Debian Weekly News - July 18th, 2006

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on Jul 18, 2006 11:27 PM EDT
Mailing list; By Martin Schulze
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Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Harald Welte announces the availability of a root filesystem based on Debian sarge and a corresponding kernel plus instructions for EZX phones. Raphaël Hertzog has the impression that the Debian project is merely trying to keep packages up-to-date and that the project is not making any significant improvements.

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/29/
Debian Weekly News - July 18th, 2006
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Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Harald Welte [1]announced the availability of a root [2]filesystem based on Debian sarge and a corresponding kernel plus instructions for EZX phones. Raphaël Hertzog has the [3]impression that the Debian project is merely trying to keep packages up-to-date and that the project is not making any significant improvements.

1. http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/weblog/2006/05/12#20060512-sarge-root 2. http://people.openezx.org/laforge/ 3. http://www.ouaza.com/wordpress/2006/05/26/improving-debian-as-a-whole/

Debian Server restored after Compromise. James Troup [4]reported that gluck.debian.org was compromised. The machine was taken down for investigation and the system was reinstalled. The intruder got [5]access via a compromised developer account and used a local kernel [6]vulnerability to elevate privileges.

4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/07/msg00003.html 5. http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060713 6. http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2006-2451

Updated Sarge CD Images with newer Kernel. Kenshi Muto [7]announced updated CD [8]images for the [9]i386 architecture for [10]sarge that use a more recent kernel. With Linux 2.6.16-15 from [11]backports.org several base utilities such as grub, udev and parted have been updated as well.

7. http://kmuto.jp/b.cgi/debian/d-i-2616.htm 8. http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge 9. http://www.debian.org/ports/i386/ 10. http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/ 11. http://www.backports.org/

Old debian-devel Channel on Freenode. Erich Schubert [12]discovered that the old debian-devel IRC channel on [13]freenode is officially flagged as abandoned. After the irc.debian.org alias has been [14]transferred from freenode to [15]OFTC the old channel wasn't used much anymore. The remaining users in the channel are encouraged to switch over to the one on OFTC.

12. http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/linux/debian/2006071302-dd-on-freenode 13. http://www.freenode.net/ 14. http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060604 15. http://www.oftc.net/

Swap on a logical Volume. David Härdeman [16]wondered whether to [17]change LVM packages so that the swap partition is created as a logical volume rather than a separate partition during the installation. This would allow swap space to be easily enlarged and shrunk using the regular tools when needed.

16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg00974.html 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/10/msg00842.html

New Wildcard Behaviour of tar. Bdale Garbee [18]explained that the new version of [19]tar incorporates a new behaviour with respect to wildcards passed to the program. The upstream developers have altered tar in order to make it conform to the UNIX98 specification and compatible with the original version of the utility. The change is documented in detail in a special NEWS.Debian file.

18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg01108.html 19. http://packages.debian.org/tar

Packages to be removed. Kevin McCarty [20]updated the [21]list of packages that have open release-critical bugs older than one month and only very few users recorded in [22]popcon. 15 out of 52 source packages have been fixed and 8 source packages have received an acknowledgement from the maintainer to be removed.

20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2006/07/msg00042.html 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2006/05/msg00026.html 22. http://popcon.debian.org/

Support for Intel-based Macs. Junichi Uekawa [23]announced his effort to foster Debian support for Intel-based Mac computers. Frans Pop [24]added that some work has already been done on the [25]installer. Owners of such machines are welcome to jump in and contact the developers on the [26]debian-boot list.

23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg01210.html 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg01213.html 25. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/

Debian Packages for Squid 3. Luigi Gangitano [27]announced his [28]intent to package the new version of [29]squid, the Internet object [30]cache, for Debian. It has been rewritten from scratch and provides a number of new features. The [31]squid3 packages may be installed in parallel with the older packages.

27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/04/msg00818.html 28. http://bugs.debian.org/364652 29. http://packages.debian.org/squid 30. http://www.squid-cache.org/ 31. http://packages.debian.org/squid3

Packages Diff Files. Tyler MacDonald [32]wondered if index diff files should be used for local archives at all. They have been invented to avoid the need to download several megabytes of Packages files upon upgrade, especially for machines with low or limited bandwidth. Alec Berryman [33]pointed out how to disable this feature. Mike Hommey additionally [34]reported that after a long time without an update and with decent bandwidth it actually takes more time merging all diff files than downloading the full file.

32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg01216.html 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/06/msg01229.html 34. http://bugs.debian.org/372712

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

* DSA 1109: [35]rssh -- Privilege escalation. * DSA 1110: [36]samba -- Denial of service. * DSA 1111: [37]Linux 2.6.8 -- Privilege escalation.

35. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1109 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1110 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1111

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [38]recently or contain important updates.

