EF Portal Release Notes

    NEW FEATURES:
      * Introduced a new Web Configuration Editor service that enables
        administrators to modify configuration parameters and files directly
        from the portal, without accessing the underlying file system.
        The service also provides built in validation of the configured settings.
      * Introduced a real-time notification system that delivers in-portal alerts
        for key events, such as job status changes and system status updates.
        Administrators can also send custom notifications to all users in a role
        or to specific users through a dedicated UI.
      * File Manager user interface now enables users to add, modify, remove,
        and sort their places. This allows them to easily organize their data into
        folders, projects, local and remote data stores.
      * Added a Log File Viewer to the Operational Dashboard (Troubleshooting
        section) with themed viewer integration, in-file search with navigation,
        tail mode with auto-refresh, log level color coding, multi-host support,
        cross-file keyword search with CSV export.
      * Operational Dashboard: Introduced a new service for navigating EF Portal
        release notes

    ENHANCEMENTS:
      * Technology Showcase: Added a comprehensive REST API demonstration to include
        practical use cases utilizing both EFPClient and cURL
      * Technology Showcase: Added implementation examples for creating new
        notifications using both JavaScript and Bash scripts
      * Operational Dashboard: The CPU Load and JVM Usage widgets now display
        data for all servers in an EF Portal Enterprise installation
      * Slurm Plugin: Improved job status mappings when 'sacct' is used
        to interact with the scheduler
      * Slurm Plugin: Added support for compact nodelist format
      * Grid Plugin: Always use the host timezone offset for job submission
        to ensure the correct time is shown in the UI
      * VDI: Display session ID in the Session Details page
      * VDI: Link job ID in Session Details to the underlying Job Details page
      * VDI: Do not display the Host link until the session job has started
      * VDI: Added possibility to disable Zoom Preview in List Sessions page
      * Applications / VDI: Added a link to the Operational Dashboard in the
        Admin View
      * DCV SM Integration: Reduced the time‑to‑live of spoolers associated
        with broken sessions to minimize repetitive warning entries in the logs
      * Service Editor: Preserve the scroll position of the options properties
      * Service Editor: Show a description and a tooltip for each option widget
      * UI: Show the pending reasons in the Jobs Details page
      * UI: Display the cluster label in Host View when configured
      * UI: Preserve the selected items in a list across refreshes
      * UI: Introduced support for searching jobs by owner in the Jobs List
      * UI: Disable the submit button after a service is submitted to prevent
        duplicate submissions
      * UI: Each navigation menu item now exposes a stable CSS class
        so that customers can target individual menu entries with custom CSS 
      * Applications / VDI: Added possibility to customize refresh interval in
        the List Services and List Interactive Services pages
      * File Manager: Compute place name if description is missing in ef.places
      * File Manager: Added configurable parameter to permit to follow symlinks
        outside the virtual root (vroot)
      * File Manager / RFB: Display base place path in the location bar
      * File Manager: Enable up arrow leading to parent folder
      * File Manager: Avoid compression when downloading a single file
      * File Manager: Show spinning icons and disable the related button when
        downloading or compressing multiple files
      * Remote File Browsing: Save the last visited folder when it is loaded
        from a profile
      * Authentication: Added configurable parameters for AD/LDAP filters
      * Authentication: Added possibility to configure the URL to redirect
        after a logout
      * Core: Improved ef:redirect tag with the newWindow attribute to open
        the target page in a new window or tab in the browser
      * REST API: Added new service to list available tokens for the logged-in user
      * REST API: Administration endpoints are now accessible by Applications and
        VDI administrators
      * Interactive: Improved creation of spoolers for interactive sessions
        to prevent the generation of inconsistent spoolers in case of errors
      * Improved error reporting for Ajax service calls
      * Improved independent control of EF Portal daemons via the 'enginframe'
        startup script
      * LSF Plugin: Allow GPU info parser to handle non‑numeric UT/MUT values
      * LSF Plugin: Improved OS compatibility by initializing the execution
        environment through a configurable shell
      * Job Cache: Improved handling of duplicate job entries when cluster IDs
        are missing or inconsistent
      * Job Cache: Introduced configurable batch processing for job updates
        to minimize the risk of deadlocks
      * PBS Plugin: Improve parsing of grid:execution-host GridML tag
      * PBS Plugin: Added support for submitting interactive sessions on
        OpenPBS 23.06
      * Hosts Info: Quick Commands are now shown also for Applications
        and VDI Administrators
      * Operational Dashboard: Extended Cleanup Interactive Sessions service
        to be able to clean up sessions in any state.
      * Improved Spoolers cleanup process to avoid repetitive execution in case
        of unexpected errors

