SME Server 8

Status: Beta

SME Server Version 8 will be the next major version of SME Server, and will involve upgrading the base to CentOS 5. SME Server 8.0beta6 is based on CentOS 5.5.

See the Release Announcement for Beta6.

A copy of the latest CD image can be downloaded here.

Testing

All users are encouraged to test, see our draft quality assurance testing page for tasks SME8.0 QA

All testing should be based on the released version plus updates from smeupdates-testing.

Considerations before installing

While SME Server 8 is still beta, we encourage you to install updates from the smeupdates-testing repository, either manually or automatically.

If you are running SME 8 on a production server you may want to review the updates before you install them. To manually update, from the command line run 'yum --enablerepo=smeupdates-testing update'. If you are testing and want to be notified of updates in smeupdates-testing, in the server-manager go to: Software Installer => Change Software Installer Settings => Make sure CentOS-os,updates & SME-addons,extras,os,updates,updates-testing are all selected => Save. Just be sure to disable smeupdates-testing once SME 8 is officially released if you choose to enable it in the server-manager

Please report any issues to our bug tracker under the SME Server 8 section only if you have installed all current updates from the smeupdates-testing repository, or you may be having an issue that has already been fixed.

This way all problems can be fixed as quickly, early and efficiently as possible by the development team.

Since SME Server 8.0 is still beta no contribs will be released.

Once the Release Candidate status is reached contribs will be released for contrib owners to check if their packages need updating.

For testing of contribs in advance of release see SME8.0 Contribs QA

Upgrade paths

Check for rpms installed from outside the standard yum repositories

/sbin/e-smith/audittools/newrpms

CD

After Upgrading

Reset repositories to SME 8, see below, bug bugzilla:5705. This is fixed for SME Server 8.0 Beta 6

Yum

Check for known issues, here SME8.0 QA and at open bugs for SME 8 in bugzilla.

Note especially bugzilla:5316, detach all USB drives, ie your backup

Pointing repositories to SME 8

Update the MirrorList property to point to the sme8 lists...

db yum_repositories print | grep '^sme' | cut -d= -f1 | while read repo
do
    db yum_repositories setprop $repo MirrorList \
    http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/mirrorlist/$repo-8
done

Expand your yum.conf...

/etc/e-smith/events/actions/generic_template_expand yum-modify

Performing the upgrade

	Note:
	You are advised to only upgrade clean machines, e.g. without contribs or other modifications.

1. Clean out the yum cache so upgrades work: yum --enablerepo '*' clean all
2. Perform the upgrade: yum --disablerepo '*' \ $(echo --enablerepo\ sme{os,updates{,-testing},extras,addons}) \ upgrade
3. Remove outdated rpm database and rebuild it (zeros not O's) rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db.00* rpm --rebuilddb
4. Reset yum updates repositories to defaults, (will delete local changes) mv /home/e-smith/db/yum_repositories /home/e-smith/db/yum_repositories.pre8 /etc/e-smith/events/actions/initialize-default-databases
5. Perform a post-upgrade and reboot signal-event post-upgrade signal-event reboot

Potential issues that may arise

If you are running a 7.0 system you may need to upgrade smeserver-yum.

1. Check which version of smeserver-yum you are running: rpm -q smeserver-yum
2. If it isn't at least 1.2.0-25.el4.sme install an updated version: rpm -Uvh \ http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/obsolete/7.1/smeos/i386/CentOS/RPMS/smeserver-yum-1.2.0-25.el4.sme.noarch.rpm \ http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/obsolete/7.1/smeos/i386/CentOS/RPMS/yum-plugin-fastestmirror-0.2.4-3.c4.noarch.rpm

If you receive the following error while trying to upgrade:

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Missing Dependency: yum-metadata-parser is needed by package yum

Solve it by installing the correct version of yum-metadata-parser:

rpm -Uvh --oldpackage \
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/7/smeos/i386/SME/RPMS/yum-metadata-parser-1.0-8.el4.centos.i386.rpm

Upgrading samba

The Samba packages in SME Server 8.0 Beta 6 have reverted to those provided by CentOS to simplify the support needed. This version of samba provides support for Windows 7 domain logins. Due to this change from samba-3.4 to samba3x-3.3 it is necessary to remove samba if samba-3.4.x has been installed. All users of SME Server 8.0 Beta 5 are affected. Users of other versions of SME Server can check their samba version.

rpm -q samba samba3x

Here is the example output showing samba 3.4 packages installed which need removal.

samba-3.4.3-1.1.el5.sme
package samba3x is not installed

Here is the example output showing samba3x 3.3 packages installed which need no further steps

package samba is not installed
samba3x-3.3.8-0.52.el5_5

If samba-3.4.x then you need to run two commands:

rpm -e --nodeps libtalloc libtdb samba samba-client samba-common samba-winbind

yum install tdb-tools

Now you are ready to upgrade to SME Server 8.0 Beta 6

USB drives

USB drives are detected differently on SME8, see http://wiki.contribs.org/USBDisks#USB_on_SME_8

Additional steps and potential changes

VMWare

VMware-server installations need some tweaking at this stage, see VMware_server_on_SME8.0beta5.

Problems and bugs

If you have any bug issues with upgrading please open a new SME Server 8.x file a bug here

Major Changes

• CentOS 5 has dropped support for i586 and therefore SME Server 8 will not work on i586 hardware. See bugzilla:2845. i586 hardware means processors before and including Intel Pentium, Pentium MMX; AMD K5, K6, K6-II, K6-III and Via C3. i686 architecture processors are Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III; AMD Athlon, Athlon XP and later.