CentOS Stream 9 - platform python (3.9) and netbox required python (>3.10) : system conflict

[litebito]

Hi,

I'm not sure this is the right place, but I hope I can get some advice.
I've to use a CentOS Stream 9 provided image (which also uses cloud-init).

On CentOS (like on RH) the system or platform python version is 3.9, whereas Netbox requires >3.10
I installed python3.12 (and python3.12-devel). After the installation I used

alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.12 2
alternatives --config python3

to add python 3.12 as alternative with priority 2 and then switch the default to python3.12

I assumed that the OS would continue to use the platform python, but that does not seem to be the case, or I set it up the wrong way.
However, after this, there is a lot of things breaking on the OS level (cloud-init, firewalld, ....)
It seems that for some reason, there is a lot of python modules (required by the OS) which are not (no longer) available for python 3.12?
For example cloud-init:
when running with python 3.9,

#pip3 freeze | grep cloud-init
cloud-init==23.4

when running under python 3.12

#pip3 install cloud-init
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement cloud-init (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for cloud-init
# pip3 install cloud-init==23.4
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement cloud-init==23.4 (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for cloud-init==23.4

I noticed python 3.9 was not in the list of alternatives, so I added it (with priority 1).

alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/bin/python3.9 1
alternatives --config python3

There are 3 programs which provide 'python3'.

  Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
*  1           /usr/bin/python3.12
 + 2           /usr/bin/python3.9

Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number: 2

and switched back to python 3.9
after this, the system/os are no longer broken, but of course then it no longer works for netbox

I trying to fix python 3.12 to make it run as platform python is probably a bad idea (or will not work).
Did I make a mistake with setting up with alternatives?

#alternatives --display python3
python3 - status is manual.
 link currently points to /usr/bin/python3.12
/usr/bin/python3.12 - priority 2
/usr/bin/python3.9 - priority 1
Current `best' version is /usr/bin/python3.12.

Anyone some advice or tips on how I can solve this? --> ensure that the os keeps using python3.9 while users default to python3.12.
If that is really impossible, how can I ensure that Netbox always uses python 3.12 (for example for the upgrade script, running netbox, netbox scripts, etc...) while the system default is python 3.9?

I appreciate any help

Thanks,

[markkuleinio]

Does this instruction solve your problem: https://netboxlabs.com/docs/netbox/en/stable/installation/3-netbox/#run-the-upgrade-script

sudo PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3.12 /opt/netbox/upgrade.sh

Also general note that Python 3.9 will be end-of-life this year: https://devguide.python.org/versions/

[litebito]

Hi, I will test that on our reference machine (I've to reset the setup) I'll let you know the result

(As for Python 3.9 EoL ... I know... but it sometimes takes much longer before it is replaced as "platform python" in CentOS .. .we'll see how that goes. )

[litebito]

So that works nicely, so far no issues with either Netbox or the OS.