IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 183 is available for testing

by Michael Tremer, January 23, Updated February 2

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It is time for testing the next version of IPFire - and it is going to be a big one: A new major version - IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 183. There is an update of the design of the web user interface, a fresh kernel based on Linux 6.6, a lot of package updates and improvements and bug fixes throughout the entire system.

Our Fresh Look

The new look of IPFire is not only coming to our brand new website - it is also coming to IPFire itself. Refreshed with new colors, a fresh font, and many smaller touches to make the web user interface, making IPFire easy to use and allows finding the options that you need at the first glance. On top of this, some smaller usability improvements have been implemented across the web user interface.

A New Kernel

IPFire is now based on Linux 6.6.15. Since the last rebase from 6.1, a lot of new features have arrived in Linux which are now available on IPFire, too. The kernel developers have been very busy improving performance throughout the entire kernel.

Misc.

  • OpenSSL, the central library for cryptography in user space in IPFire, has been updated to version 3.2.1. This update enforces that RSA keys are at least 2048 bits long, which might still be in use on very old installations. This update will re-generate a new set of RSA keys on those systems. It is very unlikely that this key will ever be used as the IPFire web user interface prefers using elliptic curve cryptography with ECDSA.
  • A heap buffer overflow in the syslog function of glibc has been patched (CVE-2023-6246, CVE-2023-6779, CVE-2023-6780).
  • GRUB, our bootloader, has been updated to version 2.12. There have been various issues being reported with some hardware compatibility and consequently the update has been rolled back in the last update. We are confident that the improvements that have been made address all of these reported problems.
  • The timezone database has been updated to version 2023d
  • Updated packages: BIND 9.16.45, cpio 2.14, fontconfig 2.15.0, GnuTLS 3.8.2, iptables 1.8.10, iputils 20231222, kmod 31, libgcrypt 1.10.3, libnl-3 3.9.0, libseccomp 2.5.5, libssh 0.10.6, libxml2 2.12.3, lmdb 0.9.31, lsof 4.99.3, meson 1.3.1, OpenSSH 9.6p1, p11-kit 0.25.3, qpdf 11.7.0, strongSwan 5.9.13, sudo 1.9.15p5

Add-Ons

  • Add mympd 13.0.6: a bootstap based webgui to control mpd
  • Updated packages: cifs-utils 7.0, Git 2.43.0, haproxy 2.8.5, htop 3.3.0, iperf3 3.16, libplist 2.3.0, nfs 4.6.4, nqptp 1.2.4, Postfix 3.8.4, Samba 4.19.3, shairport-sync 4.3.2, Tor 0.4.8.10
  • Deprecation of the icinga package: The version that is being shipped is based on the 1.x branch which has reached its EOL in 2018. As there are not enough users to make an upgrade to Icinga 2.x worthwhile, we are now deprecating this package and planning a removal with Core Update 185.

Please help us testing this important new release of IPFire, so that we can release the best version of IPFire that there has ever been. If you find any bugs, please report them to the developers - and if you like their work, please support them with a donation!

Special Note for testers.

If you have installed core183 early in testing please reinstall core 183 by setting /opt/pakfire/db/core/mine back to 182 and run pakfire upgrade.
You can determine an outdated version on the kernel version lower than 6.6.15