How to migrate from CentOS to Oracle Linux?

Updated: 28 September 2026 · Applies to: CentOS 7/8, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux and Oracle Linux

CentOS Linux 7 and 8 are end of life. You can switch a CentOS system to another Red Hat-compatible distribution in place, without reinstalling. Oracle Linux is one option; AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, both free and community-run, are others (Ucartz offers AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux on its servers).

Note: Take a backup before you change partitions or upgrade the operating system. A mistake can make data unreadable or the server unbootable.

Oracle Linux

Oracle's migration script (a community effort, not officially supported by Oracle) switches CentOS 7.9, CentOS 8.4+, CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux to the same major version of Oracle Linux:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oracle/migrate-to-ol/main/migrate-to-oracle-linux.sh
bash migrate-to-oracle-linux.sh -y
reboot

AlmaLinux

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlmaLinux/almalinux-deploy/master/almalinux-deploy.sh
bash almalinux-deploy.sh
reboot

Rocky Linux

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rocky-linux/rocky-tools/main/migrate2rocky/migrate2rocky.sh
bash migrate2rocky.sh -r
reboot

Notes

• These tools change the distribution but not the major version. CentOS 8 becomes version 8, which is still supported; then upgrade 8 → 9 with ELevate (see "Upgrade from CentOS 6 to CentOS 7").
• The AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux scripts start from CentOS 8. From CentOS 7, use ELevate, which changes the distribution and upgrades to version 8 in one go.
• On CentOS 8, the repositories moved to vault.centos.org. If dnf fails before the migration, fix the repositories first (see "Resolved Error: YumRepo, All mirror URLs are not using ftp, http[s] or file").
• On cPanel servers, use cPanel's ELevate script instead of these tools.