1.1.0

To: All Users of the Field System Linux 11 distribution

From: Jonathan Quick, Ed Himwich, and Dave Horsley

Re: Field System Linux 11 (FSL11) Minor Version 1.1 Availability

This message is to announce a minor update since the initial release of FSL11.

The main changes are:

• refresh_secondary rejects a secondary disk that is less than 24-hours old to reduce the risk of overwriting the new shelf disk
• For CIS hardened systems:
  ** More hardening
  ** AUID access to refresh_spare_usr2
  ** AUID access to rotation_shutdown and refresh_secondary has been improved
• Additional web document improvements include:
  ** The FS tag for fresh installs has been updated to 10.2.0
  ** A link for how to transfer an existing FS installation to FSL11
  ** An option to install pgplot to replace giza for use wth pgperl
  ** Document revision history sections

To update to this version, as root enter:

cd ~/fsl11
git checkout main
git pull
~/fsl11/RAID/install_tools

If you use CIS hardening, please contact Ed for additional changes that are needed.

You can access the web documents at: FS Linux 11 Installation Guide

Initial FSL11 release

To: All Users of the Field System

From: Jonathan Quick, Ed Himwich and Dave Horsley

Re: Field System Linux 11 (FSL11) Distribution Availability

This message is being sent to announce the availability of the Field System
Linux 11 (FSL11) distribution. This distribution is based on Bullseye, the
current stable Debian release. We recommend that all station using older
FS Linux distributions upgrade to FSL11. As part of this upgrade we recommend
that you should also switch to the new 64-bit "amd64" architecture if you have not
done so previously and install a suitable 64-bit capable FS version such as 10.2.0 or
later. The 32-bit “i386" architecture should only be used if it is too difficult to port
your station software to 64-bit. In most cases, the port should be fairly easy. Please
note that only a pre-release FS version 10.2.0-alpha2 has been released at the
time of writing and you will need to wait for (and install) an official release before
you use FSL11 for operations.

The absolute minimum hardware requirements for FSL11 are at least 6 GB disks
and 512 MB of RAM and no ISA based peripheral cards. Stations that do not
meet these requirements should consider upgrading their hardware. The current
base hardware recommendation would be a multi-core processor with 4 GB of RAM
and at least two 2TB disks.

Stations that do not upgrade to FSL11, for whatever reason, should consider
installing an inexpensive firewall/router to protect their older FSLx systems
from network attacks. FSL10 and older distributions are no longer supported
and do not receive new security patches. Main-line support for FSL11 is
expected to end one year after the next stable release of Debian become
available, with partial long-term support for a while thereafter until
mid-2025.

FSL11 continues to use the RAID1 scheme for two installed disk drives first
introduced in FLS6. In this approach two drives are normally inserted and
used all the time. The operating system maintains these as exact mirrors of
each other. If one disk should fail, even during observing, there should be
no loss of data or system functionality. This also provides a continuous
automatic back-up of the operational system. The robustness and continuous
back-up are the primary advantages of using the RAID1 approach. The primary
disadvantage is that because the back-up occurs automatically and
continuously, the back-up disk cannot be used to recover a file that was
accidentally deleted or recover from a software change that was made recently.
However, stations that have three disks can still maintain a "Shelf" back-up
disk that can be used to retrieve older files and recover to older software
configurations. It is recommended that all stations have at least three
disks. The RAID1 scheme is also recommended for stations that only have two
disks, even if they are unable to obtain a third disk.

This RAID1 system in FSL11 is largely transparent to system users. It is
described in detail in the file raid.adoc included in the downloadable archive
and available online at

    https://nvi-inc.github.io/fsl11/raid.html

It is recommended that you review this document, particularly the first three
or four sections, to familiarize yourself with RAID1 operations before
installing FSL11. Also included in sections 8 and 9 of this document is
information on how to utilize a second identical computer as a spare and how
to use it to recover efficiently from several possible failure modes.

Please note that some very old legacy GPIB devices may not work with the FSL11
GPIB driver for the NI GPIB cards and GPIB USB devices. A different driver
supported these devices successfully in FSL6 and earlier distributions. For
these devices, it may be necessary to switch to the NI GPIB-RS232 converter.
Please contact Ed ([Ed.Himwich@nviinc.com] if you have concerns about this.

Due to a switch to using logical volume management (LVM) to allocate multiple
new partitions in FSL10, it is unfortunately not possible to upgrade directly from
versions older than FSL10. You will need to do a fresh FSL11 install first and then
use configuration details from a backup of the old version to set things up
again.

The FSL11 archive is hosted by Github and full installation instructions can be
found at:

    https://nvi-inc.github.io/fsl11/

which includes details of adding a basic Field System installation, ready for
station customisation.

Please contact us (Jon: [jon@hartrao.ac.za] or Ed: [Ed.Himwich@nviinc.com]) if you
have any questions.