Release Notes: IBM Aspera Faspex 5.0.6

5.0.6.2

Faspex 5 now supports package creation workflow to upload multiple files/folders from multiple sources into one package, using either one transfer spec or multiple transfer specs. (Aspera/faspex-core#4121)

Faspex 5 now supports HTTP fallback. HTTP fallback requires HSTS 4.4.3 or later.(Aspera/faspex-ui#2352)

New API endpoint /packages/id/update_stats to manually update package transfer statistics when service is down or a package is stuck. (Aspera/faspex-core#4176)

Aspera/faspex-core#4177 - Package status not showing as expected when performing remote to remote transfers.

Aspera/faspex-ui#2404 - Faspex does not allow to send a new package with a new metadata profile.

Aspera/faspex5#702 - Package/file stuck in relaying status after upload is done when using HTTP fallback.

Aspera/faspex5#661 - Package download notification may send duplicate emails to the notifier.

Aspera/faspex-service#355 - Node polling issue with single tenant Faspex 5.0.6 and 5.0.6.1 instance and HSTS.

Aspera/faspex5#655 - Packages marked as deleted in Faspex 5 still exist on the server.

Aspera/faspex-core#3926 - Node API response handling format improvement.

Aspera/faspex-ui#1995 - Hide the faspex-frontend, ibm-aspera-connect, and Faspex Service - <uuid> clients from the UI.

5.0.6.1

You can filter by package status in the
packages API. (Aspera/faspex-core#3895)

Admins can add a custom message on the home page with the home_page_message attribute. (Aspera/faspex-core#4062)

Aspera/faspex-core#4107 - The /packages API does not return the archived flag in the recipient and private recipients hash.

Aspera/faspex-core#4027 - Faspex 5 expiration_policy on forwarded packages not working as expected.

Aspera/faspex-core#3985 - Able to add more files to an already completed package with
the remote_transfer endpoint.

Aspera/faspex-core#3964 - The RECIPIENT_EMAIL variable
is missing from the template for personal invitation emails.

Aspera/faspex-core#3940 - Issues when sending a remote source package with Windows HSTS node. This is fixed by upgrading HSTS to 4.4.3 or later.

Aspera/faspex-core#3763 - When
logged in as a SAML user the log out options do not redirect the user back to the Faspex login
page.

Aspera/faspex-core#3606 - Package contents are not automatically deleted after any / all
recipients have downloaded all package files.

Aspera/faspex-ui#2370 - The error Other remote content already uploaded is shown when selecting files from two different remote sources.

Aspera/faspex-ui#2337 - Faspex UI is not showing
all the metadata profiles in the shared inboxes tab.

Aspera/faspex-5#670 - Issues with faspexctl install_lets encrypt on Rocky Linux 8.8.

Aspera/faspex-5#651 - Failed transfer status when using a node that contains multiple HSTS nodes. This only affects Faspex 5.0.6.

Aspera/faspex-5#646 - Upgrading from Faspex 4.x to Faspex 5.0.6 with HTTP Fallback enabled causes an error during the upgrade.

Aspera/faspex-utility#238 - Remote MySQL 8.0.33 mysqldump generates invalid INSERT statements for generated columns.

Aspera/faspex-core#3926 - Node API response handling format improvement.

Aspera/faspex-core#3604 - Implementation of the saml_user_lookup_attribute
into the faspex_config table.

Aspera/faspex-ui#2222 - Packages table
enhancements with advanced filters and customizable columns to display all packages within a
workspace.

5.0.6

New variables in the .env files allow users to enable extra debug logging in the container logs. The new variables are: FASPEX_UTILITY_LOG_LEVEL FASPEX_CORE_LOG_LEVEL FASPEX_SERVICE_LOG_LEVEL FASPEX_UI_LOG_LEVEL. (Aspera/faspex-core#3686)

A new API endpoint days_before_deleting_package_records eliminates the database records of packages after a certain amount of days since being marked as deleted. (Aspera/faspex-core#3640)

Added support for single quotes ( ' ), ampersand (&), and backslash ( / ) in the database passwords. The dollar sign ( $ ) is not a supported character. (Aspera/faspex-db#72)

Faspex notification emails now support user-specific time zone settings configuration. (Aspera/faspex5#430)

