IPFire 2.19 - Core Update 106 is available for testing

by Michael Tremer, October 21, 2016

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Finally, the next Core Update with number 106 is available for testing. It comes with a number of exciting new features, many bug fixes and a few security improvements. Please help us testing!

Change of the DNS Proxy

IPFire used dnsmasq as DNS proxy before which is now replaced by unbound. The latter is in contrast to the former software that is specifically designed as an DNS forwarding proxy or DNS recursor and implemented DNSSEC from early on.

Because of our decision to enable DNSSEC by default and various problems in dnsmasq we have been toying with the idea of replacing it for a very long time. Unfortunately development resources are tight and because of this being a substantial part of the system and hooked into many other things, this was a very time-consuming project.

Finally, this new solution should now bring various advantages:

Performance

unbound is multi-threaded and IPFire will start one thread per CPU core that is available. That will allow execution of multiple queries in parallel which should increase responsiveness and throughput.

The cache size is adjusted based on memory available on the system. Bigger systems will have a significantly bigger DNS cache which will speed up browsing especially in larger environments like universities with a large number of clients.

Better DNSSEC reliability

DNSSEC is enabled by default (as it was before). However, unbound does not rely on the upstream servers being validating resolvers, too. This will bring DNSSEC to many more users. DNS servers are now tested before being passed on for use and any malfunctioning DNS servers won’t be used. Status of this can be seen on the user web interface.

Please see this list of various DNS services on the Internet for more details.

If none of the DNS servers configured or received from the provider can be used, unbound will fall back to full recursor mode.

With the next key rollover of the DNS root zone, IPFire will automatically download and validate the new key according to RFC5011.

Enhanced Features

DHCP leases will be published into the local DNS zone as before. Static leases are imported as well which is a new feature. Everything IP address will resolve to its hostname by publishing PTR records.

Misc

  • Passwords are now saved with a stronger hash (SHA512) which was MD5 before. Please change the root password using the setup tools to store your passwords with the improved hash.
  • Firewall: An incorrect validation of destination IP addresses for rules that use Destination NAT caused that some valid addresses were not accepted. This is fixed now.
  • PPP connections no longer require a password being set (some providers require these being empty)
  • The NTP client now waits correctly for WiFi connections being established before continuing to boot
  • The samba add-on enables SMBv2 by default
  • IPFire now ships the firmware for MediaTek 7601 series devices
  • Various old software components that are not used any more are cleaned up from the systems
  • The iptables page on the web user interface has been improved to be more readable

Updated Packages

This update installs a large number of updated packages:

  • openssl 1.0.2j which fixes some implementation errors and DoS introduced in the 1.0.2i update
  • strongswan has been updated to version 5.5.0
  • attr 2.4.47, dejagnu 1.6, diffutils 3.5, expat 2.2.0, file 5.28, flex 2.6.1, gettext 0.19.8.1, gnupg 1.4.21, iproute2 4.7.0, ipset 6.29, libassuan 2.4.3, libgcrypt 1.7.3, libidn 1.33, libgpg-error 1.24, libnetfilter_conntrack 1.0.6, libmnl 1.0, make 4.2.1, smartmontools 6.5, squid 3.5.21, usb_modeswitch 2.4.0, usb_modeswitch_data 20160803

Add-ons

  • The new Guardian 2.0 add-on’s user interface received some cosmetic changes

Updated Packages

  • asterisk 11.23.1
  • krb 1.14.4
  • Midnight Commander 4.8.18
  • monit 5.19.0
  • nano 2.6.3
  • transmission 2.92

As always, we would like to ask all users to participate in testing which will highly improve the quality of this update.

Please report any bugs to our bug tracker and provide any feedback on our development mailing list.