IPFire 2.13 - Core Update 71 in testing

by Michael Tremer, July 19, 2013

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Hello,

Arne already pushed the next Core Update into the testing tree. It has got the number 71 and is scheduled to be released in approximately two weeks. As the changes are very huge, please help us testing!

The update comes with a lot of new features. Some of them have been funded on our crowdfunding platform.

Wireless Client on RED

It is now possible to assign a wireless adapter as the RED interface. A GUI has been written where you can configure wireless access points, to which the IPFire system will connect when in reach.

You will be able to assign backup access points, to which IPFire will switch when the first one is down or out of reach. You can prioritize them, so that you can connect to the best one when ever that is possible. All common encryption technologies are supported.

This was funded on the IPFire wishlist.

DNS forwarding GUI

A new GUI has been written on which you are able to define certain name servers for zones. So, you can use your internal name server for internal name resolution instead of the public one on the Internet.

Performance improvement of squidclamav

Scanning all the HTTP traffic that is going through the proxy is very costly and makes browsing slow. In this update, we put the squidclamav process “in front of the proxy”. Therefore it trusts the cache and won’t scan data that’s coming from the cache twice which results in a huge performance increase. You now don’t even reckon that your traffic is scanned for viruses.

snort 2.9.5

The Intrusion Detection System (IDS) snort has been updated to version 2.9.5. Updating the official ruleset from sourcefire is now possible, again.

The VRT community rules package which was not available for a long time has been re-added to the list of rule sources again.

Smaller changes

  • The USB modeswitch database has been updated. This software will configure UMTS/LTE/3G USB adapters that they can be used as modems. Now, more of this hardware is supported.
  • Allow squid, the Web proxy service, to open more files and connections at once (more open file descriptors). This will result in a higher performance and better stability under high loads.
  • The whois tool for whois lookups has been replaced by GNU jwhois. It is much more flexible and does not have an outdated database like the old one.
  • squidclamav freezing when accessing sites that are also available over IPv6 has been fixed.
  • MTU negotiation on PPPoE: The default MTU for DSL lines has been 1492 which is not working on all DSL lines. If not configured correctly, your DSL connection won’t be able to transport big packets. We now allow to leave that field empty so IPFire will try to negotiate an appropriate MTU on itself.

Add-ons

  • VDR 2.0 has been pushed to the stable tree.

Documentation and Translations needed

All those new features that have been developed recently still lack documentation. We, the people who are working on the project try our best, but of course we are limited in man power and time as well.

So, we would like to get it out to you, that we always appreciate all people who want to join the documentation team or translation teams.

Writing documentation on the wiki is a community effort as is translations. We have added many features which need to be translated and documented, so that people who are new to IPFire can easily use them. Please help us with that.