--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/21/ Debian Weekly News - May 25th, 2004 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 21st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. The June [1]issue of the Australian Personal Computer magazine includes a Debian 3.0 DVD and an installation guide. We've been told that users can install Debian seamlessly through [2]Overclockix, another [3]Knoppix variant, as well. 1. http://www.apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/dir/latest 2. http://overclockix.octeams.com/ 3. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/ Debian from Scratch. John Goerzen [4]announced a Debian From Scratch (DFS) rescue or rather installer CD. The CD supports all major filesystems and has the usual, plus some unusual, recovery tools. DFS can be used to do a Gentoo-like installation of i386 woody, i386 sarge, i386 sid, or amd64 sid. John will package the scripts used to build the CD soon. 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01431.html Package Build Errors. Goswin von Brederlow [5]wondered how severe it is for a package not to build on a given architecture because of the use of uname instead of dpkg-architecture. This will fail on architectures where the Debian architecture string differs from the Linux architecture string in the kernel, e.g. when running an i386 system on an amd64 machine. Thiemo Seufer [6]asserted that only a few packages would be affected by this since mipsel also reports mips as Linux architecture, so most of these errors should have been found by now. 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01241.html 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01244.html How to declare versioned Dependencies? Andrew Pollock [7]wondered how to calculate a versioned dependency to a library, because the package doesn't [8]seem to work with an older version of the library. Matt Zimmerman [9]explained that the library package needs to be adjusted with regards to shlibs if it has introduced incompatible changes. 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01250.html 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01270.html 9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01337.html Linux Kernel 2.6.6 for SE/Linux i386. Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [10]announced new Debian kernel image [11]packages for Linux 2.6.6 and [12]SE Linux since he believes that some adventurous people might want to try SE Linux from the latest CVS, but wouldn't necessarily want to go to all the trouble of baking their own kernel. Please follow these [13]instructions as well. 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01310.html 11. http://hands.com/~lkcl/selinux/ 12. http://sf.net/projects/selinux 13. http://selinux.lemuria.org/ Base System Dependencies. Joey Hess [14]complained about developers who still change dependencies in the base system. Each of these changes costs the [15]debian-installer team at least two days of development and testing as they need to get a fixed version of debootstrap into testing. Some time ago the release management team declared a freeze of the base system, but some packages are still being altered. 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01384.html 15. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ Debian Kernel Packaging. William Lee Irwin III [16]announced how the new kernel maintenance group will be composed. It will be lead by him and Al Viro. Additionally, Masanori Goto, Christoph Hellwig and Benjamin Herrenschmidt have offered their help. 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01441.html Debian Kernels for non-x86 Architectures. Troy Benjegerdes [17]started a discussion on how to best support non-i386 architectures with Debian kernels. Christoph Hellwig [18]explained that he would like to see architecture-dependent patches included in the main package. Thiemo Seufer [19]asserted that the real question is how to create kernels from it. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2004/05/msg00037.html 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2004/05/msg00038.html 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2004/05/msg00043.html Spam on the Lists. Pascal Hakim computed some [20]statistics on how much spam is hitting the Debian mailing lists. Currently only about 3.5 % of incoming messages are forwarded on to list subscribers. Each day about 60 thousand spam messages are deleted and almost 1 and a half million emails are delivered to list subscribers. 20. http://www.redellipse.net/stuff/Debian/spam-counts.story Anatomy of the Debian Filesystem. Ivan Savov [21]thought about documenting the path where particular files reside on a Debian system since finding stuff turned out to be a major problem for him after switching from another system. Thereupon readers created the [22]Debian Anatomy document in a Wiki so others could contribute. 21. http://www.debianhelp.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB_14&file=index&action=viewtopic&topic=5045 22. http://www.debianhelp.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpWiki&file=index&pagename=DebianAnatomy Debian Packages a Day redesigned. Andrew Sweger [23]reported that he has redesigned [24]Debian Package a Day, set up a database to manage the postings, and has started loading up new packages from readers suggestions into the queue. He will try to add some commentary on each package in addition to its description to help answer the why question. Please [25]give him feedback. 23. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/15674.html 24. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/ 25. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=debaday Improved Kaffe on the Way. Arnaud Vandyck [26]reported that Debian will be the first distribution to package kaffe 1.1.5, which will be released next week. This version integrates many improvements in gnujaxp, added gjdoc as a javadoc alternative and more. 26. http://www.livejournal.com/users/avdyk/3956.html GNOME 2.6 for Debian unstable. Sebastien Bacher [27]asserted that GNOME 2.6 is indeed ready for an upload into Debian unstable. It has been built on 9 architectures and a tenth is work in progress. The release manager also [28]agreed on this. As a first step, the have [29]uploaded GTK 2.4. 