default filesystem, quotas won't work unless the kernel boot options are changed in the grub config.

We have a meeting later today, I should get an idea of how things are coming along at that point.

-Eric

No worries, if you need any help Beta testing let me know. I use RackSpace Cloud Servers in the UK, and the only option the have for CentOS7 is based on PVHVM - does that make any difference and is it supported/recommended with Virtualmin?

http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/choosing-a-virtualizat...

Hey guys -- I haven't had a chance to test this yet, but rather than further delay it, I thought I'd let you know and we can all test it together :-)

Joe just finished pushing out the CentOS 7 changes, and what we have in the repository could use some testing.

There are quite a few of changes, so it'd be surprising if there we no issues at all. But hopefully we already took care of all the large ones :-)

In order to install Virtualmin onto a CentOS 7 system, you would need the latest install.sh script, available in the "Downloads" section above, or at http://virtualmin.com/serial/ if you're using Virtualmin Pro.

There is one outstanding issue we know of that requites a manual change... and that is for quotas.

The default filesystem on CentOS 7 is XFS. In most cases, in order to enable quota support, it will require a change in the kernel boot options (as quota support is disabled in the kernel by default).

To do that, edit this file:

/etc/default/grub

Then, find the line beginning with: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX

What we'll need to do is add rootflags=usrquota,grpquota to the end of that line... it should look something like the following:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.lvm.lv=centos/swap vconsole.font=latarcyrheb-sun16 rd.lvm.lv=centos/root crashkernel=auto vconsole.keymap=us rhgb quiet rootflags=usrquota,grpquota"

Now backup your grub config file:

cp /boot/grub2/grub.cfg /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.orig

Then generate a new grub config containing the settings you updated:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Once you do that -- reboot, and quota support should work properly.

Let us know what issues you run into, and we'll get them fixed up ASAP. We'll be doing additional testing of our own as well. Thanks!

-Eric

I just tried this out on a clean CentOS 7 system and got similar results to Schnuecks. Here is the output of /root/virtualmin-install.log

It might be worth noting that this is exactly the same output I received when I ran the install script last month (i just wanted to see what would happen).

I removed the old install.sh and downloaded and new one just prior to install. I did not do the grub changes to enable quota (as it is not a feature I use) but can test again with those changes made if you would think that is causing and problems.

I just tried the script and it failed at the same point. Seems the virtualmin-release rpm's are not there.

Sorry guys, I had my fingers crossed that there wouldn't be any issues like this, but it sounds like perhaps I should have done a test run first :-/

It looks like Joe overlooked the virtualmin-release package in the the GPL repo. I've asked him to correct that, and I'll update this once he does.

-Eric

I tried out the install.sh and it failed on the mariadb stuff. I am not going to be using that on this server so I removed it from the install.sh script. The rest seemed to work fine. It even put the ports in the zone I have active in firewalld for the external interface.

Here was the error that it threw during the initial install:

Processing Conflict: 1:mariadb-galera-server-5.5.37-2.el7.x86_64 conflicts mariadb-server

FYI, the Linux Firewall is still looking for the old iptables service instead of the firewalld stuff. Not sure if that is something you would be concerned with or if it would be a different group.

Thanks for your work Mark

I tried it again and all was going well until cache/yum/x86_64/7/virtualmin/packages/proftpd-1.3.5-2.el7.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 352c64e5: NOKEY

Is there a missing key on this package? Let me know if you would like any other info/logs etc. thanks

Yeah Joe is working on correcting an issue with the GPL repository -- I'll post a note here when it's working properly.

-Eric

Alright, I think the repository issue is all fixed up -- Joe and I were both able to perform installs using the GPL repository. Give it another shot and let us know if that works for you :-)

Note that it's not necessary to perform the manual quota setup steps described above for Virtualmin to work. That step is only necessary if you require quota support.

-Eric

Howdy,

Thanks for reporting the issue with EPEL, that's good to know.

Unfortunately, I don't believe there's anything we can do about that since it's a third party repository, and what it's conflicting with is the default database package.

However, knowing that there is a package in EPEL which conflicts with the mariadb-server package provided in CentOS 7 will help us keep an eye out for related issues.

Regarding ClamAV -- can you try installing the package "clamav-server-sysvinit", which you can do with this command:

Once you do that, is Virtualmin able to work with ClamAV?

-Eric

I too got the:

Error: mariadb-galera-server conflicts with 1:mariadb-server-5.5.37-1.el7_0.x86_64

The CentOS 7 image rackspace provide is setup with EPEL enabled by default. Disabling it in /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo did the trick.

I see clamav-server-sysvinit is now installed by install.sh :)

Everything seems to be up and running, and I've enabled quotas in the grub config. I'll report back with any issues I come across.

I Just reading the post and like to know if all the bugs now fixed with centos 7.00

I am planing to update my older server from centos 6.5 to 7.00 just need the info before i start the process

Please advice

Thanks

Same here, I'm going to do this tomorrow morning due to out of date packages (OpenSSL, Apache). Anything I should know?

We are using CentOS 6.5 + Virtualmin in production for quite a while now, managed to achieve some extremely high performance and 700+ websites on single machine. A lot of research, testing and tweaking was in place. (I will probably share the whole setup and some major tweaks we have applied later). Basically the biggest bottleneck now in the system is mod_fcgid. We have discussed why it is bad many times:

• No support, no updates, nasty bugs
• Does not share memory between processes, making opcaching ineffective (opcacheing is definitely the way to go)
• Big problem with graceful restarts (no real solution there) - only waits 1 sec for the processes to end gracefully then kills them forcefully (the users gets error)
• Loses all opcache (shared memory) upon graceful restart

All these things hugely increase the RAM and I/O use on the server, the two most expensive resources. We have tested PHP-FPM on CentOS 6.5 (as it is very easy to install) and as expected the results are amazing.

