Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:55:56 -0500
From: Troy Dawson
To: scientific-linux-users
    scientific-linux-announce
Subject: Scientific Linux 3 transitions into legacy mode,
    starting in December

Starting on December 1, 2007, Scientific Linux 3 will begin it's
transition into "Legacy Mode".

What does this mean?  How will it affect you?

What does this mean?
For several years we have said that we would stop support of Scientific
Linux 3 on October 31, 2007.  This is because we do not have the human
resources to maintain so many major distributions of Scientific Linux.
But several experiments have not been able to transition off of the
Scientific Linux 3 platform for various reasons.
"Legacy Mode" is a way for the main developers to drop the level of
support, while still getting security updates to those experiments who
have been unable to transition.
In Legacy Mode we will only be supporting Scientific Linux 3.0.9.  Our
definition of support is "We will recompile and release the errata that
The Upstream Vendor (TUV) releases for Enterprise 3.  If one of our
added packages has a critical security problem, we will fix it and
release it."

How will it affect you?
We are encouraging everyone to migrate off Scientific Linux 3, but we
understand that can be difficult.  If you are unable to migrate off
Scientific Linux 3, then you should migrate to the latest release, which
is Scientific Linux 3.0.9.
We also understand that we just released S.L. 3.0.9.  We waited until
the last month so that it would have all the latest errata and updates
as possible before we went into Legacy Mode.
Because we know that you can't just migrate all your machines at once,
we have extended our normal support a month, and we are having a
transition phase.  The transition phase will last from December 1, 2007
though mid February 2008.

Two things will happen in the transition phase.

December 1, 2007
A new yum-conf for S.L. 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, and 308.
This new yum-conf will change both your cron.yum and your /etc/yum.conf.
 It will not change your release to become SL 309, but it will change
the security update (errata) section to point to SL 309's security
update area.  This will allow you to continue to get security updates as
you transition to SL 3.0.9.

mid February 2008
S.L. 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 307, and 308 will be moved into
scientific/obsolete. From experience, we know that users and admins will
continue to use SL 3 until we remove them.  We also know, that for one
reason or another, a user will need one file or another from an old release.
Our solution for both problems is to move the old releases into a
directory called obsolete.  We currently do not know how long we will
keep the releases in there before removing them.

You can find answers to Frequently Asked Questions at
https://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/faq/legacy.sl3

We hope this transition into legacy mode goes smoothly for everyone.

Troy Dawson