Table of Contents
With Univention Corporate Server 4.4-9, the ninth point release of Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 4.4 is now available. It provides several feature improvements and extensions, new properties as well as various improvements and bugfixes. Here is an overview of the most important changes:
The security and usability of Univention Management Console has been improved.
The UDM REST API scales better.
The robustness and performance of Listener/Notifier replication has been improved.
The Linux kernel has been updated to version 4.19.235.
During the update some services in the domain may not be available temporarily, that is why the update should occur in a maintenance window. It is recommended to test the update in a separate test environment prior to the actual update. The test environment should be identical to the production environment. Depending on the system performance, network connection and the installed software the update will take between 20 minutes and several hours.
In environments with more than one UCS system, the update order of the UCS systems must be borne in mind:
The authoritative version of the LDAP directory service is maintained on the master domain controller and replicated to all the remaining LDAP servers of the UCS domain. As changes to the LDAP schema can occur during release updates, the master domain controller must always be the first system to be updated during a release update.
Starting with UCS 4.0, installation DVD are only provided for the x86 64 bit architecture (amd64). Existing 32 bit UCS 3 systems can still be updated to UCS 4.0 through the online repository or by using update DVD. The 32 bit architecture will be supported over the entire UCS 4 maintenance period.
It must be checked whether sufficient disk space is available. A standard installation requires a minimum of 10 GB of disk space. The update requires approximately 4 GB additional disk space to download and install the packages, depending on the size of the existing installation.
For the update, a login should be performed on the system's local console as user root, and the update should be initiated there.
Alternatively, the update can be conducted using Univention Management Console.
Remote updating via SSH is not recommended as this may result in the update procedure being canceled, e.g., if the network connection is interrupted.
In consequence, this can affect the system severely.
If updating should occur over a network connection nevertheless, it must be verified that the update continues in case of disconnection from the network.
This can be achieved, e.g., using the tools screen and at.
These tools are installed on all UCS system roles by default.
Univention provides a script that checks for problems which would prevent the successful update of the system. Prior to the update, this script can be downloaded and executed on the UCS system.
# download
curl -OOs https://updates.software-univention.de/download/univention-update-checks/pre-update-checks-4.4{,.gpg}
# run script
gpgv --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/univention-archive-key-ucs-5x.gpg \
pre-update-checks-4.4.gpg pre-update-checks-4.4 && bash pre-update-checks-4.4
...
Starting pre-update checks ...
Checking app_appliance ... OK
Checking block_update_of_NT_DC ... OK
Checking cyrus_integration ... OK
Checking disk_space ... OK
Checking hold_packages ... OK
Checking ldap_connection ... OK
Checking ldap_schema ... OK
...
Following the update, new or updated join scripts need to be executed.
This can be done in two ways:
Either using the UMC module or by running the command
univention-run-join-scripts as user root.
Subsequently the UCS system needs to be restarted.
Secure Boot builds a chain of trust from the UEFI firmware to the Linux kernel. Any modification before the Linux kernel gets started is detected and aborts the boot process. This technique can be used to prevent boot viruses from infecting the system.
In July 2020 a major defect was detected in GRUB and the Linux kernel: Attackers can modify the environment before the Linux kernel is fully loaded and can disable secure boot. This affected nearly all Linux distributions including Univention Corporate Server. Microsoft thus revoked all previously signed versions of shim, which breaks the secure boot chain at its earliest stage. As soon as the UEFI firmware is updated or Microsoft Windows runs on the same hardware and updates the list of revoked binaries, UCS 4.4 can no longer be booted.
For 4.4-9 it was planed to update all components to have again a working UEFI installation with Secure Boot enabled. In the meantime new issues have been found in grub2 and shim. Because of that Microsoft currently does not sign any version of shim. Therefor UCS 4.4-9 only ships with the new Linux Kernel 4.19.235; older versions will no longer be allowed in the future.
