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A fairly large kernel update was published yesterday as was a new WireGuard release and I thought it important to update and sanity-check. We'll let this bake over the weekend and if no new big issue shows up we'll publish to stable. Then we can move on to the 5.4 kernel in Unraid 6.9. -rc9 summary: Update kernel to 4.19.88. Update to latest WireGuard release Other package updates. Specific changes in [-rcN] are indicated in bold below. New in Unraid OS 6.8 release: The unRAIDServer.plg file (update OS) still downloads the new release zip file to RAM but then extracts directly to USB flash boot device. You will probably notice a slight difference in speed of extract messages. [-rc2] The 'sync' command at the end has been replaced with 'sync -f /boot'. Forms based authentication If you have set a root password for your server, when accessing webGUI you'll now see a nice login form. There still is only one user for Unraid so for username enter root. This form should be compatible with all major password managers out there. We always recommend using a strong password. [-rc2] There is no auto-logout implemented yet, please click Logout on menu bar or completely close your browser to logout. Linux kernel [-rc8] Remains on 4.19 [-rc6/-rc7] include latest Intel microcode for yet another hardware vulnerability mitigation. default scheduler now 'mq-deadline' [-rc2] but this can be changed via Settings/Disk Settings/Scheduler setting. enabled Huge Page support, though no UI control yet binfmt_misc support added "Vega 10 Reset bug" [-rc2] and 'navi-reset' patches removed [-rc5] [-rc2] added oot: Realtek r8125: version 9.002.02 [-rc3] additional md/unraid changes and instrumentation [-rc6] fix chelsio missing firmware [-rc8] removed Highpoint r750 driver [does not work] md/unraid driver Introduced "multi-stream" support: Reads on devices which are not being written should run at full speed. In addition, if you have set the md_write_method tunable to "reconstruct write", then while writing, if any read streams are detected, the write method is switched to "read/modifywrite". Parity sync/check should run at full speed by default. Parity sync/check is throttled back in presence of other active streams. The "stripe pool" resource is automatically shared evenly between all active streams. As a result got rid of some Tunables: md_sync_window md_sync_thresh and added some tunables: md_queue_limit md_sync_limit [-rc2] md_scheduler Please refer to Settings/Disk Settings help text for description of these settings. WireGuard support - available as a plugin via Community Apps. Our WireGuard implementation and UI is still a work-in-process; for this reason we have made this available as a plugin, though the latest WireGuard module is included in our Linux kernel. Full WireGuard implementation will be merged into Unraid OS itself in a future release. I want to give special thanks to @bonienl who wrote the plugin with lots of guidance from @ljm42 - thank you! I also should give a shout out to @NAS who got us rolling on this. If you don't know about WireGuard it's something to look into! Guide here: WS-Discovery support - Finally you can get rid of SMBv1 and get reliable Windows network discovery. This feature is configured on the Settings/SMB Settings page and enabled by default. Also on same settings page is Enable NetBIOS setting. This is enabled by default, however if you no longer have need for NetBIOS discovery you can turn it off. When turned off, Samba is configured to accept only SMBv2 protocol and higher. Added mDNS client support in Unraid OS. This means, for example, from an Unraid OS terminal session to ping another Unraid OS server on your network you can use (e.g., 'tower'): ping tower.local instead of ping tower Note the latter will still work if you have NetBIOS enabled. User Share File System (shfs) changes: Integrated FUSE-3 - This should increase performance of User Share File System. Fixed bug with hard link support. Previously a 'stat' on two directory entries referring to same file would return different i-node numbers, thus making it look like two independent files. This has been fixed however there is a config setting on Settings/Global Share Settings called "Tunable (support hard links)". [-rc2 ] Fixed the default value Yes, but with certain very old media and DVD players which access shares via NFS, you may need to set this to No. [-rc5] Fixed not accounting for devices not mounted yet. Note: if you have custom config/extra.cfg file, get rid of it. Other improvements/bug fixes: Format - during Format any running parity sync/check is automatically Paused and then resumed upon Format completion. Encryption - an entered passphrase is not saved to any file. Fixed bug where multi-device btrfs pool was leaving metadata set to dup instead of raid1. Several other small bug fixes and improvements. [-rc5] Fixed bug where quotes were not handled properly in passwords. Numerous base package updates [-rc2] including updating PHP to version 7.3.x, Samba to version 4.11.x. Known Issues and Other Errata Some users have reported slower parity sync/check rates for very wide arrays (20+ devices) vs. 6.7 and earlier releases - we are still studying this problem. [-rc6] this is fixed: If you are using Unassigned Devices plugin with encrypted volumes, you must use the file method of specifying the encryption passphrase. Note that a file containing your passphrase must consist of a single null-terminated string with