Debian Weekly News - January 18th, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/03/
Debian Weekly News - January 18th, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 3rd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the
Debian community. Roger So sent a [1]reminder for the Call for Papers
for the Asia Debian Mini-Conf taking place at the end of February in
Beijing, China. Jeroen van Wolffelaar compiled a [2]list of packages
in contrib which should be forced into the testing stage of contrib.
Ankit Malik listed [3]ten ways to pay back to the Free Software
community.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/01/msg00008.html
 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/01/msg00040.html
 3. http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/06/1557225

Final DebConf 4 Report. Pablo Lorenzzoni [4]announced the [5]final
report about the [6]Debian Conference held last year in Porto Alegre.
The report is more a spreadsheet and lists 163 people who have
attended this conference representing many teams inside the Debian
project. Several sponsors have made this event possible and the
organisers even document things that can be improved next time.

 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/01/msg00007.html
 5. http://www.debconf.org/debconf4/final-report.html
 6. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0526-debconf

Development on dpkg. Scott James Remnant [7]announced the
experimental branch of [8]dpkg. This branch is intended to see fairly
rapid releases incorporating both bug fixes and new
development/features. It may be slightly more unstable than you may be
used to. Development plans are documented in the [9]dpkg wiki.

 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/01/msg00006.html
 8. http://packages.debian.org/dpkg
 9. http://www.dpkg.org/

New Policy for Debian Consultants. Tobias Toedter [10]proposed a new
policy regarding the addition of entries to the Debian [11]consultants
list. The consultants team didn't reach consensus on which part of the
address is mandatory. Additionally, a discussion came up why Debian is
now requiring the consultant to link to the Debian website as well.

 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/01/msg00236.html
 11. http://www.debian.org/consultants/

Call for Papers for Mini-DebConf. Jonathan Oxer [12]called for
speakers for the upcoming Debian Miniconf taking place before the
[13]Linux Conference Australia. Presentation topics have to be
directly related to Debian and be intended for a technical audience.
Presentation slots are 1 hour long with 45 minutes for presentation,
10 minutes for questions and 5 minutes for speaker changeover. The
format is pretty casual and relaxed though so anything can happen on
the day.

 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/01/msg00003.html
 13. http://www.linux.conf.au/

Keeping old Library Versions intact. Thomas Bushnell [14]wondered how
to keep an older library intact but also providing a newer version.
Santiago Vila [15]proposed to upload the old version with a higher
version number than the current and the new version with a new binary
name and an adjusted library soname. When both libraries are
compatible, the old -dev package is not required anymore and the
library should go into section oldlibs.

 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00623.html
 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00631.html

Different Architectures Binary Packages. Norbert Preining [16]wondered
if there is support for placing binaries of different architectures
and operating systems in the same Debian package. Steve Langasek
[17]explained that the proposed location of architecture specific
files would even be a violation of the [18]Filesystem Hierarchy
Standard (FHS).

 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00697.html
 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00703.html
 18. http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

Disabling Daemon Services. Erik Schanze [19]wondered how to disable
the start of daemons so that this setting will be kept upon upgrades.
Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña [20]referred to the [21]Securing Debian
Manual where it is explained that you need to leave one link intact.

 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00761.html
 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00774.html
 21. http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/ch3.en.html#s3.6

Editing History? Frank Küster [22]wondered if it would be acceptable
to add information about closed bugs to older changelog entries.
Jeroen van Wolffelaar [23]considered it fine to correct and improve
older items. He [24]added that Branden Robinson improves the changelog
file in order to be able to correctly lookup when a certain bug was
fixed.

 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00790.html
 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00791.html
 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00800.html

Essential Packages for Building Packages. Scott James Remnant
[25]wondered if [26]debhelper is or rather should be declared
build-essential since 92 % of all source packages declare a
build-dependency on it. This could remove a large chunk of versioned
dependencies on one hand, but on the other hand new versioned
[27]dependencies against [28]build-essential would be introduced when
newer versions of debhelper are required for building.

 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00849.html
 26. http://packages.debian.org/debhelper
 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00927.html
 28. http://packages.debian.org/build-essential

Turck-MMCache undistributable? Elizabeth Fong [29]sought advice since
Andres Solomon [30]reported Turck-MMCache as undistributable. The
software has been abandoned upstream with an unresponsive developer,
but forked. However, its license (GPL) is not compatible with the
license of PHP4 which it needs to be linked against. In combination
this means that Debian can not distribute binary packages of
Turck-MMCache.

 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00130.html
 30. http://bugs.debian.org/280864

License of graphviz. Somebody [31]wondered why [32]graphviz was in
non-free when the [33]license on its homepage was considered free by
the [34]FSF and [35]debian-legal. Marco d'Itri [36]pointed out that
the software has recently been relicensed. Andrew Suffield [37]added
that the new upstream version may go into main.

