Debian Weekly News - January 10th, 2006

Posted by tadelste on Jan 11, 2006 5:33 AM EDT
Mailing list; By Martin Schulze
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Welcome to this year's 2nd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community.



Jeroen van Wolffelaar [1]reported that [2]packages.debian.org has been disabled due to performance issues. Neil McGovern [3]called for sponsorship requests for active Debian people for the last time for the upcoming [4]Debian Conference.

1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/01/msg00035.html 2. http://packages.debian.org/ 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/01/msg00000.html 4. http://www.debian.org/events/2006/0514-debconf

Status of non-free Firmware. Sven Luther [5]explained the status of non-free [6]firmware blobs in the Debian Linux kernel. Some of them have been relicensed and are redistributable again, others have been separated from the kernel into userland to be used by the request_firmware infrastructure. Steve Langasek plans to start a general resolution to decide whether Debian requires the source code for firmware blobs.

5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2006/01/msg00241.html 6. http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing

FOSDEM Booth for Debian. Wouter Verhelst is [7]looking for volunteers to help man the booth at the upcoming [8]FOSDEM conference. He is also interested in suggestions for something they could show at the booth. The Debian project will also have a developers room in which talks will be held.

7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu/2006/01/msg00021.html 8. http://www.debian.org/events/2006/0225-fosdem

Bits from the Release Team. Andreas Barth [9]reported about the expectations of the release team for 2006 which includes to release [10]etch at the beginning of December. He asked to take more care about release critical bugs now and to be careful when performing non-maintainer uploads. The essential toolchain and kernels will be frozen at the end of July.

9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/01/msg00001.html 10. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/

New Technical Committee Members. After extensive consultation with the existing members of the technical committee and earlier resignations of Wichert Akkerman, Jason Gunthorpe, and Guy Maor Branden Robinson has [11]appointed Steve Langasek, Anthony Towns, and Andreas Barth as new members of the technical committee.

11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/01/msg00013.html

Stable Aliases for CD Drives. Marco d'Itri [12]reported that the convenient /dev/cdrom symlink will not be supported anymore. Joey Hess [13]added that this link needs to be available in an installed system for APT to work properly with a local CD attached. Adrian von Bidder [14]stated that similarly stable Ethernet interface names which suddenly become unstable after an upgrade are not funny.

12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg01390.html 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg01412.html 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg01467.html

Debian Archive Split and AMD64 Integration? Martin Zobel-Helas [15]asked about the status of the archive split and the integration of the [16]AMD64 port. Anthony Towns [17]mentioned the archive split that prevents AMD64 from being integrated into the normal Debian development environment earlier already. New patches need to be tested.

15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/01/msg00019.html 16. http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/ 17. http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/2005/11/16#2005-11-16-dak

GnuPG Error during Upgrade. Bernd Prager [18]noticed that upgrading Debian fails with a missing key error since a new archive key is used for signing. Lee Chinook [19]provided the path to the new [20]key and the instructions to incorporate it.

18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2006/01/msg00593.html 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2006/01/msg00675.html 20. http://ftp-master.debian.org/ziyi_key_2006.asc

Obsoleted Package: xlibs-dev. David Nusinow [21]announced that with the upload of X.org 6.9 to unstable the xlibs-dev metapackage is no longer [22]built. As a result many packages fail to build until their build dependencies have been adjusted to list only the required libraries. Since all such libraries are also available in [23]sarge the packages can still be backported easily.

21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/01/msg00003.html 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/11/msg00022.html 23. http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/

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

* DSA 929: [24]petris -- Buffer overflow. * DSA 930: [25]smstools -- Format string vulnerability. * DSA 931: [26]xpdf -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 932: [27]kdegraphics -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 933: [28]hylafax -- Arbitrary code execution. * DSA 934: [29]pound -- Several vulnerabilities.

24. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-929 25. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-930 26. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-931 27. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-932 28. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-933 29. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-934

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [30]recently or contain important updates.

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

* [31]akode-dbg -- Debugging symbols for akode. * [32]altermime -- Utility used to alter mime-encoded mailpacks. * [33]aspell-et -- Estonian dictionary for Aspell. * [34]avahi-daemon -- Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD daemon. * [35]bluetooth -- Bluetooth stack utilities. * [36]cacao -- Java virtual machine. * [37]csync2 -- Cluster synchronisation tool. * [38]dbus -- Simple interprocess messaging system. * [39]iestonian -- Estonian dictionary for Ispell. * [40]kchmviewer -- CHM viewer for KDE. * [41]kfaxview -- G3/G4 fax viewer for KDE using kviewshell. * [42]knetworkconf -- KDE network configuration tool. * [43]lua-mode -- Emacs mode for editing Lua programs. * [44]mrd6 -- IPv6 Multicast Routing Daemon. * [45]myspell-et -- Estonian dictionary for MySpell. * [46]nepenthes -- Versatile tool to collect malware by emulating widespread vulnerabilities. * [47]orage -- Calendar for Xfce Desktop Environment. * [48]thunar -- File Manager for Xfce. * [49]user-setup -- Set up initial user and password. * [50]webcheck -- Website link and structure checker.

31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libdevel/akode-dbg 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/altermime 33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aspell-et 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/avahi-daemon 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bluetooth 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/cacao 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/csync2 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/dbus 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/iestonian 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kchmviewer 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/kfaxview 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/knetworkconf 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/lua-mode 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/mrd6 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/myspell-et 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/nepenthes 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/orage 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/thunar 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/user-setup 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/webcheck

Orphaned Packages. 1 package was orphaned this week and requires a new maintainer. This makes a total of 166 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [51]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.

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

* [52]sqlobject -- Object Relational Manager for providing an object interface to your database. ([53]Bug#347193)

52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/python2.3-sqlobject 53. http://bugs.debian.org/347193

Removed Packages. 9 packages have been [54]removed from the Debian archive during the past week:

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

* guitar -- GTK+ archive extraction/viewing tool [55]Bug#300627: Request of QA, dead upstream; better alternatives exist * cabot -- Set of helper scripts for GPG/PGP keysigning paperwork [56]Bug#320961: Request of QA, has never been part of a stable release; orphaned; dead upstream; better alternatives exist * libpng3 -- PNG library - runtime [57]Bug#338016: Request of maintainer, superseded by libpng * procmeter -- X based system status monitor, older version [58]Bug#341505: Request of maintainer, dead upstream, superseded by procmeter3 * queue -- Transparent load balancing system [59]Bug#341663: Request of maintainer and QA; dead upstream; unusable * cursel -- Simple language to provide text application interfaces [60]Bug#342637: Request of maintainer, RC-buggy; FTBFS * ipmenu -- Cursel iptables/iproute2 GUI [61]Bug#342754: Request of maintainer, Obsolete * libmusicbrainz-2.0 -- Second generation incarnation of the CD Index - development [62]Bug#342776: Request of maintainer, superseded by libmusicbrainz-2.1 * baseconfig-udeb -- Run base-config from within debian-installer (udeb) [63]Bug#344970: Request of maintainer, obsolete

55. http://bugs.debian.org/300627 56. http://bugs.debian.org/320961 57. http://bugs.debian.org/338016 58. http://bugs.debian.org/341505 59. http://bugs.debian.org/341663 60. http://bugs.debian.org/342637 61. http://bugs.debian.org/342754 62. http://bugs.debian.org/342776 63. http://bugs.debian.org/344970

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 [64]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [65]dwn@debian.org.

64. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 65. mailto:dwn@debian.org



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