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Calamares
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"> <channel> <title>Calamares</title> <description>The idea of Calamares arose from a desire of several independent Linux distributions to come together and work on a shared system installer. Instead of everyone working on their own implementation and forking forks of forks, why not work together on something that can be used by many?</description> <link>https://calamares.io</link> <atom:link href="https://calamares.io/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.14 released</title> <description><p>First of 2025, with a bunch of internal improvements in the Python bindings, an undo-hook for pages (which rolls back changes that the keyboard and timezone pages may have made to the system) and improvements to the <em>partition</em> module.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by given name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Evan James</li> <li>TNE</li> <li>vincent PENVERN</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>The Python bindings have been re-organized (source) and made more consistent. At least one valid Python program would work with the Boost::Python bindings, but not the pybind11 bindings. A memory-corruption problem in the Boost::Python bindings was resolved.</li> <li>Steps in the UI now have a hook to undo any changes they have made to the live system, if the user cancels the installation.</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>keyboard</em> module undoes changes to the keyboard layout if the user cancels the installation (returning the system to whatever layout was in use when Calamares started). (#2377, #2431)</li> <li><em>locale</em> module undoes changes to the timezone. (#2377, #2431)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module stores a global storage value in luksPassphrase, for later modules that need to manipulate the encrypted partition. (thanks vincent, #2424)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module no longer clear (unmounts) a Ventoy device. (thanks TNE, #2427)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module has configurable exceptions for the clear-mounts (unmount) job. The exceptions have a few hard-coded “always included” entries, which now include Ventoy alongside some Fedora-specific entries.</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Thu, 20 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.14-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.14-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.13 released</title> <description><p>A last-minute (of 2024) release, which brings a bunch of improvements from Lubuntu and elsewhere, mostly for the <em>partition</em> module.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by given name):</p> <ul> <li>Aaron Rainbolt</li> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Anke Boersma</li> <li>Ching Hsü</li> <li>Jakob Petsovits</li> <li>Masato TOYOSHIMA</li> <li>Simon Quigley</li> <li>Vladyslav Prudius</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>Fewer compile warnings with most-recent Qt versions.</li> <li>Support systemd and consolekit block-suspend, not just KDE Plasma block-suspend, during installation. (thanks Jakob, #2404)</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>dracut</em> module has more freedom to specify program options. (thanks Simon, #2401)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module improved some user-visible messages. (thanks Masato, #2412)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module re-scans available devices when selecting “manual” partitioning mode, avoiding a crash. (thanks Masato, #2414)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module can hide the LVM buttons during manual partitioning, if the distro does not want to support LVM. (#2413)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module can restrict what filesystems a user applies where, e.g. ensuring EFI is a FAT32 partition. (thanks Aaron, #2400)</li> <li><em>unpackfs</em> module supports skipping installation media if it is not present, e.g. depending on how the live media is booted. (thanks Simon, #2410)</li> </ul> <h2 id="translations">Translations</h2> <p>Calamares translations are usually done through Transifex, but some users provide translation updates via patches, instead.</p> <ul> <li><em>uk</em> thanks Vladyslav Prudius</li> <li><em>zh_CN</em> thanks Ching Hsü</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.13-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.13-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.12 released</title> <description><p>Another quick release, primarily to resolve build issues with the <em>calamares-extensions</em> repository.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by given name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>This release repairs the Calamares configuration file which is used by external Calamares modules – calamares-extensions in particular.</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>users</em> module always uses a 3-digit UMASK if one is specified.</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.12-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.12-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.11 released</title> <description><p>A quick release with an important crash fix in the <em>partition</em> module, new features in the <em>unpackfs</em> module (from Lubuntu) and a new <em>unpackfsc</em> module (moved from the <em>calamares-extensions</em> repository) for an alternative way to unpack filesystems into the target system.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by given name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Jakob Petsovits</li> <li>Simon Quigley</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>No notable changes</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>unpackfs</em> now supports a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">condition</code> configuration option for conditional installation / unsquash. (thanks Simon)</li> <li><em>unpackfsc</em> module imported from Calamares-extensions, and extended with the same <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">condition</code> configuration.</li> <li><em>partition</em> crash fixed when swap was using the wrong end-sector in some GPT configurations. (thanks Jakob, #2367)</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.11-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.11-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.10 released</title> <description><p>A release with improvements in a number of modules, with some last-minute delay due to weirdness in the unit-tests.