Debian Weekly News - May 9th, 2006

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/19/
Debian Weekly News - May 9th, 2006
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Welcome to this year's 19th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Uwe Hermann [1]investigated changelog files and
recognised a number of interesting release names for packages. Several
Debian developers gather in Oaxtepec, Mexico, where this year's
[2]Debian Conference will take place and is preceded by a working
camp that already started.

 1. http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/debian-packages-release-names
 2. http://www.debian.org/events/2006/0514-debconf

Unified Terminology for Distribution Names. Christian Perrier
[3]reported on a discussion on the [4]debian-l10n-french
mailing-list covering different terminology in various Debian
documents referring to stable, sarge, 3.1 etc. He [5]proposed to use
distribution to refer to the Debian distribution in general and suite
when talking about stable, testing etc., using release for release
names and version when referring to the version numbers.

 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/05/msg00000.html
 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-french/
 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/05/msg00122.html

Moving irc.debian.org. Steve McIntyre [6]asked if it would be useful
to move the irc.debian.org alias away from the [7]Freenode network to
the [8]OFTC network, which is a supported project of [9]SPI and
hosts IRC channels for a lot of open source projects. Steve's
intention was seconded by a number of developers. This move would have
the advantage that all Debian related IRC channels could be
concentrated on one IRC network. Paul Johnson [10]asked if it would be
better to move to a Jabber-based network instead of IRC.

 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/04/msg00333.html
 7. http://www.freenode.net/
 8. http://www.oftc.net/oftc/
 9. http://www.spi-inc.org/
 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/04/msg00342.html

Etch Release Update. Andreas Barth [11]confirmed the timeline to
release [12]etch in December. He stated that the [13]ARM port
qualifies as a release architecture again and that the list of release
architectures are not finalised and will be re-evaluated twice before
the release. The kernel that will be used still needs to be decided
upon. More release assistants will help keep the release on track.

 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/05/msg00000.html
 12. http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/
 13. http://www.debian.org/ports/arm/

Tracking forwarded bugs in the BTS. Pierre Habouzit [14]announced the
creation of a new service called [15]bts-link. It allows Debian
Maintainers to follow the status of the bugs they forward to their
upstream's bug tracking systems directly in the Debian BTS. As of now,
it supports [16]Bugzilla (which is used by KDE, Gnome, X.org, GCC,
Mozilla and others), [17]Trac (used by VideoLAN) and [18]Savannah.
[19]Sourceforge's bug tracking system shall follow.

 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/05/msg00001.html
 15. http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/bts-link/trunk/
 16. http://www.bugzilla.org/
 17. http://www.edgewall.com/trac/
 18. http://savannah.gnu.org/
 19. http://www.sourceforge.net/

Automating new Debian Installations with Preseeding. A new
[20]document describes the technique of doing unattended Debian
installations with preseeding. The preseed file contains answers to
all [21]debconf questions asked during the installation. Its
generation is explained in the article. The file's location may be
given as a path or a URL.

 20. http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/394
 21. http://packages.debian.org/debconf

Debian participates in the Summer of Code. The Debian project
[22]announced its participation in Google's [23]Summer of Code. More
than 50 development [24]tasks related to Debian cover general
improvements, quality assurance, releasing and testing the
distribution, package management, new applications, security,
infrastructure and the improvement of particular packages. Students
and the mentoring organisation will receive funding after the tasks
have been worked on.

 22. http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060508
 23. http://code.google.com/soc/
 24. http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2006

Wiki Development. Petter Reinholdtsen [25]reported about his efforts
to write Wiki pages with [26]OpenOffice.org which is done with the
help of a [27]macro set that converts an OpenOffice.org document into
MoinMoin syntax. Later he [28]reported successful PDF generation from
the Wiki page by exporting the contents as DocBook XML.

 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2006/04/msg00157.html
 26. http://packages.debian.org/openoffice.org
 27. http://ooowiki.de/Writer2MoinMoin
 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2006/05/msg00017.html

Maintainer's Karma revived. Gürkan Sengün was missing the old karma
page from Dirk Eddelbüttel and the package status page by Takuo
Kitame. To fill the gap he has [29]created a new overview [30]page
combining both. This service is hosted on the GNU/kFreeBSD porter
[31]machine, kindly provided by Aurelien Jarno.

