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The Debian Project                                http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News                    debian-public...@lists.debian.org
May 14th, 2012                http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2012/10/
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Welcome to this year's tenth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:

  * Update for Debian 6.0: 6.0.5 released
  * Deadlines reminder for DebConf12
  * General Resolution about diversity statement
  * First alpha release of the installer for Debian Wheezy
  * "The Debian Administrator's Handbook" freed!
  * An ever growing mirrors network
  * Bits from the DPL
  * Other news
  * Upcoming events
  * New Debian Contributors
  * Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
  * Important Debian Security Advisories
  * New and noteworthy packages
  * Work-needing packages
  * Want to continue reading DPN?


Update for Debian 6.0: 6.0.5 released
-------------------------------------

The fifth update for Debian 6.0 (codenamed "Squeeze") [1] has been
released. This update mainly adds corrections of security problems to
the stable release, along with some adjustments for serious problems.

   1 : http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120512


Deadlines reminder for DebConf12
--------------------------------

Leandro Gómez noted that the deadline for sponsored registration for
DebConf12 is quickly approaching [2]; hurry up and register [3] before
Tuesday 15 May!

   2 : http://leogg.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/are-you-going-to-debconf12/
   3 : http://debconf12.debconf.org/register.xhtml

In related news, Gunnar Wolf sent another call for papers [4] for
DebConf12: talk submissions will be accepted until a day before the
talk itself, but they must be submitted before Friday 1 June to have
guaranteed video coverage and to be announced as part of the
conference's official program.

   4 : http://blog.debconf.org/blog/debconf12/gw_dc12_your_greatest_ideas.dc

Holger Levsen also reported on his recent visit to Managua,
Nicaragua [5]. The report includes a thematically sorted list of
impressions and advice you may be really interested in reading if you
are considering coming to DebConf12. In short, "it was great, DebConf12
will be great."

   5 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/05/msg00026.html


General Resolution about diversity statement
--------------------------------------------

The Debian Project Secretary, Kurt Roeckx, announced that the process
for a General Resolution about the Debian Project's diversity
statement [6] has been started. Details are available on the related
vote page [7] while the discussion can be followed on the debian-vote
mailing list [8].

   6 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/05/msg00002.html
   7 : http://www.debian.org/vote/2012/vote_002
   8 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2012/05/msg00011.html


First alpha release of the installer for Debian Wheezy
------------------------------------------------------

The new Debian Installer [9] supports WPA, uses ext4 as default
filesystem, allows Btrfs for the /boot partition, allows a choice of
the ISO image to use, and a lot more. It also improves the handling of
ZFS file systems, and supports a lot of new hardware. You are welcome
to help finding bugs and further improving the installer by trying it
out. Installer CDs, other media and everything else [10] you will need
are available.

   9 : http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2012/20120513
   10 : http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer


"The Debian Administrator's Handbook" freed!
---------------------------------------------

Raphaël Hertzog announced the availability of "The Debian
Administrator's Handbook" [11]. This manual is the English translation
of the French best-seller "Cahier de l'Admin", of which he is co-author
with Roland Mas. The book is now released under a DFSG [12] compliant
license and it has also been packaged for the main Debian repository,
so you can install it on Debian unstable with:
apt-get install debian-handbook

   11 : 
http://raphaelhertzog.com/2012/05/10/the-debian-administrators-handbook-is-available/
   12 : http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines


An ever growing mirrors network
-------------------------------

Raphael Geissert wrote a blog post about the constant growth of
Debian's mirrors network [13]. The total number of mirrors is currently
330 for the HTTP protocol and 300 for FTP. The mirrors are distributed
across 73 countries, thanks to the Debian sponsors hosting them.

   13 : http://rgeissert.blogspot.it/2012/04/ever-growing-mirrors-network.html


Bits from the DPL
-----------------

Stefano Zacchiroli sent his monthly report [14] on DPL activities.
During April, Stefano mostly spent time trying to reach consensus on
various topics: the proposal for a diversity statement for the Debian
Project [15], the revenue sharing agreement [16] with DuckDuckGo, the
long running conflict over Python maintenance [17] and the relationship
between pkg-multimedia maintainers team and the unofficial
debian-multimedia.org repository [18]. In his mail, Stefano also asked
for "DPL helpers": volunteers to help the Debian Project Leader in
some minor tasks and share his work-load.

   14 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/05/msg00001.html
   15 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/03/msg00048.html
   16 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/04/msg00101.html
   17 : http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=573745
   18 : 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/2012-April/026063.html


Other news
----------

Joerg Jaspert announced the creation of a new archive key for Debian
7.0 "Wheezy" [19]. The key will be put to use with the release of
"Wheezy" or the expiry of the old key 0x473041FA (2018-03-05),
whichever comes first.

   19 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/05/msg00000.html

Paul Tagliamonte sent another update [20] on his GCC 4.7
patchathon [21]: since 14 April he has already sent 28 patches to fix
gcc-4.7 "FTBFS" bugs. Well done, Paul!

   20 : http://blog.pault.ag/post/22810143424/gcc-4-7-patchathon-part-v
   21 : http://blog.pault.ag/post/21083720029/gcc-4-7-patchathon

Cyril Brulebois sent some [22] updates [23] on Debian X server
development.

