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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
February 6th, 2012 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2012/03/
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Welcome to this year's third issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Update for Debian 6.0: 6.0.4 released
* Bits from the Release Team
* Bits from the piuparts maintainers
* Report from Debian Med sprint
* Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze
* Answering Debian users' questions
* Debian/Ubuntu games screenshot party
* GNOME Shell 3.2 in "Wheezy" : a retrospective
* Interviews
* Other news
* Upcoming events
* New Debian Contributors
* Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Update for Debian 6.0: 6.0.4 released
-------------------------------------
The fourth update for Debian 6.0 (codenamed [1] "Squeeze" ) has been released.
This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable
release, along with some adjustments for serious problems.
1 : http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120128
Bits from the Release Team
--------------------------
Niels Thykier sent some bits from the Release Team [2] where he announced
various bits of news: the addition of armhf and s390x to testing (though these
architectures may be temporarily out of sync with the others), the acceptance
of a new release goal ( "security hardening build flags" ), and the completion
of more than fourteen transitions to testing (including GNOME 3, Perl 5.14,
Python 2.7, etc.). Niels also issued a reminder that the freeze is due in June,
even if an exact freeze date has not been selected.
2 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/01/msg00009.html
In addition, Niels announced that Cyril Brulebois joined the Release Team,
becoming Release Assistant: congratulations Cyril!
Bits from the piuparts maintainers
----------------------------------
Holger Levsen sent some bits from the piuparts maintainers [3] announcing that
piuparts is again maintained by a team and they're receiving various patches
and other contributions. piuparts is an important tool for Quality Assurance
within Debian as it runs various tests in order to verify that packages can be
installed, upgraded and removed without problems. Tests results are publicly
available on the piuparts website [4], where they are updated on a daily basis.
Holger urged maintainers to regularly check their personal status pages on
piuparts in order to fix issues related to their packages. In addition to their
regular tests, since December 2011, the piuparts maintainers have been testing
the upgrade of individual packages from [5] "Squeeze" to "Wheezy" : 158
packages failed the test (and another 130 failed it due to dependencies) while
33,708 passed it.
3 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/01/msg00007.html
4 : http://piuparts.debian.org
5 : http://piuparts.debian.org/squeeze2wheezy/
Report from Debian Med sprint
-----------------------------
Andreas Tille sent a report from the Debian Med sprint [6] held in Southport,
UK on 27-29 January. Among other activities, the Debian Med team fixed some
bugs, mentored new members and students (consolidating the effort made via the
[7] "Mentoring of the Month" initiative) and packaged new software.
For more information on Debian Med activity, you can check their real time
activity page [8].
6 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2012/01/msg00452.html
7 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/MoM
8 : http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/
Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze
-----------------------------------------------
Petter Reinholdtsen announced on his blog that the next version of Debian
Edu/Squeeze will contain a new tool, called sitesummary2ldapdhcp [9], which
allows all the computers of a school to be quickly set up with a minimal number
of manual steps. Once the central server is installed, this tool collects data
from the network to generate system objects in the LDAP database. After a few
modifications of the configuration from a GUI, the network of computers is
ready to use.
A third beta version of Debian Edu based on "Squeeze" and containing this tool
has just been released.
9 : http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html
Answering Debian users' questions
---------------------------------
Raphaël Hertzog wrote a useful blogpost about how to answer the questions of
Debian users [10] and, in general, how to support new users. There are many
places for helping users (mailing lists [11], IRC channels [12], questions &
answers websites [13], etc.) each with different characteristics, but the
golden rule for every support channel is to be respectful and courteous (as
stated in the Debian Community Guidelines [14]).
10 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2012/01/24/answering-questions-of-debian-users-on-various-support-channels/
11 : http://lists.debian.org/users.html#debian-user
12 : http://wiki.debian.org/IRC
13 : ask.debian.net
14 : http://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/
Debian/Ubuntu games screenshot party
------------------------------------
Paul Wise announced a Debian/Ubuntu games screenshot party [15] to be held on
25 and 26 February and organised by the Games Team [16]. The idea is to create
screenshots for as many games in Debian/Ubuntu as possible and upload them to
screenshots.debian.net [17] in order to have them available to goplay [18] (a
games package browser).
