http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/366 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/15/ Debian Project News - November 19th, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 15th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * First release candidate of Debian Installer for Lenny * Debian screenshot service started * "Open Use Logo" relicensed First Release Candidate for the new Debian Installer Otavio Salvador [1]announced the first release candidate for the installer to be shipped with Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00002.html Improvements since the last beta release include: * Improved support for Live-CD installation media (much faster and more reliable than earlier releases); * Support for some NAS devices based on Marvell's ARM-compatible Orion chip (QNAP TS-109/TS-209 and TS-409, HP Media Vault mv2120, Buffalo Kurobox Pro); * Installer images for Netwinder have been added again; * Installer images for i386 Xen guests; * Support for hardware speech synthesis (speakup) has been added; * Upgrade of packages early in pkgsel, for example to get available security updates for base system packages; * Support for loading firmware from (removable) media during the installation; * i386/amd64: support for installing to and loading firmware from MMC/SD cards; * New translations: Welsh, Irish, Northern Sami, Serbian (Amharic and Marathi were added in beta releases). Images are available for testing at [2]the Debian Installer website which also contains an [3]errata list. After testing the installer please send a report about the installation as explained in the [4]Debian Installer manual. 2: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ 3: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/errata 4: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/ch05s03.html#submit-bug Debian screenshot service started Christoph Haas [5]announced a new [6]screenshots.debian.net web site that serves as a public repository of screenshots of applications contained in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It was created to help users get an impression of what a given piece of software will look like on their desktops before they install it. Anybody can take screenshots and upload them; the site admin team will review the contributions before they become publicly visible. Support for screenshots has already been built into the [7]synaptic package manager, while integration in specialised package browsers like [8]goplay and the [9]general web interface are being discussed. 5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00003.html 6: http://screenshots.debian.net 7: http://packages.debian.org/synaptic 8: http://packages.debian.org/goplay 9: http://packages.debian.org "Open Use Logo" relicensed On the occasion of the production of a [10]custom Debian quilt Francesco Poli [11]noted that the license for the [12]"Open Use Logo" (also known as the "swirl") has been changed from a license considered to be non-free to an [13]MIT style license granting more rights to everyone. This fixes a long standing [14]bug. The new license grants everyone the right to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the logo while the logo with the trademarked text "Debian" may still only be used to refer to the Debian project. 10: http://ksvichaar.blogspot.com/2008/11/art-quilts-xiii-lucky-break.html 11: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/11/msg00045.html 12: http://www.debian.org/logos/ 13: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License 14: http://bugs.debian.org/212895 Tracking GCC 4.4 related build errors Martin Michlmayr [15]announced the results from an archive rebuild with a snapshot of the upcoming GCC 4.4. About 220 bugs were filed as part of the archive rebuild and a small number of build failures still need to be analyzed. The majority of GCC 4.4 related build failures are trivial, and are often caused because of [16]improved preprocessor checks in GCC 4.4 or [17]missing #include statements. 15: http://www.cyrius.com/journal/gcc/gcc-4.4-archive-build 16: http://www.cyrius.com/journal/gcc/gcc-4.4-preprocessor-errors 17: http://www.cyrius.com/journal/gcc/gcc-4.4-include Call for Help: Debian 5.0 release notes Martin Borgert [18]asked for help for the release notes of the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". Some noteworthy problems have not yet been documented, so he asks for volunteers who understand some of these issues to write about them. 18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/2008/11/msg00034.html His mail contains a list of open issues as well as instructions for how texts should be submitted. Custom Debian Distributions renamed to Debian Pure Blends and new services available Andreas Tille [19]announced that the Custom Debian Distributions (more or less, package sets for specific needs maintained inside Debian) should now be referred to as "Debian Pure Blends". The name has been changed, since the old one was misleading. Many people thought Custom Debian Distributions were something maintained outside of Debian and which added new features. After some discussion members of all these teams agreed on the new name, hoping it would clarify their status (though this [20]was [21]not universally seen as a success). 19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00001.html 20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00202.html 21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00249.html He also announced two web services for quality assurance: one can be used to list bugs reported against packages of Debian Pure Blends, while the second one lists packages of interest for them. URLs for the services for each of the Pure Blends are given in his mail. Lenny Release Critical Bugs Ordered by Popularity Enrico Zini [22]developed a new script that shows Lenny release critical bugs ordered by popularity. For those who are looking to squash the bugs that are causing the most pain, this script lays out exactly where to look. Anyone interested in running the script will need access to people.debian.org where the script can be found at ~enrico/popzimmer. 22: http://www.enricozini.org/2008/tips/popzimmer.html Survey about the Debian Wiki Anne Goldenberg, a PhD student in communication and sociology, who is currently studying the Debian Wiki, [23]announced a [24]survey aimed at gaining a better understanding of the uses and conceptions of the Debian Wiki within the Debian community. The results will be put online under a free license and announced via the mailing-lists. 23: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00757.html 24: http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/labcmo/portraitdulibre/index.php?sid=65733&lang=en A [25]Debian Wiki page describing the survey is also available. 25: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWikiSurvey New Developers 3 applicants have been [26]accepted as Debian Maintainers since the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Giuseppe Iuculano, Thorsten Glaser and Franck Joncourt to our project! 26: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/11/msg00027.html Other news Florian Weimer [27]noted that the names of source packages should not be reused, even if the name has not been used for a while. Some parts of Debian's infrastructure (including the [28]package tracking system and the [29]security tracker don't handle this very well. 27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00310.html 28: http://packages.qa.debian.org 29: http://security-tracker.debian.net/tracker/ Vincent Bernat [30]wondered how to name system accounts used for installed services. Referring to a [31]wiki page he asked to standardise the naming scheme. Some packages use a prefix debian-, while there is also some support for the way OpenBSD handles it by prefixing system accounts with an underscore. 30: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00343.html 31: http://wiki.debian.org/AccountHandlingInMaintainerScripts Holger Levsen [32]announced a web service showing how far DebianEdu (the Debian pure blend taking care of the needs of teachers and schools) is away from Debian itself. 32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2008/11/msg00038.html Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [33]mysql, [34]net-snmp and [35]libxml2. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 33: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1662 34: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1663 35: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1666 Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [36]security mailing list for announcements. 36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were recently added to the unstable Debian archive ([37]among others): * [38]grhino-data -- othello/reversi boardgame - data-files * [39]libc-client2007d -- c-client library for mail protocols - library files * [40]mseide-msegui -- FreePascal-based GUI development library and IDE 37: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/grhino-data 39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/libc-client2007d 40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mseide-msegui Debian Package of the Day featured the packages [41]remind (a text based agenda and todolist manager) and [42]apt-P2P (peer-to-peer downloading for Debian packages). 41: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/11/16/remind-a-text-based-agenda-and-todolist-manager/ 42: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/11/09/apt-p2p-peer-to-peer-downloading-of-debian-packages/ Work-needing packages Currently 489 packages are orphaned and 118 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [43]recent [44]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [45]packages which need your help. 43: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00104.html 44: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00330.html 45: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [46]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 46: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Jon Evans, Justin Rye, Andre Felipe Machado, Martin Michlmayr, Christoph Haas, Jeff Richards, Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-11-19T20:47:45 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/365 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/14/ Debian Project News - November 3rd, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated * Debian membership * First Lenny Bug Sprint finished successfully Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated The Debian project is pleased to announce the fifth update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename "Etch"). This update mainly corrects security problems in the stable release, along with a few adjustments to serious problems. Those who frequently install updates from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update. New CD and DVD images containing updated packages are available at the regular locations. Upgrading to this revision online is usually done by pointing the aptitude (or apt-get) package tool (see the sources.list(5) manual page) to one of Debian's many FTP or HTTP mirrors. A comprehensive list of mirrors is available [1]online. 1: http://www.debian.org/mirror/list More information is available in the [2]press release. 2: http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20081023 Debian membership After talking to several of the groups involved, Joerg Jaspert [3]proposed changes in the way Debian membership is handled. The motivation for these changes is to make it possible for people who contribute to Debian without maintaining packages (such as translators or documentation writers) to become members of the project. He later [4]wrote some comments additional to his proposal. However due to the scope of the envisioned changes, several developers proposed to [5]stop these changes until they have been decided upon via a general resolution, while Peter Palfrader [6]asked to be allowed to continue trying to solve this problem. 3: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00005.html 4: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/10/24/developer-status.html 5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00193.html 6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00266.html Lars Wirzenius and others would like to see the whole [7]membership system rethought, not only the process by which membership is granted. Lars proposed that membership must be periodically renewed, while "People should be allowed to join Debian when there is reasonably widespread consensus that they agree with the project's goals, are committed to working on those goals, and are trustworthy." 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00145.html Martin Krafft [8]argued that instead of introducing different classes of membership Debian should instead define different privileges and criteria for how to obtain them. Since these privileges already exist it would be easier to define the criteria instead of mapping the privileges to classes. 8: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00061.html First Lenny Bug Sprint finished successfully To help clean up release critical bug reports, especially longstanding ones, Josselin Mouette [9]initiated the first Bug Sprint. In this competition, Debian Developers and other interested people volunteered to try to fix their assigned release-critical bugs in a five day period. The winners in this competition would get cookies. 9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00004.html Josselin later added that 27 players [10]joined the bug sprint and posted [11]the results. (He already sent a more detailed [12]draft ealier). All in all, he was very satisfied with the results. Stefano Zacchiroli [13]proposed repeating this kind of event. 10: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00636.html 11: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00046.html 12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00875.html 13: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00887.html Firmware in Lenny and how to deal with DFSG-violating packages Ben Finney [14]wondered about several release-critical bugs getting the lenny-ignore tag, which specifies that these bugs are not considered release critical for the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". Release Manager Marc Brockschmidt [15]explained that "In all of the bugs I recently tagged, the DFSG violation is usually a formal problem, something that other distributions and upstream don't consider a problem at all. While fixing these issues is and should be a goal of Debian, it's hardly something that can be done in the last few weeks before releasing. The drawbacks of delaying the release indefinitely for these bugs are much greater than releasing with these minor DFSG violations." 