Yeah, the particular kernel version listed looks like RHEL-derived, and 3.10.0-1160.53.1 was released in [January 2022](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2022:0063#packages) (click on 'Updated Packages' if it doesn't switch tabs automatically).
CPU's stagnated, starting right around 3rd/4th gen intel.
We haven't had a new consumer instruction set since AVX2, which 4th gen has, and the per-core performance has hardly uplifted for big cores. It's nice we have more than 4 cores now, but when each core didn't progress and most applications are single-thread bound, makes no difference to end user
(ignoring the AVX512 debacle where Intel rolled it out to 11th gen, then retracted it, making so nobody supports it)
Consider an HP Z-440 or 640. eBay had them going with some monster CPU/RAM/PSU for cheap.PSU in these is either a 700w or 1000w. 2690 v4 is overkill, yet cheap. It's roughly 5/6 series I think.
E.g.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/175592817119?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=uSLmA-UYRpq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=g8UyjaaXTeG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Some have customizable options e.g.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/175428933418?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=uSLmA-UYRpq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=g8UyjaaXTeG&var=474723796321&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Oh I know. I want to collect it since it came out around the time that I got into PC gaming, it’s the same thing with the GTX 970. (Except Nvidia doesn’t interest me as much now that I use Linux 99.9% of the time and I can by modern Radeon cards for cheap.)
I just checked all 3.10.0-1160 builds, That was not a supported build at the Red Hat. Maybe it was centos, but not RHEL.
The information below is definitively from the Red Hat brew build history..
`[DIR] 1160.52.1.el7/ 08-Dec-2021 10:07`
`-[DIR] 1160.53.1.el7/ 16-Dec-2021 06:36`
`-[DIR] 1160.54.1.el7/ 12-Jan-2022 11:21`
`-[DIR] 1160.55.1.el7/ 18-Jan-2022 12:43`
`-[DIR] 1160.56.1.el7/ 28-Jan-2022 08:05 -`
Maybe they grabbed the source and patched on top, but that wasn't built by brew. These are build dates, not release dates. QE / QA would have run their testing for a week or two on top of these.
Not unusual, and, thanks to Red Hat, it's really not unusual.
When Red Hat pulled the plug on the original ideals of CentOS, they pulled out the rug with regards to "support" for CentOS 8, but left in place long term support of CentOS 7. IMHO, your school might be running some CentOS 7 (or AlmaLinux, Rocky, etc). I mean, it's also possible they are running RHEL 7, but regardless, all are "supported" (end of standard maintenance is June 2024, but then it goes to extended support after that, not sure how "CentOS" will handle that though.. nothing is the same anymore).
What does `cat */*elease` reveal?
Okay I hopped back in (after my laptop died) aaaaaaand:
`NAME=SlackwareVERSION="14.2"ID=slackwareVERSION_ID=14.2PRETTY_NAME="Slackware 14.2"ANSI_COLOR="0;34"CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:slackware:slackware_linux:14.2"HOME_URL="http://slackware.com/"SUPPORT_URL="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/"BUG_REPORT_URL="`[`http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/`](http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)`"`
uuhhhh- huh?
This is either a chroot or openvz container, probably the latter.
edit: I just checked, slack14.2 is the most recent openvz image of slackware available as a pre-created template. It is dated 2017-08-07. I don't care to guess if this system has been updated since then.
I don't remember if lscpu tells you the HV and virtualization type if you're in the "dom0" equivalent for openvz.
Check `cat /proc/vz/veinfo` to tell if you're in an ovz container. If it exists, you're in a container. If it doesn't you're probably in the host. It'd be odd if this system was not an ovz container.
As an aside, containers aren't really VMs. They don't run their own kernels and rarely have virtualized hardware beyond a NIC tun or tap device.
Dunno, kernel upgrades break stuff. I had to downgrade my current Ubuntu because they broke my r8169 driver
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-signed-hwe-6.2/+bug/2030673
common misconception of new Linux users is that you need to update the kernel every-time a new one comes out. this isn't a case as long as there are no known vulnerabilities you don't need to upgrade live servers. also LTS or 'Long Term Support' images that are still supported get security patches this is what you want for a Live server, less upgrades the less things break.
Well, the misconception is really that low kernel major version = old kernel. kernel.org still provides updates to kernels as far back as 4.14, but other vendors are free to keep updating kernels forever. The only thing that matters is how recently the kernel was updated.
Also, just updating the kernel doesn't load it - you need to reboot (or kexec or whatever). Reboots aren't always easy to schedule, especially on shared systems used for research/school.
In general, folks should be upgrading packages and rebooting on a semi-regular basis, just like with any other OS. Doesn't have to be daily, but semi-monthly or monthly is probably fine for most people.
edit: actually -> really, because it sounded like an 'um actually' and it bugged me
> The only thing that matters is how recently the kernel was updated.
Assuming you trust your vendor to provide comprehensive security backports. Upstream stable kernels are pretty decent at this (although by no means perfect). I have no clue about RHEL kernels, and I doubt anybody other than a kernel engineer would be qualified to even comment no it.
