Debian Project News - September 21st, 2010
Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <[email protected]> Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:35:21 +0200
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.debian.user.news |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/ Debian Project News [email protected] September 21st, 2010 http://debian.org/News/weekly/2010/12/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to this year's twelfth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include: * Linux Mint Debian Edition * "Grave" software bugs * "This week in Debian" interviews Stefano Zacchiroli * etch-backports gone * Release-critical bugs in stable release * Debian Women Mentoring rebooting * Mythbusting Ruby packaging * Debian to welcome non-packaging contributors * ... and much more. Linux Mint Debian Edition ------------------------- Linux Mint, a Linux distribution whose purpose is to "produce a modern, elegant and comfortable operating system which is both powerful and easy to use" , has released an edition based on Debian. This new Linux Mint distribution will track Debian testing, as a more reliable upstream base. Linux Mint appears to be a popular Linux distribution ranking highly at DistroWatch.com as well as other non-scientific measures. Certainly they received a large number of comments to theirblog post [1] regarding their new distribution. Anecdotal evidence seems to point to this Debian-based edition as a popular move. 1 : http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=1527 The addition of Linux Mint to the Debian derivatives family is a welcome one, and should the Linux Mint developers wish to be in contact with Debian it has been suggested that they will be warmly welcomed at the Debian Derivatives Front Desk [2]. 2 : http://wiki.debian.org/DerivativesFrontDesk "Grave" software bugs --------------------- Andreas Tille began a short discussion [3] regarding bugs which are not grave software bugs per se, but could cause grave harm to life or property under certain conditions. As an example, the bug in question involved improper data handling that could lead to a medical patient being prescribed medicine which could lead to a possibly fatal reaction. Responses from developers indicated that despite such bugs not being explicitly mentioned in the bug guidelines, they should already fall under release-critical severity and thus should have freeze exceptions and possible Debian Security Advisories if needed. The fix for the bug in question was approved for testing within the day. 3 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] "This week in Debian" interviews Stefano Zacchiroli --------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Nadeau published the first issue of the "This week in Debian" podcast! The podcast is available inOgg Vorbis [4] format as well as MP3 [5]. In this issue he interviewed Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli about Debian influence in the Linux universe and its link with upstream and derivative developers. Stefano also spoke about the Debian Project and its organisation, and more specifically the Debian Project Leader tasks. 4 : http://www.frostbitemedia.libsyn.com/rss/twid.ogg 5 : http://www.frostbitemedia.libsyn.com/rss/twidmp3 Congratulations, Jonathan, and thanks for your work! We are looking forward to hearing new issues of your podcast! etch-backports gone ------------------- Alexander Wirt announced that the backports for Debian "Etch" have finally been removed from the servers. Over the lifetime of etch-backports there accumulated a total of 508 different backports, resulting in more than 2250 binary packages for all Debian architectures offered to users. Altogether the available backports and their source occupied 13Gb of disk space on the mirrors. The backports team would like to thank every contributor and mirror administrator for their work and their help which made this possible. Release-critical bugs in stable release --------------------------------------- Gerfried Fuchs noticed [6] that recently the number of release-critical bugs in the stable release Debian 5.0 "Lenny" has dropped below the 900 mark, and thanks all who helped keeping that number down. It should be noted that the high number of open release-critical bugs for the stable release contains a fair amount of false positives (e.g. serious "fails to build from source" bugs with newer compiler versions that aren't shipped in the stable release). Previously Gerfried blogged aboutusage of the Bug Tracking System [7]. If you would like to join the efforts of keeping the bug tracking system clean, please read this post and contact Gerfried should any questions arise. 6 : http://rhonda.deb.at/blog/2010/09/10#lenny-900-RCs 7 : http://rhonda.deb.at/blog/debian/on-BTS-usage.html Debian Women Mentoring rebooting -------------------------------- Helen Faulkner noted that the Debian Women mentoring project [8] has been restarted. People interested in being a mentor or getting a mentor should contact the coordinators [9]. 8 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 9 : mailto:[email protected] Mythbusting Ruby packaging -------------------------- After hearing some myths about how Ruby is packaged in Debian, Lucas Nussbaum wrote about some of the Ruby myths [10] in his blog. It ranges from general version culture and API stability, over the necessity of package splits, performance issues and porting issues up to communication with the upstream developers and motivation issues. He also noted that due to these problems it's difficult to find new people to join the Ruby packaging teams, and that they are quite understaffed. 