Release Notes

This chapter has important information for releases in it. If you’re upgrading from a previous release, please read it carefully, or at least skim over it.

Note

ALWAYS do backups before upgrading, especially before running migrations! That way if something goes wrong, we can fix things!

And be sure to shut down your current mediagoblin/celery processes before upgrading!

Note

The MediaGoblin repository used to be on gitorious.org, but since gitorious.org shut down, we had to move. We are presently on Savannah. You may need to update your git repository location:

git remote set-url origin git://git.savannah.gnu.org/mediagoblin.git

0.9.0

This release has a number of improvements, but is also a major “plumbing upgrade” release to MediaGoblin. Notably, we now support Python 3, which is pretty cool!

Do this to upgrade

  1. If you haven’t already, switch the git remote URL: git remote set-url origin git://git.savannah.gnu.org/mediagoblin.git

  2. Update to the latest release. If checked out from git, run: git fetch && git checkout -q v0.9.0

  3. Run ./bootstrap.sh && ./configure && make

  4. Also run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate

Bugfixes/improvements:

  • Python 3 is now a first class citizen! We now support both Python 2.7 and Python 3.4 or later.

  • Major updates to internal tooling to pave the way for federation. - Massive overhaul to the database layout (particularly in

    permitting generic relations)

    • OAuth updates

    • Updating how we handle collections

    • Add a “graveyard” system with tombstones for keeping information about removed objects

    • Large overhaul to how “comments” work. In federation, many things can reply to many things, so we had to loosen the model.

  • If your user has some collections available, these will be presented as a dropdown option while submitting media.

  • Begin using Alembic for migrations

  • Lots of bugfixes and etc - Many fixes to typos - Some fixes to the blog system - Switch to waitress for development - And more…!

0.8.1

This release is a security and bugfix release. We recommend you upgrade as soon as possible.

Do this to upgrade

  1. If you haven’t already, switch the git remote URL: git remote set-url origin git://git.savannah.gnu.org/mediagoblin.git

  2. Update to the latest release. If checked out from git, run: git fetch && git checkout -q v0.8.1

  3. Run ./bootstrap.sh && ./configure && make

  4. Also run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate

(Please check intermediate release steps as well if not upgrading from 0.8.0)

Bugfixes/improvements:

Most importantly, there is an important security fix:

Quoting here a portion of the release blogpost:

We have had a security problem in our OAuth implementation reported to
us privately and have taken steps to address it. The security problem
affects all versions of GNU MediaGoblin since 0.5.0. I have created a patch
for this and released a minor version 0.8.1. It's strongly advised
that everyone upgrade as soon as they can.

In order to exploit the security issue, an attacker must have had
access to a logged in session to your GNU MediaGoblin account. If you
have kept your username and password secret, logging in only over
HTTPS and you've not left yourself logged in on publicly accessible
computers, you should be safe.  However it's still advised all users
take the following precautions, listed below.

Users should check their authorized clients. Any client which looks
unfamiliar to you, you should deauthorize. To check this:

1) Log in to the GNU MediaGoblin instance
2) Click the drop down arrow in the upper right
3) Click "Change account settings"
4) At the bottom click the "Deauthorize applications" link

If you are unsure of any of these, click "Deauthorize".

There are other bugfixes, but they are fairly minor.

0.8.0

This release has a number of changes related to the way we recommend building MediaGoblin; upgrade steps are below, but if you run into trouble, consider pinging the MediaGoblin list or IRC channel.

Do this to upgrade

  1. If you haven’t already, switch the git remote URL: git remote set-url origin git://git.savannah.gnu.org/mediagoblin.git

  2. If you don’t have node.js installed, you’ll need it for handling MediaGoblin’s static web dependencies. Install this via your distribution! (In the glorious future MediaGoblin will be simply packaged for your distribution so you won’t have to worry about this!)

  3. Update to the latest release. If checked out from git, run: git fetch && git checkout -q v0.8.0

  4. Run ./bootstrap.sh && ./configure && make

  5. Also run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate

Please note the important steps of 0 and 2, which have not appeared in prior upgrade guides!

Additionally:

  • Are you using audio or video media types? In that case, you’ll need to update your Gstreamer instance to 1.0.

  • The Pump API needs some data passed through to the WSGI application, so if you are using apache with mod_wsgi you should be sure to make sure to add “WSGIPassAuthorization On” to your config. (Using the default MediaGoblin documnetation and config, things should work as-is.)