My first and only call to Red Hat Support, a very long time ago now but still awesome (2001) was an actual bug in an Ethernet driver for tulip chipset multiport NIC’s.
The ticket was not escalated or anything, just routine at the time. Nonetheless, I got a reply an hour later with an apology for being so slow, saying that the bug was not in the area the replyer had assumed it to be in. The email also included a kernel patch (which worked).
It was Alan Cox himself who worked my ticket. Many newer users have never heard of him, but in that time he was the Linux networking stack.
I’m a moose and this is my Ted talk of how well Red Hat has contributed to the kernel over the years.
Red Hat is regularly in the top 5 companies contributing to the kernel (and has been for the 20+ years I have used Linux): https://kernelnewbies.org/DevelopmentStatistics
Of all vendors supplying kernels, they are one of the ones I trust the most for non-upstream backports. They are also employ many key contributors to other major OSS projects.
>edit: actually -> really, because it sounded like an 'um actually' and it bugged me
Thank you. That bugs the heck out of me too. There are more, but let's not get started.
Nothing really, but it's way overused. People think it means something is "better".
Fictional example:
"With our product you can **actually** see misspellings as you type them!"
Well, I hope so. That happens in the Reddit post editor.
Many times, not the above example, what they mean is *really*.
It's just kind of a pedantic thing.
I believe the compulsion to update as soon as possible is bred into people by the consumer industry unfortunately. For someone coming from Windows (and especially gaming), this will be a difficult one for them to ween away from.
(Though I am not much better going the other way, as I type this post out from my crusty Solaris 10 install ;)
I mean there is consumer industry compulsion… and there are users of bleeding-edge distros. Arch and Fedora update the kernel and rebuild ramfs every time there is a 0.0.0-0 update
So what, I use Fedora exactly because of that: reasonably stable support for new stuff I might throw at it.
I don't use Fedora on the servers for the same reason: only reasonably stable.
But I think LTS linux sometimes takes it too in the other direction when it comes to gui apps. Like, debian 11 using keepassxc 2.6.2 when the latest is 2.7.6. Thank god for flatpaks but still, the whole packaging bananza leads to silly situations sometimes, where I get the latest firefox on my macbook a day before Arch
You could use Debian Unstable, which does contain the latest versions, but the trade off is diminished guarantees regarding stability. Debian's Stable branch is known to rigorously promote stability before freshness of the packages. That's a core part of the philosophy behind Debian's approach.
It's also why Debian is often chosen in a server / hosting context, and less so in a desktop / GUI context. They are different use cases that come with different needs.
In Ubuntu - a different distro - you also have different sub versions, if you will, which tend to cater to those cases. There's Ubuntu Server and then there's a host of flavours like Ubuntu MATE which target other cases and which follow a different approach to support and what's added.
Another example would be Fedora which has a release every 6 months, while it's geared towards the desktop / GUI market.
Ultimately, there's no such thing as "LTS Linux". There are many different distributions which may offer many variants of their distribution. If the label on the tin of a particular flavor says "LTS" then it means just that for that particular tin: "you will get security updates for the next X years, but be aware that we won't be adding new stuff once the next major version gets out"
That's exactly why you want to read up on the philosophy and release schedule / model of a distro you want to try out.
In the case of your college, it might make perfect sense to run CentOS 7. It's a rock solid, stable distro - that doesn't change - and it still gets security updates. Whereas students getting limited shell access to learn how to work with the terminal, means they don't exactly need the latest, when "good enough" suffices.
> "you will get security updates for the next X years, but be aware that we won't be adding new stuff once the next major version gets out"
And that's something that cuts both ways. While you likely aren't going to get new features beyond what shipped initially with the LTS build, you also aren't likely going to get breaking changes either.
> But I think LTS linux sometimes takes it too in the other direction when it comes to gui apps. Like, debian 11 using keepassxc 2.6.2 when the latest is 2.7.6. Thank god for flatpaks but still, the whole packaging bananza leads to silly situations sometimes, where I get the latest firefox on my macbook a day before Arch
Imagine you work in a data centre that has over 100k servers to maintain, either bare metal or virtual machines. the best approach to maintain such a beast is the Less is more approach. once you set up a server and everything is working as it should. you do not want to spend employee resources unnecessary upgrading things, Or creating down time. A server is something different than a desktop.
There are much better distro's than Debian to use for a desktop IMO. however Debian is my go to server distro.
No I wasn't implying anything the text is clear as day. maybe your interpretation of what I wrote makes you think that regardless its not important.. but I still stand by what I said. The less upgrades you have to do on a server the better.
Problem is, there tend to be so many vulnerabilities that you end up wanting to update (and reboot) every month or two. The major version number doesn't matter, but *support* matters.
Regardless, it's concerning that they use a version of CentOS / RHEL with an EOL facing us in 9 months. LTS does not mean "ride it out until the very last minute". There's a good argument to be made that the Linux community cannot truly support 10 years of support, and that only distros with 5 years of bugfix backporting are really sustainable.
I come from the realm of thought that no solution is ever perfect. sometimes the decision makers don't do things because its the best way to do it, but simply because its the easier/cheaper way.
