thinRoot

This is release 20240801 of thinRoot with the following bugfixes and feature changes:

🚧 Changes:

For all changes, see the full commit log.

• added first basic support for SPICE VDI protocol support by adding own custom spice-gtk, phodav and virt-viewer package allowing to run SPICE connections via remote-viewer including USB device redirection, local folder redirections and audio/video support including possibility to route a USB webcam via SPICE.
• update qutselect to 3.3 which comes with SPICE via ProxmoxVE connection support to be able to connect to VDI VMs providing a SPICE GFX card and SPICE channels to connect usb or other devices from a client system connecting to these SPICE enabled VMs.
• update upstream kernel to 6.6.43
• make sure truser group has access to all USB devices under /dev/bus
• update buildroot to 2024.05.1
• update ThinLinc client to 4.17.0-3543
• rename intelnuc to generic-x86_64 since we are not fixed to IntelNUC machines anymore.

👪 Contributors (alphabetically):

• @jens-maus

📦 Download:

The following installation archives can be downloaded for different hardware platforms. To verify their integrity a sha256 checksum is provided as well.

• Generic x86_64:
  📦 thinRoot-20240801-generic-x86_64.imgSHA256: 7cb9fdc025a23453802563867a1e89609f54ceb532d8a72261afd397c8033949

This is release 20240409 of thinRoot with the following bugfixes and feature changes:

🚧 Changes:

For all changes, see the full commit log.

• bump to final qutselect 3.0 version with Qt6 and simplified interface support.
• update ThinLinc client to latest 4.16.0-3389 version.
• add bash wrapper and remove our own qutselect connect scripts which are now part of official qutselect project.
• optimize global buildroot config.
• bump upstream kernel to latest 6.6.25 LTS.
• enable MPTCP support.
• disable CONFIG_WERROR since buildroot removes it anyway.
• remove rng-tools because in newer linux kernel versions /dev/random is not blocking anymore (5.6+) and the standard kernel provied entropy pool is strong enough (5.10+) so that tools like rng-tools or haveged are not required anymore and just unnecessarily consume CPU time. (cf. https://github.com/nhorman/rng-tools/issues/195#issuecomment-1520598021, https://forum.manjaro.org/t/low-entropy-on-my-system/119233).
• disable busybox wget app since we use upstream wget instead and updated busybox config accordingly.
• update rpi kernel to latest stable_20240124.
• update rpi-eeprom to latest version.

👪 Contributors (alphabetically):

• @jens-maus

📦 Download:

The following installation archives can be downloaded for different hardware platforms. To verify their integrity a sha256 checksum is provided as well.

• Intel NUC:
  📦 thinRoot-20240409-intelnuc.imgSHA256: 7aa9284f2d549d80443c1e67fcdaf0fd6d8cae9880e1d530b374926ecf0636f8

This is release 20240327 of thinRoot with the following bugfixes and feature changes:

🚧 Changes:

For all changes, see the full commit log.

• update upstream linux kernel to 6.6.23 LTS
• reworked buildroot config environment and kernel config files to be based on fragment config files.
• bump buildroot to latest 2024.02.1
• integrate fix for missing /var/lock in /etc/inittab.

👪 Contributors (alphabetically):

• @jens-maus

📦 Download:

The following installation archives can be downloaded for different hardware platforms. To verify their integrity a sha256 checksum is provided as well.

• Intel NUC:
  📦 thinRoot-20240327-intelnuc.imgSHA256: 9723ed0e48bb9b2dd8e95ee527cc3eee75af69864f4377c7dec28a5c3ab1021e

This is release 20230313 of thinRoot with the following bugfixes and feature changes:

🚧 Changes:

For all changes, see the full commit log.

