Hi Mark,
.genome files are still supported, newer versions of IGV use a .json format. You can remain on 2.4 but I would recommend you host all needed files locally.
As you probably know a ".genome" file is just a zip archive. The steps to creating a locally hosted version (including sequence) follow
(1) download the .genome file of interest, or just copy it from your "igv/genomes" folder
(2) unzip the genome file to a tmp directory. "unzip hg19.genome"
(3) examine the "property.txt" file. The "sequenceLocation" property has the URL to the fasta file. Download this and upload it to your local server. Also transfer the fasta index, which will have the same URL + ".fai" extension. For example "
https://igv.org/genomes/data/hg19/hg19.fasta.fai"
(4) update the sequenceLocation in property.txt to the new location
(5) rm the original "hg19.genome" file
(6) zip all files to create a new "hg19.genome" file -> "zip hg19.genome *"
(7) upload the new hg19.genome file
(8) edit "genomes.txt", replace the url to hg19.genome with the new location. Note this is a tab delimited format, the genome url is the middle column. You might also want to remove the other entries
(9) instruction your users to update the genomes.txt url in the "Advanced" tab of user preferences
I do not have any hardware that can even run version 2.4, so I can't test this for you, but if you have any issues post them here.