Bugfixes/improvements:

  • Preliminary / experimental support for Python 3!

  • Footer forced to the bottom of page

  • Massive improvements to Pump API support - Able to run on multiple existing Pump clients! Including Pumpa

    and Dianara!

  • much cleaner ./configure && make support; it’s now the default

  • Clearer documentation on permissions and installation

  • Switched from Transifex, which had become proprietary, to an instance of Pootle hosted for GNU

  • Moved to Gstreamer 1.0! This also adds a new thumbnailer which gives much better results in

  • Removed terrible check-javascript-dependencies-into-your-application setup, now using Bower for dependency tracking

  • Put some scaffolding in place for Alembic, which will be used for future mitration work

  • Automatically create a fresh mediagoblin.ini from mediagoblin.ini.example

  • no more need for mediagoblin_local.ini (though it’s still supported)

  • Fix lowercasing of username in auth steps

  • Slowly moving towards removing global state (a source of many bugs)

0.7.1

This is a purely bugfix release. Important changes happened since 0.7.0; if running MediaGoblin 0.7.0, an upgrade is highly recommended; see below. This release is especially useful if you have been running postgres and have been receiving seemingly random database transaction errors.

Do this to upgrade

  1. Update to the latest release. If checked out from git, run: git fetch && git checkout -q v0.7.1 && git submodule init && git submodule update

  2. Make sure to run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate

That’s it, probably! If you run into problems, don’t hesitate to contact us (IRC is often best).

Bugfixes/improvements:

  • The MOST IMPORTANT change in this release: Disabling a couple of non-critical features that were causing database transaction issues. (These should be back by 0.8.0.)

    • Disabled the “checking if the database is up to date at mediagoblin startup” feature

    • Disabled the garbage collection stuff by default for now (You can set garbage_collection under the config mediagoblin header to something other than 0 to turn it back on for now, but it’s potentially risky for the moment.)

  • Some fixes to the 0.7.0 docs

  • Fixed Sandy 70s speedboat navbar by updating git submodule

  • Added support for cr2 files in raw_image media type

  • Added a description to setup.py

  • Collection and CollectionItem objects now have nicer in-python representations

  • Fixed unicode error with raw image mediatype logging

  • Fixed #945 “Host metadata does not confirm to spec (/.well-known/meta-data)”

    • Add XRD+XML formatting for /.well-known/host-meta

    • Add /.well-known/webfinger API to lookup user hrefs

  • deleteuser gmg subcommand now fails gracefully

  • Removed a false download link from setup.py

0.7.0

Do this to upgrade

  1. Update to the latest release. If checked out from git, run: git fetch && git checkout -q v0.7.0 && git submodule init && git submodule update

  2. Make sure to run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate

(NOTE: earlier versions of the 0.7.0 release instructions left out the git submodule init step! If you did an upgrade earlier based on these instructions and your theme looks weirdly aligned, try running the following:)

git submodule init && git submodule update

That’s it, probably! If you run into problems, don’t hesitate to contact us (IRC is often best).

New features:

  • New mobile upload API making use of the Pump API (which will be the foundation for MediaGoblin’s federation)

  • New theme: Sandy 70s Speedboat!

  • Metadata features! We also now have a json-ld context.

  • Many improvements for archival institutions, including metadata support and featuring items on the homepage. With the (new!) archivalook plugin enabled, featuring media is possible. Additionally, metadata about the particular media item will show up in the sidebar.

    In the future these plugins may be separated, but for now they have come together as part of the same plugin.

  • There is a new gmg subcommand called batchaddmedia that allows for uploading many files at once. This is aimed to be useful for archival institutions and groups where there is an already existing and large set of available media that needs to be included.

  • Speaking of, the call to postgres in the makefile is fixed.

  • We have a new, generic media-page context hook that allows for adding context depending on the type of media.

  • Tired of video thumbnails breaking during processing all the time? Good news, everyone! Video thumbnail generation should not fail frequently anymore. (We think…)

  • You can now set default permissions for new users in the config.

  • bootstrap.sh / gnu configuration stuff still exists, but moves to be experimental-bootstrap.sh so as to not confuse newcomers. There are some problems currently with the autoconf stuff that we need to work out… we still have interest in supporting it, though help is welcome.

