wiki/src/news/test_0.14-rc2.html

   1 [[!meta date="Mon, 29 Oct 2012 12:34:56 +0200"]]
   2 [[!pagetemplate template="news.tmpl"]]
   3 [[!meta title="Call for testing: 0.14~rc2"]]
   4
   5 <p>You can help Tails! The <em>second</em> release candidate for the
   6 upcoming version 0.14 is out. Please test it and see if all works for
   7 you.</p>
   8
   9 [[!toc levels=1]]
  10
  11 <h1>How to test Tails 0.14~rc2?</h1>
  12
  13 <ol>
  14   <li>
  15     <p>
  16       <strong>Keep in mind that this is a test image.</strong> We have made sure
  17       that it is not broken in an obvious way, but it might still contain
  18       undiscovered issues.
  19     </p>
  20   </li>
  21   <li>
  22     <p>Download the ISO image and its signature:</p>
  23     <p>
  24       <a class="download-file"
  25          href=""
  26       >Tails 0.14~rc2 ISO image</a>
  27     </p>
  28     <p>
  29       <a class="download-signature"
  30          href="http://dl.amnesia.boum.org/tails/testing/tails-i386-0.14~rc2/tails-i386-0.14~rc2.iso.pgp"
  31       >Tails 0.14~rc2 signature</a>
  32     </p>
  33   </li>
  34   <li>
  35     <p>
  36       Verify the ISO image.
  37     </p>
  38   </li>
  39   <li>
  40     <p>
  41       Have a look at the list of <a href="#known_issues">known issues
  42       of this release</a> and the list of [[longstanding known
  43       issues|support/known_issues]].
  44     </p>
  45   </li>
  46   <li>
  47     <p>
  48       Test wildly!
  49     </p>
  50   </li>
  51 </ol>
  52
  53 <p>If you find anything that is not working as it should, please [[report to
  54 us|doc/first_steps/bug_reporting]]! Bonus points if you check that it is not a
  55 <a href="#known_issues">known issue of this release</a> or a
  56 [[longstanding known issue|support/known_issues]].</p>
  57
  58 <h1>What's new since 0.14~rc1?</h1>
  59
  60 Since the following changes are brand new in this release candidate
  61 they are what we really need to be tested by you. In particular we ask
  62 you to pay attention to whether Iceweasel has any new issues or not.
  63
  64 <ul>
  65   <li>Iceweasel
  66     <ul>
  67       <li>Update to 10.0.9esr-1+tails1, which has all the privacy enhancing
  68       patches from the Tor Browser Bundle applied to it.</li>
  69       <li>Install iceweasel from our own repo, http://deb.tails.boum.org.</li>
  70     </ul>
  71   </li>
  72   <li>Minor improvements
  73     <ul>
  74       <li>Remove the last absolute path in our isolinux config, which makes
  75       it easier to migrate from isolinux to syslinux (just rename the
  76       directory), and hence might make it easier for 3rd party USB
  77       installers (like the Universal USB Installer) to support Tails.</li>
  78     </ul>
  79   </li>
  80   <li>Bug fixes
  81     <ul>
  82       <li>Fix tordate vs. Tor 0.2.3.x. Since 0.2.3.x Tor doesn't download a
  83       consensus for clocks that are more than 30 days in the past or 2
  84       days in the future (see commits f4c1fa2 and 87622e4 in Tor's git
  85       repo). For such clock skews we set the time to the Tor authority's
  86       cert's valid-after date to ensure that a consensus can be
  87       downloaded.</li>
  88     </ul>
  89   </li>
  90   <li>Software
  91     <ul>
  92       <li>Update tails-persistence-setup to 0.20-1, which should make it
  93       possible to install Tails on large (>= 32 GiB) USB drives.</li>
  94     </ul>
  95   </li>
  96 </ul>
  97
  98 <h1>What's new since 0.13?</h1>
  99
 100 <ul>
 101   <li>Major new features
 102     <ul>
 103     <li>gpgApplet can now handle public-key cryptography.</li>
 104     <li>Install an additional, PAE-enabled kernel with NX-bit
 105     support. This kernel is auto-selected when the hardware supports
 106     it and will:
 107       <ul>
 108         <li>provide executable space protection, preventing certain types of
 109         buffer overflows from being exploitable.</li>
 110         <li>enable more than 4 GiB of system memory.</li>
 111         <li>make all processors/cores available, including their
 112         power-saving functionality.</li>
 113       </ul>
 114     </li>
 115     <li>Add a persistence preset for NetworkManager connections.</li>
 116     <li>Enable Tor stream isolation; several new SocksPorts with
 117     appropriate Isolate* options have been added for different use
 118     cases (i.e. applications). All application's have been
