rl-2305.section.md

Release 23.05 (“Stoat”, 2023.05/??) {#sec-release-23.05}

Support is planned until the end of December 2023, handing over to 23.11.

Highlights {#sec-release-23.05-highlights}

In addition to numerous new and upgraded packages, this release has the following highlights:

• Cinnamon has been updated to 5.6, see the pull request for what is changed.

• KDE Plasma has been updated to v5.27, see the release notes for what is changed.

• nixos-rebuild now supports an extra --specialisation option that can be used to change specialisation for switch and test commands.

New Services {#sec-release-23.05-new-services}

• Akkoma, an ActivityPub microblogging server. Available as services.akkoma.

• blesh, a line editor written in pure bash. Available as programs.bash.blesh.

• webhook, a lightweight webhook server. Available as services.webhook.

• cups-pdf-to-pdf, a pdf-generating cups backend based on cups-pdf. Available as services.printing.cups-pdf.

• Cloudlog, a web-based Amateur Radio logging application. Available as services.cloudlog.

• fzf, a command line fuzzyfinder. Available as programs.fzf.

• gmediarender, a simple, headless UPnP/DLNA renderer. Available as services.gmediarender.

• stevenblack-blocklist, A unified hosts file with base extensions for blocking unwanted websites. Available as networking.stevenblack.

• imaginary, a microservice for high-level image processing that Nextcloud can use to generate previews. Available as services.imaginary.

• goeland, an alternative to rss2email written in golang with many filters. Available as services.goeland.

• atuin, a sync server for shell history. Available as services.atuin.

• mmsd, a lower level daemon that transmits and recieves MMSes. Available as services.mmsd.

• QDMR, a GUI application and command line tool for programming DMR radios programs.qdmr

• v2rayA, a Linux web GUI client of Project V which supports V2Ray, Xray, SS, SSR, Trojan and Pingtunnel. Available as services.v2raya.

• ulogd, a userspace logging daemon for netfilter/iptables related logging. Available as services.ulogd.

• photoprism, a AI-Powered Photos App for the Decentralized Web. Available as services.photoprism.

• autosuspend, a python daemon that suspends a system if certain conditions are met, or not met.

• sharing, a command-line tool to share directories and files from the CLI to iOS and Android devices without the need of an extra client app. Available as programs.sharing.

Backward Incompatibilities {#sec-release-23.05-incompatibilities}

• carnix and cratesIO has been removed due to being unmaintained, use alternatives such as naersk and crate2nix instead.

• checkInputs have been renamed to nativeCheckInputs, because they behave the same as nativeBuildInputs when doCheck is set. checkInputs now denote a new type of dependencies, added to buildInputs when doCheck is set. As a rule of thumb, nativeCheckInputs are tools on $PATH used during the tests, and checkInputs are libraries which are linked to executables built as part of the tests. Similarly, installCheckInputs are renamed to nativeInstallCheckInputs, corresponding to nativeBuildInputs, and installCheckInputs are a new type of dependencies added to buildInputs when doInstallCheck is set. (Note that this change will not cause breakage to derivations with strictDeps unset, which are most packages except python, rust, ocaml and go packages).

• buildDunePackage now defaults to strictDeps = true which means that any library should go into buildInputs or checkInputs. Any executable that is run on the building machine should go into nativeBuildInputs or nativeCheckInputs respectively. Example of executables are ocaml, findlib and menhir. PPXs are libraries which are built by dune and should therefore not go into nativeBuildInputs.

• borgbackup module now has an option for inhibiting system sleep while backups are running, defaulting to off (not inhibiting sleep), available as services.borgbackup.jobs.<name>.inhibitsSleep.

• The ssh client tool now disables the ~C escape sequence by default. This can be re-enabled by setting EnableEscapeCommandline yes

• podman now uses the netavark network stack. Users will need to delete all of their local containers, images, volumes, etc, by running podman system reset --force once before upgrading their systems.

• git-bug has been updated to at least version 0.8.0, which includes backwards incompatible changes. The git-bug-migration package can be used to upgrade existing repositories.

