Release Notes for CernVM-FS 2.7.5

CernVM-FS 2.7.5 is a patch release. It contains several bugfixes for the client.

As with previous releases, upgrading clients should be seamless just by installing the new package from the repository. As usual, we recommend to update only a few worker nodes first and gradually ramp up once the new version proves to work correctly. Please take special care when upgrading a cvmfs client in NFS mode.

Stratum 0 and stratum 1 servers do not necessarily need to update from version 2.7.4.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • [client] fix rare crash when kernel meta-data caches operate close to 4GB (CVM-1918)
  • [client] let mount helper detect when CVMFS_HTTP_PROXY is defined but empty
  • [client] add CVMFS_CLIENT_PROFILE and CVMFS_USE_CDN to the list of known parameters in cvmfs_config

Release Notes for CernVM-FS 2.7.4

CernVM-FS 2.7.4 is a patch release. It contains bugfixes and improvements for Ubuntu clients and servers. At the same time, we release a new cvmfs-config-default package (see below).

As with previous releases, upgrading clients should be seamless just by installing the new package from the repository. As usual, we recommend to update only a few worker nodes first and gradually ramp up once the new version proves to work correctly. Please take special care when upgrading a cvmfs client in NFS mode.

For Stratum 1 servers, there should be no running snapshots during the upgrade. For publisher and gateway nodes, all transactions must be closed and no active leases must be present before upgrading.

Note for upgrades from versions prior to 2.7.3: please also see the specific instructions in the release notes for version 2.7.3 and earlier.

Updates in cvmfs-config-default 2.0

The new cvmfs-config-default packages brings several improvements and simplifications.

Please note that this does _not_ affect clients that use the cvmfs-config-egi or the cvmfs-config-osg package (or another alternative config package). In particular, most of the grid worker nodes do not use the cvmfs-config-default package.

Note that while released together with CernVM-FS 2.7.4, the client package and the cvmfs-config-default package can be deployed indepently from each other and in any order.

The new cvmfs-config-default package brings the following changes:

  1. A number of minor improvements to the default configuration (tuning parameters, documentation, etc.)
  2. Making better use of the cvmfs config repository (/cvmfs/cvmfs-config.cern.ch), which now should, if available, override the configuration from the package; this allows for faster configuration fixes if necessary
  3. Auto-configuration of the proxy servers for users having the clients on roaming machines (laptops). For instance, CernVM-FS can now automatically pick the CERN site proxy when on site, while connecting directly to the stratum 1 server when the node is at home. Users with a single client (not a cluster) can now use CVMFS_CLIENT_PROFILE=single and do not need to explicitly set a proxy server.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Client / Debian, Ubuntu: remove deprecated packages from the dependency list (CVM-1897)
  • Client / Ubuntu: provide cvmfs-fuse3 package on Ubuntu 20.04 (CVM-1898)
  • Server: fix ingestion of tarballs with leading slashes (CVM-1907)
  • Server: fix name clash with certain, concurrently hosted repository names (CVM-1899)
  • Gateway: fix statistics counting when renaming trees with nested catalogs (CVM-1906)

Note: there is a new cvmfs_server fix-stats command that can be used to fix-up statistics counters for a repository. This command allows to recover from the bug fixed in CVM-1906.

Release Notes for CernVM-FS 2.7.3

CernVM-FS 2.7.3 is a patch release. It contains bugfixes and improvements for clients and servers.

As with previous releases, upgrading clients should be seamless just by installing the new package from the repository. As usual, we recommend to update only a few worker nodes first and gradually ramp up once the new version proves to work correctly. Please take special care when upgrading a cvmfs client in NFS mode.

For Stratum 1 servers, there should be no running snapshots during the upgrade. For publisher and gateway nodes, all transactions must be closed and no active leases must be present before upgrading.