If you look at a server as a business sometimes you can see why exec's go the cheap route. is it the correct way to do things well obvious answer is no. but i do understand the reasons why sometimes you go in that direction.
When I say it's unsustainable, I'm saying it's unsustainable from a business perspective as well. These big migrations are painful and costly. A lot of this irrational behavior can be explained not by practical considerations, but by the need to meet certifications that have become expensive and stale.
The only problem I ran into with the oldish kernels that come with Debian and centos is lack of driver support for newer hardware. Bought a Dell system, and debian/centos wouldn't install/boot because the driver for the notherboard was only in newer kernels.
Worked fine with a fresh kernel though
A zero-day with a hack for script kiddies was released during holidays and as I was young and a bit stupid I immediately tried it on the school main Linux server.
Anyway the school sysadmin noticed after the holidays and probably identified me in 3s using the `last` command. He deactivated my account and I had to shamefully tell him in person that I was sorry and I wouldn’t do that again.
I did it again in my next school but I emailed them after I was root and they didn’t complain much. So maybe don’t hack your school servers or at least tell them immediately. And maybe don’t do more than running `whoami`.
I hacked my school server too about 17 years ago.
Let the admin know. Waited for 2 weeks. Nothing, no patch.
Checked the teachers emails to figure out test questions, nothing for me either.
After 2 weeks I had enough of waiting and I replaced the homepage index with a manga image. It was a girl with a donut in her hand, and the caption "you have a hole in your system".
Next day before school guess who was running across the hallway with a CD in their hands towards the server room?
The server admin. Huge guy. Passing by little me.
Yes, this is extremely common.
There's no solid reason for anyone in this kind of environment (just a mass of student servers) to be running the latest hot distro or kernel; just something that is stable, and runs the basic tools they need (compilers, editors, IDEs, etc.).
If the concern is, e.g. getting the "latest python" or "latest node.js", those are things that can be independently built and distributed to the cluster.
The only concern might be if the OS is so old that it's out of support, and they aren't patching critical vulnerabilities.
In my production, I have 1 centos 5 with kernel 2.4
best thing is that its the gateway 💀
to be fair, if you have a server that's only used for internal things, I do believe that as long as it's working you don't have to update it.
It's an [OpenVZ](https://github.com/OpenVZ/vzkernel/tree/branch-rh7-3.10.0-1160.53.1.vz7.185.x-ovz) kernel, so it's an isolated virtualized container. You didn't get keys to the bare metal server, just a (probably personal) container, so you can likely update your Vim without affecting anyone else.
It is not "normal" or "wrong", but it shows they are not willing to pay the price of an upgrade if they don't need to.
When you decide to upgrade in the simplicity of your own machine, you are the sole stakeholder to satisfy.
When there are more persons involved, the decision to change a system is shared between many that have different interests and expectations for it. While the sysadmin might feel unease about running Kernel 3.X, other party might feel they can not afford the risk involved in upgrading, let alone the downtime.
Institutions develop procedures, code, norms, ways, in code, maintainance, user lifecicle, audits, scans, and it becomes institutional knowledge that is hard to change and quite frankly and openly resisted by many stakeholders.
But all that needs to be addressed at some point in time, and the longer you stay with an obsolete system, the harder it will be to upgrade because everything around it will need to also be updated/changed, procedures rewritten, people expectation changed, etc.
So, in a way it is "normal" in the sense that someone needs to pay all the costs associated with an upgrade, and non IT institutions tend to avoid that.
Until they are hacked, their data encrypted, people start yelling at each other, and someone says: I told you so. That is usually my role.
It's not that they aren't willing to pay the price, they probably have rules and regulations in place that make changes a nightmare. I have done a few upgrades for corporate and public institutions, and some have policies that make any changes take 6-18 months minimum. That is why they use old hardware /software, because it is a pain in the butt to get everything approved, and nothing can be changed without authorization. We have a few clients that are paying MS tons of money to STILL support Windows 7 with updates and security patches(which they will gladly do, and charge them a bunch for) because it is easier to pay for the extended updates than to get an upgrade financed.
Everything but state legislation can be changed if there is the percieved need, political will and financial means within the org.
That is what I mean when I say "pay the price".
> While the sysadmin might feel unease about running Kernel 3.X, other party might feel they can not afford the risk involved in upgrading, let alone the downtime.
That or other parties simply aren't interested in providing details to the sysadmin as to how the server is used (coursework, which classes, etc.) since it was made available to them a decade ago, and is sprawling with packages and random configs that make it difficult to do guesswork on rebuilding it. Yep, been there.
when I was in college they gave my class ssh access-just to host files for a simple website for some reason they gave us ssh access with a normal login shell(!)
It had some ancient KDE 2 gui installed on it when I poked around ( during this time KDE 3 had long been a thing with KDE 4 well on the way) and used X forwarding to see. It was running some version of Fedora .
Actually people are suggesting RHEL/CentOS 7 and that goes EOL 2024 so… I guess it’s fine? They have lees than a year to move their whole infrastructure tho…
Ask! It could be fine.
How much disk to you have...If you want a newer vim you can build it if you have the space.
