From tchung at fedoraproject.org Mon Feb 4 10:51:23 2008 From: tchung at fedoraproject.org (Thomas Chung) Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 02:51:23 -0800 Subject: Fedora Weekly News Issue 118 Message-ID: <369bce3b0802040251l7c4b16f6o42786bae0dd5ee14@mail.gmail.com> = Fedora Weekly News Issue 118 = Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 118 for the week of January 28th, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue118 In Planet Fedora, we have "Updates to anaconda", "linux.conf.au day 1, "Fedora win32 livecd-iso-to-usb tool" and "Video: Simple layer blending in Gimp" In Fedora Marketing, we have "Tasks set by Marketing Meeting on IRC", "RPM Fusion interview", "2008 Readers' Choice Survey" and "FUDCon Video Torrent" To join or give us your feedback, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join. [[TableOfContents]] 1. Planet Fedora 1. Updates to anaconda 2. linux.conf.au day 1 3. Fedora win32 livecd-iso-to-usb tool 4. Video: Simple layer blending in Gimp 2. Marketing 1. Tasks set by Marketing Meeting on IRC 2. RPM Fusion interview 3. 2008 Readers' Choice Survey 4. FUDCon Video Torrent 3. Ambassadors 1. Manipal's First Fedora 8 Install Fest 4. Developments 1. Net-install ISO Already Exists As ''rescuecd.iso'' 2. Firefox 3 Liberation Fonts 3. Firefox And Epiphany Crashes 4. Cannot Access Hardware Clock Via Any Known Method 5. Devilspie And Angelcake: Asus Eee PC Continued 6. PulseAudio Crashing Applications? 5. Infrastructure 1. Koji vacuuming 2. Collabaration Servers 3. fedora.org domain 6. Artwork 1. The quest for T-Shirts 2. Countdown to Round 2 7. Security Advisories 1. Fedora 8 Security Advisories 2. Fedora 7 Security Advisories 8. Events and Meetings 1. Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-01-29 2. Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-01-28 3. Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee Meeting 2008-MM-DD 4. Fedora Marketing Meeting 2008-01-30 5. Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-01-29 6. Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2008-01-31 7. Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2008-01-31 8. Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2008-01-29 9. Fedora Quality Assurance Meeting 2008-01-30 10. Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-01-30 11. Fedora SIG EPEL Report Week 05/2008 12. Fedora SIG KDE Report Week NN/2008 13. Fedora SIG Astronomy Meeting (Log) 2008-02-02 [[Anchor(PlanetFedora)]] == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover a highlight of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from world wide Fedora contributors. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet Contributing Writers: ThomasChung === Updates to anaconda === JeroenVanMeeuwen points out in his blog[1], "This morning I tried to provision a Fedora 7 Xen guest using a nice kickstart configuration file. However anaconda showed a traceback. Updates to anaconda are such a great deal, re-spinning (for Fedora Unity) or re-composing (business and pleasure, yes sir!) media will get you to appreciate that. So, here it is, repositories with packages for anaconda." [1] http://blogs.fedoraunity.org/kanarip/2008/02/03/updates-to-anaconda === linux.conf.au day 1 === EugeneTeo points out in his blog[1], "Fedora mini-conf went very well today. There were no technical hiccups, and everything went smoothly according to plan. We had an awesome crowd of 30 to 40 delegates which totally exceeded my expectations. David blogged, and summarized all the talks at the mini-conf in his wiki. Alex wrote a nice summary of Dave's Fedora kernel talk on his blog." [1] http://www.kernel.sg/blog/2008/01/28/linuxconfau-day-1-fedora-mini-conf-and-lguest/ === Fedora win32 livecd-iso-to-usb tool === MohdIzharFirdaus points out in his blog[1], "I just noticed LukeMacken's post[2] at fedora-devel-list...Cool!" [1] http://blog.kagesenshi.org/2008/02/fedora-will-be-having-win32-livecd-iso.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00087.html === Video: Simple layer blending in Gimp === KonstantinRyabitsev points out in his blog[1] "This little trick is known to pretty much every non-beginner user of photoshop or gimp. In this screencast I show how to quickly and effectively enhance your photos with Gimp using layer blending." [1] http://blog.mricon.com/2008/02/simple-layer-blending-in-gimp.html [[Anchor(Marketing)]] == Marketing == In this section, we cover Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Tasks set by Marketing Meeting on IRC === ColbyHoke reports[1], "Just updated this[2] - feel free to add anything I may have missed. We'll announce the next meeting soon - for those that could not join us, I hope to have a meeting late at night (for me) where we can discuss any ideas you folks around the world have." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-January/msg00293.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Tasks === RPM Fusion interview === JonathanRoberts reports[1], "This interview[2] is up now. Hope everyone is happy with it, and if you enjoy it be sure to digg[3] it." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-January/msg00288.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews/RPMFusion [3] http://digg.com/linux_unix/RPM_Fusion_One_Repository_to_Rule_Them_All === 2008 Readers' Choice Survey === RahulSundaram reports[1], "Leave your footprints:[2]" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-January/msg00272.html [2] http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1006101 === FUDCon Video Torrent === MaxSpevack reports[1], "The first of the FUDCon videos[2] are up." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-January/msg00273.html [2] http://spevack.livejournal.com/44085.html '''Editor's Note''' We're in the process of making the video available in flash version. [[Anchor(Ambassadors)]] == Ambassadors == In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock === Manipal's First Fedora 8 Install Fest === AnkurShrivastava reported[1] on Manipal's first Fedora 8 Install Fest in the fedora-ambassadors list. The event was a two day event organized by Fedora Ambassadors AnkurShrivastava and DhananjaySingh as part of the Manipal Linux User Group and was held on campus. Day one explained the advantages and importance of Linux and a preview of the next day's actual installs. The install day started with installation steps being shown and explained followed with the actual installs. Any issues encountered during the installs were solved before the install fest was finished. Photos[2] of the install fest are also available. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-January/msg00217.html [2] http://flickr.com/photos/ankurkingofnet/sets/72157600264068727/ [[Anchor(Developments)]] == Developments == In this section, we cover the problems/solutions, people/personalities, and ups/downs of the endless discussions on Fedora Developments. http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list Contributing Writer: OisinFeeley === Net-install ISO Already Exists As ''rescuecd.iso'' === MichaelDeHaan reported[1] on a discussion at FUDCon on the use of Debian-style net-install ISOs. He posited large bandwidth savings as one of the attractions. ChrisAdams was less sure[2], commenting that a DVD download was used multiple times, while each net install would require duplication. LesMikesell recommended[3] a proxy to cache large files to those who do much of this type of thing. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03014.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03016.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03022.html JasonTibbitts thought[4] that he had been doing what Michael described for all his Fedora releases. JeremyKatz added[5] that the ''rescuecd'' image was already capable of this and was going to be renamed to emphasize its utility. He added that ChrisLumens had been doing some work to delay repository selection to stage2 in order to allow the selection of mirrorlists and proxies. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03015.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03018.html === Firefox 3 Liberation Fonts === A simple request[1] from MarkG85 to make Firefox 3 use the Liberation fonts as defaults in Fedora 9 prompted and interesting discussion. MarkG85 posted screenshots of his experience in Rawhide and claimed that the Liberation fonts were obviously better than the defaults. NicolasMailhot was highly skeptical[2] and suggested that "looking better" was a purely subjective judgment mostly influenced by familiarity. He also commented that encoding coverage and upstream responsiveness were more appropriate metrics and that DejaVu won on that basis. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02847.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02857.html FelixMiata argued[3] that if the goal of choosing fonts which matched Windows' font metrics were accepted then LiberationSans proved the best substitute for Arial. The advantage of this would be uniformity of web browsing experience. Nicolas' detailed and interesting response pointed[4] out that Windows fonts have varied widely across time and application and that due to the Mozilla Foundation's lack of stewardship it would be best not to chase fonts. Instead effort might be better spent on "creat[ing] our own solid font set than continue chasing the Microsoft tail indefinitely - it has the financial means to move way faster than us on the font creation front anyway." This exchange between Felix and Nicolas is worth reading. Nicolas pointed[5] out that the page-zoom[6] features of Firefox 3 will result in huge differences between Fedora and Windows systems even if the very same fonts are installed and that "legal issues" cannot be ignored. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02862.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02870.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02953.html [6] http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/07/try-firefox-3-full-page-zoom-with-full-page-zoom/ Several people argued that the premise of the thread was mistaken. Among them was BehdadEsfahbod who outlined[7] the normal course of events in which a web-browser picks which fonts to use. MarkG85 restated[8] his objectives to make it clear that he was not interested in "mimic[ing] a well known other operating system" but rather trying to recapture the pleasant appearance of Firefox 2. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02956.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02871.html A suggestion was made[9] by NicolasMailhot that the way forward involved ripping out Firefox's font defaults and making it use desktop font settings so that users with a preference can implement their choice across all applications. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02887.html === Firefox And Epiphany Crashes === A report[1] by HorstvonBrand that Firefox and Epiphany were crashing after the updates of 30 Jan 2008 led to a request from ChristopherAillon that people testing Firefox 3 would report bugs upstream instead of at Red Hat's bugzilla. JoachimFrieben had experienced[2] the same issues as Horst and pinpointed the changes to a specific ''xulrunner'' build. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03118.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03135.html Christopher explained[3] that he was pulling from CVS HEAD and in general not adding patches to the Fedora package and it would thus be a good idea for Fedora testers to report bugs upstream. JakubRusinek (livio) preferred[4] to pull the nightly snapshot from Mozilla itself although Christopher argued that there would be no final Mozilla-distributed binary so it would be helpful to test the Fedora binary. Jakub noted that he needed fresh vanilla sources for his purposes, to which Christopher responded[5] that he was pulling from CVS, packaging them in RPM format and that the nightly builds at Mozilla were often older than Christopher's own. Jakub still seemed[6] to prefer using Mozilla's builds arguing that it was easier to find changes. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03155.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03168.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03187.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03189.html A similar point was made[7] by Horst, who asked how it would be possible to know what Fedora-specific tweaks had been made, what the CVS revision was and also pointed out that these would not be "official" upstream binaries, all of which would make it difficult to report bugs intelligently. Christopher responded[8] that: 1)no upstream binaries exist; 2)there is no such thing as a CVS-wide revision, so snapshot date is acceptable for bug filing; 3)Fedora-specific tweaks are minimal and involve using shared libraries instead of static libraries in the binaries. Also of interest is the building of Firefox as a XULrunner application about which Mozilla is keen to receive feedback. This seemed good enough for Horst who duly opened a bug report[9]. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03173.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03178.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03192.html === Cannot Access Hardware Clock Via Any Known Method === Repeatedly during booting of a rawhide machine SteveGrubb noticed the message "Cannot access the Hardware Clock via any known method" and wondered[1] if anyone else running x86_64 rawhide had noticed the message. RexDieter confirmed[2] that he and TomCallaway had noticed it and speculated that ''hwclock'' was being fired up before ''/dev/rtc'' had been created by ''udev''. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03042.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03043.html Further discussion led HansdeGoede to point out[3] that there was a bugzilla entry which described[4] the problem and possible solutions. It seemed that the problem is due to there being three possible RTC drivers and ''mkinitrd'' creating ''/dev/rtc'' with the wrong major/minor device numbering. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03084.html [4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=290731 A detailed explanatory post[5] from Hans explained his view of the problem, his proposed fix and expressed his desire that some attention would be drawn to the bug. JoachimFrieben suggested[6] a temporary means (synchronizing the system clock before startup with NTP) of mitigating the bug until it is fixed. BillNottingham agreed[7] with Hans that it might be possible to move the setting of the clock later, but still make it available as early as possible in order to co-ordinate log messages and other events. Using the kernel to automatically set the clock upon ''/dev/rtc'' instantiation was noted as being limited by the requirement of all users to use UTC. SimoSorce asked and DanHor?k confirmed[8] that this was a problem for dual-boot systems. Dan provided an interesting link to a plea[9] to Microsoft to set the RTC to use UTC. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03047.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03052.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03072.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03080.html [9] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/mswish/ut-rtc.html === Devilspie And Angelcake: Asus Eee PC Continued === The discussion of the Asus EeePC (FWN#117 "Fedora 9 For Asus EeePC"[1]) continued with some interesting developments. It seemed[2] that ChrisSnook and JayCliburn, as the main Atheros driver developers, had received a "huge code dump from Atheros" and were producing a unified ''atlx'' Atheros driver. Chris requested ''atl2'' testers to contact him off-list. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue117#head-751f643f1077b796d203768c770db644c81ea364 [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02884.html ChuckEbbert responded[3] to Orion's earlier question with the information that ACPI support for the Eeeepc is being worked on by Debian developers and discussions on upstreaming it into the kernel are happening. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03097.html LamontPeterson took up[4] JohnPalmieri's suggestion that avoiding a swap partition, while desirable, might lead to more OOM[5] troubles. Lamont recalled a Linux Journal article on the topic of setting memory ceilings on embedded systems to prevent the OOM Killer triggering. