Debian Project News - June 28th, 2010
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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
June 28th, 2010 http://debian.org/News/weekly/2010/06/
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Welcome to this year's sixth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Bits from the Release Team
* Call for volunteers for DebConf10
* Debian Live Web Images Builder
* Results from the Debian community poll
* FAI workshop 2010
* Debian Project at LSM/RMLL 2010
* Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" updated
* ... and much more.
Bits from the Release Team
--------------------------
Release manager Adam D. Barratt sent Bits from the release team [9], in
which he welcomes Mehdi Dogguy to the team. Other enthusiastic Debian
Developers who are interested are invited to contact the team [10].
9 : http://lists.debian.org/1276539279.17274.84.camel@kaa.jungle.aubergine.my-net-space.net
10 : mailto:debian-release@lists.debian.org
Lots of transitions are finished, and in order to make the boot process
faster, parallel booting should be enabled by default [11]. "Squeeze"
will release with GNOME 2.30 along with the already transitioned KDE
4.4.3. With EGLIBC 2.11 already in "testing" , Python 2.6 and Perl 5.12
(among a few others) should be able to transition before the freeze.
11 : http://lists.debian.org/E1OFQyk-0003Vs-Hw@login1.uio.no
As announced earlier, new transitions are in freeze [12] in order to
make it easier to finish current and already scheduled transitions.
"Squeeze" will be frozen when Python 2.6 and the other transitions are
completed, maybe during late August if everybody works together.
12 : http://lists.debian.org/1273229773.27856.14429.camel@kaa.jungle.aubergine.my-net-space.net
Call for volunteers for DebConf10
---------------------------------
Gabriella Coleman sent out a call for volunteers for DebConf10 [13] on
her blog. She mentioned a list of things that DebConf needs from
volunteers [14], so if you are in New York or environs you might
consider helping out if something on the list matches your skills and
interests. There is also an amazing list of free events [15], events
that take place before, during and after DebConf. The list has theatre,
movies and music as well as other types of events to choose from;
during DebConf alone there are free concerts from Gil Scott Heron and
Basia Bulat, just to name a couple.
13 : http://gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=2001
14 : http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Jobs#Conference_volunteers
15 : http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf10/TouristActivities
Debian Live Web Images Builder
------------------------------
Daniel Baumann announced [16] that thanks to outstanding Debian Live
contributor Richard Nelson a live-helper web-frontend of the Debian
Live Project [17] is now available: it lets users get their own
customised images without needing to install live-helper [18] and build
them on their own.
16 : http://blog.daniel-baumann.ch/2010/06/20#20100620_debian-live-webbuilder
17 : http://live-helper.debian.net/
18 : http://packages.qa.debian.org/live-helper
Results from the Debian community poll
--------------------------------------
Torsten Werner published the results of his Debian community poll [19]
(followed by a second part [20]) and thanks all participants. With over
80% answering that they do not contribute directly to Debian, this is
the biggest ever survey of Debian's user base, giving hints on how
Debian should deal with its non-free section, its release policy, and
the importance of the Debian Free Software Guidelines [21] to its user
base.
19 : http://twerner.blogspot.com/2010/06/results-from-debian-community-poll.html
20 : http://twerner.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-results-from-debian-community-poll.html
21 : http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
FAI workshop 2010
-----------------
Michael Prokop mentioned on his blog that there will be an FAI workshop
at the Linuxhotel in Essen, Germany [22]. FAI stands for "Fully
Automated Install" and is an important tool when dealing with large
numbers of computers, for example. As Michael writes: "As the name
states the workshop is targeted towards FAI developers. We - the
FAI developers - want to get FAI into shape for "Squeeze" , discuss
pending issues like Ubuntu packaging, release management and of course
meet in real life for networking and socialising." Sounds like fun.
22 : http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2010/06/22/fai-developer-workshop-2010/
Debian Project at LSM/RMLL 2010
-------------------------------
The Debian Project will be represented at the Libre Software Meeting /
Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre (LSM/RMLL) event in Bordeaux,
France, this year [23]. Debian related talks have been organised, as
well as a Bug Squashing Party (BSP) [24]. Everyone interested in
helping Debian is welcome at the BSP; there will be enough developers
around to sponsor your NMUs.
23 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100618
24 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2010/Bordeaux
Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" updated
------------------------------------
The fifth update of Debian's stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 5.0
(codename [25] "lenny" ) has been released. This update mainly adds
corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a
few adjustments for serious problems. Further updates include the Linux
kernel itself as well as debian-installer.
25 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100626
Other news
----------
Alexander Reichle-Schmehl announced [26] he has again started
publishing statistics of the release critical bug reports [27] on a
weekly basis.
26 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/releasing-squeeze-24
27 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats
Martin Michlmayr announced that Debian support for eSATA SheevaPlug is
now available [28]. He has updated the install guide [29] accordingly
and provided a trick to add eSATA support for an already running Debian
eSATA SheevaPlug installed as a regular SheevaPlug.
28 : http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/esata-support
29 : http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install.html
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli proposed some guidelines for
meetings inside the Debian Project [30]. His goal is to help organisers
to provide prerequisites in a community-compatible way, with a process
that includes announcements before the meeting and minutes after.
