--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/03/ Debian Weekly News - January 21st, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's third issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. The [1]Electronic Frontier Foundation is [2]seeking nominations for their annual Pioneer Awards, honoring those who extend freedom and inovation in the information technology. Nominations are due by February 1st, 2003. 1. http://www.eff.org/ 2. http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer.html Rescueing /var. Nicholas Petreley of [3]LinuxWorld.com somehow managed to backup the [4]wrong partition and found himself with a Debian system missing the /var directory. All the important package information lives in /var/lib/dpkg, in particular the /var/lib/dpkg/status file. Nicholas describes the [5]three lessons he learned in recovering from an accidental deletion of the /var/lib/dpkg directory. 3. http://www.linuxworld.com/ 4. http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0113.petreley.html 5. http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0113.petreley-p2.html Debian older than Humanity? Tomas Pospisek [6]reported that the [7]Debian Swirl can be cleary seen on one of the [8]pictures taken by NASA's orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. For example, check the lower right hand corner of the [9]image. Perhaps this is proof that grains for Debian were sowed long before the dawn of humanity. 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01114.html 7. http://www.debian.org/logos/ 8. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/1996/01/image 9. http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/1996/01/images/e/formats/full_jpg.jpg Debian Presentations. Wolfgang Borgert was [10]looking for a set of slides on dpkg, apt-get and debconf. Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña [11]intends to provide a 'presentations' section in the [12]Debian Documentation Project and has already created an [13]archive of slides. Whilst the Debian web site does link to [14]talks given by developers and some [15]sample slides, it is difficult to gather this information and publish it in a homogeneous way. Talks should be reported to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and forwarded to him. 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg00991.html 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01022.html 12. http://cvs.debian.org/ddp/?cvsroot=debian-doc 13. http://dat.etsit.upm.es/~jfs/debian/www/ddp/slides/ 14. http://www.debian.org/events/talks 15. http://www.debian.org/events/materials/slides/ Making Debconf Mandatory for Prompting Users? Adrian Bunk [16]suggested to change the Debian policy to require all user prompts in maintainer scripts to be performed by [17]debconf. This would greatly ease things like automated upgrading of multiple computers. Petter Reinholdtsen provided a list of [18]packages that he had trouble with because they do not use debconf. 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg00949.html 17. http://packages.debian.org/stable/admin/debconf.html 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg00988.html MingW32 for all Architectures? Currently, the [19]MingW32 package is only released for the IA-32 architecture for no technical reason. However, Steven G. Johnson [20]reported that he has modified the build process and [21]built the package on the PowerPC platform. He emphasises that the only code that is actually compiled for a non-x86 host belongs to gcc and binutils. Hence, the package should work on all architectures, unless there is a bug in GCC. Ron Lee indicated that new packages will be uploaded, that should run on all architectures. 19. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/mingw32.html 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0301/msg00182.html 21. http://jdj.mit.edu/~stevenj/mingw32/ Antialiasing with GNOME. Bill Moseley [22]discoverd antialiased fonts, he wanted to turn off, and Michael Sullivan also [23]noticed a major upgrade with regards to font antialiasing. Fonts should look smoother but some people find that they just seem blurred, that they are more difficult to read, and even hurt the eyes. GTK 2.2 provides support for them but this feature can easily be [24]turned off with an environment variable. 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-0301/msg01826.html 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-0301/msg01834.html 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01152.html Documenting Package Tuning. Andreas Tille noted that there are several situations where packages have to be configured to work together under certain circumstances of operation or hardware technology, which may be difficult. He came up with an [25]idea to collect some kind of knowledge base for those cases. This should probably be written by the community and could be [26]maintained as a Wiki, [27]DDP document or database. 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01164.html 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01353.html 27. http://www.debian.org/doc/ddp Splitting out Documentation Packages. Adam Heath almost [28]ran out of space and noticed that his /usr/share/doc directory contains 380 MB of documentation. Adrian von Bidder [29]concluded that documentation which uses a significant amount of space should be split out into a documentation package and neither of them should depend on each other. Jochen Voss finally proposed a [30]recommendation for such a package split. 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0301/msg00173.html 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0301/msg00183.html 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0301/msg00208.html License Problem with Glibc. Johan Walles [31]reported about [32]Bug#171659 that reveals that glibc contains sourcecode from Sun Microsystems, Inc. Brian Carlson says that it places restrictions on distribution as an independent work, failing [33]DFSG paragraph 1. It also fails DFSG paragraph 3 because it prohibits distribution of modifications of the original work as modifications. Jeff Bailey is [34]working with upstream to start a reimplementation. 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc-0301/msg00288.html 32. http://bugs.debian.org/171659 33. