Posts in 2013

As a second update to our IPFire infrastrucure, we enabled IPv6 for most of our services.

During the cold winter days, it is always time to hack on the IPFire infrastructure. So, here is the first part of a small series about what we did.

According to the "O2 URLCheck site":http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk/urlcheck.aspx, the domain www.ipfire.org is blocked by the "Parental Control" filter[1].

Christmas is approaching and as an early gift we would like to give to all those who are celebrating our brand new release IPFire 2.13 Core Update 74. It comes with a bunch of minor updates and fixes some minor bugs.

Hello guys,

just before all the Christmas celebration begins, we would like to release an other update with smaller bugfixes and security fixes. Please help us testing.

Today, I would like to point you to a new section on the IPFire forums, that is called "Job Exchange":http://forum.ipfire.org/index.php?board=78.0.

IPFire 2.13 - Core Update 73 comes with a bunch of smaller bugfixes and updates. The most important ones of these are updates of the squid web proxy server, openssh and the PHP Hypertext Processor. It is recommend to update as soon as possible.

A couple of days I asked you guys to help the "Free Software Foundation Europe":http://fsfe.org/ with writing a statement on "Routerzwang":http://planet.ipfire.org/post/fighting-for-net-neutrality-use-your-own-router to Bundesnetzagentur.

At first, our apologies that we let you wait this long for the testing announcement. The update has already been a while in the testing tree, but we didn't tell you what is hidden inside. This is because we, the developers, are currently very busy with a lot of (often private) stuff, so that we could use some help, please.

Our friends from the German "LinuxUser magazine":http://www.linux-user.de/ have written an article that is talking about IPFire and the new Tor add-on. You will learn how to set up IPFire from scratch and how to set up your web browser to use the Tor add-on . The article gives a great introduction on how to set up your network with IPFire and focuses on the different network zones and their designated purpose. The distribution is even included on the DVD that comes with the magazine.

p=. !https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BV_IjsFCAAAw-FH.jpg:large!

More and more Internet Service Providers (ISPs) deny their users to use the router/firewall software of their own choice. They require them to use the routers they send you when you order your Internet connection. This violates essential principles of net neutrality, which we think needs to be preserved, but there are also other reasons why you won't want to use this hardware and why you should oppose this development:

At the IPFire Developer Summit 2013, "Aaron Philpott":https://youtube.com/azzychill shot a quick interview with me about the IPFire project, that I would like to share with you.

We plan to drop the extra USB-installation images and replace it by a hybrid iso that can also boot and install from a usb thumbdrive. So please help testing this.

In the issue that is published on this Monday, September 9th 2013, there are two articles about Bufferbloat & CoDel which I wrote:

Today, IPFire 2.13 Core Update 72 and the "crowd-funded":http://wishlist.ipfire.org/wish/tor-protecting-online-anonymity Tor add-on have been released.

Hey,

the IPFire development team would like to warn all users of IPFire that run IPFire within a Xen hypervisor of version 3.x, that this will be soon deprecated and that you won't receive any updates for this setup any more.

We have updated the core72 updater in testing tree to fix some problems with OpenVPN and the new tor addon so all users that have already installed the update should reinstall it.

Hey guys,

thanks again to all the people who "donated to implement Tor":http://wishlist.ipfire.org/wish/tor-protecting-online-anonymity as an IPFire add-on. I am still very impressed how fast the goal was hit and I am very happy that the IPFire project has got such a great community.

IPFire 2.13 Core Update 71 was released last week, so it is time to start the testing period for the next one, which is IPFire 2.13 Core Update 72. It comes with minor bug fixes and fixes for denial-of-service attacks in strongswan and squid. Please help us testing.

This is the official release announcement for IPFire 2.13 - Core Update 71. This update comes with some new features and minor bug fixes.

p(alert alert-warning). Attention! This is a long post. Please read it, because it's important to you if you use ARM-based hardware. And you do. I'm sure. This post may get a bit ranty, but I think this is the only way to get the message out loud and clear. Despite that, it gives you insights about ARM development from a the IPFire project's point of view.

I have "already talked a lot":http://planet.ipfire.org/post/the-ipfire-arm-build-cluster about the "design" of the IPFire ARM build cluster on this blog. Design is a bit of an overstatement, because there is not that much to it. It's just a pile of ARM boards, that are crunching numbers - all day long.

Since last week, we are "collecting donations for implementing Tor - an anonymity proxy service":http://wishlist.ipfire.org/wish/tor-protecting-online-anonymity.

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!

Hello,

at this time of the year it is time to plan our next developer summit, where the IPFire developers will gather together and talk about all sorts of project-related topics. We are going to look into the future and plan releases, make roadmaps and more.

Today, the IPFire development team released the 70th Core Update for IPFire 2. This update comes with a new kernel and some minor enhancements.

Today, Arne has pushed the next Core Update into the testing tree. We would like to release this very soon-ish, as the changes are not very scary. This will become Core Update 70.

