Debian Weekly News - May 10th, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/19/
Debian Weekly News - May 10th, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Shortly before the release a [1]discussion on
the version number for sarge arose. In light of the upcoming release
of sarge, the [2]debian-release list has seen a flood of requests to
update packages in sarge which the release team are dealing with.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg00220.html
 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/

Sarge is frozen. Steve Langasek eventually [3]announced the freeze of
sarge. All updates need to be approved manually and should go in via
unstable if possible. He explained which changes are still allowed to
go into sarge and emphasised on only fixing critical bugs without
other changes. If everything goes well, we'll be ready to release at
the end of the month.

 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/05/msg00001.html

Debian Server in 3.1 Watts. Alex Perry [4]installed Debian woody on a
Peplink [5]Manga. This unit combines an ARM based processor, two
Ethernet interfaces, a four port switch, USB 2.0 and a power draw of 3
Watts (including the AC adaptor). He installed Debian on a 1 GB USB
flash drive and explains step by step how it went.

 4. http://www.pamurray.com/manga/
 5. http://www.peplink.com/en/products/MANGA_Plus.php

Second Project Leader Report. Branden Robinson [6]wrote his second
[7]report in which he reported about the sarge release progress,
about three new ARM machines that have been added to the buildd
network, upcoming hardware upgrades, about Debian assets and hardware
donations, an interview and travel plans among other topics.

 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/05/msg00005.html
 7. http://people.debian.org/~branden/dpl/reports/2005-05-08.html

AMD64 Port Update. Jörg Jaspert [8]announced that the AMD64 archive
has been moved from [9]Alioth to a dedicated server in order to
decrease the load and disk usage on the old host. The system uses a
copy of the Debian archive [10]suite and has special tools added to
keep their inofficial sarge distribution in sync with the Debian sarge
distribution. CD images of the release will also be hosted on
[11]cdimage.debian.org.

 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/05/msg00004.html
 9. http://alioth.debian.org/
 10. http://packages.debian.org/dak
 11. http://cdimage.debian.org/

License Incompatibilities. Christian Hammers [12]reported about a
[13]problem with [14]Quagga which is licensed under the [15]GNU GPL
but is supposed to be linked against [16]NetSNMP. This poses a problem
since NetSNMP depends on OpenSSL which is not GPL compatible.

 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg00127.html
 13. http://bugs.debian.org/243870
 14. http://packages.debian.org/quagga
 15. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
 16. http://packages.debian.org/libsnmp5

APT Migration Status. Florian Weimer [17]reported the status of the
[18]apt 0.6 migration into sid and maybe sarge. He has set up a public
[19]test suite so that interested users can test the behaviour of apt
0.6 with different test data. Matt Zimmerman [20]added that uploading
a new version even into experimental is non-trivial due to library
dependencies.

 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg00172.html
 18. http://packages.debian.org/experimental/base/apt
 19. http://apt-secure-test.enyo.de/README
 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg00196.html

Surveys in Debian. MJ Ray [21]wrote a [22]summary that describes
recent surveys done with affiliation to the Debian project. It also
include some pointers to advice on producing good surveys. Andrew
Suffield [23]added more cynical comments to it such as that surveys
have to be treated with extreme scepticism.

 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/04/msg00288.html
 22. http://people.debian.org/~mjr/surveys.html
 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/04/msg00290.html

Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.

 * DSA 721: [24]squid -- ACL bypass.
 * DSA 722: [25]smail -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 723: [26]xfree86 -- Arbitrary code execution.

 24. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-721
 25. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-722
 26. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-723

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [27]recently or contain important updates.

 27. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main

 * [28]belpic -- SmartCard utilities from the OpenSC project.
 * [29]cget -- Web page downloader.
 * [30]cherokee -- Extremely fast and flexible web server.
 * [31]dokuwiki -- Standards compliant simple to use Wiki.
 * [32]kronolith2 -- Calendar component for Horde Framework.
 * [33]londonlaw -- London law game.
 * [34]nag2 -- Task list component for Horde Framework.
 * [35]stopmotion -- Program for creating stop motion animations.
 * [36]switchconf -- Switch between system configuration sets.
 * [37]unison2.9.1 -- File-synchronisation tool for Unix and Windows.
 * [38]weechat -- Fast, light and extensible IRC client.

 28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/belpic
 29. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/cget
 30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/cherokee
 31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/dokuwiki
 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/kronolith2
 33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/londonlaw
 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/nag2
 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/stopmotion
 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/switchconf
 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/unison2.9.1
 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/weechat

Orphaned Packages. 2 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 219 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [39]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.

 39. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

 * [40]battfink -- GNOME Power Management Configuration.
   ([41]Bug#307644)
 * [42]zeiberbude -- Program for administering Internet cafes.
   ([43]Bug#307543)

 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/battfink
 41. http://bugs.debian.org/307644
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/zeiberbude
 43. http://bugs.debian.org/307543

Removed Packages. 6 packages have been [44]removed from the Debian
archive during the past week:

 44. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt

 * vreng -- Virtual Reality Engine
   [45]Bug#279817: Request of QA; Buggy and outdated
 * openwebmail -- WebMail based on Neomail
   [46]Bug#301561: Request of QA; Riddled with security holes,
   alternatives exist
 * libmrproject -- MrProject Engine library
   [47]Bug#305033: Request of QA; Redundant library incorporated in
   'planner'
 * xmgr -- An XY plotting tool
   [48]Bug#307362: Request of Maintainer; Outdated, dead upstream
 * animals-game -- Simple animals guessing game
   [49]Bug#307542: Request of Maintainer; Duplicate of animals
 * smurf -- SoundFont editor for Linux / *nix
   [50]Bug#305874: Request of Maintainer; Orphaned upstream,
   functionality absorbed by swami

 45. http://bugs.debian.org/279817
 46. http://bugs.debian.org/301561
 47. http://bugs.debian.org/305033
 48. http://bugs.debian.org/307362
 49. http://bugs.debian.org/307542
 50. http://bugs.debian.org/305874

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 [51]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [52]dwn@debian.org.

 51. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 52. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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