Release Notes

/releases/

The most recent release is first in this list:

  • 2022-12-06

    Release notes: UBOS Mesh update red 2022-12-06 (0.10)

    Note

    This is for developers on the red Release Channel only.

    Major changes in this version

    • MeshBase indexing is now performed by two separate Bots, and the index is now stored natively as MeshObject in the same MeshBase. Previously, the full-text search index and the type index were implemented as bespoke code with storage outside of their MeshBase. This change simplifies and unifies application development, and opens up powerful opportunities, e.g.

      • each MeshBase now has its own index;
      • each MeshBase can now set its own indexing policy in principle, from no indexing at all, to indexing only words, or only types, or in some language vs another, or custom indexing.

    • Some operations have been sped up by reducing the need, when iterating over data, to go back to the on-disk storage system (current Mariadb).

    • Some UI improvements, including reporting some basic statistics.

    Availability

    In the repos on x86_64 and aarch64.

    Known issues

    This is pre-release software not ready yet for production. There are potentially many issues, many of which may be unknown at this time. Use at your own risk.

    This does not affect the stability and security of UBOS Linux and standalone Apps like Nextcloud.

  • 2022-09-16

    Release notes: UBOS Mesh Update on red and yellow 2022-09-16

    Note to standalone app users

    If you are a UBOS user who runs UBOS Linux with standalone Apps like Nextcloud, this update does not affect you.

    Major changes in this version

    • The Amazon Importer has been updated to Amazon’s August 2022 export format. It now imports all data – some of it semantically, and the rest of it structurally (untyped).

    • The full-text search now also indexes (untyped) Attribute values. Together, this means that if an import contains a String, it can be searched.

    • The Importer framework has gotten major new functionality that enables modular importer development: only write new importer code for those portions of an import that are actually new or different compared to an older version of the importer.

    • The AccountBar UI widget has been added that provides a login dialog and related functionality.

    • The AccessManager has been reviewed, and improved. Some potential security issues were fixed.

    • The PeerTalk handler now requires a bearer access token.

    • The history of a MeshBase now has a write API. Things that happened in the past – but that we didn’t know of at the time – can now be added into the history of the MeshBase at that historical time. There is more work to be done to integrate this with importers, although the Facebook importer has been partially migrated (and is therefore currently less functional than it was. Work in progress.)

    • New additions:

      • A new skin
      • Viewlets for Accounts, data imported from the untyped importer, and for a (so far empty) landing page.

    • Obviously, lots of other bug fixes and improvements.

    • UBOS Mesh now consists of 70 packages.

    Availability

    Pre-built packages are available in the red and yellow Release Channels. As this is pre-release software, they are not available in the green channel yet.

    You may need to add the mesh repository to your pacman configuration, e.g. by creating file cat /etc/pacman.d/repositories.d/mesh with content:

    [mesh]
Server = http://depot.ubosfiles.net/$channel/$arch/mesh

    Source code and bug tracker can be found at gitlab.com/ubos.

    Known issues

    This is pre-release software not ready yet for production. There are potentially many issues, many of which may be unknown at this time. Use at your own risk.

    This does not affect the stability and security of UBOS Linux and standalone Apps like Nextcloud.

  • 2022-07-06

    Release notes: UBOS Linux apps update 2022-07-06

    Major package upgrades in this version

    Nextcloud has been upgraded to version 24, as have many of its apps.

    To upgrade

    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

    Note

    This upgrade can take a long time (hours), because some cryptographic keys need to be updated, and the key server we depend on can be very slow. If you don’t like this, first update your keys:

    • log on as root, and run pacman-key --refresh-keys, and then
    • run ubos-admin update --nokeyrefresh

    This will take about the same amount of time, but your Sites will continue to be working while pacman-key is running. The actual update then can be much faster.

    Known issues

    • If after the upgrade, sudo ubos-admin status reports that a service called nextcloud@aaa.service has failed, simply restart it: sudo systemctl start nextcloud@aaa.service (where aaa is a long hexadecimal number unique to your Device.

  • 2022-02-04

    Release notes: UBOS Linux update 2022-02-04

    Notable changes

    This is a minor bug fix release. The following issues were fixed:

    • Failed to restore from backup under some circumstances if the backup contains a symbolic link. (Link)

    • Failed to restore from backup under some circumstances if the backup contains certain JSON files. (Link)

    • SMTP setup when running Nextcloud 22. (Link)

    To upgrade

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

    • sudo ubos-admin status

    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

  • 2022-01-17

    Release notes: UBOS Linux update 2022-01-17

    Major package upgrades in this version

    This release brings Nextcloud Hub II to UBOS.

    Nextcloud has been upgraded to version 23 (Hub II), as have many of its apps.

    To upgrade

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

    • sudo ubos-admin status

    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

    Known issues

    • If after the upgrade, sudo ubos-admin status reports that a service called nextcloud@aaa.service has failed, simply restart it: sudo systemctl start nextcloud@aaa.service (where aaa is a long hexadecimal number unique to your Device.

  • 2021-12-14

    Release notes: UBOS Linux update 2021-12-14

    To upgrade

    Warning

    If you are on an ARM device, and you are running the Nextcloud News app, you need to undeploy it first, otherwise the upgrade will fail. More details below.

    To be safe, first 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

    Major package upgrades in this version

    • Mastodon
    • Matomo
    • Mediawiki
    • Nextcloud. Many Nextcloud accessories have been upgraded as well.
    • phpBB
    • Webtrees
    • Wordpress. Many Wordpress skins and plugins have been upgraded as well.

