1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
|
#use wml::debian::weeklynews::header PUBDATE="2002-09-24" SUMMARY="DPL Update, Debian Cluster, Release Update, Website, GNOME, Debconf, inetd, SE Linux"
# $Id$
<p>Welcome to this year's 37th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the
Debian community. The <a href="http://www.iprcommission.org/">Commission on
Intellectual Property Rights</a> released a <a
href="http://www.iprcommission.org/text/documents/final_report.htm">\
document</a> that suggests governments and donor organisations in developing
countries could review their software procurement policies with a view to
giving greater consideration to low cost business software products, including
generic and open-source products that are widely available.</p>
<p><strong>Bits from the DPL.</strong> The Debian Project Leader (DPL) sent
his <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0209/msg00003.html">\
notes</a> again. Bdale Garbee talks about various conferences he was invited
to give a talk or hold a workshop, most of them were related to Debian. Later
this month, he will attend the HPWorld convention in Los Angeles and then
spend two weekends in a row at AMSAT satellite design meetings in Orlando,
Florida, and in Marburg, Germany.</p>
<p><strong>Debian Cluster serves as Research Tool.</strong> It was <a
href="http://www.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=02/09/16/1956228">reported</a> that a
cluster computer consisting of 512 nodes has been set up at the <a
href="http://www.sdu.dk/">Syddansk Universitet</a> (University of Southern
Denmark). Researchers will use the cluster to map the pig genome and to do
research related to quantum chemistry, solid state physics, and cellular
biology.</p>
<p><strong>Debian Meeting in the UK.</strong> Over the weekend of August 31st
Debian developers from across the country (and the continent) flocked to
Cambridge for the annual festivities of drinking beer, barbecuing and
generally geeky chat. Steve McIntyre kindly hosted 25 Debian people and their
demands for net connections. A big thanks should go out to Steve and everyone
who helped out. Photos of the occasion were taken by <A
href="http://www.photos.mnb.org.uk/2002/debian-cambridge/">Mark Baker</a> and
<a href="http://www.cyrius.com/photos/debian-uk-meet-2002/">Martin
Michlmayr</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Bits from the Release Manager.</strong> In addition to the bits
from the DPL (see above) Anthony Towns <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0209/msg00004.html">\
reported</a> the reasons the next Debian release (codename: sarge) will
rock for sure. He mentions all great additions that we can expect, like
OpenOffice, SE Linux, support for *BSD, Hurd and more architectures as well as
internationalised dist-upgrades. Very few improvements are currently included
however the rest will be included at a later date.</p>
<p><strong>Help for Website Translations.</strong> Gerfried Fuchs <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0209/msg00009.html">\
reported</a> the status of some translations of <a
href="$(HOME)/">www.debian.org</a>. According to the <a
href="$(HOME)/devel/website/stats/">statistics</a> and the corresponding
translation coordinator(s) <a href="$(HOME)/devel/website/stats/eo">\
Esperanto</a>, <a href="$(HOME)/devel/website/stats/el">Greek</a>, <a
href="$(HOME)/devel/website/stats/fi">Finnish</a> and <a
href="$(HOME)/devel/website/stats/ru">Russian</a>, could use some help.
If you are interested and would like to help to make the website more useful
for the people in your country who can't read English fluently, please contact
one of your <a href="$(HOME)/devel/website/translation_coordinators">\
translation coordinators</a>.
<p><strong>Updating the Release Notes.</strong> Robert Bradford is <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0209/msg00007.html">\
seeking</a> updates for the <a href="$(HOME)/releases/woody/releasenotes">\
Release Notes</a>. Three areas where corrections would be beneficial are
upgrade instruction improvements, last minute changes to the document and
general bugfixing. Documenting noteworthy changes in the Release Notes is
also <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01632.html">\
important</a>. These could include different behaviour of some packages as
well as non-critical but potentially important bugs in packages that won't be
updated in the point-releases.</p>
<p><strong>GNOME Transition in Progress.</strong> Last week we <a
href="$(HOME)/News/weekly/2002/36/">reported</a> that the GNOME 2 transition
and the associated discussion had unfortunately stagnated. This resulted in a
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome-0209/msg00152.html">new</a>
(and perhaps an <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome-0209/msg00157.html">old</a>)
discussion on the subject. While some of the old conflicts remain, hopefully
everyone can work towards the common goal of adding GNOME 2 to the Debian
archive. Regardless of our internal problems <a
href="http://www.gnome.org/start/2.0/">GNOME 2.0.2</a> was released.</p>
<p><strong>Debconf with Charset Encoding Support.</strong> Joey Hess <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01265.html">announced</a>
that Debconf 1.2.0 has experimental support for encoded character sets. He
will try to use UTF-8 encoding for everything in the templates files that are shipped
with packages. However if that should not prove to be practical for some
languages, it supports other encodings as well. If you are using a different
character set, debconf will convert it to the preferred encoding.</p>
<p><strong>Choosing the Internet Superserver.</strong> Marco d'Itri <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01532.html">restarted</a>
the discussion on how to support more than only the regular <code>inetd</code>
program and configuration file, which is done through the
<code>update-inetd</code> program from <code>netbase</code>. Anthony Towns
explained that the plan hasn't changed and <code>netbase</code> needs to be
removed so we can avoid requiring inetd on all systems.
