HOWTO: install Remmina on CentOS 8 stream

Remmina is a remote access screen and file sharing to your desktop. I need to access to a lot of computers. One can think that we can work with any VNC client, but sometimes it’s not enough. So here’s the official installation documentation and below you have my installation log. Step by step:

~]# dnf install epel-release
Package epel-release-8-19.el8.noarch is already installed.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!
~]# dnf copr enable castor/remmina
Enabling a Copr repository. 
Please note that this repository is not part
of the main distribution, and quality may vary.
Do you really want to enable 
copr.fedorainfracloud.org/castor/remmina? [y/N]: y
Repository successfully enabled.
~]# dnf install 'remmina*'
Copr repo for remmina owned by castor
Dependencies resolved.
==============================
Here the package plan
============================== 
Downloading Packages:
(1/71): avahi-ui-gtk3-0.7-27.el8.x86_64.rpm
... more packages here...
(71/71): remmina-plugins-x2go-1.4.33-1.el8.x86_64.rpm 
... installation and verification...
Installed:
   avahi-ui-gtk3-0.7-27.el8.x86_64
   ...all the 71 packages...
   remmina-plugins-www-debuginfo-1.4.4-1.el8.x86_64
Complete!

After that, you can search for remmina in the apps or run it from the command line.

I will now come back to write about the last book I finish, that I will backpost, since I like to have the book reviews published on Wednesdays. Actually I’m kind of losing my mood to write again. We will see if it comes back, as usual it does.

Looking for a CentOS 7.X alternative (part I) : AlmaLinux and Rocky

CentOS 8 will reach its End of Life (EOL) on December 2021. Its old brother, CentOS 7 will live longer, one year and two months more. In any case, the sooner we have a replacement, the better. I had a couple of servers, one AMD, one Intel, that were ready to be re-deployed, so I decided to try both Rocky 8.4 and AlmaLinux 8.4.

I go and burn two USB sticks using BalenaEtcher for my servers, and two blank SSDs. I would prefer to use some PXE booting system but that was the fastest for these type of tests. Take the disk out, put an empty one, and connect the sticks.

Both installation procedures (Alma and Rocky) are pretty similar to the CentOS installers. So the feeling is that you get a CentOS system with a new coat of paint. In principle I like the idea a lot, both the new systems feel like coming back home after a long holidays. Then the problem started. I don’t have a 1 GB connection to my servers, but infiniband and 10 GB fibreglass. And both machines don’t come back online. The infiniband works, but I don’t use it to connect to the internet. To my surprise, it looks like the 10 GB card is not detected. It is there, I can see it

#> lspci | grep 10G
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: QLogic Corp. cLOM8214 1/10GbE Controller (rev 54) 
01:00.1 Ethernet controller: QLogic Corp. cLOM8214 1/10GbE Controller (rev 54)

… but I can’t start the drivers. I’m not alone on this issue. Unfortunately it looks like Red Hat and CentOS don’t support the driver anymore! There are, however, solutions, like upgrading and compiling the drivers, but I don’t have internet in principle. What can I do? I find the drivers on another machine

#> find /usr/lib/ -iname ql\*
...a lot of stuff...
#> cd  /usr/lib/modules/KERNEL/
#> ls kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/qlogic/qlogic

And using the infiband connection that works I try rsync the qlogic folder from the machine where the drivers work to the one running Alma (or the one running Rocky), followed by modprobe qlogic. Without luck. I could try a 10 GB transceiver for the infiniband card, but I don’t have one at hand. I could try installing a “test” Alma/Rocky on one of my desktops with 1GB, build the drivers and copy them to the test servers, but that is quite some work, and I wanted a working system out of the box. So I’m afraid I’m going to wait for the next version to upgrade our cluster to any Alma or Rocky distribution. But I’m going to be positive and say that to try the two guys was fun 😁😁😁.