Debian Project News - May 31st, 2010
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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
May 31st, 2010 http://debian.org/News/project/2010/04/
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Welcome to this year's fourth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Bits from the Debian Project Leader
* Parallel booting enabled by default
* DebConf Reconfirmation Deadline
* Declassification of the debian-private mailing list
* LILO about to be removed in Debian 6.0 "Squeeze"
* Firmware support in Debian's installation system
* ... and much more.
Bits from the Debian Project Leader
-----------------------------------
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli sent [8] a "Bits from..." mail
reporting some of his recent activities. He started with a call to help
Debian's Release Team as the current members need more help getting the
upcoming release of Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" ready. He also mentioned some
interviews and public appearances he had, and delegations of the Debian
System Administrators and a Debian Auditor. In a summary of his report
of his recent visit to the Ubuntu Developer Summit, he asked for
volunteers to act as the contact point for Debian derivatives. Their job
would be to help developers of Debian derivatives to find ways to
contribute back to Debian.
8 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/05/msg00008.html
Parallel booting enabled by default
-----------------------------------
Debian Developer Petter Reinholdtsen announced [9] that after enabling
reordering the init scripts of a boot sequence back in last July,
parallel booting is now also enabled by default in recent installations,
which should help to reduce boot and shutdown times of new Debian
systems. There is still some work left to do [10] which would further
improve shutdown speed of Debian systems, such as reducing the number of
scripts that just kill a daemon during shutdown.
9 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/05/msg00009.html
10 : http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html
DebConf Reconfirmation Deadline
-------------------------------
DebConf organiser Pablo Duboue asked [11] all attendees of the eleventh
Debian Developer Conference [12] to reconfirm before 10 June 2010 that
they still plan to attend the conference. Reconfirmation can be done
using the Conference Organisation Web Interface [13]. Reconfirmation is
especially important for people who requested sponsored food and/or
accommodation.
11 : http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20100525.175712.4b6eb245.en.html
12 : http://debconf10.debconf.org/
13 : https://penta.debconf.org/
Declassification of the debian-private mailing list
---------------------------------------------------
Over four years ago the Debian Project decided [14] to open up the
archive of its private mailing list for everyone after a period of three
years. With this three year period being over for the first posts,
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli is now looking [15] for
volunteers to look through the archive, contact authors of these mails
and open the archive. Martin Krafft proposed [16] to change the
workflow, by making parts of the archive open on a regular basis and
letting people delete mails they don't want to see published. Several
problems were pointed out with this approach, such as that people might
have resigned as Developers in the past three years and therefore no
longer have enough access to delete their mails.
14 : http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_002
15 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/05/msg00105.html
16 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/05/msg00106.html
LILO about to be removed in Debian 6.0 "Squeeze"
------------------------------------------------
William Pitcock explained [17] that due to some limitations (for example
in the size of supported kernels) the boot loader LILO [18] is about to
be removed from the upcoming release of Debian 6.0 "Squeeze". He
therefore asked users to test the replacement boot loader GRUB 2 [19].
17 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00769.html
18 : http://packages.debian.org/lilo
19 : http://packages.debian.org/grub-pc
Firmware support in Debian's installation system
------------------------------------------------
Debian Developer Petter Reinholdtsen announced [20] some changes he is
introducing into Debian's installation system to allow more flexible
handling of the loading of firmware files (binary programs loaded and
executed in hardware, for example some network adaptors). Steve
McIntyre, leader of the Debian CD/DVD team, has already adapted [21] the
build system for CD/DVD images to reflect these changes and created some
test images [22].
20 : http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html
21 : http://lists.debian.org/20100527141708.GA27043@einval.com
22 : http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/sid_d-i/20100527-7/
Other news
----------
Ana Guerrero noticed [23] that quite a few of the recent Non-Maintainer
Uploads are quite intrusive and reminded NMUers to keep changes minimal.
23 : http://lists.debian.org/20100522130720.GA1982@ana.debian.net
After visiting the ￜlectricitￜ de France Research and Development
centre, Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli blogged [24] about
their reasons for basing their cluster (and an increasing number of
desktops, too) on Debian. One of their main reasons was the large amount
of scientific software available as packages and the high quality
standards Debian sets.
24 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/05/Debian-based_scientific_computing_at_EDF/
Aurelien Jarno reported [25] a bit about Debian's switch from GLIBC to
EGLIBC.
25 : http://blog.aurel32.net/?p=56
Debian System Administrator Martin Zobel-Helas announced [26] that with
the successful introduction of a GeoDNS setup, the experimental subzone
security.geo.debian.org is obsolete and should be replaced by the normal
security.debian.org entry in /etc/apt/sources.list files.
26 : http://dsa.debian.org//dsablog/2010/05/Dropping_security.geo.debian.org_zone/
Roland Mas blogged [27] bits of news from the FusionForge project, the
software running Debian's collaboration platform [28].
27 : http://roland.entierement.nu/blog/2010/05/23/fusionforge-news-may-2010.html
28 : http://alioth.debian.org
While a similar list for Debian Developers already existed for some
time, it was reported [29] that Enrico Zini has just finished the code
to produce a list of Debian Maintainers and their packages [30].
