Weekly Changes – 31/10/2022
This week there are a large number of changes, mostly related to the work on the new Ubuntu installer. Also, users of the Ubuntu HWE kernel will need to consider the most suitable approach for handling the upgrade to the 5.15 series. Here are all the details…
Kernel
The hardware-enablement (HWE) kernel for Ubuntu has been updated to the 5.15 series. For any sites which wish to avoid immediately upgrading from 5.13 you may specify the KERNEL_SERIES_5130 package macro, like this:
!profile.pkgcppopts mADD(-DKERNEL_SERIES_5130)
It is important to note that the 5.13 long-term support release has reached it’s end-of-life and no longer receives security updates. Support for that kernel series will be removed from LCFG at the end of 2022.
The INF_TEST kernel for Ubuntu has been updated to 5.4.0-131.147.
grub bootloader
The headers for the grub bootloader have been refactored to simplify the configuration of legacy and UEFI boot modes. All legacy boot resources are now in lcfg/options/boot-legacy.h and all UEFI boot resources are in lcfg/options/boot-uefi.h. The lcfg/defaults/grub2.h header now simply includes the relevant header for the required boot mode.
The preseeed configuration for the Ubuntu grub packages, which is hardwired into the current installer scripts, is now specified via resources in the headers to support the new installer.
To avoid confusion, the ancient grub 1 configuration in the lcfg/defaults/grub.h header has been removed.
fstab component
The LCFG fstab component schema has been updated to version 5 on all platforms. It adds new resources which will allow for greater flexibility with the partitioning specification for the new Ubuntu installer, note that it is fully backwards-compatible for older platforms.
libvirt support
The LCFG libvirt component has been revived to support the Ubuntu platform. Currently this only supports a few configuration options which must be modified to when using polkit for authorisation.
LCFG client
The LCFG client has reverted to selecting a static UID and GID for the lcfg user and group when it is first installed on the Ubuntu platform. This has been done to make it much easier to install software using the new Ubuntu installer.
There was also a minor tweak to the lcfginit Systemd service to ensure the boot-time initialisation of the LCFG client directories is done after the local-fs.target has been reached.
Installer
Many of the resources necessary to support the new Ubuntu installer have now been moved from the temporary header – lcfg/defaults/install-debian-ng.h – into more relevant locations. In particular, most of the package preseed configuration has now moved to the appropriate headers. Over the next few weeks we will continue to integrate the support for the new installer into the standard headers with the eventual aim that it may be enabled simply by defining the USE_NEW_INSTALLER macro at the top of an LCFG profile.
Software Updates
The fwupd package, which is part of the LCFG_DESKTOP_STANDARD package group, has a new dependency on the libxmlb2 package.
Changes to headers and package lists
Members of the Informatics Computing team can browse all the changes to the headers and package lists.
Recent comments