--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/36/ Debian Weekly News - September 6th, 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 36th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Christoph Berg [1]created a Debian [2]quiz where you can test your knowledge about Debian's distribution, people, mailing lists, etc. So far, about 1600 people have participated. After their summer holidays 16,000 pupils in northern Italy (south Tyrol) will find their 2,460 classroom computers [3]migrated to a customised, multi-language [4]derivative of Debian GNU/Linux. 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-curiosa/2005/08/msg00020.html 2. http://www.df7cb.de/debian/quiz/ 3. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2079183879.html 4. http://www.fuss.bz.it/ KDE Transition Status. Adeodato Simó [5]reported that the archive now contains versions of qt-x11-free, aRts, and kdelibs for all architectures that depend on the new C++ library. Therefore he asked developers to update the packages that depend on one of these libraries and enclosed a list of maintainers and packages. 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/09/msg00000.html License for Wiki Content. Geert Stappers [6]wondered which license should be used for the [7]content of a Wiki system, which is intended to be modified and improved by others. Nathanael Nerode [8]explained that Debian is working with the [9]Creative Commons people on a draft of a new version of their license that should be DFSG-free, since the current one isn't. Andrew Suffield [10]proposed to use the MIT license unless there is a really good reason not to do so. 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00070.html 7. http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/ 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00078.html 9. http://www.creativecommons.org/ 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00101.html Using the PHP License for Packages. Charles Fry [11]noticed that the current version of the [12]PHP license (version 3.0) contains several clauses which are specific to the PHP language, and either inapplicable or even problematic for applications written in PHP. Francesco Poli [13]suggested to use the 2-clause BSD license and use the PHP license only for PHP itself. 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00190.html 12. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/36/www.php.net/license/3_0.txt 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00233.html Curl reverts to OpenSSL. Domenico Andreoli [14]announced that he has paused the plan to link [15]curl library against [16]GNU TLS instead of [17]OpenSSL which he considered after license concerns. The upstream developer was [18]not happy to restrict the binary packages to either libraries since their implementations contain partially different features. 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00314.html 15. http://packages.debian.org/libcurl3 16. http://packages.debian.org/libgnutls11 17. http://packages.debian.org/libssl0.9.7 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00367.html Purging Database Data? Philipp Kern [19]wondered under which circumstances user-supplied data should be removed upon package removal. Joey Hess [20]confirmed that using debconf during postrm purge is fine as long as the script checks whether [21]debconf is installed and falls back to reasonable behaviour if it isn't. 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00318.html 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00390.html 21. http://packages.debian.org/debconf New Runlevel Design. Timo Aaltonen [22]wondered if there were plans to change the runlevel concept more into the direction of the [23]Linux Standard Base. John Hasler [24]asserted that most probably there won't be a change into supporting multiple multi-user runlevels. Hamish Moffatt [25]explained the emergency mode which is what several people [26]expect as single-user mode. 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00596.html 23. http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/runlevels.html 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00609.html 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00689.html 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00613.html Notification on API Changes. Marc Brockschmidt [27]asked developers to notify others when the application program interface (API) is changed in a new version. Ron Johnson [28]pointed out that apt-rdepends works fine for normal reverse dependencies. Kurt Roeckx [29]added a means to discover the reverse build-dependencies of a package. 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00660.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00669.html 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00784.html Quality of the README File. Wolfgang Borgert [30]gave several examples of confusing, irrelevant, redundant, or useless README files distributed in Debian packages. He asked maintainers to not include the upstream README file in the binary package, if it's not really important to the user and strip irrelevant information otherwise. 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00705.html Differing Library Memory Consumption. Stephane Chauveau [31]noticed that a self-compiled GTK library consumes less (140 kB) memory for non-static data than the one provided by Debian. Thiemo Seufer [32]explained that this does not matter due to copy-on-write done by the kernel. The reason for this is still unknown. 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2005/08/msg00076.html 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01556.html Debian QA Meeting. Martin Zobel-Helas [33]reported about the Debian QA [34]meeting that will take place at the Technical University of Darmstadt from the 9th to the 11th of September. The attendants will give talks on various topics such as portability issues, the installer, lintian, autotools, new maintainer, collaborative maintenance and others. 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2005/08/msg00085.html 34. http://wiki.ftbfs.de/ftbfs/DebianQaMeeting Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * DSA 792: [35]pstotext -- Arbitrary command execution. * DSA 793: [36]sqwebmail -- Cross-site scripting. * DSA 794: [37]polygen -- Denial of service. * DSA 795: [38]proftpd -- Format string vulnerability. * DSA 796: [39]affix -- Remote command execution. * DSA 797: [40]zsync -- Denial of service. * DSA 798: [41]phpgroupware -- Several vulnerabilities. * DSA 799: [42]webcalendar -- Remote code execution. * DSA 800: [43]pcre3 -- Arbitrary command execution. * DSA 801: [44]ntp -- Group id confusion. 