path: root/NEWS

NEWS                                                            -*- outline -*-
----

Welcome to schroot 1.4.11.  Please read these release notes carefully.

Full installation instructions are provided in the INSTALL file.  The
README file also contains more specific notes regarding building and
configuration.

* Major changes in 1.4.11:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.4.10:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.4.9:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.4.8:

  1) Chroot names are now prefixed by a namespace.  Three namespaces
     are used in this release, "chroot:", "source:" and "session:" for
     chroots, source chroots and sessions, respectively.  These may
     all be selected with the --all-chroots, --all-source-chroots and
     --all-sessions options.  Individual chroots may be referred to
     with or without a prefix, depending upon the context.  For most
     actions, "chroot:" is the default prefix, while the
     --run-session, --recover-session and --end-session actions use
     "session:" as the default prefix.

  2) Source chroots previously used a -source suffix.  A chroot named
     "squeeze" providing a source chroot would also create a source
     chroot named "squeeze-source".  The source chroot is now named
     "source:squeeze", but a chroot with a -source suffix is still
     created for compatibility (actually now named
     "chroot:squeeze-source").  The -source suffix names will be
     dropped in the 1.5.x development releases and 1.6.x stable
     releases.

  3) Session chroots previously were in the same flat namespace as
     chroots.  Now that sessions are in a separate namespace, it is
     possible to create a session with the same name as the original
     chroot.  For example a chroot named "build" is actually
     "chroot:build" and so the session will be named "session:build".
     For compatibility session names are also still placed in the
     "chroot:" namespace so that they still work without namespaces
     with actions such as --info (namespaces are not required for
     session-specific actions such as --run-session).  The
     compatibility name will be dropped in the 1.5.x development
     releases and 1.6.x stable releases.

  4) The option --list, in addition to respecting the various --all
     options will now allow the use of --chroot as well.  This may be
     used to verify the existence of the specified chroots.  --list
     defaults to showing --all-chroots --all-source-chroots which is
     the effective behaviour of previous releases.

  5) The key named priority in the configuration file has been
     deprecated.  This was originally introduced for compatibility
     with sbuild, but sbuild has never used the properly.  It will be
     obsoleted and removed in the 1.5.x development releases and 1.6.x
     stable releases.

  6) The enviroment variables HOME and SESSION are always preserved
     (this was a regression in 1.4.7).

* Major changes in 1.4.7:

  1) Install profile configurations in the correct location.  1.4.6
     incorrectly installed these into $sysconfdir rather than
     $sysconfdir/schroot due to a mistake in the build scripts.

* Major changes in 1.4.6:

  1) The environment may be preserved on a per-chroot basis using the
     new preserve-environment key in the configuration file.  This is
     equivalent to using the --preserve-environment option, but only
     affects a single chroot.

  2) It is now possible to add a "location" configuration option to
     specify the location of the chroot within the archive file for
     file type chroots.  Previously, it was assumed that the location
     was always the root, whereas it is typical to create archives
     which unpack into a subdirectory rather than the current
     directory.  This makes chroot file archive creation and use
     easier.

  3) Chroots of type "loopback" now always create session files which
     adds the ability to begin and end sessions with this chroot type.

  4) The setup scripts have been improved to increase their
     reliability during failure.  Previously, if a problem occured it
     might not have been possible to end a session which would result
     in stray files being left in the session and mount directories.
     This should no longer occur.

  5) Users should note that by default the entirety of /dev is bind
     mounted into the chroot environment.  If this has security
     implications, the "minimal" profile does not mount any of /dev
     into the chroot and may be a more secure alternative.  For most
     situations, mounting /dev in the chroot and providing full access
     to the devices on the host system is perfectly acceptable.

* Major changes in 1.4.5:

  1) A new chroot type, "btrfs-snapshot", has been added.  This is
     similar to the existing LVM snapshot functionality, but using
     snapshots of Btrfs subvolumes.  Btrfs is currently still marked
     experimental in the Linux kernel, so this feature should also be
     regarded as experimental and subject to change.  Btrfs snapshots
     are somewhat faster than LVM snapshots, are more flexible, and
     use very little disc space.  LVM snapshots require pre-allocating
     a fixed amount of storage per snapshot.

