Version 0.4.10 is the latest generally-available stable release of
Neubot, distributed for Ubuntu >= 10.04, MacOSX >= 10.6, Windows >=
XP SP3 and FreeBSD, as well as in source format.
Here's what changed in 140 characters: better M-Lab redirection,
preparatory work for Win32 auto updates, cleanups, docs and fixes.
Install, upgrade instructions at http://www.neubot.org/download,
read on for more details.
This release contains 110 commits. The diffstat says: 65 changed
files with 1,683 additions and 586 deletions.
Here is the list of what changed and why:
- M-Lab: use airport names to compile redirection table
I noticed that it's possible to prepare a much better redirection
table for M-Lab, using airport names, embedded in the name of each
server, instead of trying to guess where the server is by means of
geolocation. It turns out that the old method of generating the
redirection table was not bad, and only a few servers were misplaced.
This is another step towards even better and more robust redirection
to M-Lab servers using DONAR, which is a distributed DNS integrated
with M-Lab. I am working to adapt Neubot to it, but the work is not
ready yet, so, in the meantime, I decided to deploy the airport fix
to improve the redirection table a bit.
Link to commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/a19f0c3a
- rendezvous: stop supporting clients without privacy settings
Since version 0.4.4 (released 25 October 2011), Neubot does not
run tests unless the user provides the permission to collect her
Internet address. Since version 0.4.6 (released 24 January
2012), Neubot needs the permission to publish her IP address
too, in order to use Measurement Lab.
Still, old clients without any privacy permissions were redirected
on the master server. And, similarly, old clients that have not
provided the permission to publish were redirected on master as well.
I decided to support them, to give users some time to upgrade to
newer versions of Neubot.
Now, it's time to move forward, and, with this change, I am, de
facto, removing support for all Neubot users that have not provided
any privacy permissions. Judging from the logs, I estimate that
I am removing service for 10-20 users, who have not upgraded their
Neubot for a long time. I think this is fair, because, since the
release of 0.4.4, four months have passed.
Please, note that in a not-too-distant-future I will also remove
support for users that have not provided the permission to publish,
for many reasons, including that I want to make master more clever
and helpful. That will probably happen when version 0.5.0 will
ship.
I understand that staying up-to-date is annoying, especially for
Windows users, and for this reason I am working to finalize the
long-awaited auto-updater module for Windows. If everything goes
well, experimental support for that should be ready in 0.4.11,
stay tuned! :-)
Link to commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/6b7f8497
- Preparatory work for Win32 auto-updates
As mentioned above, one of the things I'm working on is automatic
updates under Windows. Part of the work was to enhance the runner
module, which is the Neubot module that runs rendezvous and tests
and make sure that only one test at once can run. The enhancements
provide the infrastructure to be able to download a file using the
runner as it were a test.
Link to commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/53d6b43
- Preparatory work for making rendezvous more smart
There are some downsides in current rendezvous implementation and,
in particular, it takes work to add new fields and provide backward
compatibility. I would like, instead, to make the rendezvous more
smart and pass back to the client information such as the ISP prefix
and name, to allow to e.g. prevent automatic tests to run when you
are in a 3G network. To move in this direction I need to remove the
obstacles and one obstacle is the XML-based rendezvous. So, this
release is the first one to use JSON for rendezvous and more changes
are due in the future to refine that and gradually introduce more
goodies in the rendezvous process.
Link to commits:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/aa0774fchttps://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/f8e02cc1
- Always use runner_rendezvous for rendezvous
In Neubot 0.4.6 I introduced runner_rendezvous, a simplified
rendezvous client that is run by the runner (the component that
runs tests). That was need to automatically and transparently
trigger a rendezvous when a user manually runs a test and there
are no information on the right server to use.
Albeit based on the original one, the new simplified rendezvous
was simpler and better defined, because I had more clear the
problem when I wrote it. So the plan had always been to enhance
it and use it to replace (part of) the original rendezvous
client.
With this release that piece of work is finally done and now
the old rendezvous client is just a wrapper around the new
rendezvous client. This is good news, I have plans to make
the rendezvous more smart, as explained above, and having
simpler and more rational code helps a lot.
Link to commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/0965da40
- Better MacOS auto-updater
Working on windows updater, I have borrowed from and improved some
pieces of MacOS updater. In this release, I include better code
that performs more checks when auto-installing the tarball.
Link to commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/8aaf40a0
- Cleaner bittorrent/peer.py
Another thing I'm working on is making sure that Neubot can work
in 1 Gbit/s and 10 Gbit/s networks. This boils down to reading
the code, testing and removing bottlenecks. As usual, re-reading
my old code, I've noticed a number of things to be cleaned up,
and the set of changes is mature and safe enough to spill in this
version of Neubot.
Link to commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/3bfdd305
- Bug fixes
Since Neubot 0.4.6, I've started collecting know bugs
information at:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/wiki/errata
Here is the list of bugs that have been fixed since the previous
release, along with the link to the relevant commit:
- Win32: install in ``%APPDATA%`` not ``%PROFILE%``.
