|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/36/
Debian Weekly News - September 6th, 2005
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 36th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Christoph Berg [1]created a Debian [2]quiz
where you can test your knowledge about Debian's distribution, people,
mailing lists, etc. So far, about 1600 people have participated. After
their summer holidays 16,000 pupils in northern Italy (south Tyrol)
will find their 2,460 classroom computers [3]migrated to a
customised, multi-language [4]derivative of Debian GNU/Linux.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-curiosa/2005/08/msg00020.html
2. http://www.df7cb.de/debian/quiz/
3. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2079183879.html
4. http://www.fuss.bz.it/
KDE Transition Status. Adeodato Simó [5]reported that the archive now
contains versions of qt-x11-free, aRts, and kdelibs for all
architectures that depend on the new C++ library. Therefore he asked
developers to update the packages that depend on one of these
libraries and enclosed a list of maintainers and packages.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/09/msg00000.html
License for Wiki Content. Geert Stappers [6]wondered which license
should be used for the [7]content of a Wiki system, which is intended
to be modified and improved by others. Nathanael Nerode [8]explained
that Debian is working with the [9]Creative Commons people on a draft
of a new version of their license that should be DFSG-free, since the
current one isn't. Andrew Suffield [10]proposed to use the MIT license
unless there is a really good reason not to do so.
6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00070.html
7. http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00078.html
9. http://www.creativecommons.org/
10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00101.html
Using the PHP License for Packages. Charles Fry [11]noticed that the
current version of the [12]PHP license (version 3.0) contains several
clauses which are specific to the PHP language, and either
inapplicable or even problematic for applications written in PHP.
Francesco Poli [13]suggested to use the 2-clause BSD license and use
the PHP license only for PHP itself.
11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00190.html
12. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/36/www.php.net/license/3_0.txt
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00233.html
Curl reverts to OpenSSL. Domenico Andreoli [14]announced that he has
paused the plan to link [15]curl library against [16]GNU TLS instead
of [17]OpenSSL which he considered after license concerns. The
upstream developer was [18]not happy to restrict the binary packages
to either libraries since their implementations contain partially
different features.
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00314.html
15. http://packages.debian.org/libcurl3
16. http://packages.debian.org/libgnutls11
17. http://packages.debian.org/libssl0.9.7
18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00367.html
Purging Database Data? Philipp Kern [19]wondered under which
circumstances user-supplied data should be removed upon package
removal. Joey Hess [20]confirmed that using debconf during postrm
purge is fine as long as the script checks whether [21]debconf is
installed and falls back to reasonable behaviour if it isn't.
19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00318.html
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00390.html
21. http://packages.debian.org/debconf
New Runlevel Design. Timo Aaltonen [22]wondered if there were plans to
change the runlevel concept more into the direction of the [23]Linux
Standard Base. John Hasler [24]asserted that most probably there won't
be a change into supporting multiple multi-user runlevels. Hamish
Moffatt [25]explained the emergency mode which is what several people
[26]expect as single-user mode.
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00596.html
23. http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.0.0/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic/runlevels.html
24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00609.html
25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00689.html
26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00613.html
Notification on API Changes. Marc Brockschmidt [27]asked developers to
notify others when the application program interface (API) is changed
in a new version. Ron Johnson [28]pointed out that apt-rdepends works
fine for normal reverse dependencies. Kurt Roeckx [29]added a means to
discover the reverse build-dependencies of a package.
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00660.html
28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00669.html
29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00784.html
Quality of the README File. Wolfgang Borgert [30]gave several examples
of confusing, irrelevant, redundant, or useless README files
distributed in Debian packages. He asked maintainers to not include
the upstream README file in the binary package, if it's not really
important to the user and strip irrelevant information otherwise.
30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00705.html
Differing Library Memory Consumption. Stephane Chauveau [31]noticed
that a self-compiled GTK library consumes less (140 kB) memory for
non-static data than the one provided by Debian. Thiemo Seufer
[32]explained that this does not matter due to copy-on-write done by
the kernel. The reason for this is still unknown.
31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2005/08/msg00076.html
32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg01556.html
Debian QA Meeting. Martin Zobel-Helas [33]reported about the Debian QA
[34]meeting that will take place at the Technical University of
Darmstadt from the 9th to the 11th of September. The attendants will
give talks on various topics such as portability issues, the
installer, lintian, autotools, new maintainer, collaborative
maintenance and others.
33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2005/08/msg00085.html
34. http://wiki.ftbfs.de/ftbfs/DebianQaMeeting
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* DSA 792: [35]pstotext -- Arbitrary command execution.
* DSA 793: [36]sqwebmail -- Cross-site scripting.
* DSA 794: [37]polygen -- Denial of service.
* DSA 795: [38]proftpd -- Format string vulnerability.
* DSA 796: [39]affix -- Remote command execution.
* DSA 797: [40]zsync -- Denial of service.
* DSA 798: [41]phpgroupware -- Several vulnerabilities.
