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The Debian Project https://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
June 15, 2015 https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2015/05/
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Welcome to this year's fifth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Souvenirs from Jessie's release parties from all over the world
* Reports
* A challenge to improve reproducibility
* Debian Squeeze LTS reports
* An official mirrors redirector
* A glimpse at DebConf15's program
* Interviews
* Other news
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Souvenirs from Jessie's release parties from all over the world
---------------------------------------------------------------
To celebrate Jessie's release, many parties were organised all over the
world. Here is a collection of links to photos and reports of the
various events, in Évry [1] (France), Perth [2] (Australia), San [3]
Francisco [4] (USA), and several [5] places [6] in [7] India, from where
we received group [8] pictures [9] and [10] Jessie [11] cake [12]
photos [13]. Thanks for sharing these moments with the community!
1: https://www-public.tem-tsp.eu/~berger_o/weblog/2015/05/19/presentation-du-projet-debian-par-nicolas-dandrimont-lors-de-la-debian-release-party-de-jessie/
2: http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/debian-au/2015-May/000353.html
3: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157650542082473
4: http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=10324
5: http://www.technoparktoday.com/debian-jessie-released-technopark/
6: https://plus.google.com/events/cj7o7qu1pp02rj426p1fgqeatq4
7: https://poddery.com/uploads/images/scaled_full_c1e1fa3636c066f4525f.jpg
8: https://poddery.com/uploads/images/scaled_full_3eef6ddf359884550514.png
9: https://poddery.com/uploads/images/scaled_full_2e8e5f3613b6ebb26d22.jpg
10: https://poddery.com/uploads/images/scaled_full_ac120c665928c39183ac.jpg
11: https://poddery.com/uploads/images/scaled_full_9ba0eaab043def897def.JPG
12: https://poddery.com/uploads/images/scaled_full_123530c82601fe8b1561.jpg
13: https://poddery.com/posts/1764904
Reports
-------
The Ruby team posted a report [14] on their recent meet at IRILL in
Paris from April 8 to 10 for the 2015 Debian Ruby Sprint [15]. Pre-
Jessie a large part of the results were sent to experimental; post-
release the changes are being sent to unstable. The team triaged and/or
fixed almost all of the important bugs in Ruby library packages, and
while doing so discovered that the popular text-with-markup parsers
bluecloth and redcloth were unmaintained upstream; the team would like
to encourage anyone to work on these projects upstream. Obsolete
packages were identified and requests for removal filed and/or prepared.
The obsolete githubredir service has been removed, and a long-standing
issue with the handling of the /var/lib/gems/$VERSION paths resolved:
for Stretch and beyond, they will be shipped with the interpreter
itself. The team also worked on improving the support for Reproducible
builds, porting work for Ruby 2.2, whitelisting Ruby Packages in Debian
CI, and packaging improvements.
14: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2015/05/msg00001.html
15: https://bits.debian.org/2015/05/ruby-sprint-2015.html
Niels Thykier updated the status of experimental ddeb support [16] which
aims to automatically produce debugging symbols for everything in the
archive, without developers needing to add -dbg packages. Currently a
consensus has been reached on using the ".deb" extension for ddebs for
Automatic Debug Packages [17]. Debhelper has the necessary patches to
produce compliant ddebs with the.deb extension. Work is ongoing on
support in dak, as well as progress in debhelper toward removing and
reverting patches. Niels kindly included an FAQ and outlined the most
recent changes.
16: https://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2015/05/msg00038.html
17: https://wiki.debian.org/AutomaticDebugPackages
Martin Pitt has put forth an idea to enable stateless persistent network
interface names to overcome the problems with the kernel's unpredictable
sorting order of network devices. The proposal would remove the
administrative overhead of having to correct the order by using a round-
about manner to keep and use a stable interface name for firewalls or
other network configuration. His initial proposal [18] called for
dropping persistent-net-generator.rules and enabling ifnames; however,
as he received feedback and comments an updated proposal [19] was made
which would include a naming policy using MAC based names for USB and
other devices.
18: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/05/msg00170.html
19: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/06/msg00018.html
From Bits from the Debian Hamradio Maintainers [20], Ian Learmonth
posted updates on the Debian Hamradio pure blend and the status of its
DVD images, work towards live images based on Stretch, outstanding issue
resolutions, and updates on packages such as direwolf, qsstv, and
soundmodem.
20: https://lists.debian.org/debian-hams/2015/05/msg00147.html
Andrew Pollock blogged [21] on fixing a few issues with
changelogs.debian.net which was giving incorrect codes, along with some
needed cosmetic upgrades, and working with api.ftp-master.debian.org.
21: http://blog.andrew.net.au/2015/05/17#changelogs_back_2015
A challenge to improve reproducibility
--------------------------------------
GSOC student Eduard Sanou updated his status on Reproducible builds in
Debian [22]. Many packages in Debian are built with a fair amount of
unique data, such as build machine names, unique IDs, and timestamps
that may unfortunately produce different results when they are built on
different machines. The project goal is to achieve the same binaries
independently of what machine builds the package for production. Eduard
introduces himself with some of his background, motivation, and
separately the benefits of this coding work.