<code>update-inetd</code> needs to be rewritten and it's syntax changed to
solve a whole bunch of old outstanding bugs. He <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01582.html">explained</a>
his plan in detail and attached preliminary code. <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01580.html">Andrew
Suffield</a> also provided preliminary code.</p>
<p><strong>Same Package - Two Names.</strong> Wichert Akkerman <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01557.html">discovered</a>
that the Debian archive contains two packages with similar names and
descriptions: <code>progsreiserfs</code> and <code>reiserfsprogs</code>.
Timshel Knoll, the maintainer of <code>progsreiserfs</code> <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01603.html">explained</a>
that the package he maintains uses a library for manipulating ReiserFS
partitions. This differs from the upstream source but the library is also
used by GNU parted.</p>
<p><strong>SE Linux for Woody.</strong> Russell Coker <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01568.html">announced</a>
that Brian May has taken over woody back-ports of the SE Linux code, so Russell
can now concentrate on code and packages for sarge. In his unofficial
repository he hosts patched packages for system utilities like
<code>dpkg</code>, <code>login</code> and <code>ssh</code> that will work fine
with SE Linux but can't be uploaded into the Debian archive.</p>
<p><strong>Security Updates.</strong> You know the drill. Please make sure
that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="$(HOME)/security/2002/dsa-168">PHP</a> --
Several vulnerabilities.
</ul>
<p><strong>New or Noteworthy Packages.</strong> The following packages were
added to the Debian archive recently or contain important updates.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/anubis">anubis</a>
-- Processor for outgoing mail.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/bochsbios">bochsbios</a>
-- BIOS for the Bochs emulator.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cccc">cccc</a>
-- C and C++ Code Counter, a software metrics tool.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-lml">cl-lml</a>
-- Lisp Markup Language.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/cvsd">cvsd</a>
-- Chroot wrapper to run `cvs pserver' more securely.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/daemon">daemon</a>
-- turns other processes into daemons.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/shells/dash">dash</a>
-- The Debian Almquist Shell.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/dumpasn1">dumpasn1</a>
-- ASN.1 object dump program.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/fetchyahoo">fetchyahoo</a>
-- Retrieve mail from Yahoo!'s webmail service.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/fonty-rg">fonty-rg</a>
-- Set of fonts for the Linux console.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/galeon">galeon</a>
-- Fast Web Browser for the GNOME Desktop Environment.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/masqdialer">masqdialer</a>
-- Remote control for shared dialup links.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/memtester">memtester</a>
-- A utility for testing the memory subsystem.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/mergeant">mergeant</a>
-- GNOME Database admin tool GUI for GNOME 2.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/mozilla-browser">mozilla-browser</a>
-- Sophisticated graphical World-Wide-Web browser.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/pbuilder-uml">pbuilder-uml</a>
-- user-mode-linux version of pbuilder.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/snowdrop">snowdrop</a>
-- Plain text watermarking and watermark recovery.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/sterilize">sterilize</a>
-- Secure (supposedly) file wipe utility.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/tcpreen">tcpreen</a>
-- Simple TCP re-engineering tool.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libvtk4">vtk</a>
-- Visualization Toolkit - A high level 3D visualization library.
</ul>
<p><strong>Orphaned Packages.</strong> 16 packages were orphaned this week and
require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 123 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software
community. Please see the <a href="$(HOME)/devel/wnpp/">WNPP pages</a> 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.</p>
<ul>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/aria">aria</a>
-- Tool to download files from the Internet via HTTP or FTP.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162054">Bug#162054</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/check">check</a>
-- A unit test framework for C.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162082">Bug#162082</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/efax">efax</a>
-- Programs to send and receive fax messages.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162056">Bug#162056</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/efax-gtk">efax-gtk</a>
-- A GTK front-end for the efax package.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162064">Bug#162064</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/euler">euler</a>
-- An interactive mathematical program.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162057">Bug#162057</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/figurine">figurine</a>
-- An X11 vector graphics drawing program.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162058">Bug#162058</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/fpm">fpm</a>
-- Password Manager.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/160916">Bug#160916</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/gcdb">gcdb</a>
-- MySQL/PHP billing system.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/161707">Bug#161707</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/ggradebook">ggradebook</a>
-- A Gradebook to help teachers manage student grades.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162059">Bug#162059</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/gphone">gphone</a>
-- X/GTK-based internet telephone.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/161708">Bug#161708</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/larswm">larswm</a>
-- Lars Window Manager with tiled windows.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/161892">Bug#161892</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ncftp">ncftp</a>
-- A user-friendly and well-featured FTP client.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162062">Bug#162062</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/python-xmlrpc">py-xmlrpc</a>
-- Implementation of the XML-RPC protocol for Python.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/161224">Bug#161224</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/qcl">qcl</a>
-- A language for quantum computers.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162060">Bug#162060</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/wayv">wayv</a>
-- Experimental hand writing/gesture recognition program.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162061">Bug#162061</a>)</li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/xeuklides">xeuklides</a>
-- A program to create euclidean geometry figures.
(<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/162063">Bug#162063</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Want to continue reading DWN?</strong> Please help us create this
newsletter. Currently, it's mostly a one-man show, which is anticipated to
fail in the long term. We urgently need volunteer writers who prepare items.
Please see the <a href="$(HOME)/News/weekly/contributing">contributing
page</a> to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at <a href="mailto:dwn@debian.org">dwn@debian.org</a>.</p>
#use wml::debian::weeklynews::footer
|
