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SME Server 8.0 Beta 7 Release Announcement

Offline wellsi

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SME Server 8.0 Beta 7 Release Announcement
« on: November 28, 2011, 06:54:18 AM »
SME Server 8.0 Beta 7 Release Notes

24 November 2011

The SME Server development team is pleased to announce the release of
SME Server 8.0beta7 which is based on CentOS 5.7 and will be the next
major release of SME Server. This is the final planned Beta for SME 8.

Bug reports and reports of potential bugs should be raised in the bug
tracker (and only there, please);

    http://bugs.contribs.org/

***************************
Testers Please Note the following...

1. SME Server users should not upgrade production servers to this
   release but those who can are encouraged to load the beta to a
   dedicated test machine and take part in the testing phase.

2. CentOS 5 has dropped support for i586 and therefore SME Server 8
   will not work on i586 hardware. [See bugzilla:2845]. i586 hardware
   means processors before and including Intel Pentium, Pentium MMX;
   AMD K5, K6, K6-II, K6-III and Via C3. i686 architecture processors
   are Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III; AMD Athlon,
   Athlon XP and later.

3. Some notes on SME 8 including help on upgrades can be found at
   http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server_8

4. Upgrading from previous releases should only be done on clean
   machines without contribs or other modifications.

5. Testers are now encouraged to test upgrade paths and to start testing
   contribs. They are not certain to work so only try on test servers.
   Please raise all issues found in the bug tracker.

6. Please note it may take up to 48 hours for mirrors to finish syncing,
   during this time you may experience problems.
   You can download SME8.0 Beta 7 from
   http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/testing/8/iso/i386/
   or for other methods see http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server_8

***************************

About SME Server

SME Server is the leading Linux distribution for small and medium
enterprises.

SME Server is freely available under the GNU General Public License and
is only possible through the efforts of the SME Server community.
However, the availability and quality of SME Server is dependent on
meeting our expenses, such as hosting costs, server hardware, etc.

As such, we ask for a small donation to offset costs and fund further
development.

Please visit http://wiki.contribs.org/Donate to donate.

Thanks and a plea for help

The development team would like to thank all of those who have involved
themselves with this beta release. At this stage in development the role
of testers is vital; the final release date and the stability and
quality of the new version depend on full and thorough testing by all
levels of users, right from beginners who may be confused by, and draw
the developers attention to, insufficiently transparent system design,
up to seasoned and skilled users who can probe the system deeply. Bug
triage and verification testing needs lots of community involvement;
please try to spare some time to this vital aspect of our community's
future.

This release, which is based on a major update of the Centos Core,
contains many new features. Please run Software Installer in Server
Manager regularly during testing to be sure your system reflects the
latest stage of development.

Major changes in beta 7
* Require authentication for all emails, including local.
* Optional - to use ext4 instead of ext3 for file systems
  (except for /boot). At the boot prompt use "ext4" or "sme ext4".
  *** ext4 is considered experimental, so use with caution ***
* Optional - LDAP authentication can be enabled. Once enabled it cannot
  be disabled, so experiment with care.
  To enable: db configuration setprop ldap Authentication enabled

Changes in this release

This section of this README file lists all package changes carried out
by SME-associated developers since SME Server 8.0 Beta 6.

The package changelogs often included earlier changes and changes
carried out by non-SME-associated developers; these were removed to
shorten the list. Packages recently altered by Centos, Redhat, and
Fedora-associated developers are not included.

Backups
-------
- Improve how Backup to Workstation handles full remote disks.
- Do not make backup fail when due to a modified file.
- Localise the choices for 'Select the type of share for backup
  destination' in the Configure Workstation Backup panel.
- Improve the wording of the 'Backup or restore' server-manager panel.
  Replace term "USB disk" with "removable disk" as this is not
  restricted to only USB disks.
- Improve wording of workstation backup email regarding the set number.
- Do not modify the workstation backup location 'SmbShare' during
  software update.
- Include disk usage in Workstation Backup email.
- A new database property, OpenFilesLimit, allows customisation of
  open_files_limit option in my.cnf. This can allow backups to succeed
  if a MySQL database has a very large number of tables.

File Server
-----------
- Change separator character in general Samba configuration file.
- Changes in Samba's "Recycle VFS exclude" syntax (for ibays).