10 : http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=566 In response to this initial post, some people volunteered to help [11] on Ruby's packaging, so Lucas updated the corresponding wiki page [12] for guidance. 11 : http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=575 12 : http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Ruby Debian to welcome non-packaging contributors -------------------------------------------- In coordination with Debian's Account Managers, Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli proposed [13] a general resolution [14] to welcome non-packaging contributors as full project members. While the Debian Account Managers already are empowered to do so, and while it is already possible to become an official Debian Developer without doing packaging work, this procedure has rarely been used. So Stefano wants to make a clear sign from the entire project that Debian does welcome and honour non-packaging contributions. This goal has already been achieved partly, as Stefano's proposal got a lot of support in quite a short time-frame. However, the naming of non-packaging contributors as well as possible upload rights are under discussion. 13 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 14 : http://www.debian.org/vote/2010/vote_002 Other news ---------- Stephan Gran posted some notes from the meeting of Debian System Administrators [15] in early September in Munich. Besides some internal discussion (e.g. monitoring and configuration management), this also led to a procedure for the handling of guest accounts on debian.org machines [16]. 15 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 16 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] Joerg Jaspert posted a policy for how Debian Developers can get their account names changed [17]. 17 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] Robert Millan announced the availability of the graphical installer for Debian GNU/kFreeBSD [18]. 18 : http://robertmh.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/graphical-installer-for-debian-gnukfreebsd/ Raphaël Hertzog wondered [19] whether the Debian project shouldn't have an official page on some non-free web service. Stefano Zacchiroli disagreed [20]on the grounds that it would not be possible to use a proprietary service without endorsing it. 19 : http://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/09/can-debian-achieve-world-domination-without-being-on-facebook/ 20 : http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/09/yes_we_can/ Christian Perrier addressed his thanks to the release team [22] and encouraged every developer, whether their package is unblocked or not, to send private "thank you" messages to any Release Team member for their amazing work. 22 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2010/09/12#release-team Miriam Ruiz is grateful towards the release team who agreed to unblock Gnash 0.8.8 in Debian [23] "Squeeze" , which is by far a better option than the buggy 0.8.7. Among the improvements in the version that will be shipped in the next Debian stable release, lots of online video will now be working, it can switch at runtime between the Cairo, OpenGL, and AGG renderers, and it can use hardware acceleration. 23 : http://www.miriamruiz.es/weblog/?p=610 Luca Falavigna thanked everyone (especially Moritz Muehlenhoff) taking the trouble to file removal bugs on the ftp.debian.org pseudo-package, in order to clean up unused and buggy packages from the archive [24] in order to prepare the upcoming Debian "Squeeze" release. 24 : http://dktrkranz.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/less-cruft-for-a-better-release/ FTP Master Joerg Jaspert, in a short minute from the FTP Team meeting [25] being held this weekend, welcomed Torsten Werner as new FTP Master. Good luck and congratulations to him! 25 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] Christian Perrier is pleased to announce that the upload of Samba 3.5.4 to [26] "Sid" has been authorised by the release team. He therefore asked for users and system administrators to test the new packages and report bugs in order to make this version a quality one to be provided in "Squeeze". 26 : http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2010/09/09#samba-3.5.4 Lucas Nussbaum added [27] a bugs search interface [28] to the Ultimate Debian Database [29]. It thus may replace the unofficial release-critical bugs tracker [30], while providing many more features. 27 : http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=571 28 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugs.cgi 29 : http://udd.debian.org/ 30 : http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php A new version of [31]klibc has been released. This newer klibc release fixes ipconfig, which is responsible for netbooting, a method that is quite often found in larger cluster environments or bigger Debian deployments. ipconfig saw several fixes in order to procure more reliable netboot. 31 : http://www.itp.tuwien.ac.at/~mattems/blog/2010/08/28#klibc_1.5.20 New Debian Contributors ----------------------- 1 applicant has been accepted [32] as a Debian Developer and 1 person started to maintain packages [33] since the previous issue of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Luke Faraone and Andreas Beckmann into our project! 