Note for upgrades from versions prior to 2.7.2: please also see the specific instructions in the release notes for version 2.7.2 and earlier.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Add Ubuntu 20 and Fedora 32 packages
  • Client / EL8: fix spurious SElinux error message during package upgrade (CVM-1878)
  • Client: fix cvmfs_config chksetup for squashed NFS alien cache (CVM-1888)
  • Server: fix handling of .cvmfs_status.json after garbage collection (CVM-1887)
  • Server: add add-replica -P option to create pass-through replicas (CVM-1845)
  • Fix building with GCC >= 10 (CVM-1894)

Release Notes for CernVM-FS 2.7.2

CernVM-FS 2.7.2 is a patch release. It contains bugfixes and improvements for clients and servers. Together with version 2.7.2, we release the cvmfs-gateway 1.1.1 patch release. Publishers using the gateway should upgrade in lockstep.

As with previous releases, upgrading clients should be seamless just by installing the new package from the repository. As usual, we recommend to update only a few worker nodes first and gradually ramp up once the new version proves to work correctly. Please take special care when upgrading a cvmfs client in NFS mode.

For Stratum 1 servers, there should be no running snapshots during the upgrade. For publisher and gateway nodes, all transactions must be closed and no active leases must be present before upgrading. The cvmfs-gateway package 1.1.1 should be rolled out together with the cvmfs-server 2.7.2 package.

Note for upgrades from versions prior to 2.7.1: please also see the specific instructions in the release notes for version 2.7.1 and earlier.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Client: optimize loading of nested catalogs (CVM-1848)
  • Client: improve logging when switching hosts (CVM-1844)
  • Client: add cvmfs_talk latency command
  • Server: fix creation of nested catalogs by ingestion command (CVM-1862)
  • Server: minor improvements to geo db command line interface (CVM-1850, CVM-1851)
  • Gateway: fix lease acquisiton on non-existing path (CVM-1696)
  • Gateway: use watchdog for cvmfs_receiver (CVM-1864)
  • Fix packaging for Fedora 31

Release Notes for CernVM-FS 2.7.1

CernVM-FS 2.7.1 is a patch release. It contains bugfixes and improvements for clients and stratum 1 servers. Upgrading on publisher and gateway nodes is not necessary.

As with previous releases, upgrading clients should be seamless just by installing the new package from the repository. As usual, we recommend to update only a few worker nodes first and gradually ramp up once the new version proves to work correctly. Please take special care when upgrading a cvmfs client in NFS mode.

For Stratum 1 servers, there should be no running snapshots during the upgrade. For publisher and gateway nodes, all transactions must be closed and no active leases must be present before upgrading.

Note for stratum 1 servers: the upstream delivery mechanism for the GeoIP database changed. See Geo API Setup for more details.

Note for upgrades from versions prior to 2.7.0: please also see the specific instructions in the release notes for version 2.7.0 and earlier.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Client: fix host fail-over for redirected stratum 1 sources (CVM-1675)
  • Client: add Fuse 3 support on Debian 10 “buster” (CVM-1825)
  • Client: add reboot notice to macOS Catalina installation screen
  • Server: add support for CVMFS_GEO_DB_FILE and CVMFS_GEO_LICENSE_KEY to adjust to upstream GeoIP database delivery mechanism (CVM-1833)

Release Notes for CernVM-FS 2.7.0

CernVM-FS 2.7 is a feature release that comes with performance improvements, new functionality, and bugfixes.

CernVM-FS 2.7 includes support for the new platform EL8 (RHEL8, CentOS8, etc.), Debian 10, and macOS 10.15 “Catalina”. Note that on Catalina, in contrast to previous versions a reboot is required to finalize the installation.

As with previous releases, upgrading should be seamless just by installing the new package from the repository. As usual, we recommend to update only a few worker nodes first and gradually ramp up once the new version proves to work correctly. Please take special care when upgrading a client in NFS mode.

For Stratum 0 servers, all transactions must be closed before upgrading. For Stratum 1 servers, there should be no running snapshots during the upgrade. After the software upgrade, publisher nodes require doing cvmfs_server migrate for each repository.

