[squid-users] Squid 3.2.0.13 beta is available

The Squid HTTP Proxy team is very pleased to announce the
availability of the Squid-3.2.0.13 beta release!

This release adds SMP support to the cache storage when running with
multiple workers. It also brings bug fixes resolving several more
regressions found in the prior releases. There are some few regressions
still remaining to be found.

   SMP storage and caching

Expect some new storage bugs to arrive and some to die mysteriously.

  * installations with no workers are expected to only see small
benefits (at most) via the existing storage code streamlining and bug
fixes. There are probably more new bugs than improvements if you are not
into SMP caching, especially in corner cases. Non-SMP setups were not
the focus of this work.

  * installations with workers will automatically get the SMP shared
memory caching. This seems to be the newest most experimental of the
whole update. So fair warning: expect new bugs in this area. If you use
SMP caching and do not want shared memory caching, see
memory_cache_shared in squid.conf.

  * installations choosing to explicitly configure "rock" cache_dir type
get shared disk database-style caching. This is available for both SMP
and non-SMP builds. This is the older part with prior production use as
a 3.1 branch.

The underlying database design and Store API code is mostly the same,
but v3.1 code used blocking I/O within the same Squid process. The
now-official code is meant for use with disker kid processes, which
means a lot of new internal changes and complications. We are currently
working through the bugs resulting from that.

There are also quite a few feature holes. For example, Rock cache_dir
hot reconfiguration is not yet supported. Statistics is lacking. Squid
uses a lot more memory for shared I/O pages than it needs.

Project details are http://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/RockStore.

* If you use multiple Rock store, use round-robin cache_dir selector.

* If you use Rock store and your disks are close to 100% utilized, you
probably need to use max-swap-rate and swap-timeout options. Remember
that diskers cannot slow down workers so they can be overwhelmed with
swap requests.

Also, hiding in the background of all that some unrelated bugs have also
been found and fixed since earlier releases:

  * IPF interception is now had a fix and tests out well.

  * ext_session_acl helper upgraded to version 1.1

  * never_direct and always_direct have been fixed to resolve some
regressions since 3.2.0.11.

  * A regression in --with-swapdir option stops it being ignored by some
parts of Squid.

  * dynamic certificate generation has several database fixes. Resolving
several unwanted error or hung connection events.

  * adaptation_service directive has had some updates to the parameter
defaults an configuration style. Use "squid -k parse" to see if your
configuration is affected.

  * dynamic helper assertions on reconfigure are resolved.

  * Digest authentication bugs with backslash (\) in URLs are resolved.

  As usual this release contains all the fixes passed on to 3.1 series
alongside its own changes.

See the ChangeLog for the list of other minor changes in this release.

Users who have been staying with 2.7 releases due to lack of COSS
support in 3.x series are encouraged to assist testing of the rock
storage which is designed as an advancement from COSS.

All users interested in 3.2 features are encouraged to assist testing
this release.

Please refer to the release notes at
http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v3/3.2/RELEASENOTES.html
when you are ready to make the switch to Squid-3.2

Upgrade tip:
   "squid -k parse" is starting to display even more useful hints about
squid.conf changes.

This new release can be downloaded from our HTTP or FTP servers

       http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v3/3.2/
       ftp://ftp.squid-cache.org/pub/squid/
       ftp://ftp.squid-cache.org/pub/archive/3.2/

or the mirrors. For a list of mirror sites see

       http://www.squid-cache.org/Download/http-mirrors.html
       http://www.squid-cache.org/Download/mirrors.html

If you encounter any issues with this release please file a bug report.
       http://bugs.squid-cache.org/

Amos Jeffries
Received on Sat Oct 15 2011 - 05:35:49 MDT