LDAP (Optional in SME 8, and considered experimental)
----
- Create samba account during event for machine.
- Keep uid/gid for computer accounts in synch for Unix/Samba/LDAP.
- Fixed syntax error in create-machine-account.
- Fix samba-group-mapping for users without group membership.
- Fix cpu critical patch missing '
- LDAP admin password needs to be loaded in secrets.tdb
- Change authentication from passwd/shadow files to the pam database.
- Turba searches on LDAP address book fixed.
- Properly handle account with accents in first- or lastname with
  regards to LDAP.
- Fix create user gid parameter.
- Path for gpasswd command fixed in "init-accounts" script.
- All ibay account commands as system accounts in LDAP.
- Create ibay accounts as system accounts in LDAP.
- Use cpu commands to manage Ibays accounts if ldap is master.
- Make cpu calls critical only with ldap{Auth} is enabled.
- Check slapd.conf syntax before trying to dump the database.
- Simplify ldap-update call by calling ldif-fix
- Change script order: ldap-update should be called after
  domain-group-maps.
- LDAP ou field is taken from Dept not Department.
- LDAP changes: Add rfc2739.schema back in and include in config.
- Use ldapmodify to load ldif, add -a if no changetype.
- Remove bogus junk attribute from ldif templates.
- Change startup order for ldap.
- ldap should store locked passwords for expired passwords.
- Add ldap as an auth type to radius
- Radius should use LDAP backend (if LDAP auth is enabled).

Localisation
------------
- Latest localisation updates applied.

Mail Server
-----------
- Require SMTP authentication by default when sending to an external
  address.
- Fix TLS security defaults, TLS Ciphers for qpsmtpd can be configured.
- Change enabled to transparent for mail proxy.
- Enable authentication for smtp traffic and migrate if necessary.
- Fix pseudonym modification for "local network only" accounts.
- Add smtp auth into web interface, not just when enabled.
- Fix require_resolvable_fromhost doesn't work
- Fix qpsmtpd plugin fatal errors when incoming mail message has no
  headers.
- Serialize configure_peers to prevent errors.
- Fix SMTP proxy wording in server-manager.
- Fix SMTP auth wording in server-manager.
- New feature: Allow for individual configuration for the number of
  mail logfiles.

Server manager
--------------
- Enhance IP address syntax checking in remote access panel.

Webmail and Groupware
---------------------
- Update to Horde 3.3.11, imp 4.3.9, Ingo 1.2.5 & Turba 2.3.5
- Add option to verify from address in webmail if setting up additional
  identities.

Web Server
----------
- Disable SSLv2 by default.
- make user 'apache' an alias for user 'www'.

Other fixes and updates
-----------------------
- Initialize ExternalInterface db structure so hwaddr in console works.
- Option to select ext4 instead of ext3 for filesystems at boot prompt.
- Enable quotas on ext4 filesystems as well.
- Only allow backup to (removable) storage media that are not read only.
- Improve error handling when trying to install without NIC.
- Only remove dangling symlinks in weak-updates directories.
- Fix template-expansion for dhclient.conf.
- Improve validation (error) message for remote access setup.
- Change text in hostname and addresses panel for remote host (add
  FQDN).
- Fix hostname editing for comments with double speechmarks
- Trap croak inside Net::IPv4Addr::ipv4_in_network to allow a FQDN to be
  inserted in hostnames and addresses panel in lieu of an IP address.
- Add validator back for ip or cname entry.
- Correctly strip numbers from sql scripts
- Enable speedier time synchronisation for suspended VMs, this can be
  configured by a new db key for ntpd, SupportLargeDrift.
- Set the TimeZone property earlier, so templates can rely on it. 
- Obsolete KeepAlive and replace by ClientAliveInterval and
  ClientAliveCountMax to prevent SSH sessions from being timed out by
  network inactivity.
- New feature: Default Cipher to blowfish for ssh configuration.
- Add directive "PersistentPasswd off" to proftpd configuration.
- Quota panel should allow non-integers but only accept uppercase units.
- Obsolete magic_quotes_gpc settings.
- Set default timezone for php version 5.3.3.

General features

- Based on CentOS 5.7 and all available updates

Ian Wells on behalf of the SME Server Development
............