--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Project News http://www.debian.org/News/project/2008/16/ Debian Project News - December 2nd, 2008 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 16th issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include: * "Etch-and-a-half" installation images updated * GNU Affero General Public License suitable for Debian "main" * Security Teams Meeting in Essen * ... and much more. Etch-and-a-half installation images updated As a result of the release of the first release candidate for Lenny of Debian Installer (D-I RC1) on November 12th, the installer images for [1]Etch-and-a-half have also been updated. A consequence of this update is that during installation of Etch-and-a-half using the currently available images, a newer kernel version (2.6.26) will be used. However, the kernel used for the installed system remains unchanged at version 2.6.24. In some cases this can mean that hardware which is supported during the installation does not work after the reboot into the installed system because support for it was added after the 2.6.24 version. 1: http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/etchnhalf Old Etch-and-a-half businesscard and netinst CD images remain usable. Old netboot images are no longer usable and will need to be replaced with a current image. The [2]Etch-and-a-half Debian Installer web page has links to the new images and to the release announcements which give an overview of changes in the installation system. The Debian Installer team is currently preparing the second release candidate (RC2) of the Lenny installer, which will again result in an update of the installer images for Etch-and-a-half. The kernel version used during installation will remain at 2.6.26. 2: http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/debian-installer/etchnhalf GNU Affero General Public License suitable for Debian "main" Jörg Jaspert, representing the FTP Archives team, has released a [3]position statement about the inclusion in main of works licensed under [4]GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). In short, the statement says that such works are suitable for Debian/main, even though the AGPL has an additional clause when compared to the [5]GNU General Public License (GPLv3). The clause in question requires software to offer the source code to a user when interacting with it remotely through a computer network. 3: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/11/msg00097.html 4: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html 5: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-3.0.html Security Teams Meeting in Essen Martin "Joey" Schulze [6]reports on the Debian Security meeting which took place 28-30 November 2008 in Essen, Germany. Members of both the stable and the testing security teams attended as did the developers who are currently working on security updates for the backports archive. 6: http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200811301247 The attendees discussed issues with regard to future security work in the Debian project and for the Debian distribution. Specific topics were cooperation between the different teams (both in terms of work as well as in terms of archive management), as well as long term support for Debian GNU/Linux installations which cannot support an upgrade every two years (such as large clusters of Debian GNU/Linux systems). Notes taken during the meeting will be sent to the [7]debian-devel-announce mailing list and summarized in the [8]Debian Project News. 7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce 8: http://www.debian.org/News/project/ New Stable SuiteTelecentro 2.0 The new stable version of [9]SuiteTelecentro is now available for download from Sourceforge. SuiteTelecentro is a customisation of Debian and is built at the Free Software Laboratory of the IT Board of Banco do Brasil, the largest and oldest public bank in Brazil. 9: http://sourceforge.net/projects/suitetelecentro As [10]already covered at [11]Debian Times, SuiteTelecentro is a GNU/Linux solution which allows the use of low performance CPU and memory computers as affordable thin clients at telecentres for the poor. Over 4 million users now have affordable access to an Internet enabled computer thanks to this Free Software project. 10: http://times.debian.net/?category=success-stories#1242 11: http://times.debian.net SuiteTelecentro is based on Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (Etch) and LTSP 4.2. The new 2.0 version features easy installation, uses the GNOME graphical environment and includes: the OpenOffice.org suite, MySQL, PHP, Apache, MediaWiki and the Ocara telecentre management software. Dependency based boot sequencing release goal completed Petter Reinholdtsen [12]announced that the release goal of supporting a dependency based boot sequence has been completed. This allows system services to be started in an order which is calculated from their dependencies on each other instead of a hardcoded order. 12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00007.html He adds that 99.8% of all packages in unstable now have the necessary dependency information, with only 2 packages missing them. However, more testers are needed to identify problems with currently untested combinations of packages. Debian bugs #600000 and #1000000 contest Christian Perrier announced that as the [13]bug #500000 mark was turned on September 24th 2008, Debian developers and contributors need a new challenge. So a small contest has been set up again. The principle is very simple: Participants should place a bet (one per person) about the day bugs #600000 and as close as possible to the real moment bugs #600000 and #1000000 are reported. 