Talk:Customised Firmware Release Notes

Draft release notes for 3.10

3.10 (01.03.2016)

• Add support for large hard disks (> 2^32 sectors [~2TB with 512-byte logical sectors]) - internal and USB-attached;
• Update SATA driver to (hopefully) overcome rare drive initialisation problem;
• RFC 1323 TCP window scaling is disabled by default (as per the tcpfix package);
• Add support for automatically mounting GPT disks connected via USB;
• Add new Safe Mode which disables almost all custom firmware components - useful for troubleshooting without having to load stock firmware (which isn't possible with large drives). Safe Mode can be enabled via the web interface diagnostics page or telnet menu and disabled in the same way;
• Initial web interface installation (CFW Bootstrap) now tests repository connectivity using TCP instead of ICMP;
• Updated fix-disk:
  • Add support for GPT partitioned disks;
  • For AF drives with a pending/unreadable logical sector, fix-disk now checks and attempts to repair the entire physical sector;
  • Backup copies of the disk partition table are now kept in flash to aid future recovery;
  • The 6 most recent fix-disk logs are retained for inspection rather than just the last;
• Updated telnet menu:
  • All options are now words rather than numbers;
  • New gptf option to re-format the internal hard disk using the GPT scheme;
  • New safe option to toggle safe mode;
  • New upgrade option to upgrade all installed packages;
  • New webif option to install the initial web interface (if missing);
  • New fixweb option to re-enable web server and re-install the web interface;
  • New reboot option to restart the Humax in as clean a way as possible other than to use the remote control;
• Updates to bootstrap web pages (those shown during boot or when in different modes):
  • HTML format fixes;
  • Served images are now browser-cacheable;
  • The initial web page shown before the disk is initialised now says that the system is still initialising and will automatically refresh to the standard web interface once it's running. If no disk is found within 20 seconds then an appropriate page is shown;
  • Web pages are shown when in maintenance or safe modes with an option to restart in normal mode;
• Set system clock from front panel Micom early in boot sequence (required for bootstrap caching);
• Provide consistent and deterministic behaviour if multiple boot modes are selected together (Maintenance mode wins followed by Safe, then Reset and finally RMA);
• New boot.log file consolidates messages from boot-time;
• Include gdisk, sgdisk and sfdisk utilities for partition table management;
• Update smartctl, hdparm and ext2 utilities;
• Include basic vi and more commands in flash;
• Remove some unused/non-working/superseded commands from flash (fsck, syslogd, klogd, inetd).