Debian Weekly News - September 27th, 2005
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/39/
Debian Weekly News - September 27th, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 39th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Ben Hutchings [1]announced the availability of
video DVDs of the [2]DebConf talks. There has been some [3]effort to
convert the content of the old Wiki to the new [4]Debian Wiki.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/09/msg00011.html
2. http://www.debian.org/events/2005/0710-debconf
3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg00235.html
4. http://wiki.debian.org/
Collecting Boot Data. Jörg Sommer [5]wanted to know where on the
filesystem an init replacement could store its data. Martin Krafft
[6]suggested to keep the data in memory and dump them to a file at
the end of the boot process. Later Jörg [7]explained that the data
will be stored temporarily in /run and moved to the final destination.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01661.html
6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01663.html
7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01722.html
GL Library Duplication. Michael Biebl [8]wondered why both X.Org and
Mesa provide GL/GLU implementations as libraries and if there is an
attempt to switch to only one of them in the long term. Marcelo
Magallon [9]explained the contents of the affected packages and that
the user should know which driver they need.
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01816.html
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01886.html
Support for Libc Version 5. Jeroen van Wolffelaar [10]wondered how
long the old libc5 packages need to be supported by Debian, since
libc6 has been released 7 years ago and since the Debian project does
not provide security support for it. Roger Leigh [11]added that Debian
is the only common distribution that still ships binary packages for
the older libc and suggested its [12]removal.
10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg00109.html
11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg00136.html
12. http://bugs.debian.org/323139
Common Packaging Errors. Lars Wirzenius [13]reported on widespread
packaging bugs that he noticed during a [14]piuparts run over the
archive. These [15]runs help detecting files that aren't included in
the packages but also aren't removed during the installation or upon
package removal. They are also able to detect calls to external
programs on which packages don't properly depend.
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg00137.html
14. http://packages.debian.org/piuparts
15. http://liw.iki.fi/liw/temp/piuparts-old-logs
Debian OpenSolaris Port? Andreas Schuldei [16]encouraged developers to
take part in [17]discussions about the [18]license of OpenSolaris with
regards to a Debian [19]port. The license is currently not approved by
Debian due to its choice of venue [20]clause.
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg00227.html
17. http://www.opensolaris.org/os/discussions/
18. http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/forum.jspa?forumID=32
19. http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messageID=5914
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg00310.html
NTP License Problems. Nathanael Nerode [21]discovered several
differently licensed pieces of code in the [22]ntp package. Some of
them don't seem to be distributable by Debian at all. Bdale Garbee
[23]identified the problems and proposed to remove questionable code
from the package.
21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/09/msg00280.html
22. http://packages.debian.org/ntp
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/09/msg00315.html
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [24]recently or contain important updates.
24. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
* [25]commit-tool -- GUI commit tool for various Source Control
Management systems.
* [26]kaya -- Statically typed, imperative programming language.
* [27]klipsi -- Remote cut & paste for Psion PDA.
* [28]kpsion -- Backup and Restore of a Psion PDA.
* [29]ldirectord-2 -- Monitors virtual services provided by LVS.
* [30]mediawiki -- Website engine for collaborative work.
* [31]sqlrelay-mdb -- SQL Relay MDB connection daemon.
* [32]taskjuggler -- Project management application.
* [33]uni2ascii -- Convert UTF-8 into 7-bit ASCII and vice versa.
25. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/commit-tool
26. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kaya
27. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/klipsi
28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/kpsion
29. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/ldirectord-2
30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/mediawiki
31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/sqlrelay-mdb
32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/taskjuggler
33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/uni2ascii
Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 188 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [34]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.
34. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [35]gbatnav -- Networked BattleShip game. ([36]Bug#330167)
* [37]gtk-engines-thinice -- ThinIce theme for GTK+ 1.2.
([38]Bug#329655)
* [39]spell -- GNU Spell, a clone of Unix `spell'. ([40]Bug#330244)
35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gbatnav
36. http://bugs.debian.org/330167
37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gtk-engines-thinice
38. http://bugs.debian.org/329655
39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/spell
40. http://bugs.debian.org/330244
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* DSA 817: [41]python2.2 -- Arbitrary code execution.
* DSA 818: [42]kdeedu -- Insecure temporary files.
* DSA 819: [43]python2.1 -- Arbitrary code execution.
* DSA 820: [44]courier -- Cross-site scripting.
41. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-817
42. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-818
43. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-819
44. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-820
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 [45]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [46]dwn@debian.org.
45. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
46. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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