  2) Source chroots may be disabled for chroot types providing source
     chroots using the new source-clone key in the configuration file.

  3) Configuration profiles "minimal", "desktop" and "sbuild" have
     been added in addition to the existing "default" profile.  These
     provide pre-canned configurations for several common usage
     scenarios, and are used with the script-config key.

  4) Frequently asked questions are addressed in the new
     schroot-faq(7) manual page.

  5) The default message verbosity may be set using the new
     message-verbosity key in the configuration file.

* Major changes in 1.4.4:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.4.3:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.4.2:

  1) Added support for building with Boost 1.42.

* Major changes in 1.4.1:

  1) A dchroot bug which prevented root from accessing chroots where
     they were not specifically granted access has been fixed.  root
     now has access to all chroots.  Note this only affected dchroot
     and dchroot-dsa, not schroot.

  2) The setup script configuration files 'script-defaults',
     'mount-defaults', 'copyfiles-defaults' and
     'nssdatabases-defaults', located in /etc/schroot, have been moved
     to /etc/schroot/default.  'script-defaults' has been renamed to
     'config', and 'mount-defaults' has been renamed to 'fstab'.
     Likewise 'nssdatabases-defaults' has been renamed to
     'nssdatabases' and 'copyfiles-defaults' to 'copyfiles'.  Note
     that the default setting for 'script-config' in schroot.conf has
     changed from 'script-defaults' to 'default/config'.  If manually
     setting 'script-config' to 'script-defaults' in your chroot
     definitions, this will require updating.  If unset, no changes
     are required.

  3) Additional setup script environment variables have been added:
     HOST, HOST_OS, HOST_VENDOR, HOST_CPU and PLATFORM.  These are for
     adding platform-specific logic to setup scripts, and are
     initially for FreeBSD and GNU/kFreeBSD compatibility.

  4) Additional FreeBSD compatibility work in setup scripts and block
     device code.  schroot should now work with current FreeBSD and
     Debian GNU/kFreeBSD systems.

* Major changes in 1.4.0:

  None.  For users upgrading from the previous stable release (1.2.x),
  please read the changes made since 1.2.3.  Changes to the
  configuration file format may require some small changes to your
  existing configuration.  Additionally, the naming of chroot
  configuration files under /etc/schroot/chroot.d has been made
  stricter, in order to prevent reading of editor backup files and
  dpkg conffile backups.  It uses the same naming rules as specified
  in run-parts(8) for the --lsbsysinit option.  If some of your
  chroots are not available after upgrading to 1.4.0, this may be the
  reason.  Simply rename the files to a conforming name and they will
  become available.

* Major changes in 1.3.2:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.3.1:

  1) Kernel personality support should now work on non-Linux
     architectures such as kfreebsd.

* Major changes in 1.3.0:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.3.0-rc1:

  1) Exec scripts have been removed.  Unlike setup scripts, these
     scripts were never used, and there are no known uses for them.
     Removing them will improve the performance of schroot.  The
     run-exec-scripts configuration option is no longer used, but
     is still permitted to be used until it is obsoleted in a
     future release.

  2) Setup scripts are now always run for all chroot types except
     "plain".  In practice, scripts were required for all types
     except "plain" in order to function correctly.  The ability to
     configure this is not useful and so setting run-setup-scripts is
     now deprecated in schroot.conf.  It may still be set for backward
     compatibility, but it has no effect and will be removed in the
     future.

  3) Chroot configuration files in /etc/schroot/chroot.d are not
     loaded if they are backup files or dpkg conffile backups.

  4) Support for GCC versions prior to 3.4 has been removed.

  5) System databases are copied into the chroot using the getent
     program to use the appropriate name service switch (NSS) modules
     to get the data, rather than just copying the files.  This means
     all NSS database sources are supported, including NIS and LDAP.

  6) Setup script output is logged to stderr which prevents schroot
     outputting to stdout when run with verbose logging enabled.

