EPrints 3.4.3

This page contains information about the provisional EPrints v3.4.3 tag and release on GitHub scheduled for the end of December 2020.

Planned Features and Improvements

• Improvements for Accessibility of backend administration pages.
• Review of EPrints support for multiple different XML libraries.
• Better Sanitisation of filenames for uploads.
• Tools to fix and protection against generation of invalid XML revision files.

See 3.4.3 milestone on GitHub for more details.

Provisional Release Notes

New Dependencies

None. Check earlier dependencies for EPrints 3.4.2 and before.

Changes Since 3.4.2

New Functionality

• Provides function (EPrints::Utils::compare_version) for comparing EPrints software versions so plugins can choose to behave differently.
• Adds jquery EPrints 3.4 ingredient to allow JQuery resources to be incorporated if required by non-core EPrints functionality. Ingredient added but commented out in flavours/pub_lib/inc.
• Provides picker for date fields to reduce potential for human error.

Security and Privacy Improvements

• Makes JSON export respect value set for export_as_xml to avoid exporting unintended fields.
• Sets contact_email to not export by default for better GDPR compliance.
• Rate limits failed local login attempts for a particular user. Defaults to 10 failed login attempts in 10 minutes (using $c->{max_login_attempts} and $c->{lockout_minutes} configuration options).
• Rate limits new account requests. Defaults to 100 requests in a hour long period to avoid causing problems with planned mass sign up events. Configured using $c->{max_account_requests} and $c->{max_account_requests_minutes} options.
• Limits the maximum length of a password (default 200 characters) to prevent specific Denial-of-Service attacks.
• Modifies latex invocation to make more secure an ensure it rights to the correct output directory.
• Removes legacy /cgi/latex2png script to prevent Remote Code Execution (RCE) from CVE-2021-3342.
• Validates parameters passed to /cgi/cal script to protect against RCE and Cross Site Scripting (XSS) from CVE-2021-26475 and CVE-2021-26476.
• Validates dataset parameter passed to /cgi/dataset_dictionary to protect against XSS from CVE-2021-26702.
• Validates parameters passed to /cgi/history_search to protect against the possibility of XSS and MySQL injection vulnerabilities, although none currently exploitable.
• Validates verb passed to /cgi/toolbox/toolbox to protect against RCE from CVE-2021-26704.
• Allows EPrints::XML::parse_string to temporarily modify parser configuration to disable expanding of XML entities by the /cgi/ajax/phrase script to protect against 2021-26703.
• Ensure eprints_lang cookie explicitly sets SameSite attribute to Lax if HTTPS is not enabled or sets secure attribute to 1 if it is.
• Doubles (to 16) number of characters used for randomly generated password suggestions (e.g. for database user created by epadmin).

