ASL V6 RC1

Astaro is pleased to announce the availability of the Astaro Security Linux V6 Release Candidate 1. Thanks to anybody on this board who contributed to this release! We received a tremendous amount of excellent feedback during our BETA test. We are planning to ship the General Availability release shortly. The next days will give us extra time to validate improvements made in Astaro Security Linux V6 during the final days of testing. The Release Candidate available today is suitable for testing and for home use, but should not be used in production environments.

New Features

Astaro Security Linux V6 adds many new capabilities like improved protection for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications, increased protection from "zero-day attacks," and support for the Linux 2.6 Kernel as well as enhanced configuration and reporting options that improve the flexibility and ease of management.

Key features of this latest release include: 

• Transparent Firewall Mode
• Time-Based Packet Filter and Surf Protection
• Policy-Based Routing
• Support of Linux Kernel 2.6
• SIP Proxy
• Anomaly-Based Intrusion Protection
• Novell eDirectory Support

A detailed description of the new features is included in the package.

Changes in the release:

• NTLM Authentication: Added Clear Cache Button
• POP3 Proxy: Added detail selection for blocked messages
• DHCP Service: Added DHCP Relay agent
• Connection Tracking: Added TFTP helper
• Intrusion Prevention: Reduced anomaly detection noise
• eDirectory: Moved to User Authentication

Fixes in this release:

• Bootsplashes does not work on several Intel VGA-Cards
• Empty HTTP-Proxy profiles and Time Events could not be deleted
• PPPoA fails to connect properly
• IPS pattern up2date not working correctly
• Portscan detection not working at all
• HTTP Proxy does not honor the defer-user-agent setting
• Domain setting in the SMTP Proxy is case-sensitive

Limitations

With the provided ISO image there are maybe still some limitations. Please check the Known Issue List before you test ASL V6 RC1! Astaro does not recommend to use ASL V6 RC1 in productive environments but for home use. There is no manual for ASL V6 RC1 but the Online Help is nearly complete.

It is possible to import configuration backup files from ASL V5.2X and in the end we will support a config import from ASL V6 RC1 into the GA version. Please update your test installation regularly. The ASL V6 RC1 does not include a test license but you can use your ASL V5 licenese or generate a new one in MyAstaro.

A hardware compatibility list and a Known Issues List for the RC1 release are available at: http://docs.astaro.org

Hardware requirements

Astaro minimum recommendation for V6 RC1 installations:

• Intel Pentium III 900 MHz
• 256MB RAM
• 9 GB hard disk drive and above.

Best performance results running on:

• Dual Xeon or Athlon
• 512MB/1GB RAM
• 36 GB SCSI 15krpm hard disk drive and above.

For testing purpose you can also use a VMware Workstation (http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/ws_features.html).
 

Download Information

To our regret we were not able to release any Up2Date due to their size (over 100MB).

Download asl-5.900-050624-1.iso
size: 302 MB (302,409,728 Byte)
md5sum: 8f25ed7aa7ed520b688114cecd1aace2
Astaro FTP server: ftp://ftp2.astaro.de/pub/ASL/v6.0/iso_i386/BETA/
Astaro HTTP server: http://download2.astaro.de/ASL/v6.0/iso_i386/BETA/
BitTorrent: http://download2.astaro.de/ASL/v6.0/iso_i386/BETA/asl-5.900-050624-1.iso.torrent

(If you are not familiar with BitTorrent, please check out this detailed description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent). Search for "how to burn" on our Knowledge Base if you have trouble to burn a CD from the ISO image.

Feedback

Feedback, problem reports and comments should be posted on our User Bulletin Board in the "BETA Version / ASL Hackers" forum. Please take care to add always(!) the version you refer to (e.g. "[5.900] missing comma in Packet Filter Rules online help").

Astaro is trying to build the security solutions that you need. We greatly appreciate your input, comments and suggestions!

Thx in advance for your tests,
Astaro R&D team