BlueOnyx 5210R/5211R: YUM updates and new installation images

Today we released the accumulation of two months of YUM updates for BlueOnyx.

This is a rather massive set of updates that introduces a lot of changes, fixes and modifications. BlueOnyx 5211R received the most of these, but some feature updates and fixes were also released for BlueOnyx 5210R. Let us break those down:

BlueOnyx 5211R only:

The network handling of BlueOnyx 5211R has been overhauled substantially. It now supports all types of network interface names and doesn't specifically require that the primary network interface is named "eth0".

Additionally it will no longer create Virtual Network Interfaces (eth0:X) for each additional IP address that is used by Virtual Sites. Instead all IP addresses (IPv4 and IPv6) are bound directly to the primary network interface.

The network configuration script /root/network_settings.sh as well as the GUI pages for base-network and base-wizard have been extended to allow to configure the network in one of three ways:

You can now choose between those three options. The first option is the default one and presents the previous behavior. The second option (Bridged br0 network) will create a br0 bridge and will set up the physical primary network interface as slave for said bridge. This option is only really relevant for some specialized hosting purposes. The final option is "DHCP" and allows you to configure your BlueOnyx to auto-configure its network settings from a DHCP server. If this option is chosen, then all Vsites on the server will change their IP address to the single IPv4 and/or IPv6 IP address obtained via DHCP. This option should only be used if static IP addresses are not supported in the environment where you want to run your BlueOnyx (such as certain clouds).

The GUI pages for the setup wizard as well as "Network Settings" / "TCP/IP" have been updated accordingly as well:

The pulldown "IP Configuration Method" allows to choose between "Manual" (i.e.: static IP address assignment) and DHCP. Likewise you can see the new slider for "Bridged Network", which allows you to reconfigure your BlueOnyx 5211R to use either it's primary network interface in the traditional way or as a br0 with the primary interface being the slave of that setup.

Changes for BlueOnyx 5211R and 5210R:

The following changes are present in both BlueOnyx 5211R and 5210R:

Disk Quota: Optional!

Having filesystem disk quota for Groups and Users for /home (and/or /) is now optional. The BlueOnyx ISO image and the manual install methods will still try to configure your installed BlueOnyx to use disk quota if possible. But if the underlying file system doesn't support it (like in some clouds), then BlueOnyx can make do without. It then uses alternate means to determine Vsite and User disk usage as well as alternate methods of enforcing configured disk quota limits.

If a User or Vsites is over-quota, then the following mechanisms will kick in:

Email: The MTA config files will be reconfigured to bounce messages to over-quota Vsites and/or Users back to the sender with the distinct error message that the user is over-quota.

FTP: The FTP service of over-quota Vsites and/or Users will be modified so that they can no longer upload or create files by FTP. Deletion of files and folders is still possible, though.

PHP: The PHP settings of Vsites that are over-quota will be modified so that PHP is no longer able to create new files.

These limitations will automatically be removed once the Vsite or User are again back within their allowed quota allocation.

GUI Activity Reporter:

Since our last major Sauce::Service overhaul the GUI would finish saving changes and allow you to navigate to other things while the actual changes were still being performed in the background. This sometimes lead to uncertainty if a change was actually being completed successfully or when it would have finished propagating. To make that more transparent we added a "spinner" at the top right of the GUI:

This element will appear when the GUI is performing background tasks such as restarting services. It will show which services are currently pending a restart. Once it has finished all scheduled tasks the element will go into hiding again.

Further changes and improvements:

There are too many to list. Changes were made to the port assignments of PHP-FPM pools to better prevent usage of ports that are already in usage. The Server Administrator management page got several fixes for ACL assignments. The Vsite- and User-management pages got minor fixes and the "Preview Vsite" feature (broken since long) has been disabled until a proper fix can be worked out. Session handling and error reporting got fixes in several places, but we can scratch that up as bugfixes and minor general improvements.

Updated Installation Images:

Updated ISO images (as well as virtual disk images) for BlueOnyx 5211R and 5210R have been released today as well and can be found on our download page.

Additionally: For the first time we released Incus images for BlueOnyx 5211R and 5210R. Both "regular" as well as "cloud" images. The instructions on how to make use of them is mentioned at the bottom of our download page.

In closing:

We hope you enjoy the new updates and just in case you run into any issues with these YUM updates, then please file a Support Request via the GUI or reach out to us via the usual communication channels such as Email or the BlueOnyx mailing list.