In May, the internal ClearOS packages were moved to GitHub (blog post).  Today, we are now in the final stages of getting ready to move the ClearOS app packages, framework and themes to GitHub :-)   For those of you hacking in the development environment, please take a look at the following announcement in the forums: Development Environment Changes

ClearOS Professional 6.5.0 Beta 2 has been released!  You can find the full release announcement on the ClearCenter web site.

ClearOS Community 6.5.0 Beta 2 is now available!  Changes since Beta 1 include:

- Tuning various apps to be Samba 4 ready
- Updating apps to be ClearOS 7 ready
- Improving web browser support, notably the quirky Internet Explorer

Along with the usual round of bug fixes and enhancements, the 6.5.0 release introduces Marketplace enhancements, a Network Detail Report, an Administrators app, Official Amazon EC2 Support, a Software RAID Manager, UPnP Support, an updated Web Server app, as well as new reporting features.

Under the hood, some changes were made to support OwnCloud as well as web-based applications (Tiki Wiki, WordPress, Joomla, etc.).  For those of you deploying ClearOS Professional, you should know that Beta 2 will be available next week.

- Release Notes
- 32-bit ISO - clearos-community-6.5.0-beta-2-i386.iso  (MD5Sum)
- 64-bit ISO - clearos-community-6.5.0-beta-2-x86_64.iso  (MD5Sum)

Enjoy!

ClearOS Community 6.5.0 Beta 1 has arrived!  Along with the usual round of bug fixes and enhancements, this release introduces Marketplace enhancements, a Network Detail Report, an Administrators app, Official Amazon EC2 Support, a Software RAID Manager, UPnP Support, an updated Web Server app, as well as new reporting features.

Under the hood, some changes were made to support OwnCloud as well as web-based applications (Tiki Wiki, WordPress, Joomla, etc.). The Professional Edition will also include a new QoS app, as well as a Network Map tool to help manage devices on the network.

- Release Notes
- 32-bit ISO - clearos-community-6.5.0-beta-1-i386.iso  (MD5Sum)
- 64-bit ISO - clearos-community-6.5.0-beta-1-x86_64.iso  (MD5Sum)

Enjoy!

Special thanks goes out to our friends at 1000mbps.com who have just lit up a mirror for ClearOS in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This mirror is very fast and will be especially fast for ClearOS users in Europe. We appreciate their support and encourage users of ClearOS to support them. They provide virtual hosting at great prices. So if you are looking to light up a ClearOS server in the cloud, consider them please.

Dank je wel 1000mbps en baseip.com. 

This is a heads up for those of you who keep the updates-testing repository enabled.   The ClearOS 6.5.0 Beta 1 release will be pushed to the updates-testing repository on August 27. 

The ClearCenter development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new paid app - Mail Archive.  This app is intended for businesses and organizations who need to meet regulatory compliance or enforce internal policies for e-mail use in the workplace.  Mail Archive stores an exact duplicate of all incoming and outgoing mail when configured in either mail filter gateway mode or final destination MTA.

Mail Archive is a $US 95/yr subscription service (up to 50 mailboxes) with discounts offered via ClearCenter Partners and to educational and non-profit organizations.  The app can be purchased and installed on both ClearOS Community or Professional editions.  For environments over 50 mailboxes, please contact ClearCenter Sales.

Feedback (via email or the forums) is always welcome.

Thanks,

ClearCenter Development Team

We haven't being doing a great job at communicating the roadmap for ClearOS, so here's a quick update on what is in store for next three months!  A follow-up blog post will detail some of the medium and long term roadmap goals (more/better reports, IPv6, etc.).

The following apps are in public beta right now -- head on over to the developer forums for details:

- Software RAID Manager
- UPnP
- VLAN support
- Amazon EC2 Support

In addition, a few apps are nearing completion or waiting on the ClearOS 6.5 testing phase (which will begin in August):

- Mail Archive (paid app)
- Administrators
- QoS
- OwnCloud (Tim app)

Under the hood, a new engine for supporting web applications (WordPress, Joomla, SugarCRM, etc.) is also in development.  There's also work with "reports, reports, reports" going on.

Over the next coming days, ClearFoundation will be moving off of the slow server which is now on to a newer environment to be provided by ClearCenter. We know things have been slow and this should speed things up nicely. We will continue to look for more improvements and optimization but things may be choppy. We hope to make the cut-overs as speedy as possible (i.e. under a couple of minutes.) So if you can't get to us, come back in a few minutes and hopefully all will be well.

The ClearFoundation development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new FREE app - Software RAID Manager.  This app provides an integrated Webconfig UI to the ubiquitous mdadm software RAID management tool.

The app will be available for install via the Marketplace next week.  For now, if you have software RAID on your ClearOS server and want to give it a whirl, from the command line, run:

yum --enablerepo=clearos-test install app-raid

Feedback (via email or the forums) is always welcome.

Thanks,

CF Development Team

Over the next few months, we will be migrating ClearOS source code to GitHub.  This week, the code to all the internal packages (i.e. not upstream) used in ClearOS was migrated to https://github.com/clearos-packages.  The real GitHub fun will start when the apps are migrated... but that's for another day.