Today, the IPFire development team released the 69th Core Update for IPFire 2. This update comes with a new kernel and some minor enhancements.

Core Update 69 is available for "testing":http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/configuration/ipfire/pakfire/testing now. If you can, please install the update and give us feedback. The changes are as follows:

With IPFire 2.13 - Core Update 69 comes a new boot menu. Here is what it looks like:

Today, the IPFire development team released the 68th Core Update for IPFire 2. This update brings various bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Hello,

since the last weekend, the next Core Update with number 68 is to find in the testing tree. We already had a lot of positive feedback, but we still ask all of you who can to help us testing. The changes are as follows:

My friend Aaron made a short video which explains how to install IPFire. You should check it out because it is very informative and if you are installing IPFire for the first time, it has some great advice!

From our popular series "How to write a good anything", we just have learned how to write a good "commit message":http://planet.ipfire.org/post/how-to-write-a-good-commit-message, which was a good read for the developers. Now, we are going to learn how to write a good bug report.

Some user has reported problems with new 512MB Raspberry Pi boards with Hynix ram.

Last Monday, Joel Essler from the ClamAV project, "asked for help":http://blog.clamav.net/2013/04/you-want-to-become-clamav-mirror.html mirroring the ClamAV antivirus database. As we from the IPFire project have some bandwidth left and as we are shipping ClamAV with the distribution as well , we decided to set up a mirror.

Hey,

the IPFire developers are currently searching for people who would like to help testing a new features that is known as firewall 2013 or simply the new firewall interface for IPFire 2.13.

Today, the IPFire development team released the 67th Core Update for IPFire 2. This update comes within the usual 4-week schedule and brings various bug fixes.

Hello guys,

since yesterday, a preview version of Core Update 67 may be found in the "testing tree":http://wiki.ipfire.org/en/configuration/ipfire/pakfire/testing.

The development team of IPFire grows bigger and bigger. We are very happy with that, but there is always a downside: How to manage a big team? How can we see what everyone is up to? How can we make working with each other more easy?

After releasing IPFire 2.13 with a new kernel 3.2.38 it is time to rebuild the hardware list. I have started this with the most important network-hcl. Now i need your help! Please add not listed cards.

Something that bothers me the most these days is, that I have a massive amount of private email conversations. Most of them are about bugs or development in general. For me, this is a disturbing trend because doing my daily work gets even harder.

Dear Community,

Today is the day on which we officially release IPFire 2.13. We are very proud to have a brand new milestone release with a lot of exciting, new features. We'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to the project and if you would like to help us out as well, please consider making a "donation":http://www.ipfire.org/donate.

Since a weeks, there is an unusual wish on the "wishlist":http://wishlist.ipfire.org with the title "Supporting harddisks bigger than 2TB":http://wishlist.ipfire.org/wish/supporting-harddisks-bigger-than-2tb.

Hello,

today, we are releasing a second release candidate of IPFire 2.13. We have updated to the latest release of the 3.2 Linux kernel and we also updated openssl, which was affected by multiple security problems called "Lucky Thirteen".

In this series, we have been talking about "various":http://planet.ipfire.org/post/ipfire-2-13-beta-1-part-1-arm "new":http://planet.ipfire.org/post/ipfire-2-13-beta-1-part-2-strongswan-5-ipsec-vpn "features":http://planet.ipfire.org/post/ipfire-2-13-beta-2-part-3-wireless-lan and "functionality":http://planet.ipfire.org/post/ipfire-2-13-beta-2-part-4-bufferbloat, but what has changed the most in IPFire 2.13 is the base of the system. That means, the kernel, essential system libraries like glibc and zlib and many more things. I would even like to say that we have replaced all of the code that runs in your system 99% of the time.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

we are proud to release the first release candidate of IPFire 2.13 - the reincarnation of the IPFire firewall distribution.

Once again, here is a little candy for our users who speak German. There is a 5 page long article about IPFire in the current issue of Linux User magazine Germany. The focus of this magazine this time is how to secure your LAN.

I think it is very hard to explain what bufferbloat is to people, who are not network engineers or have only little experience in these things. But I will try it anyway, because it will change your life and how you experience the Internet.

Recently, the German "Bundesnetzagentur":http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de (Federal Network Agency) gave out a paper which basically allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Germany not to disclose the user credentials to their customers ("[1]":http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Breitbandanbieter-duerfen-Zugangsdaten-geheim-halten-1781037.html and "[2]":http://www.heise.de/netze/meldung/Routerhersteller-kritisiert-Bundesnetzagentur-1789522.html). With that comes, that the customers have to use the router that is provided by the ISP.

Today, we are releasing the second beta version of IPFire 2.13.

Yesterday, I copied the main IPFire repositories to GitHub.

The second feature, we would like to highlight is "strongswan 5":http://www.strongswan.org/, which will finally ship with IPFire 2.13.

Today, we officially release the first beta version of IPFire 2.13.