Debian Project News - July 8th, 2011
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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
June 8th, 2011 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2011/09/
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Welcome to this year's ninth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Report from LinuxTag 2011
* Testing new hardware support for Debian 6.0.2
* Bits from the Perl maintainers
* Report from the Alioth sprint
* Bits from the DPL
* New mirrors closer to Debian users
* Debian in newspapers
* Other news
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Report from LinuxTag 2011
-------------------------
Jan Hauke Rahm sent a report from the LinuxTag event [1] held in
Berlin, Germany. This year, Debian shared a booth with Kanotix and
aptosid, so one of the main topics was the relationship between Debian
and its derivatives. Users also asked about various hot topics like the
implementation of a "rolling" version of Debian, new efforts like
"/run" , etc. Jan expressed thanks to Annette Kalbow for organizing,
and all the helpers at the booth: a team of about ten to fifteen people
everyday.
1 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/05/msg00046.html
Testing new hardware support for Debian 6.0.2
---------------------------------------------
Ben Hutchings blogged about testing new hardware support for Debian
6.0.2 [2]. Ben has prepared several updates intended for Debian's
point release 6.0.2. Since the kernel team does not have a large
collection of hardware on which to test driver changes, he is asking
for test reports from users. Ben also described changes in drivers,
showed where to get the updated packages [3] and their checksums in the
signed changes file [4] so that users who want to help can verify
downloaded packages, and explained how to test the drivers.
2 : http://womble.decadent.org.uk/blog/testing-new-hardware-support-for-debian-602.html
3 : http://people.debian.org/~benh/packages/
4 : http://people.debian.org/~benh/packages/linux-2.6_2.6.32-35~test1_multi.changes
Bits from the Perl maintainers
------------------------------
Dominic Hargreaves sent some bits from the Perl maintainers [5], which
describe changes in Debian's perl [6] package. First of all, around
twelve months after the first upstream 5.12 release, Perl 5.12.3 was
uploaded to "unstable". Dominic thanked the Release Team for the
superb work of migrating new Perl packages to "testing". Although the
Perl maintainers did their best to minimize Perl 5.12 specific
breakage, he pointed out that there will inevitably be occasional
problems to be fixed. An upgrade trigger is also available in this
major version. At the end of his message, Dominic published plans for
the Perl 5.14 release which will be uploaded to "unstable" later this
year.
5 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/05/msg00006.html
6 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/perl
Report from the Alioth sprint
-----------------------------
Roland Mas sent a report from the Alioth sprint [7] held in Cambridge,
England from 20 to 22 May in the course of which the three Alioth
administrators (Stephan Gran, Tollef Fog Heen, and Roland Mas) did an
incredible amount of work to redefine the hosting structure of Alioth.
Basically, they have split the old alioth.debian.org into two different
machines: vasks.debian.org and wagner.debian.org, both running
"Squeeze". The former hosts the writable repositories, while the latter
provides anonymous read-only access to repositories, the repository
browsers, and the project websites. So, it's time for afingerprint [8]
update [9] for the two hosts. Another important change is that now
password-only remote logins are no longer allowed, and only SSH logins
via RSA key are possible. During the sprint the basic setting up was
done, trying to minimize inconvenience for users: the Alioth team is
still working on some other issues [10]. You can also read further
details of the Alioth team's work during the sprint in the report mail.
Roland ends his mail with a thankyou to the DPL and Collabora for
triggering and hosting the sprint.
7 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/05/msg00010.html
8 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/05/msg00007.html
9 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/05/msg00008.html
10 : http://titanpad.com/yyhfwA9Pyr
Bits from the DPL
-----------------
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli sent another bits from the DPL
[11] report. He summarized some of the hot topics discussed in the
Debian development mailing list, such as the "rolling" release,
pointing out how discussions in thedebian-devel mailing list have
become more useful. After listing the various events and conferences
attended, Stefano announced that he's working with SPI to figure out
how - legally speaking - could be possible to set up a "PPA" service,
to "allow Debian Developers to provide, under their own responsibility,
unofficial Debian packages benefiting from the usual archive and buildd
toolchain".
11 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/06/msg00000.html
New mirrors closer to Debian users
----------------------------------
After the announcement [12] of the official Chinese mirror [13], the
Debian mirrors team is happy to announce the first Debian mirrors in
Tunisia [14] and Madagascar [15]. For other countries, the full list
[16] is available online. There are still many countries lacking good
connectivity to a Debian mirror: interested hosting sponsors are
invited to contact the mirrors team.
12 : http://www.debian.org/News/2011/20110525
13 : http://ftp.cn.debian.org/debian/
14 : http://debian.mirror.tn/debian/
15 : http://mg.debian.net/debian/
16 : http://www.debian.org/mirror/list
Debian in newspapers
--------------------
Per Andersson and Hedvig Kamp wrote a series of article about Free
Software in general, and Debian in particular, in "Fria Tidningen" a
Swedish newspaper. One article is titledDet demokratiska Debian [17] (
"The democratic Debian" ), and describes Debian's organization and
social responsibility. Hedvig Kamp wrote aboutnerdfeminism and groups
that promote equality in free software [18]; among other groups she
presents Debian Women in the article (in the paper edition there is a
great big Debian Women logo too). Also in the paper is a general guide
on how to install GNU/Linux [19], with Debian as one of the featured
distros.