• The services.kubo.settings option is now no longer stateful. If you changed any of the options in services.kubo.settings in the past and then removed them from your NixOS configuration again, those changes are still in your Kubo configuration file but will now be reset to the default. If you're unsure, you may want to make a backup of your configuration file (probably /var/lib/ipfs/config) and compare after the update.

• The EC2 image module no longer fetches instance metadata in stage-1. This results in a significantly smaller initramfs, since network drivers no longer need to be included, and faster boots, since metadata fetching can happen in parallel with startup of other services. This breaks services which rely on metadata being present by the time stage-2 is entered. Anything which reads EC2 metadata from /etc/ec2-metadata should now have an after dependency on fetch-ec2-metadata.service

• minio removed support for its legacy filesystem backend in RELEASE.2022-10-29T06-21-33Z. This means if your storage was created with the old format, minio will no longer start. Unfortunately minio doesn't provide a an automatic migration, they only provide instructions how to manually convert the node. To facilitate this migration we keep around the last version that still supports the old filesystem backend as minio_legacy_fs. Use it via services.minio.package = minio_legacy_fs; to export your data before switching to the new version. See the corresponding issue for more details.

• services.sourcehut.dispatch and the corresponding package (sourcehut.dispatchsrht) have been removed due to upstream deprecation.

• The services.snapserver.openFirewall module option default value has been changed from true to false. You will need to explicitly set this option to true, or configure your firewall.

• The services.tmate-ssh-server.openFirewall module option default value has been changed from true to false. You will need to explicitly set this option to true, or configure your firewall.

• The services.unifi-video.openFirewall module option default value has been changed from true to false. You will need to explicitly set this option to true, or configure your firewall.

• Kime has been updated from 2.5.6 to 3.0.2 and the i18n.inputMethod.kime.config option has been removed. Users should use daemonModules, iconColor, and extraConfig options under i18n.inputMethod.kime instead.

• tut has been updated from 1.0.34 to 2.0.0, and now uses the TOML format for the configuration file instead of INI. Additional information can be found here.

• The wordpress derivation no longer contains any builtin plugins or themes. If you need them you have to add them back to prevent your site from breaking. You can find them in wordpressPackages.{plugins,themes}.

• llvmPackages_rocm.llvm will not contain clang or compiler-rt. llvmPackages_rocm.clang will not contain llvm. llvmPackages_rocm.clangNoCompilerRt has been removed in favor of using llvmPackages_rocm.clang-unwrapped.

• The EC2 image module previously detected and automatically mounted ext3-formatted instance store devices and partitions in stage-1 (initramfs), storing /tmp on the first discovered device. This behaviour, which only catered to very specific use cases and could not be disabled, has been removed. Users relying on this should provide their own implementation, and probably use ext4 and perform the mount in stage-2.

• teleport has been upgraded to major version 11. Please see upstream upgrade instructions and release notes.

• The EC2 image module previously detected and activated swap-formatted instance store devices and partitions in stage-1 (initramfs). This behaviour has been removed. Users relying on this should provide their own implementation.

• Calling makeSetupHook without passing a name argument is deprecated.

• The cosmoc package has been removed. The upstream scripts in cosmocc should be used instead.

• Qt 5.12 and 5.14 have been removed, as the corresponding branches have been EOL upstream for a long time. This affected under 10 packages in nixpkgs, largely unmaintained upstream as well, however, out-of-tree package expressions may need to be updated manually.

• The services.wordpress.sites.<name>.plugins and services.wordpress.sites.<name>.themes options have been converted from sets to attribute sets to allow for consumers to specify explicit install paths via attribute name.

• Nebula now runs as a system user and group created for each nebula network, using the CAP_NET_ADMIN ambient capability on launch rather than starting as root. Ensure that any files each Nebula instance needs to access are owned by the correct user and group, by default nebula-${networkName}.

• In mastodon it is now necessary to specify location of file with PostgreSQL database password. In services.mastodon.database.passwordFile parameter default value /var/lib/mastodon/secrets/db-password has been changed to null.

• The --target-host and --build-host options of nixos-rebuild no longer treat the localhost value specially – to build on/deploy to local machine, omit the relevant flag.

• The nix.readOnlyStore option has been renamed to boot.readOnlyNixStore to clarify that it configures the NixOS boot process, not the Nix daemon.

