INN 2.7.3 release candidate

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi all,

A release candidate for INN 2.7.3 can be downloaded at:

     https://github.com/InterNetNews/inn/releases/tag/2.7.3rc1

The tarball is attached as an asset at the end of the page.

As it has been the case since the release process of INN 2.7.1 in 2023, we no longer use the "testing" repository on ftp.isc.org.


The final 2.7.3 release is scheduled next month (mid April).  Feel free to test this release candidate and report any issue you may encounter.


Changes from 2.7.2 to 2.7.3rc1

     * actsyncd now supports fetching a remote active file from a web site,
       using the HTTP or HTTPS protocols.  Two new keywords, *path* and
       *protocol*, permit parameterizing that in the actsync.cfg
       configuration file.  See the actsync(8) manual page and the updated
       actsync.cfg sample file for more details.

       If you are currently using actsyncd to synchronize your active file
       with the one of an FTP server, please check that FTP access is still
       working and the remote active file is up to date.  You are otherwise
       encouraged to update your actsync.cfg configuration file to use an
       HTTPS access.  Just adding "protocol=https" may be enough.  The
       rationale behind that is the fact that FTP servers are considered less
       secure nowadays; FTP access to "ftp.isc.org" is doomed to be shut down
       one day in favour of HTTPS.  The updated actsyncd and simpleftp
       programs shipped with INN go along with the upcoming change.

     * simpleftp, only used by actsyncd, now supports fetching files from web
       servers, using the HTTP(S) protocol.  It now also correctly parses a
       port number following a hostname (separated by a colon), and
       establishes FTP sessions in passive mode as this mode works better
       behind firewalls and NAT configurations.

     * Added bzip2 support to actsyncd to uncompress downloaded active files.

     * Fixed syntax warnings in the default filter_innd.py Python hook so
       that innd no longer logs errors with Python 3.12 and greater.  Thanks
       to Roberto Corrado for the patch.

     * The check for a fully qualified domain name for the local host at
       startup still produces a warning in the logs but is no longer fatal.
       The installation of INN was otherwise failing under some circumstances
       like when creating a Docker image.  Additionally, the INN_HOSTNAME
       environment variable, if set and fully qualified, is now taken by INN
       as the hostname.

     * Several improvements have been made to readership statistics reported
       by innreport: IPv6 addresses are now correctly recognized and reported
       as unresolved instead of unknown, statistics by domain are at a better
       granularity, totals are correctly computed, and only the top 100
       entries are displayed by default instead of a possibly very long
       exhaustive list.

     * Fixed the computation of idle time in the nnrpd timers gathered by
       innreport, and the display of non-printable characters in the section
       about unrecognized NNRP commands.  The wording and the case of the
       section titles are also more homogenized.

     * Improved Perl code readability and quality by enforcing the most
       interesting and useful "Perl::Critic" policies.  A new "make
       code-check" command has been added to run the checks against the
       source code.

     * Spelling fixes in documentation.  Thanks to Christian Clauss for the
       run of codespell.

     * Update from GNU Libtool 2.4.7 to 2.5.4.



-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« – Quel a été votre plus beau jour ?
   – Une nuit. » (Brigitte Bardot)