32 : https://nm.debian.org/nmlist.php#newmaint 33 : http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi Release-critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release --------------------------------------------------------- According to the unofficial release-critical bug counter [34], the upcoming release, Debian 6.0 "Squeeze", is currently affected by 317 release-critical bugs. Ignoring bugs which are easily solved or on the way to being solved, roughly speaking, about 126 release-critical bugs remain to be solved for the release to happen. 34 : http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php There are also more detailed statistics [35] as well as some hints on how to interpret [36] these numbers. 35 : http://blog.schmehl.info/Debian/rc-stats/2010-37 36 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/RC-Stats Important Debian Security Advisories ------------------------------------ Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages (among others): xulrunner [37], couchdbr [38], phpmyadmin [39] (updated), cvsnt [40], samba [41], linux-2.6 [42], squid3 [43], bzip2 [44], and drupal6 [45]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures. 37 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2106 38 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2107 39 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2097 40 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2108 41 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2109 42 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2110 43 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2111 44 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2112 45 : http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2113 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 [46] for announcements. 46 : http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/ New and noteworthy packages --------------------------- The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently (among others [47]): 47 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg * browser-plugin-gnash -- GNU Shockwave Flash (SWF) player - plugin for Mozilla and derivatives [48] * code-aster-gui -- graphical user interface for Code_Aster - client [49] * code-aster-run -- graphical user interface for Code_Aster - server [50] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-amd64 -- Debian-installer network boot images for amd64 [51] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-armel -- Debian-installer network boot images for armel [52] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-hppa -- Debian-installer network boot images for hppa [53] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-i386 -- Debian-installer network boot images for i386 [54] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-ia64 -- Debian-installer network boot images for ia64 [55] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-mips -- Debian-installer network boot images for mips [56] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-mipsel -- Debian-installer network boot images for mipsel [57] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-powerpc -- Debian-installer network boot images for powerpc [58] * debian-installer-6.0-netboot-sparc -- Debian-installer network boot images for sparc [59] * iceweasel-l10n-dz-bt -- Dzongkha language package for Iceweasel [60] * iceweasel-l10n-fa-ir -- Persian language package for Iceweasel [61] * iceweasel-l10n-fur-it -- Furlan language package for Iceweasel [62] * iceweasel-l10n-ne-np -- Nepali language package for Iceweasel [63] Please note that due to the freeze of the upcoming Debian 6.0 [64] "Squeeze" acceptance of new packages has almost ceased. 48 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/browser-plugin-gnash 49 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/code-aster-gui 50 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/code-aster-run 51 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-amd64 52 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-armel 53 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-hppa 54 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-i386 55 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-ia64 56 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-mips 57 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-mipsel 58 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-powerpc 59 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-installer-6.0-netboot-sparc 60 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-dz-bt 61 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-fa-ir 62 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-fur-it 63 : http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iceweasel-l10n-ne-np 64 : http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20100806 Work-needing packages --------------------- Currently 492 packages are orphaned and 129 packages are up for adoption. Please take a look at the recent [65] reports [66] to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of packages which need your help [67]. 65 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 66 : http://lists.debian.org/[email protected] 67 : 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 [68] to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [email protected] [69]. 68 : http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute 69 : mailto:[email protected] This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Richard Darst, David Prévot, Jeremiah C. Foster and Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [70]. 70 : mailto:[email protected]