CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8 migration

As CentOS 7 is becoming close to EOL(currently June 2024) and CentOS 8 moved to a different model the sysadmins have to choose to migrate to CentOS 8 stream or search an alternative (RHEL 8 or other).
My choice was AlmaLinux 8 and I choose it for the speed of delivery and the community support.

The process is straightforward and in most case will be:
Update CentOS to the latest patches

$ sudo yum update

If there are updated packages reboot to apply them.

$ sudo reboot

Install ELevate repository

$ sudo yum install http://repo.almalinux.org/elevate/elevate-release-latest-el7.noarch.rpm

Install following packages if you want to update to AlmaLinux

$ sudo yum install -y leapp-upgrade leapp-data-almalinux

NOTE: In this step you can also replace leapp-data-almalinux with: leapp-data-centos to update to CentOS; leapp-data-rocky for RockyLinux or leapp-data-oraclelinux for OracleLinux

Next step is to start preupgrade check

$ sudo leapp preupgrade

This takes some time

At the end in the ideal case you will have a pass, but in most cases there are errors that can be seen in var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt
Most common ones are unsupported kernel modules that can be resolved by

$ sudo rmmod pata_acpi

or missing answer file for pkcs11 pam module

$ sudo leapp answer --section remove_pam_pkcs11_module_check.confirm=True

in some cases also

PermitRootLogin yes

have to be added to sshd_conf
Read the report for details and hints

After all is resolved start the upgrade

$ sudo leapp upgrade

And if all is good reboot

$ sudo reboot

This process is long, and you should watch the console if possible to catch eventual errors.
At the end you will have running system

Notes: I had issues with 3-d party repositories and packages during the upgrade. I had to remove and reinstall after the upgrade nginx, nodejs and docker-ce. As usual my advice will be to test before doing the change in production and always have your backup ready.