    CHANGES:
      * Web Terminal is now disabled by default. Users who previously relied on it
        can easily re‑enable it through the Web Configuration Editor
      * DCV SM Integration: Session Recovery is now disabled by default
      * Slurm Plugin: The "dcv2" feature is no longer required for interactive
        sessions
      * Slurm Plugin: Added optional SLURM_INTERACTIVE_FEATURE parameter to specify
        custom constraints for interactive sessions
      * UI: Added configurable auto-refresh for the Jobs List and Spoolers List
        tables
      * UI: Changed the default Jobs List ordering to descending by submission time
      * Upgraded Apache Tomcat to version 9.0.117
      * Upgraded Apache Derby to version 10.15.2.0
      * Upgraded Apache Log4j to version 2.25.4
      * Upgraded Apache Commons FileUpload to version 1.6.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons IO to 2.19.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Lang to version 3.18.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Logging to version 1.3.5
      * Upgraded Apache Commons BeanUtils to version 1.11.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Net to version 3.13.0
      * Upgraded AWS SDK for Java to version 2.41.34
      * Upgraded C3P0 to version 0.12.0
      * Upgraded Hazelcast to version 5.3.8
      * Upgraded Jackson JSON library to version 2.21
      * Upgraded SLF4J to version 2.0.16
      * Upgraded Swagger UI to version 5.32.0
      * Upgraded SnakeYAML to version 2.6
      * Upgraded Swagger JAXRS2 to version 2.2.45
      * Upgraded Kotlin libraries to version 1.7.22
      * Upgraded Node.js to version 22.22.2
      * Upgraded Node.js modules used by Web Terminal and Proxy
      * Removed Spring Framework dependency

    DISCONTINUED INTEGRATIONS:
      * Discontinued support for Java 8. Use Java 11 before upgrading EF Portal

    FIXES:
      * Slurm Plugin: Use SLURM_CLUSTER_LABEL when it is configured
      * Torque Plugin: Fix host information parsing
      * Service Profile does not store Anti CSRF Token information

    NEW FEATURES:
      * Added Web Proxy Server to enable access to internal cluster nodes and
        services directly from EF Portal, enabling access to e.g. Jupyter notebooks
        or Web Terminals not directly accessible from outside of the cluster
      * Operational Dashboard: Added new services to cleanup Interactive Sessions

    ENHANCEMENTS:
      * VDI: Show DCV error message in the session log if DCV session start fails
        e.g. related to missing license
      * VDI: Added automatic closure of interactive sessions if the underlying job
        or delegate session remains in an unknown state for a configurable period
      * Slurm Plugin: Improved job status mappings with additional states
      * Slurm Plugin: Enhanced error reporting for failed interactive job submissions
      * LSF Plugin: Show data for up to 8 GPUs per node in the Hosts view
      * Improved automatic redirection to the login page when the web session expires
      * REST API: Improved auditing and logging of REST calls
      * REST API: The token creation service can be configured to output only the
        token value
      * REST API: Improved endpoints documentation

    CHANGES:
      * Web Terminal now connects via HTTPS by default
      * VDI: INTERACTIVE_* variables are set from session starting hook for other
        hooks to use
      * Operational Dashboard: Job Cache monitor services have been moved into the
        Advanced Administration navigation folder
      * Slurm Plugin: Refined parsing of host states to ensure nodes in a drain state
        are no treated as active
      * File Manager: Updated utility libraries to ensure compatibility with
        /bin/sh shell
      * Auditing: Logout due to session expiration is now logged as a [LOGOUT] event
      * File Manager: Improved compatibility of jQuery code used for Close button

