path: root/english/News/weekly/2005/14/index.wml

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::header PUBDATE="2005-04-05" SUMMARY="Releases, Packaging, LSB, Removals, Outage, Friendliness, GNOME"
# $Id$

<p>Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the
Debian community.  A Hurd <a href="http://www.superunprivileged.org/">live</a>
CD has recently seen the light for everybody who would like to give it a try
without installing the system.  Noèl Köthe <a
href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39191002,00.htm">\
reported</a> during the CeBIT exhibition that some German government agencies
have switched to Debian recently.  Kenshi Muto has <a
href="http://kmuto.jp/b.cgi/2005/03/12#ttyplay">recorded</a> an installation
of Debian sarge which can be watched by using telnet.</p>

<p><strong>Use the Source, Luke.</strong> John Goerzen <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg01387.html">proposed</a>
a source-centric approach to mitigate the problem of getting all architectures
in sync and to save disk space on the mirrors.  Wouter Verhelst <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg01626.html">pointed
out</a> that one of Debian's key selling points is the fact that you don't
have to wait for something to build before you can use it.  The proposal would
turn Debian into a second Gentoo distribution.</p>

<p><strong>Why Firewall Support?</strong> Thomas Bushnell <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg01713.html">wondered</a>
why the <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00012.html">\
Vancouver prospectus</a> listed firewall support as an
essential requirement before a port can be supported by a release.  Joel
Aelwyn <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg01797.html">\
explained</a> that probably the buildd machine needs to be able to run with a
firewall of its own in order to operate in a hostile environment like the
Internet.</p>

<p><strong>Emulating Architectures.</strong> Gunnar Wolf <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02011.html">proposed</a>
to emulate slower architectures on faster machines by using one of the many
emulators in Debian.  Peter De Schrijver <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02013.html">added</a>
that cross-compiling with <a href="http://packages.debian.org/distcc">\
distcc</a> or scratchbox would be even faster while the buildd would still run
on the target architecture and be able to <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02018.html">execute</a>
newly created programs.</p>

<p><strong>Better Support for chroot Environments.</strong> Jorge deLyra <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02511.html">proposed</a>
to add better support for chroot environments to init scripts so that daemons
don't get started inside of these.  Henning Makholm <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02526.html">asked</a>
him to write a proper policy-rc.d script for the chroot environment.  This is
documented in <code>/usr/share/doc/sysv-rc/README.policy-rc.d.gz</code>.</p>

<p><strong>Supporting LSB init Functions?</strong> Thomas Hood <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02599.html">wondered</a>
if Debian should adopt the use of LSB init script functions.  Javier
Fernández-Sanguino Peña <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02640.html">added</a>
that currently scripts differ a lot.  Contrary to common belief, the output of
init scripts can be logged as Wouter Verhelst <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02715.html">noted</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Reason for Package Removals.</strong> Frank K&uuml;ster <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/04/msg00029.html">wondered</a>
how one could find out the reason why a package was removed from the testing
distribution.  Jeroen van Wolffelaar <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/04/msg00030.html">admitted</a>
that this information is indeed not available yet.  In the future the new <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-changes/">debian-testing-changes</a>
list should be used for such information.</p>

<p><strong>Major Outage of Debian Infrastructure.</strong> James Troup <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/04/msg00006.html">\
announced</a> major problems with one of Debian's servers.  After it became
apparent that there has been extensive data corruption on one partition the
machine was moved off of the network.  Some <a
href="http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200504051921">services</a> have been
moved and restored since then but developers still need to check the files in
their home directories on their own.  This also means that this issue cannot
be read on the web when it is distributed via mail.</p>

<p><strong>Release Status Update.</strong> Andreas Barth sent in another <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/04/msg00003.html">\
status update</a> for the sarge release.  He added a last call for volunteers
to maintain the 80386 upgrade path and patch, otherwise this sub-architecture
is bound to be dropped entirely.  He also anticipated a soon freeze of testing
once the arm architecture catches up.</p>

<p><strong>A friendlier Debian Project?</strong> Hanna Wallach wrote an <a
href="http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~hmw26/join-the-dots/2005/03/30/friendlier-debian/">\
essay</a> about making Debian a friendlier place for both men and women.
Surprisingly, many men participate in the Debian Women project because of a
much more positive, welcoming and friendly atmosphere than in other Debian
fora.</p>