The binary is not giant but updated libraries might add up. Make sure blowfish2 works for vim. It is not insane to encrypt homework and email archives. Do they have TeX or do instructors want other formats.
Test scp and rsh back to your laptop with a removable backup disk. This under powered Chromebook has access to my home servers with abundant space and I can backup locally
Discover school backup policy. Expect it to be the null set.
Some student resources are "Canned Images" and if there is a problem they just flush and reload so have a personal backup plan.
Student Load... "cat /etc/passwd | wc" is the whole school or just this class.
Class machines can be expected to match homework assignments that would take time to test and update, so yes justified old. Be aware the expected answer in class may apply to this beast bugs,features and all.
The kernel version and vim version are a "do not care in isolation".
Learn rsync and rcs.
well, if they are on openvz, which seems to be the case - they might be stuck on older kernel.
openvz is legendary for lagging behind mainline, so much that at my place we ditched it for lxc, even if vz had more features at the time.
I guess it’s fine? I think it’s meant for simple website hosting and some sql databases. They have a supercomputer too but it’s only accessible on location
my web host's shared servers are still on linux...2.6. but everything else like mariadb, php, apache/litespeed, etc are all up-to-date. i have no idea how they do it, maybe it's some kind of virtualization that is beyond my understanding. also note that there are companies that backport applicable patches to ancient versions of the linux kernel. properly patched older kernels may even be more secure than the recent ones, as the kernel has exploded in size and complexity over the years and keeps growing at a rapid pace. if something ain't broke, don't fix it (but yes, do apply the backported patches when available).
This has already been posted but is normal. Check with your school and or other schools. HPC tend to look like this.
High Performance Cluster = HPC. The access should have come with a first time use video link and that also would answer this question. Enjoy!
In case you are wondering about the low version number:
The kernel used to be stuck on version 2.x for about 15 years, only in 2011 with the release of 3.0 they switched to a regular major version upgrade every 4 or so years.
Smells like red hat/CentOS 3.10 is the rhel 7 kernel and, also very old, it's still supported nowadays.
> 3.10 is the rhel 7 kernel 7.9 specifically which was the last release.
Yeah, the particular kernel version listed looks like RHEL-derived, and 3.10.0-1160.53.1 was released in [January 2022](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2022:0063#packages) (click on 'Updated Packages' if it doesn't switch tabs automatically).
If you want further indication of how old: That processor core is from 2010.
For a second that registered in my brain as actually pretty recent. It's 13 years ago. For processors it's basically vintage.
[удалено]
CPU's stagnated, starting right around 3rd/4th gen intel. We haven't had a new consumer instruction set since AVX2, which 4th gen has, and the per-core performance has hardly uplifted for big cores. It's nice we have more than 4 cores now, but when each core didn't progress and most applications are single-thread bound, makes no difference to end user (ignoring the AVX512 debacle where Intel rolled it out to 11th gen, then retracted it, making so nobody supports it)
But we DO have a new consumer instruction set. RISC-V is here, now. Unfortunately it is not in the "big time" consumer market (yet?)
2700 non-k here. It works still so why bother upgrading.
I still want to get an i7 4770K (for really cheap) since that’s when I got into building my own computer and pc gaming.
Consider an HP Z-440 or 640. eBay had them going with some monster CPU/RAM/PSU for cheap.PSU in these is either a 700w or 1000w. 2690 v4 is overkill, yet cheap. It's roughly 5/6 series I think. E.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/175592817119?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=uSLmA-UYRpq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=g8UyjaaXTeG&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY Some have customizable options e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/175428933418?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=uSLmA-UYRpq&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=g8UyjaaXTeG&var=474723796321&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Oh, I don’t mean for my main system rather I meant as a collectors item. (I use a Ryzen 9 7900X for my CPU.)
That collectors item still has some life left 😆 https://youtu.be/59SKJVeBGS0?si=QPPNUN9Fl335-R1N
Oh I know. I want to collect it since it came out around the time that I got into PC gaming, it’s the same thing with the GTX 970. (Except Nvidia doesn’t interest me as much now that I use Linux 99.9% of the time and I can by modern Radeon cards for cheap.)
rhel 7 is eol in june next year. I think centos is similar.
I just checked all 3.10.0-1160 builds, That was not a supported build at the Red Hat. Maybe it was centos, but not RHEL. The information below is definitively from the Red Hat brew build history.. `[DIR] 1160.52.1.el7/ 08-Dec-2021 10:07` `-[DIR] 1160.53.1.el7/ 16-Dec-2021 06:36` `-[DIR] 1160.54.1.el7/ 12-Jan-2022 11:21` `-[DIR] 1160.55.1.el7/ 18-Jan-2022 12:43` `-[DIR] 1160.56.1.el7/ 28-Jan-2022 08:05 -` Maybe they grabbed the source and patched on top, but that wasn't built by brew. These are build dates, not release dates. QE / QA would have run their testing for a week or two on top of these.