RAW CHANGELOG

• bumped linux kernel to latest 6.1.18 LTS
• bumped buildroot to latest 2023.02
• fixed shellcheck warning/errors
• fixed chrony drift file permission issue and added more standard settings to default chrony.conf
• updated xprintidle package to latest 0.2.5 version fixing the build also.
• fixed qt-webengine-kiosk dependencies
• added new 0014-qt5webengine-py311-fix upstream buildroot patch to fix python 3.11 related build issues in the qt5webengine-chromium package.
• added new qt-kiosk-browser package to potentially use this as an alternative for the old/obsolete qt-webengine-kiosk package.
• enable fq_codel network scheduler in all kernel configs and enable it in global sysctl.conf for improved network performance.
• added release/snapshot workflow job and release template file
• added package consistentcy check and some more linter checks.

👪 Contributors (alphabetically):

• @jens-maus

📦 Download:

The following installation archives can be downloaded for different hardware platforms. To verify their integrity a sha256 checksum is provided as well.

• Intel NUC:
  📦 thinRoot-20230313-intelnuc.imgSHA256: e4a5cf02fc71bebb310094664a24615638561a2d809f3c7ac5a515be46f4b6af

Changes:

• updated buildroot to 2022.08.3
• instead of using the "sync" option when mounting USB data drives - which slows down transfer speed considerably and also increases the wear level load - we ensure a good synced media via decreased vm.dirty_expire_centisecs and vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs to 5 seconds. Thus we use a global sysctl.conf now with reasonable values.

Changes:

• updated upstream kernel to 5.15.74 LTS.
• updated buildroot to 2022.08 and adapted patchset accordingly.
• added +gfx-thin-client option to queselect rdp callout script to feature advanced xfreerdp 2.8.0 settings.
• added missing CROCUS gallium driver for mesa3d and added 20-intel.conf xorg config file to take care of correct DRI/device OpenGL settings.
• use the powersave scaling governor as the default one.

Changes:

• updated upstream kernel to 5.15.50 LTS.
• updated buildroot to 2022.05 and adapted patchset accordingly.
• updated rpi-eeprom package to latest pieeprom-2022-04-26 version.
• retired obsolete qt-webkit-kiosk package in favour of qt-webengine-kiosk.
• added -x jitter option to rngd startup to disable performance hungry jitter RNG source.

Changes:

• updated upstream kernel to 5.10.104 LTS.
• updated buildroot to 2022.02 and adapted patchset accordingly.
• added /video option to xfreerdp startup script to improve vide playback capabilities.

Changes:

• updated thinlinc client to 4.14.0-2324
• updated upstream kernel to 5.10.103 LTS
• updated buildroot to 2021.11.2 and adapted patchset accordingly.

Changes:

• updated raspberrypi kernel defconfig fragments to get back correct functionality for rpi3.
• added new S99SetupLEDs startup script which will make sure that the onboard LED of a RaspberryPi/Tinkerboard will be set to "heartbeat" mode for better monitoring of the current state.
• fixed VNC viewer startup by using the ThinLinc client own vncviewer for connecting to pure vnc servers using qutselect.
• updated buildroot to latest 2021.08.3 version.
• updated Linux kernel versions to 5.10.92 (intelnuc).

Changes:

• updated ThinLinc client to latest 4.13.0-2172 version.
• updated buildroot to latest 2021.08 version.
• updated Linux kernel versions to 5.10.62 (intelnuc+tinkerboard) and 5.10.60/1.20210831 (RaspberryPi) as well as updated RaspberryPi firmware to 1.20210805.
• integrated a potential u-boot fix for a stalling bootup in u-boot when a usb keyboard is connected.
• modified kernel defconfigs for RaspberryPi to use upstream kernel defconfigs plus some fragment files with our dedicated changeset.
• added a new RaspberryPi4 (32bit) target for generating a 32bit version for the RaspberryPi4 platform so that we can add/support a ThinLinc client, simply because ThinLinc is still only 32bit for ARM.
• updated Busybox.config and added PID_FILE_PATH so that crond will put its crond.reboot file into /run correctly and not in root.
• we also generate a /VERSION file for the intelnuc platform so that we can identify the used thinRoot version during runtime as well.
• added default bootEnv.txt files for RaspberryPi and Tinkerboard platform but with disabled entries so that users can pickup the BASE_PATH stuff on their own more easily.