no other line ending characters such as LF or CR/LF. In another step toward better security, the USB flash boot device is configured so that programs and scripts residing there cannot be directly executed (this is because the 'x' bit is set now only for directories). Commands placed in the 'go' file still execute because during startup, that file is copied to /tmp first and then executed from there. If you have created custom scripts you may need to take a similar approach. AFP is now deprecated and we plan to remove support in Unraid 6.9 release. A note on password strings Password strings can contain any character however white space (space and tab characters) is handled specially: all leading and trailing white space is discarded multiple embedded white space is collapsed to a single space character. By contrast, encryption passphrase is used exactly as-is. Version 6.8.0-rc9 2019-12-06 Base distro: btrfs-progs: version 5.4 ca-certificates: version 20191130 ebtables: version 2.0.11 gnutls: version 3.6.11.1 gtk+3: version 3.24.13 iproute2: version 5.4.0 iptables: version 1.8.4 keyutils: version 1.6 libepoxy: version 1.5.4 libnftnl: version 1.1.5 librsvg: version 2.46.4 libtasn1: version 4.15.0 lvm2: version 2.03.07 nano: version 4.6 pcre2: version 10.34 pkgtools: version 15.0 build 28 wireguard: version 0.0.20191205 xorg-server: version 1.20.6 Linux kernel: version 4.19.88

tldr: If you require hardware support offered by the Linux 5.x kernel then I suggest you remain on 6.8.0-rc7 and wait until 6.9.0-rc1 is published before upgrading. The "unexpected GSO type" bug is looking to be a show stopper for Unraid 6.8 using Linux kernel 5.3 or 5.4 kernel. We can get it to happen easily and quickly simply by having any VM running and then also start a docker App where Network Type has been set to "Custom : br0" (in my case) and I've set a static IP for the container or toggle between setting static IP and letting docker dhcp assign one. There are probably a lot of users waiting for a stable release who will see this issue, and therefore, I don't think we can publish with this bug. The bug does not occur with any 4.19.x or 4.20.x Linux kernel; but does occur with all kernels starting with 5.0. This implies the bug was introduced with some code change in the initial 5.0 kernel. The problem is that we are not certain where to report the bug; it could be a kernel issue or a docker issue. Of course, it could also be something we are doing wrong, since this issue is not reported in any other distro AFAIK. We are continuing investigation and putting together a report to submit either to kernel mailing list or as a docker issue. In any case, an actual fix will probably take quite a bit more time, especially since we are heading into the holidays. Therefore this is what we plan to do: For 6.8: revert kernel to 4.19.87 and publish 6.8.0-rc8. Those currently running stable (6.7.2) will see no loss of functionality because that release is also on 4.19 kernel. Hopefully this will be last or next to last -rc and then we can publish 6.8 stable. Note: we cannot revert to 4.20 kernel because that kernel is EOL and has not had any updates in months. For 6.9: as soon as 6.8 stable is published we'll release 6.9.0-rc1 on next release branch. This will be exactly the same as 6.8 except that we'll update to latest 5.4 kernel (and "unexpected GSO type" bug will be back). We will use the next branch to try and solve this bug. New features, such as multiple pools, will be integrated into 6.10 release, which is current work-in-progress. We'll wait a day or two to publish 6.8-rc8 with reverted kernel in hopes those affected will see this post first.

-rc8 summary: Revert kernel to 4.19.87 for reasons described in this post. Update Intel 10Gbit (ixgbe) to out-of-tree driver version: 5.6.5 Update to latest WireGuard release Other package updates. Misc. webGUI fixes. Specific changes in [-rcN] are indicated in bold below. New in Unraid OS 6.8 release: The unRAIDServer.plg file (update OS) still downloads the new release zip file to RAM but then extracts directly to USB flash boot device. You will probably notice a slight difference in speed of extract messages. [-rc2] The 'sync' command at the end has been replaced with 'sync -f /boot'. Forms based authentication If you have set a root password for your server, upon boot you'll now see a nice login form. There still is only one user for Unraid so for username enter root. This form should be compatible with all major password managers out there. We always recommend using a strong password. [-rc2] There is no auto-logout implemented yet, please click Logout on menu bar or completely close your browser to logout. Linux kernel [-rc8] Remains on 4.19 [-rc6/-rc7] include latest Intel microcode for yet another hardware vulnerability mitigation. default scheduler now 'mq-deadline' [-rc2] but this can be changed via Settings/Disk Settings/Scheduler setting. enabled Huge Page support, though no UI control yet binfmt_misc support added "Vega 10 Reset bug" [-rc2] and 'navi-reset' patches removed [-rc5] [-rc2] added oot: Realtek r8125: version 9.002.02 [-rc3] additional md/unraid changes and instrumentation [-rc6] fix chelsio missing firmware [-rc8] removed Highpoint r750 driver [does not work] md/unraid driver Introduced "multi-stream" support: Reads on devices which are not being written should run at full speed. In addition, if you have set the md_write_method tunable to "reconstruct write", then while writing, if any read streams are