14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00368.html 15: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00369.html In the following discussion, Robert Millan [16]proposed a general resolution on how to deal with packages violating the [17]Debian Free Software Guidelines. In his proposal, packages having a bug report open regarding their compliance with the Debian Free Software Guidelines for a certain amount of time must be moved from the main section to the non-free section. In his response to Robert's initial [18]proposal, Release Wizard Steve Langasek [19]argued that Debian has been following the road of incremental improvement. He notes that all bugs reported regarding non-free firmware for older releases have been dealt with. 16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00107.html 17: http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00010.html 19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00128.html State of NEW queue Aurelien Jarno [20]wondered whether the NEW queue (where uploaded source packages creating new binary packages are held back awaiting the check and approval of an ftp-master) is currently being processed. Joerg Jaspert [21]answered that the NEW queue has indeed not been processed very often recently. He explained further that changes in the software used to process this queue give precedence to packages that only add new binary components, as distinct from packages that add completely new code to the archive. 20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00071.html 21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00180.html Changes to archive.debian.org Joerg Jaspert [22]announced several changes for archive.debian.org, the most important being that Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge" has been moved from the regular mirrors to archive.debian.org. [23]For the convenience of our mirror network, the deletion is being performed in several chunks, avoiding problems with mirrors refusing to delete too many files at once. He later [24]highlighted that the unofficial port of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 "Sarge" to the AMD64 architecture has been moved there, too. 22: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/10/26/archiving-sarge-aka-oldstable.html 23: http://lists.debian.org/debian-mirrors-announce/2008/11/msg00000.html 23: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/11/02/archivedebianorg-old-bugs-and.html Other changes are the availability of binary packages for Debian GNU/Linux 1.2 "Rex", 1.1 "Buzz" and 0.93R6. An archive for packages from [25]volatile.debian.org, [26]security.debian.org and [27]www.backports.org is now also available at archive.debian.org. 25: http://www.debian.org/volatile/ 26: http://www.debian.org/security/ 27: http://www.backports.org During work on this, old mail archives from 1995, which had been lost, were found again as well as old bug reports ranging from bug #350 to #1750. These will soon be added back to the appropriate archives. BTS link in need of new maintainer Pierre Habouzit [28]announced that he won't be able to maintain and run the BTS link service any more. This service is used to track activity in upstream bug tracking systems and update the corresponding bug reports in Debian's BTS in a semi-automated way. Currently this service needs to be run manually. Don Armstrong, one of the maintainers of Debian's BTS, [29]highlighted the importance of the bts-link service, but won't be able to maintain it himself. Christoph Berg [30]suggested maintainership under the mantle of Debian's Quality Assurance group if someone would volunteer to act as the main responsible maintainer. 28: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00006.html 29: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00860.html 30: http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/10/msg00066.html New Developers Since the previous issue of the Debian Project News, 2 applicants have been accepted as Debian Maintainers. Please welcome Mehdi Dogguy and Olly Betts to our project! Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [31]linux-2.6.24, [32]cupsys, [33]qemu, [34]dbus, [35]clamav and [36]openoffice.org. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 31: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1655 32: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1656 33: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1657 34: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/das-1658 35: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/das-1660 36: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/das-1661 Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [37]security mailing list for announcements. 37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([38]among others): * [39]a56 -- Motorola DSP56001 assembler * [40]antlr-gcj -- language tool for constructing recognizers, compilers etc * [41]apgdiff -- Another PostgreSQL Diff Tool * [42]apt-dater -- terminal-based remote package update manager * [43]apt-dater-host -- host helper application for apt-dater * [44]avr-evtd -- AVR watchdog daemon for Linkstation/Kuroboxes * [45]automysqlbackup -- a daily, weekly and monthly backup for your MySQL database * [46]ballz -- B.A.L.L.Z. - platform/puzzle game where you control a rolling ball * [47]ballz-data -- B.A.L.L.Z. - game data * [48]barry-util -- Command line utilities for working with the RIM BlackBerry Handheld * [49]barrybackup-gui -- GTK+ based GUI for backing up the RIM BlackBerry Handheld * [50]batman-adv-battool -- B.A.T.M.A.N.-advanced network debugging tools * [51]batv-filter -- Mail Filter (milter) for BATV signing/verification * [52]blocks-of-the-undead -- Tetris Attack clone with spooky undertones * [53]blocks-of-the-undead-data -- Tetris Attack clone with spooky undertones - data files * [54]bti -- command line micro-blogging tool * [55]btnx -- daemon for rerouting mouse button events * [56]btnx-config -- graphical user interface for btnx * [57]buildtorrent -- command line torrent creation program * [58]cciss-vol-status -- HP SmartArray RAID Volume Status Checker * [59]cdde -- CD Detect & Execute utility * [60]command-not-found -- Suggest installation of packages in interactive bash sessions * [61]dns323-firmware-tools -- build and manipulate firmware images for the DNS-323 * [62]dwdiff -- font-end fof the diff program that operates word by word * [63]elfrc -- convert arbitrary files into elf objects * [64]etoolbox -- Toolbox for LaTeX class and package authors * [65]faketime -- report faked system time to programs * [66]fbterm -- A fast framebuffer based terminal emulator for Linux * [67]fwknop-client -- FireWall KNock OPerator client side * [68]fwknop-server -- FireWall KNock OPerator server side * [69]gedit-latex-plugin -- GEdit plugin for composing and compiling LaTeX documents * [70]git-cola -- highly caffeinated git gui * [71]gracie -- OpenID server for local PAM accounts * [72]guvcview -- GTK+ base UVC Viewer * [73]jardiff -- tool to visualise API differences between two JAR files * [74]kiki-the-nano-bot -- a 3D puzzle game, mixing Sokoban and Kula-World * [75]ldap-account-manager-lamdaemon -- Quota and home directory management for LDAP Account Manager * [76]mono-vbnc -- Mono Visual Basic Compiler (VB.NET) * [77]mozvoikko -- Finnish spell-checker extension for Iceweasel * [78]mrpt-apps -- Mobile Robot Programming Toolkit - Console and GUI applications * [79]mz -- versatile packet creation and network traffic generation tool * [80]netplug -- network link monitor daemon * [81]nvramtool -- Read/write coreboot-related NVRAM/CMOS information * [82]onetime -- command-line encryption using the "one-time pad" method * [83]openyahtzee -- classic dice game of Yahtzee * [84]pacpl -- a multi-purpose audio converter/ripper/tagger script * [85]pgtap -- Unit testing framework for PostgreSQL * [86]prayer-templates -- templates for customizing Prayer Webmail * [87]python-cssutils -- CSS Cascading Style Sheets parser and builder * [88]python-feedvalidator -- library and tool for validating syndication feeds * [89]python-netaddr -- manipulation of various common network address notations * [90]python-netifaces -- portable network iface information for Python * [91]python-poppler -- Poppler Python bindings * [92]python-soaplib -- Python library for writing and calling soap web services * [93]python-socksipy -- Python SOCKS client module * [94]python-zebrapygtk -- scanning and decoding bar codes (PyGTK bindings) * [95]qorganizer -- featured lightweight graphical organizer * [96]recoverdm -- recover files/disks with damaged sectors * [97]replaceit -- A quick, light and effective text replacement tool * [98]rifiuti -- A MS Windows recycle bin analysis tool * [99]rst2man -- tool to convert reST documents to Unix manual pages * [100]rst2pdf -- ReportLab-based reStructuredText to PDF renderer * [101]sdlbasic -- BASIC interpreter for game development * [102]sdlbrt -- BASIC interpreter for game development - runtime interpreter * [103]simplyhtml -- Java word processor based on HTML and CSS * [104]snimpy -- interactive SNMP tool with Python * [105]sofa-apps -- GUI for the Simulation Open Framework Architecture (SOFA) * [106]sofa-tutorials -- Simulation Open Framework Architecture - tutorials * [107]sputnik -- Extensible wiki * [108]sputnik-goodies -- Extra modules for the sputnik wiki * [109]sqlline -- JDBC command-line utility for issuing SQL * [110]switchsh -- bind-mount bash as /bin/sh * [111]tint2 -- lightweight taskbar * [112]twidge -- Unix Command-Line Twitter and Identica Client * [113]unworkable -- efficient, simple and secure bittorrent client * [114]vbackup -- A modular backup utility * [115]virtaal -- graphical localisation editor * [116]wicd -- wired and wireless network manager * [117]wiipdf -- present a PDF file using your wiimote * [118]xd -- smart directory change utility * [119]zebra-tools -- scanning and decoding bar codes (utilities) * [120]zope-maildrophost -- send mails from within Zope through a mail queue 38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/a56 40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/antlr-gcj 41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/apgdiff 42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/apt-dater 43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/apt-dater-host 44: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/avr-evtd 45: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/automysqlbackup 46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ballz 47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ballz-data 48: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/barry-util 49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/barrybackup-gui 50: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/batman-adv-battool 51: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/batv-filter 52: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/blocks-of-the-undead 53: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/blocks-of-the-undead-data 54: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bti 55: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/btnx 56: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/btnx-config 57: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/buildtorrent 58: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cciss-vol-status 59: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cdde 60: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/command-not-found 61: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dns323-firmware-tools 62: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dwdiff 63: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/elfrc 64: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/etoolbox 65: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/faketime 66: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fbterm 67: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fwknop-client 68: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fwknop-server 69: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gedit-latex-plugin 70: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/git-cola 71: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gracie 72: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/guvcview 73: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jardiff 74: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kiki-the-nano-bot 75: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ldap-account-manager-lamdaemon 76: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mono-vbnc 77: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mozvoikko 78: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mrpt-apps 79: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mz 80: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/netplug 81: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nvramtool 82: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/onetime 83: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/openyahtzee 84: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pacpl 85: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pgtap 86: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/prayer-templates 87: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-cssutils 88: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-feedvalidator 89: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-netaddr 90: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-netifaces 91: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-poppler 92: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-soaplib 93: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-socksipy 94: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-zebrapygtk 95: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/qorganizer 96: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/recoverdm 97: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/replaceit 98: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rifiuti 99: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rst2man 100: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rst2pdf 101: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sdlbasic 102: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sdlbrt 103: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/simplyhtml 104: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/snimpy 105: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sofa-apps 106: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sofa-tutorials 107: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sputnik 108: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sputnik-goodies 109: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sqlline 110: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/switchsh 111: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/tint2 112: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/twidge 113: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/unworkable 114: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vbackup 115: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/virtaal 116: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/wicd 117: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/wiipdf 118: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xd 119: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zebra-tools 120: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zope-maildrophost Debian Package of the Day featured the packages [121]synfig (a free software alternative for 2D animation) and [122]rdiff-backup (easy incremental backups from the command line). 