Debian Weekly News - October 26th, 2004

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/42/
Debian Weekly News - October 26th, 2004
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Welcome to this year's 42nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Roger So [1]called for [2]papers for the first
Asia Debian [3]Mini-Conf, to be held in Beijing, China next
February/March. Support for the new m32r processor architecture has
been added to Linux 2.6.9 and the [4]root filesystem is based on
Debian.

 1. http://spacehunt.info/2004/10#20041025-2
 2. http://debian.org.cn/events/admc2005/cfp
 3. http://debian.org.cn/events/admc2005
 4. http://www.linux-m32r.org/eng/download.html

Support for real i386 Machines. Frank Lichtenheld [5]aggregated the
opinion of the release team and reported that they have decided to
keep -i386 kernels which will continue to run on real 80386 machines.
The used [6]patch, though, is [7]said to contain security problems,
which only exist on real 80386 machines.

 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/10/msg00204.html
 6. http://svn.debian.org/viewcvs/kernel/trunk/kernel/source/kernel-source-2.6.8-2.6.8/debian/patches/x86-i486_emu.dpatch
 7. http://bugs.debian.org/250468

Problematic Xchat Shareware Version. Giacomo Catenazzi [8]noticed
that the [9]xchat website offers a [10]shareware binary for a
proprietary operating system. A fee must be paid to unlock the
shareware version and the GPL licensed source code does not include
this unlocking code. This [11]may or [12]may not pose problems for
Debian.

 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00357.html
 9. http://packages.debian.org/stable/net/xchat
 10. http://www.xchat.org/windows/
 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00373.html
 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00364.html

Debian Project at Conferences. The Debian project [13]announced that
it will participate in several events in several cities in Europe.
Debian will be present at the [14]LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in
Frankfurt, at the [15]Linux-Info-Tag in Dresden and at [16]Practical
Linux in Giessen, all taking place in Germany. Several Debian related
talks and workshops will be held during these events.

 13. http://www.debian.org/News/2004/20041015
 14. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1026-lwe
 15. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1030-lit-dresden
 16. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1030-plgiessen

Report from the Italian Mini-Conference. Marco d'Itri [17]summarised
the [18]mini Debian conference held in Milano, Italy. They had
interesting talks and discussions about the status of
internationalisation in Debian, and user mode Linux. On the second day
they had talks on how to use [19]tla/arch to maintain large Free
Software projects, debtags, the concept of custom Debian
distributions, and work on a modular postfix policy daemon.

 17. http://blog.bofh.it/id_62
 18. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1016-minidebconf
 19. http://gnuarch.org/

Overall Configuration Mechanism. Mark Roach wanted to [20]know the
proper way to configure several packages with sensible defaults for an
authentication server. Enrico Zini [21]pointed out that current trends
are centred on debconf preseeding and on installing cfengine scripts.
He also discussed diversions to replace configuration files of other
packages.

 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00919.html
 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00979.html

Multinationalisation and Input Methods. Osamu Aoki [22]reported about
his successful effort to integrate multiple UTF-8 locales and input
methods at the same time. With the script he provides, he has access
to all locales on the system. It also features a customisable startup
of X with hooks to run programs from ~/.xsession.d.

 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00951.html

Common Database Policy. Sean Finney [23]announced a first [24]draft on
a policy for database-driven applications in Debian. The best approach
seems to be to provide debconf questions in a single run-time
dependency package via the debconf REGISTER method, although it's
probably not the best solution.

 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00962.html
 24. http://people.debian.org/~seanius/policy/dbapp-policy.html

Including pre-compiled Object Files. Wesley W. Terpstra [25]wondered
if it would be acceptable to distribute pre-compiled i386 binaries
that run two time faster compared with executables compiled with GCC.
Andreas Barth [26]stated that all binary packages uploaded into Debian
should be the same as if autobuilt. Manoj Srivastava [27]explained
that users need to be able to debug the package, and can only do so
when it is compiled with the same compiler they have, i.e. GCC.

 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg01023.html
 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg01079.html
 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg01070.html

Report from Austrian OS 04. Gerfried Fuchs [28]wrote an [29]event
report where he ran a booth alone on his own while also giving a talk
and listening to others. One talk was about [30]grml a stripped down
variant of [31]Knoppix for system administrators with zsh as default
shell and some geek tools added. It will also provide good
accessibility features.

