Debian Weekly News - October 1st, 2002
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/38/
Debian Weekly News - October 1st, 2002
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Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community, which includes items by Ludovic Rousseau and
Andrew Pollock this time. After over four years (1757 days) of
computation effort and millions of cpu-hours of work,
[1]distributed.net has [2]brute forced the key to RSA Security's 64
bit encryption [3]challenge, winning a US$ 10,000 prize.
1. http://www.distributed.net/
2. http://www.rsasecurity.com/news/releases/pr.asp?doc_id=1400
3. http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/
High-profile Uses of Debian. Colin Walters [4]announced that he is
gathering information about high-profile [5]usage of Debian. Good
examples include deployment as a standard workstation at a university
or college, as a server for well known web sites such as Sourceforge
and Thawte.com, or in a high-reliability/availablity context (such as
a life support system in a hospital).
4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01609.html
5. http://www.debian.org/users/
Support for Smart Cards. Ludovic Rousseau packaged most of the
[6]MuscleCard utilities provided by [7]Muscle (Movement for the Use
of Smart Card in a Linux Environment). This includes high-level
abstraction libraries as [8]libcflexplugin for a Schlumberger
Cryptoflex card and [9]libmcardplugin for the generic JavaCard card.
On top of these [10]libmusclepkcs11 provides a [11]PKCS#11 API
(Application Program Interface).
6. http://linuxnet.com/musclecard/index.html
7. http://linuxnet.com/
8. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libcflexplugin.html
9. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libmcardplugin.html
10. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libmusclepkcs11.html
11. http://developer.netscape.com/support/faqs/pkcs_11.html
Using Smart Cards. The API mentioned above is used by Mozilla to
delegate cryptographic functions to a cryptographic token (like a
smart card). So your authentication and signing key used by Mozilla
will never leave your smart card and will not be stored on the
computer (RSA key pairs are generated onboard the smart card).
Additionally [12]xcardii provides a graphical user interface and
[13]muscletools a commandline frontend to manage your smart card.
12. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/xcardii.html
13. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/muscletools.html
Using CVS for Manpage Translations. Julien Louis [14]wondered how to
coordinate the translation of Debian specific manpages. This effort
could be maintained through CVS, sorted by language and section. Denis
Barbier [15]adds that the [16]cvs directory already exists and that we
could use similar tools to those that are used for maintaining
translations of the website.
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc-0209/msg00113.html
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc-0209/msg00134.html
16. http://cvs.debian.org/manpages/?cvsroot=debian-doc
Debiandoc versus Docbook. Susan Kleinman [17]believed that it would be
a good idea to revise the policy stating that all debian documentation
should be written in debiandoc. Susan proposed that Debian adopts an
XML based language. The following discussion lists several pros and
cons against this proposal.
17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc-0209/msg00094.html
Is Debian Losing Influence? A [18]comment on Debian Planet discussed
the little attention Debian has received from GNU/Linux websites
following the release of woody two months ago in comparison to other
distributions. There are very few online reviews of Debian 3.0,
compared to Red Hat 7.3, for example, which has had four reviews since
it's release around five months ago. Should the Debian community be
concerned about the lack of popular interest in it's distribution?
18. http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=813
Bootable ISO-Image for SGI Indy. Florian Lohoff [19]announced the
first ISO image for Debian/mips which is bootable on SGI I2 and SGI
Indy machines. All you need to do is enter the PROM and click on
Software installation from local cdrom. Then follow the usual steps to
install Debian on the machine. This was [20]developed during this
year's [21]developers meeting.
19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-mips-0209/msg00055.html
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-mips-0209/msg00048.html
21. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2002/
Debian at Spanish National Hackmeeting. Eric Van Buggenhaut reported
that the [22]Spanish National Hackmeeting will be held in Madrid this
year, on October 4th - 6th. This show is the largest annual
concentration of geeks and Free Software in Spain. Several Debian
developers will be present and run a Debian booth to demonstrate the
benefits of our favourite system to the public.
22. http://www.sindominio.net/hackmeeting/eng/madhack.html
Enabling Daemons. Noah Meyerhans [23]noted that Debian currently
doesn't support situations when a daemon package is installed and the
daemon isn't started upon startup. Noah wondered why Debian doesn't
support the BSDish /etc/rc.conf system which contains a variable for
each daemon.
