------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/ Debian Project News [email protected] June 28th, 2010 http://debian.org/News/weekly/2010/06/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's sixth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include: * Bits from the Release Team * Call for volunteers for DebConf10 * Debian Live Web Images Builder * Results from the Debian community poll * FAI workshop 2010 * Debian Project at LSM/RMLL 2010 * Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" updated * ... and much more. Bits from the Release Team -------------------------- Release manager Adam D. Barratt sent Bits from the release team [9], in which he welcomes Mehdi Dogguy to the team. Other enthusiastic Debian Developers who are interested are invited to contact the team [10]. 9 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 10 : mailto:[email protected] Lots of transitions are finished, and in order to make the boot process faster, parallel booting should be enabled by default [11]. "Squeeze" will release with GNOME 2.30 along with the already transitioned KDE 4.4.3. With EGLIBC 2.11 already in "testing" , Python 2.6 and Perl 5.12 (among a few others) should be able to transition before the freeze. 11 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] As announced earlier, new transitions are in freeze [12] in order to make it easier to finish current and already scheduled transitions. "Squeeze" will be frozen when Python 2.6 and the other transitions are completed, maybe during late August if everybody works together. 12 : http://lists.debian.org/1273229773.27856.14429.ca...@kaa.jungle.aubergine.my-net-space.net Call for volunteers for DebConf10 --------------------------------- Gabriella Coleman sent out a call for volunteers for DebConf10 [13] on her blog. She mentioned a list of things that DebConf needs from volunteers [14], so if you are in New York or environs you might consider helping out if something on the list matches your skills and interests. There is also an amazing list of free events [15], events that take place before, during and after DebConf. The list has theatre, movies and music as well as other types of events to choose from; during DebConf alone there are free concerts from Gil Scott Heron and Basia Bulat, just to name a couple. 13 : http://gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=2001 14 : http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Jobs#Conference_volunteers 15 : http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/TouristActivities Debian Live Web Images Builder ------------------------------ Daniel Baumann announced [16] that thanks to outstanding Debian Live contributor Richard Nelson a live-helper web-frontend of the Debian Live Project [17] is now available: it lets users get their own customised images without needing to install live-helper [18] and build them on their own. 16 : http://blog.daniel-baumann.ch/2010/06/20#20100620_debian-live-webbuilder 17 : http://live-helper.debian.net/ 18 : http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-helper Results from the Debian community poll -------------------------------------- Torsten Werner published the results of his Debian community poll [19] (followed by a second part [20]) and thanks all participants. With over 80% answering that they do not contribute directly to Debian, this is the biggest ever survey of Debian's user base, giving hints on how Debian should deal with its non-free section, its release policy, and the importance of the Debian Free Software Guidelines [21] to its user base. 19 : http://twerner.blogspot.com/2010/06/results-from-debian-community-poll.html 20 : http://twerner.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-results-from-debian-community-poll.html 21 : http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines FAI workshop 2010 ----------------- Michael Prokop mentioned on his blog that there will be an FAI workshop at the Linuxhotel in Essen, Germany [22]. FAI stands for "Fully Automated Install" and is an important tool when dealing with large numbers of computers, for example. As Michael writes: "As the name states the workshop is targeted towards FAI developers. We - the FAI developers - want to get FAI into shape for "Squeeze" , discuss pending issues like Ubuntu packaging, release management and of course meet in real life for networking and socialising." Sounds like fun. 22 : http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2010/06/22/fai-developer-workshop-2010/ Debian Project at LSM/RMLL 2010 ------------------------------- The Debian Project will be represented at the Libre Software Meeting / Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre (LSM/RMLL) event in Bordeaux, France, this year [23]. Debian related talks have been organised, as well as a Bug Squashing Party (BSP) [24]. Everyone interested in helping Debian is welcome at the BSP; there will be enough developers around to sponsor your NMUs. 23 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100618 24 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2010/Bordeaux Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" updated ------------------------------------ The fifth update of Debian's stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (codename [25] "lenny" ) has been released. This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Further updates include the Linux kernel itself as well as debian-installer. 25 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100626 Other news ---------- Alexander Reichle-Schmehl announced [26] he has again started publishing statistics of the release critical bug reports [27] on a weekly basis. 26 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-squeeze-24 27 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats Martin Michlmayr announced that Debian support for eSATA SheevaPlug is now available [28]. He has updated the install guide [29] accordingly and provided a trick to add eSATA support for an already running Debian eSATA SheevaPlug installed as a regular SheevaPlug. 28 : http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/esata-support 29 : http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install.html Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli proposed some guidelines for meetings inside the Debian Project [30]. His goal is to help organisers to provide prerequisites in a community-compatible way, with a process that includes announcements before the meeting and minutes after. 30 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/06/debian_meeting_guidelines_RFC/ FTP master Mark Hymers announced that [31] "Etch" has been moved to archive.debian.org, following the last [32] "Etch" point release published last month. 31 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 32 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100522 Debian Auditor Luk Claes sent an overview of the most important financial flows [33] of money held on Debian's behalf. 33 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] GRUB maintainer Colin Watson gave a small report on the status of the grub package [34] with regard to several release issues. 