 28. http://alfie.ist.org/blog/2004/10/24#os04-report.en
 29. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/1022-os04-report
 30. http://grml.org/
 31. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

Debian Stable updated. Joey Schulze [32]announced that the Debian
project has finally [33]updated its stable distribution. Since the
last time Debian stable was updated was in November 2003, a lot of
security updates have accumulated. As a result of eleven months of
updates, no less than 212 security updates are included in this
[34]update.

 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/debian-announce-2004/msg00000.html
 33. http://www.debian.org/News/2004/20041026
 34. http://people.debian.org/~joey/3.0r3/

Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.

 * DSA 570: [35]libpng -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 571: [36]libpng3 -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 572: [37]ecartis -- Unauthorised access to admin interface.
 * DSA 573: [38]cupsys -- Arbitrary code execution.

 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-570
 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-571
 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-572
 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-573

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [39]recently or contain important updates.

 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main

 * [40]atris -- Tetris-like game with a twist for Unix.
 * [41]axyl -- Axyl web development platform.
 * [42]bash3 -- GNU Bourne Again SHell (Version 3).
 * [43]bootcd-i386 -- Bootcd extension to create images that can boot
   on i386.
 * [44]clvm -- Cluster LVM Daemon for lvm2.
 * [45]cvstrac -- Low-ceremony bug tracker for medium-sized projects
   under CVS.
 * [46]decafc -- Compiler for the toy language Decaf.
 * [47]dictem -- Dict client for Emacs.
 * [48]geresh -- Simple multilingual text editor with UTF-8 & bidi
   support.
 * [49]gmailfs -- Use your GMail account as a filesystem.
 * [50]helix-player -- Helix Community's open source media player.
 * [51]hibernate -- Software Suspend 2 script.
 * [52]imageindex -- Generate static HTML galleries from images.
 * [53]jigit -- Tools for working with jigdo files.
 * [54]kcheckgmail -- KDE systray application to check GMail
   accounts.
 * [55]klatin -- Application to help revise/teach Latin.
 * [56]klinkstatus -- Web link validity checker for KDE.
 * [57]kmtrace -- KDE memory leak tracer.
 * [58]kturtle -- Educational Logo programming environment.
 * [59]kwordquiz -- Flashcard and vocabulary learning program for
   KDE.
 * [60]labplot -- Data plotting and function analysis tool for KDE.
 * [61]listadmin -- Command line mailman moderator queue
   manipulation.
 * [62]markdown -- Text-to-HTML conversion tool.
 * [63]mimetex -- LaTeX math expressions to anti-aliased GIF images
   converter.
 * [64]missingh-doc -- Documentation for Haskell utility library.
 * [65]openipmi -- Intelligent Platform Management Interface (for
   servers).
 * [66]pmount -- Mount removable devices as normal user.
 * [67]printconf -- Automatically configures USB and parallel
   printers with CUPS.
 * [68]pstack -- Display stack trace of a running process.
 * [69]spampd -- SpamAssassin based SMTP/LMTP proxy daemon.
 * [70]tagtool -- Tool to tag and rename MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files.
 * [71]ttf-f500 -- Wipeout 3 Font.
 * [72]ttf-summersby -- Free TrueType typeface font.

 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/atris
 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/axyl
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/shells/bash3
 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/bootcd-i386
 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/clvm
 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cvstrac
 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/decafc
 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/dictem
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/geresh
 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gmailfs
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/helix-player
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/hibernate
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/imageindex
 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/jigit
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kcheckgmail
 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/klatin
 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/klinkstatus
 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kmtrace
 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kturtle
 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kwordquiz
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/labplot
 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/listadmin
 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/markdown
 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/mimetex
 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/missingh-doc
 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/openipmi
 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/pmount
 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/printconf
 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/pstack
 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/spampd
 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/tagtool
 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ttf-f500
 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ttf-summersby

Orphaned Packages. 1 package was orphaned this week and requires a new
maintainer. This makes a total of 180 orphaned packages. Many thanks
to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software
community. Please see the [73]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.

 73. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

 * [74]nasm-mode -- NASM mode for XEmacs. ([75]Bug#277732)

 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/nasm-mode
 75. http://bugs.debian.org/277732

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 [76]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [77]dwn@debian.org.

 76. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 77. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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