Michael Tremer announced the release of a new update important of your Linux distribution, IP Fire 2.21 Core 122 which arrives with new improvements and an updated Kernel which gives better stability to the program.
For those who do not know this Linux distribution I can tell you that this is a linux distribution focused on simple setup, good handling and a high level of security, specifically designed to perform firewall functions (firewall) and routing in a local network.
It is regulated by an intuitive web interface through the browser, which offers many configuration options for experienced and novice sysadmins.
About IPFire
The IPFire is maintained by developers who are concerned about security and regularly update the product to maintain its security.
The system comes with a custom package manager called pakfire and the system can be expanded with various additions.
All the Features that IPFire includes by default are:
- Proxy server.
- Intrusion detection system in a network or computer.
- VPN over IPsec and OpenVPN.
- DHCP server.
- Domain name cache.
- Time server.
- Wake-on-Lan.
- DDNS server.
- QoS.
- Complete Log of all events that occur in the system.
The developers have pointed out the fact that the IPFire remains rigid and secure, even though the grsecurity security patches have been removed, as many of its features have been ported to earlier versions.
The new version of the Linux kernel makes IPFire incompatible with ARM systems.
ARM-based systems will not be able to use this update, due to the kernel change that requires changes to a handful of bootloaders.
For ARM-based users, IPFire developers recommend backing up, reinstalling and then restoring the backup on the reinstalled system, thus the system should only offer a single ARM kernel instead of multiple options, as before.
IPFire has been recently updated, the distribution has been synced from the old LTS kernel to the new Linux 4.14.50 kernel, and it comes with a load of bug fixes and general improvements.
About the new update of IPFire 2.21 Core 122
The most important new feature that we can highlight of IPFire 2.21 Core 122 is the Linux kernel 4.14.50, which contains fixes for Meltdown and Specter security vulnerabilities on different hardware architectures, along with a firmware update for Intel processors.
However, lgrsecurity patches for the Linux kernel have been removed because they are not compatible with this kernel.
In an attempt to make IPFire faster and smaller in size, the developers have put the system snapshots together, into an image capable of booting on machines with normal video output and the serial console.
In addition, new 2.21 IPFire images are compressed with the XZ compression algorithm, to make the download of the distribution faster.
Another interesting change from IPFire 2.21 is the fact that lThe partition layout has been modified to no longer include the / var partition used for logs and collects system data, which is now included in a single partition as part of the rest of the Operating System.
To finish, the size of the / boot partition has been increased to 128 MB.
Other notable changes include an updated list of trusted CAs (Certificate Authorities), updated firmware for multiple drivers, and an improved web user interface that is now able to view users logged into the console.
The IPFire 2.21 Core update 122 also comes with the ClamAV 0.100.0 and nagios-nrpe 3.2.1 plugins.
Other updated components of which we can highlight include: GCC 7.3.0, GRUB 2.02, 3.11.2 CMake, ISC DHCP 4.4.1, 6.11.5 dhcpcd, GNU nano 2.9.7, 1.19.5 GNU wget, xz 5.2.4, tar, 1.30 diffutils 3.1.6, 2.2.0 .7.70 htop, Nmap 7.7, OpenSSH 1p2,9, PowerTOP 8.42, PCRE 1.7.1, consolidate 2,13, xtables-addons 0.6.1, bwm-ng 54-f3b3,18fa, crda 2018.03, u-boot 4.14, iw 2.3.11, Sarg 6.2, RNG-tools 1.3, 1,34 beep, libidn 2.4 e Apache XNUMX.
However, being this an important update, it was divided into two parts. Which basically consists of first installing the IPFire 2.19 Core update 121 in order to run the update version IP Fire 2.21 Core 122.