  7) Most schroot features are compiled conditionally, which should
     ease porting to non-Linux platforms.

  8) Support for union filesystems has been added (aufs and unionfs).
     This permits the use of read-only block-device, directory and
     loopback chroots with a temporary writable overlay.  For "scratch"
     temporary chroots, this method is recommended over the existing
     LVM snapshot support.  It is considered to be faster, more
     robust, and uses less disc space.

  9) The "command-prefix" option no longer requires an absolute path
     to the command.  It will use the normal search path inside the
     chroot to locate the command.

 10) When creating a session, the users in "users", "root-users", and
     groups in "groups" and "root-groups" are no longer preserved.
     The user requesting access will be the sole user listed in
     "users" for the session; however, if the user was in "root-users"
     or "root-groups", they will be added to "root-users" instead.
     This ensures that only the user creating the session will have
     access, so that other users having access to the chroot will not
     also automatically gain access to other users sessions.

* Major changes in 1.2.3:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.2.2:

  None.

* Major changes in 1.2.1:

  1) A new chroot type, "loopback", has been added.  This is similar
     to the "block-device" type, but allows for loopback mounting of
     filesystems contained within regular files.

  2) "lvm-snapshot" chroot types now clean up correctly in the case of
     failures during setup.

* Major changes in 1.2.0:

  1) In addition to /etc/schroot/schroot.conf, chroot definitions may
     be placed in separate files under /etc/schroot/chroot.d to enable
     packages and system administrators to easily make new chroots
     available to schroot.

  2) Configuration files may now be symlinks as well as regular files.

  3) schroot now builds with GCC 4.3.

  4) All setup and exec scripts source and use the script
     configuration file specified with the script-config configuration
     key.

* Major changes in 1.1.6:

  1) Relicence under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or
     later.

  2) Per-chroot custom mountpoints are now possible through the use of
     an fstab file.  This may be used to mount or bind mount any
     filesystem within the chroot with the assistance of a helper
     utility, schroot-mount.  Set FSTAB=fstab in the script-config
     file to specify which file to use.

  3) Per-chroot custom file copying is now supported.  Set
     COPYFILES=file in the script-config file to specify a file
     containing a list of files to copy from the host system into the
     chroot.  This change merged the 20network and 30passwd setup
     scripts into a single script, 20copyfiles.  If you previously
     customised either of these scripts, the changes will need to be
     copied over to the new files.

  4) If invalid options are used in schroot.conf, warnings will be
     printed, rather than simply ignoring them.

* Major changes in 1.1.5:

  1) A "script-config" option has been added to allow customisation of
     the chroot setup and execution scripts on a per-chroot basis.
     See schroot.conf(5) for further details.

  2) A --session-name has been added to allow naming sessions when
     using --begin-session.  This replaces the automatically-generated
     chroot-UUID session name.

* Major changes in 1.1.4:

  1) When ending a session, processes still running in the chroot are
     terminated.

* Major changes in 1.1.3:

  Bugfixes and translation updates only.

* Major changes in 1.1.2:

  Bugfixes and translation updates only.

* Major changes in 1.1.1:

  1) For dchroot and dchroot-dsa, the syslog logging of the command or
     shell being run in the chroot now only occurs when running as
     root or switching to another user.  If the user is the same
     inside and outside the chroot, and not root, the command or shell
     being run will not be logged.

  2) Using symbolic links in the mount path (SCHROOT_MOUNT_DIR) will
     no longer result in severe dataloss.

  3) User-defined filtering of the chroot environment is now permitted
     using the environment-filter key in the configuration file, which
     uses a regular expression to identify environment variables for
     removal.

  4) The environment variables SCHROOT_COMMAND, SCHROOT_USER,
     SCHROOT_GROUP, SCHROOT_UID and SCHROOT_GID are set inside the
     chroot specifying the command being run, the user name, group
     name, user ID and group ID, respectively.

