PhpWiki - SME Server Announce v5.6

SME Server 5.6

Mitel Networks is pleased to announce the availability of version 5.6 of the SME Server. We strongly recommend all users upgrade to this release.

This is an unsupported developer release of the Mitel Networks SME Server.

MITEL NETWORKS DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY SUPPORT FOR THIS DEVELOPER RELEASE.

Mitel Networks also sells a commercial release of this software which has additional features

and is fully supported by Mitel Networks and its resellers. For details on the commercial release, please visit http://www.mitel.com/6000MAS/

THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY AND IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS

OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Availability
This release is available for download from our mirror sites. Please choose a download site

close to you from the SME Server developer release mirrors list at http://www.e-smith.org/content/downloads/

Mitel Networks is pleased to announce the availability of the final version of the 6.0 SME Server

The changes in this release include engineering improvements, a newlook and feel and Spanish language support

for the server manager webinterface, and the inclusion of a port forwarding panel.

Comments or bug reports should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (and only there, please)

Major features in this release This release is a significant update to improve compatibility with current server hardware and client

operating system releases. The Linux kernel has been upgraded to the 2.4 kernel series, and the Macintosh, Windows and IMAP (mail folder access) server applications have been updated to current releases.

This release uses the "ext3" journalling filesystem for file storage, greatly improving recovery time after

power failure or emergency shutdown and improving file system reliability. The firewalling code has been upgraded to include stateful packet inspection. This release also contains a number of minor updates and corrections.

Installation

To reduce the possibility of confusion, the user is required to

type "install" to initiate a fresh installation and "upgrade" to initiate a system upgrade. Previously the word "proceed" was required in each case.

The disk space reserved for boot support and virtual memory has been increased to 100MBytes and 256Mbytes respectively.
The kernel names on the splash screen have changed. Single processor systems will now display the kernel name "Mitel SME". Multiprocessor capable systems will now display "Mitel SME smp" (Symmetric Multiprocessing, the default) and "Mitel SME up" (uniprocessor).

Upgrades

The masquerading of all capablities of the H.323, ICQ and RTSP protocols is not supported in this release. Supported customers who require these features should contact smesupport@mitel.com to determine their availability.
Upgrades from SME Server 5.0/5.1.x/5.5 are auto-detected. Upgrades from e-smith 4.1.2 are also auto-detected. Upgrades from previous e-smith versions are not supported.
The installer will detect an SME Server system which has not been correctly shut down prior to upgrading. An upgrade cannot be performed reliably on such a system.

To upgrade in this case

Halt the system

Remove the installation CD

Start up the existing system normally

Shut the system down using the "Shutdown" option from the server console

Insert the installation CD

Restart the installation from CD

If a fresh install is desired instead of an upgrade, type "more options" and select the appropriate choice from the next menu.

The language and keyboard selection menus are displayed during an upgrade and the chosen settings override any previously chosen options.
Existing filesytems from previous SME Server releases are automatically migrated to use the journalling filesystem.
Caution should be observed if any custom templates have been created. Changes in the structure of standard templates between releases can cause existing custom templates to be inappropriate and to interfere with normal server function. The recommended strategy is to remove custom templates before upgrading and then re-apply each custom template if still applicable.
The upgrade option no longer re-installs packages which are already installed, reducing the time taken to perform a system upgrade.
While supported, upgrades of multiprocessor capable machines result in very little free space in the boot partition. To provide adequate space for future system upgrades, we recommend that multiprocessor capable machines are upgraded by performing a backup, followed by a fresh install and a restore.
The hard disk performance optimization configuration setting "hdparm" has been completely removed due to incompatibilities with some hardware.

Blades

The Blades web panel has been removed from the server manager as we have chosen to focus all blades-related development on our commercially supported products. Updates to this developer release will continue to be made available as downloadable RPMs as they were prior to the introduction of the blades interface. Commercial customers will continue to be able to download both updates and additional applications as software blades..

