Debian Weekly News - December 20th, 2005

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/51/
Debian Weekly News - December 20th, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 51st issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Mohammed Adnène Trojette summarised the events
from last year and created the [1]timeline 2004. Thomas Lange
[2]announced version 2.9 of FAI, the fully automatic installation for
Debian.

 1. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/timeline
 2. http://www.uni-koeln.de/bin2/maillist/linux-fai/20051213.170012/170506

Debian on one DVD? Jaldhar Vyas [3]reported that one of the problems
GNU/Linux users in countries like India face is low bandwidth.
Therefore a distribution on CD or DVD is preferred over large network
installations or updates. He has found a sponsor and is looking for a
1-DVD version of the Debian system. Jörg Jaspert [4]confirmed that
the production is easy since he's done it before.

 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/12/msg00089.html
 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/12/msg00091.html

Four Years debianforum.de. The web forum [5]debianforum.de, aimed at
German speaking Debian Users, has had its fourth anniversary on
December 20th. With discussions like "How to install a program" this
forum has turned into an important site for both the Debian beginner
and the professional in German speaking countries. With booths on
several GNU/Linux Events the forum was also active outside the world
wide web.

 5. http://debianforum.de/

Ballot: Declassification of private Mails. Manoj Srivastava [6]called
for [7]vote on the [8]declassification of debian-private list
archives from December 18th to December 31th. When passed a committee
will be created that will seek to declassify and publish mails of
historical or ongoing significance made to the internal private Debian
mailing list.

 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/12/msg00075.html
 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/12/msg00080.html
 8. http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_002

Simon Bienlein receives BIENE Award. [9]Simon Bienlein (German), a
German Debian contributor has received the [10]BIENE award (German).
Simon contributes to the [11]Debian installer and helped to make it
fit for use with a braille terminal. He received the award for his
[12]website (German) on GNU/Linux for blind people. The BIENE award is
given annually to websites whose accessibility is exemplary. Simon
even received a special award.

 9. http://www.bienlein.com/
 10. http://www.biene-award.de/award/
 11. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
 12. http://www.linux-fuer-blinde.de/

New apt-get and dpkg Guide. [13]All about Linux a GNU/Linux focused
blog at blogspot.com published a nice [14]guide on apt-get and dpkg.
The article is catered for new users and explains the most common
applications of both programs. For more detailed information on these
programs you can also refer to Debian's own [15]apt howto.

 13. http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/
 14. http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/12/concise-apt-get-dpkg-primer-for-new.html
 15. http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/

Using LSB conforming Init Scripts. Thomas Hood [16]wondered how he is
supposed to use the [17]LSB compliant functions for init scripts
properly. He noted that arbitrary output would spoil the formatting.
Petter Reinholdtsen [18]reported about ideas to send the output of
scripts to the syslog server. Henrique Holschuh [19]added that the
functions will even work when parallel init scripts execution is
implemented.

 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01309.html
 17. http://refspecs.freestandards.org/LSB_3.0.0/
 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01329.html
 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01343.html

Individually signed Packages. Marc Brockschmidt [20]reported about a
change in the archive suite that caused individually signed packages
to be rejected. Several people [21]stated that they would like
[22]dpkg-sig to continue to work. Marc [23]added that Jörg Jaspert
planned to provide a better version of the problematic check that will
accept such packages again.

 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01325.html
 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01337.html
 22. http://packages.debian.org/dpkg-sig
 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01352.html

TeX Live in Debian? Norbert Preining [24]reported about the
[25]genesis of [26]TeX live for Debian after the [27]packages have
been [28]rejected from the [29]incoming directory. Frank Küster
[30]added that several TeX live developers and users wanted a simple
way to install TeX live in Debian, replacing teTeX and keeping
dependencies in order.

 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01649.html
 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg00970.html
 26. http://www.tug.org/texlive/
 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01654.html
 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01651.html
 29. http://incoming.debian.org/
 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01658.html

Automatic Bug Closing. Roberto Sanchez [31]wondered if automatic
closing of [32]bugs could be adjusted to only work for bugs in the
same source package since a typo in the bug number will cause the
wrong bug to be closed. Matthew Palmer [33]added that the close
message does actually state the source package which closes the bug.

 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00033.html
 32. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00037.html

Debian Sarge updated. The Debian project [34]announced the first
[35]update for the current [36]stable release. Preparations for this
update lasted six months and ended shortly after the first round of
[37]kernel [38]updates for this release. This update accumulates 172
security updates and 16 important corrections.

 34. http://www.debian.org/News/2005/20051220
 35. http://people.debian.org/~joey/3.1r1/
 36. http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/
 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-921
 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-922

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

 * DSA 920: [39]ethereal -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 921: [40]Linux 2.4.27 -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 922: [41]Linux 2.6.8 -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 923: [42]dropbear -- Arbitrary code execution.

 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-920
 40. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-921
 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-922
 42. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-923

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [43]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [44]aspell-eo -- Esperanto dictionary for aspell.
 * [45]cheops-ng -- Network Swiss army knife.
 * [46]debsecan -- Debian Security Analyser.
 * [47]fai-client -- Fully Automatic Installation client package.
 * [48]ihu -- Voice over IP (VoIP) application for Linux (using Qt).
 * [49]kguitar -- Stringed instrument tablature editor for KDE.
 * [50]netdiscover -- Active/passive address scanner using ARP
   requests.
 * [51]pcmciautils -- PCMCIA utilities for Linux 2.6.
 * [52]uuidcdef -- Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) generator.

 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aspell-eo
 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/cheops-ng
 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/debsecan
 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/fai-client
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/ihu
 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kguitar
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/netdiscover
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/pcmciautils
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/uuidcdef

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 [53]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [54]dwn@debian.org.

 53. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 54. mailto:dwn@debian.org