--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/23/ Debian Weekly News - June 18th, 2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's twentythird issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. We're sorry that you've had to survive two weeks without an issue of Debian Weekly News, but since Joey is the only main editor, and was unavailable for a while, it had to be postponed. From now on DWN will be released on Tuesday (probably a little bit earlier than today), so [1]LWN will get a chance to refer to a current version in their weekly report. 1. http://lwn.net/ New Security Build Infrastructure. Anthony Towns [2]reported about how security updates will be handled in the future. The security archive will be converted to make use of katie, the general archive janitor, and packages will be rebuild by buildd's just as if they were normal packages. The mail contains detailed instructions. 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0206/msg00002.html Release Status Update. Anthony Towns sent an [3]update for the Woody release. He emphasizes that we're not entirely done developing Woody. Anthony also encourages developers to poke around at Woody and fix the remaining severe problems. He asks if there are any major issues that desperately need to be addressed before we release? 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0206/msg00003.html Unofficial Woody MiniCD Images. Chris Lawrence [4]reported that he updated the [5]LordSutch.com MiniCD images for alpha, i386, m68k, and PowerPC to the current state of Woody. The main change is the upgrade of dpkg and the addition of ipppd for the benefit of ISDN users. The images are small enough to burn to a 8 cm (3 inch) CD-R/RW, and contain enough packages to install a functional version of Debian Woody without going to the net. 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd-0206/msg00046.html 5. http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/debian-minicd/ Gibraltar Firewall. Joey [6]reported about the [7]Gibraltar project that aims to produce a Debian GNU/Linux-based router and firewall package, which will be bootable directly from a CD-ROM. Their lead developer, Rene Mayrhofer, is a Debian guy, and the source code for this project is available for download. 6. http://www.debian.org/News/2002/20020613 7. http://www.gibraltar.at/ Debian in your Home Stereo Component? It's been [8]said on linuxdevices.com that SONICblue's [9]Rio Central is derived from that of the Rio (formerly [10]empeg) car player, which was developed from an early version of the Debian/ARM port using a [11]StrongARM SA1110 system-on-chip processor. Rio Central is a high-fidelity home stereo component that stores up to 650 CDs on its built-in hard drive. SONICblue describes the Rio Central as being "As simple to use as a CD player, but as smart as a PC". 8. http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9481439159.html 9. http://www.sonicblue.com/audio/rio/rio_audiocenter.asp 10. http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5630105143.html 11. http://www.linuxdevices.com/products/PD7399900675.html Debian at Berliner Linux Infotage? In September another GNU/Linux show is arranged in Berlin, Germany. It is planned to have talks about GNU/Linux in governmental agencies, in the network and at the desktop scheduled during [12]Berliner Linux Infotage. Interested people should check the [13]Call for Papers (even though the submission period is over) and get in touch with the organisers. 12. http://www.linuxinfotage.de/ 13. http://www.linuxinfotage.de/cfp.htm Debian at Linux.conf.au 2003? James Bromberger informed us about [14]Linux.conf.au 2003, which will take place at the University of Western Australia in Perth from January 22nd to 25th. The [15]Call for Papers is still running, so you can submit abstracts for talks covering Debian. If you would like to run a [16]BoF session instead, please also get in touch with the organisers. There is also a good chance that there will be another Debian mini-conf run on the 20th and 21st of January 2003. 14. http://conf.linux.org.au/ 15. http://conf.linux.org.au/cfp.html 16. http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/events/bof.html Debian Developer Survey. Matt McClanahan [17]asked for a minute of time from Debian package maintainers to help [18]collecting some information. The survey is anonymous and basically asks demographic information that will be used in class to look for correlations. Matt plans to publish the results later. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02998.html 18. http://www.dodds.net/~cardinal/survey/ Debian project at LinuxTag 2002. The Debian project participated in this year's [19]LinuxTag show. We were lucky to maintain a large booth and used a beamer as eye catcher to attract visitors, which worked well. The booth staff gave away free [20]Woody CDs, sold mugs and t-shirts and organized a one-day conference for Debian people. Jon Åslund released a [21]diary together with some [22]pictures. During the show, Joey was invited as Debian representative in an [23]online discussion about the [24]UnitedLinux effort. 19. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0606-linuxtag 20. http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/events/LinuxTag2002/cd.html 21. http://www.d.kth.se/~d98-jas/karlsruhe/index.php?2002-06-12 22. http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/events/LinuxTag2002/pictures.html 23. http://www.heise.de/chat/archiv/02/06/07/ 24. http://www.unitedlinux.com/ Debian at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Roadshow. The Debian project has been invited to participate at this year's [EMAIL PROTECTED] shows. The show travels around and stops in important European cities. This exhibition and conference is dedicated entirely to business people who do or do not plan to use GNU/Linux. Some special solutions will be shown as well as general efforts. Andreas Schmehl wrote a report for the [26]Frankfurt show, Wouter Verhelst wrote one for the [27]Brussels event and Federico Di Gregorio sent in a report about the [28]Milano show. 25. