FastX has upgraded its theme support adding more customizations to the look and feel of the browser interface. FastX ships several standard base themes and media to get you started. Multiple themes are now supported

In previous versions, once a session was started there was no connection to the app that started it. In FastX 5 apps and sessions are linked. When a session is started from an app, the session displays in the app ui. Double clicking on an app with session will automatically reconnect to to the last connected session. You can still launch new sessions, via the sessions drop down menu.

Previous versions of the FastX web server used the node CommonJS syntax.  In order to future proof and keep up with newer libraries, the FastX web server has been refactored to use ESM syntax for module loading

In previous versions, once a session was started there wasn’t a connection to the app that started it.  In FastX 5, apps and sessions are linked. When a session is started from an app, the session displays in the app ui. Double clicking on an app with session will automatically reconnect to to the last connected session. You can still launch new sessions, via the sessions drop down menu.

FastX 5 has upgraded all the NodeJS libraries to the current standards. This fixes several issues and security fixes.

Advanced clustering services have been moved into their own package fastx5-advanced.  Version 4 would start the advanced services on startup of the FastX 4 web server.  Starting in version 5, the advanced services have been moved to their own package which starts up separately.

This change was necessary as currently compiled node modules do not support ESM syntax. In FastX 4, you had to explicitly disable advanced services on a node by setting the environment variable DISABLE_ADVANCED_SERVICES=1

In FastX 5, you need to install the package (typically on your cluster manager system).

Benefits:

The advanced services are compiled into bytecode.  If a node version is not supported or used a custom node compilation (ie RHEL10), this would cause the entire FastX webserver to crash until it was disabled.  This crash will now only occur in the advanced services itself which means the majority of users will not be affected.  This also makes it simpler to use a container to run advanced services

Previous versions of FastX used the default namespace “” for cluster members.  Starting in FastX 5, the cluster is now namespaced with the name “fastx-5” by default (this can be changed). 

This allows FastX 4 and FastX 5 clusters to use the same NATS transporter without conflict.  Multiple clusters can use the same NATS transporter by changing the namespace of the cluster members.  This also means that sessions started on a FastX 4 server will not appear on a FastX 5 server, because they won’t be a member of the same cluster.

By moving clustering into its own package, mounted /var directories are no longer required for compute nodes. For fault tolerant clusters, fastx-advanced may use a mounted /var directory. However, we also recommend the use of the standard tool syncthing to synchronize the data store within the advanced services.

By moving clustering into its own package, mounted /var directories are no longer required for compute nodes. For fault tolerant clusters, fastx-advanced may use a mounted /var directory. However, we also recommend the use of the standard tool syncthing to synchronize the data store within the advanced services.

In order to stay up to date with Sass compiler upgrades, the code that compiles the CSS has been moved to its own process.