 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00297.html
 32. http://packages.debian.org/graphviz
 33. http://www.graphviz.org/License.php
 34. http://www.fsf.org/
 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/
 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00299.html
 37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00394.html

Debian From Scratch. Bruce Byfield wrote an [38]introduction to
[39]Debian from scratch (DFS). It comprises of a bootable CD and the
programs to generate it. By default only core packages are installed.
DFS supports most major file systems, RAID, and LVM2, and includes
several partition editors which make it a useful rescue CD.

 38. http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/10/1727246
 39. http://people.debian.org/~jgoerzen/dfs/html/dfs.html

Properly Crafting the debian/copyright File. Jochen Voss [40]wondered
how to properly write the debian/copyright file. Henning Makholm
[41]explained that all authors who claim copyright in a source file
should be credited in the Debian copyright file, together with the
exact statement of license they issued. He added some compression
practices to improve the readability of that file.

 40. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00488.html
 41. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00519.html

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

 * DSA 635: [42]exim -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 636: [43]glibc -- Insecure temporary files.
 * DSA 637: [44]exim-tls -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 638: [45]gopher -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 639: [46]mc -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 640: [47]gatos -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 641: [48]playmidi -- Local root exploit.
 * DSA 642: [49]gallery -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 643: [50]queue -- Buffer overflows.
 * DSA 644: [51]chbg -- Arbitrary code execution.

 42. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-635
 43. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-636
 44. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-637
 45. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-638
 46. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-639
 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-640
 48. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-641
 49. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-642
 50. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-643
 51. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-644

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [52]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [53]gazpacho -- GTK+ User Interface Designer.
 * [54]gpx2shp -- Convert GPS or GPX file to ESRI Shape file.
 * [55]jabber-irc -- IRC transport for jabber.
 * [56]micro-httpd -- Really small HTTP server.
 * [57]mozilla-enigmail -- GPG support for Mozilla MailNews.
 * [58]openclipart -- Open Clip Art Library.
 * [59]packagesearch -- GUI to allow easy searching of packages.
 * [60]quodlibet -- Audio library manager and player for GTK+.
 * [61]rbot -- IRC bot written in ruby.
 * [62]ttf-junicode -- Unicode font for medievalists (Latin, IPA and
   Runic).
 * [63]wakeonlan -- Sends 'magic packets' to wake-on-LAN enabled
   ethernet adapters.
 * [64]xdesktopwaves -- Simulation of water waves on the X Window
   System.

 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/gazpacho
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/gpx2shp
 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/jabber-irc
 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/micro-httpd
 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/mozilla-enigmail
 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/openclipart
 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/packagesearch
 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/quodlibet
 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/rbot
 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ttf-junicode
 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/wakeonlan
 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/xdesktopwaves

Orphaned Packages. 10 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 255 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.

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

 * [66]encore -- Core database for lambdamoo. ([67]Bug#290410)
 * [68]ghostcore -- Core database for lambdamoo. ([69]Bug#290411)
 * [70]goats -- A sticky-note type program for Gnome 2.
   ([71]Bug#290920)
 * [72]hanterm-classic -- Another X terminal emulator with Hangul
   support. ([73]Bug#290921)
 * [74]hanterm-xf -- X terminal emulator with Hangul support.
   ([75]Bug#290919)
 * [76]jhcore -- Jay's House Core, an enhanced core database for
   lambdamoo. ([77]Bug#290416)
 * [78]lambdacore -- Core database for lambdamoo. ([79]Bug#290412)
 * [80]lambdamoo -- Server for an online multiuser virtual world.
   ([81]Bug#290413)
 * [82]lambdamoo-docs -- LambdaMOO user and programmer manuals.
   ([83]Bug#290414)
 * [84]ratmenu -- Creates X menus from the shell. ([85]Bug#290415)

 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/encore
 67. http://bugs.debian.org/290410
 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ghostcore
 69. http://bugs.debian.org/290411
 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/goats
 71. http://bugs.debian.org/290920
 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/hanterm-classic
 73. http://bugs.debian.org/290921
 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/hanterm-xf
 75. http://bugs.debian.org/290919
 76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/jhcore
 77. http://bugs.debian.org/290416
 78. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/lambdacore
 79. http://bugs.debian.org/290412
 80. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/lambdamoo
 81. http://bugs.debian.org/290413
 82. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/lambdamoo-docs
 83. http://bugs.debian.org/290414
 84. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ratmenu
 85. http://bugs.debian.org/290415

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 [86]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [87]dwn@debian.org.

 86. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 87. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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