Debian Weekly News - October 12th, 2004

Posted by dave on Oct 12, 2004 11:16 AM EDT
Mailing list; By Martin Schulze
Mail this story
Print this story

Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Christian Perrier reported the new debian-installer can be understood by two third of the world population since it is translated into 40 languages.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/40/
Debian Weekly News - October 12th, 2004
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Christian Perrier [1]reported the new [2]debian-installer can be understood by two third of the world population since it is translated into 40 languages.

1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2004/10/msg00022.html 2. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

2003 SPI Annual Report. David Graham [3]announced the [4]annual report for [5]Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI), the non-profit corporation which manages Debian's bank accounts and other legal affairs. The report discusses SPI bylaws, membership, and finances as well as hardware donations and reports that wxWidget was invited to become a SPI member project.

3. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2004/000103.html 4. http://www.spi-inc.org/~jgoerzen/ar2004/ 5. http://www.spi-inc.org/

Consistent Themes for Debian. Jaap Haitsma [6]noticed that there are many nice themes for grub, bootsplash, GDM, desktop splash and backgrounds, but in general it's difficult to find a combination that fits together nicely. Therefore he created [7]DebBlue, a set of themes, which can be used to give a nice consistent look to the Debian Desktop from boot until shutdown.

6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/10/msg00005.html 7. http://debblue.debian.net/

Developers Reference revisited. Andreas Barth [8]reported that he has updated large parts of the [9]developers reference. This includes, among others, synchronisation with the [10]Work needed and prospective packages, updated information about upload queues, ftp-master features and the testing distribution. A new [11]package is pending and some [12]bugs need more input.

8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/10/msg00003.html 9. http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/ 10. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ 11. http://packages.debian.org/developers-reference 12. http://bugs.debian.org/developers-reference

Different Types of Bug Submitters. Benjamin Drieu [13]classified bug submitters based on his experience as Debian developer and upstream software developer. He described the enthusiast, the anonymous clueless submitter, the rigorous, the clever (but mislead) submitter, the battler, the (annoying) badger, the Taiwanese and finally the patcher who has the skills to join development.

13. http://www.grassouille.org/blogmax/041009.html

New SpamAssassin Package. Martin F. Krafft [14]noted that SpamAssassin 3.x has been uploaded but has a different program interface (API) than its predecessor. He proposed to remove all packages from sarge that depend on SpamAssassin but don't work with the new version. Its maintainer wants to [15]keep this version out of sarge though.

14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00213.html 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00287.html

Setting up Databases for Packages. Philipp Hahn [16]asked about the best practice when a package requires an SQL database and needs to create its own catalog and/or tables. Peter Eisentraut [17]opted for creating tables when the program starts first. Andrew Pollock [18]mentioned [19]wwwconfig-common which works well but lacks documentation. Oliver Elphick [20]raised more concerns.

16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00340.html 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00345.html 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00390.html 19. http://packages.debian.org/wwwconfig-common 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00426.html

Archive for volatile Packages. Andreas Barth [21]discussed the idea of maintaining an [22]archive for volatile packages such as virus scanners and intrusion detection systems. Those packages require periodical updates that the main Debian archive cannot provide. However, packaging new upstream versions should be avoided as long as this is possible.

21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00430.html 22. http://volatile.debian.net/

Producing CDs and DVDs for Sarge. Steve McIntyre [23]discussed CD and DVD image generation for the upcoming release. Creating the images will take a while even when using [24]JTE. He raised the question for which architectures a DVD set should be create and whether source DVDs should be built as well. Creating a double-layer DVD will also require pruning of packages, since the Debian archive contains more than can fit on such a DVD.

23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2004/09/msg00084.html 24. http://www.einval.com/~steve/software/JTE/

Debian Desktop Goals. Stefano Fabri started a [25]discussion on common desktop goals for Debian, UserLinux and Ubuntu, such as a graphical installer, but listed many admin gadgets. Adrian von Bidder [26]added KDE-GNOME integration, font support/management and multimedia support. Cesar Martinez Izquierdo would like to see more [27]internationalisation and localisation.

25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/09/msg00010.html 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/09/msg00013.html 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/09/msg00016.html

LSB Status of Sarge. Roger So [28]noticed that the thread implementation in glibc (NPTL) in sarge is too old to pass the LSB 2.0 tests. Jeff Licquia [29]explained that updating to NPTL 0.61 is evidently difficult without upgrading to the most recent glibc. Jeff [30]offered to backport NPTL 0.61 to the Debian glibc.

28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-lsb/2004/09/msg00000.html 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-lsb/2004/09/msg00003.html 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-lsb/2004/09/msg00013.html

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

* [31]mod_dav -- Potential denial of service. * [32]net-act -- Insecure temporary file creation. * [33]lesstif -- Several vulnerabilities. * [34]xfree86 -- Several vulnerabilities. * [35]mysql -- Several vulnerabilities. * [36]cyrus-sasl -- Arbitrary code execution. * [37]samba -- Arbitrary file access.

31. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-558 32. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-559 33. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-560 34. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-561 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-562 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-563 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-600

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following package was added to the unstable Debian archive [38]recently.

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

* [39]grace6 -- XY plotting tool.

39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/grace6

Orphaned Packages. 9 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 188 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [40]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.

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

* [41]eclipse -- Extensible Tool Platform and Java IDE. ([42]Bug#276096) * [43]eskuel -- MySQL databases administration interface in PHP-scripts. ([44]Bug#274887) * [45]exult -- Engine for Ultima VII (BG, FOV, SI, SS). ([46]Bug#275780) * [47]fcheck -- IDS filesystem baseline integrity checker. ([48]Bug#275035) * [49]nwall -- Version of wall that uses GNU readline. ([50]Bug#275777) * [51]oonsoo -- Solitaire game for X. ([52]Bug#275774) * [53]plucker -- Pluck stuff from the web and read on your PalmOS device. ([54]Bug#275176) * [55]www6to4 -- Lightweight WWW proxy that communicates over IPv4 and IPv6. ([56]Bug#274888) * [57]xdiskusage -- Displays a graphic of your disk usage with du. ([58]Bug#275776)

41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/eclipse-platform 42. http://bugs.debian.org/276096 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/eskuel 44. http://bugs.debian.org/274887 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/exult 46. http://bugs.debian.org/275780 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/fcheck 48. http://bugs.debian.org/275035 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/nwall 50. http://bugs.debian.org/275777 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/oonsoo 52. http://bugs.debian.org/275774 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/plucker 54. http://bugs.debian.org/275176 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/www6to4 56. http://bugs.debian.org/274888 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xdiskusage 58. http://bugs.debian.org/275776

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 [59]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [60]dwn@debian.org.

59. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 60. mailto:dwn@debian.org

-- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [e-mail:debian-news-REQUEST@lists.debian.org] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [e-mail:listmaster@lists.debian.org]

  Nav
» Read more about: Story Type: Newsletter; Groups: Debian, Ubuntu

« Return to the newswire homepage

This topic does not have any threads posted yet!

You cannot post until you login.