Debian Weekly News - September 28th, 2004

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/38/
Debian Weekly News - September 28th, 2004
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Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Brad Fitzpatrick of LiveJournal/Danga
interactive gave a talk at this year's [1]OSCON on the use of Free
Software in a large scale web application which is based on the Debian
operating system. Slashdot [2]reported about the [3]hardening effort
for Debian that was recently [4]started by Lorenzo Hernandez
Garcia-Hierro.

 1. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/
 2. http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/04/09/15/003202.shtml
 3. http://sourceforge.net/projects/debianhardened
 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/09/msg00126.html

Sarge Release Update. Steve Langasek sent in an [5]update on the
release of sarge and explained which packages are blocking the
transition of others into testing. The major blocker seems to be the
lack of the testing-security buildd infrastructure. A new release
candidate of the [6]installer is expected soon and the number of
release critical bugs is dropping but not as fast as prospected.

 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/09/msg00005.html
 6. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Surveillance Robot powered by Debian. An [7]article talks about a
surveillance robot that was recently switched to using Debian as
operating system. Engineer Dave Northrup said, that Debian stood out
because of its quest to provide very stable and proven sets of
packages. Their commercial systems are very trimmed-down versions of
Debian GNU/Linux, and their research systems will be transitioned over
to full-releases of Debian by the end of the year.

 7. http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7830788916.html

Support for removed Packages? Andreas Krüger [8]wondered how packages
will be supported that were part of sarge at one time but were removed
later in the testing life cycle. He mentioned a wishlist [9]bug
report to implement downgrade functionality. Frank Lichtenheld
[10]added that [11]aptitude has a special category for obsolete
packages so that they could be removed easily.

 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/09/msg00348.html
 9. http://bugs.debian.org/115787
 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/09/msg00350.html
 11. http://packages.debian.org/aptitude

Graph of the Debian Organisation. Martin F Krafft prepared an
[12]organigram of the Debian organisation mainly for his forthcoming
[13]book. He has [14]released it under the [15]Artistic License and
concedes that there is no way to properly encapsulate the Debian
organisation into a graph, but it was felt that this representation is
good. He welcomes constructive criticism and suggestions.

 12. http://people.debian.org/~madduck/organigram/
 13. http://www.opensourcepress.de/index.php?26&backPID=15&tt_products=16
 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2004/09/msg00200.html
 15. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/artistic-license.php

Bugs via LDAP updated. Andreas Barth [16]announced that the LDAP
frontend to the [17]bug tracking system provides access to closed bugs
as well. The system has also been moved to a standard woody OpenLDAP
installation using the standard LDAP port. The new slapd uses a
different base dn: dc=bugs,dc=debian,dc=org and the old instances on
master and spohr are deprecated.

 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/09/msg00010.html
 17. http://bugs.debian.org/

Bugfix Migration into Sarge. Jeroen van Wolffelaar [18]reminded
developers that the release team needs help with ensuring that
important bugfixes migrate into sarge. He added a list of packages for
which he doesn't have up-to-date information. If you maintain one or
more packages that have a newer version in sid than in sarge, please
visit the [19]updates administration database and update the
information.

 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/09/msg00007.html
 19. http://www.wolffelaar.nl/~sarge/

Documentation of Sub-Sections. Gustavo Franco [20]wondered if new and
more precise documentation for subsections would be required. He
stomped over a package that would apparently fit into several
sections. Enrico Zini [21]added that there should be more support for
[22]package tags.

 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/09/msg01205.html
 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/09/msg01326.html
 22. http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/

X Display Manager Comparison. Osamu Aoki [23]compared the four X
display managers Debian ships: [24]XDM, [25]GDM, [26]KDM and [27]WDM.
GDM seems to be best suited. He also noticed that there is no standard
way to set up a start up script when choosing the window manager via
menu. This is major problem for CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) user who
needs to set up keyboard input which is sometimes a daemon program.