Added the ability to turn ON or OFF TLS to connect to the database. (Aspera/faspex5#542)

You can now use emojis in package titles. (Aspera/faspex-core#3369)

You can now download data tables into a CSV file. (Aspera/faspex-ui#2191)

Added the ability to show or hide columns in the packages table. (Aspera/faspex-ui#2235)

Added sorting support to the /shared_inboxes API, allowing you to sort items based on various criteria. (Aspera/faspex-core#3776)

Added support for storing table data settings on the API for persisting UI features. (Aspera/faspex-core#3792)

Breaking changes

Aspera/faspex-docs#247 - Directory Services users must be migrated to SAML before upgrading from Faspex 4 to Faspex 5.

Aspera/faspex-docs#246 - Public submission links and external user invitations created in Faspex 4 do not work in Faspex 5. Admins can resend the invitation as long as the invitation is not expired.

Aspera/faspex-core#4010 - If you have a network configuration that passes the requesting client's IP address through the network with the X-Forwarded-For HTTP Header, you will not be able to restrict access to Faspex via IP addresses.

Aspera/faspex-installer#357 - IBM Aspera Faspex does not support MySQL 5.7. If you are currently using MySQL you should upgrade to MySQL 8.0.

Aspera/faspex-core#3745 - The PACKAGE_NOTE variable in the email template customization does not render properly in the email.

Aspera/faspex-core#3743 - POST returns sender value as a string in the /packages endpoint.

Aspera/faspex-core#3742 - GET and POST return different responses in the /packages endpoint.

Aspera/faspex-core#3741 - The archived field is not included in the response for the /packages endpoint.

Aspera/faspex-core#3740 - Missing mailbox field in the GET/create package's response/forward API.

Aspera/faspex-core#3738 - The last_modified field is not included in the response for the /packages endpoint.

Aspera/faspex-core#3736 - Unable to see downloaders information as part of a package's details in GET /packages/{id}.

Aspera/faspex-core#3735 - The expiration_date field is not configurable through F5’s Package API (POST).

Aspera/faspex-core#3701 - Users should have the ability to retrieve all of their packages.

Aspera/faspex-core#3695 - Allow exchanging basic authentication credentials for an authorization code (used in authorization).

Aspera/faspex-core#3698 - When set to default, the storage for the shared inbox should always return a string ("12") and not a number (12).

Aspera/faspex-core#4018 - Users cannot decrypt files with Encryption at Rest from packages sent before upgrading from Faspex 4 to Faspex 5.

Aspera/faspex-core#4017 - Users cannot decrypt files with Encryption at Rest from a forwarded package.

Aspera/faspex-core#3956 - The alternate_address_client_filter value is not respected, resulting in the secondary address not being utilized during transfers.

Aspera/faspex-core#3952 - SAML users can login to Faspex with an IP address that is not part of the allowed list of addresses.

Aspera/faspex-core#3922 - If the login announcement contains line breaks, they are not shown in the UI.

Aspera/faspex-core#3920 - Faspex database name is hardcoded in db/migrate/20221221161527_change_e_packages_charset.rb.

Aspera/faspex-core#3882 - Admins are unable to delete packages created by other users.

Aspera/faspex-core#3827 - When the shared inbox name contains an ampersand (&) or other special characters the following error is displayed: User is not a member of this shared inbox.

Aspera/faspex-core#3425 - If a package sender includes themselves as a package recipient, Faspex does not deliver the expected notification email to the sender.

Aspera/faspex-core#3152 - You cannot give a SAML user limited permissions to a storage location.

Aspera/faspex-ui#2272 - Files should display two decimals on the size of the package.

Aspera/faspex-ui#1965 - When a user sends a package, the To field does not allow the sender to select a shared inbox from an auto-fill list when the sender's access is Submit only. Other contacts and shared inboxes display as expected.

Aspera/faspex5#535 - When core attempts to connect to RDS during Faspex setup and a ca-cert.pem file is not available, the connection will fail.

Aspera/faspex-service#291 - The request headers escape ampersand ( & ) after webhook URL marshalling.

Aspera/faspex-installer#277 - Containers should all follow kubernetes naming conventions.

