Debian Weekly News - August 8th, 2006

Posted by grouch on Aug 9, 2006 7:29 PM EDT
Mailing list; By Martin Schulze
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Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community.

[wjl made it into this issue. :) -- grouch]

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/32/
Debian Weekly News - August 8th, 2006
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Welcome to this year's 32nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Enrico Zini [1]noticed that the description for Pike packages contains a long explanation of Pike which produces erroneous search results, Helmut Wollmersdorfer [2]added that PHP packages have similar issues. Erich Schubert [3]called for artists to design artwork for the [4]etch release that could be used as the desktop background.

1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/07/msg00281.html 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/07/msg00332.html 3. http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/linux/debian/2006072002-debian-etch-artwork 4. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/

New SPI Board Officers elected. David Graham, secretary of [5]Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI), [6]announced that during the board meeting on August 1st Bdale Garbee was elected as president, Michael Schultheiss as vice president, Neil McGovern as secretary and Josh Berkus as treasurer for the 2006-2007 fiscal year. The last three board members have beforehand been [7]elected to the board by a total of 125 [8]voters (33 % of all eligible voters).

5. http://www.spi-inc.org/ 6. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2006/000136.html 7. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2006/000135.html 8. http://www.spi-inc.org/secretary/votes/vote5/results.html

Debian Architectures Statistics. Petter Reinholdtsen [9]reported on the architecture distribution in Debian, as reported by the [10]popularity contest. He noted that an increasing number of users are using the [11]ARM port whereas the [12]Alpha and [13]Sparc ports are losing market share. Joey Hess [14]suggested that the Linksys NSLU2 machines are a good reason for this increase in ARM users. The [15]popularity contest package is also used to decide the installation CD for a particular package.

9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/07/msg01325.html 10. http://popcon.debian.org/ 11. http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/ 12. http://www.debian.org/ports/alpha/ 13. http://www.debian.org/ports/sparc/ 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/07/msg01362.html 15. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/popularity-contest

New Information Media for Users. Wolfgang Lonien [16]announced the creation of [17]The Debian User, a website that will aggregate thoughts and comments of Debian users. The same day, Andreas Barth [18]announced the launch of [19]DebianTimes, which is intended to deliver news items to developers and interested Debian users. DebianTimes is available on the web and as an RSS [20]feed.

16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/08/msg00187.html 17. http://www.thedebianuser.org/ 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/08/msg00030.html 19. http://times.debian.net/ 20. http://times.debian.net/?format=rss20.xml

Bits from the Stable Release Team. Andreas Barth [21]announced that Dann Frazier became a member of the Stable Release Team to handle and improve kernel updates. A new [22]webpage created by Martin Zoble-Helas is also available to track packages that are waiting to be accepted for proposed-updates.

21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/08/msg00035.html 22. http://ftp-master.debian.org/proposed-updates.html

Debian adopted in the Extremadura. The project [23]announced that the local [24]flavour of Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 has been adopted by the local government of the autonomous region of Extremadura in Spain. All workers of the public administration will also use Open Document Formats for their office applications as well as PDF for document exchange. Future versions of additional software also need to be distributed under a free license.

23. http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060803 24. http://www.linex.org/

Debian for the Uninitiated. Lars Wirzenius [25]wondered how usable Debian with GNOME is for the uninitiated, or more specifically, for someone who has been using Windows for a number of years, and switches to Debian. The experiment will continue for a couple of months. The first use went pretty well, with only a couple of real problems which he outlined.

25. http://liw.iki.fi/liw/log/2006-07.html#20060728c

MiniDebconf Colombia. Santiago Ruano Rincón [26]announced that there will be a Mini DebConf held at Popayan, Cauca on the 19th and 20th of August. There will be talks, a hacklab, a bugsquashing party and so on. The conference is organised through a Wiki [27]page. All interested people are welcome to attend.

26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/08/msg00002.html 27. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianColombia/MiniDebconf2006

Hosting for Debian-related Mailing Lists. Pascal Hakim [28]reported that he has set up [29]teams.debian.net which aims at providing space for Debian-related mailing lists and archives, including package lists, user groups lists and mailing lists for special events. The service could also act as a temporary server for testing new mailing lists before making them official on [30]lists.debian.org. Pascal created a set of [31]rules for using his service.

