2011.08.19

Release Notes

What has changed in this period of more than a year?

AIF (installation tool):

  • Experimental support for btrfs and nilfs2.
  • Support syslinux bootloader, as well as grub.
  • Changes to configuration formats to support new rc.conf and linux3.0
  • Make selecting source more flexible (multiple local and/or remote repos)
  • Show package descriptions when installing packages
  • Run with debugging and logging enabled by default, add /arch/report-issues script
  • Make automatic profiles switch source depending on whether core or netinstall system is running
  • Remove support for tcp_wrappers in accordance to Arch Linux policy

libui.sh (bash UI framework):

  • Made long checklists much easier in CLI mode, by using $EDITOR
  • More flexible initialization

Archiso (image builds):

  • Snapshot of current core, including kernel 3.0.3-1, pacman 3.5.4-3, glibc 2.14-4, mkinitcpio 0.7.2-1, initscripts 2011.07.3-1 and netcfg 2.6.7-1
  • Big overhaul: use dm-snapshot instead of aufs2
  • All needed files to boot for custom USB media installed on /arch
  • Allow changing NBD export name
  • Allow using serial console (kernel parameter: console)
  • Allow starting custom script (kernel parameter: script), autologin tty1.
  • Add self integrity test (kernel parameter: checksum=y)
  • Add support to mount iso in loopback mode
  • Added packages: btrfs-progs-unstable crda curl dhclient dialog dnsmasq hdparm netcfg nilfs-utils openconnect rp-pppoe rsync vpnc wpa_actiond
  • Removed packages: aufs2 aufs2-util joe ndiswrapper ndiswrapper-utils tiacx tiacx-firmware
  • Remove x86test, add HDT to initial syslinux menu
  • Add support for booting from memdisk
  • XZ compression for SquashFS and initramfs.

Obviously there's more, such as bunches of code cleanups and bugfixes, but this should be the most important.

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