The latest version of m23 extends the spectrum of supported client distributions by adding support for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Linux Mint 17 Qiana. For Linux Mint, the desktop environments Mate, Cinnamon, Xfce and KDE are available - for Ubuntu, there are a minimal KDE/Kubuntu Desktop, Unity (3D), Xfce, the Lubuntu Desktop and Gnome.

Even while adding support for the two new distributions - and especially the desktops - accounts for most of the time needed to build this new release, there have also been made other improvements to m23. Among these you will find the improved user authentification by LDAP or the new testing framework "AutoTest" which automatically checks the m23 server installation ISOs.

LDAP

From this m23 version on LDAP users (on clients with Debian 7.x, Ubuntu 14.04 and Linux Mint 17) will automatically be added to the local groups to which local users would also be added. This ensures that users logged in via LDAP can also access the client's resources (for example the sound card). Also, when adding an LDAP user via the m23 interface, the corresponding LDAP group is created or the user is added to the group with the number of the admin's choice.

AutoTest

AutoTest is a new framework which was developed to automate repetitive testing tasks (which occur before the release of a new m23 version). Currently, it does not yet contain all the features we have planned, but it's enough to install the m23 server installation ISO on a virtual machine in VirtualBox without any user action. AutoTest defines the parts of a testing process using an XML file. Each part consists of a trigger event (for example a sequence of letters on the VM's screen), one or more actions (for example emulated keyboard strokes) and the following comparison with letter sequences on the screen which signal success, warnings or fatal results of that action. The output picture on the VM's screen is interpreted using the gocr character recognition.
The test definition file also contains the parameters used to create the VM (for example RAM and hard disk size). A test can be executed on a local machine (on the same computer with the same user as the one starting AutoTest) as well as on a remote machine (in a running X- or X2go-session).
Future versions of AutoTest will also allow to automagically test the m23 web interface, for example to add a new client and install it.

m23 command line interface

The m23 command line tool (m23cli) was extended by four features: It can now output the contents of a package sources list and a client's MAC address. One m23cli plugin lists all clients' IP addresses in one group. Another one checks if the clients can be accessed by network.

Odds and ends

Debian based clients now do a "dist-upgrade" after the installation of the base system to update the software which is in the compressed operating system archive. If the hardware detection cannot find a harddisk (either because the driver module is missing or because there really is no harddisk), an error message in the partitioning dialogue in the m23 interface now alerts the user and stops further setup of the client. The recovery method "Set status to "Add"" does no longer add the task "reboot" or "shutdown". The new script "fixPHPFilePermissionsAndCR" (in /m23/bin) allows that the Apache user can access the PHP scripts in /m23 and that they use the correct end of line markers for BASH. When installing a language pack, this automatically required the installation of k3b. From this version on, k3b will automatically be removed again if it has not been installed before the language pack was added. The m23 virtualbox functions were modified to be able to get status informations from all VirtualBox versions.

Bug fixes

Of course, we have also fixed some (small) bugs ;-) A change to the function which suggests a free IP address (used in the "Add client" dialog) now only refers to the currently valid (and not some previously used) IP range of the m23 server. At the start of the mass installation, the debconf settings are now also replicated and the second DNS server of the model client is also added to the real clients' settings. In the file list of the package architect, the file size of files bigger than 2 Gb on 32bit m23 servers is now shown correctly. And, lastly: In the HTML version of the user manual, all quotation marks are now supposedly in their correct place ;-)

The new version is available as update from the m23 interface, via APT, as ISO file to burn the m23 server installation CD, as preinstalled virtual machine or as Raspberry Pi image file (the last three can be found in the download section).