28. http://www.redellipse.net/stuff/Debian/teams.debian.net.story 29. http://teams.debian.net/ 30. http://lists.debian.org/ 31. http://teams.debian.net/request.html

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

* DSA 1131: [32]apache -- Buffer overflow. * DSA 1132: [33]apache2 -- Buffer overflow. * DSA 1133: [34]mantis -- Execution of arbitrary web script code. * DSA 1134: [35]mozilla-thunderbird -- Several vulnerabilities. * DSA 1135: [36]libtunepimp -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 1136: [37]gpdf -- Denial of service. * DSA 1137: [38]tiff -- Several vulnerabilities. * DSA 1138: [39]cfs -- Denial of service. * DSA 1139: [40]ruby1.6 -- Privilege escalation. * DSA 1140: [41]gnupg -- Denial of service. * DSA 1141: [42]gnupg2 -- Denial of service. * DSA 1142: [43]freeciv -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 1143: [44]dhcp -- Denial of service. * DSA 1144: [45]chmlib -- Denial of service. * DSA 1145: [46]freeradius -- Several vulnerabilities.

32. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1131 33. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1132 34. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1133 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1134 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1135 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1136 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1137 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1138 40. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1139 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1140 42. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1141 43. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1142 44. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1143 45. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1144 46. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1145

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [47]recently or contain important updates.

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

* [48]avarice -- Use GDB with Atmel's JTAG ICE for the AVR. * [49]epix1 -- Create mathematically accurate line figures, plots and movies. * [50]kdetv -- TV viewer for KDE. * [51]kdmtheme -- Theme manager for KDM. * [52]keep -- Backup system for KDE. * [53]kflickr -- KDE application to upload photos to Flickr. * [54]knowledgeroot -- Web-based knowledge-base system. * [55]mediawiki1.7 -- Website engine for collaborative work. * [56]ndisc6 -- IPv6 diagnostic tools. * [57]phpunit2 -- Unit testing suite for PHP5. * [58]usplash -- Userspace bootsplash utility.

48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/avarice 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/epix1 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kdetv 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kdmtheme 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/keep 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kflickr 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/knowledgeroot 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/mediawiki1.7 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/ndisc6 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/phpunit2 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/usplash

Orphaned Packages. 3 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 329 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [59]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. To find out which orphaned packages are installed on your system the wnpp-alert program from devscripts may be helpful.

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

* [60]august -- Tcl/Tk HTML editor. ([61]Bug#381207) * [62]cipe -- Lightweight encrypted IP tunnels over UDP. ([63]Bug#381162) * [64]pronto -- Highly modularised GTK+ mail client written in Perl. ([65]Bug#381111)

60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/august 61. http://bugs.debian.org/381207 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/cipe-common 63. http://bugs.debian.org/381162 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/pronto 65. http://bugs.debian.org/381111

Removed Packages. 8 packages have been [66]removed from the Debian archive during the past week:

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

* iceme -- Graphical menu editor for IceWM [67]Bug#227054: Request of QA, orphaned, outdated * icepref -- Yet another configuration tool for IceWM [68]Bug#227077: Request of QA, orphaned, outdated * openmcl -- Native code ANSI Common LISP compiler and runtime environment [69]Bug#297473: Request of QA, orphaned, no installations, RC-buggy * openmcl-build-tools -- OpenMCL Common Lisp tools for building system [70]Bug#297475: Request of QA, orphaned, useless without OpenMCL * newsflash -- Gets news with the newnews command from a server [71]Bug#312208: Request of QA: orphaned, upstream gone, few users, plenty of alternatives * postit -- Sends news from your local server to a remote host [72]Bug#312209: Request of QA: orphaned, upstream gone, no users, plenty of alternatives * libkpathsea3 -- Path search library for teTeX (devel part) [73]Bug#369096: Request of maintainer, superseded by tetex-bin * tomcat4 -- Java Servlet engine (core libraries) [74]Bug#377734: Request of maintainer, superseded by tomcat5

67. http://bugs.debian.org/227054 68. http://bugs.debian.org/227077 69. http://bugs.debian.org/297473 70. http://bugs.debian.org/297475 71. http://bugs.debian.org/312208 72. http://bugs.debian.org/312209 73. http://bugs.debian.org/369096 74. http://bugs.debian.org/377734

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 [75]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [76]dwn@debian.org.

75. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 76. mailto:dwn@debian.org

This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by David Graham, Mohammed Adnène Trojette, Sebastian Feltel and Martin 'Joey' Schulze.

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[wjl made it into this issue. :) grouch] wjl 2 1,384 Aug 10, 2006 12:21 PM

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