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by given name):</p> <ul> <li>Aaron Rainbolt</li> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Evan James</li> <li>Neal Gompa</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>Support for “rwx”-style permissions-strings everywhere permissions are written. Previously only octal was accepted (e.g. “755”) but you can now write the permissions out like they would be reported by <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ls</code> (e.g. “rwxr-xr-x”).</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>keyboard</em> Repaired summary messages with strange formatting. (#2364)</li> <li><em>keyboard</em> Can update KDE Plasma configuration in Wayland. (thanks Neal, #2264)</li> <li><em>locale</em> Repaired summary messages with strange formatting. (#2364)</li> <li><em>partition</em> Module fixed unwanted behavior with the encryption checkbox. (thanks Aaron, #2376)</li> <li><em>umount</em> Correctly unmounts the root filesystem of the target. (thanks Evan)</li> <li><em>users</em> Supports a new <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">home_permissions</code> setting to override the distro’s <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">useradd</code> configuration of the umask. Supports octal and rwx-style specifications of permissions. Other places that use permissions now also support octal and rwx-style. (#2362)</li> <li><em>welcome</em> Follows system styling colors (e.g. Dark Mode).</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.10-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.10-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.9 released</title> <description><p>A release with minor bugfixes and improvements specifically in the Arabic translation.</p> <p>A reminder for distributions using Calamares with full disk encryption: if you are using the <em>luksbootkeyfile</em> module, it must be placed before the <em>fstab</em> module in settings.conf. If it comes after, then the keyfile will be missing from crypttab and the user will be asked for their password multiple times.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by given name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Evan James</li> <li>Luca Matei Pintilie</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>Improved schemas for configuration files</li> <li>Support for Interlingue in Qt 6.7</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li>Placed <em>luksbootkeyfile</em> before <em>fstab</em> in the example <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">settings.conf</code> (#2356, Evan)</li> <li><em>packages</em> module <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">xbcs</code> package manager now logs progress messages (#2359, Luca)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module mentions creating a swap file in its summary (#2320, Adriaan)</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.9-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.9-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.8 released</title> <description><p>A release with bugfixes in several modules (especially the <em>partition</em> module), and a new feature in <em>shellprocess</em> and just about every place that runs commands – that includes <em>contextualprocess</em> jobs, <em>process</em> job modules, and other places.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by first name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Evan James</li> <li>Lorenzo Faletra</li> <li>Tj</li> <li>Victor Fuentes</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>nothing in particular</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>contextualprocess</em> see <em>shellprocess</em>.</li> <li><em>mount</em> module now correctly mounts luks and luks2-encrypted swap. (thanks Victor)</li> <li><em>partition</em> avoids a crash with specific checkbox-presets. (thanks Evan)</li> <li><em>partition</em> had a bug where manual partitioning on MBR systems might skip the installation of a bootloader, even though the visible bootloader combo-box showed that it would be installed. (see #2318)</li> <li><em>partition</em> could calculate an incorrect partition size when installing to very specific partition sizes, and now leaves a few more sectors for secondary GPT tables. (thanks Tj)</li> <li><em>shellprocess</em> now supports a <em>verbose</em> key (globally and per-command) which logs command output line-by-line.</li> <li><em>users</em> module defaults password salt to <em>yescrypt</em>. (thanks Lorenzo)</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Wed, 03 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.8-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.8-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.7 released</title> <description><p>A release mostly intended to get the process moving again, although it has a few new features and some bugfixes. Since 3.3.6 did not get a release announcement, that is included in this post as well.</p> <!--more--> <blockquote> <p>What does “get the process moving” mean? Well, it’s been two months since the last release, and planning the release for “when this issue is fixed” – whatever I happen to be working on – is taking too long. There are a couple of tough bugs to investigate, but they should not hold up progress on other fronts.</p> </blockquote> <h1 id="calamares-337-2024-06-20">Calamares 3.3.7 (2024-06-20)</h1> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by first name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Eugene San</li> <li>Evan James</li> <li>Ivan Borzenkov</li> <li>Sohrab Behdani</li> <li>Vincent Penvern</li> <li>Vladislav Nepogodin</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>Updated clang-formatting</li> <li>Some C++20 future-proofing (thanks Vladislav)</li> <li>CommandList (used by <em>contextualprocess</em> and <em>shellprocess</em>) now supports globalstorage keys as substitutable variables.</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>contextualprocess</em> see <em>shellprocess</em>.</li> <li><em>fstab</em> module does not add an encryption keyfile if it does not exist. (thanks Eugene)</li> <li><em>initcpiocfg</em> has some new configuration settings to more carefully adjust hooks for initcpio.</li> <li><em>keyboard</em> module handles Persian (fa) layout better. (thanks Sohrab)</li> <li><em>keyboard</em> module handles other non-ascii layout better. (thanks Ivan)</li> <li><em>partition</em> module did not filter out invalid fstab entries; they were not written, either, so no net change.</li> <li><em>partition</em> module now has a configurable default check-state for the encryption checkbox. (thanks Vincent)</li> <li><em>shellprocess</em> commands now support globalstorage variables, which are written as <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">${gs[key]}</code>, where <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">key</code> is a dotted string that selects the globalstorage key to use (like in <em>contextualprocess</em> variable-selectors) and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">${gs[</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">]}</code> are literal characters.