<p><strong>Helping the GNOME Team.</strong> Jordi Mallach <a
href="http://oskuro.net/blog/freesoftware/helping-debian-gnome-2005-03-12-23-31">\
asked</a> for help from people reading, testing and commenting about the
validity of the bugs filed against several GNOME packages.  Plain packaging of
the software didn't turn out to be a big problem, except when there are tricky
upgrades and transitions.  Coping with the large number of bug reports,
though, is.</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>DSA 700: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2005/dsa-700">mailreader</a> --
    Cross-site scripting vulnerability.
<li>DSA 701: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2005/dsa-701">samba</a> --
    Arbitrary code execution.
<li>DSA 702: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2005/dsa-702">imagemagick</a> --
    Several vulnerabilities.
<li>DSA 703: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2005/dsa-703">krb5</a> --
    Arbitrary code execution.
<li>DSA 704: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2005/dsa-704">remstats</a> --
    Several vulnerabilities.
<li>DSA 705: <a href="$(HOME)/security/2005/dsa-705">wu-ftpd</a> --
    Denial of service.
</ul>

<p><strong>New or Noteworthy Packages.</strong> The following packages were
added to the unstable Debian archive <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main">recently</a> or contain
important updates.</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/davfs2">davfs2</a>
    -- Mount a WebDAV resource as a regular file system.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/fapg">fapg</a>
    -- Fast Audio Playlist Generator.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/gallimimus">gallimimus</a>
    -- RSS feed storage and generation system.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/gvr">gvr</a>
    -- Interactive, introductory programming language.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/lcrash">lcrash</a>
    -- Debugger to analyze and debug LKCD kernel crash dumps.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/lhs2tex">lhs2tex</a>
    -- Generates LaTeX code from literate Haskell sources.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/lnpd">lnpd</a>
    -- Daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/manpages-zh">manpages-zh</a>
    -- Chinese manual pages.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/moomps">moomps</a>
    -- Modular Object Oriented Multi-Purpose Service.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/nemesi">nemesi</a>
    -- Standards-compliant multimedia streaming client.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/netmrg">netmrg</a>
    -- Network monitoring tool.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/openmsx">openmsx</a>
    -- MSX emulator that aims for perfection.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/potracegui">potracegui</a>
    -- KDE frontend for potrace.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/rrootage">rrootage</a>
    -- Arcade-style space shooting game.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/stellarium">stellarium</a>
    -- Real-time photo-realistic sky generator.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/tecnoballz">tecnoballz</a>
    -- Breaking block game ported from the Amiga platform.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/textopo">textopo</a>
    -- LaTeX presentation of topology of transmembrane proteins.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/wmaloader">wmaloader</a>
    -- Firmware downloader for Linksys WMA11B media adapter.
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/yate">yate</a>
    -- Yet Another Telephony Engine.
</ul>

<p><strong>Orphaned Packages.</strong> 8 packages were orphaned this week and
require a new maintainer.  This makes a total of 224 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/gnome/gnome-think">gnome-think</a>
     -- Hierarchical organiser and outliner.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/302261">Bug#302261</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/jaxml">jaxml</a>
     -- XML document generation for Python.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/302299">Bug#302299</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/jbofihe">jbofihe</a>
     -- Lojban glosser/parser.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/302298">Bug#302298</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/base/kernel-image-2.4.27-powerpc">kernel-patch-powerpc-2.4.27</a>
     -- Linux/PowerPC kernel binary image for the powerpc flavour.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/303024">Bug#303024</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/base/kernel-image-2.6.8-powerpc">kernel-patch-powerpc-2.6.8</a>
     -- Linux kernel image for 2.6.8-powerpc.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/303021">Bug#303021</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/lojban-common">lojban-common</a>
     -- Lojban wordlists.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/302297">Bug#302297</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/scanerrlog">scanerrlog</a>
     -- Apache error log parser.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/302300">Bug#302300</a>)
     </li>
<li> <a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/toshset">toshset</a>
     -- Access much of the Toshiba laptop hardware interface.
     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/301978">Bug#301978</a>)
     </li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Want to continue reading DWN?</strong> 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 <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 editor="Martin 'Joey' Schulze"