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

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