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00043.html [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_memory [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00078.html A quick note posted[7] by OrionPoplawski about the dearth of information on the Eeepc (and his own identification of the drive as "SILICONMOTION SM223AC") stimulated JonNettleton to add[8] that he had been hacking on ''devilspie''[9] (a utility to detect window creation and apply placement and sizing rules to them) in order to make it automatically resize windows in response to window-geometry thresholds. RahulSundaram shared[10] a current discussion with the Eeedora developers who seem to be interested in making their distro work on the 2GB Eee PCs. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02928.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02933.html [9] http://www.burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-January/msg00277.html Jon clarified[11] that he was not part of Eeedora[11a], and was primarily interested in a heavily-changed, non-Fedora-branded derivative with many changes to upstream Fedora. His central interests involve dealing with the challenges of the small, low-resolution screen: hence his hacking on ''devilspie'' and a possible GUI tool (provisionally named ''angelcake'') to configure it. Jon also expressed interest in updating ''asus_acpi'' to handle the keys and improving boot speed. YaakovNemoy suggested using XMonad[12] instead of ''devilspie'' but Jon was able to point to the ability of Metacity to do compositing (still in Rawhide) and the simplicity of ''devilspie''. DouglasMcClendon also seemed taken with it and suggested[13] investigating ''wmctrl''. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03061.html [11a] http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:eeedora [12] http://xmonad.org/ [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03180.html After all the interest shown Jon was encouraged by RahulSundaram to start a wiki-page detailing his progress, which seems[14] very promising. [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00078.html === PulseAudio Crashing Applications? === A request was made[1] by WarrenTogami for other people's experiences with ''pidgin'', ''mplayer'', ''xine'' crashing on a regular basis, especially whether they had backtraces. MatthiasClasen wondered[2] why Warren assumed that his crashes had anything to do with PulseAudio if he had not yet seen backtraces. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03123.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03124.html Some kvetching about PulseAudio in general and why it had been included in Fedora 8 stimulated ChrisSnook to complain[3] about the general state of KDE in Fedora. He was clear that he welcomed the "Gnome developers [...] pushing ahead with all this nest stuff[.]" When AndrewFarris pushed[4] him on the point, suggesting that the problems were due to the small number of Fedora KDE developers rather than Gnome developers breaking KDE Chris produced[5] a splendid rant. His general point seemed to be that KDE development was too hampered by interference from "Gnomifiers" and that there was a lack of responsiveness compared to, for example, SELinux development. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03138.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03140.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03142.html The wind was slightly taken[6] out of the sails of the complaint when RexDieter explained that the packaging of PulseAudio had been constructed carefully so that it was easy to remove it in KDE with a {{{rpm -e kde-settings-pulseaudio alsa-plugins-pulseaudio}}} followed by restarting the KDE session. LaurentRineau added[7] some suggestions about how this could be made a per-user choice. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03148.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03162.html Backtraces were supplied[8] by AndrewFarris of a crash of ''rhythmbox'' and also some possibly related to ''xulrunner''. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03141.html [[Anchor(Infrastructure)]] == Infrastructure == In this section, we cover the Fedora Infrastructure Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala === Koji vacuuming === ToshioKuratomi reports [1] There has been some vaccuming of the huge rpmfiles tables in koji. The vaccuming took 14 hours and was successfull at removing dead tuples that had accumulated in the database. There was also an increase in the maintenance_work_mem to 1GB. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-January/msg00114.html === Collabaration Servers === MikeMcGrath reports [2] There was a discussion about collab1.fedoraproject.org and what services we would like to have on that. It would nice to have gobby, a pastebin and mailman on that. Then there was a discussion on which specific pastebin to use for the server. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-January/msg00132.html === fedora.org domain === AnandCapur reports [3] Anand asked about getting the fedora.org domain, but the domain was never owned by us and it was registered soon as the fedora project started. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-January/msg00132.html [[Anchor(Artwork)]] == Artwork == In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: NicuBuculei === The quest for T-Shirts === MaxSpevack challenge the Art Team with a new quest[1]: create a new generation of Fedora themed T-Shirts, both for general use, special events like FUDCons and LinuxTag and crazy stuff based on the Fedora 9 codename. This is preliminary, details about manufacturing are to be determined, but the team started a page to collect those designs[2]. All contributors are warmly welcomed. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-January/msg00350.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/T-Shirt === Countdown to Round 2 === NicuBuculei warned on the fedora-art-list[1]: "The current deadline for Round 2 is less than one week away, February 5th." There is still time, but not much, for the Fedora 9 theme proposals[2] from Round 1 to be updated, expanded and polished and stay in competition for the final look of the distro. Members of the team are invited to play with the current designs, everybody is invited to join the team. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00000.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes [[Anchor(SecurityAdvisories)]] == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * icu-3.8-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-January/msg00896.html * xine-lib-1.1.10-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-January/msg00956.html * rb_libtorrent-0.12-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00001.html * SDL_image-1.2.6-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00008.html * kdebase-3.5.8-31.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00038.html * rb_libtorrent-0.12-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00050.html * deluge-0.5.8.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00079.html === Fedora 7 Security Advisories === * icu-3.6-20.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-January/msg00921.html * kernel-2.6.23.14-64.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-January/msg00968.html * xine-lib-1.1.10-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-January/msg00976.html * kdebase-3.5.8-31.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00031.html * SDL_image-1.2.5-7.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00039.html * kernel-2.6.23.14-60.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00061.html * deluge-0.5.8.3-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00069.html [[Anchor(EventsMeetings)]] == Events and Meetings == In this section, we cover event reports and meeting summaries from various Projects and SIGs. Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-01-29 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-February/msg00003.html === Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-01-28 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommunityArchitecture/Meetings/2008-01-28 === Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee Meeting 2008-MM-DD === * No Report === Fedora Marketing Meeting 2008-01-30 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-January/msg00304.html * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Meetings/Minutes/IRCLog20080130 === Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-01-29 === * http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-January/msg00255.html === Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2008-01-31 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg03181.html === Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2008-01-31 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00000.html === Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2008-01-29 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg02913.html === Fedora Quality Assurance Meeting 2008-01-30 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20080130 === Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-01-30 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Agenda-2008-Jan-30 === Fedora SIG EPEL Report Week 05/2008 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/epel-devel-list/2008-February/msg00009.html === Fedora SIG KDE Report Week NN/2008 === * No Report === Fedora SIG Astronomy Meeting (Log) 2008-02-02 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-astronomy-list/2008-February/msg00000.html -- Thomas Chung http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung From jkeating at redhat.com Tue Feb 5 15:25:25 2008 From: jkeating at redhat.com (Jesse Keating) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 10:25:25 -0500 Subject: Announcing Fedora 9 Alpha Message-ID: <20080205102525.4748a9f5@redhat.com> A funny thing happened on the way into the office today, an Alpha release of Fedora 9 happened! The Alpha release provides the first opportunity for the wider community to become involved with the testing of Rawhide: representing a sanitised snapshot of Fedora's development branch, which sees rapid changes and will become the next major release, it should boot on the majority of systems, providing both an opportunity to get a look at what new features will be included in the next release and also an opportunity to provide feedback and bug reports to help ensure that the next release is as good as possible. Some highlights of Fedora 9 Alpha: * GNOME 2.21 Development Release * KDE 4.0 * Firefox 3 Beta 2 * Support for resizing ext2, ext3 and NTFS partitions during install * Support for creating and installing to encrypted filesystems * PackageKit * Kernel 2.6.24 And numerous other improvements and enhancements. Getting it: ========== The Alpha release is available both through our mirroring system and via bittorrent. For direct http access to a local mirror: http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/test/9-Alpha/ For a list of mirrors carrying the content and the various protocols they support: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/9-Alpha/ For bittorrent: http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ More Information: ============ For more information regarding the Alpha release, please visit the release notes page: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/Alpha/ReleaseNotes -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- All my bits are free, are yours? -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kanarip at kanarip.com Wed Feb 6 18:23:25 2008 From: kanarip at kanarip.com (Jeroen van Meeuwen) Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:23:25 +0100 Subject: Fedora 9 Alpha Jigdo Message-ID: <47A9FB1D.7090103@kanarip.com> Fedora Unity announces the Fedora 9 Alpha release is now also available via Jigdo. Jigdo saves you a lot of bandwidth and time if you already have the data (maybe a local mirror or previously released media), and has been proposed as a feature for Fedora 9[1]. For documentation on how to use Jigdo or pyJigdo visit: http://fedorasolved.org/post-install-solutions/jigdo/ (Jigdo) http://fedorahosted.org/pyjigdo/ (pyJigdo) To get the bits, either yum install jigdo or yum install pyjigdo, and run it with the following Jigdo file: http://jigdo.fedoraunity.org/templates/9-Alpha/Fedora-9-Alpha.jigdo or go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins for more information. Kind regards, Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip Fedora Unity Founder [1] Jigdo Release http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/JigdoRelease From ben at fedoraunity.org Thu Feb 7 16:47:24 2008 From: ben at fedoraunity.org (Ben Williams) Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 16:47:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Fedora 8 20080204 Re-Spin Message-ID: <4051469.37271202402844902.JavaMail.root@zimbra.cbccgroup.com> The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new ISO Re-Spins (DVD and CD Sets) of Fedora 8. These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8 installation media and include all updates released as of February 4,2008. The ISO images are available for i386 and x86_64 architectures via jigdo starting Thursday, February 7, 2008. We have included CD Image sets for those in the Fedora community that do not have DVD drives or burners available. During the Testing phase some of our testers had problems with installing via VNC while others did not have any problems at all. Please report your results in our bug tracker. http://bugs.fedoraunity.org/spin-bugs/10/ We would like to give a special thanks to the following for testing this respin in 2 days Harley-D Dana Hoffman Jr zcat Jason Farrell Iwolf Jeffrey Tadlock Southern_Gentleman Ben Williams kanarip Jeroen van Meeuwen Fedora Unity has taken up the Re-Spin task to provide the community with the chance to install Fedora with recent updates already included. These updates might otherwise comprise more than 1.33GiB of downloads for a full install. This is a community project, for and by the community. You can contribute to the community by joining our test process. A full list of bugs, packages and changelogs that have been updated in this Re-Spin can be reviewed on http://spins.fedoraunity.org/changelogs/20080204/ If you are interested in helping with the testing or mirroring efforts, please contact the Fedora Unity team. Contact information is available at http://fedoraunity.org/ or the #fedora-unity channel on the Freenode IRC Network (irc.freenode.net). Go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins to get the bits! To report bugs in the Re-Spins please use http://bugs.fedoraunity.org/ Ben Williams From tchung at fedoraproject.org Mon Feb 11 10:40:48 2008 From: tchung at fedoraproject.org (Thomas Chung) Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:40:48 -0800 Subject: Fedora Weekly News Issue 119 Message-ID: <369bce3b0802110240i62717079i870356629214838f@mail.gmail.com> = Fedora Weekly News Issue 119 = Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 119 for the week of February 4th, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue119 In Announcements, we have "Announcing Fedora 9 Alpha", "Fedora 9 Alpha Jigdo" and "Fedora 8 20080204 Re-Spin" In Planet Fedora, we have "A word of thanks", "Happy 10th Birthday, Open Source!", "Field report from GNUnify 2008", "SCALE 6x: I'm Here - Saturday in Review", "SCALE 6x: cally four nya" and "Fedora General-Purpose Posters Part 2" To join or give us your feedback, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join. 1. Announcements 1. Announcing Fedora 9 Alpha 2. Fedora 9 Alpha Jigdo 3. Fedora 8 20080204 Re-Spin 2. Planet Fedora 1. A word of thanks 2. Happy 10th Birthday, Open Source! 3. Field report from GNUnify 2008 4. SCALE 6x: I'm Here - Saturday in Review 5. SCALE 6x: cally four nya 6. Fedora General-Purpose Posters Part 2 3. Marketing 1. Store SIG Update - a.k.a. State of the SIG 2. Generic Fedora Poster Designs for Events 3. Fedora Project releases alpha version of Fedora 9 4. Fedora 9 Alpha Preview 5. Fedora 9 Alpha - digg it 4. Ambassadors 1. LinuxTag 2008 Preparations 2. Fedora EMEA Board Elections 5. Developments 1. Baracuda To Replace VNC ? 2. Sins Of Commission: Google Earth 3. Autodownloader vs. CodecBuddy 4. The Point Of Mock 5. Glade 2 And Glade 3 Co-existence 6. Dropping FUSE Group? Security Concerns 6. Advisory Board 1. Where's All The Fedora Spins? 2. Fedora Education Spin, SIG 7. Documentation 1. Meeting to Discuss Publican 2. Encryption and Privacy Guide Input 3. Single-sourced Summary 4. Works in Progress 8. Infrastructure 1. Moin 1.6 2. Torent tracker/primary seed software 3. Moin 2.0 (or as I call it, mediawiki) 9. Artwork 1. F9 Theme: Round 2 extension 2. Promotional graphics: banners and posters 10. Security Week 1. New Firefox 2. How Does SELinux Work? 11. Security Advisories 1. Fedora 8 Security Advisories 2. Fedora 7 Security Advisories 12. Events and Meetings 1. Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-02-06 2. Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-02-04 3. Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-02-05 4. Fedora Localization/Translation Meeting 2008-02-05 5. Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2008-02-04 6. Fedora Quality Assurance Meeting 2008-02-06 7. Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-02-06 8. Fedora SIG EPEL Report Week 06/2008 9. Fedora SIG KDE Report Week 06/2008 13. Ask Fedora 1. Bluetooth And Fedora: Followup 2. Prayer Time: Followup [[Anchor(Announcements)]] == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from Fedora Project. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Announcing Fedora 9 Alpha === JesseKeating announces in fedora-announce-list[1], "The Alpha release provides the first opportunity for the wider community to become involved with the testing of Rawhide: representing a sanitised snapshot of Fedora's development branch, which sees rapid changes and will become the next major release, it should boot on the majority of systems, providing both an opportunity to get a look at what new features will be included in the next release and also an opportunity to provide feedback and bug reports to help ensure that the next release is as good as possible." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00001.html === Fedora 9 Alpha Jigdo === JeroenVanMeeuwen announces in fedora-announce-list[1], "Fedora Unity announces the Fedora 9 Alpha release is now also available via Jigdo. Jigdo saves you a lot of bandwidth and time if you already have the data (maybe a local mirror or previously released media), and has been proposed as a feature for Fedora 9." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00002.html === Fedora 8 20080204 Re-Spin === BenWilliams announces in fedora-announce-list[1], "The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new ISO Re-Spins (DVD and CD Sets) of Fedora 8. These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8 installation media and include all updates released as of February 4,2008. The ISO images are available for i386 and x86_64 architectures via jigdo starting Thursday, February 7, 2008. We have included CD Image sets for those in the Fedora community that do not have DVD drives or burners available." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00003.html [[Anchor(PlanetFedora)]] == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover a highlight of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from world wide Fedora contributors. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet Contributing Writers: ThomasChung === A word of thanks === MaxSpevack points out in his blog[1], "I would like to give some public thanks to JeffreyTadlock for the work that he has done with the Store SIG. I started the Store SIG a few months ago when I had some extra time, and as an attempt to bring some sanity to the problems of distributing swag globally, both for individuals and events." [1] http://spevack.livejournal.com/44818.html === Happy 10th Birthday, Open Source! === JohnBabich points out in his blog[1], "Bruce Perens published the Open Source Definition on 9 February, 1998. He commemorates the event in ''State of Open Source Message: A New Decade For Open Source''. This is a great article and should be read in its entirety by anyone who appreciates Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)." [1] http://jmbuser.livejournal.com/9080.html === Field report from GNUnify 2008 === SankarshanMukhopadhyay points out in his blog[1], "As promised earlier, here's a quick round-up of the event. I spent the entire two days on 8th and 9th (of February, 2008) at GNUnify 2008. I did not have any specific talks to attend and went more to find out for myself about all the good stuff that I have heard till date about this event. Sayamindu had come down (he had a talk on OLPC) and so on Day 1 of the event we started a bit late and gate crashed into Brian Behlendorf's talk related to 10 things about Open Source. A fairly straight forward talk introducing Open Source to the hall full of students it also had the old dogs indulging in some back seat fun." [1] http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/2008/02/10/field-report-from-gnunify-2008/ === SCALE 6x: I'm Here - Saturday in Review === ClintSavage reports in his blog[1], "Just left Jono Bacon's presentation on ''The future of the Linux Desktop''. He's quite an awesome presenter. Afterward, I went down to the exhibit floor and got to say hi to TomCallaway and actually met ThomasChung from the Fedora Project. Both of these guys have such exuberance and joy, I love being part of the fedora project." [1] http://fedora-tutorials.com/2008/02/10/scale-6x-im-here-saturday-in-review/ === SCALE 6x: cally four nya === TomCallaway reports in his blog[1], "Here I am, in Los Angeles, at SCALE 6x. I've never been to SCALE before, but I'm really impressed. Its this mix of extinct old school Linux conferences like ALS and LinuxExpo, trade shows like Comdex, and smart tech conferences like OSCON. Amazingly, they're pulling it off really well. There are just a lot of smart people and a lot of curious people, and a really vibrant feeling to it that can't help but get you excited about it. I'm not sure if the fact that it is in LA Is helping the effect, or merely making it more unique. In the last two days, I've met more people than I could possibly remember, and observed some of the ''behind-the-scene'' workings of the open source community that I've always been aware of, but never invited to participate in." [1] http://spot.livejournal.com/288127.html === Fedora General-Purpose Posters Part 2 === MairinDuffy points out in her blog[1], "Thanks to everybody who helped me out with the poster design here in my blog and in fedora-marketing-list. I think this cut is pretty good so if you are willing to translate the poster into another language or if you would simply like to have it printed up, it's ready now." [1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/52993.html [[Anchor(Marketing)]] == Marketing == In this section, we cover Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Store SIG Update - a.k.a. State of the SIG === JeffreyTadlock reports in fedora-marketing-list[1], "It is time for a Fedora Store SIG update! To bring people up to speed, the Fedora Store SIG was founded by Max Spevack as a means to solve two major issues - provide an easy way for Fedora users and contributors to obtain Fedora merchandise and help direct Fedora Ambassadors to vendors that are near them who can help fill bulk orders for events they attend. More details can be found on the Fedora SIG page." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00217.html === Generic Fedora Poster Designs for Events === MairinDuffy reports in fedora-marketing-list[1], "I've updated the posters using the color suggestions from JohnAdams and the text [:PaulWFrields: PaulFrields] gave me in my blog (with one minor mod) and some layout suggestions from RobinNorwood in IRC (the original design had the infinity sign flattened, it's readjusted to resemble its position in the logo and some of the sizing of the logo elements is changed.)" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00202.html === Fedora Project releases alpha version of Fedora 9 === RahulSundaram reports in fedora-marketing-list[1], "The GNOME programs in the alpha version of Fedora 9 are derived from the 2.21 development branch from which GNOME 2.22 should be emerging in mid March. The browser will be a preview version of Firefox 3, the core rendering elements of which are in a separate XULRunner package. Preview versions of other applications such as OpenOffice 2.4 or X-Server 1.5 are also used. The development team have also improved the installation program so that existing ext2, ext3 and NTFS partitions can now be reduced in size. In addition, it is now possible to create encrypted Linux partitions directly during installation." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00214.html === Fedora 9 Alpha Preview === RahulSundaram reports in fedora-marketing-list[1], "Among the features being worked on are encrypted file-system support, updating the KDE spin to KDE 4.0, PackageKit integration, and switching to upstart initialization. In this article, we are taking a brief look at Fedora 9 Alpha and the features planned for Fedora 9." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00068.html === Fedora 9 Alpha - digg it === JonathanRoberts reports in fedora-marketing-list[1], "Now that the Alpha is out and the release notes[2] are no longer a draft, how about we try and get it a bit of attention... If you find the information in the article useful, then why not drop by digg[3] and give it a vote :)" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00054.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/Alpha/ReleaseNotes [3] http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_9_Sulphur_Alpha_Released [[Anchor(Ambassadors)]] == Ambassadors == In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock === LinuxTag 2008 Preparations === MaxSpevack posted to the Ambassadors list [1] asking for Ambassadors attending LinuxTag 2008, May 28th to the 31st, to add your name to the LinuxTag Rooms sign-up [2]. This is only for Ambassadors attending LinuxTag and the entire bill may not be compensated. Also posted to the Ambassadors list [3] was a call for participation and preliminary look at what is lined up for LinuxTag by Gerold Kassube. Highlights at LinuxTag are to inlude a troubleshooting contest, a mini-FUDcon, Fedora on a Mac, X-Box, OLPC, Eee-PC, a Fedora 9 showroom, meet the developer and more. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00019.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/LinuxTag/LinuxTag2008/Rooms [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00021.html === Fedora EMEA Board Elections === FrancescoUgolini posted [1] an announcement of the first Fedora EMEA board elections. Nominations are being accepted February 9th through February 21st, with the election being held at FOSDEM 2008 on February 23rd. Additional information and the nomination page are available on the wiki [2]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00040.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA/BoardElections [[Anchor(Developments)]] == Developments == In this section, we cover the problems/solutions, people/personalities, and ups/downs of the endless discussions on Fedora Developments. http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list Contributing Writer: OisinFeeley === Baracuda To Replace VNC ? === A query as to the status of the replacement of ''vnc'' by ''baracuda'' (note the single "r") in Fedora 9 was posted[1] by MikeC. Mike was concerned that there was no mention of either in the feature list and especially wanted to preserve the ability to load a vnc module in Xorg.conf so that the screen could be viewed remotely even without a user logging in via the display manager. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00254.html Several replies focused on the client end of the equation and ignored the server part. DanielBerrange pointed out[2] that for GNOME the ''vinagre'' package is superior to the old RealVNC ''vncviewer'' as it can handle ''gnome-keyring'', ''avahi'' discovery and bookmarking of connections. KevinKofler and BenjaminKreuter responded[3] that on the KDE desktop the same functionality is provided by ''Krfb''. Benjamin hoped that ''vncviewer'' was going to be maintained in the repositories as there were scripts which depended on it. AdamTkac responded to DanielBerrange that the focus of ''baracuda'' was to produce a standalone Xvnc server with a libvnc.so module built against Xorg 1.5 and that the client was subsidiary. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00259.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00266.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00337.html Mike pointed out[5] that a user needed to be logged in before ''krfb'' could be run and that his use case involved remote logins. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00274.html AdamTkac, responding[6] directly to the original mail, gave an update on ''baracuda'', explaining that it was a fork forced by the need to have an Xorg-1.5 based vncserver and that the original upstream (RealVNC) were not maintaining the source. This is probably because they also sell an "enterprise" edition. The current Xvnc has thus accumulated a significant number of patches which Adam ,as Fedora maintainer, judged unacceptable. Seemingly other projects had made the same determination and once Adam announced[7] the Fedora fork the TightVNC project expressed[8] interest in merging his work and it seems this is going ahead. Mike greeted this good news with thanks to Adam for his work. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00334.html [7] http://www.realvnc.com/pipermail/vnc-list/2008-February/058598.html [8] http://www.realvnc.com/pipermail/vnc-list/2008-February/058619.html === Sins Of Commission: Google Earth === A plea for the packaging of Google Earth[1] was made by DouglasMcClendon. He explained that he was short of time but thought it ought to be easy for someone to whip up a ''kickstart'' ''%post'' scriptlet to install Google Earth. A quick response from ChristopherBrown declined to attempt to package non-Free software: "When [G]oogle actually release something open source other than obscure OCR software that sucks anyway I'll be more than happy to work a bit harder on stuff like that." Christopher's comment became the focal point of the thread which echoed long-standing unease with Google Earth's non-Free binaries, its reliance upon further non-Free video-card drivers and its restrictive licensing terms on its data[2]. Douglas clarified[3] that what he was interested in was copying Debian's approach which is to use a properly licensed script which grabs the non-Free code, turns it into an rpm and then installs it. [1] http://earth.google.com/ [2] http://lwn.net/Articles/211153/ [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00367.html Christopher made it clear[4] that he was aware that what Douglas was requesting might not be so different from the ''autodownload'' scriptlets on the Fedora Games DVD which pull non-Free game data and asked how far down the slippery slope it was proposed to travel. He described[5] the method as a circumvention of Fedora policy. AndrewFarris agreed[6] that the package should not be in the Fedora repositories but did wish that someone would package it in some other repository. He also disagreed that Google Earth and the ''autodownload'' scripts were the same as in the former case the actual program code is unavailable whereas in the latter the code is available and all that is missing is some data. Douglas largely agreed, suggested[7] the Livna repository as a good place and wished that someone would port NASA's ''worldwind''[8]. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00368.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00371.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00374.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00378.html [8] http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/index.html ToshioKuratomi summed up[9] the situation concisely and noted that HansdeGoede 's script was "controversial". TomCallaway's opinion was[10] that the distinction between data and code was a fine, but important one and OlivierGalibert thinned it even further when he asked[11] "How much of this data is code for a virtual machine?". Further exploration led ChristopherAillon to state that the games supplied are supposed to have enough data to be somewhat useful without the restricted data and KevinKofler to state[12] that in practice this was not the case. Kevin listed several possible problems in this regard and suggested that anyone objecting should take it up with FESCo. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00373.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00393.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00394.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00423.html The situation, as described, was thought by JesseKeating to be unacceptable and Toshio responded[13] that if FESCo were going to revisit the issue then it would be wise and fair to ensure that Hans were available during the discussion as he was shouldering the burden of any work and needed to understand the requirements. Responding to a request from TomCallaway for specifics, KevinKofler ran a quick {{{repoquery --whatrequires autodownloader}}} and listed[14] five games which have licenses which restrict the distribution of their data and are useless without it. AlanCox did not think the situation was so clear cut and posited[15] that a better test was to ask "whether it is possible to produce new free data sets for [such tools]." He later expanded[16] upon this with examples and with the correction that the important condition was "practicality" rather than "possibility." [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00471.