--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/22/ Debian Weekly News - May 29th, 2006 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 22nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Joey Hess has produced a [1]detailed explanation and HOWTO for secure apt in Debian. Martin Michlmayr [2]reported about this year's [3]FOSDEM event and noted that there seems to be a six month delay before a new applicant is assigned an Application Manager which hinders the big-endian ARM port. 1. http://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt 2. http://www.cyrius.com/journal/travel/crazy-fosdem 3. http://www.debian.org/events/2006/0225-fosdem Creating a Debian Layout for Desktops. Luis Matos [4]asked for a Debian theme layout to [5]improve the [6]user experience of the Debian desktop. The theme should include a background image, splash screens and [7]icons. He also proposed a guided contest to be organised. 4. http://bugs.debian.org/368594 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2006/05/msg00007.html 6. http://bugs.debian.org/288393 7. http://bugs.debian.org/368599 Debian IRC moving to OFTC. Steve McIntyre [8]announced that the Debian project will move the Alias irc.debian.org over to the [9]Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) network on June 4th, since many discussions have been moved to OFTC already. OFTC is also a sister organisation of Debian, as both are supported and represented by [10]Software in the Public Interest, Inc. The Debian project has been using the [11]Freenode IRC network for many years. 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/05/msg00012.html 9. http://www.oftc.net/ 10. http://www.spi-inc.org/ 11. http://freenode.net/ Debian Projects accepted for Summer of Code. Baruch Even [12]reported that nine Debian projects have been accepted for Google's [13]Summer of Code. The plan is that students who have a blog or setup one for the Summer of Code will be added to [14]Planet Debian so everyone can follow their progress on their quest to help Debian improve. 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/05/msg00263.html 13. http://code.google.com/soc/ 14. http://planet.debian.org/ Optimising the Boot Time. Margarita Manterola [15]gave a talk at [16]DebConf6 about possible improvements to the booting of Debian systems. From her conclusions and audiences remarks, she [17]wondered if init scripts could use [18]dash instead of bash (it saves a 10 % of boot time) and [19]asked about the necessity of running depmod at boot-time. As a result, Marco d'Itri [20]proposed to remove depmod from the [21]module-init-tools init script. 15. https://debconf6.debconf.org/comas/general/proposals/77 16. http://www.debian.org/events/2006/0514-debconf 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/05/msg02063.html 18. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/shells/dash 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/05/msg02081.html 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/05/msg02487.html 21. http://packages.debian.org/module-init-tools Supporting Solaris/i386. Eras Benson [22]provided a patch for [23]dpkg to support a Solaris-based system since [24]Sun Microsystems Inc. has opened up its kernel. In response Josselin Mouette [25]wondered whether the legal situation of dpkg being linked with a GPL-incompatible C library has been fixed. Russ Allbery [26]explained that the special exception of the [27]GNU GPL that allows linking and distribution against a GPL-incompatible library only applies if the binaries are not accompanied with the operating system itself. 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/04/msg00064.html 23. http://packages.debian.org/dpkg 24. http://www.sun.com/ 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/04/msg00067.html 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/04/msg00081.html 27. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html Debian Project at FrOSCon. Martin Zobel-Helas [28]reported that the Debian project will be participating in the [29]Free and Open Source Conference (FrOSCon) to be held on the 24th and 25th of June in Sankt Augustin (Germany). On the 24th there will be a Debian sub-conference. Martin is seeking speakers who want to deliver talks about Debian itself and Debian technologies in particular. 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2006/05/msg00009.html 29. http://www.froscon.org/wiki/FrOSCon Creative Commons 3.0 License Suite Draft. Evan Prodromou [30]announced that there is a [31]public draft of the [32]Creative Commons 3.0 license suite. Evan asserted that the main changes to these licenses has been to bring them in line with the [33]DFSG and to make at least the Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licenses compatible with the DFSG and acceptable for Debian. 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2006/05/msg00102.html 31. http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-May/003557.html 32. http://www.creativecommons.org/ 33. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Bug Squashing Marathon. Martin Zoble-Helas [34]announced three bug squashing [35]parties with particular themes to be organised this fall in order to help the release of [36]etch. In August the [37]debian-installer shall be tested and bugs in the installation process shall be fixed. In September upgrades from pre-release etch and sarge are to be reviewed and remaining bugs shall be fixed. In October the remaining bugs in core packages shall be fixed. He is seeking [38]hosting for at least two of these parties. 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/05/msg00014.html 35. http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathon 36. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/ 37. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ 38. http://wiki.debian.org/HostingBSP Release Goals for Etch. Andreas Barth [39]announced changed in the release plan for [40]etch. Approved release goals are the use of GCC 4.1, LSB 3.1 compatibility, SELinux support, pervasive IPv6 and large file support and a new Python framework. June 15th is the last chance to switch to GCC 4.1 and Python 2.4, and on July 30th the essential toolchain and the kernel are to be frozen in order to be able to release in December. 39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/05/msg00015.html 40. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/ Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * DSA 1074: [41]mpg123 -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 1075: [42]awstats -- Arbitrary command execution. * DSA 1076: [43]lynx -- Denial of service. * DSA 1077: [44]lynx-ssl -- Denial of service. * DSA 1078: [45]tiff -- Denial of service. * DSA 1079: [46]MySQL 4.0 -- Several vulnerabilities. * DSA 1080: [47]dovecot -- Directory traversal. * DSA 1081: [48]libextractor -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 1082: [49]Linux 2.4.17 -- Several vulnerabilities. 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1074 42. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1075 43. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1076 44. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1077 45. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1078 46. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1079 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1080 48. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1081 49. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1082 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [50]recently or contain important updates. 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [51]locales-all -- GNU C Library: Precompiled locale data. 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/locales-all Orphaned Packages. 10 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 297 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [52]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. To find out which orphaned packages are installed on your system the wnpp-alert program from devscripts may be helpful. 52. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [53]animal -- AN IMAging Library written in C. ([54]Bug#369209) * [55]ascpu -- AfterStep look & feel CPU statistics monitor tool. ([56]Bug#369069) * [57]asmix -- Displays a volume knob. ([58]Bug#369066) * [59]asmounter -- Monitoring mount points tool. ([60]Bug#369067) * [61]fvwm-icons -- XPMs for fvwm. ([62]Bug#369068) * [63]malaga -- System for automatic language analysis. ([64]Bug#369161) * [65]plucker -- Pluck stuff from the web and read it on your PalmOS device. ([66]Bug#369095) * [67]pyching -- Python program to cast and interpret I Ching hexagrams. ([68]Bug#368820) * [69]xboing -- Blockout game for X. ([70]Bug#369065) * [71]xpat2 -- Generic patience game for X11. ([72]Bug#369407) 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libdevel/libanimal-dev 54. http://bugs.debian.org/369209 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ascpu 56. http://bugs.debian.org/369069 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/asmix 58. http://bugs.debian.org/369066 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/asmounter 60. http://bugs.debian.org/369067 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/fvwm-icons 62. http://bugs.debian.org/369068 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/malaga-bin 64. http://bugs.debian.org/369161 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/plucker 66. http://bugs.debian.org/369095 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/pyching 68. http://bugs.debian.org/368820 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/xboing 70. http://bugs.debian.org/369065 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/xpat2 72. http://bugs.debian.org/369407 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 [73]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 73. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 74. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by Luis Matos, Mohammed Adnène Trojette, Sebastian Feltel, Frederick Noronha and Martin 'Joey' Schulze. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