13: http://bugs.debian.org/500000 The [14]bet page is hosted in the Debian wiki. It will be closed on December 31st, 2008. Bets will be kept statically until bug #600000 is reported. Then the page will be reopened with a new list of bets for bug #1000000. Thus, there will be four sets of bets for bug #1000000 with even more suspense and fun. 14: http://wiki.debian.org/600000thBugContest Inter-distribution collaboration for maintaining games Initiated by members of the merged Debian and Ubuntu games teams and Hans de Goede from Fedora, a [15]mailing list [16]was created to foster collaboration between operating systems for the maintenance of games. The goal is to share and review patches that the upstream project is slow or unwilling to accept, or to take over as the new upstream for software in cases where the original upstream has died. 15: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/games 16: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/games/2008-November/000006.html At this time, members of Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, Fink, FreeBSD, Gentoo, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, PC-BSD, Slackbuilds, SUSE and Yellow Dog Linux are on this list as well as GNOME and KDE members. Call for talks for the Debian Developers' room at FOSDEM Wouter Verhelst [17]called for talks for the Debian Developers' room at the upcoming Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM): a yearly community meeting that takes place at the université libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium and which concentrates on bringing developers of Free Software together. As during previous events, Debian has the opportunity to hold its own one and a half day conference sub-track. 17: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/12/msg00000.html When to do non-maintainer uploads? A recent non-maintainer upload of the [18]php5 package caused [19]some discussion about how and when non-maintainer uploads should be done. While fixing release critical bugs is indeed a very important topic (especially for long standing bugs without action from the maintainer), release team member Steve Langasek [20]reminded that developers should still inform the maintainers about any plans to perform a NMU, while Thomas Viehmann [21]reminded maintainers that they should fix, or at least comment on, release critical bugs within two weeks. 18: http://packages.qa.debian.org/php5 19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00643.html 20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00666.html 21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/12/msg00012.html Popular packages in Ubuntu that are not in Debian "main" Petter Reinholdtsen did a [22]survey on the question of which popular Ubuntu packages are not included in Debian/main and why. In order to determine the packages' popularity, Petter used their popcon ratings. He ended up with a list of 152 popular Ubuntu packages which are currently not in Debian/main, a number he considered surprisingly low. 22: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00659.html Many of tning packages many are multimedia related. Petter thinks it would be very nice to have these packages available in Debian and wants to encourage their packaging. In related news James Westby did a [23]survey on the quality of the Ubuntu packages which are not included in Debian using their records in the Ubuntu bug tracking system. 23: http://jameswestby.net/weblog/ubuntu/04-revu.html Developer News wanted Raphael Hertzog, the author of the Misc Developer News [24]asks developers to (regularly) [25]share short news about their work and plans so they can be published in the Misc Developer News. Possible news covers everything which is related to Debian development and not worth a dedicated mail to debian-devel-announce. The news is published whenever five news stories have come together. Raphael points out that the Misc Developer News can also be used to post calls for help. 24: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/12/msg00014.html 25: http://wiki.debian.org/DeveloperNews Need for an unofficial public community repository? The [26]rejection from the queue for some new packages to be added to Debian by the ftp-masters caused some discussion about the need of a [27]repository for [28]unofficial packages not meeting Debian's standards or being otherwise unsupported. Holger Levsen [29]pointed to [30]debian-unofficial.org, which isn't [31]flawless. This caused Holger to think about a [32]solution inside of [33]debian-community.org. The proposal to [34]use [35]apt-get.org has been [36]criticised as well. 26: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00641.html 27: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00603.html 28: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00607.html 29: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00604.html 30: http://debian-unofficial.org 31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00605.html 32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00606.html 33: http://debian-community.org 34: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00612.html 35: http://apt-get.org 36: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00633.html Bits from the buildd world Adeodato Simó sent [37]bits from buildd world. Buildds are a part of Debian's infrastructure, organising which automated build system (build daemon) is building which package for which architecture. Beside some personnel changes, he also explains the proper ways to contact the buildd team, as well as where the source code of the buildd infrastructure is maintained. 