121: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/11/02/synfig-the-free-software-alternative-for-2d-animation/ 122: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/10/26/rdiff-backup-easy-incremental-backups-from-the-command-line/ Work-needing packages Currently 498 packages are orphaned and 118 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [123]recent [124]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [125]packages which need your help. 123: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00609.html 124: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00869.html 125: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [126]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [127]debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 126: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 127: mailto:debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Joerg Jaspert, Ben Finney, Justin B. Rye and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-11-03T20:53:40 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/364 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/13/ Debian Project News - October 20th, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 12th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * Bits from the Debian CD team * Debian, software patents and archive layout * Statistics about packages.debian.org usage Bits from the Debian CD team Steve McIntyre posted some [1]bits from the Debian CD team. With the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny", Blu-ray Disc images will be available as well as CD and DVD images. For the first time in several years, users should be able to fit all of the packages for one architecture on a single disc. But due to the increased size of the Debian archive and considerations of storage and network bandwidth (especially on our mirrors) only a limited number of versions of each image will be available for direct download on our mirrors. 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00003.html All images will be available via Jigdo (a tool which creates images by downloading individual .deb files and assembling them into one .iso file), and most images for the popular architectures will be available as torrents, too. He also gave some figures about the total numbers of images that need to be created for Lenny. Summarized over all architectures it comes to 414 CD images, 64 DVD images, and 13 Blu-ray Disc images. Debian, software patents and archive layout A recently announced [2]Intent To Package "moonlight", an open source implementation of a patented proprietary product, caused some [3]discussion regarding software patents. Packaging such software and distributing it via our mirror network could be a legal risk for Debian and its mirrors. 2: http://bugs.debian.org/501190 3: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00063.html Paul Wise argued that problems caused by patented software are already addressed by unofficial archives like [4]debian-multimedia.org and [5]debian-unofficial.org. Reinhard Tartler [6]pointed out some flaws with these archives and [7]proposed introducing a new section alongside main, contrib and non-free, with policy adapted accordingly. His proposal, however, was criticised, too. for example the regression of the section main not beeing "self contained" any more. 4: http://www.debian-multimedia.org 5: http://www.debian-unofficial.org 6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00152.html 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00127.html Statistics about packages.debian.org usage Since [8]packages.debian.org has been moved to a new host sponsored by [9]1&1, Jörg Jaspert took the opportunity to [10]publish some data about the usage of this service. Since the start of this year, packages.debian.org has already seen 5,777,672 unique visitors downloading the page 122,314,763 times (both numbers excluding bots, such as crawlers for search engines). Nearly half of the visitors went directly to packages.debian.org, while less than a quarter came by way of a search engine. 8: http://packages.debian.org/ 9: http://www.1und1.info/ 10: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/10/19/packagesdebianorg-1.html Unofficial bug tracker and delayed queue The [11]unofficial tracker for Release Critical bugs now [12]incorporates bugs fixed by uploads to the so-called delayed queue. This makes it easier to track bugs needing to be worked on. The delayed queue is used for package uploads not carried out by the regular maintainer of the package (so-called NMUs). 11: http://bts.turmzimmer.net 12: http://blogs.turmzimmer.net/2008/10/14#lenny-4 In related news, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl used this tool to publish some [13]detailed and [14]categorized [15]numbers about the release critical bugs. 13: http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-lenny-2 14: http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-lenny-3 15: http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-lenny-4 Bits from the Eee PC team Ben Armstrong delivered a [16]report on the status of the port of Debian for the Eee PC netbooks. A recent upload of the Linux kernel fixed some thermal problems and solved issues with ACPI. Also, the ath5k driver included with the Linux kernel 2.6.27 supports the wireless adaptors of the 701, 900, 900A and 1000HD models, which previously required a non-free driver. 16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00002.html Policy for backporting KDE features Sune Vuorela [17]wondered how to deal with features introduced in recent versions of the desktop environment KDE. Other distributions often seem to backport new features to older versions they ship in their releases. He lists some pros and cons, and wonders whether Debian should do likewise. 17: http://pusling.com/blog/?p=89 Listing of debian.net domains Nico Golde reported that he has removed his list of debian.net subdomains (which can be registered by any Debian Developer) due to privacy issues. He [18]asks developers to add their debian.net subdomains to a [19]wiki page. 18: http://nion.modprobe.de/blog/archives/655-debian.net-domain-page-no-longer-available.html 19: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianNetDomains Report from Skolelinux/Debian-edu gathering Sune Vuorela [20]reported on the recent gathering of Skolelinux/Debian-Edu developers. He spent some time working on educational videos and KDE related education packages as well as GNASH, a free software flash player. 20: http://pusling.com/blog/?p=88 Slogan for "Lenny" The Debian Art team is seeking a slogan for the next stable release, Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". The discussion, as well as a poll, can be found in the archives of the [21]debian publicity mailing list. 21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2008/10/msg00037.html Systems Expo 2008 From Tuesday 21 October to Friday 24 October, the Debian Project will participate at the [22]Systems expo 2008 in Munich, Germany. The Debian booth will be located in Area B2, Booth 315 along with other FLOSS projects. Please see the [23]events page for further details. 22: http://www.systems.de/link/en/19137019/ 23: http://www.debian.org/events/2008/1021-systems Technical Dutch Open Source Event 2008 From Saturday 25 October to Sunday 26 October, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at the Technical Dutch Open Source Event (T-DOSE) in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Please see the [24]events page for further details. 24: http://www.debian.org/events/2008/1025-t-dose New Developers Since the previous issue of the Debian Project News, 7 applicants have been accepted as [25]Debian Developers, and 3 as [26]Debian Maintainers. Please welcome Adam Barratt, Julian Andres Klode, Jonny Lamb, Joachim Reichel, Bradley Smith, Behan Webster and Y Giridhar Appaji Nag as well as Emmanuel Bouthenot, Samuel Thibaul and David Paleino to our project! 25: http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2008/10/msg00026.html 26: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/10/msg00040.html Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [27]iceweasel, [28]openldap, [29]ruby1.8, [30]ruby1.9, [31]linux-2.6.18 and [32]libxml2. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 27: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1649 28: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1650 29: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1651 30: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1652 31: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1653 32: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1655 Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [33]security mailing list for announcements. 33: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([34]among others): * [35]antlr3-gcj -- language tool for constructing recognizers, compilers etc (native code) * [36]hotssh -- graphical interface to secure shell * [37]iceweasel-l10n-bn-in -- Bengali language package for Iceweasel * [38]iceweasel-l10n-gl -- Galician language package for Iceweasel * [39]iceweasel-l10n-hi -- Hindi language package for Iceweasel * [40]iceweasel-l10n-is -- Icelandic language package for Iceweasel * [41]iceweasel-l10n-kn -- Kannada language package for Iceweasel * [42]iceweasel-l10n-mr -- Marathi language package for Iceweasel * [43]iceweasel-l10n-te -- Telugu language package for Iceweasel * [44]iceweasel-l10n-th -- Thai language package for Iceweasel * [45]python-renderpm -- python low level render interface * [46]xen-linux-system-2.6.26-1-xen-686 -- XEN system with Linux 2.6.26 image on i686 * [47]zshdb -- debugger for Z-Shell scripts 34: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 35: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/antlr3-gcj 36: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/hotssh 37: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-bn-in 38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-gl 39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-hi 40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-is 41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-kn 42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-mr 43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-te 44: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-th 45: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-renderpm 46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-linux-system-2.6.26-1-xen-686 47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zshdb Debian Package of the Day featured the packages [48]memstat (a tool to identify what is using up virtual memory) and [49]smartmontools (a set of tools to monitor the health of your hard disks). 48: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/10/19/memstat-identify-what-is-using-up-virtual-memory/ 49: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/10/12/smartmontools-control-the-health-of-your-hard-disk/ Work-needing packages Currently 441 packages are orphaned and 124 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [50]recent [51]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [52]packages which need your help. 50: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00217.html 51: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00339.html 52: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [53]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [54]debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 53: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 54: mailto:debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-10-20T21:16:47 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/363 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/12/ Debian Project News - October 8th, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 12th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * Bits from the DPL * What you can do for Lenny * 500,000th bug reported * ... and much more. Bits from the DPL Steve McIntyre sent out another [1]"Bits from the DPL" mail. His first topic was the recently finished eighth Debian Conference in Argentina. Even though many developers and contributors could not travel there he considered it to be a successful conference. He especially thanked the video team, who "did an [2]amazing job this year making most of the sessions available via stream as well as forwarding questions via Internet Relay Chat." Steve is already looking forward to next year's Debian Conference, which will take place in the Junta Extremadura in Spain. 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/09/msg00009.html 2: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf8/Videoteam/Thanks He then summarized the results of this year's [3]Google Summer of Code, a project in which students work on specific free software projects and get paid by Google. Debian got thirteen project slots. Eleven of these projects were completed successfully (sadly, the rest had to drop out due to unforeseen problems). 3: http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2008 Steve closed with a short summary about the upcoming stable release "Lenny". Preparations for a release candidate of the debian-installer are on their way and the release notes are taking shape. But there are still a lot of release critical bugs left to be fixed. What you can do for "Lenny" Unfortunatly, Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" hasn't been released yet. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [4]briefly explained the problems and listed some open issues which need to resolved before Lenny can be released. He points out that even a "simple user" (meaning "everyone") can help. 4: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/10/msg00000.html While most release blockers and release goals have been dealt with -- including transitions to newer compilers, libraries and other tools -- the development has reached its final phase, where the last release critical bugs need to be fixed, upgrade tests need to be performed and the release notes need to be written. Alexander gave a brief overview on how to perform upgrade tests, which he later [5]updated in his blog, also showed other ways to help such as writing and translating the release notes. 5: http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-lenny He then [6]categorized the remaining bugs, while Lucas Nussbaum created a detailed list of the [7]bugs still remaining. 6: http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-lenny-2 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00072.html In related news, Franklin Piat [8]had created a [9]list of things users could do in the long term to help test Debian. 