This week sees a few improvements to the defaults for Ubuntu for users outside of Informatics. Here are the details of all notable changes…

NetworkManager

The Systemd configuration for NetworkManager has been completely removed from the default resources for Ubuntu systems and networkd is now explicitly enabled. This reflects the fact that networkd has always been our standard service for network configuration on Ubuntu, no-one should notice any functional changes. Anyone requiring NetworkManager rather than networkd should include the new lcfg/options/networkmanager.h header.

PXE Server

The LCFG pxeserver schema (version 6) has gained support for a new password resource which is mode-specific (e.g. password_bios or password_grub). This overcomes the problem of syslinux and grub password encryption methods being incompatible that means the old single password resource will not be useful. Although the new schema is available on Ubuntu the component has not yet been updated to support this feature, that will happen once testing is completed.

i3 window manager

There is a new header – lcfg/options/desktop_i3.h – that can be used to include the packages for the i3 window manager. The Systemd service config for the dunst notifications daemon is only used for this window manager so it has been removed from the default list and is now included in this new header.

ED Layer Authentication Headers

Some changes were made to the authentication and authorisation headers in the ED layer following discussion at last week’s LCFG Deployers’ meeting. In particular ed/options/auth/no-users.h leaves the PAM and NSS defaults alone and relies on GSSAPI Kerberos for root to access the host over ssh. This is suitable for use on servers where no additional user accounts are expected to be created.

Software

There are a couple of new package options available for Ubuntu:

• LCFG_OPTIONS_MYSQLCLIENT_DEV – default-libmysqlclient-dev package and dependencies
• LCFG_OPTIONS_PICOM – A lightweight compositor for X11

The dependencies for the Ubuntu Jammy postship fixes to the LCFG_OPTIONS_LIBGBM and LCFG_OPTIONS_LIBGL options have been improved so that they will always be complete.

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 – 11/03/2024 / LCFG Project by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0