29 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/05/debian_maintainers_list/
30 : https://nm.debian.org/dm_list.html
After wondering what distribution specific tools Debian's KDE might
miss, Sune Vuorela reported [31] some of the feedback he got. To quote
him: "All in all, it looks like we are quite far already. We just need
to get the last bits put together."
31 : http://pusling.com/blog/?p=167
Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
---------------------------------------------------------
According to the unofficial RC-bugs count [32], the upcoming release,
Debian 6.0 "Squeeze", is currently affected by 395 release critical
bugs. 66 of them have already been fixed in Debian's "unstable" branch.
Of the remaining 329 release critical bugs, 44 already have a patch
(which might need testing) and 27 are marked as pending.
32 : http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php
Ignoring these bugs as well as release critical bugs for packages in
contrib or non-free, 199 release critical bugs remain to be solved for
the release to happen.
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): phpgroupware [33], dvipng [34], kdegraphics [35],
postgresql-8.3 [36], krb5 [37] and linux-2.6 [38]. Please read them
carefully and take the proper measures.
33 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2046
34 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2048
35 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2050
36 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2051
37 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2052
38 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2053
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 [39] for announcements.
39 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive
recently (among others [40]):
40 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
* acgvision-agent -- Monitoring client for ACGVision [41]
* bdii -- The Berkeley Database Information Index (BDII) [42]
* bley -- intelligent greylisting daemon for Postfix [43]
* browser-plugin-parole -- multimedia plugin for web browsers based on Parole media player [44]
* cairo-dock-core -- Light eye-candy fully themable animated dock for Linux desktop [45]
* cipux-cat-web -- user and resource management framework CipUX - web-based admin tools [46]
* colortest -- utilities to test color capabilities of terminal [47]
* cscope-el -- Interactively examine a C program source, cscope emacs binding [48]
* debian-ports-archive-keyring -- GnuPG archive keys of the debian-ports archive [49]
* flegita -- Easy to use scanning interface for GNOME [50]
* giggle-personal-details-plugin -- Gtk+ frontend for the git directory tracker - personal details plugin [51]
* giggle-terminal-view-plugin -- Gtk+ frontend for the git directory tracker - terminal plugin [52]
* kdevelop-php-docs -- PHP documentation plugin for KDevelop [53]
* kdevelop-php -- PHP plugin for KDevelop [54]
* klick -- advanced metronome for JACK [55]
* latexila -- LaTeX editor designed for the GNOME desktop [56]
* pdfgrep -- search in pdf files for strings matching a regular expression [57]
* perl-depends -- roughly find out module depends from a perl file [58]
* phpbb3-l10n -- additional language files for phpBB [59]
* pius -- Quick and easy signing of each UID on a PGP keyring [60]
* python-sss -- Pam module for the System Security Services Daemon [61]
* rails-ruby1.8 -- MVC ruby based framework geared for web application development [62]
* rekonq -- KDE web browser based on Webkit [63]
* roffit -- convert nroff manual pages into HTML [64]
* rygel-tracker -- GNOME UPnP/DLNA services - Tracker plugin [65]
* sibyl-installer -- Install the SiByl boot loader on your disk [66]
* sssd -- System Security Services Daemon [67]
* uima-doc -- Documentation for the Apache UIMA framework [68]
* uima-examples -- Examples of UIMA components [69]
* uima-utils -- UIMA tools [70]
* update-notifier-kde -- Update notifier for the KDE Plasma Desktop [71]
* v4l-utils -- Collection of command line video4linux utilities [72]
* verilator -- fast free Verilog simulator [73]
* watch-maildirs -- watch mailstores for changes and initiate mailbox syncs - server tools [74]
* w-scan -- Channel scanning tool for for DVB and ATSC channels [75]
41 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/acgvision-agent
42 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bdii
43 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bley
44 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/browser-plugin-parole
45 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cairo-dock-core
46 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cipux-cat-web
47 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/colortest
48 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cscope-el
49 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-ports-archive-keyring
50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/flegita
51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/giggle-personal-details-plugin
52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/giggle-terminal-view-plugin
53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kdevelop-php-docs
54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kdevelop-php
55 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/klick
56 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/latexila
57 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pdfgrep
58 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/perl-depends
59 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/phpbb3-l10n
60 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pius
61 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-sss
62 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rails-ruby1.8
63 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rekonq
64 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/roffit
65 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rygel-tracker
66 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sibyl-installer
67 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sssd
68 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uima-doc
69 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uima-examples
70 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uima-utils
71 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/update-notifier-kde
72 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/v4l-utils
73 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/verilator
74 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/watch-maildirs
75 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/w-scan
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently 630 packages are orphaned and 123 packages are up for
adoption. Please take a look at the recent [76] reports [77] to see if
there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of
packages which need your help [78].
76 : http://lists.debian.org/E1OFG6G-0000GZ-Py@merkel.debian.org
77 : http://lists.debian.org/E1OHnR4-0000NQ-4W@merkel.debian.org
78 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested
Want to continue reading DPN?
-----------------------------
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writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on.
Please see the contributing page [79] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org [80].
79 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
80 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [81].
81 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
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