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-792 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-793 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-794 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-795 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-796 40. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-797 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-798 42. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-799 43. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-800 44. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-801 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [45]recently or contain important updates. 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [46]binfmtc -- Execute C program as script. * [47]bootchart -- Boot process performance analyser. * [48]cl-cedilla -- Best-effort Unicode text printer. * [49]cowdancer -- Copy-on-write directory tree utility. * [50]driconf -- DRI configuration GUI. * [51]fldiff -- Graphical diff program. * [52]fteqcc -- FTE QuakeC compiler. * [53]gparted -- GNOME partition editor. * [54]gpass -- Password manager for GNOME2. * [55]imview -- Image viewing and analysis application. * [56]ipodder -- Podcast receiver. * [57]jwm -- Very small lightweight pure X11 window manager with tray and menus. * [58]kbstate -- Keyboard status applet for KDE. * [59]kdesvn -- Subversion client with tight KDE integration. * [60]kiki -- Tool for Python regular expression testing. * [61]kode -- Helper library for programmatic generation of C++ code. * [62]ksayit -- Frontend for the KDE Text-to-Speech system. * [63]kttsd -- Text-to-Speech system for KDE. * [64]kvirc2 -- Fully scriptable graphical IRC client with plugin support. * [65]mpdscribble -- Last.fm reporting client for mpd. * [66]mydms -- Open source document management system based on PHP and MySQL. * [67]networkstatus -- KDE network status monitor. * [68]psignifit -- Fitting and testing hypotheses about psychometric functions. * [69]pype -- Python programmers editor. * [70]qd -- Double-double and quad double types in C++ and F90. * [71]spe -- Stani's Python Editor. * [72]vncommand -- VNC server which monitors a specified program. * [73]webgen -- Template based static website generator. 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/binfmtc 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bootchart 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/cl-cedilla 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/cowdancer 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/driconf 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/fldiff 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/fteqcc 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gparted 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gpass 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/imview 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ipodder 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/jwm 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kbstate 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kdesvn 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/kiki 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kode 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/ksayit 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kttsd 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/kvirc2 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/mpdscribble 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/mydms 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/networkstatus 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/psignifit 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/pype 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libqd2.1.142 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/spe 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/vncommand 73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/webgen Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 203 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [74]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. 74. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [75]konq-speaker -- Text-to-speech plugins for Konqueror and Kate. ([76]Bug#325996) * [77]qbble -- XMMS playlist manager with search support. ([78]Bug#325995) * [79]wmfire -- Very cool fiery way of showing your CPU usage. ([80]Bug#326779) 75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/konq-speaker 76. http://bugs.debian.org/325996 77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/xmms-qbble 78. http://bugs.debian.org/325995 79. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/wmfire 80. http://bugs.debian.org/326779 Removed Packages. 8 packages have been [81]removed from the Debian archive during the past week: 81. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt * pdfscreen -- Make PDF documents which are printable and readable on screen too [82]Bug#214928: Request of QA, orphaned, no longer used by anything * kernellab -- Manage kernel configurations for many machines easily [83]Bug#264219: Request of maintainer, no upstream, doesn't work with current kernels * openduke -- Duke Nukem 3D map viewer [84]Bug#314675: Request of QA, orphaned, RC bugs, limited functionality, in contrib * python-rrd -- Python bindings for RRD [85]Bug#323208: Request of maintainer, obsolete; now included in rrdtool source * cfdisk-utf8 -- Small UTF8 capable version of cfdisk [86]Bug#323769: Request of maintainer, obsolete * kcd -- CD player applet for KDE Kicker [87]Bug#325992: Request of maintainer, buggy, dead upstream, redundant in KDE 3.4 * kmerlin -- Instant messaging (IM) client for the MSN messenger network [88]Bug#326086: Request of maintainer, dead upstream, buggy, alternatives exist, like kopete, gaim * bsmtpd -- Batched SMTP mailer for sendmail and postfix [89]Bug#326118: Request of maintainer, buggy, dead upstream, hardly used 82. http://bugs.debian.org/214928 83. http://bugs.debian.org/264219 84. http://bugs.debian.org/314675 85. http://bugs.debian.org/323208 86. http://bugs.debian.org/323769 87. http://bugs.debian.org/325992 88. http://bugs.debian.org/326086 89. http://bugs.debian.org/326118 Want to continue reading DWN? 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