UbuntuServer

New Features in Ubuntu Server

Ubuntu 12.10 ships the latest Openstack release, codenamed Folsom, improvements to MAAS and the latest Argonaut LTS release of Ceph, a highly scalable distributed object storage solution.

These technologies further position Ubuntu Server as the best OS for scale-out computing. Quality also had a strong focus with continuous integration, deployment and testing of upstream OpenStack commits and automated testing of all cloud images on Amazon EC2 from 12.04 forward.

OpenStack

  • Ubuntu 12.10 includes the Folsom release of Openstack. Openstack projects supported in 12.10 include: Nova, Glance, Swift, Keystone, Horizon, Cinder and Quantum.

  • Openstack components are deployable via Juju Charms.

  • Openstack Folsom is also available for Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS in the Ubuntu Cloud Archive.

  • ARM support added.

MAAS

  • Metal as a Service makes it easy to set up the hardware on which to deploy any service that needs to scale up and down dynamically.

    • MAAS now supports ARM. This enables Juju use in ARM bare metal deployments.
    • MAAS has undergone significant re-factoring for improved scalability. The reliance on Cobbler has been removed.
    • MAAS has direct support for remote server management using IPMI.
    • MAAS now supports SSL both for the Web UI and any API calls.
    • MAAS allows you to automatically assign tags based on hardware information.
    • MAAS tags can be used as constraints for juju deployment of services.
    • MAAS can now handle DHCP configuration centrally for multiple cluster controllers.

Juju

  • Juju is now enabled in ARM bare metal deployments using MAAS.
  • The MAAS provider supports the standard set of constraints (arch, mem, cpu). You can also use tags as constraint criteria.
  • The Juju local provider now uses the official Ubuntu Cloud Images, providing a more consistent experience with images used in public clouds such as Amazon EC2.

  • Charm Store policy, and Charm Store release policy defined as well as charm maintainers identified

  • OpenStack provider updates for Folsom compatibility

  • Serializer performance enhancements (when libyaml is present)
  • Format: 2 support for charms (which eliminates usage of python-only formatting in favor of json)

Java

  • Ubuntu 12.10 provides Apache Tomcat 7 as the default, supported version of Tomcat. Existing installations of tomcat6 will continue to function; its recommended that users upgrade to the tomcat7 package as soon as possible.

  • Apache Solr has been update to the latest 3.6.1 release. Apache Solr provides a horizontally scalable indexing and search platform based on Apache Lucene.

  • Jenkins has been updated to version 1.466.2, the latest LTS release from the Jenkins project.

Virtualisation

  • KVM has been update to version 1.2.0.

  • LXC has been updated to version 0.8.0, improvements include:

    • Migration of containers from OpenVZ to LXC has been eased with the addition of hooks at various point in a container's lifetime.
    • Customization of container security profiles has been eased by a reorganization of the apparmor profiles.
    • Nesting of containers has been made easier with custom apparmor profiles.
    • Improved container security with support for seccomp2 profiles and simple ecryptfs-backed containers.
    • Improved container automation with a new Python LXC API.

  • Xen has been updated to version 4.1.3.

  • Libvirt has been updated to version 0.9.13, which includes support for Ceph RBD volume snapshots.
  • Open vSwitch has been updated to version 1.4.3.

Storage

  • Ceph has been updated 0.48.2, the latest Argonaut LTS release.

    • Ceph provides a highly scalable distributed object storage technology and has been tested with XFS and ext4 during this development cycle.

    • Packages are now provided for the Ceph RADOS Gateway, a S3 and Swift compatible RESTful object storage solution backed by Ceph RADOS.

    • gperftools support on x86 architectures for improved memory allocation performance.
    • Automated deployment using Juju Charms.

Networking

  • Ubuntu 12.10 features the Floodlight OpenFlow network controller. Floodlight can be used with Openstack Quantum to provide full network control in cloud deployments.

ARM Support

  • Calxeda's EnergyCore ECX-1000 ("highbank") joins Marvell's ARMADA XP in the lineup of supported server-grade ARM SoCs on Ubuntu Server. Support has also been back-ported to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Configuration Management

  • Chef 10.12.0 has been re-introduced to Ubuntu in-conjunction with OpsCode.

  • Puppet has been updated to version 2.7.18.

Cloud Images

  • Query2, a new meta-data service for describing the Ubuntu Cloud Images and their availability, has been made available for testing and comment. This new meta-data service provides a verbose, machine-readable JSON formatted file that exhaustively describes the currently available Ubuntu Cloud Images hosted on cloud-images.ubuntu.com and official Ubuntu images in public clouds (currently limited to Amazon EC2). The "Query2" data format is open for comment, and as such may change.

  • Additional Amazon AWS tools Autoscaling, Cloudwatch, and ElastiCache now available.

  • cloud-init support for config drive v2 added.
  • the default user 'ubuntu' is no longer pre-baked into the images, but is now created by cloud-init. Further, using cloud-init cloud-config, users can be created at launch time, including the option of user-less instances.

