As well as the usual range of small changes, this week there is an important fix for installing onto the latest HP G9 desktops. Here are the details of all the notable changes…

Disk sizes

We have recently encountered an issue with disk partitioning when installing DICE on the latest HP G9 desktops. The solution appears to be to specify all partition sizes in Gibibytes (1024 rather than 1000). Most of the default settings in the LCFG level have been tweaked and all those in the DICE level headers have been modified. Note that it appears the redhat-autoswap algorithm may also need adjusting to use these units, the workaround for now is to specify a fixed size for the swap partition.

Installer

The LCFG installer now includes the nvme utility and smartmontools so that it’s easier to examine disks.

fstab

Enabling the debugging for the LCFG fstab component will now make the output from the FAI setup-storage tool a lot more verbose during installs.

The FAI setup storage tool has been updated to 6.4.3 on Ubuntu Jammy and Noble. For the setup-storage tool, this just provides minor bug fixes.

Kernel

The INF_TEST kernel has been updated to 5.15.0-141.151 on Ubuntu Jammy.

DICE headers

Some protection macros have been added to the basic DICE headers for standard desktop and server configurations to ensure that they are included in the correct order. Including headers in the wrong order can generate profiles that compile but behave in very peculiar ways.

fail2ban

The LCFG fail2ban component has been updated. This modernises the way the configuration is managed to fit better with the standard approach used by the Debian/Ubuntu packages. The support for alternative backends has also been improved.

Google Chrome

There are new preview ed/options/chrome.h and ed/options/chrome-policy.h headers that bring together the configurations in use across the university. Please review it and try it out if you want – comments very welcome.

Software Mirrors

There are new aptly mirror configurations available for:

• APTLY_MIRROR_CLICKHOUSE – column-oriented database system
• APTLY_MIRROR_FLUENTBIT – logging, metrics, and traces processor and forwarder

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 – 16/06/2025 / LCFG Project by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0