Host Integration Tools for Linux on Centos 7

I found comments from Dell's folks a bit funny.

something must have been done to force removal of CentOS as a supported platform.

in HIT 1.5 ISO image, the install script include the following statement:

# Determine installation platform: -
# Supported platforms are: RHEL; RHEL-compliant platforms CentOS, Oracle; and SuSE (SLES)

But the distro.py in the support folder played the "sorry i am blind" game, tagging centos as an "unknown" platform.

give me a break. at least have the ducks aligned.

You can state that centos is not supported but there are two nice things you can do:

1. don't state CentOS is supported in the install script

2. make the script work for CentOS without committing to support it. Warn the user to use at their own risk if they install HIT on any unsupported OS.

For those of users who cannot afford enterprise distributions:

If you want to use DELL HIT 1.5.0.2 on CentOS 6/7, here is the pointer to make it work:

1. download latest HIT ISO image and the GPG key.

2. mount the iso file (say in /mnt)

3. copy the iso content to a different folder for modification

rsync -aAvW /mnt /tmp/

3. import GPG key: 

rpm --import ./RPM-GPG-KEY-DELLEQL

4. enforce DISTRO information (say you have Centos 7.2) in the install script:

cd /tmp; vi install

#add the following after line 1165. This will circumvent the distro.py script in the support folder. (you probably only need 2 lines - DISTRO_SHORTNAME and DISTRO_VERSION, but it does not hurt to include all.

SUPPORTED_PLATFORM="rhel"
PKGFORMAT="rpm"
DISTRO_VERSION="7.2"
DISTRO_ABBREV="el7"
DISTRO_SHORTNAME="rhel"
DISTRO_CODENAME="Maipo"
DISTRO_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server"

Now you can can execute the install script as if you are installing on RHEL 7.2.

Similar things can be done for other distros that support yum/zypper/rpm

Disclaimer: no guarantee or support is provided. Use at your own risk.