22: https://dhole.github.io/post/reproducible_builds_debian_gsoc2015/
While Jérémie Bobbio continued his series [23] of [24] weekly [25]
reports [26] about [27] reproducibility [28] of package builds, and how
it is improving over the Stretch development cycle, Daniel Kahn Gillmor
proposed a challenge [29], called "one reproducible package a week".
Daniel invites everyone interested in Debian development to find
packages on the reproducible builds web pages which cannot be built
reproducibly at the moment and for which the reason has not been
mentioned in the notes yet. If you find the reason, you can then file a
bug against the package with your diagnosis, and tag it with one of the
tags. It is a good opportunity to discover many aspects of Debian in a
fun and useful way. Daniel describes his workflow to achieve this, and
also refers to the dedicated Wiki page [30] for more information.
23: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_2/
24: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_3/
25: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_4/
26: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_5/
27: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_6/
28: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_7/
29: http://debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog/115
30: https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
Debian Squeeze LTS reports
--------------------------
Freexian sent a report [31] about the activities of contributors on the
long term support of Debian Squeeze during the month of April. Ben
Hutchings [32], Thorsten Alteholz [33], Raphaël Hertzog [34], Guido
Günter [35], Mike Gabriel [36], and Holger Levsen [37] have described on
their blogs their work on Debian Squeeze LTS during the month of May,
together with their activities on Debian and more broadly on free
software.
31: https://raphaelhertzog.com/2015/05/18/freexians-report-about-debian-long-term-support-april-2015/
32: http://womble.decadent.org.uk/blog/debian-lts-work-may-2015.html
33: http://blog.alteholz.eu/2015/06/my-debian-activities-in-may-2015/
34: https://raphaelhertzog.com/2015/06/03/my-free-software-activities-in-may-2015/
35: http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Debian_work_in_may.html
36: http://sunweavers.net.blog/node/15
37: http://layer-acht.org/thinking/blog/20150610-lts-may/
An official mirrors redirector
------------------------------
Raphael Geissert announced [38] the availability of an official Debian
service, httpredir.debian.org, acting as a Debian mirrors redirector.
This service, known as http.debian.net before it was hosted on Debian
infrastructure, "allows many of the nearly 400 Debian mirrors to be
available via a single address, adapting to your network location, IP
family connectivity, and service availability", says Raphael. To use
this service with Debian Jessie, just put
deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian jessie main
in your /etc/apt/sources file.
38: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/05/msg00003.html
A glimpse at DebConf15's program
--------------------------------
Monday June 15 is the deadline [39] to submit proposals for events at
DebConf15 [40], to be held in Heidelberg, Germany, from August 15 to
August 22. A list of already approved talks has been [41]
published [42], together with the list of keynote speakers [43] for the
opening and closing of DebConf: Bradley M. Kuhn [44], Werner Koch [45],
Bdale Garbee [46], and Jacob Appelbaum [47].
39: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20150603.165921.a84cb7dd.en.html
40: http://debconf15.debconf.org/
41: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20150523.144333.afc07dcf.en.html
42: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20150603.165921.a84cb7dd.en.html
43: http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20150611.105002.eac906ab.en.html
44: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_M._Kuhn
45: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Koch
46: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bdale_Garbee
47: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum
Interviews
----------
Neil McGovern, Debian Project Leader, has been interviewed [48] by
Swapnil Bhartiya for the linux.com website.
48: https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/829303-new-debian-project-leader-talks-open-source-careers-ppas-and-more
Julien Danjou published on his blog an interview on software testing in
Python by Johannes Hubertz with himself [49]. It belongs to a series of
interviews gathered by Johannes Hubertz as part of a book on the
subject.
49: https://julien.danjou.info/blog/2015/interview-software-tests-in-python
Other news
----------
Simon McVittie posted on his blog a very detailed article on how
PolicyKit works [50]. He took the example of mounting a disk on modern
Linux to illustrate the various processes involved.
50: http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2015/why_polkit/
Patrick Schoenfeld wrote an overview [51] of the different options to
test puppet [52] modules.
51: http://tech.just-imho.net/2015/06/testing-puppet-modules-an-overview.html
52: https://packages.debian.org/jessie/puppet
Holger Levsen mentioned on his blog [53] that the number of source
packages in the Debian archive has just passed 22,000. The number of
binary packages reached 45,000 a few weeks ago.
53: http://layer-acht.org/thinking/blog/20150610-debian-22k/
The first update of the stable distribution of Debian (codename
"Jessie") was released on June 6 [54].
