wiki/src/news/test_0.14-rc1.html

   1 [[!meta date="2012-10-12 12:34:56 +0200"]]
   2 [[!meta title="Call for testing: 0.14~rc1"]]
   3
   4 <p>You can help Tails! The <em>first</em> release candidate for the upcoming version 0.14
   5 is out. Please test it and see if all works for you.</p>
   6
   7 [[!toc levels=1]]
   8
   9 <h1>How to test Tails 0.14~rc1?</h1>
  10
  11 <ol>
  12   <li>
  13     <p>
  14       <strong>Keep in mind that this is a test image.</strong> We have made sure
  15       that it is not broken in an obvious way, but it might still contain
  16       undiscovered issues.
  17     </p>
  18   </li>
  19   <li>
  20     <p>Download the ISO image and its signature:</p>
  21     <p>
  22       <a class="download-file"
  23          href="http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/testing/tails-i386-0.14~rc1/tails-i386-0.14~rc1.iso"
  24       >Tails 0.14~rc1 ISO image</a>
  25     </p>
  26     <p>
  27       <a class="download-signature"
  28          href="http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/testing/tails-i386-0.14~rc1/tails-i386-0.14~rc1.iso.pgp"
  29       >Tails 0.14~rc1 signature</a>
  30     </p>
  31   </li>
  32   <li>
  33     <p>
  34       [[Verify the ISO image|download#index3h1]].
  35     </p>
  36   </li>
  37   <li>
  38     <p>
  39       Have a look at the list of <a href="#known_issues">known issues
  40       of this release</a> and the list of [[longstanding known
  41       issues|support/known_issues]].
  42     </p>
  43   </li>
  44   <li>
  45     <p>
  46       Test wildly!
  47     </p>
  48   </li>
  49 </ol>
  50
  51 <p>If you find anything that is not working as it should, please [[report to
  52 us|doc/first_steps/bug_reporting]]! Bonus points if you check that it is not a
  53 <a href="#known_issues">known issue of this release</a> or a
  54 [[longstanding known issue|support/known_issues]].</p>
  55
  56 <h1>What's new since 0.13?</h1>
  57
  58 <ul>
  59   <li>Major new features
  60     <ul>
  61     <li>gpgApplet can now handle public-key cryptography.</li>
  62     <li>Install an additional, PAE-enabled kernel with NX-bit
  63     support. This kernel is auto-selected when the hardware supports
  64     it and will:
  65       <ul>
  66         <li>provide executable space protection, preventing certain types of
  67         buffer overflows from being exploitable.</li>
  68         <li>enable more than 4 GiB of system memory.</li>
  69         <li>make all processors/cores available, including their
  70         power-saving functionality.</li>
  71       </ul>
  72     </li>
  73     <li>Add a persistence preset for NetworkManager connections.</li>
  74     <li>Enable Tor stream isolation; several new SocksPorts with
  75     appropriate Isolate* options have been added for different use
  76     cases (i.e. applications). All application's have been
  77     reconfigured to use these new SocksPorts, which should increase
  78     anonymity by making it more difficulte to correlate traffic from
  79     different applications or "online identities".</li>
  80     </ul>
  81   </li>
  82   <li>Minor improvements
  83   <ul>
  84     <li>On kexec reboot, make the boot quiet only if debug=wipemem was not
  85     enabled.</li>
  86     <li>Update torproject.org's APT repo key.</li>
  87     <li>Update the embedded Tails signing key.</li>
  88     <li>Use symlinks instead of dupliqcating localized searchplugins.</li>
  89     <li>Rewrite Tails firewall using ferm. Tails firewall was written in
  90     very unsophisticated iptables-save/restore format. As more feature
  91     creeped in, it started to be quite unreadable.</li>
  92     <li>Optimize VirtualBox modules build at runtime to avoid installing the
  93     userspace utils N times.</li>
  94     <li>Drop most of Vidalia's configuration. Our custom lines just caused
  95     trouble (with multiple SocksPorts) and the default works well.</li>
  96     <li>Blacklist PC speaker module. On some computers, having the
  97     pcspkr module loaded means loud beeps at bootup, shutdown and when
