CentOS 8 Linux will be not supported by the end of the year 2021 and if you want to migrate it to AlmaLinux 8, follow the instructions below.
There is no standard release of CentOS 8+ Linux going forward and CentOS Stream continues after that date, serving as an upstream branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that seats between Fedora and RHEL.
AlmaLinux is an free and open source Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) fork developed by CloudLinux that is a great alternative to CentOS 8.
- Suggested Read: How to Migrate from CentOS 8 to Rocky Linux 8
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to migrate to AlmaLinux from CentOS 8 using “almalinux-deploy” script.
Prerequisites:
Make sure you have a backup of important data or applications. This allows you to restore the data if something goes wrong during the migration activity.
Updating the system
Install all the packages to the latest version by running the below commands.
$ sudo dnf update $ sudo dnf upgrade
Make sure that you are running with the latest version of CentOS 8.3 by running the below command.
$ cat /etc/*-release CentOS Linux release 8.4.2105 NAME="CentOS Linux" VERSION="8" ID="centos" ID_LIKE="rhel fedora" VERSION_ID="8" PLATFORM_ID="platform:el8" PRETTY_NAME="CentOS Linux 8" ANSI_COLOR="0;31" CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:centos:centos:8" HOME_URL="https://centos.org/" BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.centos.org/" CENTOS_MANTISBT_PROJECT="CentOS-8" CENTOS_MANTISBT_PROJECT_VERSION="8" CentOS Linux release 8.4.2105 CentOS Linux release 8.4.2105
Restart your system if you have installed any kernel patches:
$ sudo reboot
To download the AlmaLinux migration script, run:
$ curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlmaLinux/almalinux-deploy/master/almalinux-deploy.sh
Set execute permissions to the migration script using the chmod command as showing below:
$ chmod +x almalinux-deploy.sh
Starting Migration Process
Kick on the migration process using the following command. This bash script automates the migration process seamlessly. As part of this migration activity, it performs some system checks, then uninstall, reinstall and upgrade the necessary packages.
$ sudo bash almalinux-deploy.sh
Once the migration process has been completed, you should get the following output:
Restart your system to apply the changes:
$ sudo reboot
Post reboot of your system, you can find the AlmaLinux operating system version using the below command:
$ cat /etc/os-release
Run the following command to verify the loaded kernel version, which confirms that the Almalinux kernel is set to boot by default.
$ sudo grubby --info DEFAULT | grep AlmaLinux title="AlmaLinux (4.18.0-305.12.1.el8_4.x86_64) 8.4 (Electric Cheetah)"
Closing Notes
In this guide, we’ve shown you how to migrate from CentOS 8.4 to AlmaLinux 8.4
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to comment below.
