NethServer project milestone 8.1

After four months from the stable release announcement, it’s time for a brief recap of goals achieved so far.

:thinking: 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!

:muscle: 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.

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:no_good_woman: 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.

:lady_beetle: Bug Fixes

During these months, more than 50 bug fixes were implemented. In particular:

See our GitHub issue tracker for the full list.

:compass: Roadmap

We are now heading towards milestone 8.2. For the next two months, we’ll focus on:

  • Defining and documenting the Application Certification process.

  • Improving the Software Center page to fit our Application Certification process.

  • Enhancing the selection of backups in the restore procedure.

  • Exploring and documenting the usage of LVM for bare metal installations.

  • Improving the cluster join phase in the NS8 Migration Tool.

  • Implementing TCP and UDP port reclaim when an application instance is removed.

  • Exporting and archiving system logs to a remote server.

Follow the development on the project page.

:earth_africa: 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.

:call_me_hand: Please Help Us

We would greatly appreciate any feedback to help us improve the stability and functionality of NethServer 8.

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

10 Likes

Thank you very much!

1 Like

Thank you all in the development and operations team for making things move,
you guys are doing the Lords work, and have put a tremendous Effort in what youre doing, and thank you for this.

I am curious, this time around we have not received the next Milestones Expected in the next Version, I Assumed it would be a Trend, release and Announce Version 8.1, Announce version 8.2 Features/Milestone Expections

Top on MY list would be>

  • Improvement on Software Center, sure needs lots of work
  • Expose Ldap Outside the Cluster
  • Ldap on Mattermost
  • Upgrading Nextcloud to a Newer Version. and Potentially, the Improvement in the Migration tool to Fix migration to a Specific Version, That way, we at NS8 can still continue to Enjoy the latest and Greatest…
  • DNS Challenge in UI, (i need it for Future matrix implementation)
  • Limited CLuster Admin Authorization
  • System RE-Branding(I know its an Enterpirse Fature, and would be happy to Pay)

These are All Listed on the Schedule, So should be within Reach, other users would probably have their own requirements, but i believe alot would concur with me in some of the above

Goals of the next 8.2 milestone are listed in the Roadmap section

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Thank you for the great work, both the Nethserver team as well as the community for providing so many additional apps. NS8 is becoming more and more attractive :slight_smile:
What I would wish for in future releases is:

  • proper support for NFS as data store (e.g. nextcloud data directory, mail store, …) ideally with UI, as discussed e.g. here: Mount NFS share for NextCloud data - #7 by PerpetuumMobile
  • better support of Active Directory, e.g. management of DNS, mgmt. of OUs, moving users/groups/computers into OUs, taking over DC role for existing AD, exposing a second DC to outside the cluster, …
4 Likes

Yes Storage is mportant, and sure enough seems the standard, seems not to fit the bill.

1 Like

We would also like to see better support for NFS. I have an upcoming project, a small office, only Linux clients (mostly laptops) and Linux based servers. Nethserver seems like the perfect solution for integrating a simple directory service with Nextcloud, but it feels a little pointless using an (Samba) AD, when we could make a nice environment(LDAP, Kerberos, NTP and NFS) optimized for Linux devices.
I have nothing against Samba, but it just seems a little overkill and bloated, if you only have Linux devices.

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