Packet filter and masquerading changes

The firewalling code has been rewritten to use the Linux iptables interface, and enables connection tracking to allow stateful packet filtering.
All actions which modify firewalling rules now use a new interface which preserves all existing rules. Previous versions rebuilt and reloaded all rules when modifications were required.
Specific protocol modules have been loaded to handle masquerading of FTP, TFTP and PPTP protocols.
The masquerading of all capablities of the H.323, ICQ and RTSP protocols is not supported in this release. Supported customers who require these features should contact smesupport@mitel.com to determine their availability.
The pidentd software which provided responses to IDENT queries has been replaced by oidentd. oidentd has a flexible mechanism for specifying IDENT responses and includes support for identifying netfilter masqueraded connections.
The iptstate program has been added to the release to provide a detailed view of masqueraded connections. This software is currently only available to administrators logged onto the server.

IMAP server update

The IMAP server has been upgraded to version 2001a which provides many additional features and corrections.
The IMAP server now supports encrypted connections when negotiated by the client using the STARTTLS messages. The Webmail and Groupware applications have been upgraded for this change. Some mail clients may need to be configured to accept the self-signed SSL certificate presented by the server or, failing that, to maintain the connection in cleartext.
The received time of messages is preserved when messages are moved between folders.
Mail folders have been moved from the user's home directory to a subdirectory "Mail". This move happens automatically on upgrades and is transparent to IMAP mail clients.
The mail prefix entry box in Webmail (which defaulted to "Mail") has been removed.

Apple Macintosh file sharing support

The Macintosh file sharing support has been updated to netatalk version 1.5.5 which provides greatly improved support for Quark Express and Adobe Photoshop.
Macintosh clients are no longer able to connect to the server using "Clear Text Authentication". Macintosh clients prior to System 7.6 will not be able to connect to the server. Macintosh clients using System 7.6 and 8.x may need to install an AppleShare Client update from the Apple website to enable DHX encrypted authentication.

Windows file sharing support

The Windows (SMB/CIFS) file sharing support has been upgraded to Samba version 2.2.5 which provides improved support for printing from Windows XP clients and for running Microsoft Access executables directly from a server share.
Windows networking opportunistic file locks have been enabled which provide improved read and write performance.
Windows XP requires an interoperability patch if domain logins are used. This patch is made available via the web server, via the URL "http://servername/server-resources/".

LDAP data changes

The LDAP database is saved to an LDAP interchange format (LDIF) file whenever the LDAP server is shut down. This data is also backed up and restored by backup and restore.

Documentation

The User Guide has been split into separate "Administrator Guide" and "Technician's Handbook" documents. These documents are available in the Documentation directory of the CD image in HTML, Windows HTML Help file (CHM) and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) formats. They are available in both English and French-Canadian.
All documentation is also available at http://edocs.mitel.com/.

Corrections

This release contains all fixes included in 5.5 Upgrade 1 and 5.5 Upgrade 2. It also contains fixes for some other problems

Multidrop email collection can now be used in Private Server and Gateway mode.
Webmail preferences are preserved across upgrades and other Webmail initialization issues have been corrected.
Group membership changes made via the User Accounts panel are now correctly preserved.
It is no longer possible to assign a static IP address which conflicts with the DHCP dynamic address range in the Hostnames and addresses panel.
The NTP time synchronization client now uses the recommended source port for queries (port 123).
It is now possible to set a "Limit with grace period" without setting an "Absolute limit" in the Quota Management panel. Some improvements have also been made to the content of the messages sent when quotas were exceeded.
The allocation of software mirrored partitions to disks has been improved.

There are also other minor corrections, and some clarification of text of the French Canadian translations. We strongly recommend all users upgrade to this release.

Third party package updates

All packages directly derived from RedHat Linux have been upgraded to the RedHat 7.3 version, with applicable updates.
mailfront has been upgraded to 0.81
proftpd has been upgraded to 1.2.5
FreeS/WAN has been upgraded to 1.98b
Samba has been upgraded to 2.2.5
netatalk has been upgraded to 1.5.5