Changes:

• implemented hardware support for using a RaspberryPi4, RaspberryPi3 or ASUS Tinkerboard as a thinRoot client system.
• converted the qutselect package into a cmake-package to compile it correctly with the buildroot own compiler suite.
• use max timeout of 60 seconds or otherwise the bootup process can hang forever in the DHCP phase.
• added a fixed version of dhcpcd-run-hooks which executes logger without -i
• modified S42LoadNetFiles to correctly deal with non existing BOOT_IMAGE parameter in /proc/cmdline and also correctly deal with BASE_PATH being specified instead. This should finally allow our raspberrypi to work correctly as a thinroot client.
• upon startup no idle shutdown cronjob will be created in case the idle shutdown timer was set to 0
• splitted the wm vs. qutselect startup in dedicated wm-startup.sh and qutselect-startup.sh scripts so that users can more easily override which command should be executed upon X11/WM startup, especially if they are not interested in running qutselect at all.
• updated qutselect to latest 2.4 version.
• updated Linux kernel to 5.10.57 LTS.

Changes:

• tuned X11 default settings to make sure all modules are loaded in correct order and that we have a 32bit screen as well.
• added remmina as dedicated buildroot package for potential future use.
• updated freerdp package to latest 2.3.2 version potentially including important fixes.
• updated Linux kernel to 5.10.46 LTS.
• updated buildroot to latest 2021.05

Changes:

• updated ThinLinc client to latest version (4.12.1r6733).
• updated intel-e1000e package to latest version and added support for intelNUC Gen11 (Panther Canyon) hardware.
• updated Linux kernel to 5.10.32 LTS.
• updated buildroot to latest 2021.02.1 version.

Changes:

• added /dynamic-resolution to xfreerdp call so that the resolution is updated in case a user switch between NUC stations having different monitors/resolutions.
• bumped kernel to latest 5.4.84 LTS version.
• bumped buildroot to 2020.11

Changes:

• added ffmpeg and libxv and additional /bpp:32 /gdi:hw /rfx /gfx:avc444 /network:lan parameters to xfreerdp for an improved gfx performance.
• added a workaround patch to fix regular disconnect issues with w2012r2 and w2016 terminal server connection using xfreerdp 2.2.0 (FreeRDP/FreeRDP#4717)
• modified intel-nuc build template to use BR2_x86_corei7 for a cpu optimized build for an potentially increased performance.
• bumped buildroot version to latest 2020.08.2
• bumped linux kernel version to LTS 5.4.80

Changes:

• integrated hardware support for the Intel NUC10 (Comet Lake) generation (NUC10i3BNK/BNH)
• bumped linux-firmware package to latest 20200721 for an improved integrated hardware firmware version support
• bumped buildroot version to latest 2020.05.1
• bumped linux kernel version to LTS 5.4.56

Changes:

• updated to latest qutselect 2.3 which comes with a keyboard selection bugfix.
• bumped buildroot version to latest 2020.05
• fixed xfreerdp startup to use keyboard ids rather than names to reduce conflicts when starting and removed obsolete -floatbar argument.
• bumped integrated thinlinc client version to latest 4.12.0-6517
• bumped linux kernel version to LTS 5.4.52

• updated ThinLinc client to latest 4.11.0-6323 version
• updated used linux kernel version to latest 4.19.93 LTS
• updated buildroot to latest 2019.11 version

• minor fix to the usbmount+ntfs issue so that NTFS usb thumb drives are properly unmounted again.
• updated buildroot to latest 2019.08.2
• bumped the latest kernel to 4.19.84
• enabled "sync" option for mounting USB drives so that filesystem corruption should be less frequent.
• fixed usbmount.conf to only specify uid/gid/umask for vfat/ntfs and not in general options or otherwise other filesystems won't mount correctly.
• changed kernel config to enable wifi, bluetooth and also allow to use mmc/sd card interfaces of various NUC models.
• modified usbmount.rules udev rule to allow to automount mmcblk devices also. Thus removed the sysfs-skip patch completly as it is not necessary.
• adapted buildroot defconfig to include iwlwifi/bluetooth firmwares to get bluetooth/wifi in principle working. Also added bluetooth (bluez) tools for configuring bluetooth connectivity.