The wait for CentOS 6.0 is over
July 8, 2011 | In: CentOS
CentOS 6 release is in progress. The internal mirrors will now be opening up for external mirrors to sync from. This may take up to a couple of hours to propagate throughout the system, so external mirrors should start seeing the 6.0 soon.
Update: Links have started appearing in the wild, if you want to download through torrents use the following links and please help seed
http://burnbit.com/torrent/172773/CentOS_6_0_x86_64_bin_DVD1_iso
-
Torrent Hash : 97725ad6e936ca9975444c56aab5cabcf2d75932
http://burnbit.com/torrent/172792/CentOS_6_0_x86_64_bin_DVD2_iso
-
Torrent Hash : f2cae43709b931107aaa692794d8dfb0739e648d
Direct DVD links @ http://www.stargatenetworks.net/centos/6.0/isos/x86_64/
One note of caution if you download before the “bitflip” is lifted (open to public download) as per the mailing list.
Policy is that until the release is announced on www.centos.org and the mailing lists it is not official and is subject to recall and reissue. If a mirror leaks content before “bitflip” and such a recall takes place anyone that downloaded that content and installed it will find themselves in a very precarious position as they are using unsupported package content at that moment and this can lead to all sorts of support nightmares. There is precedent for this; there have been cases in the past where ISOs have needed to be reissued after seeding has initially begun. Content is initially seeded to the mirrors with read access denied for just this reason. When it is determined that all (or most) mirrors are fully seeded and that content is gold the bits are flipped on the master mirrors and all the other mirrors worldwide will pick up this change and open then content to the public.If you download using torrents you can easily update the ISO using the new link if it is reissued but if you download ISO images you will need to re-download the whole image.
Sun Jul 10 14:51:21 EDT 2011
CentOS announces the immediate availability of CentOS-6.0 for i386 and x86_64 Architectures.
Some major changes to note are as follows:
All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with.
There are no CD images being released with CentOS-6, however there are some CD variants in the pipeline.
Since upstream (Red Hat) has a 6.1 version already released, CentOS will be using a Continous Release repository for 6.0 to bring all 6.1 and post 6.1 security updates to all 6.0 users, till such time as CentOS-6.1 is released itself. There will be more details about this posted within the next 48 hours.
LiveCDs and LiveDVDs for i386 and x86_64 will be released within the next few days. These will bring in the ability to directly install from the livemedia.
CentOS is working on a minimal install CD, that would bring up a base machine with just enough content to have a usable platform. This CD image will be released in the next few days.
In order to bring back the CentOS-4 Server CD style single iso image, CentOS is working on a LWS (Light Weight Server) varient of the main distro. Details for this will be posted in the next few days with release happening after the live media and the minimal cd editions.
There are some important changes to this release compared with the previous versions of CentOS and it is highly recommend to consult Release Notes at http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS6.0
Downloading CentOS-6.0 for new installs:
When possible, consider using torrents to run the downloads. In most cases you will find its also the fastest means to download the distro. There are currently over a thousand people seeding CentOS-6 and it’s possible to get upto 100mbps downloads via these torrents.
Torrent files for the DVD’s are avilable at :
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6.0/isos/i386/CentOS-6.0-i386-bin-DVD.torrent
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6.0/isos/x86_64/CentOS-6.0-x86_64-bin-DVD.torrent
You can also use a mirror close to you :
http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=30
And remember if you downloaded any content before the official announcement was made you have to verify the checksums of your ISOs (even if both DVDs install correctly) and correct them if any discrepancies are found. It is quite easy to do so, just download the official torrent and un-check the ISOs from the list of files to be downloaded. Once the checksums have been downloaded into the correct folder, move your existing ISOs into the folder, mark the ISOs that you had previously un-checked for download. Verify the Local Data and the torrent client should pick up any difference and reuse much/most of the existing content.
P.S: I am using Transmission as my torrent client.
Congratulations to the CentOS team, it has been a very long wait…