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01760.html
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
Debian archive recently or contain important updates.
* [24]basilisk2 -- 68k Macintosh emulator.
* [25]tcptrace -- Tool for analyzing tcpdump output.
* [26]umlrun -- Run commands inside User-Mode Linux.
24. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/basilisk2.html
25. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/tcptrace.html
26. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/umlrun.html
Orphaned Packages. 20 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 139 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [27]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.
27. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [28]argus -- IP network transaction auditing tool.
([29]Bug#163005)
* [30]argus-client -- IP network transaction auditing tool.
([31]Bug#163006)
* [32]blt -- the BLT libraries for TK/TCL. ([33]Bug#162857)
* [34]chkrootkit -- Checks for signs of rootkits on the local
system. ([35]Bug#163009)
* [36]eeyes -- The Electric Eyes graphics viewer/editor.
([37]Bug#162305)
* [38]generator -- Genesis emulator. ([39]Bug#162407)
* [40]ggradebook -- A Gradebook to help teachers manage student
grades. ([41]Bug#162059)
* [42]gnome-vfs-extras -- GPL gnome-vfs modules, includes SMB
support. ([43]Bug#162408)
* [44]gnome-vfs-extras2 -- GPL gnome-vfs modules, includes SMB and
Rio500 support. ([45]Bug#162409)
* [46]gtk-engines-cleanice -- CleanIce theme for GTK+ 1.2.
([47]Bug#162410)
* [48]gtk-engines-cleanice2 -- CleanIce theme for GTK+ 2.x.
([49]Bug#162411)
* [50]gtk-engines-mgicchikn -- Magic Chicken theme for GTK+ 2.x.
([51]Bug#162412)
* [52]libhdf4g -- The Hierarchical Data Format, version 4.
([53]Bug#162608)
* [54]saml -- Simple Algebraic Math Library. ([55]Bug#162536)
* [56]screem -- GNOME website development environment.
([57]Bug#162887)
* [58]tct -- Forensics related utilities. ([59]Bug#163007)
* [60]thttpd -- tiny/turbo/throttling HTTP server. ([61]Bug#163004)
* [62]utah-glx -- Hardware accelerated GLX module for XFree86.
([63]Bug#162609)
* [64]xfonts-gimpers -- X11 fonts created by Artwiz, TigerT and
Daniel Erat. ([65]Bug#162476)
* [66]xwave -- Wave sound file editor. ([67]Bug#162607)
28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/argus-server.html
29. http://bugs.debian.org/163005
30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/argus-client.html
31. http://bugs.debian.org/163006
32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/blt.html
33. http://bugs.debian.org/162857
34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/chkrootkit.html
35. http://bugs.debian.org/163009
36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/eeyes.html
37. http://bugs.debian.org/162305
38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/generator.html
39. http://bugs.debian.org/162407
40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/ggradebook.html
41. http://bugs.debian.org/162059
42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gnome-vfs-extras.html
43. http://bugs.debian.org/162408
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gnome-vfs-extras2.html
45. http://bugs.debian.org/162409
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gtk-engines-cleanice.html
47. http://bugs.debian.org/162410
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gtk-engines-cleanice2.html
49. http://bugs.debian.org/162411
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gtk-engines-mgicchikn.html
51. http://bugs.debian.org/162412
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libhdf4g.html
53. http://bugs.debian.org/162608
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/saml.html
55. http://bugs.debian.org/162536
56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/screem.html
57. http://bugs.debian.org/162887
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/tct.html
59. http://bugs.debian.org/163007
60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/thttpd.html
61. http://bugs.debian.org/163004
62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/utah-glx.html
63. http://bugs.debian.org/162609
64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xfonts-gimpers.html
65. http://bugs.debian.org/162476
66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/xwave.html
67. http://bugs.debian.org/162607
Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter.
Currently, it's mostly a one-man show, which is anticipated to fail in
the long term. We urgently need volunteer writers who prepare items.
Please see the [68]contributing page to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at [69]dwn@debian.org.
68. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
69. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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