   22 : http://blog.mraw.org/2012/05/01/DXN-11/
   23 : http://blog.mraw.org/2012/05/07/DXN-12/

Thanks to an upstream licence change [24], autoconf-doc [25] is now
part of Debian main.

   24 : https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2012-04/msg00041.html
   25 : http://packages.debian.org/sid/autoconf-doc

Based on a recent study looking at insecure libraries [26], Thomas Koch
suggested that it makes sense to package Java libraries [27] in Debian,
thanks to its strict and rigorous security policy.

   26 : 
https://www.aspectsecurity.com/uploads/downloads/2012/03/Aspect-Security-The-Unfortunate-Reality-of-Insecure-Libraries.pdf
   27 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2012/05/msg00008.html

Andreas B. Mundt presented the "Debian Local Area Network" project
(Debian-LAN) [28]: its goal is to make setting up a local network with
centralised user and machine management, intranet, etc. as easy as
possible in Debian. More information is available on the wiki [29].

   28 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/04/msg00178.html
   29 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN/


Upcoming events
---------------

There is one upcoming Debian-related event:

  * May 21, Paris, France — Keysigning party [30]
  * May 23-26, Berlin, Germany — Debian booth at LinuxTag [31]

   30 : http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article53/announce-signing-party-2012-05
   31 : http://www.debian.org/events/2012/0523-linuxtag

You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [32] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [33],
Netherlands [34], Hispanic America [35], North America [36].

   32 : http://www.debian.org/events
   33 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
   34 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
   35 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
   36 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na

Do you want to organise a Debian booth or a Debian install party? Are
you aware of other upcoming Debian-related events? Have you delivered a
Debian talk that you want to link on our talks page [37]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [38].

   37 : http://www.debian.org/events/talks
   38 : eve...@debian.org


New Debian Contributors
-----------------------

Three applicants have been accepted [39] as Debian Developers, eight
applicants have been accepted [40] as Debian Maintainer, and eight
people have started to maintain packages [41] since the previous issue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Peter Green, Willi Mann,
Clint Byrum, Dmitry Shachnev, Matteo F. Vescovi, Christian Welzel,
Koichi Akabe, Julian Taylor, Jeremy Bicha, Frank Habermann, Thomas
Pierson, wujiang, Billy Zhe-Wei Lin (林哲瑋), Kefu Chai, xiaowen (辛晓闻),
Thomas Kluyver, Russell Sim, Bruno Braga, and Markus Wanner into our
project!

   39 : https://nm.debian.org/public/nmlist#done
   40 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/05/msg00010.html
   41 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi


Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
---------------------------------------------------------

According to the Bugs Search interface of the Ultimate Debian
Database [42], the upcoming release, Debian "Wheezy", is currently
affected by 930 Release-Critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily
solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about 556
Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen.

   42 : http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi

There are also more detailed statistics [43] as well as some hints on
how to interpret [44] these numbers.

   43 : http://www.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/7.0-wheezy/2012-19
   44 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats


Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): samba [45], icedove [46], imagemagick [47] (updated
announcement), quagga [48] (updated announcement), php5 [49],
rails [50], mahara [51], file [52] (updated announcement),
libjakarta-poi-java [53], linux-2.6 [54] and wordpress [55]. Please
read them carefully and take the proper measures.

   45 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2463
   46 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2464
   47 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2462
   48 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2459
   49 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2465
   50 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2466
   51 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2467
   52 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2422
   53 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2468
   54 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2469
   55 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2470

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 [56] (and the separate backports
list [57], and stable updates list [58]) for announcements.

   56 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
   57 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
   58 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/


New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------

243 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [59] are:

  * debian-handbook — reference book for Debian users and system 
administrators [60]
  * environment-modules — modular system for handling environment variables [61]
  * gnome-boxes — simple GNOME app to access remote or virtual systems [62]
  * lightsoff — sight puzzle game [63]
  * maelstrom — arcade-style game resembling Asteroids [64]
  * mustang-plug — controller for Fender Mustang amplifiers [65]
  * swell-foop — colored ball puzzle game [66]
  * swftools — collection of utilities for SWF file manipulation/creation [67]
  * termsaver — simple text-based terminal screensaver [68]
  * unburden-home-dir — remove or move cache files automatically from user's 
home [69]

   59 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
   60 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-handbook
   61 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/environment-modules
   62 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-boxes
   63 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lightsoff
   64 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/maelstrom
   65 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mustang-plug
   66 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/swell-foop
   67 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/swftools
   68 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/termsaver
   69 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/unburden-home-dir


Work-needing packages
---------------------

Currently [70] 394 packages are orphaned [71] and 169 packages are up
for adoption [72]: please visit the complete list of packages which
need your help [73].

   70 : https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/05/msg00433.html
   71 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
   72 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
   73 : 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 [74] to find out how to help.
We're looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-public...@lists.debian.org [75].

   74 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
   75 : debian-public...@lists.debian.org


This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Moray Allan, Cédric
Boutillier, Francesca Ciceri, David Prévot and Justin B Rye [76].

   76 : debian-public...@lists.debian.org

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