This week many of the changes are related to work on upgrading the Informatics servers, along with a few Jammy desktop improvements. Here are all the notable details…

nvidia driver

An initial attempt has been made at adding support for the nvidia driver on Ubuntu Jammy. As with Focal we’re using the server packages by default.

On Focal we have experienced problems with using the dkms packages since it needs another reboot immediately after the modules are rebuilt. To avoid this we’re trying the pre-built modules packages (linux-modules, linux-objects, linux-signatures) provided by Ubuntu.

The nvidia driver series is now controlled via the profile.pkgcppopts resource, for example:

!profile.pkgcppopts mADD(-DVIDEO_NVIDIA_SERIES=535)

If the series is not specified, currently the default is 535, note there is not yet support for any other series…

Testing and feedback from other Schools for this new approach would be much appreciated.

PHP

There are two new macros for PHP when using the lcfg/options/php.h header. These are PHP_CORE_VERSION_MAJOR (e.g. 8.1) and PHP_INI_DIR which is the path to where INI config files for PHP should be stored (e.g. /etc/php/PHP_CORE_VERSION_MAJOR/apache2/conf.d for Ubuntu).

Console Server

The LCFG conserver component has gained support for using a different username for IPMI authentication. Support has also been added for specifying an alternative port for a default terminal configuration.

NTP

The LCFG ntp component has been updated on SL7 to match the version being used on Ubuntu, there are no functional changes.

SNMP

The versions for the lcfg-snmp and lcfg-snmptrap packages have been updated to match what was actually being used in Informatics. Basic support has also been added for Ubuntu but it has not yet been tested.

Informatics Syslog

As part of the transition to the new logserver all machines have been logging to both loghost and newloghost. After this stable release they will only log to the newloghost. Next week the DNS alias will change and the old server will be decommissioned.

bird routing

There are new LCFG-level headers for the bird routing software, version 1 – lcfg/options/bird.h and version 2 – lcfg/options/bird2.h. The DICE header has been simplified by using those new headers.

OpenVPN

There is a new dice/options/openvpn-server.h header which will be used to provide all the configuration for the DICE openvpn servers. It relies on the existing dice/options/openvpn.h header which has support for both server and client configuration. This should allow us to bring most of the configuration which is currently live under release-control.

Robot Operating System

A first attempt has been made at creating a package list for ROS2 iron packages. Also, to ease maintenance issues, the package list has been split into two parts. There is a new updates list (dice_ubu2204_ros2_updates.pkgs) which is used for dependencies from upstream Ubuntu that should have security updates applied automatically.

Software

There are some new software options available for Ubuntu:

• LCFG_OPTIONS_BIRD – internet routing daemon
• LCFG_OPTIONS_BIRD2 – internet routing daemon version 2
• LCFG_OPTIONS_LIBNTL – Number theory library
• LCFG_OPTIONS_LIBNTL_DEV – Number theory library, development support
• LCFG_OPTIONS_COLORD – system service to manage device colour profiles
• LCFG_OPTIONS_PATCH – Sofware patching utility

These can be enabled by adding the option name to the profile.pkgcppopts resource, for example:

!profile.pkgcppopts mADD(LCFG_OPTIONS_COLORD)

Changes to headers and package lists

Members of the Informatics Computing team can browse all the changes to the headers and package lists.

Weekly Changes – 31/07/2023 / LCFG Project by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0