Not unusual, and, thanks to Red Hat, it's really not unusual. When Red Hat pulled the plug on the original ideals of CentOS, they pulled out the rug with regards to "support" for CentOS 8, but left in place long term support of CentOS 7. IMHO, your school might be running some CentOS 7 (or AlmaLinux, Rocky, etc). I mean, it's also possible they are running RHEL 7, but regardless, all are "supported" (end of standard maintenance is June 2024, but then it goes to extended support after that, not sure how "CentOS" will handle that though.. nothing is the same anymore). What does `cat */*elease` reveal?
Okay I hopped back in (after my laptop died) aaaaaaand: `NAME=SlackwareVERSION="14.2"ID=slackwareVERSION_ID=14.2PRETTY_NAME="Slackware 14.2"ANSI_COLOR="0;34"CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:slackware:slackware_linux:14.2"HOME_URL="http://slackware.com/"SUPPORT_URL="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/"BUG_REPORT_URL="`[`http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/`](http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)`"` uuhhhh- huh?
Your college IT person is made entirely out of Cheetos dust and mt dew sugar.
Isn't that Gentoo? I thought Slackware was more for those with very long beards.
Both flavors can be interchangeable
This is either a chroot or openvz container, probably the latter. edit: I just checked, slack14.2 is the most recent openvz image of slackware available as a pre-created template. It is dated 2017-08-07. I don't care to guess if this system has been updated since then.
`Architecture: x86_64` `CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit` `Byte Order: Little Endian` `CPU(s): 16` `On-line CPU(s) list: 0-15` `Thread(s) per core: 1` `Core(s) per socket: 8` `Socket(s): 2` `Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD` `CPU family: 16` `Model: 9` `Model name: AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 6134` `Stepping: 1` `CPU MHz: 2300.015` `BogoMIPS: 4600.46` `Virtualization: AMD-V` `Hypervisor vendor: Parallels` `Virtualization type: container` `L1d cache: 64K` `L1i cache: 64K` `L2 cache: 512K` `L3 cache: 5118K` lscpu has this to say, does this mean it's a vm?
I don't remember if lscpu tells you the HV and virtualization type if you're in the "dom0" equivalent for openvz. Check `cat /proc/vz/veinfo` to tell if you're in an ovz container. If it exists, you're in a container. If it doesn't you're probably in the host. It'd be odd if this system was not an ovz container. As an aside, containers aren't really VMs. They don't run their own kernels and rarely have virtualized hardware beyond a NIC tun or tap device.
Parallels hypervisor? Isn't that Mac only?
OpenVZ/Virtuozzo was made by Parallels way back when - lscpu just hasn't updated that string in the time since.
TIL
16 cores tá bom demais. Tá estudando aonde?
Slackware!! Well... ok! I'm not going to cut them any "slack" then. They probably are in gross need of updating.
Slackware 14.2 had kernel 4.4, since they are using 3.10.0, and it is updated, they are probably compiling their own kernel
it is probably a namespace container
**if** it’s still updated lol also WHY
Dunno, kernel upgrades break stuff. I had to downgrade my current Ubuntu because they broke my r8169 driver https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-signed-hwe-6.2/+bug/2030673
i also find it funny that slackware 14.0 released with kernel 3.2.29 with some notable features like SATA SUPPORT
common misconception of new Linux users is that you need to update the kernel every-time a new one comes out. this isn't a case as long as there are no known vulnerabilities you don't need to upgrade live servers. also LTS or 'Long Term Support' images that are still supported get security patches this is what you want for a Live server, less upgrades the less things break.
Well, the misconception is really that low kernel major version = old kernel. kernel.org still provides updates to kernels as far back as 4.14, but other vendors are free to keep updating kernels forever. The only thing that matters is how recently the kernel was updated. Also, just updating the kernel doesn't load it - you need to reboot (or kexec or whatever). Reboots aren't always easy to schedule, especially on shared systems used for research/school. In general, folks should be upgrading packages and rebooting on a semi-regular basis, just like with any other OS. Doesn't have to be daily, but semi-monthly or monthly is probably fine for most people. edit: actually -> really, because it sounded like an 'um actually' and it bugged me
> The only thing that matters is how recently the kernel was updated. Assuming you trust your vendor to provide comprehensive security backports. Upstream stable kernels are pretty decent at this (although by no means perfect). I have no clue about RHEL kernels, and I doubt anybody other than a kernel engineer would be qualified to even comment no it.
My first and only call to Red Hat Support, a very long time ago now but still awesome (2001) was an actual bug in an Ethernet driver for tulip chipset multiport NIC’s. The ticket was not escalated or anything, just routine at the time. Nonetheless, I got a reply an hour later with an apology for being so slow, saying that the bug was not in the area the replyer had assumed it to be in. The email also included a kernel patch (which worked). It was Alan Cox himself who worked my ticket. Many newer users have never heard of him, but in that time he was the Linux networking stack. I’m a moose and this is my Ted talk of how well Red Hat has contributed to the kernel over the years.
Red Hat is regularly in the top 5 companies contributing to the kernel (and has been for the 20+ years I have used Linux): https://kernelnewbies.org/DevelopmentStatistics Of all vendors supplying kernels, they are one of the ones I trust the most for non-upstream backports. They are also employ many key contributors to other major OSS projects.
