This week there is a range of minor updates. Note that sites using the Informatics package repository must update their keyrings. Here are all the details…

Informatics package repositories

The signing key for the Informatics package repository was updated last Friday (27th September). Anyone mirroring from the repository will need to update their keyring, see the separate blog post for details.

polkit

It appears that support for the default user is a RHEL-specific feature. To match any/all users on Ubuntu you instead should use unix-user:*. Two headers have been updated to reflect this practice – lcfg/defaults/network.h and lcfg/options/disable_user_shutdown.h. Other sites should check their polkit rules to ensure they work as expected on Debian/Ubuntu.

The rules in the header for disabling system shutdowns by normal users have also been expanded to include the various org.freedesktop.login1.halt actions.

network component

The LCFG network component has been tweaked so that the netplan configuration generator specifies any gateway in the recommended way and no longer uses any of the deprecated gateway, gateway4 or gateway6 options.

DICE Network

It is now possible to avoid the inclusion of the routing component (and thus rdisc) on DICE machines by specifying the DICE_NO_RDISC macro at the top of the LCFG profile for a system. Currently, this only works on certain subnets – S32, S33, AT1 – the others will be updated as required.

Defunct apt repositories

The aptly mirrors for atom and sbt_bintray packages are defunct and have now been dropped from the list of repositories used by DICE machines. The final released versions of the packages have been copied into the relevant world buckets so they are still available where needed.

Lab machine shutdown permission

To avoid normal users shutting down DICE lab and podium machines they are now configured to only permit reboots. This removes some of the items from the standard power-management menu on the lightdm login screen and most window managers, it also changes the behaviour of some other items.

Software

There are some new package options for Ubuntu this week:

• LCFG_OPTIONS_SCREEN – terminal multiplexer
• LCFG_OPTIONS_JAGS – Just Another Gibbs Sampler for Bayesian MCMC
• LCFG_OPTIONS_GAP – computer algebra system for Groups, Algorithms and Programming
• LCFG_OPTIONS_RVIZ – 3D visualization tool for Robot OS
• LCFG_OPTIONS_NCAL – display a calendar and the date of Easter
• LCFG_OPTIONS_MACAULAY2 – Software system for algebraic geometry research

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 – 30/09/2024 / LCFG Project by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0