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Migration of webEOS sites out of CC7 to EL9

The migration is necessary due to the upcoming end of support of the CERN CentOS 7 (CC7) operating system (on 30.06.2024) run currently by the servers hosting webEOS sites. A new environment based on AlmaLinux 9 (referred as EL9) is replacing CC7.

There are notable differences between the CC7 and EL9 environments:

  • PHP 5 is replaced by PHP 8.
  • Python 2 is replaced by Python 3.

Owners of sites using PHP and Python thus need to adapt these scripts for the new versions. Guidelines for migrating these sites are available here.

No significant difference is expected for static content, other CGI scripts and Apache configuration files in general. A temporary site preview will be available to allow site owners to validate the site is working normally on EL9. Owners of sites not using PHP or Python only need a few clicks to migrate the site to EL9, and are invited to follow the instructions as soon as possible. Reverting to CC7 in case of issues is also an easy operation.

Provisional schedule:

  • 20.09.2023 - EL9 environment will be the default for newly created webEOS sites
  • 20.09.2023 - Previews of all webEOS sites will be available (preview for https://mysite.web.cern.ch available at https://mysite-el9-preview.webtest.cern.ch)
  • 20.09.2023 - 02.04.2024 - Site Owners need to validate their sites' previews and switch to EL9
  • 02.04.2024 - Sites in categories Test and Personal: any site still on CC7 will be forcibly switched to EL9 (with deletion of preview sites)
  • 17.06.2024 - Sites in category Official: any site still on CC7 will be forcibly switched to EL9 (with deletion of preview sites)