For more information, you can visit the related wiki page [19].
15 : http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2012/02/03/debian-ubuntu-games-screenshot-party/
16 : http://wiki.debian.org/Games/Team
17 : http://screenshots.debian.net/
18 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/goplay
19 : http://wiki.debian.org/Games/Parties/Screenshots
GNOME Shell 3.2 in "Wheezy" : a retrospective
----------------------------------------------
Jordi Mallach wrote an article on the transition from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 in
Debian [20] from the Debian GNOME Team point of view. "When you’re dealing
with dozens of GNOME source packages at the same time, many of which introduce
new libraries, or worse, introduce incompatible APIs that affect many more
unrelated packages, things get hairy, and you need a plan" Jordi said. But even
with a plan for a smooth transition, they encountered a lot of difficulties,
such as failures to build from source on various architectures and
incompatibilities with other packages. Finally GNOME Shell 3.2 has transitioned
to Debian's testing suite and Jordi thanks not only all Debian GNOME Team
members, but also Release Team members Julien Cristau and Cyril Brulebois and
FTP assistant Luca Falavigna, who helped in reaching this goal.
20 : http://oskuro.net/blog/freesoftware/gnome-shell-3.2-in-wheezy-2012-01-31-01-23
Interviews
----------
There has been a
"People behind Debian" interview withJosselin Mouette [21], founder of the
Debian GNOME team.
21 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2012/01/27/people-behind-debian-josselin-mouette-founder-of-the-debian-gnome-team/
Other news
----------
The 28th issue of the miscellaneous news for developers [22] has been released
and covers the following topics:
22 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/01/msg00005.html
* Debian Member Portfolio Service
* Release goals bugs displayed in the PTS
* Transitions displayed in the PTS
* dh_linktree helper tool
* Patch Tagging Guidelines: DEP-3 moved to ACCEPTED status
The Debian website is now also optimised for handheld devices [23].
23 : http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=654205
Didier Raboud announced the birth of a new mailing list dedicated to everyone
interested in discussing mobile inferfaces in Debian [24]. The debian-mobile
mailing list [25] is intended as a place for "discussions around packaging
suitable mobile interfaces for Debian" . For more information about running
Debian on mobile devices, you can visit themobile [26] and smartphone [27] wiki
pages.
24 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/01/msg00076.html
25 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-mobile
26 : http://wiki.debian.org/Mobile
27 : http://wiki.debian.org/Smartphone
Micheal Gilbert wrote an article on a recent security flaw [28] (CVE-2012-0064
[29]) and how it was handled by distributions. Thanks also to the detailed
research by the discoverer of the issue, Debian reacted really fast and the
issue was already fixed in Debian unstable less than six hours after the
disclosure.
28 : https://lwn.net/Articles/477062/
29 : http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2012-0064
Andrew Pollock wrote some bits from the ISC DHCP Maintainer [30]: during a
meeting with upstream, he gave them an overview of his packages on Debian
advocating GNU/Hurd patches. A nice example of good distribution maintainer
practices.
30 : http://blog.andrew.net.au/2012/01/21
Ben Hutchings announced that Debian 7.0 [31] "Wheezy" will include Linux 3.2,
which is currently in unstable and will soon enter testing.
31 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/01/msg00012.html
Lior Kaplan blogged about the upcoming PHP 5.4.0 [32] release, a pre-release
version is already available in the experimental repository. Lior worked in
particular on PHP extensions in order to make them compatible with PHP 5.4.
32 : http://liorkaplan.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/php-5-4-debian/
Upcoming events
---------------
There are several upcoming Debian-related events:
* February 10-12, Oslo, Norway —Skolelinux/Debian Edu developers meeting
[33]
* February 10-12, Minsk, Belarus — Debian contributors and enthusiasts will
be present at the winter edition ofLinux Vacation / Eastern Europe [34]
* February 15, Redwood Shores, CA, USA — [35] "Multiarch and Why You Should
Care: Running, Installing and Crossbuilding With Multiple Architectures" by
Wookey at Embedded Linux Conference
* February 17-19, Paris, France —Debian Bug Squashing Party [36]
You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on the
events section [37] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of our events
mailing lists for different regions: Europe [38], Netherlands [39], Hispanic
America [40], North America [41].