17 : http://www.fria.nu/artikel/88296
18 : http://www.fria.nu/artikel/88292
19 : http://www.fria.nu/artikel/88301
Other news
----------
Rene Engelhard, maintainer of Debian's LibreOffice packages, was
appointed as a member of LibreOffice's new Engineering Steering
Committee [20], which discusses release progress and coordinates
development activities.
20 : http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/05/23/the-document-foundation-announces-the-members-of-the-engineering-steering-committee/
Tanguy Ortolo wrote an interesting article about uninstalling a single
component of a metapackage [21], explaining how to unmark all the
dependencies and recommendations of the metapackage itself.
21 : http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article8/uninstall-meta-package
Till Kamppeter proposed some cooperation between Debian and Ubuntu to
start work on Color Management [22]. As Didier Raboud said in this
thread [23], "this type of communication between Debian and its
derivatives (and reversely in that case) is very important for the
health of our ecosystem".
22 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/05/msg01223.html
23 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/06/msg00012.html
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
Nine applicants have been accepted [24] as Debian Developers, two
applicants have been accepted [25] as Debian Maintainers, and eight
people have started to maintain packages [26] since the previous issue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Bert Agaz, Olivier Berger,
Gary Briggs, Jonathan Carter, Francesca Ciceri, Serge Hallyn, Anton
Gladky, Christoph Göhre, Christian Kastner, Iain Lane, Gennaro Oliva,
David Prévot, Filippo Rusconi, Jeremy Salwen, Michael Tokarev, Matteo
F. Vescovi, Sven Wick, Aron Xu, and Artem Popov into our project!
24 : https://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#newmaint
25 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2011/05/msg00055.html
26 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): vino [27], apr [28] (update), libmojolicious-perl [29],
qemu-kvm [30], linux-2.6 [31], cyrus-imapd-2.2 [32], unbound [33],
bind9 [34], chromium-browser [35], mahara [36], rails [37], ejabberd
[38], jabberd14 [39], citadel [40], subversion [41], dovecot [42],
fontforge [43], oprofile [44], and libxml2 [45]. Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.
27 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2238
28 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2237
29 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2239
30 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2241
31 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2240
32 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2242
33 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2243
34 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2244
35 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2245
36 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2246
37 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2247
38 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2248
39 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2249
40 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2250
41 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2251
42 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2252
43 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2253
44 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2254
45 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2255
Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about
security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please
subscribe to the security mailing list [46] (and the separate backports
list [47], and stable updates list [48] or volatile list [49], for
"Lenny", the oldstable distribution) for announcements.
46 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
47 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
48 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
49 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
816 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [50] are:
50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
* activity-log-manager -- blacklist configuration user interface for Zeitgeist [51]
* azr3-jack -- drawbar organ simulator [52]
* check-mk-agent -- general purpose Nagios-plugin for retrieving data [53]
* creepy -- geolocation information aggregator [54]
* duende -- experimental MaraDNS logging daemonizer [55]
* dvcs-autosync -- automatically synchronize distributed version control repositories [56]
* gcc-msp430 -- the GNU C compiler (cross compiler for MSP430) [57]
* kaccessible -- accessibility services for Qt applications [58]
* kalgebramobile -- algebraic graphing calculator for KDE [59]
* ladish -- session management system for JACK applications [60]
* lv2file -- command-line program to apply LV2 effects to files [61]
* mutrace -- mutex and realtime memory allocation profiling tools [62]
* nordugrid-arc-client -- ARC prototype clients [63]
* nzbget -- command-line newsgrabber for NZB files [64]
* packaging-tutorial -- introduction to Debian packaging [65]
* simgrid -- toolkit for scalable simulation of distributed applications [66]
* udisks-glue -- simple automount daemon with support for user-defined actions [67]
* xul-ext-perspectives -- verify HTTPS sites through notary servers [68]
* xyscan -- data thief for scientist [69]
* zita-rev1 -- pro-audio reverb effect [70]
51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/activity-log-manager
52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/azr3-jack
53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/check-mk-agent
54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/creepy
55 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/duende
56 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/dvcs-autosync
57 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gcc-msp430
58 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kaccessible
59 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kalgebramobile
60 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/ladish
61 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lv2file
62 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mutrace
63 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nordugrid-arc-client
64 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/nzbget
65 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/packaging-tutorial
66 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/simgrid
67 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/udisks-glue
68 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-perspectives
69 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xyscan
70 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zita-rev1
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently 316 packages are orphaned [71] and 140 packages are up for
adoption [72]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [73].
71 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
72 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
73 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested
Want to continue reading DPN?
-----------------------------
Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer
writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going
on. Please see the contributing page [74] to find out how to help.
We're looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org [75].
74 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
75 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Francesca Ciceri,
Jeremiah C. Foster, Simon Paillard, David Prévot, Alexander
Reichle-Schmehl, Alexander Reshetov and Justin B Rye [76].
76 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
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