detected, the write method is switched to "read/modifywrite". Parity sync/check should run at full speed by default. Parity sync/check is throttled back in presence of other active streams. The "stripe pool" resource is automatically shared evenly between all active streams. As a result got rid of some Tunables: md_sync_window md_sync_thresh and added some tunables: md_queue_limit md_sync_limit [-rc2] md_scheduler Please refer to Settings/Disk Settings help text for description of these settings. WireGuard support - available as a plugin via Community Apps. Our WireGuard implementation and UI is still a work-in-process; for this reason we have made this available as a plugin, though the latest WireGuard module is included in our Linux kernel. Full WireGuard implementation will be merged into Unraid OS itself in a future release. I want to give special thanks to @bonienl who wrote the plugin with lots of guidance from @ljm42 - thank you! I also should give a shout out to @NAS who got us rolling on this. If you don't know about WireGuard it's something to look into! Guide here: WS-Discovery support - Finally you can get rid of SMBv1 and get reliable Windows network discovery. This feature is configured on the Settings/SMB Settings page and enabled by default. Also on same settings page is Enable NetBIOS setting. This is enabled by default, however if you no longer have need for NetBIOS discovery you can turn it off. When turned off, Samba is configured to accept only SMBv2 protocol and higher. Added mDNS client support in Unraid OS. This means, for example, from an Unraid OS terminal session to ping another Unraid OS server on your network you can use (e.g., 'tower'): ping tower.local instead of ping tower Note the latter will still work if you have NetBIOS enabled. User Share File System (shfs) changes: Integrated FUSE-3 - This should increase performance of User Share File System. Fixed bug with hard link support. Previously a 'stat' on two directory entries referring to same file would return different i-node numbers, thus making it look like two independent files. This has been fixed however there is a config setting on Settings/Global Share Settings called "Tunable (support hard links)". [-rc2 ] Fixed the default value Yes, but with certain very old media and DVD players which access shares via NFS, you may need to set this to No. [-rc5] Fixed not accounting for devices not mounted yet. Note: if you have custom config/extra.cfg file, get rid of it. Other improvements/bug fixes: Format - during Format any running parity sync/check is automatically Paused and then resumed upon Format completion. Encryption - an entered passphrase is not saved to any file. Fixed bug where multi-device btrfs pool was leaving metadata set to dup instead of raid1. Several other small bug fixes and improvements. [-rc5] Fixed bug where quotes were not handled properly in passwords. Numerous base package updates [-rc2] including updating PHP to version 7.3.x, Samba to version 4.11.x. Known Issues and Other Errata Some users have reported slower parity sync/check rates for very wide arrays (20+ devices) vs. 6.7 and earlier releases - we are still studying this problem. [-rc6] this is fixed: If you are using Unassigned Devices plugin with encrypted volumes, you must use the file method of specifying the encryption passphrase. Note that a file containing your passphrase must consist of a single null-terminated string with no other line ending characters such as LF or CR/LF. In another step toward better security, the USB flash boot device is configured so that programs and scripts residing there cannot be directly executed (this is because the 'x' bit is set now only for directories). Commands placed in the 'go' file still execute because during startup, that file is copied to /tmp first and then executed from there. If you have created custom scripts you may need to take a similar approach. AFP is now deprecated and we plan to remove support in Unraid 6.9 release. A note on password strings Password strings can contain any character however white space (space and tab characters) is handled specially: all leading and trailing white space is discarded multiple embedded white space is collapsed to a single space character. By contrast, encryption passphrase is used exactly as-is. Version 6.8.0-rc8 2019-12-04 Base distro: mozilla-firefox: version 71.0 (CVE-2019-11756, CVE-2019-17008, CVE-2019-13722, CVE-2019-11745, CVE-2019-17014, CVE-2019-17009, CVE-2019-17010, CVE-2019-17005, CVE-2019-17011, CVE-2019-17012, CVE-2019-17013) wireguard: version 0.0.20191127 Linux kernel: version 4.19.87 [revert from 5.3.12] CONFIG_SCSI_MQ_DEFAULT: SCSI: use blk-mq I/O path by default CONFIG_IP_VS: IP virtual server support CONFIG_IP_VS_NFCT: Netfilter connection tracking CONFIG_IP_VS_PROTO_TCP: TCP load balancing support CONFIG_IP_VS_PROTO_UDP: UDP load balancing support CONFIG_IP_VS_RR: round-robin scheduling CONFIG_IPVLAN: IP-VLAN support CONFIG_IPVTAP: IP-VLAN based tap driver CONFIG_NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_IPVS: "ipvs" match support CONFIG_NET_CLS_CGROUP: Control Group Classifier CONFIG_CGROUP_NET_PRIO: Network priority cgroup CONFIG_DUMMY: Dummy net driver support oot: Intel ixgbe: version 5.6.5 oot: Highpoint rr3740a: version: v1.17.0_18_06_15 Management: Upgrade noVNC to git commit 9f557f5 webgui: Diagnostics: Remove OSK info from VM xml webgui: Diagnostics: Adjust for timezone from webGUI webgui: Add support for the self-hosted Gotify notification agent.