33 : http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2012-02-10-12-Oslo
34 : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/LVEE/2012Winter
35 : https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/embedded-linux-conference/wookey
36 : http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2012/Paris
37 : http://www.debian.org/events
38 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
39 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
40 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
41 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na
Do you want to organise a Debian booth or a Debian install party? Are you aware
of other upcoming Debian related events? Have you delivered a Debian talk that
you want to link on our talks page [42]? Send an email to the Debian Events
Team [43].
42 : http://www.debian.org/events/talks
43 : mailto:events@debian.org
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
Six applicants have been accepted
as Debian Maintainer, and nine people have started to maintain packages
[44] since the previous issue of the Debian Project News.
Please welcome Neutron Soutmun, Boris Pek, Christian M.
Amsüss, Alexandre Mestiashvili, Emmanuel "Kasper" Kasprzyk, Aleksey
Kravchenko, Dan Stowell, Adam Michal Ziaja, Sebastian Boehm, Cyril Lavier,
Phillip Susi, Jose Ernesto Davila Pantoja, Peter Drysdale, Dominique Lasserre
and Antono Vasiljev into our project!
44 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
---------------------------------------------------------
According to the Bugs Search interface of the Ultimate Debian Database
[45], the upcoming release, Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" , is currently affected
by 695 Release-Critical bugs.
Ignoring bugs which are easily solved or on the way to being solved,
roughly speaking, about 482 Release-Critical bugs remain to be solved for the
release to happen.
45 : http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi
There are also more detailed statistics [46] as well as some hints on
how to interpret [47] these numbers.
46 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/7.0-wheezy/2012-05
47 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released
advisories for these packages (among others): rails [48] (update),
cacti [49] (update), openssl [50], bip [51], libxml2 [52], wireshark [53],
qemu-kvm [54], icu [55], curl [56], php5 [57], iceweasel [58], tomcat6 [59],
iceape [60], php5 [61] and xen-qemu-dm-4.0 [62].
Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.
48 : http://www.debian.org/security/2011/dsa-2301
49 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2384
50 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2392
51 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2393
52 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2394
53 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2395
54 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2396
55 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2397
56 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2398
57 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2399
58 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2400
59 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2401
60 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2402
61 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2403
62 : http://www.debian.org/security/2012/dsa-2404
Debian's Stable Release Team released an update announcement for the package
clive [63]. Please read it carefully and take the proper measures.
63 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html
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 [64] (and the separate backports list [65], and stable
updates list [66] or volatile list [67], for "Lenny" , the oldstable
distribution) for announcements.
64 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
65 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
66 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
67 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-volatile-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
1008 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among many
others [68] are:
68 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
* clinica — simple medical records manager [69]
* coinst — computes the co-installability kernel of a deb or RPM repository
[70]
* espeak-gui — graphical user interface for eSpeak [71]
* instead — simple text adventures/visual novels engine [72]
* pyformex — program to create 3D geometry from Python scripts [73]
* actionaz — emulate human activity through a powerful GUI and JavaScript
[74]
* apper — KDE package management tool [75]
* vagrant — tool for building and distributing virtualized development
environments [76]
69 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/clinica
70 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/coinst
71 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/espeak-gui
72 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/instead
73 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pyformex
74 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/actionaz
75 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/apper
76 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/vagrant
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently 390 packages are orphaned [77] and 148 packages are up for
adoption [78]: please visit the complete
list of packages which need your help [79].
77 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
78 : http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
79 : 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 [80] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to
receiving your mail at debian-publicity@lists.debian.org [81].
80 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
81 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Cédric Boutillier, Francesca
Ciceri, David Prévot, Justin B Rye and Paul Wise [82].
82 : mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
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