</li> </ul> <h1 id="calamares-336-2024-04-16">Calamares 3.3.6 (2024-04-16)</h1> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by first name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Anke Boersma</li> <li>Eugene San</li> <li>Evan James</li> <li>Harald Sitter</li> <li>Mike Stemle</li> <li>Peter Jung</li> <li>Simon Quigley</li> </ul> <h2 id="core-1">Core</h2> <ul> <li>Various Qt6-related fixes.</li> <li>Calamares now prevents sleep and suspend while the installation is running, so that unattended installs do not accidentally fall asleep.</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules-1">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>bootloader</em> Adds “splash” to kernel parameters if plymouth is present. (thanks Eugene)</li> <li><em>locale</em> Now picks the correct timezone for Dubai, Muscat, Tehran.</li> <li><em>plymouthcfg</em> Use plymouth-set-default-theme to avoid issues with configuration. (thanks Peter)</li> <li><em>users</em> module now supports enrolling in Active Directory, if enabled. (thanks Simon)</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.7-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.7-is-out/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares and xz</title> <description><p>Calamares does not use <em>xz</em> directly, and Calamares isn’t <em>sshd</em>, so the attack against <em>xz</em> does not affect Calamares directly. It is worthwhile, though, to reflect on how Calamares development and releases happen, and what we can learn from the attack against <em>xz</em>.</p> <!--more--> <h2 id="release-tarballs">Release Tarballs</h2> <p>Calamares produces separate release tarballs, and encourages you to use those instead of the GitHub (yes, Calamares is still on GitHub) automatic tarballs. This is <strong>exactly the attack vector</strong> against <em>xz</em>. So what should we do with the tarballs?</p> <p>The <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/releases">releases</a> page lists all Calamares releases. Each release has an attached tarball (generated by Adriaan de Groot) and a GPG signature (generated by Adriaan de Groot). There are also the automatic zip and tarball archives that GitHub provides. Each release mentions a SHA256 (of the tarball) and a GPG signing key.</p> <p>The release tarball is made by running <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">git export</code>. You can find the command in the script <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">ci/RELEASE.sh</code> which is what gets used to create the tarballs in the first place.</p> <p>In other words: the tarballs <strong>must</strong> be reproduced exactly by a <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">git export</code> command. This may be slightly different from the automatic archives, which can change if GitHub decides to spit out a different format (unlikely as that is).</p> <h2 id="verifying-release-tarballs">Verifying Release Tarballs</h2> <p>Suppose we go back to <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/releases/tag/v3.2.46">Calamares 3.2.46</a> from November 2011. The release metadata says:</p> <div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>SHA256: 8ceba247e0c94702284be42f8c003c12a364140dddd36ac03163418ea2b22138 Signing key: 86B8EDB6ED8E3F96A9BAECB5CFDDC96F12B1915C </code></pre></div></div> <p>There have been various signing keys used over the years in Calamares. I have generally used signing keys with an expiry date, although that makes this one a little harder to verify. The key is still in <a href="https://euroquis.nl/doc/pubkey.asc">Adriaan de Groot’s public key</a>, although it expired in 2022:</p> <div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>sub rsa3072/0xCFDDC96F12B1915C created: 2020-07-11 expired: 2022-01-02 usage: S </code></pre></div></div> <p>Anyway, if you fetch the tarball, the signature, and the automatic tarball, then you can use <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">sha256sum</code> and <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">gpg</code> to verify the integrity of those artifacts.</p> <ul> <li>Both the automatic tarball and the release tarball have the <strong>same</strong> SHA256. This is because both are created from the exact same git tree with the same <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">git export</code> command. It also matches the published SHA256.</li> <li>Both the automatic tarball and the release tarball pass signature verification with the attached GPG signature. GPG does warn about the expired signing key, and this is expected.</li> </ul> <h2 id="tarballs-in-future">Tarballs in Future</h2> <p>Although the hand-rolled tarballs don’t provide any value over the automatic tarballs <strong>right now</strong>, there are no plans to stop rolling them. They are reproducible from the git repository. If you find a mis-matched tarball, then we want to know.</p> </description> <pubDate>Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-and-xz/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-and-xz/</guid> </item> <item> <title>Calamares 3.3.5 released</title> <description><p>A little release with a handful of Qt6-related improvements, a bugfix for NetPlan, and a new feature in the <em>displaymanager</em> module.</p> <!--more--> <p>This release contains contributions from (alphabetically by first name):</p> <ul> <li>Adriaan de Groot</li> <li>Evan James</li> </ul> <h2 id="core">Core</h2> <ul> <li>Calamares logs more information about how the executable was created in the session log on startup. This will help in recreating the specific configuration when bug reports are filed. (thanks Evan)</li> <li>The debug window now has better Qt6 compatibility.</li> </ul> <h2 id="modules">Modules</h2> <ul> <li><em>displaymanager</em> module can configure an alternate SDDM configuration file.</li> <li><em>networkcfg</em> a bug affecting NetPlan + NetworkManager was fixed.</li> </ul> <h2 id="feedback">Feedback</h2> <p>If you experience an issue with Calamares, please tell us all about it on the <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues"><strong>Calamares issue tracker</strong></a>. For a full change list, see the full list of <a href="https://github.com/calamares/calamares/milestone/83">issues closed</a> within the current generation (which is many releases).</p> </description> <pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <link>https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.5-is-out/</link> <guid isPermaLink="true">https://calamares.io/calamares-3.3.5-is-out/</guid> </item> </channel> </rss>