2024-08-17

Release notes: UBOS update 2024-08-17

/releases/2024-08-17/release-notes/

Release overview

  • The Mastodon package has been upgraded and improved:

    • The automatically provisioned Mastodon account now has role “owner”.
    • The Mastodon media cache is skipped during backup: in a typical installation, its size dwarfs other data sets, and the content can be re-fetched if a backup needs to be restored. This makes backups with ubos-admin backup faster and much smaller.
    • One of the Mastodon systemd services now starts later so it avoids an unnecessary restart due to errors upon installation.
    • The updated Mastodon configuration now makes it more likely that if it is installed in a Linux container, it can be accessed from the host without running into some server-side request forgery prevention code implemented by Mastodon.
    • Mastodon is now available on the “green” (production) Release Channel.

  • The Nextcloud package has been upgraded and the redirect from a Nextcloud installed in a subdirectory, when accessed without the trailing slash, is back.

  • The WordPress package now automatically sets a permalink structure that is compatible with the ActivityPub plugin; no manual activation is required any more.

  • There are newly created Developer VMs. This makes things easier for developers as they don’t need to make systemd configuration changes to track recent systemd updates (changed keyword). The VM names have become a bit more consistent, too.

  • The default networking configuration has changed so that entries in /etc/hosts are also served via DNS, as dnsmasq does, for example. This makes certain development tasks much simpler as developers do not need to configure a separate name server.

  • ubos-admin showsite has become more flexible and usable.

  • systemd is less likely to time out certbot (random delay removed).

  • Tor support has been removed due to little use.

  • Support for apps Selfoss, River, PhpBB, Mediawiki, Mattermost, and Known has been removed due to little use.

  • Various other smaller fixes. You find the list of issues fixed in this release here.

  • Further website updates.

  • We also have completed our code migration from GitHub to GitLab, and from hosting the Depot on Amazon S3 to Digital Ocean.

Updated and added packages

This release upgrades some of the UBOS apps, their accessories, and some UBOS Gears components, notably:

  • Mastodon;
  • Matomo;
  • Nextcloud;
  • WordPress.

The WordPress plugin that adds support for the Mastodon API was added.

To upgrade

If you have Mastodon running on your Device, make a backup with ubos-admin backup. Then, after the upgrade, you must manually restore the content of the directory /ubos/lib/mastodon/<appconfigid>/mastodon/public/system/. This is a one-time activity we did not automate in this release.

To be safe, first check the status of your Device:

  • sudo ubos-admin status

and make sure everything is in working order. Then create a backup of all your sites, with a command such as:

  • sudo ubos-admin backup --all --backuptodirectory ~

Then, update your device:

  • sudo ubos-admin update -v

Depending on what apps you have installed and how much data they manage, and the speed of your disk and network, the upgrade can take a while.

Known issues

  • Nextcloud reports issues with its integrity check. This is ugly but benign, see this issue.

Need help?

Find us in the Fediverse at @ubos@mastodon.social with an app such as Mastodon.