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

* [39]adacontrol -- Ada rules controller. * [40]amap-align -- Protein multiple alignment by sequence annealing. * [41]apbs -- Adaptive Poisson Boltzmann Solver. * [42]aspell-fa -- Persian dictionary for GNU Aspell. * [43]casper -- Debian Live initramfs generator. * [44]courierpassd -- Change courier user passwords using poppassd interface. * [45]gapcmon -- Apcupsd monitor GUI. * [46]gbdfed -- X11 font editor. * [47]haxe -- Web programming language generating Flash, AJAX or Neko. * [48]last-exit -- Last.fm audio player. * [49]lphoto -- Digital photo manager. * [50]mcabber -- Small Jabber console client. * [51]opencity -- 3D city simulator game. * [52]oping -- Sends ICMP_ECHO requests to network hosts. * [53]pgagent -- Job scheduler for PostgreSQL. * [54]ploticus -- Script driven business graphics package. * [55]refit -- Graphical boot-loader for EFI-based ia32 systems. * [56]skyeye -- Embedded Hardware Simulation. * [57]squid3 -- Full featured Web Proxy cache (HTTP proxy). * [58]syrep -- Generic file repository synchronisation tool. * [59]tclxapian -- Xapian search engine interface for Tcl. * [60]tikiwiki -- Groupware and content management system. * [61]tntnet -- Modular, multi-threaded web application server for C++. * [62]treeviewx -- Displays and prints phylogenetic trees. * [63]wormux -- Funny fight game on 2D maps. * [64]zmakebas -- Convert text files into ZX Spectrum Basic programs.

39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/adacontrol 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/amap-align 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/apbs 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aspell-fa 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/casper 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/courierpassd 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gapcmon 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gbdfed 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/haxe 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/last-exit 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/lphoto 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/mcabber 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/opencity 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/oping 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/pgagent 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/ploticus 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/refit 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/skyeye 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/squid3 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/syrep 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/tclxapian 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/tikiwiki 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/tntnet 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/treeviewx 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/wormux 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/zmakebas

Orphaned Packages. 12 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 326 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [65]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. To find out which orphaned packages are installed on your system the wnpp-alert program from devscripts may be helpful.

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

* [66]cl-awk -- Common Lisp package with the features of AWK and more. ([67]Bug#377919) * [68]cl-lexer -- Lexical-analyser-generator package for Common Lisp. ([69]Bug#377920) * [70]cl-parse-number -- Provides functions to parse any Common Lisp number string. ([71]Bug#377921) * [72]cl-regex -- Common Lisp regular expression compiler/matcher. ([73]Bug#377922) * [74]cl-tclink -- Common Lisp bindings to the TrustCommerce transaction system. ([75]Bug#377923) * [76]dtmfdial -- DTMF Tone Dialer. ([77]Bug#377869) * [78]ld.so.preload-manager -- Utility to manage the libraries in /etc/ld.so.preload. ([79]Bug#377867) * [80]libxbox -- Library for Xbox Linux utilities ([81]Bug#377861) * [82]printop -- Graphical interface to the LPRng print system. ([83]Bug#377924) * [84]rolldice -- Virtual dice roller. ([85]Bug#377870) * [86]sipp -- Development library for sipp. ([87]Bug#377925) * [88]xbox-cromwell -- Xbox BIOS image. ([89]Bug#377862)

66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-awk 67. http://bugs.debian.org/377919 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-lexer 69. http://bugs.debian.org/377920 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-parse-number 71. http://bugs.debian.org/377921 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-regex 73. http://bugs.debian.org/377922 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-tclink 75. http://bugs.debian.org/377923 76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/dtmfdial 77. http://bugs.debian.org/377869 78. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/ld.so.preload-manager 79. http://bugs.debian.org/377867 80. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libxbox0 81. http://bugs.debian.org/377861 82. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/printop 83. http://bugs.debian.org/377924 84. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/rolldice 85. http://bugs.debian.org/377870 86. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/sipp 87. http://bugs.debian.org/377925 88. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/xbox-cromwell 89. http://bugs.debian.org/377862

Removed Packages. 5 packages have been [90]removed from the Debian archive during the past week:

90. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt

* bcm4400-source -- Module source for Broadcom's bcm4400 ethernet driver [91]Bug#271798: Request of maintainer, unmaintained and unnecessary * messagewall -- SMTP proxy daemon, designed to help keep out unwanted email [92]Bug#274732: Request of QA, orphaned, dead upstream * libdbix-class-loader-perl -- Dynamic definition of DBIx::Class sub classes. [93]Bug#369556: Request of Maintainer, dead upstream; superseded by libdbix-class-schema-loader-perl * libcharles0 -- Data structure library for Ada95 modelled on the C++ STL [94]Bug#377927: Request of Maintainer, superseded by gnat-4.1 * xmbdfed -- X11 font editor [95]Bug#377954: Request of Maintainer, licensing issues

91. http://bugs.debian.org/271798 92. http://bugs.debian.org/274732 93. http://bugs.debian.org/369556 94. http://bugs.debian.org/377927 95. http://bugs.debian.org/377954

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 [96]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [97]dwn@debian.org.

96. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 97. mailto:dwn@debian.org

This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by Sebastian Feltel and Martin 'Joey' Schulze.

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