CentOS 7 experience - esp the installer

Comments, suggestions, compliments, etc
Locked
natharran
Posts: 2
Joined: 2015/05/07 22:22:48

CentOS 7 experience - esp the installer

Post by natharran » 2015/05/19 11:48:35

Hello all. :)
I'm a newcomer to CentOS, but I've been using Linux / BSD for cca 10 years now (I administer a few *NIX networks and servers, FreeBSD is also my desktop system) so I dare say I'm not your typical newbie ;). I'm mostly used to Slackware and FreeBSD (though I was using many other *NIX systems over the years, but nothing from RH) and I was looking forward to CentOS.

I will say right now that overall I'm very satisfied with CentOS (I'll get to that later). That, however, doesn't apply to the installer.

Since I've never used this distro before, there is no nostalgia on my part about how things used to be and I don't mind many things that other people do (according to what I read on many forums). I don't mind this installer "hub" or this "Done" button in the upper left corner which many people complain about (though I find it a bit weird), I find these to be mere details. What I do mind a lot, though, is the installer partitioning manager.

I've never seen anything this buggy. It somewhat works if you're going to set a very simple partitioning layout, but if you're going to do something a little bit more complex, you end up still fighting decisions the installer is doing for you. Do you want an encrypted LVM on RAID? Well, then you can just forget about installing CentOS 7 the way you would like to. The installer is always trying to be smarter than you, but unfortunately, it isn't.
On my previous Linux system I had sda and sdb in RAID1 (disks are identical). An encrypted LVM was there and the entire system resided on it. The EFI parition and /boot partition were on sdc(1,2) and the system booted from there. That is just impossible with CentOS 7. In the installer I set encrypted LVM to RAID1 over sda and sdb, EFI parition (mounted to /boot/efi) and the /boot partition are standard partitions on sdc again. And when I confirm this, the installer says that there is no EFI partition with /boot/efi mountpoint set and that I should create it. But it's right there, on sdc1. But the installer simply ignores its existence.
It was a long and bitter fight which I lost because in the end the only solution that the installer was willing to accept was this horrible travesty: it creates EFI like sda1, /boot like sda2 and then it creates sda3 and sdb1 (which are not of the same size of course) and sets them as RAID1 leaving sdc out of the game entirely. To make this comedy even more tragic, when I start the installation and the installer tries to actually apply the partitioning setup it forced upon me, it fails 4 times out of 5 and restarts the machine, so I had to do all the setting from the very beginning again, hoping that this time it will work.
Also, is there any rational reason why I must reformat the root partition (the installer demands this)? I formatted my XFS root partition in advance with "-m crc=1", which is not the default in CentOS if I'm correct. Since I have to click "Reformat" in the installer, I loose this functionality.
But the partitioning manager in the installer is even more buggy. For example if you already have some partitions on your disk and you want to install CentOS behind them using "legacy booting" (so you set up BIOS Boot partition etc) the installer fails again, saying that there is not enough space for boot loader in the beginning of the disk (I know there surely is enough space).
So in the end, the ONLY partitioning setup that works without flaws is the most simple one - you have only 1 disk and CentOS is going to be the only system. Sorry, but that's not good enough for a system that claims to be enterprise grade.

I would like to state here that I'm not writing this to offend anyone. As I've stated before, I like CentOS and I'm still looking forward to learning it's internals. If you get past the installation it turns to be a very good, stable and reliable system (though it's a bit too early for me to judge). I like the package management, I like that all the software I need is available (though I have to rely on third party sources quite a lot, but that doesn't matter as long as the package works and is up-to-date), I'm not very fond of systemd, but I can manage. Unfortunately, the installer (the partitioning part) is such a PITA that I really don't feel comfortable recommending CentOS to anyone at this point. It seems to me that no serious testing was put into it (the installation) and I consider that an unjustifiable failure considering this distro claims to be enterprise grade.

Last but not least, this post is not here to start some fierce argument, I only thought that CentOS developers would appreciate a feedback of someone who doesn't carry the "burden" of previous CentOS releases (or any RH distro). I hope some of them will read this and do some serious testing before next CentOS release comes out.

Cheers,
Natharran

User avatar
AlanBartlett
Forum Moderator
Posts: 9345
Joined: 2007/10/22 11:30:09
Location: ~/Earth/UK/England/Suffolk
Contact:

Re: CentOS 7 experience - esp the installer

Post by AlanBartlett » 2015/05/19 13:10:54

Thank you for your comments. You are not the first person to be perplexed and annoyed with the installation process. :(

However the basic installer is that provided by Red Hat, which has been visually customised by the CentOS Project during the code de-branding process. Any changes in the way the installer operates will have to be made by Red Hat . . . as CentOS 7 is essentially a clone (bug for bug, annoyance for annoyance, etc) of RHEL 7.
Image 100% Linux and, previously, Unix. Co-founder of the ELRepo Project.

gerald_clark
Posts: 10642
Joined: 2005/08/05 15:19:54
Location: Northern Illinois, USA

Re: CentOS 7 experience - esp the installer

Post by gerald_clark » 2015/05/19 13:54:28

For non-simple partitioning, switch to another virtual console, do your partitioning, switch back to the installer, and chose to use existing partitions.

JazzMan11
Posts: 2
Joined: 2015/07/17 23:01:46

Re: CentOS 7 experience - esp the installer

Post by JazzMan11 » 2015/07/17 23:10:50

This actually works? Because from what Ive been reading it doesnt. And RedHat has some work to do on the installer. Have you tried filing a bug with RedHat Bugzilla? Non-EFI compliant systems such as the crosshairV mothoerboard flip flop between BIOS and UEFI modes for install.Install in UEFI mode and you get a non-bootable system.Try and override an existing installation and you get the "boot sector did not write" error, even though it did. Lots of problems with anaconda.

gerald_clark
Posts: 10642
Joined: 2005/08/05 15:19:54
Location: Northern Illinois, USA

Re: CentOS 7 experience - esp the installer

Post by gerald_clark » 2015/07/18 00:18:11

Jazzman, did you sign up just to hijack threads and troll?
You have a total of two posts, both just complaints about things you don't understand.

Locked