--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2008/03/ Debian Weekly News - May 26th, 2008 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 3rd issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Steve McIntyre sent a new "Bits from the DPL" mail. A serious issue in Debians OpenSSL package has been fixed recently. Debian is discussing about an archive strucure for huge packages. Bits from the Debian Project Leader ----------------------------------- Steve McIntyre sent a new release of his "Bits from the DPL"[1] reporting his recent activities as elected Project Leader. He starts by pointing to several interviews he gave recently[2][3][4][5][6] and continues by informing about personal changes in core teams. Jonathan McDowell has been added as keyring maintainer, and is already working together with James Troup on easier integration of keyring maintenance and our ldap system for better cooperation with the Debian System Administrators. He thanks Anthony Towns, who stepped down from the teams he was in. 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/05/msg00006.html 2: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/17716/1090/ 3: http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?RSS&entryid=741 4: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39406494,00.htm 5: http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/04/21/debian_developers_approved/ 6: http://www.tllts.org/audio/tllts_244-05-07-08.ogg Last but not least he talks about the upcoming Debian Conference[7] in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The organizational efforts are going on pretty well, with announcements about papers, talk selection and travel sponsorship soon to be sent out. But as always, the organizers are also still looking for more companies and individuals to sponsor the conference -- please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you can help. 7: http://debconf8.debconf.org/ 8: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] OpenSSL weakness in Debian affecting many other packages -------------------------------------------------------- Luciano Bello discovered[9] that the random number generator in Debian's openssl package is predictable. This is caused by an incorrect Debian-specific change to the openssl package (CVE-2008-0166[10]). As a result, cryptographic key material may be guessable. Affected keys include SSH keys, OpenVPN keys, DNSSEC keys, and key material for use in X.509 certificates and session keys used in SSL/TLS connections. Keys generated with GnuPG or GNUTLS are not affected, though. However, other systems can be indirectly affected if weak keys are imported into them. 9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html 10: http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-0166 Shortly after Luciano's discovery fixed packages[11] were created and - due to the seriousness of the problem - a new OpenSSH package, automatically regenerating possibly compromised keys and featuring a blacklist for possibly affected user keys was released[12]. At the same time a detector software[13] (]GPG signature[14]) has been written and constantly improved since then and detailed test and upgrade procedures for different software packages have been collected[15]. 11: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html 12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00153.html 13: http://security.debian.org/project/extra/dowkd/dowkd.pl.gz 14: http://security.debian.org/project/extra/dowkd/dowkd.pl.gz.asc 15: http://www.debian.org/security/key-rollover/ We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by that and would like to thank everyone who helped getting this issue solved so fast and without any major consequences. Discussion on how to prevent such accidents in the future has already been started on various[16] lists[17]. 16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg00536.html 17: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg00427.html Perl 5.10 Transition -------------------- Marc Brockschmidt announced the completion of the recently ongoing transition to Perl 5.10 as default version for the upcoming stable release. 18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/05/msg00007.html He noted that for this transition over 400 packages got updated in testing, including updates for heimdal, clamav and sendmail/libmilter. The next scheduled, smaller updates are planed for xulrunner, ocaml, ffmpeg, poppler and nautilus. Backports.org unknown? ---------------------- During his triage of older bugs reported against OpenOffice.org, Lior Kaplan noticed[19], that many users are not aware of backports.org[20], an unofficial service providing updated packages for users of the stable version of Debian. 19: http://liorkaplan.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/why-arent-our-users-familiar-with-backportsorg/ 20: http://www.backports.org In the following discussion several proposals for better integration of that service into Debian were made. Gerfried Fuchs summarized[21] the current state. 21: http://liorkaplan.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/why-arent-our-users-familiar-with-backportsorg/#comment-362 Huge Packages in Debian ----------------------- After members of the Debian Games Team[22] (and other maintainers of generic large data packages) wondered about size limitations of the Debian archive (and its infrastructure) regarding packages. Joerg Jaspert joined as ftp-master the discussion and summarized[23] the possibilities to solve the issues. He's favouring to create a new archive for large packages (containing architecture independent data) and if possible a change of the Debian Policy allowing packages depending on such data only available in the new archive to stay in main. 22: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2008/05/msg00165.html 23: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg00970.html State of SANE ------------- Since SANE (scanner access now easy, a framework for accessing scanners) is working on improving its interface, Julien Blache gave an overview[24] on his plans for the SANE packages for the upcoming release "Lenny". Sane will need so stay on the current interface, but Julien plans to backport some important improvements from the development branch and asks for some feedback. 24: http://blog.technologeek.org/2008/05/07/106 Hints for new Free Software Projects ------------------------------------ Francois Marier gave hints[25] on how to choose a license for free software projects. He concludes that using a license incompatible with mainstream licenses like the GNU General Public License is as bad as writing an own license. 25: http://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/2008/05/choosing-right-license-for-your-new.html Neil Williams added[26] some more general hints. 26: http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/serendipity/index.php?/archives/117-Non-code-code-development-upstream-for-estron.html Other News ---------- Sven Joachim wondered[27] about the state of translation packages for enigmail[28], a GnuPG tool for the mail client Icedove[29]. Alexander Sack replied[30], that he will add them to the main package. 27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2008/05/msg00248.html 28: http://packages.debian.org/enigmail 29: http://packages.debian.org/icedove 30: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=473168#35 Joerg Jaspert proposed[31] to standardize headers added to e-mails by various tools used by Debian. 31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/05/msg00001.html Enrico Zini gave[32] a small howto on "Conditional partitioning in debian installer" for unattended installations preserving some partitions. He already wrote a small howto[33] on creating bootable USB keys with simple-cdd. 32: http://www.enricozini.org/2008/tips/d-i-conditional-partitioning.html 33: http://www.enricozini.org/2008/tips/simple-cdd-usb.html Since the database used by packages.debian.org[34] covers only supported and upcoming releases, Frank Lichtenheld created archive.debian.net[35] which is capable of searching through archived releases, too. Sadly it has some caveats[36]. 34: http://packages.debian.org 35: http://archive.debian.net 36: http://blog.djpig.de/2008/05/13#archive-debian-net Martin Kraft started[37] collecting noteworthy additions, changes and other improvements in the upcoming stable Debian Release "Lenny" in the wiki[38]. Please help and contribute to that page. 37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg00422.html 38: http://wiki.debian.org/NewInLenny Debian Project will be at Linux Tag 2008 ---------------------------------------- >From Wednesday the 28th of May 2008 to Saturday the 31st of May 2008, Berlin, Germany, Debian Project will participate with a booth at Linux Tag 2008. Please see our events page[39] for further details. 39: http://www.debian.org/events/2008/0528-linuxtag Work-needing packages --------------------- Currently 433 packages are orphaned and 104 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the recent[40] reports[41] if there are packages you are interested in. 40: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg00402.html 41: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/05/msg00913.html Want to continue reading DPN? 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 our "HOWTO contribute"[42] page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 42: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 43: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by Luca Bruno, Meike Reichle and Alexander Schmehl. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
