The eagle-eyed will notice significant churn in the headers which configure apt this week, it shouldn’t have any immediate impact. Here are the details of all the notable changes…

Package Repositories

A number of optional apt package repository configurations have been moved from the ed/options/packages.h header into separate headers. This means they can be now be enabled either on a site-wide basis using the same macro as before or by including the header in individual headers/profiles as required. The benefit of not enabling on a site-wide basis is that systems where those repositories are not required will update the apt metadata quickly (and thus probably boot more quickly).

So far, the following configs have moved:

• Chrome – ed/options/repos/chrome.h or ED_OPTIONS_PACKAGES_CHROME
• Chrome Remote Desktop – ed/options/repos/chromerd.h or ED_OPTIONS_PACKAGES_CHROME_REMOTE_DESKTOP
• Conda – ed/options/repos/conda.h or ED_OPTIONS_PACKAGES_CONDA
• Mozilla Team (firefox and thunderbird) – ed/options/repos/mozteam.h or ED_OPTIONS_PACKAGES_MOZTEAM
• VSCode – ed/options/repos/vscode.h or ED_OPTIONS_PACKAGES_VSCODE

There is a new header for including the package repository key for the ISG service – ed/options/isg-archive-keyring.h – this is used in the installer and also in DICE profiles so we have access to the ISG service when necessary.

Kernel

On Noble the INF_TEST series has been updated to 6.8.0-86.

On Jammy we’re now beginning preparation to update the INF series to follow the 6.8.0 HWE kernel versions. At the moment this can be tried by selecting the ED_KERNEL_INF_HWE_TEST option instead of the usual INF_TEST. In a couple of weeks time we expect to update the INF_TEST series and then over the Christmas break we will upgrade the INF series itself.

On Focal the INF series has been updated to 5.15.0-139 which is the final released version.

DICE Packages

On DICE there is new support for fetching packages from the ISG package server. This is currently intended primarily for disaster recovery purposes. It can be enabled by defining the DICE_OPTIONS_PKGCACHE_ISG macro at the top of an LCFG profile. To avoid putting too much load on the ISG service it is accessed through our usual squid caches. This currently only provides access to the upstream package mirrors, locally built packages still come from our local package server.

Chrome Remote Desktop

There is a new ed-level header – ed/options/chrome-remote-desktop.h for including the Chrome Remote Desktop software into a profile.

Fetchmail

Fetchmail received a security update, but unfortunately its postinst script tries to restart fetchmail.service which causes hangs if the package is updated during reboots. Therefore the default has been changed to disable and mask fetchmail.service. If you do use fetchmail.service, your LCFG config should already be overriding this default.

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 – 03/11/2025 / LCFG Project by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0