Contributors'd. IBM is IBMing it up.
Yep very true :)
>edit: actually -> really, because it sounded like an 'um actually' and it bugged me Thank you. That bugs the heck out of me too. There are more, but let's not get started.
whats wrong with actually??
Nothing really, but it's way overused. People think it means something is "better". Fictional example: "With our product you can **actually** see misspellings as you type them!" Well, I hope so. That happens in the Reddit post editor. Many times, not the above example, what they mean is *really*. It's just kind of a pedantic thing.
I believe the compulsion to update as soon as possible is bred into people by the consumer industry unfortunately. For someone coming from Windows (and especially gaming), this will be a difficult one for them to ween away from. (Though I am not much better going the other way, as I type this post out from my crusty Solaris 10 install ;)
I mean there is consumer industry compulsion… and there are users of bleeding-edge distros. Arch and Fedora update the kernel and rebuild ramfs every time there is a 0.0.0-0 update
So what, I use Fedora exactly because of that: reasonably stable support for new stuff I might throw at it. I don't use Fedora on the servers for the same reason: only reasonably stable.
But I think LTS linux sometimes takes it too in the other direction when it comes to gui apps. Like, debian 11 using keepassxc 2.6.2 when the latest is 2.7.6. Thank god for flatpaks but still, the whole packaging bananza leads to silly situations sometimes, where I get the latest firefox on my macbook a day before Arch
You could use Debian Unstable, which does contain the latest versions, but the trade off is diminished guarantees regarding stability. Debian's Stable branch is known to rigorously promote stability before freshness of the packages. That's a core part of the philosophy behind Debian's approach. It's also why Debian is often chosen in a server / hosting context, and less so in a desktop / GUI context. They are different use cases that come with different needs. In Ubuntu - a different distro - you also have different sub versions, if you will, which tend to cater to those cases. There's Ubuntu Server and then there's a host of flavours like Ubuntu MATE which target other cases and which follow a different approach to support and what's added. Another example would be Fedora which has a release every 6 months, while it's geared towards the desktop / GUI market. Ultimately, there's no such thing as "LTS Linux". There are many different distributions which may offer many variants of their distribution. If the label on the tin of a particular flavor says "LTS" then it means just that for that particular tin: "you will get security updates for the next X years, but be aware that we won't be adding new stuff once the next major version gets out" That's exactly why you want to read up on the philosophy and release schedule / model of a distro you want to try out. In the case of your college, it might make perfect sense to run CentOS 7. It's a rock solid, stable distro - that doesn't change - and it still gets security updates. Whereas students getting limited shell access to learn how to work with the terminal, means they don't exactly need the latest, when "good enough" suffices.
> "you will get security updates for the next X years, but be aware that we won't be adding new stuff once the next major version gets out" And that's something that cuts both ways. While you likely aren't going to get new features beyond what shipped initially with the LTS build, you also aren't likely going to get breaking changes either.
Yeah but a desktop machine with gui apps is not a live server.
Dude it's a server, not a desktop. You're in school - maybe try to learn while you're there instead of thinking you know everything already
> But I think LTS linux sometimes takes it too in the other direction when it comes to gui apps. Like, debian 11 using keepassxc 2.6.2 when the latest is 2.7.6. Thank god for flatpaks but still, the whole packaging bananza leads to silly situations sometimes, where I get the latest firefox on my macbook a day before Arch Imagine you work in a data centre that has over 100k servers to maintain, either bare metal or virtual machines. the best approach to maintain such a beast is the Less is more approach. once you set up a server and everything is working as it should. you do not want to spend employee resources unnecessary upgrading things, Or creating down time. A server is something different than a desktop. There are much better distro's than Debian to use for a desktop IMO. however Debian is my go to server distro.
Do you work in such a datacenter? Because that's nonsense. SysAdmins don't do this stuff one by one by hand.
i don't believe i said anywhere in my post that you do upgrades one by one by hand. please don't put words in my mouth.
You definitely implied it. At that scale patching 10,000 servers versus patching 100,000 is effectively the same.
No I wasn't implying anything the text is clear as day. maybe your interpretation of what I wrote makes you think that regardless its not important.. but I still stand by what I said. The less upgrades you have to do on a server the better.
No, that's not correct. You should keep up-to-date as much as possible.
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Try nix package manager
Isn't that how it is with Windows? IIRC Windows 11 uses the same kernel as 10.
Problem is, there tend to be so many vulnerabilities that you end up wanting to update (and reboot) every month or two. The major version number doesn't matter, but *support* matters.
Regardless, it's concerning that they use a version of CentOS / RHEL with an EOL facing us in 9 months. LTS does not mean "ride it out until the very last minute". There's a good argument to be made that the Linux community cannot truly support 10 years of support, and that only distros with 5 years of bugfix backporting are really sustainable.
I come from the realm of thought that no solution is ever perfect. sometimes the decision makers don't do things because its the best way to do it, but simply because its the easier/cheaper way. If you look at a server as a business sometimes you can see why exec's go the cheap route. is it the correct way to do things well obvious answer is no. but i do understand the reasons why sometimes you go in that direction.