Other

  • A new package 'overlayroot' added as part of cloud-initramfs-tools allows easy utilization overlayfs for the root filesystem. This allows you to boot with changes made to filesystems to be diverted to another filesystem. The second filesystem can be encrypted, a tmpfs, or another disk. This is useful as a cloud-guest and is used by MAAS's ephemeral environment.
  • Due to a binary naming issue between the node and nodejs packages, nodejs now ships with its binary installed to /usr/bin/nodejs. Users of nodejs applications sourced from outside of the Ubuntu distribution should either use the nodejs-legacy package (which continues to provide /usr/bin/node) or migrate their applications to use the /usr/bin/nodejs interpreter.

Common Infrastructure

Secure Boot

Ubuntu 12.10 is the first Ubuntu release to support UEFI Secure Boot, a standard for controlling what software can be run on a computer. Supporting Secure Boot, a part of the Windows 8 certification requirements for client systems, ensures that Ubuntu will continue to provide an "it just works" experience on new hardware.

Due to time pressures, only some flavors released with 12.10 will install and boot on Secure Boot hardware:

  • Ubuntu desktop
  • Ubuntu server
  • Edubuntu

We expect to enable all other flavors in 13.04.

Migration-support deprecated

The tool responsible for migrating user accounts from other operating systems to Ubuntu (migration-assistant) has been removed from the installer.

Linux kernel 3.5.5

The Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal release includes the 3.5.0-17.28 Ubuntu Linux kernel which was based on the v3.5.5 upstream Linux kernel. This is an update from the 3.2.0-23.36 Ubuntu Linux kernel which shipped in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin and was based on the v3.2 upstream Linux kernel. Other notable changes with the Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal kernel include:

  • Transitioning of the i386 generic-pae flavor to become the generic flavor offering
  • Collapsing of the virtual flavor back into the generic flavor
  • Homogenizing the entire linux-meta package
  • Arrival of a new highbank arm server kernel flavor
  • Changing of the default scheduler from cfq to deadline
  • Packaging updates for signed kernels

Python 3.2

The Ubuntu desktop has begun migrating from Python 2 to Python 3. Most Python applications included in the desktop and their dependent libraries have been ported to Python 3. In most cases, Python 3 versions of libraries are available alongside their Python 2 counterparts. Ported applications will only run with Python 3. Work will continue in Ubuntu 13.04.

If you have your own programs based on Python 2, fear not! Python 2 will continue to be available (as the python package) for the foreseeable future. However, to best support future versions of Ubuntu you should consider porting your code to Python 3. Python/3 has some advice and resources on this.

GNU Toolchain

Ubuntu 12.10 is distributed with an updated default toolchain that includes: GCC 4.7.2 (was GCC 4.6 in 12.04 LTS), a binutils snapshot from the 2.23 branch (was 2.22 in 12.04 LTS), eglibc 2.15, and gdb 7.5.

Further information can be found upstream (GCC-4.7, gdb).

Java Toolchain

Ubuntu 12.10 ships OpenJDK7 as the default Java implementation. This brings improved performance, new features and better compatibility with other Java 7 implementations.

Use of the OpenJDK6 is now deprecated and the openjdk-6-* packages in universe for Ubuntu 12.10 will not be provided in future releases of Ubuntu.

Installation

Overview

Preparing your computer for Ubuntu is now much simpler, with a wider range of disk setup options. Each of these are detailed at length to provide you with a clear understanding of the actions that will take place with your selection.

Download

Ubuntu Server 12.10 images can be downloaded from a location near you:

The images can also be found at:

System Requirements

  • Your server should have a recommend minimum 256 MB of RAM and 1 GB of disk space.
  • The i386 image has a recommended maximum of 16GB of RAM, and a maximum of 8 CPU cores are exposed.

Netboot ARM Server Images

The ARM Netboot images allow you to bootstrap Ubuntu Server on supported hardware. There are three supported images available, each for a different type of computer:

  • Calxeda ECX-1000 Highbank (Hard-Float) netboot server image
  • Marvell Armada-XP (Hard-Float) netboot server image
  • Texas Instruments OMAP4 (Hard-Float) netboot server image

Detailed installations instructions for the 3 above platforms can be found here.

Upgrade

From 12.04 to 12.10

To upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 on a server system, follow the steps listed below:

  1. Install the update-manager-core package (if it is not already installed).

  2. Update /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades to specify to allow upgrades to a 'norma' release instead of just a new 'lts' release.

  3. Run sudo do-release-upgrade to launch the upgrade tool.

  4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Note that the server upgrade is now more robust and will utilize GNU screen and automatically re-attach in case of dropped connection problems, for example.

From other release

Users of other Ubuntu releases need to upgrade first to 12.04, and then to 12.10.

For further information on upgrading to 12.10, please see the Quantal upgrade instructions.

Known Issues

OpenStack

  • The configuration format used by nova.conf has migrated from gflags (--option=value) to .ini (option=value) syntax. Packaging will use Nova utilities to convert existing config files to the new format, configuration management users take note.

