Debian Weekly News - February 1st, 2005
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/05/
Debian Weekly News - February 1st, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 5th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the
Debian community. Andreas Schuldei [1]announced that the
[2]registration for this year's Debian conference has been opened. Og
Maciel [3]installed Debian for the first time and thought that the
expert mode was appropriate, giving him the opportunity to answer all
27 questions of which only a fraction would be displayed during a
normal installation.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/01/msg00014.html
2. http://comas.linux-aktivaattori.org/debconf5
3. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9516
Debian Developer Room at FOSDEM. Wouter Verhelst [4]announced the
talk schedule for the Debian developer room during this year's
[5]FOSDEM taking place at the end of February. The talks will cover
the release process, embedded Debian, the Debian Women project, the
Hurd, porting, quality assurance and more.
4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2005/01/msg00064.html
5. http://www.debian.org/events/2005/0226-fosdem
Dealing with missing Dependencies. Frank Küster [6]wondered why the
[7]Debian policy manual uses the word "should" and not "must" when it
comes to the requirement to add dependencies to packages which are
used in maintainer scripts. John Hasler [8]added that they are used
to distinguish the significance of the various guidelines. Jeroen van
Wolffelaar [9]explained that the significance for the sarge release
is defined in the [10]release policy.
6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01644.html
7. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01669.html
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01670.html
10. http://release.debian.org/sarge_rc_policy.txt
Library Packaging Guideline. Pierre Ancelot [11]wondered why the
[12]library packaging guide is not yet integrated into the official
[13]developers reference. Andreas Metzler [14]pointed out that it is
already linked from there. Junichi Uekawa [15]added that this document
is rather a recommendation that should be followed as long as there
are no good arguments against it.
11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01646.html
12. http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/column/libpkg-guide/libpkg-guide.html
13. http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01648.html
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01746.html
MySQL related Packages Transition. Steve Langasek [16]discussed a late
transition of packages linking against MySQL libraries. Before, the
MySQL maintainer, upstream developers, and others have worked on
fixing the license so that it meets the needs of the software that
Debian distributes. Andreas Metzler [17]pointed out that there is
still a license problem with packages that also link to the OpenSSL
library. This seems to [18]break the whole plan, though.
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01757.html
17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01774.html
18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01777.html
Woody to Sarge Upgrade? Henning Glawe [19]noticed that circular
dependencies prevent a normal upgrade from woody to sarge using
apt-get. The version in sarge works around this by increasing the
length of the argument list fed into dpkg. Steve Langasek [20]added
that the release notes recommend to use [21]aptitude for upgrading.
19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01784.html
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01821.html
21. http://packages.debian.org/aptitude
Gettext Script in Binary Directory. Jochen Voss [22]noticed that the
[23]gettext package installs a shell script component in the /usr/bin
directory with execute permissions removed. In [24]Bug#284637 Bruno
Haible [25]explains that it is meant to be included in shell scripts
and needs to be installed in this location. Anthony Towns [26]proposed
to add a SOURCEPATH variable to the shells.
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01797.html
23. http://packages.debian.org/gettext
24. http://bugs.debian.org/284637
25. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=284637&msg=6
26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01893.html
New 2005 Debian Archive Key. Several people noticed a problem with the
Debian archive recently, like apt-secure [27]failing. Steve Kowalik
[28]revealed that the archive key for 2004 has been expired and
apparently [29]GnuPG failed to create a signature with it leading to
empty files. Anthony Towns [30]created a new [31]archive key and noted
that it's almost four years that Debian started with a signature chain
but it is still not even supported by mainline software in Debian
unstable.
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01843.html
28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01844.html
29. http://www.gnupg.org/
30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg01898.html
31. http://ftp-master.debian.org/ziyi_key_2005.asc
Bug Squashing Party. Frank Lichtenheld [32]announced the next bug
squashing party to take place from February 4th to 6th with
coordination in #debian-bugs on irc.debian.org. The number of release
critical [33]bugs is around 100 for several days already. Targets will
be packages that lack the license text for the [34]GNU FDL,
long-standing and complex bugs, QA uploads and work on removed
packages.
32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/01/msg00017.html
33. http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
34. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
Wishlist for Talks during DebConf 5. Lars Wirzenius [35]pondered about
talks he would like to have at the upcoming [36]Debian conference that
will take place in Helsinki in summer. Among others the list contains
very practical talks like writing good manpages, tutorials and
documentation, using gettext, understanding Unicode, adding test cases
to packages, identifying security problems.
35. http://liw.iki.fi/liw/log/2005-01.html#20050128c
36. http://www.debconf.org/debconf5
Temporary Exclusion of mipsel Architecture. Steve Langasek
[37]informed the developers that the [38]mipsel architecture will be
ignored for the propagation of packages into testing. This is only a
temporary measure in order to let a number of release critical
bugfixes migrate into testing. The port will have an opportunity to
catch up down before the release.
37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/01/msg00178.html
38. http://www.debian.org/ports/mips/
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* DSA 659: [39]libpam-radius-auth -- Insecure temporary file.
* DSA 660: [40]kdebase -- Authentication bypass.
* DSA 661: [41]f2c -- Insecure temporary files.
* DSA 662: [42]squirrelmail -- Several vulnerabilities.
* DSA 663: [43]prozilla -- Arbitrary code execution.
39. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-658
40. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-660
41. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-661
42. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-662
43. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-663
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [44]recently or contain important updates.
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
* [45]graphviz -- Rich set of graph drawing tools.
* [46]lg-issue108 -- Issue 108 of the Linux Gazette.
* [47]lg-issue109 -- Issue 109 of the Linux Gazette.
* [48]lg-issue110 -- Issue 110 of the Linux Gazette.
* [49]vbetool -- Run real-mode video BIOS code to alter hardware
state.
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/graphviz
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/lg-issue108
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/lg-issue109
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/lg-issue110
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/vbetool
Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 241 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [50]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.
50. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [51]binstats -- Statistics tool for installed programs.
([52]Bug#292019)
* [53]libcpanplus-perl -- Download and install perl modules from
CPAN - in a modern way. ([54]Bug#292754)
* [55]liblog-agent-logger-perl -- Log::Agent::Logger perl module.
([56]Bug#292916)
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/binstats
52. http://bugs.debian.org/292019
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/libcpanplus-perl
54. http://bugs.debian.org/292754
55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/liblog-agent-logger-perl
56. http://bugs.debian.org/292916
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 [57]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [58]dwn@debian.org.
57. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
58. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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