34 : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/2010/06/21#2010-06-21-grub2-boot-problems initramfs maintainer Michael Prokop called for testing of initramfs-tools 0.97 [35], a tool used to create an initial ramdisk file to boot a system. The packages available should work on all Debian systems and should be checked on a wide variety of platforms. 35 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00393.html Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli reported [36] on his recent invitation to the European Commission. In a joint session of academic and industrial research projects and EC commissioners, Stefano helped summarise best and worst practices in the interaction between research projects and FOSS communities. 36 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/06/Debian_consultancy_for_the_European_Framework_Programme/ New Developers and Maintainers ------------------------------ Three applicants have been accepted [37] as Debian Maintainers since the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Carl Chenet, Mathias Behrle and Thomas Koch into our project! 37 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release --------------------------------------------------------- According to the unofficial RC-bugs count [38], the upcoming release, Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" , is currently affected by 419 release critical bugs. 65 of them have already been fixed in Debian's "unstable" branch. Of the remaining 354 release critical bugs, 55 already have a patch (which might need testing) and 19 are marked as pending. 38 : http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php Ignoring these bugs as well as release critical bugs for packages in contrib or non-free, 170 release critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen. Important Debian Security Advisories ------------------------------------ Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): bind9 [39] (updated), samba [40], sudo [41], pmount [42], xulrunner [43] and kvirc [44]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 39 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2054 40 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2061 41 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2062 42 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2063 43 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2064 44 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2065 Please note that these are a selection of the more important security advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please subscribe to the security mailing list [45] 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 (among others [46]): 46 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg * awn-settings -- preferences manager for Avant Window Navigator [47] * backfire-dkms -- kernel module for signal benchmarking (DKMS) [48] * baobab -- GNOME disk usage analyzer [49] * beid-mozilla-plugin -- Belgian eID Mozilla plugin [50] * bluetile -- modern tiling window manager with a gentle learning curve [51] * boolector -- SMT solver for bit-vectors and arrays [52] * bzr-grep -- Bazaar plugin to grep files and history [53] * freerdp-x11 -- RDP client for Windows Terminal Services [54] * gnome-dictionary -- GNOME dictionary application [55] * gnome-screenshot -- screenshot application for GNOME [56] * gnome-search-tool -- GNOME tool to search files [57] * gnome-system-log -- system log viewer for GNOME [58] * indicator-applet -- GNOME panel indicator applet [59] * kprogress -- KDE login progress indicator [60] * lekhonee-gnome -- desktop client for WordPress blogs [61] * logkeys -- keylogger for GNU/Linux systems [62] * minitube -- native YouTube client [63] * opencc -- simplified-traditional Chinese conversion tool [64] * phonefsod -- SHR daemon for freesmartphone.org interaction [65] * plasma-widget-networkmanagement -- Network Management widget for KDE4 Plasma [66] * sessioninstaller -- APT based installer using PackageKit's session DBus API [67] * sharand -- generate cryptographically secure pseudo random file [68] * shorewall-init -- Shorewall initialization [69] * xen-hypervisor-4.0-amd64 -- Xen hypervisor on amd64 [70] * xen-hypervisor-4.0-i386 -- Xen hypervisor on i386 [71] * xul-ext-sync -- extension to sync bookmarks, passwords and other user data between devices [72] 47 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/awn-settings 48 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/backfire-dkms 49 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/baobab 50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/beid-mozilla-plugin 51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bluetile 52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/boolector 53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bzr-grep 54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freerdp-x11 55 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-dictionary 56 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-screenshot 57 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-search-tool 58 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-system-log 59 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/indicator-applet 60 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kprogress 61 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lekhonee-gnome 62 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/logkeys 63 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/minitube 64 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/opencc 65 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/phonefsod 66 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/plasma-widget-networkmanagement 67 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sessioninstaller 68 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sharand 69 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/shorewall-init 70 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-hypervisor-4.0-amd64 71 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-hypervisor-4.0-i386 72 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-sync Work-needing packages --------------------- Currently 619 packages are orphaned and 143 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the recent [73] reports [74] to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of packages which need your help [75]. 73 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 74 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 75 : 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 contributing page [76] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [email protected] [77]. 76 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 77 : mailto:[email protected] This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Jeremiah Foster, David Prévot and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [78]. 78 : mailto:[email protected] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? 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