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Release Notes

February 2023 (version 8.14)

Overview

The February 11th, 2023 release of DietPi v8.14 comes with a new image for the Radxa ROCK 5B, Odroid N2/HC4, Orange Pi 5 and a couple of improvements and bug fixes.

Icy bike

Photo by borismayer77, Pixabay

New images

  • Orange Pi 5 Support for Orange Pi 5 SBC has been added to DietPi with hardware ID 80.
  • Odroid N2/C4/HC4 New images have been generated with support for the default Hardkernel SPI bootloader petitboot. Thanks to this, boot from USB devices is now possible, and on Odroid HC4 it is not necessary anymore to erase the SPI flash or flash mainline U-Boot to it. Many thanks to @hstarcm and @Power-onoff for bringing up this topic and help testing adjustments to the boot script: MichaIng/DietPi#5634
  • ROCK 5B New images with ext4 boot filesystem have been generated, to solve possible issues and limitations of the previously used FAT filesystem. Many thanks to @isarrider for reporting this issue: MichaIng/DietPi#6122

New architecture

  • Initial experimental support for RISC-V and the StarFive VisionFive 2 SBC has been added. This is all in playground stage currently, but if anyone wants to join the party, contact us.

Improvements

  • WiFi Since Linux 4.15, the kernel can read the WiFi country code from connected access points, and searches the regulatory database for related allowed frequencies automatically. The Central Regulatory Domain Agent (CRDA) has hence become obsolete and isn’t even functional if the kernel feature is used. Linux needs to have the regulatory database in specific format stored below /lib/firmware for this, which is the case since Debian Bullseye. Additionally, if no Debian kernel is used (all SBCs), one needs to change the used regulatory database from a Debian-only one to the upstream one. New DietPi images are shipped now with this setup without CRDA, it is applied on next DietPi update on Bullseye and Bookworm systems, and it is offered to purge the obsolete CRDA package. This also fixes the issue on Bookworm SBC systems, where the limited global (00) country code was used, since CRDA is not available on Bookworm, but the Debian-only regulatory database used by default.
  • NanoPi R2S/NEO3 Video related kernel modules are now blacklisted on these headless SBCs, saving some bits of RAM and load at boot.
  • DietPi-Config It is now possible to change the dietpi.txt network connection test settings CONFIG_CHECK_CONNECTION_IP, CONFIG_CHECK_CONNECTION_IPV6 and CONFIG_CHECK_DNS_DOMAIN via dietpi-config -> Network Options -> Misc menu. Those are used when checking Internet access via IPv4 and IPv6 and DNS resolver functionality.

  • DietPi-Config The user experience of “Network Options: Adapters” has been improved:

    • When changing the WiFi country code, the network is not restarted anymore and the check whether the country code has been successfully applied, has been dropped.
      When the kernel applies allowed frequencies directly (see above WiFi changelog entry), the country code cannot be changed anyway, and there are other cases where this fails. It is not worth the hassle of a full network restart only to check whether the country code is valid.
    • If WiFi settings are applied while no SSID has been configured yet, the interface is not tried to be brought up so that one does not need to wait for the DHCP timeout to continue.
    • The dialogue which offers to purge WiFi packages is now only shown if any of those packages is actually installed.
    • System services are not stopped and restarted anymore when applying network changes, but only hostapd and the DHCP server, if installed.
    • Most WiFi handling is now done with the modern iw utility instead of the legacy wireless-tools set.

  • DietPi-Tools | DietPi-LetsEncrypt HTTP/2 is now enabled automatically when applying HTTPS on Apache. Nginx and Lighttpd have this enabled OOTB already.

  • DietPi-Software | Gogs Our ARMv6 build for Raspberry Pi 1 and Zero (1) models has been updated to latest version 0.12.10. The update can be applied via reinstall: dietpi-software reinstall 49
  • DietPi-Software | Docker Compose Migrated to the plugin variant, installed from the Docker APT repository. On existing installs, the migration can be done via dietpi-software reinstall 134. To call it, use docker compose (without dash) from now on. Many thanks to @isarrider for making us aware of this: MichaIng/DietPi#6135
  • DietPi-Globals G_CHECK_NET: When hitting “Retry” from the error handler, the IPv6 connection check is now skipped as well when IPv6 is disabled via dietpi-config network settings or manually. The same is true for changes to the CONFIG_CHECK_CONNECTION/DOMAINdietpi.txt settings, which can now also be changed right from the error handler. Many thanks to @derSebastian for reporting a related issue: MichaIng/DietPi#5667

  • DietPi-Docs Documentation contributions were done from a couple of persons.
    Many thanks to

Bug fixes

As always, many smaller code performance and stability improvements, visual and spelling fixes have been done, too much to list all of them here. Check out all code changes of this release on GitHub: MichaIng/DietPi!6139