Operational Impacts

The operational impact of Debian-based StarlingX is small:

• Functional equivalence with CentOS-based StarlingX

• Use of the StarlingX CLIs and APIs will remain the same:

  • StarlingX on Debian will provide the same CLIs and APIs as StarlingX on CentOS.

  • StarlingX on Debian will run the same 5.10 kernel version as StarlingX on CentOS.

  • StarlingX on Debian will support the same set of Kubernetes APIs used in StarlingX on CentOS.

  • The procedure to install hosts will be unchanged by the migration from CentOS to Debian. Only the grub menu has been modified.

  • The CLIs used for software updates (patching) will be unchanged by the migration from CentOS to Debian.

• User applications running in containers on CentOS should run on Debian without modification. Re-validation of containers on Debian is encouraged to identify any exceptions.

• A small subset of operating system-specific commands will differ. Some of these changes result from the switch in distributions while others are generic changes that have accumulated since the release of the CentOS distribution currently used. For example:

  • The Debian installation requires new pxeboot grub menus. See Technology Preview Installation.

  • Some prompt strings will be slightly different (for example: ssh login, passwd command, and others).

  • Many 3rd-party software packages are running a newer version in Debian and this may lead to minor changes in syntax, output, config files, and logs.

  • The URL to expose keystone service does not have the version appended.

  • On Debian, interface and static routes need to be handled using system-API.

    • Do not edit configuration files in /etc/network/ as they are regenerated from sysinv database after a system reboot. Any changes directly done there will be lost.

    • The static routes configuration file is /etc/network/routes

    • Interface configuration files are located in /etc/network/interfaces.d/

  • Debian stores network information in /etc/network instead of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts location used in CentOS. However, the StarlingX system … commands are unchanged.

  • Patching on Debian is done using ostree commits rather than individual RPMs.

    You can see which packages are updated by ostree using the dpkg -l instead of rpm -qa used on CentOS.

  • Patching is done via reboot required patches. In-service patching is not supported in the Technology Preview release.

  • The patching CLI commands and Horizon interactions are the same as for CentOS.

    • The supported patching CLI commands for release 7.0 are:

      • sw-patch upload

      • sw-patch upload-dir

      • sw-patch apply

      • sw-patch remove

      • sw-patch delete

      • sw-patch query

      • sw-patch show

      • sw-patch query-hosts

      • sw-patch host-install

      • sw-patch host-install-async

      • sw-patch install-local

    However, since Debian patches work with ostree commits rather than RPMs, the patch contents visible on Horizon and CLI are different.

    Running the sw-patch show <patch-ID> CLI command or selecting Software Management and the patch name in Horizon displays details about the contents of a Debian patch including:

    • The number of ostree commits in this patch.

    • The base commit on which the patch can be applied.

    • The commit IDs that are associated with this patch.

    CLI

    Sample sw-patch show <patch-ID> output:

    DEBIAN_RR:
    Release:        22.06
    Patch State:    Available
    Status:         DEV
    Unremovable:    N
    RR:             Y
    Summary:        Reboot Required Patch 0015
    Description:    Reboot Required Patch for resolving subcloud unlock issue
    Install Instructions:
                    Please ensure that there is 450MB minimum available space in the directory where the patch is going to be placed.
    Warnings:       This patch requires PATCH_0014 to be installed first.
    Contents:
    
    No. of commits: 2
    Base commit:    d0a0d5ad78746c86ab477fb5ccb98d7e813484a9cb1c0a780363233794655fdc
    Commit1:        a386e76d6430f7fd6693d40379cccc838445f4abd409f158b919c010da80cb83
    Commit2:        647dcef3f32d61b3d341fab905f5267c5614d804cae5d295693a6098db6e4e6d
    

    Horizon

    Sample Software Management > patch name output.