• Deprecated xlibsWrapper transitional package has been removed in favour of direct use of its constitutents: xorg.libX11, freetype and others.

• .NET 5.0 was removed due to being end-of-life, use a newer, supported .NET version - https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/support/policy/dotnet-core

• The iputils package, which is installed by default, no longer provides the ninfod, rarpd and rdisc tools. See upstream's release notes for more details and available replacements.

Other Notable Changes {#sec-release-23.05-notable-changes}

• vim_configurable has been renamed to vim-full to avoid confusion: vim-full's build-time features are configurable, but both vim and vim-full are customizable (in the sense of user configuration, like vimrc).

• The module for the application firewall opensnitch got the ability to configure rules. Available as services.opensnitch.rules

• The module usbmuxd now has the ability to change the package used by the daemon. In case you're experiencing issues with usbmuxd you can try an alternative program like usbmuxd2. Available as services.usbmuxd.package

• A few openssh options have been moved from extraConfig to the new freeform option settings and renamed as follows:

  • services.openssh.forwardX11 to services.openssh.settings.X11Forwarding
  • services.openssh.kbdInteractiveAuthentication -> services.openssh.settings.KbdInteractiveAuthentication
  • services.openssh.passwordAuthentication to services.openssh.settings.PasswordAuthentication
  • services.openssh.useDns to services.openssh.settings.UseDns
  • services.openssh.permitRootLogin to services.openssh.settings.PermitRootLogin
  • services.openssh.logLevel to services.openssh.settings.LogLevel
  • services.openssh.kexAlgorithms to services.openssh.settings.KexAlgorithms
  • services.openssh.macs to services.openssh.settings.Macs
  • services.openssh.ciphers to services.openssh.settings.Ciphers
  • services.openssh.gatewayPorts to services.openssh.settings.GatewayPorts

• services.mastodon gained a tootctl wrapped named mastodon-tootctl similar to nextcloud-occ which can be executed from any user and switches to the configured mastodon user with sudo and sources the environment variables.

• DocBook option documentation, which has been deprecated since 22.11, will now cause a warning when documentation is built. Out-of-tree modules should migrate to using CommonMark documentation as outlined in to silence this warning.

  DocBook option documentation support will be removed in the next release and CommonMark will become the default. DocBook option documentation that has not been migrated until then will no longer render properly or cause errors.

• NixOS now defaults to using nsncd (a non-caching reimplementation in Rust) as NSS lookup dispatcher, instead of the buggy and deprecated glibc-provided nscd. If you need to switch back, set services.nscd.enableNsncd = false, but please open an issue in nixpkgs so your issue can be fixed.

• The dnsmasq service now takes configuration via the services.dnsmasq.settings attribute set. The option services.dnsmasq.extraConfig will be deprecated when NixOS 22.11 reaches end of life.

• The dokuwiki service now takes configuration via the services.dokuwiki.sites.<name>.settings attribute set, extraConfig is deprecated and will be removed. The {aclUse,superUser,disableActions} attributes have been renamed, pluginsConfig now also accepts an attribute set of booleans, passing plain PHP is deprecated. Same applies to acl which now also accepts structured settings.

• The wordpress service now takes configuration via the services.wordpress.sites.<name>.settings attribute set, extraConfig is still available to append additional text to wp-config.php.

• To reduce closure size in nixos/modules/profiles/minimal.nix profile disabled installation documentations and manuals. Also disabled logrotate and udisks2 services.

• The minimal ISO image now uses the nixos/modules/profiles/minimal.nix profile.

• The ghcWithPackages and ghcWithHoogle wrappers will now also symlink GHC's and all included libraries' documentation to $out/share/doc for convenience. If undesired, the old behavior can be restored by overriding the builders with { installDocumentation = false; }.

• mastodon now supports connection to a remote PostgreSQL database.

• services.peertube now requires you to specify the secret file secrets.secretsFile. It can be generated by running openssl rand -hex 32. Before upgrading, read the release notes for PeerTube:

  • Release v5.0.0

  And backup your data.

• services.chronyd is now started with additional systemd sandbox/hardening options for better security.

• services.dhcpcd service now don't solicit or accept IPv6 Router Advertisements on interfaces that use static IPv6 addresses.

