Release 2013-03-04#

Packages#

This release represents a major OS upgrade. It brings in a lot of good new stuff. Of the roughly 1000 packages we provide in our managed environment, web developers may find the following updates interesting:

  • amavisd-new-2.7.2

  • apache-2.2.23

  • automake-1.11.6

  • awstats-7.1

  • bundler-1.0.22

  • clamav-0.97.5

  • couchdb-1.2.0

  • curl-7.26.0

  • dovecot-2.1.9

  • emacs-24.2

  • erlang-15.2

  • gawk-4.0.1

  • gcc-4.5.4

  • gd-2.0.35

  • gdb-7.3.1

  • geos-3.3.5

  • ghostscript-gpl-9.05

  • git-1.7.8.6

  • glibc-2.15

  • gnutls-2.12.20

  • graphviz-2.26.3

  • icedtea-bin-6.1.11.5

  • imagemagick-6.7.8.7

  • libpcre-8.30

  • libreoffice-3.6.3.2

  • libxml2-2.8.0

  • libxslt-1.1.27

  • llvm-3.1

  • memcached-1.4.5

  • mercurial-2.1.1

  • mysql-5.1.66

  • nginx-1.2.5

  • nodejs-0.9.3

  • openldap-2.4.30

  • openoffice-bin-3.4.1

  • openssh-5.9_p1

  • php-5.4.6

  • poppler-0.20.4

  • postfix-2.9.4

  • postgis-2.0.0

  • postgresql-server-9.0.10

  • python-2.6.8

  • python-2.7.3

  • python-3.1.5

  • python-3.2.3

  • redis-2.4.10

  • ruby-1.9.3_p194

  • spamassassin-3.3.2

  • sqlite-3.7.14.1

  • strace-4.7

  • subversion-1.6.17

  • tar-1.26

  • v8-3.14.5.1

  • varnish-3.0.2

  • vim-7.3.409

  • webalizer-2.21.02

  • zsh-4.3.17

The updates should not break existing applications. However, some Python modules with compiled C extensions may need to be recompiled, for example PIL and lxml.

Configuration#

Apart from reflecting the updated packages’ configuration, we reworked quite a bit of the system management code. Most of these changes are not directly visible to users.

  • Reduce VM host reboot times by parallelizing VM shutdowns.

  • Relax IPMI watchdog timeout on VM hosts to avoid unnecessary reboots.

A high-level description of changes users may need to consider in their application deployments can be found in our blog post. There is also a detailed description of our roll-out techniques available.