New features in Debian Edu Squeeze
Contents
Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze" released 2013-03-03
- Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze" is an incremental update to Debian Edu 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as well as the following changes:
- sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
- Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient
- Comply with 3.X kernel
- debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
- Minor updates from the wiki
- Danish translation now complete
- debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
- Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880
- Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.
- Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days. Closes: #664596
- Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password. Closes: #664976
- Fixes for gosa-sync:
- Don't fail if password contains "
- Don't disclose new password string in syslog
- Fixes for gosa-create:
- Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes
- Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²
- gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256
- First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users
- Add Danish web page
- debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
- Improve preseeding support and documentation
New features for Debian Edu 6.0.4+r0 Codename "Squeeze" released 2012-03-11
User visible changes
- Updated artwork and new Debian Edu / Skolelinux logo, visible during installation, in the login screen and as desktop wallpaper.
Replace LWAT with GOsa² as the LDAP administration interface. See below and the Getting started chapter of the manual for more information on GOsa².
- See below for a list of updated software.
Show welcome page to users when they first log in. This default start page for Iceweasel is fetched from LDAP at installation and boot time for networked profiles. Set to http://www.skolelinux.org/ for Standalone installations.
- New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome. As the Gnome option, the LXDE desktop option is only supported by the CD installation method.
- Speed up LTSP client boot.
- Provide a KDE menu entry for changing the password in GOsa².
For more information on how to change passwords (including expired passwords at the KDM/GDM login prompt), please see the HowTos for users chapter of the manual.
Add link to http://linuxsignpost.org/ on the start page shown to new users.
All LTSP servers are also RDP servers by default.
- Improve handing of removable media on thin clients. Show desktop notification longer when inserting new media and provide an option to start dolphin when such media is inserted.
Installation changes
New version of debian-installer from Debian Squeeze, see installation manual for more details.
Since root logins are no longer allowed when using gdm/kdm, a user in LDAP is set up during installation of the Main Server. This user is up as GOsa² administrator and is also granted sudo access. The Debian Edu menu reordering has been enabled as well, by adding the user also to the teachers group.
The .iso images can directly be copied onto USB sticks, for example by using dd or even cat..
- New roaming workstation profile for laptops.
Device access for all users is handled by PolicyKit, and no extra group memberships are needed to get access to devices.
- A warning will be issued when installing on too small disks for the selected profile.
- Simplify partitioning for Standalone installs to only have a separate /home/ but no seperate /usr anymore.
- More tests in the test suite, and correct some of the tests that failed earlier.
- Make sure to report an error and abort the installation when trying to use the netinst images without a working Internet connection, instead of silently installing a broken system.
Software updates
- Everything which is new in Debian Squeeze:
- compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.
- Linux kernel 2.6.32
- Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.4 and GNOME 2.30
- Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
OpenOffice.org 3.2.1
- Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
- Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
- Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
- Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
- Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
- Debian Squeeze includes over 10,000 new packages available for installation, including the browser Chromium
More information about Debian Squeeze 6.0 is provided in the release notes and the installation manual.
Infrastructural changes
- The 10.0.0.0/8 network is used instead of 10.0.2.0/23, and the default gateway is 10.0.0.1/8, not 10.0.2.1/8 as used in the past.
- The dynamic DHCP range was extended on the backbone network to around 4k IP addresses, and around 200 IP addresses for the thin client network.
The DHCP network for 10.0.0.0/8 has been renamed from barebone to intern
- There are no pre-defined host entries for client systems in DNS anymore (staticXX, ..., dhcpYY...)
- MIT Kerberos5 used for user authentication, enabled for:
- PAM
- IMAP
- SMTP
NFSv4, but without added Kerberos privacy/integrity/authentication. The machines still have to be added to the workstation netgroup to be able to mount the home directories
- Full Samba NT4 domain support for Windows XP/Vista/7
- A complete PXE boot environment is setup when installing from the DVD, so that further installations can be done using PXE network installs only. A new script pxe-addfirmware is provided to support more hardware models needing firmware.
Remove all hard coded settings on workstations, and configure workstations and roaming workstations using settings detected from the environment using DNS, DHCP and LDAP. See this blog post with more information on the changes.