30 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/06/debian_meeting_guidelines_RFC/
FTP master Mark Hymers announced that [31] "Etch" has been moved to
archive.debian.org, following the last [32] "Etch" point release
published last month.
31 : http://lists.debian.org/20100619084642.GA26963@hymers.org.uk
32 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100522
Debian Auditor Luk Claes sent an overview of the most important
financial flows [33] of money held on Debian's behalf.
33 : http://lists.debian.org/4C24E91E.4000405@debian.org
GRUB maintainer Colin Watson gave a small report on the status of the
grub package [34] with regard to several release issues.
34 : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/2010/06/21#2010-06-21-grub2-boot-problems
initramfs maintainer Michael Prokop called for testing of
initramfs-tools 0.97 [35], a tool used to create an initial ramdisk
file to boot a system. The packages available should work on all Debian
systems and should be checked on a wide variety of platforms.
35 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00393.html
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli reported [36] on his recent
invitation to the European Commission. In a joint session of academic
and industrial research projects and EC commissioners, Stefano helped
summarise best and worst practices in the interaction between research
projects and FOSS communities.
36 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/06/Debian_consultancy_for_the_European_Framework_Programme/
New Developers and Maintainers
------------------------------
Three applicants have been accepted [37] as Debian Maintainers since
the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Carl
Chenet, Mathias Behrle and Thomas Koch into our project!
37 : http://lists.debian.org/E1ORhRf-0002Fe-Fh@ries.debian.org
Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
---------------------------------------------------------
According to the unofficial RC-bugs count [38], the upcoming release,
Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" , is currently affected by 419 release critical
bugs. 65 of them have already been fixed in Debian's "unstable" branch.
Of the remaining 354 release critical bugs, 55 already have a patch
(which might need testing) and 19 are marked as pending.
38 : http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php
Ignoring these bugs as well as release critical bugs for packages in
contrib or non-free, 170 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): bind9 [39] (updated), samba [40], sudo [41], pmount
[42], xulrunner [43] and kvirc [44]. Please read them carefully and
take the proper measures.
39 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2054
40 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2061
41 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2062
42 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2063
43 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2064
44 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2065
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 [45] for announcements.
45 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive
recently (among others [46]):
46 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
* awn-settings -- preferences manager for Avant Window Navigator [47]
* backfire-dkms -- kernel module for signal benchmarking (DKMS) [48]
* baobab -- GNOME disk usage analyzer [49]
* beid-mozilla-plugin -- Belgian eID Mozilla plugin [50]
* bluetile -- modern tiling window manager with a gentle learning curve [51]
* boolector -- SMT solver for bit-vectors and arrays [52]
* bzr-grep -- Bazaar plugin to grep files and history [53]
* freerdp-x11 -- RDP client for Windows Terminal Services [54]
* gnome-dictionary -- GNOME dictionary application [55]
* gnome-screenshot -- screenshot application for GNOME [56]
* gnome-search-tool -- GNOME tool to search files [57]
* gnome-system-log -- system log viewer for GNOME [58]
* indicator-applet -- GNOME panel indicator applet [59]
* kprogress -- KDE login progress indicator [60]
* lekhonee-gnome -- desktop client for WordPress blogs [61]
* logkeys -- keylogger for GNU/Linux systems [62]
* minitube -- native YouTube client [63]
* opencc -- simplified-traditional Chinese conversion tool [64]
* phonefsod -- SHR daemon for freesmartphone.org interaction [65]
* plasma-widget-networkmanagement -- Network Management widget for KDE4 Plasma [66]
* sessioninstaller -- APT based installer using PackageKit's session DBus API [67]
* sharand -- generate cryptographically secure pseudo random file [68]
* shorewall-init -- Shorewall initialization [69]
* xen-hypervisor-4.0-amd64 -- Xen hypervisor on amd64 [70]
* xen-hypervisor-4.0-i386 -- Xen hypervisor on i386 [71]
* xul-ext-sync -- extension to sync bookmarks, passwords and other user data between devices [72]
47 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/awn-settings
48 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/backfire-dkms
49 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/baobab
50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/beid-mozilla-plugin
51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bluetile
52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/boolector
53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bzr-grep
54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/freerdp-x11
55 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-dictionary
56 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-screenshot
57 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-search-tool
58 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-system-log
59 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/indicator-applet
60 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kprogress
61 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lekhonee-gnome
62 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/logkeys
63 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/minitube
64 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/opencc
65 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/phonefsod
66 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/plasma-widget-networkmanagement
67 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sessioninstaller
68 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sharand
69 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/shorewall-init
70 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-hypervisor-4.0-amd64
71 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xen-hypervisor-4.0-i386
72 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-sync
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently 619 packages are orphaned and 143 packages are up for
adoption. Please take a look at the recent [73] reports [74] to see if
there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of
packages which need your help [75].
73 : http://lists.debian.org/E1OPPRY-0007be-9V@merkel.debian.org
74 : http://lists.debian.org/E1ORwmT-0006DO-NT@merkel.debian.org
75 : 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 [76] to find out how to help.
We're looking forward to receiving your mail at
debian-publicity@lists.debian.org [77].
76 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
77 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Jeremiah Foster, David
Prévot and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [78].
78 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
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