General Improvements

• Resolves all accessibility errors and most alerts (as reported by the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) for backend admin pages as listed in the Accessibility report.
• Appropriately uses protocol-relative, preferred (i.e. https where available) or absolute path URLs instead of http URLs to avoid mixed content warnings and other similar issues.
• Uses HTML class for Longtext_counter counter line and provides CSS to by default make this red and bold if the maxwords limit is exceeded.
• Allows full path or just subject name to be displayed for values set in subjects field by setting render_path attribute (true by default).
• Allows time between password reset requests to be configured (to a number of hours) rather than hard-coded to 24 hours.
• Adds option to set status of EPrints that should be checked by check_xapian script.
• Adds date_embargo_retained field to Documents to retain the embargo date after the embargo is lifted.
• Adds deprecation warning to indicate only LibXML library will be supported in future versions of EPrints. (Version for removal yet to be confirmed).
• Adds basic default citation for files.
• Adds validation for date fields to prevent invalid dates being set.
• Allows files to be stored to disk with generic filenames (i.e. <fileid>.bin) rather than the upload filename that can cause retrieval problem by setting the $c->{generic_filenames} configuration setting.
• Adds code to lib and pub_lib versions of security.pl to deal with request a copy access issue if repository has coversheets plugin enabled.
• Allows sub-fields to have help texts configured.
• Generates log message for views that have reached their max_items limit.
• Allows document fields displayed in an eprint's Details tab to be configured.
• Adds data-context attributes to aid CSS styling of HTML div elements within search forms.
• Improves scaling of of Lightbox popups on narrow screens.
• Allows a pin to set the id or class attribute for a template HTML element to facilitate different CSS styling on different pages.
• Prompts for organisation name when creating a new archive using epadmin create.
• Allows classes to be assigned to parts (i.e. top, left, main, after, etc.) of abstract/summary pages to facilitate better CSS styling.
• Allows search results forms to be configured to automatically reload on ordering change.
• Allows classes for EPrints' user menu (i.e. by default ep_tm_key_tools) to be configured to better integrate with institutional branding.
• Adds commented advice on fixing issues with PDF thumbnail generation using ImageMagick.
• Tidies up citations by removing identical flavours/pub_lib/ citations that appear in lib/.
• Allows max_files that can be expanded from an uploaded zip file to be configured. (Previously hardcoded to 100 file limit).
• Allows customisable overriding of type-mapping based on ispublished value for BiBTeX and RIS export. (I.e. not using @unpublished type if ispublished set to unpub).
• Provides has_role EPC function to allow more granular control of workflows that can be edited by specific group of user that have has this role added to their profile.
• Allows positioning of hovering document preview to be set to left or right and implements this in summary_page and result eprint citations to improve preview positioning.
• Improves verbosity of get_input and get_input_hidden to explain better why input is invalid. Assisting epadmin data entry.

Bug Fixes

• Prevents access code from changing if request a copy is approved multiple times (and warns if request has already been approved).
• Fixes formatting of results from user search introduced by accessibility changes in 3.4.2.
• Updates issue citation to use <div> rather than and tags so it works with accessibility changes introduced in 3.4.2.
• Deals more gracefully if History DataObj's parent does not exist when checking if it is an EPrints::List.
• Fixes internal server error when trying to save values to a non-multiple compound field.
• Fixes issue with XML import setting unset compound subfields to NULL rather than empty string.
• Fixes errors on import pages caused by Accessibility improvements and fixes other Accessibility issues for import pages.
• Fixes broken link of default 401 error page.
• Sets STDOUT and STDERR binmode to utf8 to avoid wide character errors.
• Fixes user history layout as a result of earlier Accessibility improvements.
• Fixes missing phrases reported in error logs. Typically fieldhelp phrases for sub-fields of compound fields, which are generally not rendered but still report missing phrase warnings.
• Sets SameSite property to None for secure login and request copy cookies as Google Chrome is now quite strict about this.
• Provides handling for XML parsing of revision files to show warning for particular revision in the hostory tab rather than an internal server error for the whole page.
• Allows use of same pin multiple times within a phrase.
• Prevents undefined $c->{aliases} from causing epadmin config_core to fail.
• Ensures saved searches indicate email notifications cannot be sent when the Xapianv2 (in addition to Xapian) plugin has been used for the original search.
• Adds missing event_queue phrases.
• Fixes inappropriate mapping of monograph_type in BibTeX import.
• Fixes erroneous post-login redirection when login required to access eprint summary/abstract pages and long URLs (e.g. /id/eprint/1234) enabled.
• Ensures readonly attribute works for MetaField::Set in compound-multiple fields.
• Adds missing reason phrase for RejectWithEmail screen plugin.
• Prevents HEAD requests (e.g. email link checkers) for password from resets from actioning the reset. (Otherwise, when the user clicks the link it will say the password has already been reset, which may concern the user).
• Forces full day-month-year to be set for document embargo expiry to avoid any ambiguity.
• Improves epadmin by removing unusable functionality and reporting if database tables do not get created as expected.
• Adds symlinks between brief and default citations for various data objects to prevent log warnings.
• Better handles DOI not being set when parsing it.
• Provides more useful logging when field has invalid parameters.
• Fixes missing pin for error message phrase when restarting indexer.
• Fixes MetaField::Listing from logging an error that no datasetid is defined when on its index page (listing datasets).