An update of grub2 and shim is planned for UCS 4.4-10. Until then the revoked version of shim will still be used. If the system no longer boots after updating the revocation lists, Secure Boot has to be turned off for the time being. Updating to UCS 5.0 is another alternative.
Anonymous usage statistics on the use of Univention Management Console are collected when using the UCS Core Edition. The modules opened get logged to an instance of the web traffic analysis tool Piwik. This makes it possible for Univention to tailor the development of Univention Management Console better to customer needs and carry out usability improvements.
This logging is only performed when the UCS Core Edition license is used. The license status can be verified via the menu entry of the user menu in the upper right corner of Univention Management Console. If is listed under , this version is in use. When a regular UCS license is used, no usage statistics are collected.
Independent of the license used, the statistics generation can be deactivated by setting the Univention Configuration Registry variable umc/web/piwik to false.
WebKit, Konqueror and QtWebKit are shipped in the maintained branch of the UCS repository, but not covered by security support. WebKit is primarily used for displaying HTML help pages etc. Firefox should be used as web browser.
Univention Management Console uses numerous JavaScript and CSS functions to display the web interface. Cookies need to be permitted in the browser. The following browsers are recommended:
Chrome as of version 71
Firefox as of version 60
Safari and Safari Mobile as of version 12
Microsoft Edge as of version 18
As of this release Internet Explorer is not supported by Univention Management Console anymore.
Users running older browsers may experience display or performance issues.
Listed are the changes since UCS 4.4-8:
All security updates issued for UCS 4.4-8 are included:
The following updated packages from Debian Stretch 10.12 are included (Bug 53918): advancecomp, agg, aide, ansible, apache2, apache-log4j1.2, apache-log4j2, apng2gif, aria2, axis, botan1.10, btrbk, cacti, cargo-mozilla, cgal, ckeditor, commons-io, composer, condor, connman, debian-archive-keyring, debian-edu-config, drupal7, edk2, eterm, fig2dev, firebird3.0, freecad, gdal, gerbv, gif2apng, glusterfs, golang-1.7, golang-1.8, graphicsmagick, gst-libav1.0, gst-plugins-bad1.0, gst-plugins-ugly1.0, gthumb, h2database, hivex, htmldoc, icinga2, ieee-data, ipmitool, ipython, ircii, jackson-databind, jetty9, ldns, libdatetime-timezone-perl, libextractor, libgetdata, libimage-exiftool-perl, libjdom1-java, libjdom2-java, libmodbus, libntlm, libpam-tacplus, libpano13, libphp-adodb, librecad, libspf2, libspring-java, libxml-security-java, libxstream-java, libxstream-java, lighttpd, linux-4.19, linux-latest-4.19, linux-latest, linuxptp, llvm-toolchain-11, lrzip, lrzsz, lynx, mailman, mbedtls, mediawiki, minidlna, monit, mosquitto, mrxvt, mupdf, netkit-rsh, neutron, nginx, node-bl, nvidia-graphics-drivers, opendmarc, opensc, paramiko, pgbouncer, plib, postgis, privoxy, prosody, python-scrapy, python-treq, pywps, pyxdg, rails, rdflib, redis, redmine, resiprocate, ring, roundcube, ruby-actionpack-page-caching, ruby-haml, ruby-kaminari, ruby-nokogiri, ruby-sidekiq, rust-cbindgen, rustc-mozilla, rxvt, rxvt-unicode, salt, scilab, scrollz, shiro, slurm-llnl, sogo, sphinxsearch, spip, squashfs-tools, sssd, strongswan, thunderbird, tnef, tomcat8, tryton-proteus, tryton-server, tzdata, ujson, unbound1.9, usermode, uwsgi, weechat, wordpress, xmlbeans, zabbix, zsh
The following updated packages from Debian Buster 11.3 are included (Bug 54530): gcc-8, linux, linux-signed-amd64, linux-signed-i386, nvptx-tools
The following packages have been moved to the maintained repository of UCS: backports.functools-lru-cache (Bug 52920), pigz (Bug 54485), python-pathlib (Bug 53237), python-tzlocal (Bug 53675), unidecode (Bug 52878)
translog overlay was modified to skip grandchildren of the cn=temporary,cn=univention container.