The proper place where to install under Windows is the nonroaming
appdata folder (``%APPDATA%``), not the user home directory
(``%PROFILE%``). Out of the Windows jargon, for me this means
that, under Windows 7, Neubot is installed in:
C:\\Users\\simone\\AppData\\Local\\Neubot
Instead of in:
C:\\Users\\simone\\Neubot
Fixed by these commits:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/29cfe63fhttps://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/5190ae98
- MacOS: update installer to privacy policy 2.0.3.
MacOSX installer privacy policy was at version 2.0 whereas the
current version was 2.0.3 (nothing significant changed, nonetheless
that must be corrected).
Fixed by this commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/0f0a5902
- MacOS: do not add okfile to generated packages.
MacOS auto-updater tarballs contained by mistake the ok-file,
which indicates that Neubot has been installed successfully.
Instead, they should not contain this file, and the autoupdater
must add it when a tarball is unpacked successfully.
Fixed by this commit:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commit/06bba1ac
- More code rationalizations, cleanups, documentation improvements
and regression tests.
Full change log available here:
https://raw.github.com/neubot/neubot/0.4.10/ChangeLog
Diff since previous version here:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/compare/0.4.9...0.4.10
Commit history here:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/commits/0.4.10
SHA256sums here:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/wiki/sha256
Errata here:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/wiki/errata
Data here:
http://www.neubot.org/data
Short-term roadmap here:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/wiki/todo
Long-term roadmap here:
https://github.com/neubot/neubot/wiki/roadmap
--
Simone <http://www.neubot.org/people#basso>
*40° Mercoledì di NEXA*
*La "Rivoluzione Digitale" al Politecnico di Torino*
http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-40*
*
*Mercoledì 14 marzo 2012
ore 18 - 20*
(2° mercoledì del mese)
Via Boggio 65/a, Torino (primo piano)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/nexacenter
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nexa.center
Live Streaming: http://nexa.polito.it/upcoming-events
Il prof. *Juan Carlos De Martin* presenterà gli obiettivi, la
struttura e la metodologia didattica del corso "Rivoluzione Digitale
<https://didattica.polito.it/pls/portal30/sviluppo.guide.visualizza?p_cod_in…>"
che verrà offerto, come corso a scelta di Ateneo, agli studenti del
Politecnico di Torino <http://www.polito.it/> a partire da
*mercoledì 21 marzo*. Il corso sarà fortemente *multidisciplinare*
(anche perché aperto a studenti di tutti i corsi di laurea) e
introduttivo, dal momento che è rivolto principalmente a studenti
del primo anno. Un'attenzione particolare verrà data alla
metodologia didattica, che cercherà di introdurre alcune
*innovazioni rispetto alla tradizionale didattica frontale*. Il
prof. De Martin verrà affiancato nel corso dall'ing. *Simone Basso*,
research fellow del Centro NEXA, nonché studente di dottorato del
Politecnico di Torino.
*Biografia:
*
*Juan Carlos De Martin* è docente di ruolo presso la Facoltà di
Ingegneria dell'Informazione del Politecnico di Torino
<http://www.polito.it/> dove coordina, insieme con il Prof. Angelo
Raffaele Meo, l'Internet Media Group <http://media.polito.it/>. In
precedenza ha trascorso due anni in qualità di "Visiting Scholar"
presso l'Università della California <http://www.ucsb.edu/>, due
anni a Dallas come membro del "Texas Instruments technical staff" e
come Professore a contratto presso l'Università del Texas
<http://www.utdallas.edu/> e sette anni presso il Consiglio
Nazionale delle Ricerche <http://www.cnr.it/> di Torino. Dal 2005
guida il gruppo di lavoro Creative Commons Italia
<http://www.creativecommons.it/>, che ha co-fondato nel 2003. Nel
2006 ha co-fondato, insieme al prof. Marco Ricolfi, il Centro di
Ricerca NEXA su Internet & Società <http://nexa.polito.it/> del
Politecnico di Torino. Juan Carlos De Martin è stato il coordinatore
di COMMUNIA <http://communia-project.eu/>, la rete tematica europea
sul pubblico dominio digitale (2007-2011). Nel periodo 2007-2011 è
stato presidente del Sistema Bibliotecario del Politecnico di Torino
<http://biblio.polito.it/>. Juan Carlos De Martin è "Faculty Fellow
2011-12 <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jcdemartin>" presso il
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/> della Harvard University, dove ha
recentemente trascorso 5 mesi, e "Senior Visiting Researcher
<http://www.kri.sfc.keio.ac.jp/en/researchers/visiting_researchers.html#D>"
presso la Keio University di Tokyo. Juan Carlos De Martin è membro
del Consiglio Scientifico
<http://www.treccani.it/istituto/profilo/organi_sociali/consiglio_scientific…>
dell'Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani e di Biennale
Democrazia <http://biennaledemocrazia.it/>. Dal 2010 De Martin è
editorialista de "La Stampa"; collabora anche con " Nova" de "Il
Sole 24 Ore". E' inoltre un membro dell'IEEE <http://www.ieee.org/>
e autore, o co-autore, di oltre 100 pubblicazioni scientifiche
internazionali, tra cui due "best paper awards" IEEE.
*Ufficio Stampa
Centro NEXA su Internet & Società:*
Giuseppe Futia
NEXA Center for Internet & Society
Politecnico di Torino
Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica
Tel. +39 011 090 7219