8: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00043.html 9: http://wiki.debian.org/TestDebian 500,000th bug reported Christian Perrier [10]noted that the 500,000th [11]bug has been reported to Debian's bug tracking sytem. In it, Nobuhiro Iwamatsu requested a feature for the common debian build system, a tool used to create Debian packages, and even provided a patch. 10: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/09/24#bug-500000-now 11: http://bugs.debian.org/500000 Lucas Nussbaum [12]graciously provided some statistics. From these 500,000 bugs, nearly 410,000 have already been solved. 12: ttp://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=312 Christian also noted that the vitality of the Debian Bug Tracking system is an indicator of the vitality of development in Debian (the current bug report rate is about 60,000 bugs per year for a total of 24,000 packages in the distribution, only 2.5 bugs per year, per package). Thus, Debian developers are proud that they have had 500,000 occasions to interact with their users. Of course, they are also proud that 410,000 of thesve already closed 410,000 of these bugs and and only 250 of the remaining bugs are release critical for the upcoming Debian lenny release. Valid-Until field in Release files While the current archive structure prevents injection of malicious packages through a digital trust path (e.g. at a "bad mirror"), it still has a small flaw. A potential attacker could use outdated release information to force people to use an outdated mirror, leaving out the latest security updates. To address this problem, Jörg Jaspert [13]has added a "valid until" field to the release information. APT (or another package manager) can then check if the data available on the mirror is up to date. Work has already begun to integrate this feature into the apt package manager and tools based upon it; however, [14]some questions remain unresolved. 13: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/09/23/valid-until-field-in-release-f.html 14: http://bugs.debian.org/499897 Choosing a language during NAS installations Martin Michlmayr [15]reported that due to changes of the internal structure of the debian-installer, it is now it is now possible to choose the language (and the resulting system) for installations on NAS machines. Installations on headless NAS devices are typically done remotely via SSH and up until now, the network had been started after the language had already been chosen, thus the ability to choose a language interactively was completely disabled for such devices. Due to changes in the component responsible for choosing the locale, this feature can now be enabled for these kinds of devices. 15: http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/nas-localechooser m68k moved to debian-ports After missing release criteria for both Etch and Lenny, the m68k port made the switch from using the wanna-build instance on Debian infrastructure to the one on [16]Debian-Ports. This is a necessary step before m68k can be removed from the Debian archive. [17]Buildd.Net still supports the m68k architecture and has already adopted the change. The m68k port was one of two official ports in the first Debian release, Debian 2.0 (the other being i386). 16: http://www.debian-ports.org/ 17: http://unstable.buildd.net/index-m68k.html Other news Christian Perrier [18]released the final number of languages which will be supported in the debian-installer of the upcoming release. All-in-all 63 languages will be supported, which is 5 more than in the current release. 18: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/09/21#di-freeze-lenny-final A long term goal, the move from documentation in /usr/doc to /usr/share/doc as recommended in the Filesystem hierarchy standard, has finally been [19]completed. 19: http://bugs.debian.org/322762#1225 Christian Perrier [20]also noted that the team working on apt, the core package manager of Debian and Debian-based distributions, is lacking manpower and in need of help. 20: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/09/30#apt-maintenance Linux Kongress 2008 From Thursday the 9th of October to Friday the 10th of October, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at the Linux-Kongress 2008 in Hamburg, Germany. Please see the respective [21]events page for further details. 21: http://www.debian.org/events/2008/1009-linuxkongress Technical Dutch Open Source Event 2008 From Saturday the 25th of October to Sunday the 26th of October, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at the Technical Dutch Open Source Event (T-DOSE) in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Please see the respective [22]events page for further details. 22: http://www.debian.org/events/2008/1025-t-dose New Developers 6 applicants [23]have been [24]accepted as Debian Developers since the prior issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Tobias Grimm, Chris Lamb, Manuel Prinz, Patrick Schoenfeld, Sandro Tosi, Jan Wagner and Barry deFreese in our project! 23: http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2008/09/msg00059.html 24: http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2008/09/msg00029.html Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [25]openssh, [26]twiki, [27]phpmyadmin, [28]horde3, [29]mplayer, [30]lighttpd, [31]squid and [32]php5. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 25: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1638 26: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1639 27: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1641 28: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1642 29: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1644 30: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1645 31: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1646 32: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1647 Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [33]security mailing list for announcements. 33: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([34]among others): * [35]9mount-dbg -- plan9 filesystem (v9fs) user mount utilities (debug) * [36]acpitool-dbg -- command line ACPI client (debug) * [37]amule-emc -- list ed2k links inside emulecollection files * [38]dosfstools-dbg -- utilities for making and checking MS-DOS FAT filesystems (debug) * [39]gameclock -- a simple chess clock to track time in real life games * [40]gnupg-pkcs11-scd-dbg -- GnuPG smart-card daemon with PKCS#11 support (debug) * [41]jags -- Just Another Gibbs Sampler for Bayesian MCMC simulation * [42]libfwbuilder8 -- Firewall Builder API library * [43]libfwbuilder8-dbg -- Firewall Builder API library (debugging version) * [44]libgammu4 -- Mobile phone management library * [45]libgammu4-dbg -- Mobile phone management library - debugger symbols * [46]netdiscover-dbg -- active/passive network address scanner using arp requests (debug) * [47]poedit-dbg -- gettext catalog editor (debug) * [48]python-crack -- transitional package from python-crack to python-cracklib * [49]python-django-registration -- A user-registration application for Django * [50]qt4-qmake -- Qt 4 qmake Makefile generator tool * [51]rawstudio-dbg -- open source raw-image converter (debug) * [52]ttf-linux-libertine -- The Linux Libertine family of free fonts * [53]twiki-ldapcontrib -- LDAP services for TWiki * [54]tworld-data -- Chip's Challenge Game Engine Emulation 34: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 35: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/9mount-dbg 36: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/acpitool-dbg 37: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/amule-emc 38: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dosfstools-dbg 39: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gameclock 40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnupg-pkcs11-scd-dbg 41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jags 42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/libfwbuilder8 43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/libfwbuilder8-dbg 44: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/libgammu4 45: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/libgammu4-dbg 46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/netdiscover-dbg 47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/poedit-dbg 48: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-crack 49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-django-registration 50: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/qt4-qmake 51: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rawstudio-dbg 52: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ttf-linux-libertine 53: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/twiki-ldapcontrib 54: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/tworld-data [55]ddclient (an utility to get access to home servers despite having a dynamic IP), [56]FlameRobin (a GUI to Administer Firebird/Interbase SQL servers) and [57]logstalgia (a pong-like apache log viewer) where presented by Debian Package of the Day. 55: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/09/28/ddclient-getting-access-to-home-servers-despite-having-a-dynamic-ip/ 56: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/09/21/flamerobin-a-gui-to-administer-firebirdinterbase-sql-servers/ 57: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/10/05/logstalgia-pong-like-apache-log-viewer/ Work-needing packages Currently 444 packages are orphaned and 125 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at [58]the [59]recent [60]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [61]packages which need your help. 58: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00574.html 59: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00714.html 60: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/10/msg00020.html 61: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [62]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [63]debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 62: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 63: mailto:debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Ari Pollak, Ingo Juergensmann, Christian Perrier and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-10-08T04:46:13 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/362 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/11/ Debian Project News - September 15th, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * Release Update * Should Security Enhanced Linux be priority "standard"? * Lenny Upgrade advisor * ... and much more. Release update Luk Claes [1]reported on the progress regarding the release of the new stable release Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". While there are still a lot of release critical bugs to be fixed, Lenny is in good enough shape to call for upgrade tests and work on the release notes. Regarding the upgrade tests, he especially asks to test the Linux 2.6.26 kernel. Regarding the release notes, he asks that any issues that should be documented should be reported as bug against the [2]release-notes pseudo package. Further discussion will happen on the [3]debian-doc mailing list. 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/09/msg00000.html 2: http://bugs.debian.org/release-notes 3: http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc Should Security Enhanced Linux be standard? Martin Michlmayr [4]wondered if the packages needed for security enhanced Linux should still be priority "standard" or if they should be lowered to "optional". Martin noticed, that the installation of these packages takes at least half an hour on popular devices like the Linksys NSLU2. Frans Pop [5]noted that the packages where far from being usable without major tweaks, but were made "standard" to gain more testing by being installed but not activated by default. Russell Coker [6]reported on the improvements during the last month. Several people [7]argued, that SELinux should either not be installed by default or activated, maybe by offering an option or task during the installation. 4: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00369.html 5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00372.html 6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00374.html 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00403.html Lenny Upgrade advisor Franklin Piat [8]started to write a script that warns users of potential problems when upgrading their system from Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 "Etch" to the upcoming version 5.0 "Lenny". The intention of his script is to notice potential problems (for instance obsoleted or discontinued package) and point out relevant documentation and solutions. He asked for further ideas, comments and patches. Christian Perrier [9]asked if the messages could be internationalized allowing them to be translated. 8: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00135.html 9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00145.html Status of translations in the debian-installer When the development of the current Debian installation system [10]reached a state where changing output strings was discouraged (string freeze), Christian Perrier started coordinated translation efforts and reported daily about the progress. In the two weeks between his [11]first and his [12]latest report, the number of translations ready for inclusion with the next Debian release has been trippeled. 10: http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2008/08/msg00684.html 11: http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2008/08/msg00166.html 12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2008/09/msg00082.html Overall it looks, like the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux "Lenny" will be shipped with at least [13]60 languages activated in the installation system. 13: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/doc/i18n/languages.html Bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd porters Michael Banck [14]sent bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd porters. Since the last bits had been posted, a lot of development took place, including the release of several snapshot releases. Michael also reports, that the base packages and the basic toolchain are in pretty good shape and most toolchain packages from Debian's repository can be used without any changes. He also refers to the possibility of testing Debian GNU/Hurd using XEN and ongoing work to make a Debian GNU/Hurd box available to all Debian Developers. He closes with a call for help, since Debian GNU/Hurd still misses an installer. 14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/09/msg00004.html FAI / Emdebian work session in Extremadura Holger Levsen [15]wrote a report on the recent work session in Extremadura, Spain. 