Release v1.6.6

Change Log

Version v1.6.6

Released 2023-06-28

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.6.6 Fixes

• #145 - Wrap geneos tls list JSON output in an array correctly

• tools/geneos - Package version handling was broken in some cases, especially for components with 'parent' types

v1.6.6 Changes

• tools/geneos - Add a progress bar for downloads when running interactively. Make checking if running interactively consistent

• tools/geneos - Add package install -D to download packages without unpacking them

• tools/geneos - Refactor internal variable names in subsystem packages to shrink very long names

• pkg/geneos - Various updates to plugins and other structures to support an ongoing project

Release v1.6.5

Note: There is now also a geneos.centos7-x86_64 download which is dynamically linked to support PAM and other dynamic directories.

Change Log

Version v1.6.5

Released 2023-06-23

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.6.4 Fixes

• #146 - Entering empty passwords could cause pointer panics

• #148 - Fallback to environment vars when user.Current() fails because user is not in local passwd file with static binary.

Release v1.6.4 (replaces v1.6.3)

Change Log

Version v1.6.4

Released 2023-06-22

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

Note: v1.6.3 was removed, and v1.6.4 releases to address some last minute issues.

v1.6.4 Changes

• tools/geneos - Add an initial hidden flag to hosts, so they don't participate in wildcarded operations.

• tools/geneos - Add new --validate option to geneos show to run a validation and output results as JSON.

• pkg/geneos - Updates for further parsing of config files, fix the treatment of geneos.Value type.

• pkg/config - Add a config.UseEnvs() option to New() and Load() to trigger viper AutomaticEnv() and use prefixes.

• Convert all packages and programs to use *config.Plaintext and not config.Plaintext.

v1.6.4 Fixes

• Fix remote host optional encoded password handling

• #142 - Fix expansion of non-encoded config strings in show and other places

• #140 - Fix generation of 'secure' args for command start-up

• #138 - Fix autostart behaviour for geneos restart

• #139 - Show running AC2 instances

• #134 - Update some geneos commands that need either flags or args set to just output usage otherwise.

• #133 - Check restart logic and fix for when instance is already stopped. Also update the Stop() function and it's usage in other callers.

v1.6.2 patch release for `geneos deploy`

Change Log

Version v1.6.2

Released 2023-06-14

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.6.2 Fixes

• tools/geneos Fix late found bug with deploy and home directories

Release v1.6.1

Change Log

Version v1.6.1

Released 2023-06-13

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.6.1 Changes

• pkg/geneos Changes

  Some API changes to support work on a project for reading Gateway configuration files. Existing structures used to write config files cannot co-exist and have been renamed with an "Out" suffix down to the SamplerOut level. While the old names should have been retained and the new API requirements used new names, it was decided that this is the more common use case in the future.

• tools/geneos Command updates

  The show command can now output an instance's own configuration file (for types of Netprobe and Gateway) and also try to produce a merged Gateway file using a modified command line with the Gateway -dump-xml command line option.

  A new instance flag autostart has been added, set to true for all types except ac2 which defaults to false. Documentation updtes to follow.

  The init demo command now detects if the user has a DISPLAY environment variable set and if so also installs an ac2 instance.

  The command command can now output the details in JSON format. This format is not quite compatible with the pkg/process Run and Batch functions, but the aim is to eventually merge the formats so that they can also share the implementation later.

v1.6.1 Fixes

• Minor ongoing changes

  While adding new features there is ongoing review work and refactoring of code.

v1.6.0

Change Log

Version v1.6.0

Released 2023-06-07

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.6.0 Changes

• #116

  Added a new geneos deploy command that combines geneos init and geneos add but takes more care over existing installations and/or creating new directories.

  As part of this work all the geneos init command will prompt the user for a directory if none is given on the command line. If the command is run from a non-interactive parent (e.g. a pipe from the shell) then the prompt is skipped and the default directory is used.

  The geneos deploy command uses the same initialisation rules but reduces the number of options. The intended audience is around automation where the deployment scripts may not have the knowledge or logic to check for existing installations.

• #114

  For geneos instances that have both the default libpaths and an environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH configured these are now concatenated with libpaths always first.

• #117

  Based on user feedback all the Netprobe types have been merged under the netprobe/ directory in their respective plural names, e.g. netprobe/sans. Existing installations should continue to work unchanged but you can use the geneos migrate command to automatically merge the instance directories under netprobe/ including the update of configuration files.

• #97

  The Linux Active Console is now treated like any other component and instance. At the moment, if you issue a geneos start command then all instances including Active Console(s) will be run. In a future release we may add an autostart like flag that can prevent this and require a manual start using the full geneos start ac2 abcde syntax.

• pkg/process - New features

  New functions have been added to support the running of single processes and batches based on a Program struct. This is for running tasks loaded from a config file (typically YAML) for an ongoing project. The reason for not using existing external packages was the integration with other cordial tooling. This functionality is currently maturing and is very sparsely documented and subject to major changes.