NEW FEATURES:

      * Operational Dashboard: Added Administrator Dashboard to monitor the
        status of EF Portal in one comprehensive view
      * Applications / VDI: Added functionality to directly configure and display
        a Message Of The Day (MOTD)
      * VDI: Added the ability to pass additional requirements from pre-submit hook
      * VDI: Added configurable timeouts for session hooks
      * AWS Workspaces integration: Added sample pre-submit and closing hooks to
        manage AWS WorkSpaces instances and run DCV session including Office support
      * Applications / VDI: Enabled configuration of services and folders on top
        of the default navigation menu
      * Operational Dashboard: Added Job Cache administration services

ENHANCEMENTS:
      * Remote File Browsing: Last visited folder is preserved across different
        RFBs in the same service page
      * Remote File Browsing: Added the ability to configure a RFB to guide the
        last visited folder for all RFBs in the same service page
      * File Manager: Improved disk space management with automatic cleanup
        of download spoolers upon completion
      * Operational Dashboard: Enabled access for HPC Workspace and Virtual Desktop
        administrators
      * Operational Dashboard: Added quick link to the NI SP Support and
        Knowledge Base
      * Operational Dashboard: Enhanced system statistics retrieval to reduce load
        on the EF Portal host
      * File Manager: target address of a .url file can now be opened clicking
        on the filename
      * DCV SM Integration: Added the ability to configure automatic session recovery
      * DCV SM Integration: Added comprehensive support for requirements conditions
        and operators passed as submit options
      * LSF Plugin: Improved compatibility to support a wider range of Linux
        environments and interpreters
      * PBS Plugin: Optimized number of queries to PBS server
      * PBS Plugin: Added support for Job IDs exceeding 30 characters
      * PBS Plugin: Improved compatibility to support a wider range of Linux
        environments and interpreters
      * Installer: Added umask detection and validation
      * Added REST service in Admin SDF to retrieve CPU load and Memory usage
      * Added new trigger to remove expired REST tokens from database
      * Service Editor: Introduced checks for incomplete Service configuration,
        to prevent launch failures with unmodified default Services
      * Service Editor: Improved validation rules and messaging for Max Number
        of Sessions parameter

CHANGES:
      * VDI: Introduced a default timeout of 30 seconds for closing hook execution
      * VDI: Execute hook scripts as separate processes instead of sourcing them
      * VDI: Automatically switch to the Session folder when submitting a VDI job
      * Changed default output limit for job scheduler XML output from 50MB to 300MB
      * Installer: Added two-step confirmation when installing EF Agent on a
        separate host
      * Installer: Technology Showcase and documentation are now installed by default
      * Removed administration services from Technology Showcase portal
      * Upgraded Apache Tomcat to version 9.0.111
      * Upgraded rrd4j to version 3.9
      * Upgraded Jackson JSON library to version 2.15.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Text to version 1.14.0

BUGFIXES:
      * VDI: Prevent duplicate execution of Interactive Session closing hooks
        upon session termination
      * VDI: Prevent concurrent execution of Interactive Session starting hooks
      * VDI: Resolved edge cases causing Linux sessions to hang in the Closing state
      * Installer: Manage Web Terminal port configuration during updates
      * Slurm Plugin: Properly display free memory in the hosts information page
      * Charts: Fixed chart rendering for series with all zero values

  NEW FEATURES:

      * Monitoring to customer owned StatsD/Grafana of EF Portal data such as
        jobs status, licenses status, logged users, CPU load, filesystem and
        memory usage 
      * Interactive Sessions pre-submit and closing hooks as extension points
        to support executing custom actions before the session is actually
        submitted and as soon as the session is closed
      * Added WebTerminal to give administrators immediate access to remote
        hosts in the cluster from the Host View using a web-based terminal
      * REST API endpoints for VDI management, such as show running sessions,
        get session information, connect to a session and close a session
      * REST API automatically converts to JSON any EF Portal service output
        when it is in XML format, in addition to the original XML output

