Category: News

Regarding Gitlab updates

Gitlab will be updated to v17 for the upcoming semester during August. As this is a major update, UI changes and changes in operation are expected. For a full list of major changes/breakages, see the official Gitlab release notes for v17

Subsequent updates to minor versions of 17.x will follow on quiet times during semester. Since the upstream policy of Gitlab maintainers is to support only three newest releases, we will try to keep up with this cycle and stay on [newest-1] as the newest release almost always breaks functionality.

Patches and vulnerability updates are done during office hours on thursdays or fridays, depending on upstream releases. This will usually take less than half an hour and you can see if updates are in progress from the maintenance banner in the Gitlab UI. When update window is active Gitlab is in read-only mode, making sure no data is lost during updates. Keeping personal backups is still highly recommended.

Help us enhance Gitlab security

We highly recommend all our Gitlab users to enable two-factor authentication on their account. It is a very easy and efficient way to secure project data and takes only a few steps to complete:

Go to your profile in Gitlab and under Account, click “Enable two-factor authentication”

From there add your preferred two-factor authentication app such as Google Duo, Yubikey, Microsoft Authenticator or any other compatible application. Gitlab supports both TOTP and WebAuthn methods for two-factor authentication and you can have multiple methods enabled.

Two-factor is (currently) optional, but as it is one of the most efficient method in preventing credential abuse we would like to see all our users help us in securing one of the most important tools we have in our study network.

Upcoming server software upgrades

On January 2023 the student server will be upgraded to include newer versions of most commonly used software as their current versions are to be deprecated. The software and versions will be:

• Mariadb 10.5
• PHP 8.2
• Python 3.9
• Postgresql-client 13

These updates will push the support life of the software to at least the year 2025 while maintaining some backwards compatibility. Some issues may occur if you have very old applications or databases. More accurate list of changes/deprecated functionality can be found in the release notes of the aforementioned software and their changelog/documentation pages.

The database servers (mariadb and postgresql.labranet.jamk.fi) will also be upgraded later to the versions mentioned above which might require the use of newer client software if you are using other clients than those supplied on student.labranet.jamk.fi.

EDIT: The packages have now been upgraded. Python 2.7 has been deprecated and is not available anymore. The system default python3 is now python3.9 and python3.6 will be available as an alternative for some time for migration purposes. System-wide packages handled by pip should work as usual but create a helpdesk ticket in case something is still missing.

If you have installed packages for yourself using pip3 install –user before the upgrade, you need to install the packages again

pip3.6 list --user
pip3 install --user <packagenames>

Upcoming VLE Maintenance 7.12

On Tuesday 7.12 starting at 18:00, we will be conducting maintenance that will impact access to provisioning or configuring VLE virtual machines or accessing virtual machine consoles. The outage is expected to last up to two hours.

Virtual machines will continue to run as normal during the outage.

Summer service outages

Due to maintenance during summer some LabraNet student services may be unavailable from time to time. We try to minimize the impact on usage and schedule the maintenance on quiet hours.

The following services will be unavailable for extended period of times on Thursday 8.7.2021, due to continued data migrations:

• student.labranet.jamk.fi
• mariadb.labranet.jamk.fi
• postgres.labranet.jamk.fi
• LabraNet VPN

We expect the services to be functional again on Friday 9.7.2021 but in case of problems, please create a ticket on our helpdesk.