• pkg/icp and pkg/gwhub - New APIs

  These two packages are the start of Go APIs for ITRS Capacity Planner and Gateway Hub, respectively. These should not yet be used and have been included to track progress over the next few releases.

v1.6.0 Fixes

• #126

  In the config package the Load() function would fail if used with a file format set bu other defaults and run in the same directory as the binary it ran in because viper would also try to load the bare-named program binary as a config file of the type given. The package now does it's own file name construction to avoid this.

  As a consequence of the work done around this fix to make the usage of options to Load() and Save() clearer some have changed names. Existing code that wants to use v1.6.0 will experience minor API breakage. The fixes are simple refactors, so no backward compatibility has been retained.

• #124

  The work done for #117 above meant that all templates are now located under netprobe/templates and both san and floating templates had the same name. The default templates now have updated root names, e.g. san.setup.xml.gotmpl, but existing configuration may need updating if the existing templates clash.

  To help users control which configuration files are created from templates, and which to use for instance start-up, a new instance parameter setup has been introduced for this. The defaults are netprobe.setup.xml and gateway.setup.xml for the two affected component types which means no change for existing users.

  So even though the new SAN template is san.setup.xml.gotmpl, for example, running geneos rebuild san will still result in a
  netprobe.setup.xml in the instance directory.

• #120

  While this report was a misunderstanding of the way to use Daemon() the comments have been updated to give better direction on how to use the pidfile io.Writer parameters.

Patch release with small fixes and some new features

Change Log

Version v1.5.2

Releases 2023/05/31

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.5.2 Changes

• #102 - process package additions

• #109 - New tls create command

  Move the functions of --name etc from tls new to tls create to remove dependency on the Geneos home directory.

• #106 - Change directory for TLS root and signing certs and keys

• #97 - Start of Linux AC2 support. Not yet fully functional.

• #98 - Work done and then superceeded by #109 above.

v1.5.2 Fixes

• #111 - Fix gateway instance template ports

• #103 - Fix default web server log file name

Patch release to v1.5.0

Change Log

Version v1.5.1

Releases 2023/05/25

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.5.1 Changes

• tools/geneos:

  • #85 - TLS Issues

    Added verification for certificates against existing root and
    signing certificates.

    Added an option to recreate root and signing certs from tls init.

  • #86 - New log option for stderr logs blocked main logs

    Reworked the way that logs are followed to allow both normal and
    stderr logs to be followed. This fixes start -l, restart -l and
    by implication init -l options. Added a --nostandard/-N option
    to logs to allow normal log to be surpressed when you only want
    the error logs.

  • #88 - Floating probe configuration template output malformed

    The defaults for new floating probes used sanname instead of
    floatingname as the parameter for the template rendering.

  • #90 - Variables in SANs

    The san template was not corrected updated for the new variable
    structure.

  • #43 - Minor error in disable

    In disable check if stopped and print error if not --force

v1.5.0

We are very happy to announce release v1.5.0 of cordial

Release Notes

Version v1.5.0

Released 2023/05/22

Please report issues via github or the ITRS Community Forum.

v1.5.0 - Highlights

This release brings numerous changes to the cordial tools, especially
the geneos utility. We have tried to improve the reliability and
usability of the utility through updated and improved documentation and
subsequent fixes and changes that arose from writing and checking that
documentation.

v1.5.0 - BREAKING CHANGES

• pkg/logger:

  • REMOVED. This simplistic internal logging package has been
    deprecated in favour of more mature solutions, such as
    zerolog.

• tools/geneos:

  • The way SAN instances handle gateway connections has been fixed to
    allow gateway represented as FDQNs or IP addresses. The old way
    resulted in a mess - viper defaults to dots ('.') as configuration
    item hierarchy delimiters and this caused issues. Most users with
    SANs should not notice any change, but if you see problems please
    check the san XML file and correct the gateways section as
    necessary. One way is to remove and re-set them using:

    geneos set san mySan -g gateway.example.com ...

    Running set will rewrite the configuration in the new format bu
    there is a chance that the previous configuration will continue to
    occupy settings. You may need to manually edit the instance
    configuration file san.json anyway.

  • Like the above any variables defined for either SAN or Gateway
    instances used to generate XML from templates will have not worked
    in a case sensitive manner to mirror how Geneos treats variable
    names. To fix this the internal format of the variables section
    has been updated to move the variable name from the configuration
    key to a separate structure as it's own value. Code has been added
    to automatically convert from the old format to the new when the
    configuration file is updated however there is no fix for the
    correction of variable case name being incorrect from previous
    configurations. Please review and adjust as necessary.

  • Support for running instances as other user accounts or under
    sudo has been deprecated. Security is hard, and the support
    for these was poorly implemented. A better way should be coming in
    a future release.

