Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 14

Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: April 5th, 2004

1. Gentoo News

Gentoo Linux Project seeking additional kernel developers

Gentoo Linux is currently seeking some additional kernel developers, primarily for the x86, amd64, ppc, and ppc64 architectures. Applicants should have a fair amount of experience with the kernel, specifically with one or more of the above architectures. Send an email to John Mylchreest if you're interested.

Gentoo Weekly Newsletter seeking additional contributors

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is seeking additional contributors to help with community coverage - this involves monitoring mailing lists, web forums, or the international community and summarizing the interesting traffic each week. We'd also like to take on some volunteers to help with some of the other sections, bringing new ideas to the team and lightening the load on the current contributors. The only real requirement of applicants is a solid knowledge of written English. Experience with journalism or Linux, as well as a variety of other skills might be helpful, but are not necessary, although motivation and willingness to work about a couple of hours each week is. Still interested? Drop us a line here with some background info and any ideas you have for the newsletter.

2. Gentoo Security

Fetchmail 6.2.5 fixes a remote DoS

Fetchmail versions 6.2.4 and earlier can be crashed by sending a specially-crafted email to a fetchmail user.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

Squid ACL [url_regex] bypass vulnerability

Squid versions 2.0 through to 2.5.STABLE4 could allow a remote attacker to bypass Access Control Lists by sending a specially-crafted URL request containing '%00': in such circumstances; the url_regex ACL may not properly detect the malicious URL, allowing the attacker to effectively bypass the ACL.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

OpenLDAP DoS Vulnerability

A failed password operation can cause the OpenLDAP slapd server, if it is using the back-ldbm backend, to free memory that was never allocated.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

Remote buffer overflow in MPlayer

MPlayer contains a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in the HTTP parser that may allow attackers to run arbitrary code on a user's computer.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

Multiple Security Vulnerabilities in Monit

A denial of service and a buffer overflow vulnerability have been found in Monit.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

3. Heard in the Community

Web Forums

GLSA Integration in Portage

Gentoo developer Genone has set up a sticky thread a while ago that deals with the upcoming integration of security announcements in Portage. Check here for updates to the script that is now in gentoolkit, before its final implementation as part of emerge:

• portage GLSA integration (aka `emerge security`)
• Portage GLSA integration project page

The Colour: Purple...

The "Lila Theme" is a new concerted effort at designing a Gentoo wallpaper and desktop icons collection, in purple (German: "lila") and pink, the predominant Gentoo colours. Sounds awful, looks stunningly beautiful, and it's entirely SVG-based, so you can generate your own PNGs with a Python script via Sodipodi or Inkscape! The Firefox theme has even made it onto the list of the "official" upstream themes. Here's where the artists coordinate their work:

• Lila Theme Official Thread



• dgt84's Gentoo Linux Artwork pages
• KDE version by telex4
• Firefox purple theme

4. Gentoo International

Germany: Yet Another GUM in Oberhausen

The next Gentoo User Meeting in Oberhausen (Ruhr region of central Germany) will take place this Wednesday, 7 April. The meeting point will again be the Gasthof Harlos, and the GUM starts at 19:00. Newcomers and regulars alike are most welcome. The coordination thread in the Forums is at its usual location.

5. Bugzilla

Summary

• Statistics



• Closed Bug Ranking
• New Bug Rankings

Statistics

The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 27 March 2004 and 02 April 2004, activity on the site has resulted in:

• 697 new bugs during this period
• 438 bugs closed or resolved during this period



• 20 previously closed bugs were reopened this period

Of the 5510 currently open bugs: 130 are labeled 'blocker', 203 are labeled 'critical', and 460 are labeled 'major'.

Closed Bug Rankings

The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period are:

• AMD64 Porting Team, with 76 closed bugs



• Gentoo Security, with 17 closed bugs
• 
  
  Jeremy Huddleston, with 17 closed bugs
• Gnome Desktop Team, with 15 closed bugs
  
  
• Gentoo Games, with 15 closed bugs
  
  

New Bug Rankings

The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during this period are:

• Apache Herd, with 33 new bugs
  
  
• Core System Packages Team, with 20 new bugs



• Gentoo KDE team, with 19 new bugs
• 
  
  Java team, with 17 new bugs
• AMD64 Porting Team, with 16 new bugs
  
  

6. Tips and Tricks

Multiple X-Sessions

XFree86 allows you to have multiple X sessions open at once. This can be useful if you want or need two different desktop environments open at once.

    // By default X uses the display :0

% startx
    // To open a second display, use another number
% startx -- :1 

The desktops will be on terminals F7-F12

7. Moves, Adds, and Changes

Moves

The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:

• none this week

Adds

The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:

• none this week

Changes

The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux project:

• none this week

8. Contribute to GWN

Interested in contributing to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter? Send us an email.

9. GWN Feedback

Please send us your feedback and help make the GWN better.

10. GWN Subscription Information

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