Debian Weekly News - May 2nd, 2006
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/18/
Debian Weekly News - May 2nd, 2006
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Welcome to this year's 18th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Jörg Jaspert [1]reported that the web content
for past Debian Conferences is online again. In an effort to remove
old cruft Andreas Barth [2]proposed to remove packages from unstable
which are neither available in the current [3]sarge nor in the
upcoming [4]etch distribution.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/02/msg01032.html
2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2006/04/msg00067.html
3. http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/
4. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/
PowerPC Port needs Help. Frans Pop [5]asked for help with the PowerPC
port of the [6]debian-installer. In particular someone is needed to
take responsibility for architecture-specific issues. This comprises
of regularly testing of the installer, keeping an eye on installation
reports, taking care of architecture specific components of the
installer, resolving bugs and taking care of daily builds.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2006/03/msg00490.html
6. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
Relicensing the Debian Web Pages. Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña
[7]pointed out that there is still an open [8]bug in the [9]bug
tracking system which is about the non-[10]DFSG-free license for the
current Debian web pages. It was suggested to use an modified FreeBSD
documentation [11]license. Some others want to use the GPL for the web
pages. There are also technical, legal and practical problems which
needs to be resolved before the license could be changed. The
[12]discussion is still ongoing on the [13]debian-www mailing list.
7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2006/04/msg00126.html
8. http://bugs.debian.org/238245
9. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
10. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
11. http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-doc-license.html
12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/2006/04/threads.html
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-www/
Avoiding native Debian Packages. Panu Kalliokoski [14]wondered why one
should not add Debian packaging information to upstream packages. Lars
Wirzenius [15]explained the benefits as keeping package fixes out of
upstream and to simplify things if the upstream maintainer is no
longer a Debian developer. Henning Makholm [16]added that the lack of
Debian-specific information indicates that the package might be useful
by any GNU/Linux distribution.
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/02/msg01193.html
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/02/msg01194.html
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/02/msg01207.html
/usr/doc Transition finished. Joey Hess [17]announced that he has
opened bug reports for the last remaining packages which still create
/usr/doc symlinks. This final step marks the end of the era of regular
documentation in /usr/doc.
17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg00166.html
Device Mapper Support for Block Device ID Library. Theodore Ts'o
[18]reported that he has received a patch which allows the block
device id library to properly handle device mapper partitions. Since
this would essentially drag in three more libraries into everybody's
systems he wondered if this would be acceptable. Mike Hommey
[19]stated that two of them have already been added via other
packages.
18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg00265.html
19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg00267.html
New Features of Buildd.Net. Ingo Jürgensmann [20]announced new
features of [21]buildd.net such as tracking packages for sarge
[22]backports, various new package state checks, estimation of time
needed for building all packages in a queue, a new mailing-list for
discussions and as a bonus the source is [23]available under a sane
license.
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg00437.html
21. http://www.buildd.net/
22. http://www.backports.org/
23. http://www.buildd.net/source/
Stable Installer Update. Frans Pop [24]proposed how to deal with ABI
changes introduced by the recent kernel [25]security [26]updates and
to rebuild the installer images using the new kernel udebs. This will
break some existing installation images. The main problem is going to
be testing the new images as it will not be possible to run an
installation and download udebs from different sources.
24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2006/04/msg00715.html
25. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1018
26. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1017
Removing Log Files during Package Purge? Martin Krafft [27]proposed to
alter the policy to not remove log files upon package purge. He argued
that this removal may put an administrator into legal trouble with the
authorities in Europe. Marco d'Itri [28]suggested to run a backup
prior to the package purge or not purge it at all if not all files
should be removed anyway.
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg00688.html
28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/03/msg00691.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* DSA 1043: [29]abcmidi -- Arbitrary code execution.
* DSA 1044: [30]mozilla-firefox -- Several vulnerabilities.
* DSA 1045: [31]openvpn -- Arbitrary code execution.
* DSA 1046: [32]mozilla -- Several vulnerabilities.
* DSA 1047: [33]resmgr -- Unauthorised access.
* DSA 1048: [34]asterisk -- Arbitrary code execution.
* DSA 1049: [35]ethereal -- Several vulnerabilities.
29. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1043
30. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1044
31. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1045
32. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1046
33. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1047
34. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1048
35. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1049
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [36]recently or contain important updates.
36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
* [37]aircrack-ng -- Wireless WEP/WPA cracking utilities.
* [38]bibledit -- Bible translation tool.
* [39]enemylines3 -- Semi-abstract first person 3d-shooter game.
* [40]epylog -- New logs analyser and parser.
* [41]gaupol -- Subtitle editor for text-based subtitle files.
* [42]gulm -- Server-based unified cluster/lock manager for GFS.
* [43]hoichess -- Xboard compatible chess engine to play chess with.
* [44]krecipes -- Recipes manager for KDE.
* [45]matchbox-keyboard -- On-screen keyboard.
* [46]mktemp -- Makes unique filenames for temporary files.
* [47]paps -- UTF-8 to PostScript converter using Pango.
* [48]php4-memcache -- Memcache extension module for PHP4.
* [49]php5 -- PHP5 - HTML-embeddable scripting language.
* [50]php5-memcache -- Memcache extension module for PHP5.
* [51]squashfs-source -- Source for the squash filesystem.
* [52]simpleopal -- Simple example from the OPAL project.
* [53]slugimage -- NSUL2 firmare image manipulation utility.
* [54]sqlfairy -- SQL translation utilities.
* [55]sysrqd -- Small daemon intended to manage Linux SysRq over
network.
* [56]unionfs-tools -- Tools to manage unionfs filesystems.
* [57]xen-utils-3.0 -- XEN administrative tools.
* [58]xprint-utils -- Utilities for Xprint, the X11 print system.
* [59]xserver-xorg-input-wacom -- X.Org X server -- wacom input
driver.
* [60]xtrkcad -- Sillub Technologies Model Train Track CAD Program.
37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/aircrack-ng
38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/bibledit
39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/enemylines3
40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/epylog
41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gaupol
42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/gulm
43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/hoichess
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/krecipes
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/embedded/matchbox-keyboard
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/mktemp
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/paps
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/php4-memcache
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/php5
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/php5-memcache
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/squashfs-source
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/simpleopal
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/slugimage
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/sqlfairy
55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/sysrqd
56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/unionfs-tools
57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/xen-utils-3.0
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xprint-utils
59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xserver-xorg-input-wacom
60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/xtrkcad
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 [61]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [62]dwn@debian.org.
61. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
62. mailto:dwn@debian.org
This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by Sebastian Feltel
and Martin 'Joey' Schulze.
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