* Major changes in 1.1.0:

  1) Authentication now uses the Controlling TTY (/dev/tty) for
     communication with the user.  This means PAM interaction with the
     user will work even if stdin, stdout and stderr are all
     redirected.  If authentication is required and no CTTY is
     available, it will fail (due to authentication being an
     interactive process).

  2) The syslog logging of the command or shell being run in the
     chroot now only occurs when running as root or switching to
     another user.  If the user is the same inside and outside the
     chroot, and not root, the command or shell being run will not be
     logged.

  3) A --directory option has been added to schroot, dchroot and
     dchroot-dsa.  This option allows the user to explictly specify
     the working directory inside the chroot.

* Major changes in 1.0.6:

  Bugfixes only.

* Major changes in 1.0.5:

  Bugfixes only.

* Major changes in 1.0.4:

  1) Using symbolic links in the mount path (SCHROOT_MOUNT_DIR) will
     no longer result in severe dataloss.

  2) LSB init script functions are now used.

* Major changes in 1.0.3:

  1) For dchroot and dchroot-dsa, the syslog logging of the command or
     shell being run in the chroot now only occurs when running as
     root or switching to another user.  If the user is the same
     inside and outside the chroot, and not root, the command or shell
     being run will not be logged.

* Major changes in 1.0.2:

  1) The syslog logging of the command or shell being run in the
     chroot now only occurs when running as root or switching to
     another user.  If the user is the same inside and outside the
     chroot, and not root, the command or shell being run will not be
     logged.

  2) A --directory option has been added to schroot, dchroot and
     dchroot-dsa.  This option allows the user to explictly specify
     the working directory inside the chroot.

* Major changes in 1.0.1:

  Bugfixes and translation updates only.

* Major changes in 1.0.0:

  Bugfixes and translation updates only.

* Major changes in 0.99.4:

  1) All errors in the configuration file now show the full details of
     the problem, including the exact line number, group and key.

  2) Duplicate groups and keys with groups are now treated as errors.

  3) The terminal state is only saved and restored when running a
     login shell.  It is no longer saved and restored when running
     commands.  This is to correct the problem of schroot being
     stopped when running in the background while restoring the
     terminal settings.

  4) Child processes are now terminated when SIGTERM is received, in
     addition to SIGHUP.

* Major changes in 0.99.3:

  1) A new chroot type, "directory", has been added.  This is the same
     as the "plain" type, but additionally allows filesystem mounting
     when setup scripts are enabled.

  2) A further dchroot compatibility issue has been corrected.
     Multiple command options specified on the command line are
     concatenated into a single command, separated by spaces.

* Major changes in 0.99.2:

  1) A --debug option has been added to all programs.  Its use is
     documented in the manual pages.

  2) When errors are found in the chroot configuration, the line
     number in the configuration file is now reported.

  3) The use of run-parts(8) is no longer needed.  This should make
     the package portable to non-Debian systems.

* Major changes in 0.99.1:

  1) A dchroot-dsa compatibility mode has been implemented.  This
     behaves in the same manner as the DSA dchroot program, and is
     useful for backward compatibility with DSA dchroot, as well as
     migrating from DSA dchroot.

  2) The dchroot program is now compatible with the command-line
     syntax of older versions, and also matches the older behaviour of
     which directory is used inside the chroot.  The behaviour is
     documented in the manual page.

  3) In addition to "groups" and "root-groups" options for controlling
     chroot access, "users" and "root-users" have been added for finer
     control over access.  Corresponding "source-users" and
     "source-root-users" options have been added for source chroots.

  4) Files, Devices and Locations in schroot.conf must be absolute
     pathnames.  Relative names are a security risk, because the
     behaviour may vary depending on the current working directory.
     It was previously the sysadmin's responsibility to set these
     correctly, but this rule is now strictly enforced.

* Major changes in 0.99.0:

  1) In order to support running 32-bit chroots on 64-bit systems, a
     "personality" option has been added.  This may be set to
     "linux32" to run a 32-bit Linux chroot on an amd64 system, for
     example.

  2) dchroot has an additional personality field in dchroot.conf.
     This may also be set to linux32 to achieve the same effect as the
     personality setting in schroot.conf.