  • Deployments that host nova-network on the same node as nova-compute will encounter issues preventing instances from obtaining IPs using DHCP. This is caused by vhost_net enablement by default on newer kernels and can be worked around by adding a single iptables rule. (1029430)

  • The default web root for the Horizon dashboard has moved from / to /horizon. (1020313)

  • The default install of Openstack should be used on a protected network, as many components use http (non-SSL) as a transport, and therefore subject to security concerns. (978963)

Installation

  • A bug may cause a failure in memtest test #7. See this memtest86+ bug

  • Booting the Ubuntu installer in UEFI mode from a USB disk on certain Samsung laptops (530U3C, NP700Z5C) may trigger a firmware bug that renders the machine unbootable. Users are advised to use caution when installing on Samsung laptops and ensure that they are configured for legacy BIOS mode, not UEFI mode. (1040557)

  • The consolidation of desktop installation media into a single image means that some installation options that were previously available on the alternate CD have no direct replacement on the desktop image.
    • Users who were installing using the alternate CD to install with LVM or full-disk encryption can now use the desktop image for this.
    • To install LTSP, please install using the Ubuntu Server 12.10 image, then add ltsp after installation. You can also continue to install with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS media and upgrade to 12.10 from there.
    • There are several options for installing using software RAID. You can:

  • The desktop image installer cannot unlock existing encrypted (LUKS) volumes. If you need to make use of existing encrypted volumes during partitioning, then use the "Try Ubuntu without installing" boot option to start a live session, open the encrypted volumes (for example, by clicking on their icons in the Unity launcher), enter your password when prompted to unlock them, close them again, and run ubiquity to start the installer. (1066480)

  • ARM OMAP4 machines will sometimes boot to a black screen during installation. It's likely that the system has booted fine, but you will need to switch to another tty then back to tty7 (Ctrl+Alt+F1 and then Alt+F7) to get graphics. (1065902)

  • On ARM Panda boards with no external storage attached, the installer interface will be confusing and installation is likely to fail. We strongly recommend attaching an external hard disk when installing on Panda boards. (1053030)

  • On a mac with an external display can not run in framebuffer mode error occurs on the 2nd reboot onwards. (1066883)

Kernel

  • Haswell processor graphics is not fully supported. (1066975)

  • On some systems, when opening lid, there is a kerneloops with a suspend/resume failure message seen. (1054732)

  • On certain ASUS machines with AMD graphic chips, a WMI event and ACPI interrupt are sent at the same time when hitting the hotkey to change display mode, resulting in the display mode being changed twice in succession. Users can work around this using the Displays panel in System Settings for changing display modes. (1052278)

  • On ASUS N53SN laptops, the kernel does not boot without noefi on commandline. (1053897)

Networking

  • In order to improve compatibility with other local nameserver packages, NetworkManager now assigns IP address 127.0.1.1 to the local nameserver process that it controls instead of 127.0.0.1. If the system's /etc/resolv.conf is absent or is a static file instead of the symbolic link to ../run/resolvconf/resolv.conf installed by default then this static file will have to be updated by the administrator in order to continue using the NetworkManager-controlled nameserver.

Libvirt

  • Windows vms which previously worked with 'vga' video now need 'cirrus' video.

Toolchain

  • Python 2.7.3 includes a fix for a security vulnerability affecting Python's dict and set implementations. Carefully crafted, untrusted input could lead to extremely long computation times and denials of service. Although disabled by default, vulnerable applications such as CGI scripts can explicitly enable "hash randomization" to prevent this exploit. Due to implementation details of this fix, virtualenvs created with older 2.7.x releases may not work with 2.7.3. Specifically, the os module may not appear to have a urandom function. This problem can be solved by recreating the broken virtualenvs with the newer Python 2.7.3 version. See http://bugs.python.org/issue13703 for full details. (954595)

MAAS

  • If you are using juju to deploy to an ARM-based MAAS cluster, you need to use the --constraints arch=arm option to the bootstrap command. Juju by default will request an amd64 node which wouldn't be available in this case.

  • The following issues will be fixed in a zero-day stable release update:

    • With some hardware, MAAS incorrectly registers the memory attributes of nodes during commissioning. The result of this is that when deploying services using juju with a memory constraint, MAAS will not be able to provide a suitable node. (1064638)

    • The MAAS dns package (maas-dns) currently changes the default bind rndc key which breaks the standard bind9 init scripts. (1064638)

    • MAAS DNS configuration is invalid after a node gets enlisted if a custom node name is not provided. (1066958)

    • The MAAS region worker by default connects to the wrong queue. This will cause a warning message about "The region controller does not know whether any boot images have been imported yet..." to not disappear in the MAAS Web Interface. If MAAS also controls DNS, this will not work either. Please see 1067929 for a workaround.

Other

  • Users who are using bonded network interfaces may experience a race condition on upgrade which can stop the bonded interface coming up on boot. This may cause problems for those performing remote upgrades. (974218)

  • Users who install Ubuntu Server on a Panda using encrypted partitions will not be able to use usb-attached keyboards to enter the password for unlocking the disk on boot. The password can be entered by enabling serial console and entering it from there. (1066376)

Support Terms

  • 18 months.

QuantalQuetzal/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuServer (last edited 2012-11-13 18:52:26 by dynamic-ip-adsl-190)