 119     reconfigured to use these new SocksPorts, which should increase
 120     anonymity by making it more difficulte to correlate traffic from
 121     different applications or "online identities".</li>
 122     </ul>
 123   </li>
 124   <li>Minor improvements
 125   <ul>
 126     <li>On kexec reboot, make the boot quiet only if debug=wipemem was not
 127     enabled.</li>
 128     <li>Update torproject.org's APT repo key.</li>
 129     <li>Update the embedded Tails signing key.</li>
 130     <li>Use symlinks instead of dupliqcating localized searchplugins.</li>
 131     <li>Rewrite Tails firewall using ferm. Tails firewall was written in
 132     very unsophisticated iptables-save/restore format. As more feature
 133     creeped in, it started to be quite unreadable.</li>
 134     <li>Optimize VirtualBox modules build at runtime to avoid installing the
 135     userspace utils N times.</li>
 136     <li>Drop most of Vidalia's configuration. Our custom lines just caused
 137     trouble (with multiple SocksPorts) and the default works well.</li>
 138     <li>Blacklist PC speaker module. On some computers, having the
 139     pcspkr module loaded means loud beeps at bootup, shutdown and when
 140     using the console. As it draws useless attention to Tails users,
 141     it is better to prevent Linux from loading it by default.</li>
 142     <li>Remove all addons from the Unsafe Browser. No addons are
 143     essential for the Unsafe Browser's intent. If anything they will
 144     modify the network fingerprint compared to a normal Iceweasel
 145     install, which is undesirable.</li>
 146     <li>Prevent some unwanted packages to be installed at all, rather than
 147     uninstalling them later. This should speed up the build a bit.</li>
 148     <li>Add a symlink from /etc/live/config to
 149     /etc/live/config.d. This makes the system compatible with
 150     live-config 3.0.4-1, without breaking backward compatibility with
 151     various parts of the system that use the old path.</li>
 152     <li>Do not run unecessary scripts during shutdown sequence, to make
 153     shutdown faster.</li>
 154     <li>Fix Iceweasel's file associations. No more should you be suggested
 155     to open a PDF in the GIMP.</li>
 156     <li>Make live-persist deal with persistent ~/.gconf subdirs so that
 157     any options saved therein actually get persistent.</li>
 158     <li>Prevent memlockd unload on shutdown, to make sure that all
 159     necessary tools for memory wiping are available when the new
 160     kernel has kexec'd.</li>
 161     <li>Patch initscripts headers instead of fiddling with
 162     update-rc.d. We now let insserv figure out the correct ordering
 163     for the services during startup and shutdown, i.e. use
 164     dependency-based boot sequencing.</li>
 165     </ul>
 166   </li>
 167   <li>Bugfixes
 168     <ul>
 169       <li>Include <code>seq</code> in the ramdisk environment: it is
 170       used to wipe more memory. This fixes the long-standing bug about
 171       Tails not cleaning all memory on shutdown.</li>
 172       <li>Fix Yelp crashing on internal links</li>
 173       <li>Allow amnesia user to use Tor's TransPort. This firewall
 174       exception is necessary for applications that doesn't have
 175       in-built SOCKS support and cannot use torsocks. One such example
 176       is Claws Mail, which uses tsocks since torsocks makes it leak
 177       the hostname. This exception, together with Tor's automatic
 178       .onion mapping makes Claws Mail able to use hidden service mail
 179       providers again.</li>
 180       <li>Force threads locking support in Python DBus binding. Without this
 181       liveusb-creator doesn't work with a PAE-enabled kernel.</li>
 182       <li>Fix localized search plugins for 'es' and 'pt'</li>
 183       <li>Fix live-boot's readahead, which caused an unnecessary pause
 184       during boot.</li>
 185       <li>Factorize GCC wanted / available version numbers in
 186       VirtualBox modules building hook. This, incidentally, fixes a
 187       bug caused by duplication and not updating all instances.</li>
 188     </ul>
 189   </li>
 190   <li>Tor
 191     <ul>
 192       <li>Update to version 0.2.3.22-rc-1~~squeeze+1, a new major
 193       version. It's not a stable release, but we have been assured by
 194       the Tor developers that this is the right move.</li>