ENHANCEMENTS:

      * File Manager: Improved Drag and Drop upload
      * Service Editor: Improved locking of services
      * Service Editor: Improved token management for Jupyter Notebook service
      * Service Editor: Improved ACL management after editing a published service
      * UI: Updated logic to prevent quick clicks on session start function
      * Server: startup time reduced by about 40%
      * Core: Number of other performance improvements
      * Core: Removed legacy NEUTRO code and dependency
      * Core: Replaced BSF/BSH with Groovy
      * REST API: /monitor endpoints do not consume a REST license

CHANGES:

      * Upgraded Apache Tomcat to version 9.0.107
      * Upgraded Hazelcast to version 5.3.5
      * Upgraded Quartz to version 2.4.0
      * Upgraded Apache CXF to version 3.5.11
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Lang to version 3.17.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Text to version 1.13.1
      * Upgraded Apache Commons IO to version 2.19.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Logging to version 1.3.5
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Codec to version 1.18.0
      * Upgraded Apache Commons JEXL to version 2.1.1
      * Upgraded Jackson to version 2.13.5
      * Upgraded Google Guava to version 32.0.1-jre
      * Upgraded Google Guava FailureAccess to version 1.0.3
      * Upgraded Google Gson to version 2.13.0
      * Upgraded JFreeChart to version 1.0.19
      * Upgraded Yauaa to version 7.30.0
      * Upgraded OWASP Java Encoder to version 1.3.1
      * Upgraded HyperSQL Database to version 2.7.4
      * Upgraded C3P0 to version 0.10.2
      * Upgraded Mchange Commons Java to version 0.3.2

MAJOR FEATURES:
      * Comprehensive REST API for interacting with EF Portal core services,
        hosts and queues management, jobs control, services querying and
        submission, spooler and file management and more.
        Visit the docs/rest/ address of your EF Portal installation to see the
        full API specifications. The OpenAPI based API enables the creation of
        custom REST API clients in languages like Python, PHP, NodeJS as well as
        curl to consume the EF Portal REST API
      * New Python-based lightweight EFPClient to interact with the REST API
        on the command line.
        Visit https://pypi.org/project/efpclient to get more information
      * Token-based authentication is now built into EF Portal and offered
        by default for any service

NEW FEATURES:
      * EF Portal UI has been updated to offer a modern look and feel
      * Configurable Quick Commands for Host Information
      * Prevent file downloads using an allowlist to define user download
        permissions.
      * Configurable Custom View for Hosts List to only show a limited set
        of hosts
      * Jupyter Notebook integration supported by a new Jupyter EF Portal service
      * Added STAR-CCM+ service template

ENHANCEMENTS:
      * VDI: Connection Quick Access bar in session preview can be hidden
        using a configuration variable
      * File Manager: added more file types to preview as text files
      * File Manager: show a clickable URL for files ending with .url

CHANGES:
      * Upgraded Apache Tomcat to latest version 9.0.102
      * Upgraded MyBatis to 3.5.6
      * Upgraded Apache Commons IO to 2.18.0
      * Upgraded Google Guava to 32.0.0-jre
      * Upgraded Xalan-J to 2.7.3
      * Upgraded Xalan-J Serializer to 2.7.3
      * Upgraded Xerces2-J to 2.12.2

BUGFIXES:
      * Service Editor: fixed Update Published button which was shown when
        creating a new service
      * Server: fixed cookies processing issue that could occur when EF Portal
        is configured behind an HTTP server like Apache

NEW FEATURES:
      * Service Manager: added the ability to edit published services
      * Core: Added auditing of logins and logouts into log file
      * HPC Workspaces and Virtual Desktop: added CSS editor in Appearance Editor
        to fully customize the layout