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc-0301/msg00291.html KDE 3.1 for Woody and Ägypten. Ralf Nolden [35]announced that he has uploaded Debian packages for KDE 3.1 and woody and i386 to the [36]KTown server. While he was at it he added a complete set of woody packages for [37]Ägypten. This includes required packages that were backported from unstable where available. 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde-0301/msg00485.html 36. http://ktown.kde.org/~nolden/kde/woody/ 37. http://www.gnupg.org/aegypten/ Conferences in January. The Debian project [38]announced that it will be present at three conferences this month. The first one refers to the [39]Debian Mini-Conf prior to the [40]Linux Conference Australia where many Debian developers attend and give [41]talks on various topics. From January 22nd to 24th Debian will maintain a booth at the [42]Linuxworld Conference and Expo in New York and from January 23rd to 26th the Debian project will maintain a booth at the [43]Hamburger Computer Tage in Hamburg, Germany. 38. http://www.debian.org/News/2003/20030119 39. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0120-linuxconf 40. http://www.linux.conf.au/ 41. http://www.debconf.org/lca2003/schedule/ 42. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0122-lwce-ny 43. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0123-hct Debian at CeBIT Exhibition? The Debian project has been [44]offered to participate in the upcoming CeBIT exhibition in Germany. This could include installations on customers' notebooks, a booth presentations and talks. Even though booths don't have to be present on all days, it would be easier to maintain if at least one person would be around on all days. Michael Meskes [45]offered to give some talks and Roland Bauerschmidt [46]volunteered for the booth. The time to organize things is very tight, so active people are needed. 44. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu-0301/msg00018.html 45. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu-0301/msg00020.html 46. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu-0301/msg00019.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [47]IMP -- SQL injection. * [48]Bugzilla -- Unauthorized data modification. * [49]dhcp3 -- Arbitrary code execution. * [50]CUPS -- Several vulnerabilities. * [51]CVS -- Arbitrary command execution. 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-229 48. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-230 49. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-231 50. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-232 51. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-233 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently or contain important updates. * [52]aqsis -- Applications implementing the RenderMan Interface. * [53]cbmconvert -- Converts different Commodore file formats between each other. * [54]cgp -- Curses General Player - general player interface for audio formats. * [55]cwdaemon -- Morse daemon for the parallel port. * [56]dchroot -- Execute commands under different root filesystems. * [57]divxcalc -- Bitrate calculator for DivX:-) movies. * [58]drwright -- GNOME 2 program to remind you to take breaks. * [59]dvipdfmx -- DVI to PDF translator with CJK support. * [60]e2recover -- Automated tool for ext2 undeletion. * [61]gnucash-hbci -- Personal finance tracking program. * [62]hinfo -- Check address ownership and DNSBL listings for spam reporting. * [63]muttprofile -- Utility to choose profiles in Mutt. * [64]picalib -- Set of PICA helper scripts and configuration files. * [65]poppass-cgi -- CGI script to interact with a poppassd server. * [66]pyqt-tools -- Pyuic and pylupdate for Qt3. * [67]searchandrescue-common -- Common files and documentation for SearchAndRescue. * [68]sidplay -- Music player for tunes from C64 and C128 (console). * [69]smarteiffel -- The GNU Eiffel compiler. * [70]ts10 -- Emulators for various old computers. * [71]tutos -- The Ultimate Team Organisation Sofware. 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/aqsis.html 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/cbmconvert.html 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/cgp.html 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/hamradio/cwdaemon.html 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/dchroot.html 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/divxcalc.html 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/drwright.html 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/dvipdfmx.html 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/e2recover.html 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gnucash-hbci.html 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/hinfo.html 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/muttprofile.html 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/picalib.html 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/poppass-cgi.html 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/pyqt-tools.html 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/searchandrescue-common.html 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/sidplay.html 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/smarteiffel.html 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/ts10.html 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/tutos.html Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 165 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [72]WNPP pages for the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package. 72. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * blender-powerpc -- Very fast and versatile 3D modeller/renderer. ([73]Bug#176936) * [74]prozgui -- FLTK-based GUI front end for prozilla. ([75]Bug#176771) * [76]xdigger -- A XWindow-game like Boulderdash (without scrolling). ([77]Bug#176934) 73. http://bugs.debian.org/176936 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/prozgui.html 75. http://bugs.debian.org/176771 76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/xdigger.html 77. http://bugs.debian.org/176934 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. Several people are submitting items already, but we are still in need of volunteer writers who prepare items. Please see the [78]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 78. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 79. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
