EF Portal Release Notes

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