    This may mean that where users has configured netprobes to run as
    different users and have previously run sudo geneos start to let
    the program do the right thing will run into issues. Please be
    careful if any of your instances run as other users and do not run
    the geneos program with sudo. There is no additional
    checking/rejection of running under sudo or any other privilege
    escalation system so this is important!

v1.5.0 - Other Changes

• There has been a significant amount of refactoring and moving around
  of the code-base. Most of this should not be user visible, but some
  public APIs have changed. As with all major changes there may be
  problems that have not been caught in testing. Please report
  anything you see as either a github
  issue or via the
  ITRS Community Forum.

  There are too many changed to list them all in detail but specific
  ones worth mentioning include:

  • memguard
    support for protected memory. Credentials (passwords, TLS keys and
    so on) should now be handled as Enclaves (for plaintext or private
    keys) or as LockedBuffers (for ciphertexts of sensitive data).

    The config package includes new methods
    for handling configuration file data as Enclaves and LockedBuffers
    to try to reduce the amount of confidential data visible in the
    process.

    The changes are ongoing and, in addition to adding a layer of data
    security to cordial, an added benefit is the interception of
    memory use errors etc. If you see errors, panic etc. please report
    them as a github
    issue

  • A number of the previous package APIs have undergone review and
    changed as needed. In particular the
    config API has been through the wringer
    and if you have any code that relies on it from v1.4 or earlier
    then it will require changes. There are new functions, which is to
    be expected, but also some existing ones have been renamed or had
    their argument signatures changed. Please review the documentation
    to see what the methods and functions have become.

  • Credentials support. There is both general purpose and
    geneos specific support for the local
    storage of credentials. Passwords and other secrets "at rest" are
    stored in Geneos AES256 format using a key file that is initial
    auto-generated. To decode these passwords you must have both the
    key file (which is by default only user readable) and the
    credentials file. There should be support for other credentials
    types, such as OAuth style client secrets and tokens, in future
    releases. The username and the domain that the credentials
    apply to are not encrypted, by design. This is however subject to
    change in a future release.

    Credentials currently works with a free-text domain that matches a
    destination using a "longest match wins" search, e.g. for a URL
    this may be a full or partial domain name, and for Geneos
    component authentication, e.g. the REST command API, the domain is
    in the form gateway:NAME. Others will be added later, probably
    including TLS certificates and keys as well as SSH password and
    private keys.

  • Releases now include selected binaries with a semantic version
    suffix. The programs in cordial use the base name of the binary
    as a key to select which configuration files to load, so that
    renaming the binary will result in a different set of
    configuration file being used, automatically.

    To make life simpler, any version suffix is automatically stripped
    if, and only if, it matches the one used to build the binary. This
    means you can now download geneos-v.1.5.0 and use it without
    having to rename it (useful for initial testing of new releases).

• tools/geneos:

  • Extensive documentation restructuring and rewriting. This is still
    work in progress but largely complet. Built-in help text (shown
    with the help command or the --help/-h option) should now
    align much more closely with real functionality and the online
    documentation is now almost completely built from the same source.

  • Addition of subsystems to group commands.

  • Move aes and tls command sources to their subsystems.

  • Add host and package subsystems and create aliases for the
    original commands, e.g.

    • add host becomes host add
    • install becomes package install
    • etc.

  • The set user, show user etc. commands are now under single
    config subystem, e.g. geneos config set mykey=value

  • The set global and related commands have been deprecated.

  • The new package subsystem command pulls all Geneos release
    management into one place

  • New login and logout commands to manage credentials.

  • New ca3 and floating components for Collection Agent 3 and Floating
    Netprobes

• tools/dv2email:

  • This new utility can be run as a Geneos Action or Effect to
    capture one or more Dataviews and send as an email. The
    configuration is extensive and the layout and contents are
    completely configurable through the use of Go templates.

v1.5.0 - Bug Fixes

• tools/geneos:

  • Version checking of local release archives was broken because of
    overloading of a common function. This is now split and checking
    should work once again.

  • Most reported issues on github have been fixed.

v1.5.0 - To Do

• Documentation needs more work and refinement. The built-in help for
  almost all commands is now up-to-date but the init and tls
  subsystems need to be reviewed further and completed. This should be
  in a patch release soon.

• tools/geneos:

  • Local storage of encrypted passwords for remote SSH access needs
    documenting

v1.5.0 Beta 2 - fixes and documentation updates

This second beta addresses some issues found during testing - thanks to those who reported issues - and also incorporates a significant number of changes (bug fixes or enhancements, you decide) that came to light while updating the help documentation for most geneos program commands. Almost all the help test in geneos has been updated with just a small subset awaiting more edits.

The geneos help text should now more closely align with functionality and has also resulted in that functionality being improved and made more consistent. Online rendered version of these changes can be browsed here: https://github.com/ITRS-Group/cordial/blob/main/tools/geneos/docs/commands/geneos.md

The CHANGELOG.md file has not had much in the way of change yet, so is not being copied here.

One more note - if you download any of the binaries attached to this release directly then please remember to rename before use as new behaviour means that the executable file name influences the configuration files loaded at start-up. We are looking at how to allow embedded semantic versioning in the file name without affecting the "basename" of the program which may be done by final release.

Once again, thanks for your patience and feedback.