[Testing Update] 2023-12-04 - Kernels, Systemd, GNOME 45.2, LibPamac, ZFS, LibreOffice, Maui

Announcements Testing Updates
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Hello community,

Another testing branch update with some usual package updates for you.

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Recent News:

  • Manjaro, like many other open-source projects, relies on the generosity of its community through donations and corporate sponsorships to support its growth and development. These donations are essential in covering the various expenses incurred in the operations of the project such as server costs, software development tools, infrastructure expenses, training, flying people to events or conferences and the salaries of key developers. With the help of these donations, Manjaro is able to secure the necessary financial stability that allows the project to continuously improve and remain active. If you love Manjaro, consider to donate!
Previous News
Finding information easier about Manjaro

Finding information easier about Manjaro always has been a topic that needed to be solved. With our new search we have put all Manjaro data accessible in one place and divided by sections so it makes it easier to digest: New Manjaro search engine is available | Blog

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Notable Package Updates:

  • Some Kernels got updated
  • Systemd is now at 254.7
  • Cinnamon got updated to 6.0
  • GNOME 45.2
  • gamescope-plus is now at 3.11.13
  • libpamac fixed the offline updates in 11.6.3
  • zfs got updated to 2.2.2
    • not all modules yet
  • issues starting blender 4.0.1 are now fixed
  • Firefox is at 120.0.1 and Thunderbird is at 115.5.1
  • LibreOffice got updated to 7.6.3
  • Maui got renewed to 3.0.2
  • Usual KDE-git, Haskell and Python updates

Additional Info

Info about AUR packages

:warning: AUR (Arch User Repository) packages are neither supported by Arch nor Manjaro. Posts about them in Announcements topics are off-topic and will be flagged, moved or removed without warning.

For help with AUR packages, please create a new topic in AUR and a helpful volunteer may be able to assist you.

Get our latest daily developer images now from Github: Plasma, GNOME, XFCE. You can get the latest stable releases of Manjaro from CDN77.

Our current supported kernels

  • linux419 4.19.300
  • linux54 5.4.262
  • linux510 5.10.202
  • linux515 5.15.141
  • linux61 6.1.65
  • linux65 6.5.13 [EOL]
  • linux66 6.6.4
  • linux67 6.7-rc4
  • linux61-rt 6.1.59_rt16
  • linux65-rt 6.5.2_rt8
  • linux66-rt 6.6.0_rt15

Package Changes (Mon Dec 4 07:27:52 CET 2023)

  • testing core x86_64: 20 new and 20 removed package(s)
  • testing extra x86_64: 1684 new and 1661 removed package(s)
  • testing kde-unstable x86_64: 276 new and 276 removed package(s)
  • testing multilib x86_64: 4 new and 4 removed package(s)

A list of all differences you may find here

  • No issue, everything went smoothly
  • Yes there was an issue. I was able to resolve it myself.(Please post your solution)
  • Yes i am currently experiencing an issue due to the update. (Please post about it)
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Check if your mirror has already synced:

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Known issues and solutions

This is a wiki post; please edit as necessary.
Please, consider subscribing to the Testing Updates Announcements RSS feed

Please RTFT (Read This Fine Thread) first before reporting the same issues over and over again!

:arrow_right: 2023-12-04

2023-11-10

Nvidia 545 drivers might have issues

:information_source: Due to various issues including non working backlights on some machines, the NVIDIA 545 series feature branch drivers have been downgraded to the 535 series production branch drivers.

If you are having no issues with the 545 series, there is nothing to do. If you are, you can downgrade to the 535 series with pamac update --enable-downgrade or sudo pacman -Syuu.

So far we know about these issues the Nvidia 545 driver series has:

If you experience similar or new issues please run sudo usr/bin/nvidia-bug-report.sh and post either in an already given post or create a new one, including your generated nvidia-bug-report.log.gz for Nvidia to fix the issue: Linux - NVIDIA Developer Forums

Changes in JDK / JRE 21 packages may require manual intervention

2023-11-02 - Frederik Schwan

We are introducing a change in JDK/JRE packages of our distro. This is triggered from the way a JRE is build in modern versions of Java (>9). We are introducing this change in Java 21.

To sum it up instead of having JDK and JRE packages coexist in the same system we will be making them conflict. The JDK variant package includes the runtime environment to execute Java applications so if one needs compilation and runtime of Java they need only the JDK package in the future. If, on the other hand, they need just runtime of Java then JRE (or jre-headless) will work.