Documentation and translation updates
- Translation updates for the templates used in the installer. These templates are now available in 28 languages.
- The Debian Edu Squeeze Manual has generally been cleaned up and improved. A proof-read with corrections was done by a native English linguist.
- The Debian Edu Squeeze Manual is fully translated to German, French, Italian and Danish (new). Partly translated versions exist for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
- Improvements to many language tasks, especially French and Danish.
- Improvements to the welcome web page shown at first logins.
- Add new Japanese, Portuguese and Catalan translations of the welcome web page.
Regressions
CD and DVD installs are different - the DVD is only suitable for installing a KDE environemnt.
Drop support for powerpc architecture from netinst installation CDs. It is still possible to run Debian Edu on powerpc, but installation is less automated.
- Drop gtick in the default installation, because it doesn't work on thin clients (BTS #566335).
New administration tool: GOsa²
- gosa (2.6.11-3+squeeze1~edu+1) from the upcoming 6.0.5 Debian point release, with:
- Fix DHCP host removal. Closes: #650258
- Backport user generator unicode character transliteration. Closes: #657086
- Customized GOsa² configuration to better suit the Debian Edu network architecture.
- GOsa² updates DNS and NFS exports immediately when a system is updated in LDAP, making diskless workstations work right after they are added to the required netgroup.
- Provide script sitesummary2ldapdhcp to update or populate GOsa² with system objects using information gathered by sitesummary, to make it easier to add new computers to the network.
More software changes
- Add video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 and interactive geometry tool Geogebra 3.2.42
- Change default package manager from adept to synaptic, to avoid getting two graphical package managers installed by default.
- Install openoffice.org-kde by default ensure OOo uses KDE file dialogs in KDE.
- Change video player setup to install different players in KDE (dragonplayer), Gnome (totem) and LXDE (totem).
- Add KDE tools freespacenotifier, kinfocenter, update-notifier-kde to the default KDE installation.
- Replace network-manager-kde with plasma-widget-networkmanagement in the standalone KDE profile
- Install usb-modeswitch on laptops to handle dual mode USB devices.
- Add cifs-utils to the default installation to ensure SMB mounting can work in any profile.
- Drop octave, gpscorrelate, qlandkartegt, viking, starplot, kig, kseg, luma, and valgrind from the default installation and the DVD to make room for higher priority packages.
- Drop libnss-mdns from stationary profiles, to make sure DNS is the authoritive source of host names.
freerdp-x11 is installed by default as RDP and VNC client. (Previously rdesktop was installed instead.)
Other LDAP related changes
- Make the LDAP server handle more clients after increasing the server's file descriptor limit from 1024 to 32768.
- Add code to re-enable stopped CUPS queues every hour on the Main Server, and flush all CUPS queues every night. Both can be disabled in LDAP.
- Provide network blocking / exam mode by default, controlled by LDAP. In addition to network blocking, changes to the Squid proxy configuration is needed.
- Enable automatic extending of full file systems on the Main Server by default. This can be disabled in LDAP.
- Change SSL certificate name used by the LDAP server and adjust clients to use the new name to be able to enable certificate checking on clients.
- Switch PowerDNS to use strict LDAP mode, to allow us to simplify the LDAP setup used for DNS.
- Simplify autofs LDAP rules to make sure they work with extra home directory partitions exported from the main-server without any changes.
- Make backup system more robust in handling LDAP database dump and restart.
Other changes
Root logins are denied for both KDM and GDM - see above and Getting started for details.
- Clients set up to shut down at night will stay up for at least an hour if they are turned on manually between 16:00 and 07:00.
- Additionally use local NTP clock on the main-server to ensure clients and server sync clocks also when disconnected from the Internet.
Access to Debian repositories is always done via a proxy on the main server - read more about the implementation details using DHCP and WPAD
- The home0 partition is mounted nosuid, to increase security.
- Change KDE/Akonadi configuration to reduce the disk footprint of every user from 144 to 24 MiB.
- New tool notify-local-users to send desktop notification to all logged in users on a machine. Useful for thin client servers.