  98     using the console. As it draws useless attention to Tails users,
  99     it is better to prevent Linux from loading it by default.</li>
 100     <li>Remove all addons from the Unsafe Browser. No addons are
 101     essential for the Unsafe Browser's intent. If anything they will
 102     modify the network fingerprint compared to a normal Iceweasel
 103     install, which is undesirable.</li>
 104     <li>Prevent some unwanted packages to be installed at all, rather than
 105     uninstalling them later. This should speed up the build a bit.</li>
 106     <li>Add a symlink from /etc/live/config to
 107     /etc/live/config.d. This makes the system compatible with
 108     live-config 3.0.4-1, without breaking backward compatibility with
 109     various parts of the system that use the old path.</li>
 110     <li>Do not run unecessary scripts during shutdown sequence, to make
 111     shutdown faster.</li>
 112     <li>Fix Iceweasel's file associations. No more should you be suggested
 113     to open a PDF in the GIMP.</li>
 114     <li>Make live-persist deal with persistent ~/.gconf subdirs so that
 115     any options saved therein actually get persistent.</li>
 116     <li>Prevent memlockd unload on shutdown, to make sure that all
 117     necessary tools for memory wiping are available when the new
 118     kernel has kexec'd.</li>
 119     <li>Patch initscripts headers instead of fiddling with
 120     update-rc.d. We now let insserv figure out the correct ordering
 121     for the services during startup and shutdown, i.e. use
 122     dependency-based boot sequencing.</li>
 123     </ul>
 124   </li>
 125   <li>Bugfixes
 126     <ul>
 127       <li>Include <code>seq</code> in the ramdisk environment: it is
 128       used to wipe more memory. This fixes the long-standing bug about
 129       Tails not cleaning all memory on shutdown.</li>
 130       <li>Fix Yelp crashing on internal links</li>
 131       <li>Allow amnesia user to use Tor's TransPort. This firewall
 132       exception is necessary for applications that doesn't have
 133       in-built SOCKS support and cannot use torsocks. One such example
 134       is Claws Mail, which uses tsocks since torsocks makes it leak
 135       the hostname. This exception, together with Tor's automatic
 136       .onion mapping makes Claws Mail able to use hidden service mail
 137       providers again.</li>
 138       <li>Force threads locking support in Python DBus binding. Without this
 139       liveusb-creator doesn't work with a PAE-enabled kernel.</li>
 140       <li>Fix localized search plugins for 'es' and 'pt'</li>
 141       <li>Fix live-boot's readahead, which caused an unnecessary pause
 142       during boot.</li>
 143       <li>Factorize GCC wanted / available version numbers in
 144       VirtualBox modules building hook. This, incidentally, fixes a
 145       bug caused by duplication and not updating all instances.</li>
 146     </ul>
 147   </li>
 148   <li>Tor
 149     <ul>
 150       <li>Update to version 0.2.3.22-rc-1~~squeeze+1, a new major
 151       version. It's not a stable release, but we have been assured by
 152       the Tor developers that this is the right move.</li>
 153       <li>Stop setting custom value for the Tor LongLivedPorts
 154       setting. Gobby's port was upstreamed in Tor 0.2.3.x.</li>
 155     </ul>
 156   </li>
 157   <li>htpdate
 158     <ul>
 159       <li>Use curl instead of wget, and add a --proxy option passed through
 160       to curl.</li>
 161       <li>Remove the --fullrequest option, we don't need it anymore.</li>
 162       <li>Remove --dns-timeout option, we don't need it anymore.</li>
 163       <li>Change --proxy handling to support Debian Squeeze's curl.</li>
 164       <li>Clarify what happens if --proxy is not used.</li>
 165       <li>Compute the median of the diffs more correctly.</li>
 166     </ul>
 167   </li>
 168   <li>Hardware support
 169     <ul>
 170       <li>Update Linux to 3.2.30-1.</li>
 171     </ul>
 172   </li>
 173   <li>Software
 174     <ul>