ENHANCEMENTS:
      * VDI: improved usability of the Connection Quick Access bar available
        for each session preview in the List Sessions compact view
      * VDI: improved user experience when waiting to connect to a session
        in case either Web Client or DCV URI are used
      * VDI: updated action script in-file guide and comments
      * DCV SM Integration: added automatic recovery of running sessions
        available in the SM Broker not tracked by EF Portal
      * File Manager: added preview of video files
      * File Manager: added preview of glb and glTF 3D models
      * File Manager: administrators can define custom places for all users using
        a global ef.places file
      * File Manager: custom places defined by users outside their home directory
        must be allowlisted by administrators to be used
      * File Manager: added the ability to define custom extensions for text and
        image mime types which will be recognized as such by the File Manager
      * SLURM plugin: added new Starting and PoweredDown states, particularly
        useful when hosts are in the Cloud
      * SLURM plugin: added ability to adjust Nice value of jobs
      * SLURM plugin: added Move Top action for pending jobs
      * Settings: added DCV URI as default connection option. Improved settings
        pages usability
      * Hosts view: GPU related columns are hidden if no GPU data is available
      * UI: added configurable logout behavior
      * Appearance Editor: improved layout and behavior
      * Installer: optimal memory settings for Server and Agent are automatically
        calculated and applied based on host memory capabilities both at first
        installation and update time
      * Installer: improved the Grid Managers selection page to let users
        seamlessly configure HPC scheduler and VDI Session Managers
      * Installer: improved behavior during EF Portal updates
      * Logs: ef.log, agent.remote.log and dcvsm.log do not show error stack
        traces for better readability. Logs with full stack traces are now
        collected into corresponding .withtrace.log files
      * Logs: Tomcat logging strategy has been revised to control growth of
        the Tomcat logs directory
      * Logs: cleaned up misleading Hazelcast warnings

NEW FEATURES AND ENHANCEMENTS:
      * Added support for Redhat 8 and 9, CentOS 8 and 9, AlmaLinux 8 and 9,
        Rocky 8 and 9
      * Added support for Ubuntu 22 and 24
      * Added support for Amazon Linux 2023
      * Added support for SLURM 22.x and 23.x
      * Support for file, ssh and S3 file manager place and remote spoolers
      * Support for Copy/Paste/Move operations on files and directories between
        spoolers, remote spoolers and places
      * Display of present file manager copy/paste/move operation
      * Preview of data in spoolers supported for images, text and pdf as overlay
        in the file manager, draggable and resizable
      * Editor for text files in File Manager including saving into all supported
        locations
      * Remember last location in a file manager and spooler and return to that
        path when viewing the "Place"
      * Show history of paths in places (spooler, filemanager) and allow user to
        jump to a selected previous locations. History display can be toggled
        pressing the 't' key.
      * Search is now performed in all columns for job lists and spooler list.
        Search by dates is supported as well.
      * Improved search in File Manager
      * Support for UTF-8 Characters in Filenames
      * Custom File Manager Places via ~/.ef/ef.places
      * Job History Service displaying history of job usage in table and graph view
      * GPU Compute and Memory monitoring in host view
      * DCV SM Integration - Added Enqueue API support
      * DCV SM Integration - Added option for command line parameters for the
        autorun delegate script
      * DCV SM Integration - Added more session info in the session details page,
        like storage root and last disconnection time
      * Added Gridware scheduler support
      * Added LSF MultiCluster support
      * Updated the EF Portal installer to accept DCV SM as only
        scheduler/session manager
      * Show full hostname in title of host view when hovering over hostname

CHANGES:
      * Upgraded Apache Tomcat to latest version 9.0.86 from Feb 14 2024
      * Upgraded Apache Commons Text from 1.9 to 1.11
      * Upgraded jQuery UI to v1.13.3
      * Upgraded jqGrid to v4.7
      * Upgraded ACE editor to 1.36.2

BUGFIXES:
      * SLURM plugin: fixed a bug which prevented the host list from being displayed
        for certain SLURM setups
      * SLURM plugin: fixed a bug which prevented --project option of grid.submit
        from working properly
      * 'enginframe status' system script now correctly displays the listening port
        when Tomcat has been configured to use HTTPS
      * Installer: fixed a bug which listed Eclipse Adoptium JREs as unsupported
      * Fixed a bug which which made job list disappear after performing a search
        with no results in host view and spooler view