  3) The root user can access all chroots, even when the root group is
     omitted from the groups or root_groups lists.  Authentication is
     still required, but by default is skipped due to using
     pam_rootok.so in the PAM configuration.

  4) Session recovery is only performed at system startup, not on
     upgrades.  This prevents upgrades interfering with active
     sessions.

* Major changes in 0.2.11:

  1) The 10mount script, used to unmount filesystem in a chroot, will
     exit with an error if unmounting fails (for safety).  It also
     uses /proc/mounts (via a new program, schroot-listmounts) to
     ensure all filesystems in the chroot are unmounted.

  2) The 05file script, used to unpack and repack chroot archives,
     will use schroot-listmounts to check if any filesystems are
     mounted before purging the chroot.  This is in order to avoid
     dataloss.

  3) Setup scripts can now abort on failure during cleanup (exec-stop
     and setup-stop phases).  Previously the scripts continued in the
     face of failure, and broken sessions were removed.  Broken
     sessions which failed to clean up must now be removed by the
     system administrator (which was required previously; it just
     wasn't apparent), or the session can be ended again once the
     problem has been rectified.

* Major changes in 0.2.10:

  Bugfixes only.

* Major changes in 0.2.9:

  1) The package now compiles with older compilers, such as GCC 3.3
     and 3.4.

  2) If the current working directory does not exist inside the
     chroot, the user's home directory ($HOME, home directory in
     passwd, or /) will be used when running a login shell.  If
     running a command and the directory does not exist, schroot will
     exit with an error.

* Major changes in 0.2.8:

  Bugfixes only.

* Major changes in 0.2.7:

  Bugfixes only.

* Major changes in 0.2.6:

  1) For all chroot types, a "command-prefix" option has been added.
     This is a command to prefix to all commands run inside the
     chroot.

  2) The scripts run before and after executing a command or shell in
     the chroot have been moved from /etc/schroot/run.d to
     /etc/schroot/exec.d.  The corresponding configuration option in
     schroot.conf has been renamed from "run-session-scripts" to
     "run-exec-scripts".  This change was to reduce ambiguity in the
     naming, to make it easier to understand and configure.

  3) The session operations "--recover-session", "--run-session", and
     "--end-session" now allow multiple chroots to be specified with
     "--chroot", rather than just one.

  4) The "file" and "lvm-snapshot" chroot types both implement "source
     chroots", to provide access to the source block device and
     archive file, respectively.  The "source-groups" and
     "source-root-groups" options have been added to set the "groups"
     and "root-groups" options for the source chroot.

  5) The "file" chroot, when accessed as a source chroot using the
     "-source" suffix, will now automatically repack itself into a new
     archive file on ending a session.

* Major changes in 0.2.5:

  1) The output of "--info" now displays a "Path" line if available.
     This is the location of the chroot in the filesystem.

* Major changes in 0.2.4:

  1) For "block-device" and "lvm-snapshot" type chroots, it is now
     possible to add a "location" configuration option to specify the
     location of the chroot within the device filesystem, rather than
     assuming the location is always the root.  This allows multiple
     chroots to be stored on a single LVM LV, for example.

  2) For "plain" chroots, if setup scripts (run-setup-scripts) is
     enabled, session management is also enabled.  This is not true
     session management, because it uses bind mounts rather than a
     copy of the chroot, so should be used with caution, but will make
     concurrent access to the chroot with session scripts enabled
     rather more useful.

* Major changes in 0.2.3:

  1) A dchroot compatibility mode has been implemented.  This behaves
     in the same manner as the dchroot program, and is useful for
     backward compatibility with dchroot, as well as migrating from
     dchroot.

  2) Access to the source device of an "lvm-snapshot" type chroot is
     simplified.  For a chroot named "snap", a "block-device" type
     chroot named "snap-source" is created for easy access to the
     source device.

  3) The output of "--info" now includes a "Session Managed" line,
     which is true if full session management is available, or false
     otherwise.

* Major changes in 0.2.2:

  1) Session metadata is now correctly saved and restored.

