--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/44/ Debian Weekly News - November 1st, 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 44th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Nathanael Nerode [1]reported that current GCC versions support the old i386 processor again and hence Debian could retain i386 compatibility in the upcoming [2]etch release. 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00388.html 2. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/ Calculating Development Package Dependencies. Jay Berkenbilt [3]proposed to work on a [4]debhelper script that helps calculating [5]libtool dependencies for development packages. Goswin von Brederlow [6]pointed out that with [7]multiarch there may be concurrent .la files to handle. No consensus in favour of such a script was reached. Junichi Uekawa [8]mentioned the [9]d-shlibs package that contains scripts to support the maintainer in this regard. 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00184.html 4. http://packages.debian.org/debhelper 5. http://packages.debian.org/libtool 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00519.html 7. http://raw.no/debian/amd64-multiarch-2 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00316.html 9. http://packages.debian.org/d-shlibs New OpenSSL Package. Christoph Martin has uploaded a new upstream version of [10]OpenSSL and Aurelien Jarno [11]provided a list of more than 300 packages that will have to be rebuilt. Jonas Meurer [12]added maintainer names to it. Henrique Holschuh [13]asked for versioned symbols for this library since it would cure the problem of linking against more than one version of the library. 10. http://packages.debian.org/openssl 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00383.html 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00372.html 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00226.html Berlinux Event Report. Meike Reichle wrote a [14]report about the [15]Berlinux exhibition and conference that took place in Berlin, Germany at the end of last month. Members of the Debian project ran a booth and gave several talks that were directly or indirectly related to Debian. The booth featured a Debian controlled model railway from Frank Ronneburg and a Nokia 770 from Wolfgang Borgert. 14. http://www.debian.org/events/2005/1021-berlinux-report 15. http://www.debian.org/events/2005/1021-berlinux Effort to alter RFC Licensing. Simon Josefsson [16]started an [17]effort to influence the [18]IETF to change the copying conditions on RFCs to make them more Free Software friendly. He is looking for signatures from Free Software developers to support his proposed license change. 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00214.html 17. http://josefsson.org/bcp78broken/ 18. http://www.ietf.org/ Automatic Building Kernel Modules. Russ Allbery [19]wondered how to deal with a [20]request against the [21]openafs-modules-source to automatically build kernel modules when the kernel is updated. Building kernel modules separately from the source package is a very bad idea since they can't be easily updated by the security team. Andres Salomon [22]added that the infrastructure for a package to build -source packages hasn't been implemented yet. 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00273.html 20. http://bugs.debian.org/168852 21. http://packages.debian.org/openafs-modules-source 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00382.html Automatic Test Suite Results Forwarding. Florian Ragwitz [23]wondered how a package could emit the results of the test suite to the upstream developers. The test suite is run during the build stage of the package and is a helpful resource for the developers. Daniel Jacobowitz [24]proposed to display the results during the build so they will end up in the build logs, which are publically available. 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00426.html 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00428.html GTK+ Icon Cache Discussion. Josselin Mouette is [25]seeking input on handling icons caches in the GTK+ library since traversing the entire directory tree is time consuming. When the cache is not rebuilt for recently added icons, the corresponding programs can't start as usual. 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00455.html Postinst Check for Package Status. Frank Küster [26]wondered if there is an established method for the postinst script to determine the status of another package in order to prevent a second invocation of a time [27]consuming program. He [28]stated that the Zope packages already try to implement a general post-hook mechnism with APT. Ben Armstrong [29]quoted a snippet from the [30]libc6 postinst that solves the original problem. 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00463.html 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00467.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00655.html 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00470.html 30. http://packages.debian.org/libc6 GNOME Meta Package Dependencies. Arthur Edwards [31]complained about the [32]gnome meta package depending on the [33]gnome-games package since in some government environments games are prohibited. Ben Armstrong [34]noted that one doesn't benefit from future goodies if the meta package is removed, even though it is not essential. 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00468.html 32. http://packages.debian.org/gnome 33. http://packages.debian.org/gnome-games 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/10/msg00475.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * DSA 872: [35]koffice -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 873: [36]net-snmp -- Denial of service. * DSA 874: [37]lynx -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 875: [38]openssl094 -- Cryptographic weakness. * DSA 876: [39]lynx-ssl -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 877: [40]gnump3d -- Several vulnerabilities. * DSA 878: [41]netpbm-free -- Arbitrary code execution. 