• The module services.headscale was refactored to be compliant with RFC 0042. To be precise, this means that the following things have changed:

  • Most settings has been migrated under services.headscale.settings which is an attribute-set that will be converted into headscale's YAML config format. This means that the configuration from headscale's example configuration can be directly written as attribute-set in Nix within this option.

• nixos/lib/make-disk-image.nix can now mutate EFI variables, run user-provided EFI firmware or variable templates. This is now extensively documented in the NixOS manual.

• services.grafana listens only on localhost by default again. This was changed to upstreams default of 0.0.0.0 by accident in the freeform setting conversion.

• Grafana Tempo has been updated to version 2.0. See the upstream upgrade guide for migration instructions.

• A new virtualisation.rosetta module was added to allow running x86_64 binaries through Rosetta inside virtualised NixOS guests on Apple silicon. This feature works by default with the UTM virtualisation package.

• The new option users.motdFile allows configuring a Message Of The Day that can be updated dynamically.

• The root package is now built with the "-Dgnuinstall=ON" CMake flag, making the output conform the bin lib share layout. In this layout, tutorials is under share/doc/ROOT/; cmake, font, icons, js and macro under share/root; Makefile.comp and Makefile.config under etc/root.

• Enabling global redirect in services.nginx.virtualHosts now allows one to add exceptions with the locations option.

• A new option recommendedBrotliSettings has been added to services.nginx. Learn more about compression in Brotli format here.

• Updated recommended settings in services.nginx.recommendedGzipSettings:

  • Enables gzip compression for only certain proxied requests.
  • Allow checking and loading of precompressed files.
  • Updated gzip mime-types.
  • Increased the minimum length of a response that will be gzipped.

• Garage version is based on system.stateVersion, existing installations will keep using version 0.7. New installations will use version 0.8. In order to upgrade a Garage cluster, please follow upstream instructions and force services.garage.package or upgrade accordingly system.stateVersion.

• Nebula now supports the services.nebula.networks.<name>.isRelay and services.nebula.networks.<name>.relays configuration options for setting up or allowing traffic relaying. See the announcement for more details about relays.

• hip has been separated into hip, hip-common and hipcc.

• services.nginx.recommendedProxySettings now removes the Connection header preventing clients from closing backend connections.

• Resilio sync secret keys can now be provided using a secrets file at runtime, preventing these secrets from ending up in the Nix store.

• The firewall and nat module now has a nftables based implementation. Enable networking.nftables to use it.

• The services.fwupd module now allows arbitrary daemon settings to be configured in a structured manner (services.fwupd.daemonSettings).

• services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.phononBackend now defaults to vlc according to upstrean recommendation

• The zramSwap is now implemented with zram-generator, and the option zramSwap.numDevices for using ZRAM devices as general purpose ephemeral block devices has been removed.

• As Singularity has renamed to Apptainer to distinguish from an un-renamed fork by Sylabs Inc., there are now two packages of Singularity/Apptainer:

  • apptainer: From github.com/apptainer/apptainer, which is the new repo after renaming.
  • singularity: From github.com/sylabs/singularity, which is the fork by Sylabs Inc..

  programs.singularity got a new package option to specify which package to use.

  singularity-tools.buildImage got a new input argument singularity to specify which package to use.

• The new option programs.singularity.enableFakeroot, if set to true, provides --fakeroot support for apptainer and singularity.

• The unifi-poller package and corresponding NixOS module have been renamed to unpoller to match upstream.

• The new option services.tailscale.useRoutingFeatures controls various settings for using Tailscale features like exit nodes and subnet routers. If you wish to use your machine as an exit node, you can set this setting to server, otherwise if you wish to use an exit node you can set this setting to client. The strict RPF warning has been removed as the RPF will be loosened automatically based on the value of this setting.

• Xastir can now access AX.25 interfaces via the libax25 package.

• tvbrowser-bin was removed, and now tvbrowser is built from source.

• nixos-version now accepts --configuration-revision to display more information about the current generation revision

• The option services.nomad.extraSettingsPlugins has been fixed to allow more than one plugin in the path.

• The option services.prometheus.exporters.pihole.interval does not exist anymore and has been removed.

• The module services.calibre-server has new options to configure the host, port and auth mode.