  2) New option "--config" to dump chroot configuration, in the same
     manner as "--info".  This is useful to test if the configuration
     you put in schroot.conf is what schroot is actually parsing.

  3) Session-managed chroot types ("file" and "lvm-snapshot") now run
     setup and session scripts by default.  It was previously disabled
     for all chroot types for safety reasons.  It's considered safe
     for these types due to their ephemeral nature.

* Major changes in 0.2.1:

  1) Creating a session now returns a zero exit status on success.

* Major changes in 0.2.0:

  1) A new chroot type, "file", has been added, to allow chroots to be
     created by unpacking a file archive, such as a tar or zip file.

  2) The source has been rewritten in C++, and documented with
     Doxygen.

  3) A testsuite has been added to unit test as much functionality as
     is reasonably possible.

* Major changes in 0.1.7:

  1) The chroots now implement locking to restrict access to chroots
     which are already in use.

  2) The "current-users" and "max-users" configuration options have
     been removed.  These have been obsoleted by chroot locking.

  3) The command-line options "--all-chroots" and "--all-sessions"
     have been added, which have similar behaviour to "--all", but
     selects all chroots and all active sessions, respectively.

  4) Session creation, use and removal is now available for LVM
     snapshot chroots, using the options documented in schroot(1).

  5) The session commands also work with non-session-based chroot
     types (plain and block-device), but are equivalent to using the
     chroot normally.

  6) An init script is used to recover (restore) session chroots at
     system startup.

  7) If no chroot is specified, schroot will fall back to using the
     "default" chroot.  Adding a "default" alias to an existing chroot
     will make this chroot the default.

* Major changes in 0.1.6:

  1) Setup scripts may be run on startup and shutdown and before and
     after a command in order to perform setup tasks such as
     configuring the chroot and mounting filesystems.  These are
     stored in /etc/schroot/setup.d and /etc/schroot/run.d, and run
     using run-parts(8).  New scripts may easily be added by the
     system administrator.  See schroot-setup(5).

  2) Different types of chroots are now supported.  The current types
     are "plain" (the default, which is the type supported by previous
     releases), "block-device" (a block device mounted on the fly) and
     "lvm-snapshot" (an LVM snapshot of an LV made on the fly).

* Major changes in 0.1.5:

  1) The authentication system has been extended to remove the
     dependency upon libpam_misc.  There are no user-visible changes.

  2) The root user (uid 0) no longer has special privileges during
     authentication.  If the root user should have special privileges
     (such as not requiring authentication to change to any other
     user), do the following:

     - uncomment the pam_rootok.so line in pam.d/schroot.  This will
       disable the requirement for root authentication.
     - add root to groups (root_groups membership is redundant), so
       that root is allowed access.

  3) The configuration file, /etc/schroot.conf has been moved to
     /etc/schroot/schroot.conf.  This should be moved automatically
     when upgrading the Debian package.

  4) A new directory, /etc/schroot/setup.d has been added.  This
     contains scripts to perform setup and cleanup tasks in the
     chroot, which are run with run-parts(8).  This provides an
     easy was to configure and customise chroots.

* Major changes in 0.1.4:

  1) A new chroot configuration option, "priority", has been added.
     This is intended for use with sbuild, to indicate whether the
     distribution in a chroot is older than the distribution in
     another chroot.

  2) The printed messages displaying the command or shell being run
     now correctly inform the user if the shell is a login shell or
     not.

* Major changes in 0.1.3:

  1) HOME, LOGNAME and USER are set in the environment if the old
     environment is not being preserved.

  2) schroot now aborts earlier if no chroots are defined in
     schroot.conf, rather than failing with a confusing failed
     assertion error.

  3) An option parsing bug which could sometimes cause a crash has
     been fixed.

* Major changes in 0.1.2:

  1) Support for gettext has been added, to allow localisation into
     any language.

  2) If a command is specified, it will be searched for in $PATH.
     Previously, an absolute path was always required.

* Major changes in 0.1.1:

  1) Add a large number of pointer checks.

* Major changes in 0.1.0:

  1) Initial release.

  2) Debian packaging created.