We have updated the ClearOS development tools and documentation.  If you are interested in building apps, you may want to check out the new Hello World Tutorial. The tutorial - which includes video demonstrations - can guide you through the process of getting an app up and running in no time!

The ClearOS Community 6.4.0 ISOs were updated.  The default partitioning scheme was not configured to use all available disk space -- not a great default of course. Only the ISOs were updated, the virtual machine and Amazon EC2 images were not changed.

For a few months now, ClearFoundation has been using Amazon EC2 for bits of infrastructure and we really like it. We eat our own dog food when we can, and Amazon EC2 is a great place to implement a master node in a master/slave architecture.

For ClearFoundation, all the users and groups are managed on the ClearOS master node running in EC2. Across the Internet, two ClearOS slave nodes are used for hosting source code (SVN running on good old hardware) and hosting the beta translation server (running in a virtual machine on-premise). The accounts on the master node are automatically replicated to these two slave nodes and the slaves can run quite happily without a connection to the master node. In other words, we can shutdown the master node on Amazon and the two slave nodes will hum along just fine.

Enough blabbing about clearfoundation.com infrastructure.  If you are looking for a hybrid cloud / on-premise solution, Amazon EC2 can certainly be part of the puzzle.  To install ClearOS in Amazon, please review the documentation here:

- ClearOS Amazon EC2 Install Guide

If you run into any issues, please post a message in the forums or send an e-mail to developer@clearfoundation.com. We like squashing bugs, so send those reports our way!

The Storage Manager is currently available in the (beta) Amazon EC2 ClearOS Professional builds, but the app can be installed and implemented on any ClearOS system. If you want to start using the Storage Manager on an existing ClearOS system, the following technical guide walks through the details:

Storage Manager Technical Guide

If you have any questions or run into any problems, please feel free to post a message in the forums or contact technical support if you have a ClearCenter support subscription.

If you are outside the United States, you know the frustration of getting locked out from content providers like Hulu, Netflix, Pandora and others. With ClearOS and the new ibVPN app, you can now invisibly and securely access these services.

Using the ClearOS Marketplace, install the ibVPN app on your ClearOS gateway and start routing devices on your local network via your favorite country: US, Canada, UK, and many more. For example, an Apple TV system can be routed through the US while leaving other systems on the network as is. Here's how it works.

- Install the app from the ClearOS Marketplace
- Sign up for an account from ibVPN (link includes an affiliate ID... beer money)
- Configure your ibVPN settings in the ClearOS app
- Select the country VPN server (US, UK, Canada, etc)
- Specify the devices on your network that should go through ibVPN

Enjoy!

The folks over at terasaur (by ibiblio) have provided a nice spot for grabbing ClearOS Community 6.4.0 via BitTorrent.  We are adding a couple of seed nodes right now, so feel free to torrent away!

ClearOS Community 6.4.0 is now available! Along with the usual round of bug fixes and enhancements, this release introduces a new reports engine, a storage manager, an antimalware file scanner, RADIUS, a basic POP/IMAP server, and mail retrieval.

- Release Notes
- Downloads

What's next? After a bumpy start with ClearOS 6, we are now happy with the stability and maturity of the version. Version 6 required a major overhaul under the hood, but it provided ClearOS with a modern and secure web application platform.  So what's currently in the pipeline?

- A beta release of the new QoS engine
- Samba 4 / Samba Directory preview
- The ibVPN app (coming next week!)
- A new Administrators app
- Additional network support: VLAN and static routes
- The Network Map tool, which will enable IP-based content filter filter policies (Professional Edition)

OwnCloud, Captive Portal are other potential developments are also floating around in various stages of development.  Stay tuned!

ClearOS Community 6.4.0 Beta 2 has arrived! Along with the usual round of bug fixes and enhancements, this release introduces a new reports engine, a storage manager, an antimalware file scanner, RADIUS, a basic POP/IMAP server, mail retrieval (fetchmail) as well as upstream proxy support.

Over the last few weeks, there was a lot of focus on squashing bugs and improving little usability issues. From the modernized installer to the easy to use Marketplace, ClearOS 6 has matured to be our best offering.  It's not only the core platform that has had a facelift, but also the individual apps and solutions.  For example, Zarafa's solution with two great webmail interfaces, Outlook support, and out-of-the-box mobile synchronization brings enterprise-level mail to small organizations. 

- ClearOS Community 6.4.0 Beta 2 - Release Notes and Download

The build of ClearOS Core 6.4 packages from upstream sources is completed and rolling out to the mirrors. All in all it took about 32 hours from the time the packages showed up to having them fully built. We are busy adding Core to the current ClearOS Community and Professional trees and should have some great new features and hardware support. 6.4 Core is useful for techies and hobbyists but we shall all be able to set our sights on the future release of ClearOS 6.4 Community and ClearOS 6.4 Professional.

Cant wait to get started with ClearOS? Then don't wait. 6.3 will upgrade to 6.4 when the time comes and the licensing is all the same. Stay tuned for more updates on the features of 6.4.