Converting old RHEL 5.7 box to CentOS. Possible? Good/Bad idea?
 

I have a dying RHEL 5.7 physical server, but I really still need it. I'm thinking of VM'ing it, then trying to convert that VM to CentOS.

Is it possible to convert an older RHEL to the same or higher version of CentOS? Are there negative caveats to doing it that I should consider, if it is possible?

Thanks in advance for the advice and tips.

Maybe you need to clarify dying :) as 5,7 has been unsupported for a while I am assuming dying from a software perspective (rather than hardware). The answer to your question is yes, maybe you could download a live DVD version and see if that works?

There are a few different Centos versions with a bit of support left:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentOS...pport_schedule

so 5.11 is supported until next year. 6.7 is supported until 2020 and 7.x until 2024.

HTH

Well, yeah, both software but I'm more worried about the hardware than anything.

But I actually want to convert the currently installed RHEL to some version of CentOS, not just run a Live DVD off the existing hardware.

noted. If you run a live DVD this should indicate whether Centos supports your aging hardware. Once you find the best version for you, you can install.

EG. I had a problem running Centos 7 on my server as it did not recognise my ethernet card. So I stuck with 6!

CentOS 5 is still supported until the end of March, 2017, and 5.7 should update painlessly to the current 5.11. CentOS 5 will support exactly the same hardware as RHEL 5 (at least, I am not aware of any proprietary hardware modules in RHEL 5). If you are moving that installation to a VM, why are you concerned about hardware support? Do you have some specialized hardware that you plan to pass directly through to the VM?

Sorry, let me clarify. I'm concerned about the current physical hardware running the 5.7 software. What I was envisioning is to clone the server to a vm, then hopefully be able to convert the clone from rhel 5.7 to CentOS 5.7 then upgrade that to CentOS 5.11 latest. But wasn't sure if that's doable, the rhel to CentOS part

While not officially supported, it's not very difficult. Here's one set of instructions.

Thanks