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0605-linuxatwork 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu-0206/msg00122.html 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu-0206/msg00128.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu-0206/msg00150.html CPU optimized Debian builds? Every once in a while, the [29]question pops up why Debian does not support pentium-optimised or athlon-optimised binaries for that particular processor. However, as Michael Stone [30]points out nobody did some research to [31]back up the idea of things running significantly faster. Daniel Burrows also [32]noted that we don't provide an optimised glibc due to unforseen bugs with its optimisation. 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02210.html 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02220.html 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02237.html 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02258.html Best Packaging Practices, Act II. Raphaël Hertzog [33]announced that he has an initial list of Best Packaging Practices, which he would like to document within the [34]developers' reference. He created empty sections in the [35]CVS version and is looking for volunteers to write the texts of those. 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02307.html 34. http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ 35. http://cvs.debian.org/ddp/manuals.sgml/developers-reference/?cvsroot=debian-doc Whishlist for after Woody. Erich Schubert [36]started a discussion about things that he (and others) would like to see supported by the next release, i.e. after Woody. The compiled list is stored [37]here and contains quite a lot of items, such as package tags, support for UTF-8, a modified release proposal, the Hurd and IPv6 among others. 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02497.html 37. http://people.debian.org/~erich/woody+1/ New Dictionaries Policy Proposal. Agustín Martín Domingo [38]announced a proposal for the "Debian Spelling Dictionaries and Tools Policy", as well as the new dictionaries-common package, which will provide the infrastructure to implement it. This is an announcement for all interested users and developers. The proposed system deals with ispell dictionaries and wordlist packages. Comments should be sent to [39]Agustín directly. 38. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02856.html 39. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] UKUUG Linux Developer Conference 2002. Robert McQueen [40]informed us about the upcoming [41]UKUUG Linux Developers' Conference 2002 which will take place in Bristol between Thursday the 4th and Sunday the 7th of July, and features a range of interesting talks from a big number of well-known free software and open source personalities. The Debian project will be present with a booth within the ".ORG" stand. 40. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg02988.html 41. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0704-ukuug Uninstallable Packages in Woody. Santiago Vila [42]reported about packages in the Woody distribution which are currently not installable due to one or another bug. It is, however, not unlikely that some of these problems were inherited from the Potato release long ago and haven't been fixed yet. For those, who would like to fix such problems, there are lists of unmet dependencies in [43]Woody and [44]Sid as well as [45]Santiago's pages and the [46]QA system. 42. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0205/msg03152.html 43. http://master.debian.org/~wakkerma/unmet-woody.html 44. http://ftp-master.debian.org/unmet-sid.html 45. http://ftp-master.debian.org/~sanvila/dependency-checks/ 46. http://qa.debian.org/debcheck.php Woody Release Announcement. Joey Hess sent in a last [47]call for comments for the upcoming release announcement. If you feel that something is missing or a paragraph is misleading, please get in touch with [48]Joey Hess directly. 47. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0206/msg00613.html 48. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The Automake Saga... Joseph Carter took the opportunity and released a detailed [49]description of the current situation with regard to automake and autoconf. Because of incompatibilities in automake 1.5 the version for Woody has been reverted to version 1.4 so configure scripts for source packages in that distribution won't break. Joseph proposes to drop automake 1.5 in favour of version 1.6 since they are compatible at least. 49. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0206/msg00886.html Developer's Guide to Security Updates. Wichert Akkerman, member of the security team of Debian, released a [50]document that describes how the new security infrastructure ought to work. If a maintainer needs to upload a security fix for a released distribution, the upload needs to be made to security.debian.org directly (and not to the main archive) or via the security team as before. 50. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0206/msg00004.html Debian on the Sharp Zaurus. Matt Zimmerman recently had the good [51]fortune of having one of these delightful little toys come into his possession. Matt is interested in creating a full-featured Debian environment for the Zaurus, with all the trimmings (including package management with dpkg and apt). Philip Blundell pointed to the [52]GPE effort which also uses Debian as base distribution apparently. 51. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0206/msg01032.html 52. http://gpe.handhelds.org/ Design of an apt-src Program. Joey Hess [53]started to design a tool that intends to eliminate the need for binary source packages (like tetex-src) and to support build dependencies for source packages. It will need something like a status file to list installed source trees together with their location and version. The tools should work for any user and not only the superuser. 53. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0206/msg01110.html SE Linux Play Machine. Russell Coker [54]announced that he set up a machine running SE Linux (with security enhancements) and a known root password. SE Linux uses capabilities and special security levels. As a result, you can't damage the system as root. If you ever wanted to know how SE Linux feels, just try it out. 54. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0206/msg01187.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [55]UUCP -- String truncation problem. * [56]ethereal -- Memory allocation error. 55. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-129 56. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-130 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the Debian archive recently or contain important updates. * [57]atapci -- Displays /proc/ide/ chipset specific information. * [58]automake1.6 -- A tool for generating GNU Standards-compliant Makefiles. * [59]cpcieject -- Userspace daemon for cpcieject kernel driver. * [60]david -- A C/C++ code editor for GNOME. * [61]fags -- AudioGalaxy client for Unices. * [62]gael -- Gnome application for electrical circuits. * [63]generator -- Genesis emulator. * [64]gg-kde -- An instant messenger compatible with Gadu Gadu - KDE version. * [65]glade-2 -- GTK+ 2 User Interface Builder. * [66]gnomemeeting2 -- H323 Compatible Netmeeting clone for the Gnome Desktop. * [67]gnump3d -- A streaming server for MP3 and OGG files. * [68]gshield -- Firewall script based on iptables. * [69]hearse -- Exchange Nethack bones files with other users. * [70]linda -- Debian package checker, not unlike lintian. * [71]mklibs -- Shared library reduction script. * [72]moobot -- A modular IRC bot written in Python. * [73]openh323gk -- H.323 gatekeeper. * [74]pinball -- The Emilia Pinball Emulator. * [75]python-jabber -- Python library for the Jabber instant messaging platform. * [76]qemacs -- Small emacs clone editor with docbook editing support. * [77]restartd -- Process checker and/or restarter. * [78]rosegarden4 -- Music Editor and MIDI/Audio Sequencer. * [79]simpleproxy -- Simple TCP socket proxy. * [80]sjeng -- A chess program that plays many variants. * [81]unlambda -- Tiny functional programming language using combinators. * [82]vimacs -- Emacs emulation for Vim. * [83]wmget -- Background download manager in a Window Maker dock app. * [84]xdfssrv -- Network server for XDFS (xdelta2) volumes. * [85]xmlto -- XML-to-any converter. * [86]zec -- Z-Shell Empire client. 57. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/admin/atapci.html 58. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/automake1.6.html 59. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/admin/cpcieject.html 60. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/editors/david.html 61. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/fags.html 62. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/electronics/gael.html 63. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/games/generator.html 64. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/gg-kde.html 65. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/glade-2.html 66. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/comm/gnomemeeting2.html 67. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/sound/gnump3d.html 68. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/gshield.html 69. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/games/hearse.html 70. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/linda.html 71. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/mklibs.html 72. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/moobot.html 73. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/non-us/openh323gk.html 74. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/games/pinball.html 75. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/python-jabber.html 76. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/editors/qemacs.html 77. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/utils/restartd.html 78. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/sound/rosegarden4.html 79. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/simpleproxy.html 80. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/games/sjeng.html 81. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/interpreters/unlambda.html 82. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/editors/vimacs.html 83. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/x11/wmget.html 84. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/net/xdfssrv.html 85. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/text/xmlto.html 86. http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/games/zec.html Orphaned Packages. Two packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 78 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [87]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. 87. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [88]gravitywars -- Clone of Gravity Force, for SVGA. ([89]Bug#149933) * [90]w-bassman -- An alternative "w" command. ([91]Bug#149934) 88. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/gravitywars.html 89. http://bugs.debian.org/149933 90. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/w-bassman.html 91. http://bugs.debian.org/149934 Seen something interesting? Please drop us a note whenever you see something noteworthy that you think is appropriate for inclusion in DWN. We don't see everything, unfortunately, and this month will be a busy one for us. Of course, we are also thankful for completely written items from volunteer writers. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 92. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
