Open Beta v8.16 | Please help testing and hardening our upcoming release

[MichaIng]

RC version	v8.16.1
v8.16.0 PR	#6258
v8.16.1 PR	#6285
Raw changelog	https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/blob/beta/CHANGELOG.txt
Code changes	master...beta
Release date	2023-04-08

How to apply: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/blob/master/BRANCH_SYSTEM.md

Related/solved issues: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issues?q=is%3Aissue+milestone%3Av8.16

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Beta v8.16.1

(2023-04-07)

New software

• microblog.pub | A self-hosted, single-user, ActivityPub powered microblog has been added to our software catalogue. Many thanks to @mtekman for implementing this software option: Dietpi-Software | microblog.pub #6246

Enhancements

• General | Reworked GPU driver installations for x86 systems. This provides better control of GPU drivers for DietPi, adding support for Vulkan and resolves issues with Steam Proton. Users will be prompted to select a driver package during DietPi-Update.: Steam + Vulkan support (Proton) | Notes #6262
• Network | When checking for one among multiple Ethernet adapters on first boot and generally when all Ethernet interfaces are disabled, all of them are enabled first to allow the detection of a carrier signal, i.e. a connected cable. Previously, eth0 was always chosen in this situation while users may have connected a cable to another adapter. Now one does not need to know or test which adapter is eth0 to have a successful automated first run setup on NanoPi mini routers, VisionFive 2 and similar SBCs with multiple Ethernet adapters.
• Network | The IPv6 connection check is now only done if both, an IPv6 default route as well as a global unicast address (GUA) is assigned. If any of both is missing, the system falls back to using IPv4 automatically, as far as we tested. It hence is not needed to force users disabling IPv6 in this case to assure connectivity to hosts with IPv6 (and IPv4) addresses. Many thanks to @taoteh1221 for reporting a case where our scripts do and fail the IPv6 check while there are no connection issues when ignoring it: Network | Skip IPv6 check on missing GUA instead of missing gateway #6168
• NanoPi R5S/R6S | The kernel will be upgraded during the DietPi update to disable a writable clk DebugFS flag it was previously shipped with. Many thanks to @thinkpanzer for bringing this to our attention: NanoPi R5S/R6S | Writable clk DebugFS enabled #6136
• Orange Pi 5/ROCK 5B | The hardware random generator daemon rngd is used now in favour of the software random generator haveged. It will be replaced on DietPi update.
• Orange Pi 5 | Added an option to the dietpi-config Advanced Options menu to update the SPI flash bootloader. This may be needed to enable booting directly from NVMe SSDs. Many thanks to @michaelscott for bringing up this topic: https://dietpi.com/forum/t/orange-pi-5-boot-from-nvme/16457
• First run setup | When connected via local console and the keyboard layout has not been changed in dietpi.txt, an additional prompt allows you now to change the keyboard layout before you are offered to change passwords. This is obviously helpful since the password input fields are masked, hence false characters due to false keyboard layout may not be recognised but bite you later when you cannot login into your installed application. Many thanks to @LeFish1 for doing this suggestion: Improvement: Keyboard layout vs. password change during initial setup #5925
• DietPi-Services | The service handling for software installed via dietpi-software has received a major rework. Previously, services were "disabled" by default, so that the systemd init system did not start them automatically at boot. Instead, they were enabled at a late boot stage as part of the dietpi-postboot service via dietpi-services. The idea was to assure fast undisturbed early boot process and to have all services started up in a specific order, which guarantees that dependencies are running before dependants. But it had several negative implications: systemd is designed to speed overall services startup via parallelism, while our serial startup broke this benefit. "systemctl status SERVICE" showed services as "disabled", which caused confusion as they were still started at boot. Consequently the only way to prevent them from being started was to mask services or exclude them with our script or its config file, as "systemctl disable SERVICE" had no effect. Also it was not uncommon that APT package upgrades left the service stopped, respecting the "disabled" state. DietPi has now been aligned with how Linux distros with systemd handle services commonly. The most important startup ordering is instead done via systemd unit "After=" ordering directives to have e.g. webservers starting after PHP, and PHP after databases.
• DietPi-RAMlog | For unknown historical reasons, the /var/log tmpfs mount had 1777 mode, i.e. was world-writable with sticky bit. Since this does not match the Debian default for this directory, this mode has been removed from the mount options, so that the default mode 0755 is now used.
• DietPi-Config | Added an option to the dietpi-config Advanced Options menu to flash the current U-Boot bootloader to the MMC device if the linux-u-boot-* package of Armbian is installed (true on most SBCs aside of Raspberry Pi).
• DietPi-Config | Display Brightness: Now supports all valid and available sysfs entries in /sys/class/backlight/*. Multiple entries are also supported, allowing users to change brightness levels for all available backlights on the system. Menu system now uses percent based selection for brightness levels. NB: OLED panels (specifically laptops) require a 5.12 Kernel or higher to be supported with this feature: DietPi-Config | Display Brightness Changes #6288