This new behavior can be controlled by the Univention Configuration Registry variable ldap/translog-ignore-temporary.
This reduces the number of replication transactions during creation of users and groups significantly.
As a result it increases the replication performance and reduces the rate at which the cn=translog LMDB backend database gets filled.
This variable is applicable only to the Primary Directory Node.
The package univention-ldap-server activates this variable by default (Bug 54446).
last_id atomically (Bug 53821).
listener/listener cannot be written (Bug 53821).
<TransID> if last_id could not be determined as all (Bug 53821).
listener/listener if getting last_id fails (Bug 53821).
replication.py priority directly in the file (Bug 54504).
univention-translog have been improved (Bug 53821).
univention-translog now also checks the file listener/listener.priv if that exists (Bug 53821).
univention-translog recognizes the special values <TransID> and 0 and is able to fix them (Bug 53821).
translog overlay is not a valid integer (Bug 53821).
replication.py listener module priority from univention-directory-listener.
Instead, the priority is now set by package univention-directory-replication (Bug 54504).
priority (Bug 54061).
DateBox and TimeBox widgets now handle empty values correctly and support the date2 syntax again (Bug 53675).
directory/manager/rest/processes.
Further details can be found in performance guide (Bug 53669).
umc/http/enforce-secure-cookie can be set to make cookies secure when using a HTTPS connection (Bug 53511).
umc/http/enforce-session-cookie can be set to make the login cookie a session cookie: Closing the browser will delete the cookie, effectively logging out the user (Bug 52353).
users/user module (Bug 53675).
remove_childs from the UDM function remove() in the method delete() to recursively delete objects below the DN of the object that is being deleted (Bug 53620).
ucs_registerLDAPExtension from the UCS shell function library now allows the option umcmessagecatalog.
This option can be used to supply translation files in GNU message catalog format for the UMC (Bug 53362).
mspolicy password complexity criteria was configured due to the missing displayname (Bug 52446).
refint for uniqueMember has been enabled (Bug 48956).
61_notifier_protocol_version will now be skipped on systems without univention-directory-notifier and therefore no longer produces false positive results (Bug 54365).
notifier/protocol/version (Bug 50733).
ucs_registerLDAPExtension from the UCS shell function library now allows the option umcmessagecatalog.
This option can be used to supply translation files in GNU message catalog format for the UMC (Bug 53362).
echowithtimestamp was added (Bug 54019).
connector/ad/max_retry_rejected is not set (Bug 54432).
connector/ad/max_retry_rejected, which defaults to 10 tries (Bug 49867).
case_insensitive_attributes when using an authorize:Authorize filter.
These attributes will be compared case insensitive (Bug 53432).
ucs_registerLDAPExtension from the UCS shell function library now allows the option umcmessagecatalog.
This option can be used to supply translation files in GNU message catalog format for the UMC (Bug 53362).
ldap/translog-ignore-temporary has been created to control if UDM temporary objects should be considered for replication by the OpenLDAP translog overlay which feeds the Listener/Notifier.
This reduces the number of replication transactions during creation of users and groups significantly.
As a result it increases the replication performance and reduces the rate at which the LMDB backend database cn=translog gets filled.
This variable is applicable only to the Primary Directory Node.
By default is will be set to yes during package installation and update (Bug 54446).
/etc/machine.secret.SAVE is no longer readable by everyone (Bug 49033).
refint can now be enabled by setting the Univention Configuration Registry variable ldap/refint=true.
It enforces referential integrity for the attribute uniqueMember.
For updates the module will not be enabled by default (Bug 48956).
None when requesting non-existing keys.
This fixes a traceback in the Microsoft 365 Connector listener, when not every ADConnectionAlias has at least one user (Bug 54561).