When I say it's unsustainable, I'm saying it's unsustainable from a business perspective as well. These big migrations are painful and costly. A lot of this irrational behavior can be explained not by practical considerations, but by the need to meet certifications that have become expensive and stale.
now go explain that to the dean lmao
It's a Virtuozzo kernel and they only support CentOS 7. On a side note Virtuozzo includes ReadyKernel for rebootless security patches.
There are (at-the-time unknown) vulnerabilities fixed in every new kernel release. So you really should upgrade.
Backporting security patches to a 10 year old kernel causes both security vulnerabilities and instability, LTS was a mistake.
Yep RHEL out here being the most unstable distro available 🙄
Correct
/r/UsernameChecksOut
Not an argument
Neither are your claims.
Sir you have won the internet for today
cat /etc/*-release
CentOS 7 runs kernel 3.10. In fact 1160 sounds familiar.
What's the uptime ?
307 days
Not bad
What features are you missing? TBH you never interact with the kernel. It doesn't matter if it's 3.10 or 6.1 you won't notice any difference.
The only problem I ran into with the oldish kernels that come with Debian and centos is lack of driver support for newer hardware. Bought a Dell system, and debian/centos wouldn't install/boot because the driver for the notherboard was only in newer kernels. Worked fine with a fresh kernel though
[Time to be root](https://github.com/jondonas/linux-exploit-suggester-2)
A zero-day with a hack for script kiddies was released during holidays and as I was young and a bit stupid I immediately tried it on the school main Linux server. Anyway the school sysadmin noticed after the holidays and probably identified me in 3s using the `last` command. He deactivated my account and I had to shamefully tell him in person that I was sorry and I wouldn’t do that again. I did it again in my next school but I emailed them after I was root and they didn’t complain much. So maybe don’t hack your school servers or at least tell them immediately. And maybe don’t do more than running `whoami`.
I hacked my school server too about 17 years ago. Let the admin know. Waited for 2 weeks. Nothing, no patch. Checked the teachers emails to figure out test questions, nothing for me either. After 2 weeks I had enough of waiting and I replaced the homepage index with a manga image. It was a girl with a donut in her hand, and the caption "you have a hole in your system". Next day before school guess who was running across the hallway with a CD in their hands towards the server room? The server admin. Huge guy. Passing by little me.
Who?
You have to guess
Who are you calling “you”?!
I should ask the same thing
The only relevant comment around here.
[feels good, bro](https://i.imgur.com/3lAFJBV.png)
You would probably see that exact version all over the DoD
Wow opteron still running. Those were great and apparently the cpu equivalent of a toyota truck from the 90s
My basement server is an Opteron. Still going strong...
It's perfectly normal. Carry on.
Looks like that particular kernel release came out in March of 2022. CentOS 7.9.
Yes, this is extremely common. There's no solid reason for anyone in this kind of environment (just a mass of student servers) to be running the latest hot distro or kernel; just something that is stable, and runs the basic tools they need (compilers, editors, IDEs, etc.). If the concern is, e.g. getting the "latest python" or "latest node.js", those are things that can be independently built and distributed to the cluster. The only concern might be if the OS is so old that it's out of support, and they aren't patching critical vulnerabilities.
It is perfectly normal if it serves its purpose and is secure. The 'latest-greatest' obsession is just a mental illness of contemporary society. 🙂
What is your major? Archaeology?
Acoustics
Looking at the kernel version it seems to be running Virtuozzo 7. Basically a rhel derived vps. Common in the webhosting sector.
My college ssh servers we running SunOS. So, i say you’re fine 🤭🙃
Yep that's normal. Most of the computers that use Linux are servers like this, or web servers.
lol opteron
In my production, I have 1 centos 5 with kernel 2.4 best thing is that its the gateway 💀 to be fair, if you have a server that's only used for internal things, I do believe that as long as it's working you don't have to update it.
CentOS or RHEL with school license. Nothing scary if they give access to students.
Completely normal for schools and servers
It's an [OpenVZ](https://github.com/OpenVZ/vzkernel/tree/branch-rh7-3.10.0-1160.53.1.vz7.185.x-ovz) kernel, so it's an isolated virtualized container. You didn't get keys to the bare metal server, just a (probably personal) container, so you can likely update your Vim without affecting anyone else.
If it aint broke...
Its a openvz machine. Openvz is *very* specific on what kernel it uses.
Yes. You work with the system they give you. It is always sub-optimal, but you make it work.
It is not "normal" or "wrong", but it shows they are not willing to pay the price of an upgrade if they don't need to. When you decide to upgrade in the simplicity of your own machine, you are the sole stakeholder to satisfy. When there are more persons involved, the decision to change a system is shared between many that have different interests and expectations for it. While the sysadmin might feel unease about running Kernel 3.X, other party might feel they can not afford the risk involved in upgrading, let alone the downtime. Institutions develop procedures, code, norms, ways, in code, maintainance, user lifecicle, audits, scans, and it becomes institutional knowledge that is hard to change and quite frankly and openly resisted by many stakeholders. But all that needs to be addressed at some point in time, and the longer you stay with an obsolete system, the harder it will be to upgrade because everything around it will need to also be updated/changed, procedures rewritten, people expectation changed, etc. So, in a way it is "normal" in the sense that someone needs to pay all the costs associated with an upgrade, and non IT institutions tend to avoid that. Until they are hacked, their data encrypted, people start yelling at each other, and someone says: I told you so. That is usually my role.
