Smoothwall Express 3.1 RC4 Released

Smoothwall Express 3.1 Firewall. RC4 corrects a few problems found in the third release candidate, settles on i586 and x86_64 as the system architectures that will cause the fewest problems when upgrading from release 3.0, has a much re-worked QoS feature, and has Marco's URL Filter mod fully integrated. We expect RC4 to the the last release candidate before they release Smoothwall Express 3.1.

Key new features & improvements in version 3.1

The build system is vastly improved; it is now re-entrant (a build will continue where it left off when an error is encountered and fixed), and compiles will use all CPU cores present).

There are now three ISO images: standard install, developer's edition that contains the development and documentation packages, and a 27MiB 'off-road' edition to be used to verify general hardware compatibility with v3.1.

Grub Legacy is now used to boot all drives: ISO images, flash installers, and the installed target.

SMP is now standard for 32- and 64-bit installations. Smoothwall Express will now use those extra CPU cores.

Installation on KVM, VMWare and Hyper-V virtual systems is supported. KVM works well; the other two are known to work but haven't been tested very well.

The distribution ISO image includes several new features.

an option to make a bootable install flash drive; it is now possible to install from a flash drive when there is no CD/DVD drive available.

options to install and/or boot using a serial console.

the basic (traditional) installer to be used when the system contains one hard drive, one CD/DVD drive, and standard VESA display with keyboard.

a new advanced installer to be used with all other install options

choose the target hard drive

choose the installation source drive (ISO, flash, or other)

use a serial (EIA-232) console

install and upgrade with a restore of 'variable' data from a previous archive

completely restore a 'total' archive

use ext4 or reiserfs

optionally install the development and/or documentation packages

The kernel now provides /dev entries for all devices it knows about; udev handles the rest.

Those who find the vi text editor hard to use may find the newly added nano editor more to their liking.

The bandwidthbars presentation was reworked and improved.

The interfaces page has a new subsection for the RED NIC that allows the admin to ignore the MTU setting the ISP sends in their DHCP packets and allows the admin to override the ISP's DNS servers.

The Smoothinfo mod has been integrated into the user interface.

The browser's preferred language can now control the language presented in the user interface.

There is a new Plug-n-Play backup system: hot-plug a configured drive and the system will be automatically archived onto it in both a 'var' archive (all the 'variable' data on the system)--useful when upgrading--and a 'total' archive--useful when a system fails or is moved to new hardware. USB thumb drives and eSATA drives are known to work.

Marco's URL Filter mod from v3.0 has been fully integrated.

The QoS feature is significantly improved.

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