Blog

/blog/

  • 2020-02-17

    UBOS update available on all release channels

    A new UBOS update is available on all release channels and all platforms.

    The focus of this release was tracking upstream package upgrades. The biggest new feature is that UBOS now writes system logs to the UBOS Staff. This aids in troubleshooting systems that don’t have keyboards or monitors.

    There is also an initial integration with the Storj decentralized storage network on the “yellow” release channel, and the usual bug fixes and documentation improvements.

    As usual, the details are in the release notes.

  • 2019-12-23

    Migrating this site to Hugo and Sphinx

    This site has always been using two static site generators:

    • Jekyll for the main site, and
    • Sphinx for the technical documentation.

    We recently migrated the Jekyll part to Hugo, also a static site generator, but one that makes our life easier. For one, we can use reusable themes and so we can “plug in” the CSS for responsive sites that we’ve been using elsewhere.

    As a user of this site, this should make no difference to you. Except that if we broke something during the port (very likely!), please do let us. Thanks!!

  • 2019-11-12

    UBOS apps update available (2019-11-12)

    Apps have been updated on all release channels. This includes upgrades to:

    • Matomo

    • Mattermost

    • Mediawiki

    • Nextcloud

    • Shaarli

    • Wordpress

    and apps to many accessories that go with these apps.

    More details are in the release notes.

  • 2019-09-01

    UBOS update available on all release channels (2019-09-01)

    Lots of new functionality in this UBOS update, which is now available on all release channels and on all platforms.

    As usual, the details are in the release notes, so here are the highlights:

    More and improved administration tools

    • Every wondered whether your UBOS device is working as it should, or whether you are overlooking something? ubos-admin status has lots of new functionality to help you out.

      For example ubos-admin status --problems will tell you which problems UBOS is aware of, such as a daemon that failed, or a disk that is getting too full. And it keeps its answer short and sweet if everything seems fine. (You are get the full details with various other command-line options; see documentation.)

      This makes ongoing systems administration much simpler for professionals and novices alike.

    • Extensions to ubos-admin showsite make some common tasks much simpler, such as determining what the Site administrator account is. While we were at it, we also removed from clutter from the output that isn’t usually needed.

    • ubos-admin createsite can now use a template Site JSON, and will only ask you for values not already provided. This has some intriguing possibilities for shipping templates for complex Sites with multiple Apps. We’ll have more to say about that in the future.

    Speed improvements

    • Backups have become faster, as UBOS now applies a heuristic on which files to compress and which not.

    • Also, UBOS now lets you invoke certain ubos-admin subcommands concurrently with each other, which makes it easier to, say, look at the configuration on a site already running on your device, while creating another.

    LetsEncrypt integration rewrite

    Our LetsEncrypt integration wasn’t as flexible (and had more issues) than we wanted, so we basically did a rewrite. Here are some tricks UBOS as learned:

    • Backing up a LetsEncrypt-protected Site and restoring it to a different hostname, or on a different device is now supported. UBOS will transparently get new certificates if it needs to.

    • UBOS will smartly reuse LetsEncrypt certificates it has already and avoid getting new ones if possible.

    • When we tested a LetsEncrypt-protected site running this new version of UBOS with the tools provided by SSL Labs, we obtained an “A” rating. Your LetsEncrypt-protected sites running on UBOS should, too, after this upgrade.

    Lots of little usability improvements

    • ubos-install will refuse to install to a mounted disk.

    • The UBOS Staff now lists the devices first that were most recently updated.

    • Logging in via ssh now presents the UBOS banner.

    • The VirtualBox image is now larger.

    • Improved progress messages.

    • Various documentation improvements and bug fixes.

    New and improved functionality for developers:

    • Apps can now require TLS by saying so in the UBOS Manifest. This makes it impossible to deploy the App to a Site not protected by (official, or self-signed) TLS.

    • A defined conflict resolution strategy has been implemented for when two apps deployed to the same Site request the same entries in the Site’s .well-known directory; depending on the entry, one takes preference over another, or the entries are merged.

    Need help?

    More details are in the release notes.

  • 2019-07-23

    UBOS apps update available (2019-07-23)

    Apps have been updated on all release channels. This includes upgrades to:

    • Nextcloud

    • Nextcloud accessories (aka “Nextcloud apps”)

    • Mediawiki

    • Wordpress

    • Wordpress accessories (aka “Wordpress plugins and themes”)

    • Plus a few bug fixes.

    More details are in the release notes.

  • 2019-05-09

    UBOS apps update available (2019-05-09)

    Apps have been updated on all release channels.

    • Nextcloud 16 is now available. It introduces machine learning to detect suspicious logins and offering clever recommendations. Group Folders now sport access control lists so system administrators can easily manage who has access to what in organization-wide shares. There are also Projects, a way to easily relate and find related information like files, chats or tasks.