    Bug fixes

    The usual: fixed bugs and made improvements. You can find the closed issues on Github tagged with milestone ubos-apps-26.

    Known issues

    • If after the upgrade, Nextcloud reports an “internal error” (out-of-memory error related to the database), restart mariadb. This is easiest if you simply reboot your Device.

    • The Nextcloud News app now requires 64bit-PHP. Lower-end (ARM) devices do not meet this requirement. Upgrading such a Device running the Nextcloud News app will fail, as the Nextcloud upgrader reports an error and keeps the installation in maintenance mode. To avoid this, it is best to redeploy the Site without Nextcloud News before the upgrade. Here is a possible sequence of steps:

      1. Determine the current Site JSON and save it to a file:

        % sudo ubos-admin showsite --json > site.json

      2. Edit that file, e.g.:

        % vi site.json

        by removing the line that reads: "nextcloud-news",. Save the file.

      3. Redeploy the Site:

        % sudo ubos-admin deploy -v --file site.json

      Then upgrade your device as usual.

  • 2021-07-30

    Release notes: UBOS Linux update 2021-07-30

    To upgrade

    To be safe, first 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

    New: revamped developer experience

    To make packaging apps for UBOS simpler, we now provide a pair of Docker containers, and a tutorial for how to use them:

    • One container is used for building packages, and has the most common build tools pre-installed, so developers can build immediately with almost no required setup.

    • The other container simulates a typical target UBOS system, to test the built packages in a real-world environment.

    This allows developers to use any platform they love as their development platform for UBOS (as long as it runs Docker), their favorite editor and other tools on that platform, and speeds up setup very considerably.

    For developers who prefer systemd-nspawn over Docker on Linux, a second tutorial describes a very similar setup.

    Other new features and key changes

    • The developer documentation on the UBOS website has been reorganized.

    • UBOS now is easier to use inside of a Docker container; for example, UBOS has gained a Docker-specific network configuration so Docker and UBOS network management don’t get into each other’s way.

    • Some IPv6 traffic that had been incorrectly blocked by the UBOS firewall is not blocked any more.

    • UBOS can now use LLMNR to acquire an IPv6 address.

    • High load is not considered an error any more in ubos-admin status; only if the high load persists for a longer period of time.

    • ubos-admin setup-shepherd had its arguments and behavior made simpler and more consistent.

    • ubos-install can run an extra script on the installed system, at the end of the installation before the installed system is unmounted.

    • The UBOS build tool macrobuild now defines its tasks in more sane manner.

    • PHP is now at version 8.

    • All “master” branches in Git have been renamed to “main”.

    Package upgrades in this version

    • Almost 700 packages in have been updated, including apps phpBB and Wordpress.

    Bug fixes

    The usual: fixed bugs and made improvements. You can find the closed issues on Github tagged with milestone ubos-25.

  • 2021-04-22

    Release notes: UBOS Linux and apps update 2021-04-22

    To upgrade

    To be safe, first 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

    New features and key changes

    • ubos-admin status has learned a number of new tricks. It can now report on IP addresses, incompletely performed upgrades, and more. It also distinguishes between “soft” and “hard” scenarios for disks getting full.

    • ubos-admin createsite is more tolerant and explains better when certain incompatible input is provided, such as adding the wrong Accessory to an App, or attempting to run an App at a Wildcard hostname.

    • If the UBOS Staff is written during boot of a Device while no network is available, the generated HTML now displays the warning message much more prominently. This was done in direct response to user feedback as previously it could easily be overlooked.

    • All MySQL databases are now provisioned, by default, as utf8mb4, a more complete UTF-8 character set implementation than the previous default.

    Major package upgrades in this version

    • Mastodon
    • Matomo
    • Mattermost
    • Nextcloud. Many Nextcloud accessories have been upgraded as well.
    • Webtrees
    • Wordpress. Many Wordpress skins and plugins have been upgraded as well.

    Bug fixes

    The usual: fixed bugs and made improvements. You can find the closed issues on Github tagged with milestone ubos-24.

    Known issues

    Mastodon may produce an error when posting for the first time. A sudo ubos-admin update seems to make it go away.

  • 2021-01-12

    Release notes: apps update 2021-01-12

    To upgrade

    To be safe, first 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

    Major package upgrades in this version

    • Matomo is now at version 4.1.0

    • Mattermost is now at version 5.30.1

    • Nextcloud is now at version 20.0.4. Many Nextcloud accessories have been upgraded as well.

    • phpBB is now at version 3.3.2

    • Shaarli is now at version 0.12.1

    • Webtrees is now at version 2.0.11

    Bug fixes

    The usual: fixed bugs and made improvements. You can find the closed issues on Github tagged with milestone ubos-apps-25.

    Known issues

    Mastodon may produce an error when posting for the first time. A sudo ubos-admin update seems to make it go away.

  • 2020-10-20

    Release notes: apps update 2020-10-20

    To upgrade

    To be safe, first 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

    Major package upgrades in this version

    • Nextcloud is now at version 20.0.0. It includes the recently release Nextcloud Dashboard, and many productivity and integration enhancements.

    • Mastodon is now at 3.2.0 (yellow channel only).

    Bug fixes

    The usual: fixed bugs and made improvements. You can find the closed issues on Github tagged with milestone ubos-apps-24.