18 Debian contributors met and worked to get the fully automated install (FAI) in shape for the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" and to work on the infrastructure for using Debian on embeded architectures. Beside that Holger reports, that 30GB of DebConf7 videos (as ntsc and pal mpeg1 file formats) where uploaded, so that DVDs can be created soon. He closed with thanks to Junta de Extremadura for sponsoring yet another successful work session. 15: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/09/msg00002.html Brazilian government-owned IT enterprise SERPRO selects Debian GNU/Linux for its servers and wishes to collaborate The Servico Federal de Processamento de Dados (SERPRO), a US$ 1 billion annual revenue Brazilian government-owned IT enterprise, announced during the Debian Day Brasil 2008 in Porto Alegre that it [16]has selected Debian GNU/Linux as the preferred distribution for its hundreds of GNU/Linux development and production servers. 16: http://times.debian.net/?category=success-stories#1272 SERPRO has decided to increase supplier independence, flexibility, agility, and participation in technical solutions by direct interaction with the Debian Project community. This is the first time that a federal government institution of this size has reached out to the Debian Project community for a closer relationship. Other news The 10th issue of the [17]miscellaneous news for developers has been released and covers the following topics: * Package Tracking System news * Casals replaced by mahler (MIPS porter machine for Debian Developers) * Personnel changes (Martin Zobel-Helas joins Debian System Administrators, becomes Stable Release Wizard; Philipp Kern joins Stable Release Management) * Delayed queue moves to ravel (new people.debian.org machine) * Git user survey 2008 17: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/09/msg00003.html Joey Schulze [18]gave an overview about the upcoming Linux and Free Software related events in Europe and asked for volunteers to organize and man booths or give talks. 18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2008/09/msg00008.html New Developers 5 applicants have been [19]accepted as Debian Developers since the prior issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Laurent Bigonville, Gregory Colpart, Timo Jyrinki, Adriaan Peeters and Soeren Sonnenburg in our project! 19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/09/msg00040.html Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [20]freetype and [21]linux-2.6.24. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 20: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1635 21: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1636 If you would like to be kept up to date about the security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [22]mailing list for security announcements. 22: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([23]among others): * [24]bzflag-client -- BZFlag client * [25]dnssec-tools -- DNSSEC tools, applications and wrappers * [26]scim-python -- Python input method framework for SCIM * [27]vboxgtk -- simple GTK+ frontend for VirtualBox * [28]esteidutil -- EstEID smartcard management tool * [29]js2-mode -- Emacs mode for editing Javascript programs * [30]s51dude -- In-System Programmer for 8051 MCUs using usbtiny * [31]zoomer -- generate a video from a picture by zooming from one point to another 23: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 24: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bzflag-client 25: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dnssec-tools 26: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/scim-python 27: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vboxgtk 28: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/esteidutil 29: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/js2-mode 30: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/s51dude 31: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zoomer [32]mythtv and [33]mrxvt where presented by Debian Package of the Day. 32: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/09/14/mythtv-a-personal-tv-recorder/ 33: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/09/07/mrxvt-fast-light-multitabbed-terminal-emulator/ Work-needing packages Currently 452 packages are orphaned and 125 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [34]recent [35]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [36]packages which need your help. 34: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00096.html 35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/09/msg00294.html 36: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [37]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [38]debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 37: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 38: mailto:debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Andre Felipe Machado, Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. PS: For organisational reasons the next issue of the DPN will be published in three instead of two weeks. After that, the DPN will be continued with the usual two week intervall. We apologize for any inconveniences. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-09-15T20:47:52 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/361 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/10/ Debian Project News - September 1st, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * Debian Live Lenny Beta1 released * Debian Translations for French and German Reach 100% * Policy for web apps session storage? * ... and much more. Debian Live Lenny Beta1 The Debian Live team [1]announced the first beta of Debian Lenny's Live images. This is the first official release of Debian Live CDs. The main features are, that these Live images are build 100% with packages in Debians main section and different flavours (GNOME, KDE and Xfce as well as a small image without graphical environment. 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00013.html Future releases should also contain an installation system, which is not part of this beta1 version, since it still contains some minor bugs. The images are created using [2]live-helper, a collection of scripts helping to create these CD images. There is also a [3]graphical front end for these script. 2: http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-helper 3: http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-magic Debian Translations for French and German Reach 100% [4]Christian Perrier announced "On August 22nd, both German and French languages reached 100% completeness for po-debconf translations in unstable. For German, this is the very first time this has happened and the German l10n (localization) team deserves congratulations for that achievement." Po-debconf translations enables native speakers use Debian in their own language and is an important aspect in working toward Debian's goal of being a universal operating system. 4: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00014.html Helge Kreutzmann [5]added, that "this was only possible due to the tireless efforts of Christian to actually get the translations into Debian." Christian Perrier spend a lot of time to coordinate new translations and upload packages containing new translations. 5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2008/08/msg00172.html Policy for web apps session storage? After several bugs regarding [6]possible symlink attacks were reported, Olivier Berger [7]wonders about a policy how web applications (or their framework) should handle storage of their session files. He noted that PHP already tries to prevent possible symlink attacks, by using /var/lib/php5 which is only readable by the root-user and automatically cleaned with a cronjob to prevent attacks by opening a lot of sessions. He especially wonders, if whether there's a similar approach for applications using perl and CGI::Session. 6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00271.html 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00340.html Usage of Package diffs? Joerg Jasper [8]asked, if the package diffs, a system to update the package list by downloading the differences between versions of that file, is used at all. Since he usually turns that feature of, which seems to him only slow apt down and wastes a lot of bandwidth of our mirror network. 8: http://blog.ganneff.de/blog/2008/09/01/pdiffs-1.html Several people already reported to use this feature and asked for it to stay. Others proposed to keep the feature, but to disable it by default. people.debian.org to move to a new host and file transfer between Debian hosts Peter Palfrader [9]reported that people.debian.org, a service offering web space for Debian Developers, will be moved to new host in late September ans asks all Developers using that service to check if all needed packages are available on the new host. 9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00012.html This announcement lead to the [10]questions regarding the file transfer between different hosts of the Debian infrastructure. Peter [11]summarized possible options and asks for further feedback. 10: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00780.html 11: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/08/msg00172.html Other news Joerg Jaspert [12]announced, that James Troup stepped down from his post as Debian Account Manager. We would like to thanks James for the hard work and dedication over many years. 12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/08/msg00167.html Ana Beatriz Guerrero Lopez [13]announced that since Lenny has been frozen, back ported KDE 4.1 packages are available now at [14]kde4.debian.net. 13: http://ekaia.org/blog/2008/08/21/kde-41-backported-packages-for-lenny/ 14: http://kde4.debian.net/ Joey Schulze [15]reported from the [16]m68k porter meeting which took place at the University of Kiel, Germany. The Meeting was streamed, so that people unable to attend in person could participate via IRC. The [17]results include bits about the port to the coldfire architecture as well as status updates for Sid and Lenny. 15: http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200808311226 16: http://wiki.ffis.de/m68k/Meeting2008 17: http://wiki.debian.org/M68k/Meetings/Kiel2008 Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [18]postfix, [19]linux-2.6, [20]libxml2 and [21]tiff. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 18: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1629 19: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1630 20: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1631 21: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1632 If you would like to be kept up to date about the security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [22]mailing list for security announcements. 22: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([23]among others): * [24]drupal6 -- a fully-featured content management framework * [25]kde-i18n-uzcyrillic -- Cyrillic Uzbek (uz< at >cyrillic) internationalized (i18n) files for KDE * [26]openoffice.org-report-builder-bin -- OpenOffice.org Report Builder extension - support libraries * [27]python-hcluster -- Python functions for agglomerative clustering * [28]qmmp -- feature-rich audio player with support of many formats * [29]rapache -- apache2 graphical configuration tool * [30]salasaga -- IDE for development of eLearning applications * [31]topgit -- a Git patch queue manager * [32]virt-top -- show stats of virtualized domains * [33]warzone2100-music -- music for warzone2100 23: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 24: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/drupal6 25: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kde-i18n-uzcyrillic 26: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/openoffice.org-report-builder-bin 27: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-hcluster 28: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/qmmp 29: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rapache 30: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/salasaga 31: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/topgit 32: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/virt-top 33: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/warzone2100-music Work-needing packages Currently 453 packages are orphaned and 110 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [34]recent [35]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [36]packages which need your help. 34: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00532.html 35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00815.html 36: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [37]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [38]debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 37: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 38: mailto:debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Jeff Richards, Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-09-02T05:17:58 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/360 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/09/ Debian Project News - August 18th, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * Debian turns 15 * 8th annual Debian Conference finished * Freespire 5 to be based on Debian * ... and much more. Debian turns 15 On 16 August 1993 Ian Murdock [1]announced a new Linux distribution named "Debian". 15 years later the project started by him is the biggest Linux distribution worldwide, offering more than 20 000 software packages maintained by over 1'000 volunteers, supporting more hardware architectures than any other Linux distribution, and providing a base for more than twenty active derivatives, like [2]Knoppix, [3]Skolelinux or [4]Ubuntu. 1: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.development/msg/a32d4e2ef3bcdcc6 2: http://www.knoppix.net 3: http://www.skolelinux.org 4: http://www.ubuntu.com/ [5]Users, [6]journalists, and [7]Debian Developers congratulated, sometimes [8]just happy, sometimes [9]thoughtfully, and celebrated the birthday of the Debian project [10]worldwide with parties and single day conferences (sometimes even with live streams of the sessions). Even a [11]virtual birthday party was held in Second live (a virtual world powered by [12]Debian) where musicians Blue4u Nowicka and Jaggpro McCann gave concerts as an opener to the virtual party. In Argentina Steve McIntyre, current Debian Project Leader, opened the 8th Debian Conference with a talk describing the current state of the Debian project and the long way it has come until today. His talk is already available as a downloadable [13]video. 