54: https://www.debian.org/News/2015/20150606
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
4 applicants have been accepted [55] as Debian Developers, 9 applicants
have been accepted [56] as Debian Maintainer, and 18 people have started
to maintain packages [57] since the previous issue of the Debian Project
News. Please welcome Fabian Greffrath, Michael Fladischer, Jean-Michel
Vourgère, Alexandre Delanoë, Arturo Borrero Gonzalez, Bertrand Marc,
Herbert Parentes Fortes Neto, Robert James Clay, Jochen Sprickerhof,
Peter Spiess-Knafl, Roland Fehrenbacher, Ruben Undheim, Steven Capper,
Johannes Hubertz, Navid Fehrenbacher, Partha Pratim Mukherjee, Richard B
Winters, Pali Rohár, Gustavo Soares de Lima, Paulo Henrique de Lima
Santana, Paul Liétar, Arthur de Moura Del Esposte, Lucas Kanashiro,
Hialo Muniz, Guillaume Grossetie, Athos Coimbra Ribeiro, James Lu, Alba
Crespi, Kai-Chung Yan, Kevin Murray, and David Mohr into our project!
55: https://nm.debian.org/public/nmlist#done
56: https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2015/05/msg00004.html
57: https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): quassel [58], qemu [59], iceweasel [60],
libmodule-signature-perl [61], xen [62], proftpd-dfsg [63], icedove [64],
zendframework [65], fuse [66], chromium-browser [67], ntfs-3g [68],
postgresql-9.1 [69], postgresql-9.4 [70], nbd [71], ipsec-tools [72],
tiff [73], virtualbox [74], fusionforge [75], symfony [76],
wireshark [77], libapache-mod-jk [78], redis [79], php5 [80],
strongswan [81], and cups [82]. Please read them carefully and take the
proper measures.
58: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3258
59: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3259
60: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3260
61: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3261
62: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3262
63: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3263
64: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3264
65: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3265
66: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3266
67: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3267
68: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3268
69: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3269
70: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3270
71: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3271
72: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3272
73: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3273
74: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3274
75: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3275
76: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3276
77: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3277
78: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3278
79: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3279
80: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3280
81: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3282
82: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3283
Debian's Backports Team released advisories for these packages: nbd [83]
and horizon [84]. Please read them carefully and take the proper
measures.
83: https://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2015/05/msg00000.html
84: https://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/2015/05/msg00001.html
The Debian team in charge of Squeeze Long Term Support released security
update announcements for these packages: icu [85], dpkg [86], tiff [87],
nbd [88], ruby1.8 [89], commons-httpclient [90], dnsmasq [91],
ntfs-3g [92], ntfs-3g [93], libnokogiri-ruby [94], eglibc [95],
dulwich [96], exactimage [97], tomcat6 [98], clamav [99],
postgresql-8.4 [100] ipsec-tools [101] ruby1.9.1 [102] wordpress [103],
mercurial [104], fuse [105], cups [106], libapache-mod-jk [107],
wireshark [108], libraw [109], imagemagick [110], and strongswan [111].
Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.
85: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00003.html
86: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00004.html
87: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00005.html
88: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00006.html
89: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00007.html
90: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00008.html
91: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00009.html
92: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00010.html
93: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00011.html
94: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00012.html
95: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00013.html
96: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00014.html
97: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00015.html
98: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00016.html
99: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00017.html
100: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00018.html
101: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00019.html
102: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/05/msg00020.html
103: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00000.html
104: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00001.html
105: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00002.html
106: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00003.html
107: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00004.html
108: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00006.html
109: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00007.html
110: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00008.html
111: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00009.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 [112] (and the separate backports
list [113], stable updates list [114], and long term support security
updates list [115]) for announcements.
112: https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
113: https://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
114: https://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
115: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
849 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [116] are:
* btcheck — downloaded data checker and a torrent file content viewer [117]
* care — make Linux programs reproducible on all Linux systems [118]
* chake — serverless configuration management tool for chef [119]
* docker-compose — punctual, lightweight development environments using Docker [120]
* fiona — command line tool for reading/writing vector geospatial data [121]
* flamp — ham radio Amateur Multicast Protocol application [122]
* git-crypt — Transparent file encryption in git [123]
* pamu2fcfg — universal 2nd factor (U2F) PAM module command-line helper tool [124]
* pluginhook — simple plugin system for Bash programs [125]
* rustc — Rust systems programming language [126]
* xbuilder — tool to cross-build a list of packages using sbuild, xdeb or pdebuild-cross [127]
* xul-ext-lightbeam — visualize sites that may be tracking you around the internet [128]
* yad — tool for creating graphical dialogs from shell scripts [129]
* zyne — Modular synthesizer written in Python [130]
116: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
117: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/btcheck
118: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/care
119: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/chake
120: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/docker-compose
121: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fiona
122: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/flamp
123: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/git-crypt
124: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pamu2fcfg
125: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pluginhook
126: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rustc
127: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xbuilder
128: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/xul-ext-lightbeam
129: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/yad
130: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zyne
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently [131] 666 packages are orphaned [132] and 177 packages are up
for adoption [133]: please visit the complete list of packages which
need your help [134].
131: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/06/msg00159.html
132: https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
133: https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
134: https://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 [135] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
135: https://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Cédric Boutillier, Jean-
Pierre Giraud, Donald Norwood, Justin B Rye and Paul Wise.
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