Bug fixes

• General | Added more generic support for obtaining the CPU temperature, covering some thin clients and potentially other systems where no CPU temperature was shown when running the "cpu" command or enabling it for the login banner.
• Network | Resolved an issue where WiFi connection may have failed or provided bad performance if the WiFi access point did not send a country code. If no CRDA is used, the country code is now applied via wpa_supplicant. If the access point sends a country code, it overrides the choice once the connection has been established. Many thanks to all community members who reported the issue, tested and provided a solution: https://dietpi.com/forum/t/wifi-drops-out-after-update-to-8-14-2/16082, https://dietpi.com/forum/t/rpi-wifi-stops-working-after-reboot-but-works-again-after-a-proper-shutdown/16406
• Orange Pi 5/ROCK 5B | Resolved an issue where the wrong serial console device name was expected. The correct /dev/ttyFIQ0 will be enabled on DietPi update and patched for a baudrate of 1,500,000.
• Raspberry Pi | With the recent official Raspberry Pi kernel upgrade, Raspberry Pi 4 systems do now boot with the 64-bit kernel by default, even if the underlying OS/userland is 32-bit. While we doubt in any practical benefits, dietpi-software has been patched to correctly deal with this case, i.e. installing 32-bit packages and binaries instead of relying on the "uname -m" kernel architecture output. Some 3rd party software installers may still fail to deal with this case, but we give it a chance for now and hope that affected installers can be relatively easily made compatible.
• DietPi-Config | Resolved an issue where selecting the Nvidia driver on x86_64 systems did not actually install the needed kernel module if kernel headers were not installed before. Headers matching your kernel package are now installed automatically when selecting this option, to have the driver compiled and installed.
• DietPi-Software | Fail2Ban: Resolved a DietPi v8.11 regression where moving logs to systemd journal on install fails due to a typo.
• DietPi-Software | Portainer: Disabled the install option on ARMv6 RPi models since no Portainer Docker image is available for this architecture anymore. Many thanks to @intiplink for making us aware of this: https://dietpi.com/forum/t/armv6-bookworm-software-test-matrix-question/16380/11

[MichaIng]

DietPi beta v8.16.1 has been merged: #6285

[Fourdee]

Testing of #6262 and #6288

• ASUS Zenbook 13 OLED | 11th Gen I5 with Intel Iris Xe graphics.
• DietPi UEFI fresh installation. Setting Beta before network was connected.
• DietPi-Software | LXDE + Steam. 🈯 GPU Driver prompt appeared correctly.
• DietPi-Autostart | Prompt did not appear for desktop installation. I cant be 100% sure on this, was distracted at the time, however, a retest would be needed my end (when time permits).
• 🈯 Display brightness (once updated to 5.18 kernel)
• 🈯 GPU Driver
• 🈯 Steam + Proton + Sonic Mania

In relation to above tickets, passed fine here.

🈺 Unrelated to Beta. Only issue I did noticed was apt install firmware-sof-signed was required for soundcard to function on my device. Should add this to Intel firmware installs?

[    5.164614] sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl 0000:00:1f.3: Topology: ABI 3:18:1 Kernel ABI 3:19:1
[    5.232336] input: sof-hda-dsp HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/skl_hda_dsp_generic/sound/card0/input34

[MichaIng]

https://packages.debian.org/firmware-sof-signed

Available from Bullseye on, "needed for audio functionality on some Intel system".

For https://packages.debian.org/firmware-intel-sound we have a dedicated sound card option if an Intel CPU was detected. But it may be even needed that both packages are needed in some cases? Not sure if there is a clever way to detect whether either of these firmware is needed, e.g. checking for related error messages in dmesg?

However, dedicated topic which needs to wait for next release 🙂.

[MichaIng]

DietPi v8.16 has been released: #6282

Many thanks to all testers ❤️!