This will (potentially) require a manual user action during upgrade:

  • If you have both JDK and JRE installed you can manually install the JDK with pacman -Sy jdk-openjdk && pacman -Su and this removes the JRE related packages.
  • If you have both JRE and JRE-headless you will need to choose one of them and install it manually since they would conflict each other now.
  • If you only have one of the JDK/JRE/JRE-headless pacman should resolve dependencies normally and no action is needed.

At the moment this is only valid for the upcoming JDK 21 release.

– Arch Linux - News: Incoming changes in JDK / JRE 21 packages may require manual intervention

2023-10-21

Mechanical HDDs may not spin-down properly on shutdown

There might be a regression introduced with 6.6.0-rc4 which got also backported to 6.1.59 and 6.5.8 Kernels. There is a discussion with the author of the offending patch ongoing here.

ZFS package changes

ZFS extramodules; i.e., linuxXX-zfs, have been dropped from the repos. There have been recent difficulties building them and no one on the Manjaro Team uses ZFS.

Please install zfs-dkms instead. You will to need to manually remove the old 2.1.13 extramodule package(s) first to install the new 2.2.0 packages; i.e., with linux61:

sudo pacman -R linux61-zfs && sudo pacman -Syu zfs-dkms
Restarting gnome-shell using Alt+F2 and entering R, causes a crash

FS#79884 : [gnome-shell] Restarting gnome-shell using Alt+F2 and entering R, causes a crash

GNOME Extensions that target older GNOME versions will not work in GNOME 45

It is recommended to remove all third-party extensions before updating, then install the compatible versions after updating and rebooting. All Most extensions in the Manjaro repos are already updated.

2023-10-05

glibc-locales update requires manual intervention

If you had the old glibc-locales package from the extra repo installed, the update to the new core package will need manual intervention:

 sudo pacman -Syu glibc-locales --overwrite /usr/lib/locale/\*/\*

2023-09-27

Changes to default password hashing algorithm and umask settings

2023-09-22 - David Runge

With shadow >= 4.14.0, Arch Linux’s default password hashing algorithm changed from SHA512 to yescrypt [1].

Furthermore, the umask [2] settings are now configured in /etc/login.defs instead of /etc/profile.

This should not require any manual intervention.

Reasons for Yescrypt

The password-based key derivation function (KDF) and password hashing scheme yescrypt has been chosen due to its adoption (readily available in libxcrypt, which is used by pam [3]) and its stronger resilience towards password cracking attempts over SHA512.

Although the winner of the Password Hashing Competition [4] has been argon2, this even more resilient algorithm is not yet available in libxcrypt [5][6].

Configuring yescrypt

The YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR setting in /etc/login.defs is currently without effect, until pam implements reading its value [7]. If a YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR higher (or lower) than the default (5) is needed, it can be set using the rounds option of the pam_unix [8] module (i.e. in /etc/pam.d/system-auth).

General list of changes

  • yescrypt is used as default password hashing algorithm, instead of SHA512
  • pam honors the chosen ENCRYPT_METHOD in /etc/login.defs and does not override the chosen method anymore
  • changes in the filesystem (>= 2023.09.18) and pambase (>= 20230918) packages ensure, that umask is set centrally in /etc/login.defs instead of /etc/profile

[1] yescrypt - scalable KDF and password hashing scheme

[2] umask(1p) — Arch manual pages

[3] PAM - ArchWiki

[4] https://www.password-hashing.net/

[5] [RFC] Add argon2 backend. by ferivoz · Pull Request #113 · besser82/libxcrypt · GitHub

[6] Add support for Argon2 by maandree · Pull Request #150 · besser82/libxcrypt · GitHub

[7] pam_unix: Support reading YESCRYPT_COST_FACTOR from /etc/login.defs · Issue #607 · linux-pam/linux-pam · GitHub

[8] pam_unix(8) — Arch manual pages

– Arch Linux - News: Changes to default password hashing algorithm and umask settings

2023-09-06

filesystem and bashrc-manjaro pacnews

With the filesystem 2023.09.03-1 and bashrc-manjaro 5.1.016-3 updates there may be pacnews for the following files if you have local modifications:

  • /etc/shells
  • /etc/bash.bashrc

This would be a good time to test @Ste74’s new manjaro-pacnew-checker program. See Check and manage pacnew files for more info.

Previous testing threads:

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The new 6.6-Kernel now also fixed my previous issue with the keybord backlight control in GNOME :muscle:

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all zfs modules are now updated …

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2 posts were split to a new topic: I don’t see an option to downgrade NVIDIA drivers

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