Debian Weekly News - October 12th, 2004

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/40/
Debian Weekly News - October 12th, 2004
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Welcome to this year's 40th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Christian Perrier [1]reported the new
[2]debian-installer can be understood by two third of the world
population since it is translated into 40 languages.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-i18n/2004/10/msg00022.html
 2. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

2003 SPI Annual Report. David Graham [3]announced the [4]annual
report for [5]Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI), the
non-profit corporation which manages Debian's bank accounts and other
legal affairs. The report discusses SPI bylaws, membership, and
finances as well as hardware donations and reports that wxWidget was
invited to become a SPI member project.

 3. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-announce/2004/000103.html
 4. http://www.spi-inc.org/~jgoerzen/ar2004/
 5. http://www.spi-inc.org/

Consistent Themes for Debian. Jaap Haitsma [6]noticed that there are
many nice themes for grub, bootsplash, GDM, desktop splash and
backgrounds, but in general it's difficult to find a combination that
fits together nicely. Therefore he created [7]DebBlue, a set of
themes, which can be used to give a nice consistent look to the Debian
Desktop from boot until shutdown.

 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/10/msg00005.html
 7. http://debblue.debian.net/

Developers Reference revisited. Andreas Barth [8]reported that he has
updated large parts of the [9]developers reference. This includes,
among others, synchronisation with the [10]Work needed and prospective
packages, updated information about upload queues, ftp-master features
and the testing distribution. A new [11]package is pending and some
[12]bugs need more input.

 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/10/msg00003.html
 9. http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/
 10. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
 11. http://packages.debian.org/developers-reference
 12. http://bugs.debian.org/developers-reference

Different Types of Bug Submitters. Benjamin Drieu [13]classified bug
submitters based on his experience as Debian developer and upstream
software developer. He described the enthusiast, the anonymous
clueless submitter, the rigorous, the clever (but mislead) submitter,
the battler, the (annoying) badger, the Taiwanese and finally the
patcher who has the skills to join development.

 13. http://www.grassouille.org/blogmax/041009.html

New SpamAssassin Package. Martin F. Krafft [14]noted that SpamAssassin
3.x has been uploaded but has a different program interface (API) than
its predecessor. He proposed to remove all packages from sarge that
depend on SpamAssassin but don't work with the new version. Its
maintainer wants to [15]keep this version out of sarge though.

 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00213.html
 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00287.html

Setting up Databases for Packages. Philipp Hahn [16]asked about the
best practice when a package requires an SQL database and needs to
create its own catalog and/or tables. Peter Eisentraut [17]opted for
creating tables when the program starts first. Andrew Pollock
[18]mentioned [19]wwwconfig-common which works well but lacks
documentation. Oliver Elphick [20]raised more concerns.

 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00340.html
 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00345.html
 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00390.html
 19. http://packages.debian.org/wwwconfig-common
 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00426.html

Archive for volatile Packages. Andreas Barth [21]discussed the idea of
maintaining an [22]archive for volatile packages such as virus
scanners and intrusion detection systems. Those packages require
periodical updates that the main Debian archive cannot provide.
However, packaging new upstream versions should be avoided as long as
this is possible.

 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00430.html
 22. http://volatile.debian.net/

Producing CDs and DVDs for Sarge. Steve McIntyre [23]discussed CD and
DVD image generation for the upcoming release. Creating the images
will take a while even when using [24]JTE. He raised the question for
which architectures a DVD set should be create and whether source DVDs
should be built as well. Creating a double-layer DVD will also require
pruning of packages, since the Debian archive contains more than can
fit on such a DVD.

 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2004/09/msg00084.html
 24. http://www.einval.com/~steve/software/JTE/

Debian Desktop Goals. Stefano Fabri started a [25]discussion on common
desktop goals for Debian, UserLinux and Ubuntu, such as a graphical
installer, but listed many admin gadgets. Adrian von Bidder [26]added
KDE-GNOME integration, font support/management and multimedia support.
Cesar Martinez Izquierdo would like to see more
[27]internationalisation and localisation.

 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/09/msg00010.html
 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/09/msg00013.html
 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-desktop/2004/09/msg00016.html

LSB Status of Sarge. Roger So [28]noticed that the thread
implementation in glibc (NPTL) in sarge is too old to pass the LSB 2.0
tests. Jeff Licquia [29]explained that updating to NPTL 0.61 is
evidently difficult without upgrading to the most recent glibc. Jeff
[30]offered to backport NPTL 0.61 to the Debian glibc.

 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-lsb/2004/09/msg00000.html
 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-lsb/2004/09/msg00003.html
 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-lsb/2004/09/msg00013.html

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

 * [31]mod_dav -- Potential denial of service.
 * [32]net-act -- Insecure temporary file creation.
 * [33]lesstif -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * [34]xfree86 -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * [35]mysql -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * [36]cyrus-sasl -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * [37]samba -- Arbitrary file access.

 31. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-558
 32. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-559
 33. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-560
 34. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-561
 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-562
 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-563
 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-600

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following package was added to the
unstable Debian archive [38]recently.

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

 * [39]grace6 -- XY plotting tool.

 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/grace6

Orphaned Packages. 9 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 188 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [40]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.

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

 * [41]eclipse -- Extensible Tool Platform and Java IDE.
   ([42]Bug#276096)
 * [43]eskuel -- MySQL databases administration interface in
   PHP-scripts. ([44]Bug#274887)
 * [45]exult -- Engine for Ultima VII (BG, FOV, SI, SS).
   ([46]Bug#275780)
 * [47]fcheck -- IDS filesystem baseline integrity checker.
   ([48]Bug#275035)
 * [49]nwall -- Version of wall that uses GNU readline.
   ([50]Bug#275777)
 * [51]oonsoo -- Solitaire game for X. ([52]Bug#275774)
 * [53]plucker -- Pluck stuff from the web and read on your PalmOS
   device. ([54]Bug#275176)
 * [55]www6to4 -- Lightweight WWW proxy that communicates over IPv4
   and IPv6. ([56]Bug#274888)
 * [57]xdiskusage -- Displays a graphic of your disk usage with du.
   ([58]Bug#275776)

 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/eclipse-platform
 42. http://bugs.debian.org/276096
 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/eskuel
 44. http://bugs.debian.org/274887
 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/exult
 46. http://bugs.debian.org/275780
 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/fcheck
 48. http://bugs.debian.org/275035
 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/nwall
 50. http://bugs.debian.org/275777
 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/oonsoo
 52. http://bugs.debian.org/275774
 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/plucker
 54. http://bugs.debian.org/275176
 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/www6to4
 56. http://bugs.debian.org/274888
 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xdiskusage
 58. http://bugs.debian.org/275776

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 [59]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [60]dwn@debian.org.

 59. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 60. mailto:dwn@debian.org


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