Debian Weekly News - February 24th, 2004

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Welcome to this year's eighth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Finally, we can send mail using [1]morse code, since the [2]International Telecommunications Union assigned a new [3]code (. - - . - .) for the "@" sign. Andreas Barth [4]reported that 16 packages were broken by a recently uploaded broken tar version, that was fixed later.

1. http://www.npg.si.edu/edu/brush/guide/unit2/morse.html 2. http://www.itu.int/ 3. http://www.cjonline.com/stories/021704/pag_morsecode.shtml 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg00591.html

Storing RRD Data and Graph Files. Jean-Michel Kelbert [5]asked where to store [6]RRD files. Since it is [7]impossible to rebuild RRD files without data loss due to log rotation, it must not be stored in /var/cache, he asserts later. However, since the graph files are generated from the data files, they have to go into /var/cache.

5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg00960.html 6. http://packages.debian.org/rrdtool 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg01015.html

Investigation of the new XFree86 License. Branden Robinson [8]inspected the new [9]license for XFree86 4.4 and higher. He concluded that the de facto impact of the change to the XFree86 Project, Inc.'s own license is to render the XFree86 source distribution GPL-incompatible in many aspects. Keith Packard [10]asserted that he has a strong desire to make the released software on freedesktop.org from that source completely [11]DFSG-free.

8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00102.html 9. http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses.html 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00116.html 11. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

Expiration of the GIF/LZW Patent. Roland Stigge [12]wondered if it is still possible for sarge to be released before 7 July 2004. If not, Debian could start preparing to move GIF/LZW patent encumbered packages from non-free and contrib to main since that's the day when the patent US4558302 expires internationally.

12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00168.html

Report from Solutions Linux. Julien Blache wrote a [13]report about this years' [14]Solutions Linux exhibition and conference in France. Several Debian developers met at the Debian booth inside the .Org pavilion and were even interviewed by a French web radio station about Debian in general and the upcoming release of sarge. The number of interested visitors at the booth was also higher, compared to past events.

13. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0203-solutionslinux-report 14. http://www.debian.org/events/2004/0203-solutionslinux

Release Progress Report. Colin Watson wrote a new [15]report about progress made with the release of sarge since December 1st. He said that the [16]debian-installer is improving, that GNOME 2.4 and KDE 3.1.5 have entered testing and that XFree86 4.3 has been uploaded to unstable recently. An important task left is to finish debian-installer and port it to the [17]remaining architectures. There are also still 350 release-critical bugs on packages in testing. This isn't something we can release with.

15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0402/msg00009.html 16. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0401/msg00015.html

Pure 64-Bit AMD64 Port? John Goerzen [18]proposed to stay with a pure 64-bit port to the [19]AMD64 architecture. When a way forward with the multiarch is finally laid out they can transition to becoming a multiarch platform while still supporting those that want a pure 64-bit environment. Josh Hansen [20]added that both efforts will continue as long as people are willing to devote time to them.

18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-amd64-0402/msg00235.html 19. http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/ 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-amd64-0402/msg00263.html

Mozilla Firefox Packages. Eric Dorland [21]announced that he had uploaded packages for Mozilla Firefox 0.8. Since the package has gone through a name change (the package was formerly known as phoenix, then as firebird) it will take about one week until they appear in the archive. For the interested and impatient he has copied the files to [22]people.debian.org as well.

21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0402/msg01501.html 22. http://people.debian.org/~eric/debian/

Man-pages to be moved to non-free? A recent [23]change in the upstream [24]man-pages project was detected. As of version 1.65 manual pages from the POSIX standard are [25]included in the upstream man-pages distribution. Their copyright, however, doesn't talk about distribution and modification, but the latter is explicitly not permitted, according to the upstream maintainer. Since this would render the entire package non-free, its packaging has changed slightly so that non-free parts are stripped off in time.

23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0402/msg00190.html 24. ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages/ 25. http://linuxpr.com/releases/6599.html

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

* [26]Linux 2.4.18 (alpha+i386+powerpc) -- Local root exploit. * [27]Linux 2.4.16 (arm) -- Local root exploits. * [28]Linux 2.4.17 (powerpc/apus) -- Local root exploits. * [29]Linux 2.4.17 (mips+mipsel) -- Local root exploit. * [30]Linux 2.4.17 (s390) -- Local root exploits and more. * [31]XFree86 -- Multiple vulnerabilities. * [32]Linux 2.4.17 (ia64) -- Local root exploit. * [33]lbreakout2 -- Buffer overflow. * [34]synaesthesia -- Insecure file creation. * [35]hsftp -- Format string vulnerability. * [36]pwlib -- Multiple vulnerabilities. * [37]metamail -- Arbitrary code execution.

26. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-438 27. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-439 28. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-440 29. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-441 30. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-442 31. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-443 32. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-444 33. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-445 34. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-446 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-447 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-448 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-449

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [38]recently or contain important updates.

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

* [39]aclock -- Analog dockapp clock for GNUstep. * [40]arabtex -- Arabic/Hebrew macros for TeX/LaTeX. * [41]attal -- Turn by turn game in the spirit of HoMM II. * [42]directoryassistant -- Small LDAP address book manager. * [43]efp -- Escape from Pong NES game. * [44]fgetty -- Very small, efficient, console-only getty and login. * [45]fwatch -- Kernel module, reporting changes on files to /dev/fwatch. * [46]gmines -- Minesweeper for GNUstep. * [47]impose+ -- Postscript utilities for two-up printing, bbox, etc. * [48]javacc -- Parser generator for use with Java. * [49]latex-beamer -- LaTeX class to produce presentations. * [50]mined -- Small, easy to use, unicode-capable text editor. * [51]munin -- Network-wide graphing framework (grapher/gatherer). * [52]openggsn1 -- OpenSource Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN). * [53]par2 -- Parity Archive Volume Set, for checking and repair of files. * [54]pdftk -- Tool for manipulating PDF documents. * [55]pm-dev -- Proxy management protocol development files. * [56]proxycheck -- Simple tool to quickly recon a running open proxy server. * [57]pvpgn -- Gaming server that emulates Battle.net(R). * [58]rapidsvn -- GUI client for subversion. * [59]renaissance -- GNUstep GUI Development Framework. * [60]rng-tools -- Daemon to use the Intel/AMD/VIA Hardware RNG. * [61]squid-prefetch -- Simple page-prefetch for Squid web proxy. * [62]steptalk -- The GNUstep Scripting Framework. * [63]tdom -- XML/DOM/XPath/XSLT implementation for Tcl. * [64]uim -- Simple, secure, and flexible input method collection and library. * [65]util-vserver -- Tools for Virtual private servers and context switching. * [66]waiho -- Simple FTP client for GNUstep. * [67]xrestop -- X11 server resource usage monitor. * [68]yafray -- Modern, xml-speaking raytracing-based rendering system.

39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/aclock 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/arabtex 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/attal 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/directoryassistant 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/efp 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/fgetty 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/fwatch 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/gmines 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/impose+ 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/javacc 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/latex-beamer 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/mined 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/munin 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/openggsn1 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/par2 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/pdftk 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libdevel/pm-dev 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/proxycheck 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/pvpgn 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/rapidsvn 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/renaissance 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/rng-tools 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/squid-prefetch 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/steptalk 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/tdom 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/uim 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/util-vserver 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/waiho 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xrestop 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/yafray

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 [69]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [70]dwn@debian.org.

69. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 70. mailto:dwn@debian.org

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