After four months from the stable release announcement, it’s time for a brief recap of goals achieved so far.
What is a “Project Milestone”?
In the past NS7 product line, we announced the release of every minor release corresponding to an upstream release of the operating system image in ISO format.
In NS8, we don’t have such an artifact to track. Instead, minor “milestone” updates are project checkpoints where some goals are reached and further goals are added to the roadmap. Let’s see them here!
Enhancements
This is a brief list of new applications and improvements. Do not forget to read the release notes for further details.
New DNSMasq local DNS and DHCP server application.
Netdata application for an alternative monitoring stack.
Configurable log retention and other improvements in the System Logs page.
Relay rules and other long-awaited improvements to the email stack.
Piler mail archive application.
Release of Rocky Linux 9.4, which brings Podman release 4.9.
In-place Upgrade Stalled
Experiments to implement an in-place upgrade path led to the decision of not working further on it.
As written in the goals of the next milestone, we prefer to prioritize and concentrate our efforts on the improvement of the migration tool and the storage configuration. In particular, we feel that the existing NS7 storage configuration might not fit NS8 needs and could impact overall system performance.
Let’s continue the discussion in the open thread: In-place upgrade path.
Bug Fixes
During these months, more than 50 bug fixes were implemented. In particular:
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Fixed container random startup failure at system boot – GitHub issue #6916
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Fixed a deadlock in cluster scheduled update – GitHub issue #6854
See our GitHub issue tracker for the full list.
Roadmap
We are now heading towards milestone 8.2. For the next two months, we’ll focus on:
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Defining and documenting the Application Certification process.
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Improving the Software Center page to fit our Application Certification process.
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Enhancing the selection of backups in the restore procedure.
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Exploring and documenting the usage of LVM for bare metal installations.
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Improving the cluster join phase in the NS8 Migration Tool.
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Implementing TCP and UDP port reclaim when an application instance is removed.
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Exporting and archiving system logs to a remote server.
Follow the development on the project page.
Community Applications
There is great interest around the NS8 platform. Since its creation, the new App category in this forum has received more than 10 new posts per month and more than 30 NS8 applications! This is a great achievement for our project, but we want to do more with the definition of a certification path for NS8 applications.
Please Help Us
We would greatly appreciate any feedback to help us improve the stability and functionality of NethServer 8.
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Please open a new discussion in our community with the tag ns8.
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We invite you to contribute by translating NethServer into your language with Weblate.
We look forward to your feedback and contributions. Your input plays a vital role in shaping the future of NethServer.
Thank you for being part of our community!
The NethServer team