5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/08/msg00132.html 6: http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/08/debian-15-is-it-still-relevant.html 7: http://www.michaelandkrissy.com/node/87 8: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20064/53/ 9: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3765826/Debian+GNU/Linux:+15+Years+Old+and+at+the+Crossroads.htm 10: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2008 11: http://tinyurl.com/DPN080903 12: http://www.debian.org/users/com/lindenlab 13: http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2008/debconf8/high/490_Debian.ogg The Debian project would like to thank its users and developers for the confidence placed in our distribution over the last 15 years and is looking forward to the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" and many happy returns. Freespire 5 to be based on Debian Recently acquired by the Xandrox Corporation, the upcoming release of Freespire will be based on the Debian GNU/Linux "Lenny" release. The current release of Freespire (2.0.8) is still based on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). "A combined Xandros/Linspire development effort will return Freespire to its Debian GNU/Linux roots and put it in sync with Xandros Desktop Pro," [14]said Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO. Freespire 5 is slated to be released in the fourth quarter of 2008. 14: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/freespire-returns-debian-roots/story.aspx?guid={21713CB4-464B-4292-89EB-BE41F67FDD92}&dist=hppr 8th annual Debian Conference finished The [15]8th annual Debian Conference, allowing Users and Developers to come together, learn new techniques and discuss further development has finished yesterday on the 17th August 2008. Some results of the discussions which took place there are mentioned in this issue. Videos of the conference sessions are available (or will be soon) at the [16]meetings archive. The video team asks for [17]feedback. It is also possible to give [18]feedback to speakers and topics. Since most attendees are still on their way home, the next issue of the Debian Project News will have a deeper coverage of the Debian Conference and the associated [19]Debian Day at Buenos Aires. 15: http://debconf8.debconf.org/ 16: http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2008/debconf8/ 17: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf8/Videoteam/Thanks 18: http://blog.debconf.org/blog/debconf8/jj_feedback.dc 19: http://debconf8.debconf.org/debianday.xhtml Debian on the OpenMoko FreeRunner [20]Joachim Breitner announces the start of an official Debian port to the OpenMoko FreeRunner, a smartphone that was designed and developed in a free and open manner. This enables Debian users to use the distribution of their choice even on their telephone. [21]Installation instructions can be found on the Debian wiki. 20: http://lists.linuxtogo.org/pipermail/smartphones-standards/2008-August/000232.html 21: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianOnFreeRunner Bits from the X Strike Force Julien Cristau [22]reports on the newest developments within the X Strike Force. The X Strike Force is happy to announce that the configuration of the Xorg server has been considerably simplified and it is now also possible to configure video output at runtime. Furthermore new drivers have been packaged, namely the [23]nouveau driver, a reverse-engineering effort for nVidia cards and [24]openchrome, which will support via chipsets instead of the unmaintained via driver. The nouveau driver does not yet have release-quality but the X Strike Force asks for testing of the experimental build. xorg-server 1.5 and mesa 7.1 are also currently in experimental and are scheduled to advance to sid after the Lenny release. At around the same time, the team plans to enable hotplugging of input devices, and their configuration through hal. The X Strike Force concludes their report with a call for maintainers (DDs and non-DDs). People interested in joining the team can contact them on #debian-x on irc.debian.org, or on debian-x< at >lists.debian.org. 22: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00010.html 23: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ 24: http://www.openchrome.org/ Request for adoption: The Debian Jr. project Ben Armstrong [25]is looking for someone to take over the [26]Debian Jr. project, since he is currently too involved with other Debian-internal projects and can no longer spend the necessary time on it. He recommends several measures to move the project forward and hopes to find a new leader for the project who will tackle these and other tasks and carry on his work on a child-friendly custom Debian distribution. 25: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00004.html 26: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianJr Upcoming changes to supported architectures One of the problems discussed during this year's Debian Conference was ftp-master.debian.org, the main host for the Debian archive, running into resource constraints. [27]Joerg Jaspert announced the results: Hardware architectures, which have failed to be included in 2 successive official releases, will be moved to an other host (e.g. [28]debian-ports.org). The main purpose is to free space for architectures that are in a better shape and therefore have higher chances of being in an release. 27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00009.html 28: http://debian-ports.org The current [29]candidates for removal are m68k, hurd-i386 and arm (which will be replaced by armel anyway), while kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64 as well as [30]other architectures could now be added to the official Debian archive machines. Of course removed architectures can be re-added to the main archive, when they have proven to be fit for release. 29: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00369.html 30: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00371.html Dropping packages in main building packages in contrib Joerg Jaspert [31]wondered if it is a necessary feature, that source packages of a specific component (main, contrib or non-free) may create binary packages within an other component. Some source packages in Debian main use that feature to create binary packages in contrib. Dropping this feature would ease a re-design of the central project database. When asked for the benefits of dropping this feature, Stefano Zacchiroli [32]explained further that the database should reflect the structure of the project, especially since only the component main is an official part of Debian. Blurring the difference might confuse our users and is "weird at best". 31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00148.html 32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00173.html Bits from the GNU/kFreeBSD porters Aurelien Jarno gave a [33]status report about the kFreeBSD port. Overall it is in very good shape. Currently i386 and AMD64 based architectures are supported. It has a complete toolchain (including java) and more than 85% of all packages are built. He asked for help to qualify as a releasable architecture, since a port of the debian-installer is currently missing. 33: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00007.html FAI developer workshop at the Linuxhotel in Essen/Germany At the weekend from 8th until 10th of August, the FAI (Fully Automatic Installation - an installation and update-management framework for Debian and other distributions) developer team met at the Linuxhotel in Essen, Germany, to make FAI fit for the Lenny release. In a productive as well as fun meeting, seven people got a lot of things done, but most importantly, they did a lot of testing of the current FAI functionality in the Lenny context. Important bugs were found and solved and future development has been discussed, e.g. integrating tests for classes as well as software regressions, how to deal with copyright issues and how contributors should be mentioned in the Debian copyright files. Further issues that were tackled during the meeting were how more developers could be attracted to add their code into FAI, how to make it available for testing by users, and how to get external patches into mainline FAI - which is currently only written to by the main developer. An first documentation of the meeting's outcome can be found in the [34]faiwiki. The meeting was sponsored by the [35]Linuxhotel Essen, the [36]Linux Information Systems AG and [37]LT-ec. 34: http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/DeveloperWorkshopAugust2008#Documentation 35: http://www.linuxhotel.de 36: http://www.linux-ag.de 37: http://lt-ec.de/ Debian Lenny to Support Low-Power NAS Systems Martin Michlmayr [38]updated kernels for MIPS and ARM for kernel version 2.6.26. These kernel updates bring major improvements to the ARM architecture support, which helps running Debian on low-power NAS devices like the [39]QNAP TS-409. With 2.6.26 coming closer to lenny, lenny is coming closer to run on these devices. 38: http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/2.6.26-udebs 39: http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/ Future of snapshot.debian.net Since [40]snapshot.debian.net - a service storing all versions of all Debian packages ever uploaded to the archive including useful symlinks e.g. for browsing to specific days - has problems from time to time keeping up its disc space, Eddy Petrisor [41]wondered, if a distributed, user supported structure for storing this huge amount of data would be a good idea. Andrew Pollock [42]answered that Debian could spend some of its fund for this service. Cyril Brulebois [43]added that it has been [44]announced that snapshot.debian.net should be made an official service provided by Debian, making it easier to spend funds on it. 40: http://snapshot.debian.net 41: http://tinyurl.com/DPN080901 42: http://blog.andrew.net.au/2008/08/16#fund_snapshot.debian.net 43: http://ikibiki.org//blog/2008/08/16/snapshot.debian.org/ 44: http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/08/msg00060.html Artwork and Desktop themes for Debian "Lenny" Valessio Brito [45]announced that the work for artwork and themes for the upcoming stable release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0" Lenny has been started during [46]DebCamp the hacking session before the annual Debian Conference. In the meantime and [47]updated version of the [48]desktop-base package has been uploaded including a new default theme as well as a [49]second one. 45: http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2008/08/msg00000.html 46: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20080804.231055.943faaa6.en.html 47: http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2008/08/msg00068.html 48: http://packages.debian.org/desktop-base 49: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArtThemesNightly CD/DVD Image Downloads - A Reminder / rsync on ftp.debian.org [50]Josip Rodin noted that there seems to be a rush of CD/DVD image hoarding happening. Particularly, it seems that many people are not only downloading the first image, but the additional images (CDs 2-20+) as well. The full set of images is published so that they can be downloaded by those who do not have regular access to a reliable internet connection. However, for those who do have solid Internet connections, it is more efficient to retrieve packages directly from the repositories. 50: http://lists.debian.org/debian-mirrors/2008/08/msg00000.html In related news Josip Rodin [51]noted that the rsync service on ftp.debian.org has been deprecated since 2001 and has now been disabled completely. Everyone who has used that mirror to synchronise his own mirror using rsync should switch to an other mirror. A complete list of Debian mirrors is available at [52]http://www.debian.org/mirror/list. 51: http://lists.debian.org/debian-mirrors/2008/08/msg00018.html 52: http://www.debian.org/mirror/list Bits from the DPN editors The editors of the Debian Project News sent a first [53]status report on the start-up period of the DPN. After a rough start a workflow has now been established which overall works but still has some issues, including the often missing time for native speakers to proofread the drafts and for translators to prepare versions of the project news in their own language, to be sent out simultaneously with the original news. But most importantly more people are needed to contribute to the Debian Project News by writing small texts on the noteworthy news collected at each issue's [54]development page. 53: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00008.html 54: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/Issues/Current Other news Lucas Nussbaum [55]wondered if the technical solution of freezing the propagation of packages from the unstable development branch to the to-be-released-soon testing branch is adequate. Since the requirement of non-disruptive changes are more a social problem, it shouldn't be solved by strict technical measures and manual approval of exceptions. 55: http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=305 Joey Schulze [56]announced the 2008 M68k Linux Porter Meeting, which will take place from August 29th to 31st at the University of Kiel, Germany. 56: http://lists.debian.org/debian-68k/2008/08/msg00002.html Lucas Nussbaum [57]asked for final reviews for the Debian Enhancement Proposal 1, which tries to improve the way how to deal with "non maintainer uploads" (NMUs). 57: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/08/msg00071.html Sandro Tosi [58]noticed that the #debian-devel< at >OFTC channel topic is often used to give status messages in the case of severe or exceptional situations (outages, downtimes, etc). In order to stay informed even if not connected to oftc he recommends subscribing to the [59]Debian Wiki page that mirrors that channel's topic. 58: http://tinyurl.com/DPN080902 59: http://wiki.debian.org/TopicDebianDevel Neil Williams [60]summarized the usage of [61]PO for anything for maintaining translations of various documents, including manpages. 60: http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/serendipity/index.php?/archives/129-po4a-translation-support-from-any-format.html 61: http://packages.debian.org/po4a Nicolas Francois [62]announced that the services hosted on i18n.debian.net (for example the web frontend to the Debian Package Description Translation Project) is now available via SSL, too. 62: http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2008/08/msg00041.html Stefano Zacchiroli reported [63]several [64]improvements he did for the [65]package tracking system. He fixed several bugs and feature request including tighter integration with [66]lintian, a tool for checking Debian packages for common errors, and [67]mentors.debian.net, a service used by package maintainers searching for Debian Developers to "sponsor" their upload to the Debian archive. 63: http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/08/improved_integration_among_PTS_and_Lintian/ 64: http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2008/08/PTS_integrated_with_mentors_and_gifts/ 65: http://packages.qa.debian.org 66: http://packages.debian.org/lintian 67: http://mentors.debian.net Lucas Nussbaum [68]blogged about an important usecase for the Ultimate Debian Database, a Google Summer of Code project integrating several information sources within Debian: recently removals of important packages from the testing Distribution have caused some discussion. Tracking these important packages will be easier through this database. 