Back to CentOS7: The default PHP is 5.4 with PHP-FPM as default process manager (execution mode), Apache 2.4 with mpm_event (the fastest possible setup right now), it makes sense to add PHP-FPM support soon.

PHP-FPM execution mode is also easy to achieve on CentOS 6.5 (I guess on Ubuntu too)

We are keen to provide the community with such extension (it will need just few files added), but we will need little dev support/documentation, then testing by the community and then, if the Virtualmin owners agree to include it in the official version.

Shall we work together on this?

P.S. As for CentOS 7 - still have issues, many core features changed, we will wait at least 6 months before making any effort to use it in production.

I unfortunately do not have a choice. I've been banging my head for close to 2 weeks now trying to get my site PCI compliant.

The issue is with apache 2.2.15 and openssl, the vulnerability scans being run on our site say that it is vulnerable to BEAST. Even using SSL LABS shows this as a problem and my system is completely up to date through yum update.

Everything I've read is basically saying upgrade Apache and OpenSSL. Even if I install 2.4 next to 2.2, I will still have to implement the newest version of OpenSSL and I'm worried that will break things.

Note: I did get Apache 2.4 installed on 6.5, but none of my sites would load.

Up and running :)

Now I can't seem to install php mcrypt...

@gpetrov In your post you said "PHP-FPM execution mode is also easy to achieve on CentOS 6.5". Is there any chance you could share how you achieved this?

When creating a virtual server:

Setting up scheduled Webalizer reporting ..
.. Webalizer reporting failed! : Missing file to open at WebminCore::/usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 3108 at /usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 1397.
 
Setting up log file rotation ..
.. done
 
Creating MySQL login ..
.. done
 
Creating MySQL database iglooexpress ..
.. done
 
Setting up spam filtering ..
.. Spam filtering failed! : Missing file to open at WebminCore::/usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 3108 at /usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 1397.
 
Setting up virus filtering ..
.. Virus filtering failed! : Missing file to open at WebminCore::/usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 3108 at /usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 1397.
 
Adding DAV directives to website configuration ..
.. done
 
Adding DAV account for server administrator ..
.. done
 
Setting up AWstats reporting ..
.. AWstats reporting failed! : virtualmin-awstats::feature_setup failed : Missing file to open at WebminCore::/usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 3108 at /usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 1397.
 
Adding Mailman alias and redirects to website configuration ..
.. Mailman failed! : virtualmin-mailman::feature_setup failed : Missing file to open at WebminCore::/usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 3108 at /usr/libexec/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 1397.

is there some sort of upgrade-path?

Or just go directly with Centos Upgrade from 6 to 7 and then re-install virtualmin using the new install scripts for Centos 7?

Hello,

In the Virtualmin GPL 4.10 announcement it states that CentOS 7 is now supported, however there still seem to be some bugs. I've found the following:

- MariaDB conflict with EPEL
- ClamAV not supported
- IPv6 configured in 'Network Interfaces' but not available for allocation in VirtualMin
- Apache Won't start after creating/reconfiguring a Vhost

I believe the MariaDB and ClamAV issues are documented previously in this thread by myself an others.

I've only just noticed the IpV6 issue and can provide more info on that if required.

Regarding apache, I created a Virtualhost, Enabled/Disabled some of its featured and then noticed that Apache wasn't running any more. Output of systemctl status httpd.service:


[root@**** ~]# systemctl status httpd.service
httpd.service - The Apache HTTP Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2014-09-08 13:32:05 UTC; 6min ago
Process: 16130 ExecStop=/bin/kill -WINCH ${MAINPID} (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 16942 ExecReload=/usr/sbin/httpd $OPTIONS -k graceful (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 16129 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/httpd $OPTIONS -DFOREGROUND (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 16129 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Status: "Total requests: 0; Current requests/sec: 0; Current traffic: 0 B/sec"

Sep 08 13:32:05 ****.******.com systemd[1]: Starting The Apache HTTP Server...
Sep 08 13:32:05 ****.******.com httpd[16129]: (98)Address already in use: AH00072: make_sock: could not bind to address ***.***.***.***:443
Sep 08 13:32:05 ****.******.com httpd[16129]: no listening sockets available, shutting down
Sep 08 13:32:05 ****.******.com httpd[16129]: AH00015: Unable to open logs
Sep 08 13:32:05 ****.******.com systemd[1]: httpd.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Sep 08 13:32:05 ****.******.com systemd[1]: Failed to start The Apache HTTP Server.
Sep 08 13:32:05 ****.******.com systemd[1]: Unit httpd.service entered failed state.

Is there a bug tracker somewhere I can submit these/check on progress? I'd love to start using CentOS 7 asap :)

Edit - Sorry, should have searched before asking - just found this - https://www.virtualmin.com/project/issues

I was keen to upgrade to CentOS 7 and install virtualmin on it but I tried it myself and found too many problems.

I'm now exploring Ubuntu 14.04 and virtualmin which seems like a better option, once you get past the bugged install script.

Ubuntu 14.04 has more up to date versions of php, apache and mysql and apt-get works just as well as yum. I was able to install qbittorrent-nox (version 3.1.8) with apt-get whereas only a very old version is available via yum. Trying to install an up to date version of qbittorrent-nox on CentOS with yum and rpm is a nightmare and I eventually gave up with so many unresolved dependencies.

I kind of like the stability of CentOS - it can be kept up to date without the worry of new versions breaking things. However php 5.3.3 in CentOS 6.5 is getting a bit too out of date, so CentOS 7 will be a welcome update. I'm sure the bugs will get ironed out fairly quickly :)