 195       <li>Stop setting custom value for the Tor LongLivedPorts
 196       setting. Gobby's port was upstreamed in Tor 0.2.3.x.</li>
 197     </ul>
 198   </li>
 199   <li>htpdate
 200     <ul>
 201       <li>Use curl instead of wget, and add a --proxy option passed through
 202       to curl.</li>
 203       <li>Remove the --fullrequest option, we don't need it anymore.</li>
 204       <li>Remove --dns-timeout option, we don't need it anymore.</li>
 205       <li>Change --proxy handling to support Debian Squeeze's curl.</li>
 206       <li>Clarify what happens if --proxy is not used.</li>
 207       <li>Compute the median of the diffs more correctly.</li>
 208     </ul>
 209   </li>
 210   <li>Hardware support
 211     <ul>
 212       <li>Update Linux to 3.2.30-1.</li>
 213     </ul>
 214   </li>
 215   <li>Software
 216     <ul>
 217       <li>Update vidalia to 0.2.20-1+tails1.</li>
 218       <li>Update bundled WhisperBack package to 1.6.1:
 219         <ul>
 220           <li>Raise the socket library timeout to 120 seconds</li>
 221           <li>Use smtplib's timeout parameter</li>
 222           <li>Fix error output when calling send a 2nd time</li>
 223         </ul>
 224       </li>
 225       <li>Update liveusb-creator to 3.11.6-3.</li>
 226       <li>Update i2p to 0.9.2.</li>
 227       <li>Update tails-persistence-setup to 0.18-1.</li>
 228       <li>Install console-setup and keyboard-configuration from unstable
 229       (required by new initramfs-tools).</li>
 230       <li>Update tails-greeter to 0.7.3:
 231         <ul>
 232           <li>Import pt_BR translation.</li>
 233           <li>Let langpanel usable during option selection stage</li>
 234           <li>Print less debugging messages by default
 235           (below are changes in tails-greeter 0.7.2:)</li>
 236           <li>Use correct test operators.</li>
 237           <li>Generate language codes of available locales at package build
 238           time.</li>
 239           <li>Read list of language codes from where we have saved it at
 240           package build time.</li>
 241           <li>Drop tails-lang-helper, not used anymore.</li>
 242           <li>Do not compile locales at login time anymore. Tails now ships
 243           locales-all.</li>
 244         </ul>
 245       </li>
 246     </ul>
 247   </li>
 248   <li>Internationalization
 249     <ul>
 250       <li>Fix Tails specific Iceweasel localization for pt-BR</li>
 251       <li>Add Japanese input system: scim-anthy.</li>
 252     </ul>
 253   </li>
 254   <li>Build system
 255     <ul>
 256       <li>Catch more errors during build time:
 257         <ul>
 258           <li>Ensure that all local hooks start with 'set -e'.</li>
 259           <li>Fail hard if adduser fails in local hooks.</li>
 260           <li>Fail hard if 'rm' fails in local hooks.</li>
 261         </ul>
 262       </li>
 263       <li>vagrant: Ensure we have the set of Perl packages needed by our
 264       Ikiwiki</li>
 265       <li>vagrant: Configure live-build to ship with ftp.us.debian.org.
 266       Using cdn.debian.net leads to bad interactions with Tor.</li>
 267       <li>vagrant: Don't use gzip compression when building from a tag, i.e.
 268       a release.</li>
 269       <li>vagrant: Optionally use bootstrap stage cache for faster builds
 270       via the 'cache' build option.</li>
 271       <li>vagrant: Make sure release builds are clean, i.e. they don't use
 272       any potentially dangerous build options.</li>
 273       <li>vagrant: Disable live-build package caching. This build system is
 274       meant to use an external caching proxy, so live-build's cache just
 275       wastes RAM (for in-memory builds) or disk space.</li>
 276       <li>vagrant: use aufs magic instead of copying source into tmpfs.
 277       This reduces the amount of RAM required for building Tails in.</li>
 278       <li>vagrant: Allow in-memory builds when a VM with enough memory is
 279       already started.</li>
 280     </ul>
 281   </li>
 282 </ul>
 283
 284 <h1><a id="known_issues"></a>Known issues in 0.14~rc2</h1>
 285
 286 <h2>Stream isolation inconsistency in Claws Mail</h2>
 287
 288 <p>Claws Mail isn't using its dedicated Tor SocksPort for Tor hidden
 289 service IMAP/POP/SMTP servers (instead Tor's TransPort is used). This
 290 is just a deviation from Tails' design and should have no adverse real
 291 world consequences.</p>