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2004/05/msg00197.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2004/05/msg00204.html 29. http://www.advogato.org/person/seb128/diary.html?start=13 Debian Conference 2004. The Debian project [30]announced this year's [31]Debian Conference which will take place from May 26th to June 5th at SESC in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This is a conference with, by and for Debian developers, interested and sophisticated users. The [32]schedule is composed of talks and birds of a feather sessions. This is a chance for developers to work together in an less formal setting. 30. http://www.debian.org/News/2004/20040524 31. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0526-debconf 32. http://www.debconf.org/debconf4/schedule Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [33]cvs -- Buffer overflow. * [34]neon -- Buffer overflow. * [35]cadaver -- Buffer overflow. * [36]xpcd -- Buffer overflow. 33. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-505 34. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-506 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-507 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-508 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [37]recently or contain important updates. 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [38]cacti-cactid -- Multi-Threading poller for cacti. * [39]wmmaiload -- Dockapp to monitor mails in one or more mail boxes. 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/cacti-cactid 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/wmmaiload Debian Packages introduced last Week. Every day, a different Debian package is [40]featured from the testing distribution. If you know about an obscure package you think others should also know about, send it to [41]Andrew Sweger. Debian package a day introduced the following packages last week. 40. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/ 41. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=debaday * [42]discover -- Hardware identification system. * [43]lftp -- Sophisticated command-line FTP/HTTP client programs. * [44]debian-goodies -- Small toolbox-style utilities for Debian systems. * [45]flightgear -- Flight Gear Flight Simulator. 42. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/15211.html 43. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/15364.html 44. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/16114.html 45. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/16183.html Orphaned Packages. 18 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 174 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]6in4tunnel -- Interactively setup a tunnel to the IPv6 network. ([48]Bug#250072) * [49]bbdate -- Date tool for the blackbox window manager. ([50]Bug#249828) * [51]casu -- Communication and Status Utilities. ([52]Bug#249829) * [53]cpuburn -- A collection of programs to put heavy load on CPU. ([54]Bug#250073) * [55]defrag -- Ext2, Minix and xiafs filesystem defragmenter. ([56]Bug#249830) * [57]dosemu -- The Linux DOS Emulator and the VGA font for. ([58]Bug#249718) * [59]dosemu-freedos -- FreeDOS package for DOSEMU. ([60]Bug#249719) * [61]gg2 -- GNU Instant Messenger with plug-in support - core. ([62]Bug#250078) * [63]gnomba -- GNOME Samba browser. ([64]Bug#249831) * [65]imwheel -- Program to support the "wheel" on most new mice. ([66]Bug#249533) * [67]kernel-patch-usagi -- Another IPv6 implementation for Linux. ([68]Bug#250447) * [69]lesstif1-1 -- OSF/Motif 1.2 implementation released under LGPL. ([70]Bug#249708) * [71]netleds-applet -- GNOME network LEDs applet. ([72]Bug#249834) * [73]nfs-user-server -- User space NFS server. ([74]Bug#249715) * [75]vrfy -- Verify electronic mail addresses. ([76]Bug#249717) * [77]widestudio -- Multi platform C++ IDE for x11. ([78]Bug#250327) * [79]xpm4.7 -- X PixMap library, compiled with libc5. ([80]Bug#249833) 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/6in4tunnel 48. http://bugs.debian.org/250072 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/bbdate 50. http://bugs.debian.org/249828 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/casu 52. http://bugs.debian.org/249829 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/cpuburn 54. http://bugs.debian.org/250073 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/defrag 56. http://bugs.debian.org/249830 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/dosemu 58. http://bugs.debian.org/249718 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/dosemu-freedos 60. http://bugs.debian.org/249719 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/gg2 62. http://bugs.debian.org/250078 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gnomba 64. http://bugs.debian.org/249831 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/imwheel 66. http://bugs.debian.org/249533 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kernel-patch-usagi 68. http://bugs.debian.org/250447 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/lesstif1 70. http://bugs.debian.org/249708 71. http://packages.debian.org/stable/net/netleds-applet 72. http://bugs.debian.org/249834 73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/nfs-user-server 74. http://bugs.debian.org/249715 75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/vrfy 76. http://bugs.debian.org/249717 77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/widestudio 78. http://bugs.debian.org/250327 79. http://packages.debian.org/stable/oldlibs/xpm4.7 80. http://bugs.debian.org/249833 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [81]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 81. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 82. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