    • Mediawiki has been upgraded

    • Wordpress has been upgraded

    • Many accessories for the above apps have been upgraded as well.

    • Plus a few bug fixes.

    More details are in the release notes.

  • 2019-03-29

    UBOS update available (2019-04-03)

    This updated, on the “green” (“production”) release channel, aggregates several of the previously made updates on the “yellow” channel. It includes changes and extensions both an UBOS operating system level, and for applications.

    If you run UBOS, we recommend you subscribe to one of our new release notification lists so you are notified when UBOS updates are available:

    Release notification mailing lists

    • We have created notification-only mailing lists (separate for the yellow and the green channel) that you can subscribe to, to be notified when there are updates on the respective channel.
    • Go here to subscribe.

    The details of the release are in the release notes.

  • 2019-03-29

    UBOS “yellow” update available (2019-03-29)

    Update 2024-11: Removed now-superseded section.

    This update has new packages both on the UBOS operating system level, and for applications. Sometimes, we have to do both at the same time!

    As indicated in the last update, This is also the first update in which we use a new numbering scheme based on the date of the announcement.

    For now, updates have been published to the yellow channel only. We will promote it to green in a few days, assuming things go well. If you like to be notified when UBOS updates have been published, or for any other notifications, here is the first news for you:

    Release notification mailing lists

    • We have created notification-only mailing lists (separate for the yellow and the green channel) that you can subscribe to, to be notified when there are updates on the respective channel.
    • Go here to subscribe.
    [Matomo]

    New apps

    • Matomo, a privacy-preserving alternative to cloud-based web analytics tools such as Google Analytics (formerly named Piwik) is now available for single-command installation and upgrades.

      To install, run ubos-admin createsite and specify app matomo.

    Notable new packages for users:

    • IPFS: go-ipfs
    • More Wordpress plugins, such as Pterotype and SEO

    Key package upgrades in this release

    • Nextcloud
    • Mastodon
    • Wordpress
    • Linux is now at kernel version 5.0.x (x86_64 only for now)
    • Mariadb is now at 10.3.x
    • Bitcoin daemon
    • Ethereum daemon

    Notable fixes and improvements:

    • Various backup/restore issues were fixed. These had impacted primarily sites running Shaarli and Selfoss.
    • Nextcloud installations now set the admin e-mail address automatically
    • Nextcloud now shows memory info
    • DNSSEC is turned off by default, as it appears to be incompatible with many deployed DNS servers that don’t support it.

    Changes for developers:

    • Apps based on Node now need to package their own node runtime.

    Upgrades:

    • IMPORTANT: Please consult the release notes for platform-specific notes.

    More details are in the release notes.

  • 2019-02-27

    UBOS Beta 17 available

    There is lots of new stuff in this update. But before we get there:

    This is the last of the increasingly inaccurately named “beta XXX updates”. UBOS has been fairly stable for some time, and our “beta” labels are a throw-back to the past when that wasn’t necessarily true. So going forward, we will stop using the term “beta”. Instead, we will focus on the distinction between the different release channels, and at what version they are at. If you check UBOS on GitHub, you’ll see that the milestone labels have already been renamed.

    Here are some of the highlights on what is new in beta (ahem!) 17, currently available on the yellow release channel only:

    • ubos-admin is now in color! (On terminals that support it.) That makes entering the correct information in commands such as ubos-admin createsite visually much simpler. It also makes it easier to distinguish between informational messages and errors.

    • ubos-admin backup is now the unified command for all backups in UBOS. Extra commands like ubos-admin backup-to-amazon-s3 are gone. ubos-admin backup can do it all, and more! It has learned not only to back up to local files, and to Amazon S3, but also to remote hosts with protocols such as ftp, sftp, scp, rsync, http and https. All that’s needed is to specify a backup destination with the protocol prefix, such as s3://mybucket/myfile.

    • ubos-admin backup can also encrypt backups automatically, and the key management for that has become much simpler.

    • Upgrades have become faster, and require less storage.

    • The UBOS documentation now exists in two places:

      • at ubos.net/docs, as before, you find the documentation for the green (“production”) release channel.

      • at ubos.net/docs-yellow, which is new, you find the documentation for the yellow (“beta”) release channel. (Updated: merged back together)

      As UBOS gets promoted through the release channels, new features will first show up on yellow, and its documentation section, and later make it into green. That clears up some confusion where sometimes the documentation seemed to say one thing, but the software did something else: now you can refer to the documentation that goes with your release channel.

    • As usual, lots of other smaller improvements and fixes of bugs and annoyances.

    The more detailed release notes are here.