We are proud to announce the release of HRM 3.4! This release comes with a few big and many small changes in preparation for the release of HRM 4.0 that will be majestic!

The new features at a glance are:

• Enhanced user management and security
• Multi-GPU support
• Chunked, parallel file uploader
• Support for Metamorph ND and Leica LOF files

The following will describe the new features is some detail, but please make sure that you follow the upgrade instructions, since there were quite a few changes in this release!

Enhanced user management

HRM 3.4 offers several enhancements in the user management, that are only the beginning of more changes to come. In particular, we worked on the following points:

Enhanced security of user accounts

User credentials are managed and stored more securely in HRM 3.4 than in the past. But fear not: at the first login, the credentials will be transparently upgraded. So, no additional work is required for the users or the administrator(s)!

Multiple administrators possible

In HRM 3.4, multiple administrators are possible. The old ‘admin’ user still exists and has been upgraded to super admin (a super admin is an administrator that cannot be deleted and always has integrated authentication — see also below). The super admin and any other administrator in the system can then promote other users to administrators from the user management page.

Multiple authentication modes supported

In the past, you had to configure HRM to use one of three possible authentication mechanisms: the integrated, own HRM user management; Microsoft’s Active Directory; or generic LDAP. In HRM 3.4 you are no longer limited to one! For instance, you can use Active Directory for the bulk of your users, and use the integrated authentication for a handful of guest users. The one you have been using until now will become the default one on upgrade, and you can add more as explained in the instructions.

Multi-GPU support

In HRM 3.3 we added support for GPU deconvolution; in HRM 3.4 we extended that to support multiple GPUs! Please mind, however, that for multi-GPU support in HRM you will need to upgrade HuCore to version 16.10.1p0!

Also, configuration of processing servers and GPUs can now be performed by an administrator via the Servers & GPUs pages, and does not require modifying the database directly anymore!

New chunked, parallel file uploader

A new chunked file uploader allows uploading files larger than 2GB. Moreover, since chunks are uploaded over parallel connections, the speed of data transfer to the server should be improved.

Support for Metamorph ND and Leica LOF files

HRM 3.4 also expands on the palette of supported file formats by adding support for Metamorph ND (version 2) and Leica LOF files.

Some important remarks!

Do not extract the new hrm_3.4.zip archive on top of the previous installation!

In version 3.4, we started a major reorganization of the code structure of HRM and it is therefore highly recommended not to extract the new archive on top of the old one.

Please rename the old hrm folder, extract the code into a fresh ${HRM_ROOT} and move the configuration files from the old config subfolder into the new ${HRM_ROOT}/config.

You might also want to reinstall the hrmd or hrmd.service scripts.

Upgrade to mysqli driver

If your server runs PHP 5.6, please make sure to change the driver in the configuration files from mysql to mysqli, since the old mysql driver is deprecated in PHP5.6 and the apache log file will be seriously flooded with warnings!

Specifically, change:

// The database type (mysqli or postgres)
$db_type = "mysql";

into:

// The database type (mysqli or postgres)
$db_type = "mysqli";

in config/hrm_{server|client}_config.inc.

Minimum Huygens Core version required

The minimum HuCore version has not changed from HRM 3.3. Please notice, however, that if you want to take advantage of multiple GPUs or would like to deconvolve Metamorph ND files, you will need to upgrade to HuCore version 16.10.1p0.

HRM upgrade instructions

The detailed upgrade instructions can be found here. Please follow the instructions carefully!

HRM download

You can download HRM 3.4 from the official download page!