68: http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=303 Debian Project at FrOSCon 2008 2008, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at Free and Open Source Software Conference 2008 in St. Augustin, Germany. Please see the respective [69]events page for further details. 69: http://www.debian.org/events/2008/0823-froscon Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team hasn't released any important advisories since the last issue. If you would like to be kept up to date about the security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [70]mailing list for security announcements. 70: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([71]among others): * [72]autorun4linuxcd -- Menu for Debian Live under Windows * [73]bluemindo -- really simple but powerful audio player * [74]cdebconf-gtk-terminal -- cdebconf gtk plugin dislaying a terminal * [75]daptup -- reporter of changes in list of available packages from repositories * [76]etherpuppet -- create a virtual interface from a remote Ethernet interface * [77]freealchemist -- simpler figure block game * [78]guake -- A drop-down terminal for GNOME Desktop Environment * [79]ink-generator -- Inkscape extension to automatically generate files from a template * [80]jaranalyzer -- Dependency management utility for jar files * [81]uboot-envtools -- read/modify the environment for the bootloader U-Boot * [82]xorriso -- command line iso9660+RR manipulation tool 71: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 72: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/autorun4linuxcd 73: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bluemindo 74: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cdebconf-gtk-terminal 75: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/daptup 76: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/etherpuppet 77: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freealchemist 78: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/guake 79: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ink-generator 80: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jaranalyzer 81: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uboot-envtools 82: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xorriso Work-needing packages Currently 468 packages are orphaned and 120 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [83]recent [84]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [85]packages which need your help. 83: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00212.html 84: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00372.html 85: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [86]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [87]debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 86: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 87: mailto:debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Martin Michlmayr, Joachim Breitner, Rainer Dorsch, Henning Sprang, Jeff Richards, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl and Meike Reichle. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-08-19T19:22:11 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/359 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/ Mar Del Plata to host 9th Debian conference press< at >debconf.org August 8th, 2008 http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20080808 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mar Del Plata to host 9th Debian conference * 250 developers from 37 countries to come together at Hotel Dorá, Mar Del Plata, Argentina, 10-16 August 2008. * 100 talks and tutorial sessions scheduled. * Attendance is free of charge, on-site registration required. * Debian Project to turn 15 years of age. Mar Del Plata, Argentina, 8 August 2008 - The Debian Project, the team behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system, is inviting members of the public and the press to its annual conference, DebConf 8, which takes place from 10 August to 16 August at the Hotel Dorá in Mar Del Plata, Argentina. Over 100 events have been scheduled with speakers from all parts of the world, such as Debian Project leader Steve McIntyre and Hewlett Packard's Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist, Bdale Garbee. The topics include global team organisation, internationalisation, development internals and policy, virtualisation, and systems & network adminisatration. In tutorial sessions, attendants can gain hands-on experience in various subjects. Development and brainstorming takes place in the two "hack labs", and peripheral events, such as a world cheese party, allow for extensive networking. The full schedule is available on the conference website: https://penta.debconf.org/dc8_schedule/ Celebrations will be in order on Saturday, 16 August, when the Debian Project turns 15 years of age. Founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly Free, community project, the project has grown to one of the largest and most influential open source projects. Jörg Jaspert, one of the conference organisers, is excited: "Of all the Debian conferences I have experienced, this is the best prepared. Thank you to the local team for all their work!" The local organiser team — 40 volunteers from all over the country — have dedicated almost an entire year of their time to make this event happen. Attending the conference is free of charge, although visitors are required to register on-site. More information is available from the conference website: http://debconf8.debconf.org . The language of presentation is English, although many Spanish speakers are available to help and answer questions. All events are recorded and streamed over the Internet. More information is available at: http://debconf8.debconf.org/video On Wednesday, 13 August, no events will take place as conference attendees take a day off to experience local sites and culture. Following DebConf 8, Debian Day will take place on 18 August in Buenos Aires. Debian Day is a free-of-charge, one-day software users' conference. The event provides a friendly, personal atmosphere for individuals who are interested in free and open-source software to meet the people behind the project and obtain free advice. About Debian ------------ The Debian Project is an association of Free Software developers who volunteer their time and effort in order to produce the completely free operating system Debian GNU/Linux. About DebConf ------------- DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Canada, Finland and Mexico. Contact Information ------------------- For further information, please visit the DebConf web pages at <http://www.debconf.org/> or send mail to press< at >debconf.org. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-08-08T20:11:08 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/358 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2008/08/ Debian Project News - August 4th, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 8th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue include: * "Lenny" frozen * Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated to include support for newer hardware * Schedule for 8th annual Debian Conference announced * Debian Days around the world * ... and much more. "Lenny" frozen Marc Brockschmidt, a Release Manager, announced that "Lenny", the upcoming new stable release, has been [1]frozen as [2]planned. The automatic transition of new versions of packages from the development branch ("sid" or "unstable") to the current testing branch ("lenny") has been stopped and new versions of packages need manual approval. New versions which fix release critical bugs, other important bugs, add documentation, or include translation fixes can be approved by the release team upon request. 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00002.html 2: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/07/msg00005.html Lenny is still scheduled to be released in September 2008. Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 updated to include support for newer hardware The Debian project [3]released an updated version of its current stable release Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 "etch" called "etch and a half". While this update mainly includes security fixes and fixes for severe bugs, the Debian project has for the first time also added support for newer hardware by adding new drivers with updated Linux kernel and X.org packages. The new drivers are optional and the old versions will still be supported. 3: http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20080726 Detailed upgrade instructions are available in the respective [4]announcement, the [5]etch and a half release notes and the [6]etch and a half installation guide. 4: http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20080726 5: http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/etchnhalf 6: http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/debian-installer/etchnhalf Schedule for 8th annual Debian Conference announced Jörg Jaspert [7]announced the [8]schedule for the 8th annual Debian Conference which will be held from August 10th to August 16th, 2008 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. As usual the schedule should considered a "work in progress" as session slots will be filled during the conference with spontaneous sessions, including so called BoF ("Birds of a feather") sessions. 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00001.html 8: https://penta.debconf.org/dc8_schedule/ For those who can't attend the conference physically, the DebConf video team will try to stream all sessions, so interested people can point their media player (e.g. [9]xine or [10]totem) to [11]http://video.debconf.org:8000/microcine.ogv.m3u and [12]http://video.debconf.org:8000/salon_del_mar.ogv.m3u. Users in North America, Europe and Australia should use http://video.eu.debconf.org:8000, http://video.na.debconf.org:8000 and http://video.au.debconf.org:8000, respectively, with the corresponding filename. 9: http://packages.debian.org/xine-ui 10: http://packages.debian.org/totem 11: http://video.debconf.org:8000/microcine.ogv.m3u 12: http://video.debconf.org:8000/salon_del_mar.ogv.m3u IRC channels which can be used to participate in discussion sessions will be announced separately; a schedule with times in UTC is in preparation. After DebConf8 the sessions will also be available as videos at [13]http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/, where you can also find older DebConf videos. 13: http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/ In related news, the organizers of the Debian Conference are [14]soliciting location proposals for the 10th annual Debian Conference to be held in 2010. Groups interested in hosting the 10th DebConf conference should prepare their proposal according to [15]this checklist and send it to [16]debconf-team< at >lists.debconf.org. 14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00000.html 15: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/LocationCheckList 16: mailto:debconf-team< at >lists.debconf.org Debian Days around the world Debian users around the world are preparing to celebrate the [17]15th anniversary of the Debian project on August 16th 2008. Currently Debian Days are planned in Nicaragua, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Chile, Argentina and eight different locations in Brazil. Apart from general celebration, the Debian Days will feature install fests, talks, discussion panels, LAN parties, Debian merchandise, software demonstrations, advanced installation workshops, knowledge exchange, and much more. 17: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDay2008 The Brazilian Portuguese event will be transmitted on-line by tv.softwarelivre.org and torrents will be available after. Other Brazilian Debian User Groups interested in their own event transmissions may visit the event page for details. Limited Xen support in Lenny A recent discussion on the debian-devel list highlighted that due to the upstream delays in getting Xen support integrated into kernels beyond 2.6.18, Lenny will need to ship with limited Xen support. Pasi Kärkkäinen explained [18]the situation and Bastian Blank wrote [19]an article about the options the Debian Project has. His conclusion is to support a 2.6.18 kernel in Lenny, until "lenny-and-a-half" adds better Xen support. However, the release managers have not yet made a final decision. 18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00475.html 19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00476.html Screenshots of GUI applications Roberto Sanchez [20]raised the topic of screenshots for GUI applications. Since it's often difficult to judge a package based only on the textual package description, he suggested being able to add screenshots of specific applications to Debian. This would allow package search and maintenance tools to show the user what can be expected from a specific package. 20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00770.html During the discussion Raphael Hertzog [21]remarked about a previous discussion during the 6th Debian Conference and Paul Wise [22]added that the Debian Package Games Team already creates screenshots for their games which are available in the [23]games-thumbnails package, and are used by [24]goplay, a debtags-based browser for game-related packages. Jon Dowland [25]pointed out that there may be possible legal issues, since screenshots could be seen as derivative works of the original application in some legislations. 21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00782.html 22: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00774.html 23: http://packages.debian.org/games-thumbnails 24: http://packages.debian.org/goplay 25: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00877.html Bits from the Debian Eee PC team Ben Armstrong [26]reported on the current activities of the [27]Debian Eee PC team: Debian's next release Lenny will work with all of the earliest models of the Eee PC and the Eee PC team hopes to soon realize its goal of a completely DFSG free system for the earliest models of the Eee Pc. Newer models are now able to install using the atl1e ethernet driver from eeepc.debian.net; support for wireless and other aspects of the new hardware will follow soon. The wireless custom Debian-installer is also making good progress. There are currently two Debian-live USB images available: a demo of the [28]LXDE desktop (a lightweight desktop environment that is made with the Eee PC in mind) and a minimal console-only image for rescue/backup. The team is also always looking for new members to contribute to Debian's support for the Eee Pc. 26: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/08/msg00002.html 27: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC 28: http://lxde.org/ SELinux and lenny Russel Coker [29]gave [30]several [31]updates on security enhanced Linux in the upcoming stable release of Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny". 