Aspera/faspex-installer#239 - The process faspexctl install_letsencrypt fails on Amazon Linux 2 systems.

Aspera/faspex-db#78 - Exceeding the 80 character limit for all passwords defined in /opt/aspera/faspex/conf/docker may cause issues during setup or when performing migrations.

Aspera/faspex-router#76 - Modifying FASPEX_ROUTER_HTTPS_PORT in router.env does not allow the use of custom ports.

Aspera/faspex-core#3761 - DisablePostProcessing value should be ignored as webhooks have individual Active (ON/OFF) settings.

Aspera/faspex-core#3663 - Searching for files in "Import from shared folders" is case sensitive.

Aspera/faspex-core#3482 - e_session ID data type was changed to bigint.

Aspera/faspex-ui#2233 - Users can resize packages and all packages table columns and the custom size will remain even after refreshing the page and/or the session expires.

Aspera/faspex5#455 - A security improvement was implemented in relation to the zlib compression library.

Aspera/faspex5#431 - Updated SSL 3.0.1 builds from the Red Hat Yum repositories to address several SSL bugs.

Aspera/faspex-service#279 - The LOG_LEVEL variable has been replaced with FASPEX_SERVICE_LOG_LEVEL.

Known issues and limitations

Aspera/faspex-service#369 - Deleting files on Amazon S3 storage fails when using an HSTS cluster with a shared High availability Redis instance.

Aspera/faspex-service#360 - 25 and more concurrent transfers causes faspex-service to fail. If you encounter this issue, increase the limit of max_prepared_stmt_count in the database.

Setting the max_items option value too high (100k for example) may result in an out of memory error. You must apply the HSTS/E 4.4.3 patch level 2 before enabling files processing. The max_items option changes the number of files that are retrieved in each Node API request. This number should only be updated based on recommendation from IBM Aspera Engineering or Support.

Aspera/otfv-validator#29 - Shared Inboxes and Work Groups are not currently supported in lua scripts package details.

Aspera/faspex-core#4163 - Changes in node credentials are not reflected in the sc_nodes table. Workaround:

Aspera/faspex-core#3883 - When updating an existing Webhook the package_name_exact parameter can be set to true even when the parent element is blank. Users should see the following error instead: Value required for <parameter> parameter when <parameter_exact> is set to true.

Aspera/faspex-core#3046 - The job /monitor endpoint shows packages that fail to upload as backlogged when it should show them as failed instead.

Aspera/faspex-core#2978 - Relays to file storage with cloud referencing enabled should create a link file on the cloud storage, but instead the actual file is transferred.

Aspera/faspex-core#2893 - Date files in metadata profile should not accept letters and specials characters.

Aspera/faspex-core#1765 - Deleting a user does not remove that user from distribution lists. If a user sends a package to a distribution list containing a deleted user, Faspex sends the package to the user's email address as a new external user. If the sender is not allowed to send to external users, sending the package fails.

Aspera/faspex-ui#1902 - When downloading encrypted packages sent using HTTP Gateway, Faspex UI should ask for the passphrase to decrypt the package contents before downloading. Workaround: Download the encrypted files and use Connect to decrypt the downloaded encrypted files.

Aspera/faspex-ui#1996 - Invitations created with Prevent HTTP upload enabled do not prevent users from uploading using HTTP Gateway.

Aspera/faspex-ui#1682 - The Admin Sender Quota page does not allow setting no-quota by default for admin-defined quotas per user.

Aspera/faspex5#655 - Packages marked as deleted remain on the node.

Aspera/faspex-docs#249 - Expanding the logical volume manager (LVM) on HSTS docroot affects the ability of Faspex to send packages. Workaround: Delete the node and add it again.

System Requirements

Faspex 5 requires one of these databases:

• MariaDB 10.9
• RDS MariaDB 10.6
• MySQL 8.0
• RDS MySQL 8.0 – Do not use version 8.0.33. There is a known issue creating database backups related to that specific version.

If you are running an older or different database, you must migrate your database before upgrading.

IBM Aspera Connect 4.1.3 and later (unless defaulting to HTTP Gateway)

Product support

For online support, go to the IBM Aspera Support site at https://www.ibm.com/mysupport/. To open a support case, log in with your IBMid or set up a new IBMid account.