Release Version 2.8

Release date: 17 Aug 2019.

Distribution

Source snapshots are attached to this announcement and the git tag filesender-2.8 contains the base that these snapshots were created from.

Installation

Documentation is available at http://docs.filesender.org/v2.0/install/

Upgrade Notes

Version 2.x breaks compatibility with version 1.x. We recommend a fresh installation to version 2.x of FileSender.

Major changes since 2.7

Automatic resume from a network failure has been improved #609 and #610.

A number of configuration changes are made to set the default timeouts to be closer to the test environment. Note that the config.php setting upload_considered_too_slow_if_no_progress_for_seconds is for any upload progress, so a 30 second timeout should work even on a congested network because some bytes should have moved in that time frame.

The number of seconds since any data was sent is now shown on the upload page to provide insight to the user. Once that delay for no data sent reaches upload_considered_too_slow_if_no_progress_for_seconds then the upload will have a resume automatically scheduled.

A new "reconnect and continue" button was added to the upload page to allow the user to force a reconnection to the server and a resume. This could sort of be done before by pausing the transfer and clicking on the play button to resume though the reconnect button is a more heavy operation in that it will close terasender connections and respawn them in order to "reconnect" which may be needed if the laptop has changed IP address for example. Note that the automatic resume performs this more heavy reconnect operation in order to cater for network address changes and the like and to provide the best chance of continuing the upload.

One consideration is the possibility to combine the pause/play and reconnect into a single interface but they are similar but different enough features that attempts to bring them into a single user interface would likely lead the user to trying to second guess what was happening (eg, does this pause/play trigger
a reconnection so that the change in wifi network will be fixed by doing it).

The terasender_failed_after_many_retries message will now present as human readable when it happens. Failure to start terasender workers such as might happen if the network happens to be down at the time is now reported in a much nicer way.

Config changes relating to the automatic resume update:

from   0 to 30 for upload_considered_too_slow_if_no_progress_for_seconds
from  10 to 50 for automatic_resume_number_of_retries
from 360 to 10 for automatic_resume_delay_to_resume

Guest transfers SQL update and possible restriction #614.

The main statistics tab has been moved from a subtab on the admin page to a top level item #611. This can be enabled for users with the config.php setting can_view_statistics which works the same was as the "admin" config setting or enabled through SAML using the auth_sp_saml_can_view_statistics_entitlement config setting.

A fix for a bad interaction of options and archive download #617

The CI system was restored to having Selenium web browser tests working again #599.

Updates to the archive name for tar files were merged #595, #617.

Fixed a quoting issue on MySQL when searching for users by SAMLID #583.

Small improvement to full row display in transfers and guests page #601.

Update to browser and os stats #587.

Update to auditlogs sql to use a subselect #602.

Added the ability to select a subdirectory for a custom 'theme' #604,
#590.

A relic parameter was removed for creation of archives #605.

A bad interaction with can_only_send_to_me and get_a_link in guest creation reported in #591 caused an update in #606 to be merged. This presents the interface in line with the config.php depending on how your config.php is setup and also makes the binding of these two options more apparent to the user.

Update merged for over zealous aup checked test in the rest code #607 raised here #596.

Docs update for i18n #608

Configuration changes

Access to the statistics tab is governed by the can_view_statistics setting which has similar format to the admin setting. You can also use the auth_sp_saml_can_view_statistics_entitlement and auth_sp_saml_can_view_aggregate_statistics_entitlement settings to enabled these features using attributes from SAML.

A new "theme" setting allows you to select a theme from a subdirectory to use instead of the default.

A new setting user_can_only_view_guest_transfers_shared_with_them allows the restriction of viewing guest transfers.

Support and Feedback

Please lodge new github issues for things that might improve the next release!
See Support and Mailinglists and Feature requests.