Rocky Linux Long Term Support | How to manage and make essential changes
Justin Burdine from CIQ addresses a question he hears from administrators who need to stay on a specific Rocky Linux minor release longer than the normal six-month cycle. He first demonstrates the problem: running dnf update on a Rocky Linux 8.6 box in March 2023 moves it to 8.7, which is fine for many users but not for those whose certified applications require a particular release.
The video then introduces CIQ Long Term Support, a service that delivers critical and important security updates plus priority bug fixes while keeping a system on its release for up to 24 months. Justin walks through the portal where active subscriptions are listed, opens the LTS for Rocky Linux 8.6 repository, generates a named access key, and follows the basic setup steps: install the CIQ release package, install the CIQ command line interface, enroll the system with the access key, and enable the LTS repository.
On a fresh 8.6 system, the update then shows far fewer packages because the 8.7 packages are excluded, and after updating the system remains on 8.6 while still receiving backports and security patches. Administrators with stability or certification requirements see exactly what it takes to pin a Rocky Linux release with LTS.
Key takeaways
- Without LTS, running dnf update on a Rocky Linux 8.6 system moves it to the current 8.7 release.
- CIQ Long Term Support provides critical and important security updates and priority bug fixes for up to 24 months on a release.
- The portal lists active subscriptions and lets you generate named access keys that control which systems can use the LTS repository.
- Setup involves installing the CIQ release package and CLI, enrolling with the access key, and enabling the LTS repository.
- Once registered, updates exclude newer release packages and the system stays on 8.6 while receiving backported fixes.
Questions this video answers
How do I keep a Rocky Linux system on a specific minor version?
CIQ Long Term Support pins a system to its release for up to 24 months while still delivering critical security updates and priority bug fixes. After subscribing, you install the CIQ release package and CLI, enroll the system with a generated access key, and enable the LTS repository, after which dnf update excludes the newer release packages.
What does CIQ Long Term Support for Rocky Linux include?
The service provides critical and important security updates along with priority bug fixes for a specific Rocky Linux release, allowing systems to remain on that version for up to 24 months. Subscriptions are managed through the CIQ portal, which offers basic and advanced setup instructions plus guidance for Apptainer and Docker images.
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Transcript
hey everyone Justin here from ciq and in this video I'm going to address a question I've gotten from a number of you administrators out there um I've spoken with a few of you who have a situation where you need to stay on a specific version of Rocky Linux for longer than the normal six month development release cycle um if you've ever tried to do that you know it's kind of a pain typically when a new version comes out let's say 8.7 which is out now if you have an 8.6 box and you do an update you're going to be an 8.7 box so to solve
this ciq now offers up a product that we call long-term support or LTS and this service provides critical important security updates as well as priority bug fixes and enables you to stay on that version of Rocky Linux for up to 24 months so in this video I'm going to show you how to um can manage your subscription create Keys subscribe your system to the the LTS repository and then I'm gonna also show you like what does it look like when your system gets updated from 7.6 without LTS and then we'll show you what that same upgrade looks like when you're on LTS sound good let's
get to it all right so the first thing I'm going to do is show you what it looks like when you try to update a rocky 8.6 box without LTS for a Time reference it's currently March 2023 and the current release of Rocky is 8.7 so let's jump into my Rocky 8.6 box and verify the version I'll cat Ezio's release and confirm that this is indeed a rocky 8.6 system I'll now run a dnf update and we can see that we have a bunch of packages that are ready to be updated that's definitely a lot of packages which is a good sign this update
will bump me to the next release we can even see references to 8.7 here in the package list so let's confirm the update and we'll see what the system does okay not too bad that took about eight minutes and through the miracle of editing you didn't have to endure it so let's recheck that Ezio's release and confirmed the system's been updated and as we expected we can see the system has indeed been updated in the latest version of 8.7 and for a lot of people that's perfectly fine but as I mentioned before there are users who need to ensure they're certified apps and services run
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on a specific stable release so before we run through another update with LTS let's jump in and take a look at the platform that provides this LTS functionality after logging in you're presented with a list of your active subscriptions any custom repositories or Services you purchase through ciq will be listed here for our example today I'm going to focus on the ciq LTS for Rocky Linux 8.6 repository listed here by clicking the subscription name this opens up a window that provides instructions for basic setup Advanced setup allowing you to customize the repo on your system as well as instructions for setting up Apptainer and Docker
images for this video I'm going to focus on the basic instructions for a traditional Rocky system running on a VM or bare metal server in order to connect your system up to the repository we need to generate an access key s used to ensure that only the systems you select can connect and utilize the LTS Repository let's click generate access key and give it a name I'm going to use this highly descriptive name for this demo but you should choose a name that's meaningful to you and your organization now click create and you'll be presented with your own generated key which you want to store
in a password or key manager for safe storage you can click the button to the right and copy the key to your clipboard and when you've recorded your key you can click done if we want to see a list of all the existing Keys we can click the access key button in the upper left hand menu this provides you with the view of all the keys that have been created in the portal from this view we can add or remove access keys so now that we've seen the interface we're ready to go register our Rocky 8.6 box to the LTS Repository so let's bring up
a fresh system and once again validate that this is an 8.6 system by cadding at cos release cool looks like we're good to go so let's bring up the portal and start working through those instructions step one is to install the ciq release package again I can copy the command to my clipboard by clicking the green button located at the right of the command I'll paste that into my system and hit enter in a few seconds we get confirmation that the package is installed is to install the ciq command line interface this allows us to later register the system so let's once again cut and
paste the command and press enter step 3 is generating the access key which we did earlier so we can go ahead and Skip to step four step 4 instructs us to use the ciq utility which we just installed to enroll the system using the axis key we generated if you followed these steps in order the key will automatically be inserted into the command enabling you to Simply cut and paste and finally step 5 instructs us to enable the specific repository for our system in our case we can see that we're enabling LTS for 8.6 again we can cut and paste this into our system and
hit enter and that's it now that our system is registered to the LTS repository let's see what happens when we update the first thing we notice is there are far fewer packages available to update this is because all those 8.7 packages are now excluded let's kick off an update and zip through the update process and once again we can validate the OS and verify the system is still on 8.6 we can even try another dnf update and we'll see that the system is indeed up to date the system will now stay on 8.6 receiving critical back ports and security patches that ciq provides as part
of the service so as you can see this isn't really complicated it's not rocket science but for those of you with this requirement of staying on a specific version it's super important and we now have a solution for you so if you have questions or are just curious about what we're up to here at ciq um reach out to me directly or leave a comment below um I'd love to have a conversation with you about what you're up to what you're doing what problems you're trying to solve um and just maybe kind of introduce you to who we are and kind of what we offer
um yeah until now until next time until whenever uh my name is Justin Burdine and I hope to see in the next video
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