* DSA 799: [42]webcalendar -- Remote code execution.
* DSA 800: [43]pcre3 -- Arbitrary command execution.
* DSA 801: [44]ntp -- Group id confusion.
35. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-792
36. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-793
37. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-794
38. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-795
39. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-796
40. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-797
41. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-798
42. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-799
43. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-800
44. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-801
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [45]recently or contain important updates.
45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main
* [46]binfmtc -- Execute C program as script.
* [47]bootchart -- Boot process performance analyser.
* [48]cl-cedilla -- Best-effort Unicode text printer.
* [49]cowdancer -- Copy-on-write directory tree utility.
* [50]driconf -- DRI configuration GUI.
* [51]fldiff -- Graphical diff program.
* [52]fteqcc -- FTE QuakeC compiler.
* [53]gparted -- GNOME partition editor.
* [54]gpass -- Password manager for GNOME2.
* [55]imview -- Image viewing and analysis application.
* [56]ipodder -- Podcast receiver.
* [57]jwm -- Very small lightweight pure X11 window manager with
tray and menus.
* [58]kbstate -- Keyboard status applet for KDE.
* [59]kdesvn -- Subversion client with tight KDE integration.
* [60]kiki -- Tool for Python regular expression testing.
* [61]kode -- Helper library for programmatic generation of C++
code.
* [62]ksayit -- Frontend for the KDE Text-to-Speech system.
* [63]kttsd -- Text-to-Speech system for KDE.
* [64]kvirc2 -- Fully scriptable graphical IRC client with plugin
support.
* [65]mpdscribble -- Last.fm reporting client for mpd.
* [66]mydms -- Open source document management system based on PHP
and MySQL.
* [67]networkstatus -- KDE network status monitor.
* [68]psignifit -- Fitting and testing hypotheses about psychometric
functions.
* [69]pype -- Python programmers editor.
* [70]qd -- Double-double and quad double types in C++ and F90.
* [71]spe -- Stani's Python Editor.
* [72]vncommand -- VNC server which monitors a specified program.
* [73]webgen -- Template based static website generator.
46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/binfmtc
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bootchart
48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/cl-cedilla
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/cowdancer
50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/driconf
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/fldiff
52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/fteqcc
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gparted
54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gpass
55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/science/imview
56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ipodder
57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/jwm
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kbstate
59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kdesvn
60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/kiki
61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/kode
62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/ksayit
63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/kttsd
64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/kvirc2
65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/mpdscribble
66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/mydms
67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/networkstatus
68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/psignifit
69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/pype
70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libqd2.1.142
71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/spe
72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/vncommand
73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/webgen
Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 203 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [74]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.
74. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [75]konq-speaker -- Text-to-speech plugins for Konqueror and Kate.
([76]Bug#325996)
* [77]qbble -- XMMS playlist manager with search support.
([78]Bug#325995)
* [79]wmfire -- Very cool fiery way of showing your CPU usage.
([80]Bug#326779)
75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/konq-speaker
76. http://bugs.debian.org/325996
77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/xmms-qbble
78. http://bugs.debian.org/325995
79. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/wmfire
80. http://bugs.debian.org/326779
Removed Packages. 8 packages have been [81]removed from the Debian
archive during the past week:
81. http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals.txt
* pdfscreen -- Make PDF documents which are printable and readable
on screen too
[82]Bug#214928: Request of QA, orphaned, no longer used by
anything
* kernellab -- Manage kernel configurations for many machines easily
[83]Bug#264219: Request of maintainer, no upstream, doesn't work
with current kernels
* openduke -- Duke Nukem 3D map viewer
[84]Bug#314675: Request of QA, orphaned, RC bugs, limited
functionality, in contrib
* python-rrd -- Python bindings for RRD
[85]Bug#323208: Request of maintainer, obsolete; now included in
rrdtool source
* cfdisk-utf8 -- Small UTF8 capable version of cfdisk
[86]Bug#323769: Request of maintainer, obsolete
* kcd -- CD player applet for KDE Kicker
[87]Bug#325992: Request of maintainer, buggy, dead upstream,
redundant in KDE 3.4
* kmerlin -- Instant messaging (IM) client for the MSN messenger
network
[88]Bug#326086: Request of maintainer, dead upstream, buggy,
alternatives exist, like kopete, gaim
* bsmtpd -- Batched SMTP mailer for sendmail and postfix
[89]Bug#326118: Request of maintainer, buggy, dead upstream,
hardly used
82. http://bugs.debian.org/214928
83. http://bugs.debian.org/264219
84. http://bugs.debian.org/314675
85. http://bugs.debian.org/323208
86. http://bugs.debian.org/323769
87. http://bugs.debian.org/325992
88. http://bugs.debian.org/326086
89. http://bugs.debian.org/326118
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 [90]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [91]dwn@debian.org.
90. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
91. mailto:dwn@debian.org
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [e-mail:debian-news-REQUEST@lists.debian.org]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [e-mail:listmaster@lists.debian.org]
|
