Debian Weekly News - February 4th, 2003
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/05/
Debian Weekly News - February 4th, 2003
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Welcome to this year's fifth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Martin Michlmayr was [1]interviewed (German
only) about the Debian project. Jonathan Oxer told us that the Debian
[2]Mini-Conf last week was a success with 117 people attending.
Internet2 [3]reported that they have improved their previous speed
[4]record and transferred two DVD movies at an average speed of more
than 923 megabits per second.
1. http://www.linux-fuer-alle.de/doc_show.php?docid=161
2. http://www.debian.org/events/2003/0120-linuxconf
3. http://archives.internet2.edu/guest/archives/I2-NEWS/log200301/msg00005.html
4. http://www.debian.org/News/2002/20020522
The Debian Init Script System. Alexander Wirt [5]wondered why Debian
doesn't make different use of the runlevels 3 to 5 and he suggested a
scheme including all seven runlevels. Matthew P. McGuire mentioned the
LSB, which [6]specifies how the runlevels should be used. Henrique de
Moraes Holschuh disagreed that it would be simple to change the init
script system and pointed at his [7]paper in which he describes in
detail the current system and his proposed changes.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01898.html
6. http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/refspecs/LSB_1.3.0/gLSB/gLSB/runlevels.html
7. http://people.debian.org/~hmh/debconf2/debconf2-initscripts-bkg.ps.gz
New Debian Archive Key. Anthony Towns [8]announced the [9]archive
key for 2003, which is used to sign the Release file for the main,
non-US and security archives. This key can be used with
[10]apt-check-sigs to protect your use of apt-get from malicious or
exploited mirrors. There are other tools based on this that may be of
interest, see Google or the debian-security mailing list archives.
Colin Walters and a couple of others have been working on integrating
this into apt properly.
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0301/msg00009.html
9. http://ftp-master.debian.org/ziyi_key_2003.asc
10. http://people.debian.org/~ajt/apt-check-sigs
Improving Games in Debian. Hwei Sheng Teoh [11]offered to help any
Debian Developers who look after games to fix common soundserver
related problems. For example, the poor sound management of several
games can allow soundserver processes to linger after exit, infinitely
chewing up CPU power. Steve Kemp has also [12]noticed a recurring
problem with games not properly handling environment variables.
11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg02039.html
12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg02050.html
User Input into the Project Leader Elections. Manoj Srivastava, the
Debian Project Secretary, [13]announced that this year's Project
Leader debate on IRC will include user input. A [14]discussion has
begun on [15]Debian Planet where people are invited to pose questions
or offer opinions. The debate panelists will select some of these
questions to ask the candidates in the debate.
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0301/msg00011.html
14. http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=902
15. http://www.debianplanet.org/
Debian Logo on virtual Consoles. Dan McCombs wrote a [16]howto in
which he describes how to use the [17]linuxlogo for all virtual
consoles in order to display the Debian logo on them. The Mini-Howto
is written merely for fun and the only purpose it serves is to make
your computer look cool.
16. http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=548
17. http://packages.debian.org/linuxlogo
OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 for Woody. Adrian Bunk [18]announced that he has
backported OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 to woody (stable) using a backported
GCC 3.2.1. However, he warns that the [19]packages are only lightly
tested and he would welcome any comments. Version 1.0.2 is officially
available for i386, powerpc and s390 in Debian unstable.
18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-openoffice-0301/msg00169.html
19. http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/packages/
Vote on new Members for the SPI Board. Wichert Akkerman [20]called for
votes for [21]new members for the board of directors of [22]Software
in the Public Interest, Inc.. During the period from January 25 to
February 7 (UTC) contributing members can cast their vote [23]online.
People who become contributing members during this period are also
eligible to vote and all Debian developers who apply will become
contributing members automatically.
20. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2003/000042.html
21. http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/
22. http://www.spi-inc.org/
23. https://members.spi-inc.org/vote/
Debian Use in Nicaragua. Georg Lehner [24]reported that Debian is
spreading in Central America. Three universities use Debian for
routers and servers. A Debian workshop for system administrators from
the biggest university, Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua-Managua, just
finished. The national engineering university [25]UNI maintains a
Debian [26]mirror (i386) and also recently has joined the [27]LinEX
project.
24. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/05/mail.wml#1
25. http://www.uni.edu.ni/
26. http://debian.uni.edu.ni/
27. http://www.linex.org/
Exim 4.12 for Debian. Sander Smeenk [28]announced that he has created
[29]packages for Exim-TLS 4.12. He hesitates to upload them into
Debian because of problems that might arise when someone with an
insanely difficult exim-tls 3.xx configuration tries to upgrade.
Sander asks people to test the packages and report problems and
success.
28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg01896.html
29. http://people.debian.org/~ssmeenk/exim-tls/
Removing the undocumented.7 Manual Page. Bas Zoetekouw [30]plans to
file bug reports against all packages that still [31]contain
undocumented.7.gz symlinks. There are currently 693 binary packages in
sid that still use them. This manpage is obsolete in the current
[32]policy.
30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0302/msg00053.html
31. http://people.debian.org/~bas/undocumented
32. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
Project Leader Candidates. After Manoj Srivastava [33]announced the
beginning of the project leader election procedure, two Debian
developers have nominated so far. The first one was [34]Moshe Zadka,
followed by [35]Bdale Garbee. Branden Robinson has not yet decided if
he should run again and is [36]soliciting specific feedback by means
of the long questionnaire he attached.
33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0301/msg00006.html
34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0301/msg00008.html
35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0302/msg00000.html
36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0302/msg00001.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* [37]tomcat -- Information exposure and cross site scripting.
* [38]courier-ssl -- SQL injection.
* [39]hypermail -- Arbitrary code execution.
37. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-246
38. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-247
39. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-248
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive recently or contain important updates.
* [40]ebtables -- Ethernet bridge frame table administration.
* [41]fbdesk -- Desktop icons for fluxbox window manager.
* [42]manderlbot -- IRC bot, written in erlang.
* [43]openmash -- Multimedia tools for multicast from the OpenMASH
Project.
* [44]paketto -- Unusual TCP/IP testing tools.
* [45]wysihtml-el -- Almost real-time previewing system for HTML and
DocBook.
40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ebtables.html
41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/fbdesk.html
42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/manderlbot.html
43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/openmash.html
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/paketto.html
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/wysihtml-el.html
Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 161 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [46]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.
46. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [47]gtick -- GTK-based metronome. ([48]Bug#178979)
* [49]tubesock -- Free GTK/GNOME swf flash player written in C.
([50]Bug#179234)
* [51]wanpipe -- Configuration utilities for Sangoma S508/S514 WAN
cards. ([52]Bug#179392)
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/gtick.html
48. http://bugs.debian.org/178979
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/tubesock.html
50. http://bugs.debian.org/179234
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/wanpipe.html
52. http://bugs.debian.org/179392
Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter.
Several people are submitting items already, but we are still in need
of volunteer writers who prepare items. Please see the
[53]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward
to receiving your mail at [54]dwn@debian.org.
53. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
54. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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