14 DAY TRIAL // NethServer's Alessio Fattorini is informing Softpedia today, May 3, 2017, on the official release and immediate availability for download of the NethServer 6.9 operating system.
NethServer 6.9 follows in the footsteps of the CentOS 6.9, Scientific Linux 6.9, and Koozali SME Server 9.2 operating systems, all of which are derived from the freely distributed sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9, the last maintenance update in the series.
Therefore, NethServer 6.9 is a small point release to add various improvements and fix bugs for the NethServer 6.x series of server-oriented operating systems. It incorporates all the upstream updates and security patches from the CentOS 6.9 repositories, and also backports some features from the NethServer 7.x branch.
"We’re confident that, as always, it will achieve our mission: making sysadmin’s life easier with Open Source. This is thanks to the most vibrant, supportive and friendly community in the Open Source space (and not just Open Source)," said Alessio Fattorini, NethServer Community Leader, in today's announcement.
Traffic shaping and port forwarding support on red VLANs
Prominent new features of the NethServer 6.9 release include the ability to add traffic shaping and create port forwarding on red VLAN (Virtual LAN) interfaces, which will now be listed on the Traffic Shaping web-based UI and the WAN IP (red interface) section.
It also implements the ability to restore a NethServer installation from old backups, support for accessing Collectd Graph Panel (CGP) graphs and lightsquid reports via the server-manager port 980, updates the Shorewall firewall software to the 5.x series, and improves the IPsec tunnel to correctly reject unencrypted traffic.
Another interesting feature implemented in NethServer 6.9 is the enablement of NTLMv2 authentication to allow Samba to work with Microsoft Windows networks that only support the NTLMv2 authentication protocol. Other than that, NethServer adds support for importing contacts from Microsoft Outlook 2016 via Webtop.
The generation of certificates in the certificate-update event and during renewal of Let’s Encrypt are now avoided, the Kerberos ticket renewal process should no longer fail when NethServer joins an AD (Active Directory) domain, and Collectd 5 was updated to avoid rrd write problems on overloaded systems.
Upgrading from NethServer 6.9 is rather easy and involves starting the update process from the Software Center page, waiting for all packages to be downloaded and installed, and then rebooting the machine at the end of the upgrade procedure. You can also download the NethServer 6.9 installation images right now from our website.