Fuse 3 Support

This release adds support for libfuse 3 platforms in addition to libfuse 2. The libfuse libraries are part of the system’s fuse package. The libfuse libraries take care of the low-level communication with the Fuse kernel module. The libfuse 3 libraries provide new features and performance improvements; they can be installed side-by-side with the libfuse 2 libraries. If libfuse 3 is available and the cvmfs-fuse3 package is installed, the CernVM-FS client will automatically use libfuse 3, otherwise it falls back to libfuse 2. A libfuse version can be enforced by setting the libfuse=[2,3] mount option.

For the EL6 and EL7 platforms, libfuse 3 libraries are provided in the fuse3-libs package through EPEL.

Pre-mounted Repository

This release adds support for “pre-mounted” repositories. Mounting a CernVM-FS repository involves calling the mount() system call on /dev/fuse. This is usually done by the fusermount utility, which is part of the fuse system package. As of libfuse 3, the task of mounting /dev/fuse can be offloaded to an external, custom utility. Such an external executable “pre-mounts” the repository and allows for easier integration in special environments. This functionality has been integrated with Singularity 3.4. See Pre-mounting for more details.

POSIX ACLs

This release adds support for storing and enforcing POSIX ACLs. In order to store ACLs during publication, simply enable extended attributes by setting CVMFS_INCLUDE_XATTRS=true in the repository’s server.conf configuration file. Note that ACLs require overlayfs as a union file system; aufs does not support storing ACLs. For systems with both aufs and overlayfs installed, the CVMFS_UNION_FS_TYPE parameter can be used to select overlayfs.

In order to enforce ACLs on the client side, set CVMFS_ENFORCE_ACLS=true in the client configuration. Enforcing POSIX ACLs requires libfuse 3 on the client node. If only libfuse 2 is available, the client will refuse to mount with enforced ACLs.

Note that enforcing ACLs usually only makes sense in concert with a secure distribution infrastructure (see Large-Scale Data, Authorization Helpers).

Client Performance Instrumentation

The CernVM-FS client can now record a histogram of wall-clock time spent in the different Fuse callback routines (CVM-1770). Recording is enabled by setting the client configuration variable CVMFS_INSTRUMENT_FUSE=true. The time distribution histograms are displayed in the cvmfs_talk internal affairs command.

Bug Fixes

  • Client: fix stale negative entries in active cache eviction (CVM-1759)
  • Client: fix potentially incomplete parsing of /etc/hosts
  • Client: fix potential file descriptor mix-up of external cache manager after reload
  • Client: fix repository updates on shared, writable alien cache (CVM-1803)
  • Client: fix missing package dependency on Debian 9 and Ubuntu 18.04 (CVM-1789)
  • Client: fix spurious error message when starting external cache manager
  • Client: fix spurious error message with auto;DIRECT if proxy auto discovery returns an empty list (CVM-1818)
  • Client, macOS >= 10.15: set default mount point to /Users/Shared/cvmfs with a firm link from /cvmfs to the new destination (CVM-1813)
  • Server: fix publish statistics for several corner cases (CVM-1716 - CVM-1720)
  • Server, gateway: fix clashing generic tags for short transactions (CVM-1735)
  • Server, DUCC: use relative symbolic links (CVM-1817)

Other Improvements

  • Client: enable default config repository on Debian stretch and newer (CVM-1794)
  • Client: add new magic extended attribute repo_counters (CVM-1733)
  • Client: add new magic extended attribute repo_metainfo (CVM-1499)
  • Client: enforce CVMFS_NFILES parameter only when mounting through mount helper
  • Client: add support for CVMFS_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable in order to facilitate standalone deployment
  • Server: add support for extended attributes on directories
  • Server: add filestats command to cvmfs_swissknife (CVM-1756)
  • Server: add list_reflog command to cvmfs_swissknife (CVM-1756)