--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/05/ Debian Weekly News - February 4th, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's fifth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Martin Michlmayr was [1]interviewed (German only) about the Debian project. Jonathan Oxer told us that the Debian [2]Mini-Conf last week was a success with 117 people attending. Internet2 [3]reported that they have improved their previous speed [4]record and transferred two DVD movies at an average speed of more than 923 megabits per second. 1. http://www.linux-fuer-alle.de/doc_show.php?docid=161 2. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0120-linuxconf 3. http://archives.internet2.edu/guest/archives/I2-NEWS/log200301/msg00005.html 4. http://www.debian.org/News/2002/20020522 The Debian Init Script System. Alexander Wirt [5]wondered why Debian doesn't make different use of the runlevels 3 to 5 and he suggested a scheme including all seven runlevels. Matthew P. McGuire mentioned the LSB, which [6]specifies how the runlevels should be used. Henrique de Moraes Holschuh disagreed that it would be simple to change the init script system and pointed at his [7]paper in which he describes in detail the current system and his proposed changes. 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01898.html 6. http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/refspecs/LSB_1.3.0/gLSB/gLSB/runlevels.html 7. http://people.debian.org/~hmh/debconf2/debconf2-initscripts-bkg.ps.gz New Debian Archive Key. Anthony Towns [8]announced the [9]archive key for 2003, which is used to sign the Release file for the main, non-US and security archives. This key can be used with [10]apt-check-sigs to protect your use of apt-get from malicious or exploited mirrors. There are other tools based on this that may be of interest, see Google or the debian-security mailing list archives. Colin Walters and a couple of others have been working on integrating this into apt properly. 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0301/msg00009.html 9. http://ftp-master.debian.org/ziyi_key_2003.asc 10. http://people.debian.org/~ajt/apt-check-sigs Improving Games in Debian. Hwei Sheng Teoh [11]offered to help any Debian Developers who look after games to fix common soundserver related problems. For example, the poor sound management of several games can allow soundserver processes to linger after exit, infinitely chewing up CPU power. Steve Kemp has also [12]noticed a recurring problem with games not properly handling environment variables. 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg02039.html 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg02050.html User Input into the Project Leader Elections. Manoj Srivastava, the Debian Project Secretary, [13]announced that this year's Project Leader debate on IRC will include user input. A [14]discussion has begun on [15]Debian Planet where people are invited to pose questions or offer opinions. The debate panelists will select some of these questions to ask the candidates in the debate. 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0301/msg00011.html 14. http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=902 15. http://www.debianplanet.org/ Debian Logo on virtual Consoles. Dan McCombs wrote a [16]howto in which he describes how to use the [17]linuxlogo for all virtual consoles in order to display the Debian logo on them. The Mini-Howto is written merely for fun and the only purpose it serves is to make your computer look cool. 16. http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=548 17. http://packages.debian.org/linuxlogo OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 for Woody. Adrian Bunk [18]announced that he has backported OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 to woody (stable) using a backported GCC 3.2.1. However, he warns that the [19]packages are only lightly tested and he would welcome any comments. Version 1.0.2 is officially available for i386, powerpc and s390 in Debian unstable. 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-openoffice-0301/msg00169.html 19. http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/packages/ Vote on new Members for the SPI Board. Wichert Akkerman [20]called for votes for [21]new members for the board of directors of [22]Software in the Public Interest, Inc.. During the period from January 25 to February 7 (UTC) contributing members can cast their vote [23]online. People who become contributing members during this period are also eligible to vote and all Debian developers who apply will become contributing members automatically. 20. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2003/000042.html 21. http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/ 22. http://www.spi-inc.org/ 23. https://members.spi-inc.org/vote/ Debian Use in Nicaragua. Georg Lehner [24]reported that Debian is spreading in Central America. Three universities use Debian for routers and servers. A Debian workshop for system administrators from the biggest university, Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua-Managua, just finished. The national engineering university [25]UNI maintains a Debian [26]mirror (i386) and also recently has joined the [27]LinEX project. 24. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/05/mail.wml#1 25. http://www.uni.edu.ni/ 26. http://debian.uni.edu.ni/ 27. http://www.linex.org/ Exim 4.12 for Debian. Sander Smeenk [28]announced that he has created [29]packages for Exim-TLS 4.12. He hesitates to upload them into Debian because of problems that might arise when someone with an insanely difficult exim-tls 3.xx configuration tries to upgrade. Sander asks people to test the packages and report problems and success. 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01896.html 29. http://people.debian.org/~ssmeenk/exim-tls/ Removing the undocumented.7 Manual Page. Bas Zoetekouw [30]plans to file bug reports against all packages that still [31]contain undocumented.7.gz symlinks. There are currently 693 binary packages in sid that still use them. This manpage is obsolete in the current [32]policy. 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00053.html 31. http://people.debian.org/~bas/undocumented 32. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ Project Leader Candidates. After Manoj Srivastava [33]announced the beginning of the project leader election procedure, two Debian developers have nominated so far. The first one was [34]Moshe Zadka, followed by [35]Bdale Garbee. Branden Robinson has not yet decided if he should run again and is [36]soliciting specific feedback by means of the long questionnaire he attached. 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0301/msg00006.html 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0301/msg00008.html 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0302/msg00000.html 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0302/msg00001.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [37]tomcat -- Information exposure and cross site scripting. * [38]courier-ssl -- SQL injection. * [39]hypermail -- Arbitrary code execution. 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-246 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-247 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-248 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently or contain important updates. * [40]ebtables -- Ethernet bridge frame table administration. * [41]fbdesk -- Desktop icons for fluxbox window manager. * [42]manderlbot -- IRC bot, written in erlang. * [43]openmash -- Multimedia tools for multicast from the OpenMASH Project. * [44]paketto -- Unusual TCP/IP testing tools. * [45]wysihtml-el -- Almost real-time previewing system for HTML and DocBook. 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ebtables.html 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/fbdesk.html 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/manderlbot.html 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/openmash.html 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/paketto.html 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/wysihtml-el.html Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 161 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [46]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. 46. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [47]gtick -- GTK-based metronome. ([48]Bug#178979) * [49]tubesock -- Free GTK/GNOME swf flash player written in C. ([50]Bug#179234) * [51]wanpipe -- Configuration utilities for Sangoma S508/S514 WAN cards. ([52]Bug#179392) 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/gtick.html 48. http://bugs.debian.org/178979 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/tubesock.html 50. http://bugs.debian.org/179234 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/wanpipe.html 52. http://bugs.debian.org/179392 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 [53]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 53. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 54. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