  • MediaGoblin now checks whether or not the database is up to date when starting.

  • Switched to Skeleton as a system for graphic design.

  • New gmg subcommands for administrators: - A “deletemedia” command - A “deleteuser” command

  • We now have a blogging media type… it’s very experimental, however. Use with caution!

  • We have switched to exifread as an external library for reading EXIF data. It’s basically the same thing as before, but packaged separately from MediaGoblin.

  • Many improvements to internationalization. Also (still rudimentary, but existant!) RTL language support!

Known issues:

  • The host-meta is now json by default; in the spec it should be xml by default. We have done this because of compatibility with the pump API. We are checking with upstream to see if there is a way to resolve this discrepancy.

0.6.1

This is a short, bugfix release.

Do this to upgrade

  1. Update to the latest release. If checked out from git, run: git fetch && git checkout -q v0.6.1

  2. Make sure to run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate

This release switches the default terms of service to be off by default and corrects some mistakes in the default terms of service.

Turning the terms of service on is very easy, just set show_tos in the [mediagoblin] section of your config to true.

0.6.0

Do this to upgrade

  1. Update to the latest release. If checked out from git, run: git fetch && git checkout -q v0.6.0

  2. Make sure to run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate

That’s it, probably! If you run into problems, don’t hesitate to contact us (IRC is often best).

This tool has a lot of new tools for administrators, hence the nickname “Lore of the Admin”!

New features:

  • New tools to control how much users can upload, both as a general user limit, or per file.

    You can set this with the following options in your mediagoblin config file: upload_limit and max_file_size. Both are integers in megabytes.

    There is an option to control how much each individual user can upload too, though an interface for this is not yet exposed. See the “uploaded” field on the core__users table.

  • MediaGoblin now contains an authentication plugin for ldap! You can turn on the mediagoblin.plugins.ldap plugin to make use of this. See the documentation: ldap plugin

  • There’s a new command line upload tool! At long last! See ./bin/gmg addmedia –help for info on how to use this.

  • There’s now a terms of service document included in MediaGoblin. It’s turned on by default, but you can turn it off if you prefer, just set the configuration option of show_tos in the [mediagoblin] section of your config to false.

    Alternately, you can override the template for the terms of service document to set up your own.

  • We have a lot of new administrative tooling features! - There’s a built-in privileges/permissions system now.

    Administrators are given access to modifying these parameters from a user administration panel.

    • Users can submit reports about other problematic users or media and administrators are given tools to resolve said reports and ban/unban users if needed.

  • New version of video.js is included with MediaGoblin. Slight amount of skinning to match the MediaGoblin look, otherwise also uses the new default skin.

Developer-oriented changes:

  • New developer tool for quickly setting up a development environment in devtools/make_example_database.sh. Requires doing a checkout of our other tool mg_dev_environments (probably in the parent Directory) though!

  • A “foundations” framework has entered into the codebase. This is mostly just relevant to coders, but it does mean that it’s much easier to add database structures that need some entries filled automatically by default.

  • Refactoring to the authentication code and the reprocessing code

0.5.1

v0.5.1 is a bugfix release… the steps are the same as for 0.5.1.

Bugfixes:

  • python 2.6 compatibility restored

  • Fixed last release’s release notes ;)

0.5.0

NOTE: If using the API is important to you, we’re in a state of ransition towards a new API via the Pump API. As such, though the old API still probably works, some changes have happened to the way oauth works to make it more Pump-compatible. If you’re heavily using clients using the old API, you may wish to hold off on upgrading for now. Otherwise, jump in and have fun! :)

Do this to upgrade

  1. Make sure to run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate after upgrading.

  1. Note that a couple of things have changed with mediagoblin.ini. First we have a new Authentication System. You need to add [[mediagoblin.plugins.basic_auth]] under the [plugins] section of your config file. Second, media types are now plugins, so you need to add each media type under the [plugins] section of your config file.

  2. We have made a script to transition your mediagoblin_local.ini file for you. This script can be found at:

    http://mediagoblin.org/download/0.5.0_config_converter.py

If you run into problems, don’t hesitate to contact us (IRC is often best).

New features

  • As mentioned above, we now have a plugable Authentication system. You can use any combination of the multiple authentication systems (basic_auth plugin, persona plugin, openid plugin) or write your own!