 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/09/msg01333.html
 24. http://packages.debian.org/xdm
 25. http://packages.debian.org/gdm
 26. http://packages.debian.org/kdm
 27. http://packages.debian.org/wdm

Modifications to the GNU Free Documentation License? Roger Leigh
[28]wondered if it would be possible to add a clarification document
to the license in order to counter the main problems which would
affect a manual licensed under the [29]GNU FDL. The work itself is
written in Docbook/SGML, and contains no invariant sections. The
answers suggest that this would work but that the document would still
not be [30]compatible with the [31]GNU GPL.

 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/09/msg00362.html
 29. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/09/msg00375.html
 31. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Debian-Installer Schedule. Joey Hess sent in [32]plans for the
[33]debian-installer meeting in [34]Oldenburg that talked about
immediate release plans and post-sarge work. A timeline is included in
the [35]minutes. This includes a test candidate to be released on
September 30th, including a string release.

 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/09/msg01451.html
 33. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
 34. http://meeting.ffis.de/Oldenburg2004/
 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/09/msg01482.html

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

 * [36]lukemftpd -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * [37]imlib2 -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * [38]getmail -- Root compromise.
 * [39]sendmail -- Potential open relay.

 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-551
 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-552
 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-553
 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-554

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [40]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [41]eric -- Full featured Python IDE.
 * [42]esvn -- Qt frontend for the Subversion revision system.
 * [43]gpsbabel -- GPS file conversion plus transfer to/from GPS
   units.
 * [44]ivi -- Graphical front-end for various HDL simulators.
 * [45]podbrowser -- Documentation browser for Perl.
 * [46]pperl -- Make Perl scripts persistent in memory.
 * [47]prboom -- Clone of the legendary first person shooter Doom.
 * [48]qtorrent -- BitTorrent client for QT 3.x.
 * [49]rox-filer -- Simple graphical file manager for X11.
 * [50]smbldap-tools -- Scripts to manage Unix and Samba accounts
   stored on LDAP.
 * [51]wash2hs -- WASH preprocessor for including literal XHTML
   fragments.
 * [52]xblast-tnt -- Multiplayer blast-the-others game inspired by
   Dynablaster.
 * [53]xmame-tools -- Tools for xmame and xmess.
 * [54]zsafe -- Password manager with encryption.

 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/eric
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/esvn
 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/gpsbabel
 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/ivi
 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/podbrowser
 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/pperl
 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/prboom
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/qtorrent
 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/rox-filer
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/smbldap-tools
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/wash2hs
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/xblast-tnt
 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/xmame-tools
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/zsafe

Orphaned Packages. 9 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 169 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [55]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.

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

 * [56]beaver -- Lightweight text editor. ([57]Bug#273316)
 * [58]bfbtester -- Brute Force Binary Tester. ([59]Bug#273701)
 * [60]doc-linux-sv -- Linux HOWTOs in Swedish - Text version.
   ([61]Bug#273702)
 * [62]gfslicer -- Utility to split and join files. ([63]Bug#273703)
 * [64]ksmp3play -- Curses-based MP3 player. ([65]Bug#273704)
 * [66]ledcontrol -- Scriptable keyboard LED control.
   ([67]Bug#273705)
 * [68]libfilesys-diskfree-perl -- Perl interface to df.
   ([69]Bug#273907)
 * [70]nco -- NetCDF Operators. ([71]Bug#273322)
 * [72]snake4 -- Snake game. ([73]Bug#273706)

 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/beaver
 57. http://bugs.debian.org/273316
 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/bfbtester
 59. http://bugs.debian.org/273701
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/doc-linux-sv-text
 61. http://bugs.debian.org/273702
 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gfslicer
 63. http://bugs.debian.org/273703
 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/ksmp3play
 65. http://bugs.debian.org/273704
 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/ledcontrol
 67. http://bugs.debian.org/273705
 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/libfilesys-diskfree-perl
 69. http://bugs.debian.org/273907
 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/nco
 71. http://bugs.debian.org/273322
 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/snake4
 73. http://bugs.debian.org/273706

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 [74]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [75]dwn@debian.org.

 74. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 75. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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