 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/04/msg00840.html
 30. http://io.debian.net/~tar/bugstats/
 31. http://io.debian.net/

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

 * DSA 1050: [32]clamav -- Denial of service or arbitrary code
   execution.
 * DSA 1051: [33]mozilla-thunderbird -- Several vulnerabilities.
 * DSA 1052: [34]cgiirc -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 1053: [35]mozilla -- Arbitrary code execution.
 * DSA 1054: [36]tiff -- Denial of service and arbitrary code
   execution.

 32. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1050
 33. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1051
 34. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1052
 35. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1053
 36. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1054

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive [37]recently or contain important updates.

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

 * [38]btscanner -- Ncurses-based scanner for Bluetooth devices.
 * [39]derivations -- Book: Derivations of Applied Mathematics.
 * [40]gbindadmin -- GTK+ configuration tool for bind9.
 * [41]ikiwiki -- Wiki compiler.
 * [42]wammu -- Phone manager.

 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/btscanner
 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/derivations
 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/gbindadmin
 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/ikiwiki
 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/comm/wammu

Orphaned Packages. 6 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 302 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [43]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.

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

 * [44]f-prot-installer -- F-Prot(tm) Antivirus installer package.
   ([45]Bug#364731)
 * [46]galternatives -- Graphical setup tool for the alternatives
   system. ([47]Bug#365365)
 * [48]gnobog -- GNOME Bookmarks Organiser. ([49]Bug#366013)
 * [50]qtorrent -- Graphical BitTorrent client using Qt 3.x.
   ([51]Bug#365959)
 * [52]rtlinux -- Real-Time-Linux, a POSIX-compatible hard realtime
   operating system. ([53]Bug#365717)
 * [54]svn-arch-mirror -- One-way mirroring from Subversion to Arch
   revision control. ([55]Bug#364859)

 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/f-prot-installer
 45. http://bugs.debian.org/364731
 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/galternatives
 47. http://bugs.debian.org/365365
 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/gnobog
 49. http://bugs.debian.org/366013
 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/qtorrent
 51. http://bugs.debian.org/365959
 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/rtlinux
 53. http://bugs.debian.org/365717
 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/svn-arch-mirror
 55. http://bugs.debian.org/364859

Removed Packages. 10 packages have been [56]removed from the Debian
archive during the past week:

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

 * xmms-alarm-bmp1 -- BMP general plugin using beep-media-player as
   an alarm clock work
   [57]Bug#272859: Request of QA, has never been part of a stable
   release, RC-buggy, superseded by bmp-alarm.
 * doc-linux-sv -- Linux HOWTOs in Swedish - HTML version
   [58]Bug#273702: Request of QA, orphaned, very very outdated.
 * libdb2-ruby -- Interface to Berkeley DB for Ruby 1.6
   [59]Bug#344725: Request of Maintainer, depends on obsolete db2.
 * libtest-builder-tester-perl -- Helper testing library for
   Test::Builder tests
   [60]Bug#353134: Request of Maintainer, superseded by
   libtest-simple-perl.
 * xpcd -- PhotoCD tool collection: Base
   [61]Bug#357014: Request of Maintainer, orphaned; dead upstream.
 * postgresql-8.0 -- Object-relational SQL database, version 8.0
   server
   [62]Bug#363963: Request of Maintainer, superseded by
   postgresql-8.1.
 * kernel-patch-2.4-preempt -- Reduces the latency of the Linux
   kernel
   [63]Bug#361161: Request of Maintainer, deprecated due to requiring
   2.4 kernel.
 * zope2.7 -- Open Source Web Application Server
   [64]Bug#362283: Request of Maintainer, superseded by zope2.
 * devfsd -- Daemon for the device file system
   [65]Bug#363402: Request of Maintainer, obsolete.
 * mozilla-thunderbird -- Mozilla Thunderbird standalone mail client
   [66]Bug#363270: Request of Maintainer, superseded by thunderbird.

 57. http://bugs.debian.org/272859
 58. http://bugs.debian.org/273702
 59. http://bugs.debian.org/344725
 60. http://bugs.debian.org/353134
 61. http://bugs.debian.org/357014
 62. http://bugs.debian.org/363963
 63. http://bugs.debian.org/361161
 64. http://bugs.debian.org/362283
 65. http://bugs.debian.org/363402
 66. http://bugs.debian.org/363270

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 [67]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [68]dwn@debian.org.

 67. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
 68. mailto:dwn@debian.org

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