  • Media types are now plugins! This means that new media types will be able to do new, fancy things they couldn’t in the future.

  • We now have notification support! This allows you to subscribe to media comments and to be notified when someone comments on your media.

  • New reprocessing framework! You can now reprocess failed uploads, and send already processed media back to processing to re-transcode or resize media.

  • Comment preview!

  • Users now have the ability to change their email associated with their account.

  • New oauth code as we move closer to federation support.

  • Experimental pyconfigure support for GNU-style configue and makefile deployment.

  • Database foundations! You can now pre-populate the database models.

  • Way faster unit test run-time via in-memory database.

  • All mongokit stuff has been cleaned up.

  • Fixes for non-ascii filenames.

  • The option to stay logged in.

  • Mediagoblin has been upgraded to use the latest celery version.

  • You can now add jinja2 extensions to your config file to use in custom templates.

  • Fixed video permission issues.

  • Mediagoblin docs are now hosted with multiple versions.

  • We removed redundent tooltips from the STL media display.

  • We are now using itsdangerous for verification tokens.

0.4.1

This is a bugfix release for 0.4.0. This only implements one major fix in the newly released document support which prevented the “conversion via libreoffice” feature.

If you were running 0.4.0 you can upgrade to v0.4.1 via a simple switch and restarting mediagoblin/celery with no other actions.

Otherwise, follow 0.4.0 instructions.

0.4.0

Do this to upgrade

  1. Make sure to run ./bin/python setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg dbupdate after upgrading.

  2. See “For Theme authors” if you have a custom theme.

  3. Note that ./bin/gmg theme assetlink is now just ./bin/gmg assetlink and covers both plugins and assets. Keep on reading to hear more about new plugin features.

  4. If you want to take advantage of new plugins that have statically served assets, you are going to need to add the new “plugin_static” section to your nginx config. Basically the following for nginx:

    # Plugin static files (usually symlinked in)
location /plugin_static/ {
   alias /srv/mediagoblin.example.org/mediagoblin/user_dev/plugin_static/;
}

    Similarly, if you’ve got a modified paste config, you may want to borrow the app:plugin_static section from the default paste.ini file.

  5. We now use itsdangerous for sessions; if you had any references to beaker in your paste config you can remove them. Again, see the default paste.ini config

  6. We also now use git submodules. Please do: git submodule init && git submodule update You will need to do this to use the new PDF support.

For theme authors

If you have your own theme or you have any “user modified templates”, please note the following:

  • mediagoblin/bits/ files above-content.html, body-end.html, body-start.html now are renamed… they have underscores instead of dashes in the filenames now :)

  • There’s a new file: mediagoblin/bits/frontpage_welcome.html. You can easily customize this to give a welcome page appropriate to your site.

New features

  • PDF media type!

  • Improved plugin system. More flexible, better documented, with a new plugin authoring section of the docs.

  • itsdangerous based sessions. No more beaker!

  • New, experimental Piwigo-based API. This means you should be able to use MediaGoblin with something like Shotwell. (Again, a word of caution: this is very experimental!)

  • Human readable timestamps, and the option to display the original date of an image when available (available as the “original_date_visible” variable)

  • Moved unit testing system from nosetests to py.test so we can better handle issues with sqlalchemy exploding with different database configurations. Long story :)

  • You can now disable the ability to post comments.

  • Tags now can be up to length 255 characters by default.

0.3.3

Do this to upgrade

  1. Make sure to run bin/gmg dbupdate after upgrading.

  2. OpenStreetMap is now a plugin, so if you want to use it, add the following to your config file:

    [plugins]
[[mediagoblin.plugins.geolocation]]

If you have your own theme, you may need to make some adjustments to it as some theme related things may have changed in this release. If you run into problems, don’t hesitate to contact us (IRC is often best).

New features

  • New dropdown menu for accessing various features.

  • Significantly improved URL generation. Now mediagoblin won’t give up on making a slug if it looks like there will be a duplicate; it’ll try extra hard to generate a meaningful one instead.

    Similarly, linking to an id no longer can possibly conflict with linking to a slug; /u/username/m/id:35/ is the kind of reference we now use to linking to entries with ids. However, old links with entries that linked to ids should work just fine with our migration. The only urls that might break in this release are ones using colons or equal signs.

  • New template hooks for plugin authoring.

