v4.1 Release Notes

Acknowledgments 

List of first time contributors
Call out specific folks that made a big difference to this release!

Breaking Changes and Deprecations 

The important stuff!

Packaging, SELinux, Dependencies 

Dependency lists
Operating system stuff

Platform Configuration, Operations, and Observability 

NGINX
Passenger
Shell?
Environment variables
Portal stuff

Shell Terminal is Now Configurable 

The new OOD_SHELL_TERM environment variable allows the default TERM=xterm-16color to be overridden. This variable can be set to any other terminal type whose escape codes are fully supported by the underlying hterm library. Some other common supported options include xterm, xterm-256color, and xterm-direct. This environment variable can only be set from /etc/ood/config/apps/shell/env.

Accessibility and Usability 

Any UX or UI stuff
Accessibility improvements

New Dashboard Widgets 

New dashboard widgets have been added in this release. They include balances, file_quotas, nsf_access_events and system_status.

See Custom layouts in the dashboard for more details.

New Canadian Internationalization Files 

Open OnDemand v4.1 will be the first to include Canadian internationalization files for both English and French, thanks to Rahim Khoja of the University of Alberta. This adds to pre-existing internationalization files for American English, Chinese, and Japanese. It is easy to customize or generate your own localization files, and we greatly appreciate community contributions for languages we do not include by default. In addition to making it easier for others in your country or region to use Open OnDemand, contributed localization files will also be automatically updated with new releases.

Interactive Jobs and Applications 

Batch Connect
Interactive sessions
Job cards, session information, submission things

Session Cards Now Have 'Download as Zip' Button 

Interactive session cards now have a 'Download as Zip' button. This allows users to collect session details like logs, scripts, and user-defined parameters in a single zip file so that this context can be easily included with support ticket requests. To avoid accidentally downloading sensitive session information, this button is only available on completed sessions, and is hidden from users who do not have downloads enabled.

Forms, Widgets, and User Input 

Dynamic forms
Widgets
Smart attributes
Form YAML stuff

New data-help Directive 

Version 4.1 adds the data-help directive, allowing you to dynamically change the help text below form items when certain select options are chosen. For example, you may have a node_type select widget, where type basic has older GPUs than advanced. The data-help directive can change the help text on the num_gpus option for users who select advanced so that they can take that info into account when deciding how many GPUs to select. For full documentation, see Dynamic Help Text.

Form Items Can Be Hidden By Default 

Form items now accept a hide_by_default: true attribute, which will hide the form item until an option with a data-hide-item: false is selected. This is especially useful when certain items are only needed for a few options, as you no longer have to include data-hide-item: true on all of those options, but instead only supply directives to options that will show the item. For full documentation, see the Hiding entire elements

Files, Projects, and Data Management 

Files App
Project Manager
File Editor
File Browser?

File Browser Can Now Render HTML Files 

Open OnDemand v4.1 brings back HTML rendering within the files app, allowing users to open and view HTML files directly. This is disabled by default due to security concerns, but can be enabled by setting OOD_UNSAFE_RENDER_HTML=true in your environment or including unsafe_render_html=true in your ondemand.d/*.yml files.

File Editor Has a Maximum Size 

As of v4.1 the file editor will not open files above a configurable maximum size. The default is 12MB, but this can be changed by setting the OOD_FILE_EDITOR_MAX_SIZE environment variable, or setting file_editor_max_size in your ondemand.d/*.yml files. Note that size configurations always accept an integer number of (binary) bytes, so the 12MB default would be represented as 12582912.

Help, Support and Institutional Integration 

SerivceNow, ticketing things

Upgrade Instructions 

We should review this list and improve upon it or ensure the info is up to date with the proper OS list