 175       <li>Update vidalia to 0.2.20-1+tails1.</li>
 176       <li>Update bundled WhisperBack package to 1.6.1:
 177         <ul>
 178           <li>Raise the socket library timeout to 120 seconds</li>
 179           <li>Use smtplib's timeout parameter</li>
 180           <li>Fix error output when calling send a 2nd time</li>
 181         </ul>
 182       </li>
 183       <li>Update liveusb-creator to 3.11.6-3.</li>
 184       <li>Update i2p to 0.9.2.</li>
 185       <li>Update tails-persistence-setup to 0.18-1.</li>
 186       <li>Install console-setup and keyboard-configuration from unstable
 187       (required by new initramfs-tools).</li>
 188       <li>Update tails-greeter to 0.7.3:
 189         <ul>
 190           <li>Import pt_BR translation.</li>
 191           <li>Let langpanel usable during option selection stage</li>
 192           <li>Print less debugging messages by default
 193           (below are changes in tails-greeter 0.7.2:)</li>
 194           <li>Use correct test operators.</li>
 195           <li>Generate language codes of available locales at package build
 196           time.</li>
 197           <li>Read list of language codes from where we have saved it at
 198           package build time.</li>
 199           <li>Drop tails-lang-helper, not used anymore.</li>
 200           <li>Do not compile locales at login time anymore. Tails now ships
 201           locales-all.</li>
 202         </ul>
 203       </li>
 204     </ul>
 205   </li>
 206   <li>Internationalization
 207     <ul>
 208       <li>Fix Tails specific Iceweasel localization for pt-BR</li>
 209       <li>Add Japanese input system: scim-anthy.</li>
 210     </ul>
 211   </li>
 212   <li>Build system
 213     <ul>
 214       <li>Catch more errors during build time:
 215         <ul>
 216           <li>Ensure that all local hooks start with 'set -e'.</li>
 217           <li>Fail hard if adduser fails in local hooks.</li>
 218           <li>Fail hard if 'rm' fails in local hooks.</li>
 219         </ul>
 220       </li>
 221       <li>vagrant: Ensure we have the set of Perl packages needed by our
 222       Ikiwiki</li>
 223       <li>vagrant: Configure live-build to ship with ftp.us.debian.org.
 224       Using cdn.debian.net leads to bad interactions with Tor.</li>
 225       <li>vagrant: Don't use gzip compression when building from a tag, i.e.
 226       a release.</li>
 227       <li>vagrant: Optionally use bootstrap stage cache for faster builds
 228       via the 'cache' build option.</li>
 229       <li>vagrant: Make sure release builds are clean, i.e. they don't use
 230       any potentially dangerous build options.</li>
 231       <li>vagrant: Disable live-build package caching. This build system is
 232       meant to use an external caching proxy, so live-build's cache just
 233       wastes RAM (for in-memory builds) or disk space.</li>
 234       <li>vagrant: use aufs magic instead of copying source into tmpfs.
 235       This reduces the amount of RAM required for building Tails in.</li>
 236       <li>vagrant: Allow in-memory builds when a VM with enough memory is
 237       already started.</li>
 238     </ul>
 239   </li>
 240 </ul>
 241
 242 <h1><a id="known_issues"></a>Known issues in 0.14~rc1</h1>
 243
 244 <h2>Stream isolation inconsistency in Claws Mail</h2>
 245
 246 <p>Claws Mail isn't using its dedicated Tor SocksPort for Tor hidden
 247 service IMAP/POP/SMTP servers (instead Tor's TransPort is used). This
 248 is just a deviation from Tails' design and should have no adverse real
 249 world consequences.</p>
 250
 251 <h2>I2P is broken</h2>
 252
 253 <p>I2P doesn't start any local proxies despite connecting to the I2P
 254 network just fine. This makes it essentially unusable, e.g. eepSites
 255 like http://www.i2p2.i2p cannot be accessed in Iceweasel. The reason
 256 for this seems to be a random memory error in the machine building the
 257 Tails 0.14~rc1 image.
 258 See <a href="https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001829.html">this
 259 post on tails-dev</a> for more information.</p>