29: http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/07/31/installing-se-linux-on-lenny/ 30: http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/08/01/selinux-activate/ 31: http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/08/04/lenny-se-linux-on-the-desktop/ adept package manager alpha release of version 3.0 Petr Rockai gave a [32]report about his work on a rewritten version of adept, a package management tool for KDE. He points out that the new version of adept has improved upon the speed, reliability and user experience of previous versions. Notable among the new features he added are full text searching and handling of interactive installation prompts (for example, debconf prompts and dpkg prompts about changed configuration files). 32: http://web.mornfall.net/blog/adept_3.0_alpha_5.html Debian Project at FrOSCon 2008 From Saturday the 23rd of August 2008 to Sunday the 24th of August 2008, the Debian Project will participate with a booth at Free and Open Source Software Conference 2008 in St. Augustin, Germany. Please see the respective [33]events page for further details. 33: http://www.debian.org/events/2008/0823-froscon Other news Stefano Zacchiroli [34]reminded package maintainers that the old pseudo-header for upstream Homepages in the package description has been replaced by a proper header which should now be used instead. 34: zack/blog/posts/2008/07/reminder:_Homepage_pseudo_fields_are_GONE/ Ian Jackson [35]pointed out how to properly rename a package to ease the transition of other package's dependencies upon the renamed package. 35: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00844.html Christian von Essen [36]reported about his [37]Google Summer of Code project the [38]"Ultimate Debian Database", which combines Debian information from various sources. He's also looking for [39]example queries to allow for further testing of his database layout. 36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/07/msg00105.html 37: http://www.debian.org/News/2008/20080427 38: http://wiki.debian.org/UltimateDebianDatabase 39: http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2008/08/msg00002.html New and noteworthy packages By popular request, DPN will once again feature a list of new and noteworthy packages that have recently been added to the unstable branch. The list will feature editorial picks from the official list of [40]new packages and will be appended to each issue of Debian Project News. 40: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg * [41]almanah -- application to ease management of a personal diary * [42]amora-server -- use a bluetooth enabled mobile phone as desktop remote control * [43]bzr-cvsps-import -- CVS to Bazaar importer * [44]cnee -- X event recorder/replayer - command-line flavor * [45]gecko-mediaplayer -- Media plug-in for Gecko browsers * [46]gnee -- X event recorder/replayer - GUI flavor * [47]gnome-mplayer -- A simple GUI for MPlayer * [48]gpsdrive-data -- Car naviagion system * [49]gptsync -- GPT and MBR partition tables synchronisation tool * [50]ia32-apt-get -- Apt-get and dpkg wrapper for on-the-fly ia32-libs conversion * [51]jabberd2 -- Jabber instant messenger server * [52]jifty -- perl web MVC framework * [53]link-monitor-applet-common -- GNOME Panel Applet with graph of round-trip times to hosts (data) * [54]maq -- maps short fixed-legth polymporphic DNA sequence reads to reference sequences * [55]midori -- Fast and lightweight web browser * [56]postgresql-8.3-plr -- Procedural language interface between PostgreSQL 8.3 and R * [57]singular -- A commutative algebra system * [58]strace64 -- A system call tracer for 64bit binaries * [59]topal -- Links Pine and GnuPG together * [60]trac-accountmanager -- account management plugin for Trac * [61]zope-formulator -- tool to create and validate web forms in zope 41: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/almanah 42: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/amora-server 43: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bzr-cvsps-import 44: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cnee 45: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gecko-mediaplayer 46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnee 47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-mplayer 48: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gpsdrive-data 49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gptsync 50: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ia32-apt-get 51: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jabberd2 52: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/jifty 53: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/link-monitor-applet-common 54: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/maq 55: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/midori 56: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/postgresql-8.3-plr 57: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/singular 58: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/strace64 59: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/topal 60: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/trac-accountmanager 61: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zope-formulator Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [62]libgd, [63]iceweasel, [64]xulrunner , [65]clamav, [66]python2.5, [67]icedove and [68]cupsys. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 62: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1613 63: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1614 64: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1615 65: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1616 66: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1620 67: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1621 68: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1625 Please note that those are only the most important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you would like to be kept up to date about the security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [69]mailing list for security announcements. 69: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ Work-needing packages Currently 461 packages are orphaned and 118 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [70]recent [71]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [72]packages which need your help. 70: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/06/msg00762.html 71: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/08/msg00004.html 72: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [73]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [74]debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org. 73: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 74: mailto:debian-publicity< at >lists.debian.org This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Don Armstrong, Andre Felipe Machado, Graham Cobb, Paul van der Vlis, Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl 2008-08-04T23:07:42 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.user.news/357 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/ Debian Project News - July 21st, 2008 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 7th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Some of the topics covered in this issue: * Updates to the Lenny release process * Debian-installer to support loading of external firmwares * Best practice for debug packages * ... and much more. Updates to the Lenny release process Luk Claes sent a [1]release update regarding the upcoming stable release Debian 5.0 "Lenny". An important part is, that starting with next week, the transition of packages from the unstable to the testing branch will be frozen to concentrate on: fixing the remaining bugs. He further reports on the different release goals, which he sees in good shape, but is a bit worried about the architecture qualification pages on wiki.debian.org, which still miss a lot of information. Porters should provide status information on these pages, so it's easier for the release team to inform themselves about the status of different hardware architectures. 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/07/msg00005.html In related news Ana Guerrero [2]reported about the status of KDE especially KDE4 related packages in the upcoming release of Debian. 2: http://ekaia.org/blog/2008/07/19/debian-packages-for-kde-41-koffice-alpha9-and-more/ Debian-installer to support loading of external firmwares Joey Hess [3]announced a new feature of the Debian installer: On demand loading of firmwares. Since some drivers need to load such binary blobs to the device before they can operate but these firmwares are often non-free according to the [4]Debian Free Software Guidelines, some devices could only be operated after Debian has been successfully installed and network access has been configured by adding Debian's non-free section to the package sources. Which would fail, if the network driver itself needed to load a firmware to operate. 3: http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/d-i_firmware_loading/ 4: http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines With the newly introduced feature, it is now possible to drop the firmware files on a separate medium, like an USB stick. The Debian-Installer will then automatically load the necessary files. He also noted, that the Debian-CD team [5]builds zip files and tarballs containing all the firmware that Debian ships in non-free. 5: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/ Best practice for debug packages Theodore Tso [6]wondered about the best practice regarding debug packages, containing additional data to ease debugging of programs and libraries. [7]Mike Hommey answered that debug files should be installed at the non-debug files path preceded by /usr/lib/debug/ and, depending on the size of the debug data, split of in a separate package. Joerg Jaspert [8]added that the priority of such debug packages should be extra and that they should be in the same section as the parent package. 6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00187.html 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00188.html 8: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00205.html Call for help DebConf 8 website Martin Ferrari [9]called for help for the website of the upcoming Debian Conference. A lot of information needed by travellers is missing. The most important thing he sees, is to recognise missing data, since it's difficult to guess what foreigners might need to know when youâre a local. 9: http://blog.debconf.org/blog/debconf8/mf_website_help.dc Debian release versioning Martin Krafft [10]proposed to change the way Debian versions its releases. He proposed increasing the first number with each release, and the second one with every "point release" / "r-release" of the stable branch only including fixed packages, while new releases of the stable release adding new features (like the upcoming "Etch and a half") should get a five as second number to show the "half" update. Lars Wirzenius [11]reminded that Debian introduced the current versioning scheme because CD vendors feared old boxes would stay in the shelves after a point release. Others preferred a "classic two dot" versioning scheme, where the first number gets increased with every new major release, the third one with "bug fix" releases and the second one with releases adding new features. 10: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00371.html 11: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00395.html Package management unsafe? - No. A recently published [12]study which described several attack vectors against Linux systems using their package management has recently caused [13]some [14]discussion. While the study was generally judged to be "oversensationalized attention-grabbing" the consensus was, that one weak point does remain: a potential attacker could manipulate the domain name system and redirect security.debian.org, source of security updates for Debian, to an outdated copy of that server. Currently plans are drafted to add a signed time stamp to prevent that kind of attacks. 12: http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/justin/packagemanagersecurity/attacks-on-package-managers.html 13: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2008/07/msg00054.html 14: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/07/msg00321.html Other news Steve McIntyre [15]sent bits from the DPL. Beside mentioning several personnel changes already reported in last issues of the Debian Project News, he also informs about his intention to intense the cooperation between Debian and its derivatives. He already contacted several derivatives, namely Linspire, Xandros and Ubuntu. 15: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/07/msg00004.html Obey Arthur Liu [16]gave another status report on his graphical front end to the package manager aptitude. While he thinks that the basic functionality is already present, he lists several missing features he would like to add. 16: http://www.milliways.fr/2008/07/09/state-of-the-aptitude-week-7/ Neil Williams [17]reported about the status of Emdebian (for the ARM architecture). 17: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/07/msg00003.html Olivier Berger informed us, that videos from two French speeches from the 9th Libre Software Meeting by Debian Developer Lucas Nussbaum on the topics [18]Why and how to make a first contribution to Debian and [19]Debianâs production process and infrastructure are available. 18: http://2008.rmll.info/Making-a-first-contribution-to.html 19: http://2008.rmll.info/Debian-distribution-s-production.html Martin Borgert [20]asked for updates and [21]new translations of the Debian reference card. 20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/2008/07/msg00039.html 21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/2008/07/msg00078.html Bastian Venthur [22]released version 1.0 of reportbug-ng a graphical front end to report bugs to the Debian bug tracking system. 22: http://blog.venthur.de/2008/07/19/rng-10-in-unstable/ Starting with the next release, [23]rsyslog will be the [24]preferred system logging daemon, replacing [25]syslogd and [26]klogd. 23: http://packages.debian.org/rsyslog 24: http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2008/07/msg00259.html 25: http://packages.debian.org/sysklogd 26: http://packages.debian.org/klogd Patrick Schoenfeld [27]called for testers of the mantis package. 27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2008/07/msg01050.html Christian Perrier [28]kindly asks package maintainers changing debconf templates, which are used to ask questions during the configuration of a package, to coordinate with translators. 28: http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2008/07/15#anti-l10n-cabal Thijs Kinkhorst [29]noted, that he renamed the [30]msttcorefonts package to [31]ttf-mscorefonts-installer. He also notes, that the