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-872 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-873 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-874 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-875 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-876 40. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-877 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-878 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [42]recently or contain important updates. 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [43]abakus -- Calculator for KDE. * [44]eclipse-base -- Eclipse distribution base. * [45]evms-bootdebug -- Enterprise Volume Management System (boot-time debugger). * [46]gtkorphan -- Graphical tool to find and remove orphaned libraries. * [47]iasl -- Intel ASL compiler/decompiler. * [48]ksubtile -- Subtitle editor for KDE. * [49]pngnq -- Tool for optimising PNG (Portable Network Graphics) images. * [50]poker2d -- GTK poker client to play on a poker-network server. * [51]tomcat5 -- Java Servlet 2.4 engine with JSP 2.0 support. * [52]usermode -- Graphical tools for certain user account management tasks. * [53]vblade -- Virtual AoE blade emulator. * [54]zim -- Desktop Wiki. 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/abakus 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/eclipse-base 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/evms-bootdebug 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/gtkorphan 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/iasl 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/ksubtile 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/pngnq 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/poker2d 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/tomcat5 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/usermode 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/vblade 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/zim Orphaned Packages. 9 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 206 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [55]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. 55. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [56]gtk2-engines-wonderland -- Wonderland theme for GTK+ 2.0. ([57]Bug#335918) * [58]libhtml-htmltokenizer-ruby -- Simple HTML tokenizer/parser for Ruby. ([59]Bug#335700) * [60]libxml-ruby -- Ruby interface to libxml. ([61]Bug#335698) * [62]libxslt-ruby -- Ruby interface to libxslt. ([63]Bug#335699) * [64]lmodern -- Scalable PostScript fonts for european character sets. ([65]Bug#335899) * [66]netmon-applet -- GNOME2 Network Load Applet. ([67]Bug#335916) * [68]pyxmms -- Python interface to XMMS. ([69]Bug#335900) * [70]pyxmms-remote -- Command-line interface to XMMS. ([71]Bug#335901) * [72]sysv-rc-conf -- SysV init runlevel configuration tool for the terminal. ([73]Bug#335790) 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gtk2-engines-wonderland 57. http://bugs.debian.org/335918 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/libhtml-htmltokenizer-ruby 59. http://bugs.debian.org/335700 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/libxml-ruby1.8 61. http://bugs.debian.org/335698 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/libxslt-ruby1.8 63. http://bugs.debian.org/335699 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/lmodern 65. http://bugs.debian.org/335899 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/netmon-applet 67. http://bugs.debian.org/335916 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/python-xmms 69. http://bugs.debian.org/335900 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/pyxmms-remote 71. http://bugs.debian.org/335901 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/sysv-rc-conf 73. http://bugs.debian.org/335790 Removed Packages. 11 packages have been [74]removed from the Debian archive during the past week: 74. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt * libtool1.4 -- Generic library support script (obsolete version) [75]Bug#266387: Request of QA, obsolete version * libfilesys-diskfree-perl -- Perl interface to df [76]Bug#273907: Request of QA, orphaned, better alternatives * langband -- Langband term-libs [77]Bug#297426: Request of QA, orphaned, few users, has never been part of a stable release * xfs-xtt -- X-TrueType font server [78]Bug#314882: Request of QA, superseded by X.Org, RC-buggy * rx320 -- Control a Ten-Tec RX-320 receiver [79]Bug#328667: Request of QA, unused, out of date * xtet42 -- Tetris for X, supports one or 2 players [80]Bug#328799: Request of QA, unused, old, alternatives available * xezmlm -- Ezmlm mailing list configuration tool for the X Window System [81]Bug#332366: Request of maintainer, depends on removed package (ezmlm) * libapache2-mod-jk2 -- Apache 2.0 connector for the Tomcat Java servlet engine [82]Bug#333884: Request of maintainer, dead upstream; RC buggy; superseded by libapache2-mod-jk * ifp-line -- Command line tool to access iRiver iFP audio players [83]Bug#334018: Request of maintainer, obsoleted by ifp-line-libifp * gb -- Gnome Basic - VB compatible Basic for GNOME [84]Bug#334174: Request of maintainer, abandoned upstream; superseded by monos BASIC components * golem -- Lightweight X11 Window Manager [85]Bug#334777: Request of maintainer, outdated; dead upstream 75. http://bugs.debian.org/266387 76. http://bugs.debian.org/273907 77. http://bugs.debian.org/297426 78. http://bugs.debian.org/314882 79. http://bugs.debian.org/328667 80. http://bugs.debian.org/328799 81. http://bugs.debian.org/332366 82. http://bugs.debian.org/333884 83. http://bugs.debian.org/334018 84. http://bugs.debian.org/334174 85. http://bugs.debian.org/334777 Want to continue reading DWN? 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