37: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/11/msg00006.html New maintainer One applicant has been [38]accepted as Debian Maintainer since the prior issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Jörg Sommer into our project! 38: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/11/msg00071.html Release cricital bug stats for the upcoming release According to the [39]unofficial RC-bugs count, the upcoming release Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" is currently affected by 118 release critical bugs. 43 of them have already been fixed in Debian's "unstable" branch. Of the remaining 75 release critical bugs, 33 already have a patch (which might need testing) and 5 are marked as pending. Ignoring these bugs as well as release critical bugs for packages in contrib or non-free, 36 release critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen. 39: http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php Important Debian Security Advisories Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): [40]python2.4, [41]xulrunner, [42]iceweasel, [43]wireshark and [44]phpmyadmin. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 40: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1667 41: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1669 42: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1671 43: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1673 44: http://www.debian.org/security/2008/dsa-1675 Please note that these are only a selection of the more important security advisories of the last two weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the [45]security mailing list for announcements. 45: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently ([46]among others): * [47]arandr -- Simple visual front end for XRandR 1.2 * [48]asunder -- graphical audio CD ripper and encoder * [49]biblatex -- Bibliographies for LaTeX * [50]canto -- flexible ncurses Atom/RSS newsreader for the console * [51]geotranz -- GEOgraphic coordinates TRANslator * [52]iceape-l10n-lt -- Lithuanian language package for Iceape * [53]iceweasel-l10n-bg -- Bulgarian language package for Iceweasel * [54]iceweasel-l10n-cy -- Welsh language package for Iceweasel * [55]iceweasel-l10n-eo -- Esperanto language package for Iceweasel * [56]iceweasel-l10n-et -- Estonian language package for Iceweasel * [57]iceweasel-l10n-hi-in -- Hindi language package for Iceweasel * [58]iceweasel-l10n-lv -- Latvian language package for Iceweasel * [59]iceweasel-l10n-oc -- Occitan language package for Iceweasel * [60]link-grammar-dictionaries-lt -- Carnegie Mellon University's link grammar parser for English * [61]mseide -- A FreePascal-based GUI IDE * [62]nmapsi4 -- graphical interface to nmap, the network scanner * [63]open-font-design-toolkit -- metapackage for open font design * [64]ps3-utils -- Utilities for running Debian on a Sony Playstation 3 * [65]pyneighborhood -- PyGTK2 SAMBA browser * [66]snow -- whitespace steganography for text files * [67]xplot-xplot.org -- fast tool to graph and visualize lots of data * [68]zabbix-proxy-mysql -- software for monitoring of your networks -- proxy 46: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg 47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/arandr 48: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/asunder 49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/biblatex 50: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/canto 51: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/geotranz 52: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceape-l10n-lt 53: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-bg 54: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-cy 55: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-eo 56: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-et 57: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-hi-in 58: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-lv 59: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-oc 60: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/link-grammar-dictionaries-lt 61: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mseide 62: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nmapsi4 63: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/open-font-design-toolkit 64: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ps3-utils 65: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pyneighborhood 66: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/snow 67: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xplot-xplot.org 68: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zabbix-proxy-mysql Debian Package of the Day featured the package [69]apticron (a cron-script to mail impending apt updates). 69: http://debaday.debian.net/2008/11/30/ Work-needing packages Currently 488 packages are orphaned and 117 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the [70]recent [71]reports to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of [72]packages which need your help. 70: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00595.html 71: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/11/msg00455.html 72: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested Want to continue reading DPN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers to 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://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 74: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Andre Felipe Machado, Jon Evans, Richard Hartmann, Stefano Zacchiroli, Christian Perrier, Frans Pop, Meike Reichle and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". 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