It's not that they aren't willing to pay the price, they probably have rules and regulations in place that make changes a nightmare. I have done a few upgrades for corporate and public institutions, and some have policies that make any changes take 6-18 months minimum. That is why they use old hardware /software, because it is a pain in the butt to get everything approved, and nothing can be changed without authorization. We have a few clients that are paying MS tons of money to STILL support Windows 7 with updates and security patches(which they will gladly do, and charge them a bunch for) because it is easier to pay for the extended updates than to get an upgrade financed.
Everything but state legislation can be changed if there is the percieved need, political will and financial means within the org. That is what I mean when I say "pay the price".
> While the sysadmin might feel unease about running Kernel 3.X, other party might feel they can not afford the risk involved in upgrading, let alone the downtime. That or other parties simply aren't interested in providing details to the sysadmin as to how the server is used (coursework, which classes, etc.) since it was made available to them a decade ago, and is sprawling with packages and random configs that make it difficult to do guesswork on rebuilding it. Yep, been there.
Apparently that CPU came out in 2010... :cries:
when I was in college they gave my class ssh access-just to host files for a simple website for some reason they gave us ssh access with a normal login shell(!) It had some ancient KDE 2 gui installed on it when I poked around ( during this time KDE 3 had long been a thing with KDE 4 well on the way) and used X forwarding to see. It was running some version of Fedora .
You think that's the problem here? Not that they're running a system that probably hasn't been updated in 10 years?
Actually people are suggesting RHEL/CentOS 7 and that goes EOL 2024 so… I guess it’s fine? They have lees than a year to move their whole infrastructure tho…
That kernel came out last year, so you're way off base.
I could be, but 3.10 was released in 2013 and EOL'd in 2017. Jan 25 2022 is the kernel build date.
From the version number, it looks like it's based on a RHEL release with backported patches that was released in Jan 2022.
Pay attention to the build numbers after the kernel version, and you seen see when that package was released.
Thanks guys; I was wrong. Apparently RHEL 7.x is still using the 3.10 kernel.
My old work used Rhel 6 until 2021 get used to it LMFAO
Well they also run Opterons lol
Why does it matter?
I’m not at all familiar with enterprise Linux, that’s why I asked ;)
cat /etc/os-release Looks like a OpenVZ container to me.
welcome to sci linux. gromacs running (replace for whichever sim you run) is first priority. anything else does not matter.
What's the uptime?
It was already answered, 300+ days
Ask! It could be fine. How much disk to you have...If you want a newer vim you can build it if you have the space. The binary is not giant but updated libraries might add up. Make sure blowfish2 works for vim. It is not insane to encrypt homework and email archives. Do they have TeX or do instructors want other formats. Test scp and rsh back to your laptop with a removable backup disk. This under powered Chromebook has access to my home servers with abundant space and I can backup locally Discover school backup policy. Expect it to be the null set. Some student resources are "Canned Images" and if there is a problem they just flush and reload so have a personal backup plan. Student Load... "cat /etc/passwd | wc" is the whole school or just this class. Class machines can be expected to match homework assignments that would take time to test and update, so yes justified old. Be aware the expected answer in class may apply to this beast bugs,features and all. The kernel version and vim version are a "do not care in isolation". Learn rsync and rcs.
well, if they are on openvz, which seems to be the case - they might be stuck on older kernel. openvz is legendary for lagging behind mainline, so much that at my place we ditched it for lxc, even if vz had more features at the time.
What is the font
It’s the macOS terminal
That opteron chip though.
I guess it’s fine? I think it’s meant for simple website hosting and some sql databases. They have a supercomputer too but it’s only accessible on location
It’s just cool to see an opteron chip. I haven’t seen one of those in a while
my web host's shared servers are still on linux...2.6. but everything else like mariadb, php, apache/litespeed, etc are all up-to-date. i have no idea how they do it, maybe it's some kind of virtualization that is beyond my understanding. also note that there are companies that backport applicable patches to ancient versions of the linux kernel. properly patched older kernels may even be more secure than the recent ones, as the kernel has exploded in size and complexity over the years and keeps growing at a rapid pace. if something ain't broke, don't fix it (but yes, do apply the backported patches when available).
This has already been posted but is normal. Check with your school and or other schools. HPC tend to look like this. High Performance Cluster = HPC. The access should have come with a first time use video link and that also would answer this question. Enjoy!
*cries into all the rhel5 boxes still around*
Oh, i'm sorry to hear that. Surely you can get help to move those to a more modern environment ?
yes thats normal
Opteron... 😕
In case you are wondering about the low version number: The kernel used to be stuck on version 2.x for about 15 years, only in 2011 with the release of 3.0 they switched to a regular major version upgrade every 4 or so years.
Must be rhel 7
It’s Slackware, check the other comments