  • As a demonstration of new template hooks for plugin authoring, openstreetmap support now moved to a plugin!

  • Method to add media to collections switched from icon of paperclip to button with “add to collection” text.

  • Bug where videos often failed to produce a proper thumbnail fixed!

  • Copying around files in MediaGoblin now much more efficient, doesn’t waste gobs of memory.

  • Video transcoding now optional for videos that meet certain criteria. By default, MediaGoblin will not transcode webm videos that are smaller in resolution than the MediaGoblin defaults, and MediaGoblin can also be configured to allow theora files to not be transcoded as well.

  • Per-user license preference option; always want your uploads to be BY-SA and tired of changing that field? You can now set your license preference in your user settings.

  • Video player now responsive; better for mobile!

  • You can now delete your account from the user preferences page if you so wish.

Other changes

  • Plugin writers: Internal restructuring led to mediagoblin.db.sql* be mediagoblin.db.* starting from 0.3.3

  • Dependency list has been reduced not requiring the “webob” package anymore.

  • And many small fixes/improvements, too numerous to list!

0.3.2

This will be the last release that is capable of converting from an earlier MongoDB-based MediaGoblin instance to the newer SQL-based system.

Do this to upgrade

# directory of your mediagoblin install cd /srv/mediagoblin.example.org

# copy source for this release git fetch git checkout tags/v0.3.2

# perform any needed database updates bin/gmg dbupdate

# restart your servers however you do that, e.g., sudo service mediagoblin-paster restart sudo service mediagoblin-celeryd restart

New features

  • 3d model support!

    You can now upload STL and OBJ files and display them in MediaGoblin. Requires a recent-ish Blender; for details see: Deploying MediaGoblin

  • trim_whitespace

    We bundle the optional plugin trim_whitespace which reduces the size of the delivered html output by reducing redundant whitespace.

    See Part 2: Core plugin documentation for plugin documentation

  • A new API!

    It isn’t well documented yet but we do have an API. There is an android application in progress which makes use of it, and there are some demo applications between automgtic, an automatic media uploader for your desktop and OMGMG, an example of a web application hooking up to the API.

    This is a plugin, so you have to enable it in your mediagoblin config file by adding a section under [plugins] like:

    [plugins]
[[mediagoblin.plugins.api]]

    Note that the API works but is not nailed down… the way it is called may change in future releases.

  • OAuth login support

    For applications that use OAuth to connect to the API.

    This is a plugin, so you have to enable it in your mediagoblin config file by adding a section under [plugins] like:

    [plugins]
[[mediagoblin.plugins.oauth]]

  • Collections

    We now have user-curated collections support. These are arbitrary galleries that are customizable by users. You can add media to these by clicking on the paperclip icon when logged in and looking at a media entry.

  • OpenStreetMap licensing display improvements

    More accurate display of OSM licensing, and less disruptive: you click to “expand” the display of said licensing.

    Geolocation is also now on by default.

  • Miscelaneous visual improvements

    We’ve made a number of small visual improvements including newer and nicer looking thumbnails and improved checkbox placement.

0.3.1

Do this to upgrade

  1. Make sure to run bin/gmg dbuptdate after upgrading.

  2. If you set up your server config with an older version of mediagoblin and the mediagoblin docs, it’s possible you don’t have the “theme static files” alias, so double check to make sure that section is there if you are having problems.

New features

  • theming support

    MediaGoblin now also includes theming support, which you can read about in the section Theming MediaGoblin.

  • flatpages

    MediaGoblin has a flatpages plugin allowing you to add pages that are aren’t media-related like “About this site…”, “Terms of service…”, etc.

    See Part 2: Core plugin documentation for plugin documentation

0.3.0

This release has one important change. You need to act when upgrading from a previous version!

This release changes the database system from MongoDB to SQL(alchemy). If you want to setup a fresh instance, just follow the instructions in the deployment chapter. If on the other hand you want to continue to use one instance, read on.

To convert your data from MongoDB to SQL(alchemy), you need to follow these steps:

  1. Make sure your MongoDB is still running and has your data, it’s needed for the conversion.

  2. Configure the sql_engine URI in the config to represent your target database (see: Deploying MediaGoblin)

  3. You need an empty database.

  4. Then run the following command:

    bin/gmg [-cf mediagoblin_config.ini] convert_mongo_to_sql

  5. Start your server and investigate.

  6. That’s it.