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00481.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00519.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00623.html === Autodownloader vs. CodecBuddy === A thread to specifically discuss the ethical and practical problems posed by the use of ''autodownloader'' (see this FWN#119 "Sins Of Commission: Google Earth") was opened[1] by HansdeGoede. Hans explained that his own guideline for the use of autodownloader was that it was "only for content [...] for Free engines." He thought that while CodecBuddy (also known as Codeina[2]) was included in the distribution it was hypocritical to worry about autodownloader. He emphasized that Codeina downloads closed-source code and also offers the user the option to purchase said code, effectively advertising closed-source. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00476.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/Codeina A longish sub-thread started[3] by JakubRusinek worked over the exhausted topic of whether or not Codeina/CodecBuddy can do anything further to facilitate the installation of possibly patent-encumbered codecs. There was nothing particularly new to see here, with the situation remaining as it has since the last opinion from Red Hat "legal" which implies that the current web page can obliquely explain the problem but needs to beware of contributory infringement. RahulSundaram supplied[4] a link to the relevant post. Unless the interpretation of software as both machine and copyrightable work (see AlanCox's post[5]) in the U.S.A. were to be miraculously overthrown then such discussion appears moot, as do comparisons to the non-US based Canonical. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00480.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00540.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00523.html A bizarrely formatted post made by TrondDanielsen suggested[6] that the pursuit of the Online Desktop[7] was another example of the hypocrisy and grey areas to which Hans had alluded. MatejCepl reacted[8] harshly, rebutting Trond's assertion that there was a partnership with Google, or that the purpose was to integrate Flickr and Google with the rest of the desktop. Trond's civil, self-deprecating response explained[9] that "The purpose of the argument was that Fedora already depend on proprietary services and software which makes the argument against the autodownloader invalid" but HorstvonBrand undermined[10] the validity of the argument and explained that while a daily beating with the cluestick may be beneficial to recipients it is tiring for the administrator. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00492.html [7] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureOnlineDesktop [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00545.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00558.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00570.html There were several voices raised in favor of removing Codeina/CodecBuddy. Among them were Dexter[11] and KevinKofler[12]. Kevin added that web browsers should be prevented from offering to install the proprietary flash plugins as there was a Yum repository facilitating cleaner installs. JefSpaleta grew tired[13] of the strained comparisons between different pieces of software. ChrisAdams thought that picking on Adobe's Flash (especially when they provide such a repository) would prevent him from being able to use Fedora in his job. He pointed out that ''swfdec'' and other free software Flash players cannot support MP3 audio until possibly 2017. BrianPepple pointed[14] out that the gstreamer plugin was available, just not included in Fedora due to legal reasons and so the thread came full circle to the issue of licensing. Rahul provided links and wondered[15] if this conversation had to occur every few weeks. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00479.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00544.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00588.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00648.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00673.html === The Point Of Mock === An interesting short thread was started[1] by KellyMiller (lightsolphoenix). Kelly sought advice on how to write the spec file for a KDE3 package destined for both Fedora 8 and rawhide now that the package names have changed. IgnacioVazquezAbrams suggested[2] using a ''%{dist}'' tag and JarodWilson added[3] that BuildRequires did not need to be versioned to catch devel packages less than version 3. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00286.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00287.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00290.html As a subsidiary issue Kelly mentioned[4] that there seemed to be problems with the ability of ''mock'' to build x86_64 packages. Jarod and Jesse both wondered whether he was on an x86 machine and it seemed that he was. Kelly mused[5] "I was under the impression that the whole point of using Mock was to handle that situation". Jesse responded[6] "No, the whole point of mock is to create clean chroots each time you want to build. The x86_64 platforms ability to run i386 code is a side effect." KevinKofler observed[7] that running ''qemu'' allowed (at the expense of a massive speed penalty) the building of x86_64 code on an i386 platform. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00297.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00329.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00331.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00347.html === Glade 2 And Glade 3 Co-existence === DebarshiRay (rishi) drew attention[1] to the dependency of the latest ''anjuta'' on ''glade3''[2] and requested that the replacement of ''glade2'' by ''glade3'' be considered. Debarshi thought this would affect the Developer Live spin and the regular GNOME DVD spin. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00308.html [2] Glade is a RAD tool to develop GTK GUIs: http://glade.gnome.org/ MatthiasClasen asked[3] whether ''glade3'' could handle all the files produced by ''glade2''. TimWaugh confirmed[4] that although this seemed to work he had seen problems with the converse, where files touched or produced by ''glade3'' were not rendered correctly by ''glade2''. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00309.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00326.html The suggestion by Debarshi that it might be prudent to split Anjuta up or drop it entirely was thought[5] by Matthias not to be necessary as the two glade versions might be able to co-exist. JeremyKatz was happy that there was plenty of space on the DVD for both versions[6]. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00311.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00320.html === Dropping FUSE Group? Security Concerns === As the upcoming GNOME VFS will use FUSE as a backend PeterLemenkov proposed[1] to drop the Fuse group as otherwise all users would need to be added to this group. He asked for objections to be made known. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00237.html Initial concern was expressed by WarrenTogami on the foot of the affect this might have on KDE users. He also wondered how upgrades would be affected. ThorstenLeemhuis asked[3] whether a security audit had been conducted as he had suggested some time ago. KarelZak reported[4] that MiklosSzeredi's work on a non-root-privileged mount (which could be used by FUSE) was making its way into the --mm kernel tree. He also made some interesting observations on the Fedora Project package process. MattDomsch suggested[5] a Koji equivalent of ''rpmlint'' to search for suid problems. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00239.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00240.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00278.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00442.html AlexanderLarsson argued[6] that Thorsten's security worries were only tangentially related to FUSE itself and had more to do with inappropriate use of setuid. He added that SELinux policy for ''fusermount'' would be a possibly useful enhancement. Alex also provided[7] the information that it was actually ''GVFS'', a replacement to ''GNOME VFS'' which was under discussion and explained its workings. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00306.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00296.html KevinKofler called[8] the FUSE group "plugdev reloaded" and outlined the problem of having to add users manually. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00382.html Further questioning by Warren as to the implications of the change for users of non-GNOME desktops drew[9] a reply from Alexander to the effect that it was an orthogonal issue and Kevin provided some backing on this point with the comparison of KIO functionality. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00387.html An excellent summary was made[10] by Alexander in which he pointed out that FUSE provides desired features that GNOME and other software are currently using and that Fedora's security fears will lead to either "punching users in the face" by shipping a setup which they need to correct manually or else just not shipping the software. SteveGrubb replied[11] that the Common Criteria[12] evaluations were for specific mounting mechanisms and that this new, parallel method might necessitate Steve doing a lot of extra, unplanned work. A meaty, information-filled series of posts followed. Alexander described[13], in another excellent post, the benefits of FUSE, Steve pointed[14] to a potential problem with SELinux auditing and wondered whether FUSE was duplicating some pre-existing functionality in sharing files over SSH, but without the benefit of auditing mechanisms. Alexander's last mail[15] (as of publication date) was a detailed apparent rebuttal of Steve's concerns which emphasized the role of FUSE in exposing non-root users to filesystems which were otherwise awkward to access. [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00386.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00402.html [12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Criteria [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00447.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00452.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00457.html [[Anchor(AdvisoryBoard)]] == Advisory Board == In this section, we cover discussion in Fedora Advisory Board. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board Contributing Writer: MichaelLarabel === Where's All The Fedora Spins? === MikeMcGrath has asked on the fedora-advisory-board list where are all of the Fedora re-spins?[1] To date there is just Fedora Games, Fedora Developer, and Fedora Electronic Lab editions. JeffSpaleta had responded saying that a number of localized editions are being worked on, and an Xfce spin is being worked on but was facing technical struggles that has been fixed recently. Jeff also highlighted that a education spin has been proposed recently[2]. RahulSundaram had also commented that Fedora Lite, Security Spin, and Fedora Art Studio are also on the road-map.[3] [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-February/msg00043.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-February/msg00044.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-February/msg00049.html === Fedora Education Spin, SIG === AxelThimm had asked about establishing a SIG (Special Interest Group) for those interested in bringing Fedora to schools[1]. Announced just four days later, however, was a Fedora Education spin as well as intending to form a Fedora Education SIG[2]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-February/msg00026.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-February/msg00060.html [[Anchor(Documentation)]] == Documentation == In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject Contributing Writer: JohnBabich === Meeting to Discuss Publican === PaulFrields asked [1]: "Can Fedora Documentation folks be available next Wednesday evening [13 February] after hours (EST) for an ad hoc meeting about the new RH Docs team's "publican" documentation tools? You'll especially want to attend if: * You're on the [Fedora Docs] steering committee * You do (or intend to) work on the Release Notes or other formal documentation" A time is being set for the meeting, keeping in mind that the Red Hat Docs team is in Brisbane, Australia in the UTC+10 time zone. Interested people should respond via the Fedora Docs mailing list by Tuesday, 12 February, at the latest. Note that "publican" does not refer to a tax collector or a pub owner. Rather, Publican is a completely unencumbered FOSS tool chain for producing documentation for open-source, as well as commercial, software projects. Publican is composed of common files and scripts for building documentation using the Doc``Book XML format. [1]http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00051.html === Encryption and Privacy Guide Input === After he finished making updates to the Encryption and Privacy Guide (EPG)[1] and requested input, EricChristensen responded [2] to KarstenWade's remarks asking for more Fedora-specific content. "Here is what I propose... In order to provide a comprehensive guide that covers privacy and encryption that is available to Fedora I think we should cover in depth the Fedora-specific information while providing a summary and alternate paths for getting information for items that are more Linux-specific." There is already non-Fedora-specific information in our Docs (like a guide for using GPG ...[3]...) that could be rolled into the EPG as a summary. This would allow a guide that would be encompassing while not rewriting the book on everything security." KarstenWade replied [4]: "I don't see a problem with this idea. You understand what the catch is and avoid it with the summary approach...One way we could help the users is to identify the background they may want to skip and make it easy for them to learn how to skip it." [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/CryptoGuide [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00035.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/UsingGpg [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00060.html === Single-sourced Summary === JonathanRoberts announced [1]: "We're going to try something new for the various release notes / summaries / overviews and see how we go. The plan...looks like this: Create a wiki page... Flesh out that page with sections for: a) Press Release style summary b) Detailed Overview covering all features on / Releases / # / Feature List either alphabetically or by coolness... c) Technical Summary - brief but aimed at tech journalists d) Detailed Technical Summary - detailed and aimed at geeks, similar to release notes content now. ... The idea is that by developing all this in one location we won't duplicate any work - we can see what is done and what's not done." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00050.html === Works in Progress === * Desktop User Guide (DUG) * Administration Guide (AG) The goal is to include both of the above guides in the official Fedora 9 release. They appear to be on track for inclusion in the March beta. These, as well as other draft versions of documents, can be found in the draft docs section of the wiki [1]. After joining the Docs Project [2], feel free to work on any of these documents or create your own Fedora-related doc. [1] http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/ [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Join [[Anchor(Infrastructure)]] == Infrastructure == In this section, we cover the Fedora Infrastructure Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala This section covers discussions on the fedora-infrastructure-list between 4th Feb 2008 to 10th Feb 2008. === Moin 1.6 === MikeMcGrath reports [1] Moin 1.6 was successfully installed and migrated for testing. This is purely a test instance [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00025.html === Torent tracker/primary seed software === SethVidal reports [2] We are setting up a new torrent tracker and are debating which tracker software to use. The primary softwares which are being considered are bittorrent, ctorrent and rtorrent. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00027.html === Moin 2.0 (or as I call it, mediawiki) === MikeMcGrath reports [3] Mike upgraded Moin 1.5.8 to mediawiki at https://publictest1.fedoraproject.org/wiki/index.php/FedoraMain. There is still some work to be done specially on the theme. However, MediaWiki requires MySQL database so it's a bit complex than Moin. Later in the thread there is some discussion about comparing both the wikis. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00039.html [[Anchor(Artwork)]] == Artwork == In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: NicuBuculei === F9 Theme: Round 2 extension === After a short debate on the mailing list [1]. the Art Team decided, for various reasons, to extend the Round 2 for the Fedora 9 with one week, so the new deadline is February 12. Some artists already took advantage to this extension and updated their work [2], expect some cool graphics for the next week, [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00016.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes#Submissions === Promotional graphics: banners and posters === Part of the Art Team work is dedicated to produce good looking marketing graphics. For the Alpha release the team has designed a couple of website banners and it was a good opportunity to create a banner archive [1] holding all the website banners created so far for easy accessibility. In related art/marketing news, MairinDuffy published a pack of general purpose posters [2], which were acclaimed by the community. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/PromoBanners [2] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/52591.html [[Anchor(SecurityWeek)]] == Security Week == In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora. Contributing Writer: JoshBressers === New Firefox === This week Mozilla released a new version[1] of Firefox. As usual it fixes some rather dangerous flaws. [1] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vulnerabilities.html#firefox2.0.0.12 === How Does SELinux Work? === I ran across this article[1] this week. it's not too shabby explaining how SELinux works. It's a decent read for anyone interested in this sort of thing. [1] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/s-selinux/?n-s-381 [[Anchor(SecurityAdvisories)]] == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * perl-Tk-804.028-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00115.html * kernel-2.6.23.14-115.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00145.html * tk-8.4.17-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00193.html * gnumeric-1.6.3-14.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00227.html === Fedora 7 Security Advisories === * openldap-2.3.34-6.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00105.html * gnumeric-1.6.3-14.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00114.html * tk-8.4.13-7.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00132.html * perl-Tk-804.028-3.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00205.html [[Anchor(EventsMeetings)]] == Events and Meetings == In this section, we cover event reports and meeting summaries from various Projects and SIGs. Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-02-06 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Meetings/2008-02-06 === Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-02-04 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommunityArchitecture/Meetings/2008-02-04 === Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-02-05 === * http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00044.html === Fedora Localization/Translation Meeting 2008-02-05 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-February/msg00009.html === Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2008-02-04 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/Meetings/2008-feb-04 === Fedora Quality Assurance Meeting 2008-02-06 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20080206 === Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-02-06 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2008-Feb-06 === Fedora SIG EPEL Report Week 06/2008 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/Reports/Week06 === Fedora SIG KDE Report Week 06/2008 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/Meetings/2008-02-05 [[Anchor(AskFedora)]] == Ask Fedora == In this section, we answer general questions from Fedora community. Send your questions to askfedora AT fedoraproject.org and Fedora News Team will bring you answers from the Fedora Developers and Contributors to selected number of questions every week as part of our weekly news report. Please indicate if you do not wish your name and/or email address to be published. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AskFedora Contributing Writer: RahulSundaram === Bluetooth And Fedora: Followup === In response to the question[1], BastienNocera, one of the bluetooth maintainers in Fedora added a followup: "Refer http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/toshiba.html and the more recent module at http://0bits.com/toshbt/ Explains why the device isn't enabled by default, the latter link is something that should work in recent versions of Fedora (the former will only work if ACPI is disabled in the kernel)." [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue117#head-61b401e99bb6abb77fd77434241223fda329a0b7 === Prayer Time: Followup === In response to the question[1] on prayer time software in Fedora, MohdIzharFirdaus, a Fedora developer has submitted[2] a few related packages for review in Fedora and they should be available in Fedora repository shortly. Thanks to him for being so responsive to the needs of users. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue117#head-61b401e99bb6abb77fd77434241223fda329a0b7/ [2] http://blog.kagesenshi.org/2008/02/itl-minbar-in-fedora.html -- Thomas Chung http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung From sundaram at fedoraproject.org Wed Feb 13 05:01:23 2008 From: sundaram at fedoraproject.org (Rahul Sundaram) Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:31:23 +0530 Subject: Announcing Fedora 8 Xfce Spin Message-ID: <47B279A3.4040200@fedoraproject.org> Hello Friends, I am pleased to announce the immediate release of a brand new and sparkling, Fedora 8 Xfce Spin. Fedora Xfce Spin is a bootable Fedora Live CD image available for x86 and x86_64 architecture. It can be optionally installed to hard disk or converted into boot USB images and is ideal for Xfce fans and for users running Fedora on relatively low resource systems. As a additional bonus, this release rolls in updates for Fedora 8 released till yesterday (2008/02/12). Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment available in Fedora. Designed for productivity, it loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources. More information at http://xfce.org == Download == Torrent only download available at http://spins.fedoraproject.org/ == Feedback == We value your feedback highly. Send all your feedback and suggestions to http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list == Release Highlights == === Xfce 4.4.2 === This release includes the latest Xfce release, 4.4.2 that integrates many new features and bug fixes. More information is available [http://www.xfce.org/about/news?id=13 here]. Along with the basic Xfce desktop environment, Thunar file manager and a comprehensive set of plugins and additional Xfce utilities like Xarchiver archive manager and Orage calendar application is included. All available languages in Fedora has also been integrated with this release. === Major Desktop Applications === This release includes a number of major desktop applications including: * Firefox 2.0 Web browser * Claws Mail * Pidgin Instant Messenger * Brasero CD/DVD Burner * Tracker Desktop Search * NetworkManager * Totem With Browser Plugin * Java With Browser Plugin === Office Software === * Abiword Word Processor * Gnumeric Spreadsheet Application * Evince PDF viewer === Accessories === * Geany Basic Integrated Development Environment(IDE) * Galculator Scientific Calculator * Gftp FTP Client * Mirage Image Viewer === Command Line Utilities === Several small but useful command line utilities are included too! Major highlights include: * Mutt mail client * Irssi Modular IRC Client * Yum-utils: A collection of very useful yum utilities * Powertop: Power Consumption Monitor For Laptop Users == Release Notes == Release notes for Fedora is available for your reference at http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f8/ == Create Your Own Fedora! == The kickstart file used to create this spin is available at http://sundaram.fedorapeople.org/spins/livecd-fedora-8-xfce.ks. If you wish to create your own spin locally or customize this to suit your needs, refer http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/LiveCDHowTo. --- Rahul Sundaram From tchung at fedoraproject.org Mon Feb 18 10:26:31 2008 From: tchung at fedoraproject.org (Thomas Chung) Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:26:31 -0800 Subject: Fedora Weekly News Issue 120 Message-ID: <369bce3b0802180226x74425e34o94af272d5c32113d@mail.gmail.com> = Fedora Weekly News Issue 120 = Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 120 for the week of February 11th, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue120 In Announcements, we have "Announcing Fedora 8 Xfce Spin" In Planet Fedora, we have "KDE 4 Interview", "Announcing Fedora Ambassadors Wall", "Insert favorite Elvis joke here", "Publican - the 'new' Documentation Publisher", and "SCALE 6X Trip Report" To join or give us your feedback, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join. 1. Announcements 1. Announcing Fedora 8 Xfce Spin 2. Planet Fedora 1. KDE 4 Interview 2. Announcing Fedora Ambassadors Wall 3. Insert favorite Elvis joke here 4. Publican - the "new" Documentation Publisher 5. SCALE 6X Trip Report 3. Ambassadors 1. Ambassador Wall 2. Ambassador Statistics 3. Max's Event Report Announcement 4. EMEA Meeting Summary 4. Developments 1. Source File Audit 2. Multiuser Noise And Fury 3. Separate /usr An Anachronism? 4. Git Is Not Git, Git Is A Metapackage 5. Kernel-2.6.25 Rawhide Booting Problem 6. Firefox 3 (Minefield) Zoomed Screen Size 7. LOCALE Vs. LANGUAGE 5. Artwork 1. Fedora 9 Artwork: Round 2 has ended, Round 3 has started 2. Echo development status 3. A new Inkscape release is coming 6. Daily Package 1. License Change 2. Maxima - Computer Algebra System 3. PDFCube - Presentation Viewer 4. Customizing the Grub Splash Screen 5. hplip-gui - HP Device Manager 6. ksudoku - Sudoku Game 7. Security Week 1. Kernel Local Root 8. Security Advisories 1. Fedora 8 Security Advisories 2. Fedora 7 Security Advisories 9. Events and Meetings 1. Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-02-12 2. Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-02-11 3. Fedora Ambassadors Meeting 2008-02-13 4. Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-02-14 5. Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2008-02-14 6. Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2008-02-14 7. Fedora Packaging Committee Meeting 2008-02-12 8. Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2008-02-11 9. Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-02-13 10. Fedora SIG KDE Report Week 2008-02-12 [[Anchor(Announcements)]] == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from Fedora Project. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Announcing Fedora 8 Xfce Spin === RahulSundaram announces[1] in fedora-announce-list, "I am pleased to announce the immediate release of a brand new and sparkling, Fedora 8 Xfce Spin. Fedora Xfce Spin is a bootable Fedora Live CD image available for x86 and x86_64 architecture. It can be optionally installed to hard disk or converted into boot USB images and is ideal for Xfce fans and for users running Fedora on relatively low resource systems." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00005.html [[Anchor(PlanetFedora)]] == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover a highlight of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from world wide Fedora contributors. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet Contributing Writers: ThomasChung === KDE 4 Interview === JonRoberts points out in his blog[1], "I've just published an interview with Rex, Kevin and Sebastien about KDE 4 and Fedora 9 :) You know the plan here, go, take a look at the interview and if you enjoy it give it a digg - if you do you'll be forever in my good graces!" [1] http://blog.questionsplease.org/2008/02/17/kde-4-interview/ === Announcing Fedora Ambassadors Wall === FrancescoUgolini pionts out in his blog[1], "Now it's time to create a place where each person can describe with few words what he/she thinks about Ambassadors Project and Fedora Project in general, starting from his/her vision of Ambassadors to his/her opinion about Fedora." [1] http://ugolini.livejournal.com/1114.html === Insert favorite Elvis joke here === KarstenWade points out in his blog[1], "What is happening is simply that we're doing a final push to get all modules migrated from elvis to a VCS hosted by the Fedora Project, coming to conclusion this Monday 18 February. Once all modules are within Fedora, we can more easily connect them to Transifex." [1] http://iquaid.org/2008/02/16/insert-favorite-elvis-joke-here/ === Publican - the "new" Documentation Publisher === JohnBabich points out in his blog[1], "Publican -- which has been used by Red Hat's Documentation Group for almost two years -- takes DocBook XML input and outputs HTML, plain Unicode text and PDF. This output can be branded with the following brands: Fedora, Red Hat, and JBoss. A default, generic brand is also included. Further brands can be added, either by request, or by direct customisation." [1] http://jmbuser.livejournal.com/9322.html === SCALE 6X Trip Report === TomCallaway points out in his blog[1], "SCALE 6X was one of the most fun, most interesting community shows that I have attended in quite some time. Friday was a day of specialized tracks, one for Open Source in Education, one for Open Source in Healthcare, and one for Women in Open Source." "On Saturday, the expo floor opened, and I got to meet ThomasChung, who helped me man the Fedora booth. Thomas was great, he provided posters, stickers, DVDs and T-Shirts, plus he was willing to talk to all visitors, and encourage them to try Fedora 8." '''Editor's Note''' - SCALE 6X Photo Report[2] is also available. [1] http://spot.livejournal.com/288447.html [2] http://tchung.fedorapeople.org/scale6x/ [[Anchor(Ambassadors)]] == Ambassadors == In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock === Ambassador Wall === FrancescoUgolini announced[1] the creation of an Ambassador Wall [2] in the wiki. The Ambassador Wall offers a place for people to describe in a few words what he or she thinks about the Ambassadors and Fedora Project in general. Future marketing materials may be made based on some of the comments left on the Ambassador Wall. There are already some comments there, so stop by and take a look and tak a few minutes to add your own. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00116.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Wall === Ambassador Statistics === There has been recent interest in gathering more statistics in regards to various Ambassador activities as a means to measure the impact of Fedora Ambassadors around the world. Initial statistics of the growth of the Fedora Ambassadors group has been started by FabianAffolter with a blog post [1] and the creation of a statistics page [2] in the wiki. JeffreyTadlock has also posted a one sheet overview [3] covering the past six months. FrancescoCrippa has recently started work on generating more of these statistics via automated scripts [4]. [1] http://fabaff.blogspot.com/2008/02/increase-of-fedora-ambassador-program.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Statistics [3] http://jeffreyt.fedorapeople.org/ambassador-metrics/ambassador_verification_metrics.pdf [4] http://people.byte-code.com/fcrippa/2008/02/16/fedora-ambassadors-statistics/ === Max's Event Report Announcement === MaxSpevack posted[1] a request to the Ambassador's List that any ambassador who has received funds from Fedora for attending or organizing an event is required to produce an event report. Max, GregDeKoenigsberg and JackAboutboul have been working hard to secure a higher budget for community events and ambassadors. As Max stated in the post "... with increased funding comes increased pressure to prove that the money was well spent." An event report should consist of the following things: "- one blog post per day with a description of what you did, the atmosphere of the event in general, and pictures if they are available. - a summary post to fedora-ambassadors-list at the end that provides links to all the blog posts. - the "leader" of that particular event should encourage all the other Fedora folks who were there to post about it as well, and aggregate their posts into the summary email to Fedora Ambassadors list. - were any new contributors signed up during the event? - the blog should be part of the Fedora Planet. - this should be completed within 1 week from the end of the trip." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00074.html === EMEA Meeting Summary === The EMEA Ambassadors held their monthly meeting on February 13th. If you were unable to attend the meeting, FabianAffolter has posted a detailed meeting summary to the Ambassador's mailing list. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00118.html [[Anchor(Developments)]] == Developments == In this section, we cover the problems/solutions, people/personalities, and ups/downs of the endless discussions on Fedora Developments. http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list Contributing Writer: OisinFeeley === Source File Audit === The results of another run of KevinFenzi's ''sourcecheck'' script were posted[1]. The tool checks to make sure that source referenced in rpms is downloadable and has matching MD5SUMs and timestamps. Kevin noted that there were a varying number of approximately 700 packages failing one of those three conditions and wondered if he should keep posting the results to the list and/or spam the maintainers. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01273.html Reaction was uniformly positive with several of the listed maintainers providing brief explanations of problems usually originating in the upstream of the package making changes to location. A suggestion by JonathanUnderwood that automatic opening of a bugzilla would be useful was not welcomed by ColinWalters. Colin explained[2] that issues out of the control of the maintainer (such as transient network outages) would invalidate such bug reports. He suggested instead that integrating such scripts into the Fedora infrastructure and exporting their reports via RSS would be more useful. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01345.html Kevin was largely in agreement[3] and ToshioKuratomi was excited[4] by the prospect of adding these features into the pre-planning of the notification server which had been discussed several months ago. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01356.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01376.html Most respondents were clear that the reports were useful and should be sent to the list. Several problems appeared to be due to the need to log in to get the source. === Multiuser Noise And Fury === As reported in FWN#118 "PulseAudio Crashing Applications"[1] concerns have been expressed about the sparkling new sound management system: PulseAudio. The creator, LennartPoettering, revisited[2] the issue to clear up some misconceptions and in the process stimulated a wider discussion over the setting and enforcement of policy on a multiuser system. Lennart's initial point was that it was expected that sound playback would be temporarily interrupted when there was a new login to a virtual terminal. This is because[3] ConsoleKit and HAL will change the ACL of the audio device in order to follow the active session. Lennart thought that the sound should resume once the initial session was resumed. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue118#head-009f873a04d5ff649747268eb972d8d9325df359 [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01054.html [3] Discussion of the device ownership problem in the FastUserSwitching scenario: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/FastUserSwitching However, AndrewFarris reported[4] that what had actually happened was that Rhythmbox had frozen. Lennart suggested[5] that the problem lay with Gstreamer which is, as yet, unable to make use of the information provided by PulseAudio. He also thought that Rhythmbox's frozen UI was not an issue as it should be frozen while inactive. Andrew corrected Lennart's interpretation with the information that the UI had been frozen both "during AND after the session was inactive, making it permanently frozen (dead, defunct, useless)." This clarification led[6] Lennart to suggest that a process other than PulseAudio had blocked the audio device and he asked Andrew to check this (it can be verified with {{{pactl list sinks | grep SUSPENDED}}} or else by using {{{pacmd}}} to obtain an interactive PulseAudio shell and passing it "list-sinks" as an argument. See {{{man pactl; man pacmd}}} for more information.) Another possibility suggested by Lennart was a known-issue with HAL failing to restore ACLs and he suggested {{{getfacl /dev/snd/*}}} to check this. Andrew later reported[7] that neither of these appeared to be the problem and documented his investigations with a bugzilla entry. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01133.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01134.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01136.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01161.html Using PulseAudio's ability to re-route "sound to /dev/null (and mic from /dev/null)" was suggested[8] by SimoSorce as a simple fix to stop applications crashing. Lennart argued[9] that any applications crashing were broken and should be fixed to merely freeze. This struck him as preferable to making non-trivial changes to PulseAudio. He added that his version of "expected behavior" is that the music should stop, and then resume on session switch in a manner similar to the suspension of processes achieved with a simple ''Ctrl-Z''. It seems that PulseAudio forwards the information that suspending should happen, but the GStreamer plugin is unable to make use of the information. William "Jon" McCann (a Rhythmbox developer) agreed[10] that this was an issue and pointed to a related discussion on Gnome's bugzilla. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01137.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01143.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01144.html Earlier KevinKofler had suggested that muting, as opposed to blocking, might solve the problem but Lennart rejected[11] this on the basis that it would be impossible to continue streaming as the sound card's clock would be inaccessible. When Kevin further suggested that acceptable alternatives might include using an OS-based timer Lennart argued[12] that it would be "a PITA to do the switching back and forth" and AndrewFarris added[13] that it was pointless to stream to a muted device and that the resolution should be to pause the applications streaming to the device. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01084.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01121.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01138.html Another angle to the problem under discussion was explored when LesMikesell suggested[14] that the current approach was the wrong way to obtain an audio server not tied to a particular login session. Les wondered if it was necessary to now use Xnest, FreeNX, VNC, ssh or other non-VT methods to login to avoid grabbing hardware. JefSpaleta answered[15] that this should be viewed through the lens of ConsoleKit policy: "There's no technical reason that a music server daemon package for example couldn't drop in new policy that changed the behavior here. We just have to understand how to write that policy file and then agree that's the sort of thing we want server packages to do on install." A fairly long thread resulted in which Les robustly defended the viewpoint that it was both impossible to imagine[16] all the behaviors which might be needed in the future and that this specific behavior was incorrect. ChuckAnderson[17] and AlanCox[18] explained that the current default behavior enforced security in that it prevented, for example, audio snooping by users running in other sessions. [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01109.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01115.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01145.html [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01146.html [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01171.html The discussion saw Les argue[19] that traditional UNIX behavior was being broken, that emergency VOIP calls could be disastrously interrupted and that controls based on ownership still allowed snooping by root. Lennart was unimpressed "Yes, and you know what? Unix sucks" and jokingly suggested that frevoke() might be making its way to Linux soon. AlanCox questioned[19a] the accuracy of Les' descriptions of UNIX behavior and how VT switching was handled by X and the kernel. Les stuck to his point that "its wrong to give permissions according to where you are instead of who you are, and its wrong to add default policy changes before documenting the way to manage them locally in unsurprising ways" [19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01184.html [19a] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01377.html [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01210.html There were some other responses, many of which sought a way to manage local policy, or the documentation for how to do so. "Drago01" responded[21] "Is it that hard to cl[i]ck some buttons in the policykit gui?" JefSpaleta's suggestion that it all came down to admins refusing to learn how to write local policy for HAL/ConsoleKit was met by JasonTibbitts' pointing[22] out that it was difficult to find out how to do this. ChristopherAillon helpfully suggested[23] reading the freedesktop.org documentation and/or {{{yum install PolicyKit-docs}}}. "Drago01" referenced[24] a post by DavidZeuthen (possibly this[25] one) and waved towards {{{polkit-gnome-authorization}}} as a way of helping people out. [21] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01433.html [22] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01383.html [23] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01386.html [24] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01387.html [25] http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2007-November/msg00052.html Some similar ground had been covered previously in FWN#113 "How Should PulseAudio Work"[26] and WillWoods' post (the third citation in that section) is very useful in explaining how PulseAudio integrates with the rest of the desktop. === Separate /usr An Anachronism? === StepanKasal noticed[1] that ''dbus-daemon'' was in ''/bin'' and that this was due to being a pre-requisite to bluetooth which in turn must be started before networking. Consequently an increasing number of daemons seemed to need to be started in single-user mode (runlevel 1). Stepan noted that the ability to mount ''/usr'' over a network was important to support, but wondered if it would be possible to split networking into a part which could support the necessary functions for "/usr over network" and another part which was only for things like connecting a phone via bluetooth. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01068.html BillNottingham was keen[2] to stop supporting "/usr over network" with a local "/". MatthiasClasen also asked[3] that Stepan "explain how the separate /usr is not just an anachronism [...] holding us back." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01069.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01078.html That challenge was taken up[4] by AlanCox, who explained that it was defined in the LSB and cautioned against dumping long-established abilities: ''Please don't confuse "I don't use it" with "obsolete" or you'll end up with a distro that's like some of the desktop apps and only usable by exact clones of their authors.'' Apparently mildly stung by this BillNottingham differentiated[5] "separate /usr" from "local / with network /usr" and gnomically argued "One is fairly useful, one is becoming more and more pointless over time." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01086.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01088.html Further battling over this saw Alan make the case[6], in the face of BillNottingham's skepticism, that a /usr partition shared over the network by NFS or GFS2 allowed the rest of the system to be fitted onto a small local flash drive in a faster, easier manner[7] than a network boot. JeremyKatz responded[8] that initramfs for / on iSCSI or NFS already contained many of the pieces allowing a boot off flash without the "annoyances that dealing with a /usr-not-on-/ entails." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01102.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01131.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01106.html === Git Is Not Git, Git Is A Metapackage === A surprised YaakovNemoy asked[1] why a simple {{{yum install git}}} had resulted in 29 dependencies, including emacs, cvs and subversion and totaling 32M. Yaakov wondered should he file a bug. Answers were quickly forthcoming from many to the effect that what Yaakov really wanted was ''git-core'', not ''git'' which is actually a metapackage and that he should not file a bug. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01330.html Yaakov was thankful for the fast answers[2] from DanielBerrange, BillNottingham and others and decided not to file a bug. OlivierGalibert amplified[3] upon the answers a bit with the suggestion "For normal use, you want git-core and probably gitk." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01338.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01339.html Others were less thankful. NicolasMailhot welcomed[4] us "to metapackage hell" and AdamJackson's suggestion[5] that "metapackages must be explicitly named as such" garnered a lot of support. HansdeGoede argued[6] that this "actually is a bug, almost no other package has this." Hans' explanation of how his ''yum'' commands should be interpreted received[7] a reply from JamesBowes that upstream git had been requested to rename ''git-core'' to ''git'' and that "As for yum doing what you say and not what you mean, that is a bug. Please bring it up with Seth personally." JoshBoyer and JefSpaleta took pains to make sure that this was understood to be sarcasm. ToddZullinger explained[8] the correct way to make sure that such bugs are dealt with by Seth personally. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01349.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01360.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01362.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01374.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01396.html Pleading forgiveness in advance JoshBoyer decided[9] to pick on HansdeGoede, suggesting that he should bugzilla the problem instead of posting a "mailing list rant". Hans agreed[10] with him. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01412.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01432.html A discussion over the best naming scheme for metapackages (also known as dummy or virtual packages) led to the suggestion[11] by VilleSkytt? that the metapackage be replaced instead with a git comps group. This seemed to find favor with participants in the discussion including Yaakov on the grounds that comps were a consistent scheme. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01434.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01479.html === Kernel-2.6.25 Rawhide Booting Problem === A report[1] from MikeChambers asked whether other rawhide users had experienced problems since upgrading to ''kernel-2.6.25-0.40.rc1.git2.fc9.i686'' on 14 February 2008. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01218.html Although some were able to report no problems JarodWilson relayed[2] that there had been sporadic reports of boot failures, possibly to do with LVM VGs not being found. BillNottingham disputed[3] that it was anything "to do with LVM tools specifically" and instead was "to do with the kernel used to build your initrd. Newer kernels (2.6.25-git) rearrange sysfs - things that were directories are now symlinks, etc. This hurts mkinitrd pretty badly - it can't find the root devices right, to include the right drivers [...] any initrd built on 2.6.25-x will fail." He attached a patch to fix the problem. Discussion with Jarod suggests that the problem may extend back to some 2.6.24 kernels and Bill clarified[4] that it would probably occur if the initrd was "[b]uilt on a kernel where /sys/block/* are all symlinks." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01221.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01263.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01328.html BrunoWolfIII did some testing and reported[5] that falling back from a 2.6.25 kernel to 2.6.24 seemed to fix his problems. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01413.html === Firefox 3 (Minefield) Zoomed Screen Size === DarrellPfeifer was concerned[1] that Firefox seemed "to have an incorrect impression of the screen size" and was displaying massive navigation buttons and displayed content. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01342.html FelixMiata was able[2] to reassure him that it was a feature not a bug, whereby the latest ''gecko'' display engine will carry out pixel scaling automatically for systems with greater than 144 DPI. As Darrell struggled with reconfiguring Xorg using information from ''xdpyinfo'' Felix outlined the problems with dealing with DPI resulting from the overhaul of video drivers. He suggested that an old videocard was the easy way out, but suspected that as Darrell was running Rawhide that he was up for helping iron out the bugs! [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01419.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01425.html An excellent post by NicolasMailhot expanded[4] on the problem and suggested that either Firefox was being passed the wrong information or else Firefox itself was broken. Subsequent to Darrell filing a bugzilla it looked[5] as though the former might be the case. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01438.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01464.html === LOCALE Vs. LANGUAGE === Some disparities in the stock settings of applications for paper sizes were noticed[1] by JohannGudmundsson. RoddClarkson also wondered[2] how important ISO standards were to Fedora and the thread later developed[3] into a discussion of what ''anaconda'' should be assuming about a user's locale based on the language they choose during installation. Rodd was unhappy that the installer's simple logic made some default choices which seemed broken to him: "Because I chose the English (USA) language, anaconda has assumed that everything I do is US. I'm even stunned to note that while I select Melbourne, AUSTRALIA as my time zone, local reports LC_TIME as en_US.UTF-8." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01259.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01012.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01242.html ChristianRose agreed[4] that some fixing of ''anaconda'' might be needed based on his experience of administering Swedish machines for work environments which use en_US for official communication but "Swedish sized" paper for printing. Christian thought that the assumption "that just because you want LC_MESSAGES=en_US, everything else should be en_US too" was wrong. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01252.html The idea that this was a per-user customization was expressed[5] by JefSpaleta. Jef argued that the installer did a good job of choosing a default and that was all that could be reasonably expected: "We set a sane default in the installer based on the locale, and then the installer gets the hell out of the way." MatejCepl provided[6] the simplest way for users to discover the settings they are currently using: {{{locale}}}. There's a lot more to the thread including many individual answers to the specific requirements of people identifying as various nationalities living in far-flung geographic locations who need system-messages in one language, time and date formatting in the convention of yet another and everything else in a third convention. An honorable mention goes to SimoSorce who requested[7] an as-yet unsupported locale "CAN I HAS ENGLISH(IT) ? KTHXBYE ;-)" [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01258.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01177.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01261.html [[Anchor(Artwork)]] == Artwork == In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: NicuBuculei === Fedora 9 Artwork: Round 2 has ended, Round 3 has started === NicuBuculei announces[1] the end of Round 2 for choosing the default desktop artwork in Fedora 9. Two designs meet the requirements and qualified for Round 3: Waves[2], proposed by MartinSourada and modified intro Sulfuric Waves by MairinDuffy and Shoowa[3], proposed by LuyaTshimbalanga. Please send us feedback, either using the project's mailing list, Nicu's blog[4] or FedoraForum.org[5] [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00094.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes/Waves [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F9Themes/Shoowa [4] http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2008/02/fedora-8-artwork-round-2.html [5] http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=177882 === Echo development status === MartinSourada reports[1] about the status of the development for the Echo icon theme. The Echo icon theme[2] is developed by a group of Fedora Art contributors in an attempt to replace the old Bluecurve. It has a modern look and follow the Tango naming guidelines. Martin talks about the new website including git web access and a nice status page, a final version of the guidelines, current activities, palns for future and more. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00142.html [2] https://fedorahosted.org/echo-icon-theme/wiki/IconThemeStatus === A new Inkscape release is coming === RahulSundaram forwards[1] there a call for testing for a development version of Inkscape, which in nearing a stable release. Inkscape is one of the major tools used by the team in their day to day work and the new release brings a lot on new and useful features, so they can be considered experts in the matter. When released, Inkscape 0.46 will be built also for Fedora 8 so is important to have it seriously tested in advance. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00130.html [[Anchor(DailyPackage)]] == Daily Package == In this section, we recap the packages that have been highlighted as a Fedora Daily Package. http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/ Contributing Writer: ChrisTyler === License Change === The Fedora Daily Package articles are now dual-licensed[1] under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 Canada license[2] and the Open Publication License[3]. The OPL was added for compatibility with the Fedora Documentation Project[4]. [1] http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/105-Fedora-Daily-Package-License-Change.html [2] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ca/ [3] http://opencontent.org/openpub/ [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject === Maxima - Computer Algebra System === ''Productive Mondays'' highlight a timesaving tool. This Monday[1] we covered Maxima[2]: "In the late 1960's, a computer algebra system named Macsyma was developed at MIT. ... Fedora includes the maxima package, an open-source descendant of the original Macsyma code (forked in 1982 and placed under the GPL in 1998)." [1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/162-Productive-Monday-Maxima.html [2] http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ === PDFCube - Presentation Viewer === ''Artsy Tuesdays'' highlight a graphics, video, or sound application. This Tuesday[1] PDFCube[2] was featured: "PDFCube is a tiny (35k) player for PDF presentations. It provides double-buffered page switching (PgUp/PgDown or space), zoom to the corners or center of a page (h,j,k,l,z), and a Compiz-style animated cube transition (c)." [1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/163-Artsy-Tuesday-PDFCube-Presentation-Viewer.html [2] http://code.100allora.it/pdfcube === Customizing the Grub Splash Screen === The ''Wednesday Why'' article[1] was on customizing the Fedora boot splash screen: "A Fedora system usually begins its boot process with a startup screen (or menu) displayed by the bootloader Grub. The background for this screen is provided by the wonderfully talented Fedora artTeam[2]. ... Customizing your boot screen with a favorite photo, your company logo, or even a cartoon is quite straightforward." [1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/164-Wednesday-Why-Customizing-the-Grub-Splash-Screen.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork === hplip-gui - HP Device Manager === ''GUI Thursdays'' highlight software that provides, enhances, or effectively uses a GUI interface. This Thursday[1], hplip-gui[2] was discussed: "HP printers and multifunction units are well supported in Fedora, thanks in large measure to HP's decision to open-source its driver software and utilities (hplip) in cooperation with related projects such as sane, ghostscript, and cups. The hplip-gui package provides a simple, convenient GUI front-end to these tools..." [1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/166-GUI-Thursday-hplip-gui-HP-Device-Manager.html [2] http://hplip.sourceforge.net/ === ksudoku - Sudoku Game === ''Friday Fun'' highlights fun, interesting, and amusing programs. This Friday[1], we took a look ksudoku[2]: "Ksudoku is a Sudoku game included in Fedora. It can generate Sudoku puzzles and many variants, including Roxdoku (3D) and Samurai (5 overlapping grid) versions." [1] http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/167-Friday-Fun-ksudoku-Sudoku-Game.html [2] http://ksudoku.sourceforge.net/ [[Anchor(SecurityWeek)]] == Security Week == In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora. Contributing Writer: JoshBressers === Kernel Local Root === The most exciting thing to happen last week was probably all the attention CVE-2008-0600[1] got. This flaw could allow a local user to gain root privileges, and things such as SELinux wouldn't stop it. The significant part isn't the local root in itself, but rather that there were working exploits available in the wild. There are always kernel privilege escalation flaws, but there are not always easy working exploits. This was of course fixed quite promptly in both Red Hat Enterprise Linux[2] and Fedora[3]. [1] http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-0600 [2] http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2008-0129.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00255.html [[Anchor(SecurityAdvisories)]] == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * kernel-2.6.23.15-137.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00255.html * kernel-xen-2.6-2.6.21-2957.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00270.html * seamonkey-1.1.8-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00309.html * moin-1.5.8-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00330.html * duplicity-0.4.9-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00356.html * glib2-2.14.6-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00371.html * devhelp-0.16.1-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00373.html * blam-1.8.3-13.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00374.html * chmsee-1.0.0-1.28.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00375.html * epiphany-extensions-2.20.1-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00376.html * gnome-web-photo-0.3-8.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00377.html * gnome-python2-extras-2.19.1-12.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00378.html * epiphany-2.20.2-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00379.html * firefox-2.0.0.12-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00380.html * gtkmozembedmm-1.4.2.cvs20060817-18.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00381.html * kazehakase-0.5.2-1.fc8.2 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00382.html * galeon-2.0.4-1.fc8.2 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00383.html * Miro-1.1-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00384.html * yelp-2.20.0-7.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00385.html * liferea-1.4.11-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00386.html * openvrml-0.17.5-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00387.html * ruby-gnome2-0.16.0-20.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00388.html * xine-lib-1.1.10.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00395.html * wordpress-2.3.3-0.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00416.html * openldap-2.3.39-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00430.html * mailman-2.1.9-8.2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00452.html * tomcat5-5.5.26-1jpp.2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00460.html * clamav-0.92.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00481.html * scponly-4.6-10.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00546.html * httpd-2.2.8-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00562.html * cacti-0.8.7b-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00570.html === Fedora 7 Security Advisories === * kernel-2.6.23.15-80.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00254.html * chmsee-1.0.0-1.28.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00272.html * epiphany-extensions-2.18.3-7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00273.html * firefox-2.0.0.12-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00274.html * devhelp-0.13-13.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00275.html * gtkmozembedmm-1.4.2.cvs20060817-15.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00276.html * gnome-python2-extras-2.14.3-8.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00277.html * galeon-2.0.3-15.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00278.html * ruby-gnome2-0.16.0-21.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00279.html * epiphany-2.18.3-6.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00280.html * liferea-1.4.9-2.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00281.html * kazehakase-0.5.2-1.fc7.2 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00282.html * yelp-2.18.1-9.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00283.html * Miro-1.1-3.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00284.html * openvrml-0.16.7-3.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00285.html * tomcat5-5.5.26-1jpp.2.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00315.html * wordpress-2.3.3-0.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00349.html * moin-1.5.8-3.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00424.html * xine-lib-1.1.10.1-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00442.html * duplicity-0.4.9-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00445.html * clamav-0.92.1-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00462.html * openldap-2.3.34-7.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00471.html * kernel-xen-2.6-2.6.21-7.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00485.html * graphviz-2.12-10.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00502.html * mailman-2.1.9-5.3 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00517.html * seamonkey-1.1.8-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00518.html * httpd-2.2.8-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00541.html * cacti-0.8.7b-1.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00593.html * scponly-4.6-10.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00595.html [[Anchor(EventsMeetings)]] == Events and Meetings == In this section, we cover event reports and meeting summaries from various Projects and SIGs. Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-02-12 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Meetings/2008-02-12 === Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-02-11 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommunityArchitecture/Meetings/2008-02-11 === Fedora Ambassadors Meeting 2008-02-13 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Meetings/2008-02-13 === Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-02-14 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/SteeringCommittee/Meetings/Minutes/IRCLog20080214 === Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2008-02-14 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Meeting-20080214 === Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2008-02-14 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Meetings/2008-02-14 === Fedora Packaging Committee Meeting 2008-02-12 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Minutes20080212 === Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2008-02-11 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/Meetings/2008-feb-11 === Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-02-13 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2008-Feb-13 === Fedora SIG KDE Report Week 2008-02-12 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/Meetings/2008-02-12 -- Thomas Chung http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung From mspevack at redhat.com Sat Feb 23 18:06:45 2008 From: mspevack at redhat.com (Max Spevack) Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:06:45 -0500 (EST) Subject: Fedora 10's FUDCon Message-ID: The next North American FUDCon will be in Boston, MA. It will be held from June 19-21, in parallel with this year's Red Hat Summit. For information and to sign up: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConF10 Thanks, Max From sebastian at when.com Thu Feb 21 15:38:53 2008 From: sebastian at when.com (sebastian at when.com) Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:38:53 +0100 Subject: Education SIG Message-ID: <47BD9B0D.2020202@when.com> Hi everybody, now, I am able to announce the establishment of an Education SIG. I have created a wiki page, which is currently placed here [1]. Again, I would like to encourage everybody, who is interested in education to join us on fedora-education-list and to add his or her name to the list in the wiki. In the near future, one topic might be, how to go on with educational work (e.g. in connection with K12LTSP). But this is only one part, so feel free to join and discuss. Best Regards, Sebastian Dziallas [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Education From bob at fedoraunity.org Fri Feb 22 18:53:04 2008 From: bob at fedoraunity.org (Robert 'Bob' Jensen) Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:53:04 -0600 Subject: Fedora Amateur Radio SIG Message-ID: <47BF1A10.5000703@fedoraunity.org> Hello Fedora, I would like to announce a new Special Interest Group in the Fedora Community, The Fedora Amateur Radio SIG or Fedora-Hams for short. I wanted to start the SIG to get radio related software in to Fedora, as it turns out there is a bunch of this type of software in every major distro but Fedora. We have been busy this past week submitting packages for review, most of them have been accepted and are now in Fedora, more waiting for reviews and more that still need packaging to be finished. On my FedoraPeople.org page I have a list of the packages in fedora, in review, in progress and dreams. We have a wiki page, a mailing list hosted by FedoraUnity.org and an IRC channel (#fedora-hams) on Freenode.net. Stop in an say 'Hi' 73, Robert 'Bob' Jensen KC0WYC http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BobJensen http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIG/AmatuerRadio http://bjensen.fedorapeople.org/pkgs/hams/ http://lists.fedoraunity.org/mailman/listinfo/fedora-hams From jspaleta at gmail.com Sat Feb 23 23:51:41 2008 From: jspaleta at gmail.com (Jeff Spaleta) Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:51:41 -0900 Subject: Are you a Fedora Contributor and want a LWN subscription? Message-ID: <604aa7910802231551o2bf9fa3avcd009f0da4ad4786@mail.gmail.com> To support the 10th anniversary of LWN.net, the Fedora Project has purchased 65 subscriptions to be given to Fedora contributors. The Fedora Board has decided that the fairest way to distribute this windfall of subscriptions is by holding an open lottery for all Fedora contributors who have an active account in the Fedora Account System (as of Feb 1st, 2008). I will be taking requests from all such interested Fedora contributors for the next week. If you are interested in making a request, here is what you need to do: Send an email to: jspaleta at fedoraproject.org Subject: LWN Subscription request Please include the following: * Your Fedora Account System username * Your full name as it appears in the Fedora Account System * Your LWN account name (you'll need to create an account with LWN before sending in the request for a subscription) Please have all requests in by March 1st, 2008. -jef"The Man...agement"spaleta From tchung at fedoraproject.org Mon Feb 25 10:50:56 2008 From: tchung at fedoraproject.org (Thomas Chung) Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:50:56 -0800 Subject: Fedora Weekly News Issue 121 Message-ID: <369bce3b0802250250t38892a5bic0c88909b54b3f9f@mail.gmail.com> = Fedora Weekly News Issue 121 = Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 121 for the week of February 18th, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue121 In Announcements, we have "Fedora 10's FUDCon", "LWN subscription?", "Fedora Amateur Radio SIG" and "Fedora Education SIG" In Planet Fedora, we have "What a FOSDEM Day!", "FOSDEM08 - Saturday", "The FOSDEM Buzz", "LWN, Fedora and you", "Fedora 10's FUDCon" and "Fedora by Night" To join or give us your feedback, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join. 1. Announcements 1. Fedora 10's FUDCon 2. LWN subscription? 3. Fedora Amateur Radio SIG 4. Fedora Education SIG 2. Planet Fedora 1. What a FOSDEM Day! 2. FOSDEM08 - Saturday 3. The FOSDEM Buzz 4. LWN, Fedora and you 5. Fedora 10's FUDCon 6. Fedora by Night 3. Marketing 1. Dig the KDE4 Interview 2. Fedora Studios Spin? 3. Free Me Too 4. Fedora and the art of creating an inclusive community 5. Fedora Store SIG Update 6. Windows -> Fedora -> Windows 7. Best way to announce things? 8. Logo War: Red Hat Takes On DataPortability 9. Ubuntu Marketing 10. Fedora and alternative desktops 11. AMD Releases 3D Programming Documentation 4. Ambassadors 1. Fedora By Night Event Report 2. FOSDEM Reports 5. Developments 1. Evolution Of Mail Client Preferences 2. Incompatible Unison Update 3. Three Simple Steps To Speed Up Booting / Shutdown 4. When To Introduce Asterisk 1.6 5. SELinux Smolt Statistics 6. How To Get Mock To Include Testing Packages In Buildroot 7. Auto-rebuild Release Bump Errors 8. GCC 4.3 Mass Rebuild 6. Documentation 1. Generating PDFs with Publican 2. F9 Toolchain 7. Infrastructure 1. Koji Bandaid 2. news.fp.o 3. Mailman List Policy for Fedora Hosted 8. Artwork 1. Theming the distro: the new GDM 2. EeeDora Artwork 9. Security Week 1. CUPS flaw 2. Disk Encryption Isn't So Safe 10. Security Advisories 1. Fedora 8 Security Advisories 2. Fedora 7 Security Advisories 11. Events and Meetings 1. Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-02-19 2. Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-02-18 3. Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-02-20 4. Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2008-02-21 5. Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-02-20 6. Fedora SIG EPEL Report Week 07/2008 7. Fedora SIG KDE Report Week 2008-02-19 [[Anchor(Announcements)]] == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from Fedora Project. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora 10's FUDCon === MaxSpevack announces in fedora-announce-list[1], "The next North American FUDCon will be in Boston, MA. It will be held from June 19-21, in parallel with this year's Red Hat Summit." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00007.html === LWN subscription? === JeffSpaleta announces in fedora-announce-list[1], "To support the 10th anniversary of LWN.net, the Fedora Project has purchased 65 subscriptions to be given to Fedora contributors." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00010.html === Fedora Amateur Radio SIG === BobJensen announces in fedora-announce-list[1], "I would like to announce a new Special Interest Group in the Fedora Community, The Fedora Amateur Radio SIG or Fedora-Hams for short." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00009.html === Fedora Education SIG === SebastianDziallas announces in fedora-announce-list[1], "I would like to encourage everybody, who is interested in education to join us on fedora-education-list and to add his or her name to the list in the wiki." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-February/msg00008.html [[Anchor(PlanetFedora)]] == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover a highlight of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from world wide Fedora contributors. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet Contributing Writers: ThomasChung === What a FOSDEM Day! === JoergSimon reports in his blog[1], "the first FOSDEM Day is over and compared to last year, our booth is much better located - so the people overrun our booth - no way to count with how many people we talked - sometimes it was chaotic, could not move." [1] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/02/first-fosdem-day-is-over-and-compared.html === FOSDEM08 - Saturday === FrancescoUgolini reports in his blog[1], "a lot of people visit us not only at the booth but at the conferences that Fedora contributors held (with great results, see Jens speech about SELinux), moreover people asked for DVDs (the live CDs ended soon) and they wanted to try the two OLPCs that we had at the booth." [1] http://ugolini.livejournal.com/1950.html === The FOSDEM Buzz === JeroenVanMeeuwen reports in his blog[1], "Yesterday was an interesting day at FOSDEM. I've been working on pyJigdo mostly -in order to get the proposed feature for Fedora 9 done, and while I was doing so I attended talks...I've taken some pictures you can view at my Fedora Unity space. Announcements in all the proper places coming up soon." [1] http://blogs.fedoraunity.org/kanarip/2008/02/24/the-fosdem-buzz === LWN, Fedora and you === JefSpaleta reports in his blog[1], "The Fedora Board has decided that the fairest way to distribute this windfall of subscriptions is by holding an open lottery for all Fedora contributors who have an active account in the Fedora Account System" [1] http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/19142.html === Fedora 10's FUDCon === MaxSpevack reports in his blog[1], "Look! We're actually planning ahead for the next North American FUDCon, to be held in Boston MA, in conjunction with this year's Red Hat Summit." [1] http://spevack.livejournal.com/46053.html === Fedora by Night === FrancescoCrippa reports in his blog[1], "Yesterday night was a Fedora Night! "Fedora by Night" attracted a lot of Linux enthusiasts from Lodi and near zones. Thanks to LOLUG for help, availability and visibility." [1] http://people.byte-code.com/fcrippa/2008/02/21/fedora-by-night-the-day-after/ [[Anchor(Marketing)]] == Marketing == In this section, we cover Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: JohnBabich === Dig the KDE4 Interview === JonathanRoberts announced [1] that the KDE4 interview [2] can now be "Dug". [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00278.html [2} http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_IS_a_KDE_distro === Fedora Studios Spin? === FrancescoUgolini proposed [1] that we "create a Fedora Spin with open source movie / sound / image programmes". This would be an alternative to prohibitively expensive commercial products. MichaelBeckwith agreed [2], saying we "could probably include stuff like video and sound editing in the art spin if it's not already planned." Juan M. Rodriguez Moreno reminded us [3] that "Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) used ...Fedora Core 2." Things could only have gotten better. GregDeKoenigsberg put forward [4] that "we should start by engaging Fernando Lopez-Lezcano [and] Planet CCRMA." NicuBuculei expressed [5] his skepticism: "However, the tools are not ready yet: Kino can't open Ogg Theora, PiTiVi can't do anything useful, Cinelerra makes full use of proprietary codecs and so on. Do not forget the potential legal troubles around such a spin: it would have to handle out of the box all the tasks using free codecs, which may not be what the users expect (you would not be legally able to master a DVD with it)." RussellHarrison added [6] there "would need to be the same sort of educational message Codina has in prominent locations all over the DVD. Aside from the technical issues you pointed out which are much more difficult to deal with." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00280.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00281.html [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00283.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00284.html [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00290.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00293.html === Free Me Too === RahulSundaram pointed out [1] that "we have been discussing taking Free Me to the next step. Free Me is a collection of open licensed content bundled with a Live CD. Jonathan Roberts, I appreciate your suggestions. Let's get started [2]. In particular, any hints on finding some of the content under open codec formats or conversion procedures would be appreciated. Additional content suggestions ...that... should be freely distributable and preferably have no use restrictions." JonathanRoberts enthused [3] "Wow, totally awesome that you're picking this up now!! Conversion procedures I can definitely help with, though you might need people to tweak it a little bit...ffmpeg2theora I think is the best tool for the conversion of the video...Oh and another point: part of my goals with free me was to make it workable without even having to boot the live disc..." He followed up [4] with "you're more than welcome to use any of the free me artwork". Rahul asked [5] "How did you get the Google Videos converted? How about all the other content not in theora or any open format?" RussellHarrison volunteered [6] to help, but had some reservations: "Is there any legal exposure if we use tools with potential patent problems to convert content even if they aren't distributed on the DVD? h.264 comes to mind as an example...Should all of the content on the DVD be licensed under free licenses such as Creative Commons, or is it acceptable for the [copyright] holder to release the content for distribution with the DVD." Rahul cautioned [7] "if you are in a region that enforce software patents, you should consider the implications carefully... If you have content in patent encumbered codecs, feel free to point them to me and I will take care of the conversion. He added that he wants "openly licensed content and not something specific to the DVD image I put out. The ability to redistribute content as a criteria is not negotiable. I am ok with some of the content having non-commercial restrictions though I would prefer not." Nicu promoted [8] the openclipart package [9], which Rahul added to his wiki page [2]. Rahul stated [10] that "the goal of the live DVD is to promote Free culture and Free software but not Fedora specifically." RussellHarrison heartily agreed [11]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00282.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RahulSundaram/FreeMeToo [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00285.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00286.html [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00287.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00292.html [7] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00294.html [8] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00295.html [9] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=5839 [10] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00299.html [11] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00326.html === Fedora and the art of creating an inclusive community === Caroline Kazmierski announced [1] that PaulFrields was interviewed by Matt Asay on his CNET blog, "The Open Road" [2]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00303.html [2] http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9875189-16.html?tag=head === Fedora Store SIG Update === JeffreyTadlock updated [1] on "what has been happening with the Fedora Store SIG. This past week I placed an order from cafepress.com, I ordered a T-shirt and a coffee mug...The mug looked okay. The T-shirt was of good quality material wise, but the printing left a lot to be desired...I have posted pictures, comparing the cafepress.com shirt to the screen printed shirt here [2]...Another item I could use help on is with a mockup of the store web page [3]...If you have any pros and cons to mention, a new distributor to consider - please add them to the wiki by next Wednesday, February 27th." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00309.html [2] http://jeffreyt.fedorapeople.org/storeSIG/ [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Store/GeneralRequirements === Windows -> Fedora -> Windows === MarcWiriadisastra submitted [1] a link [2] to a strange article on a school going from Windows to Fedora and back again. He provided this bizarre quote: "The move ended up saving a lot of money in licensing costs. Initially, the school used Red Hat Linux; later Fedora, Red Hat's community distribution, was used. The money saved was used to upgrade hardware at the school and also to provide for more PCs." NicuBuculei opined [3]: "The reason is simple: "The reason for the switch back to Microsoft operating systems? A lack of support from some of the teachers, says Perkins."...But what I think was the final nail in the coffin was: "but when all staff got laptops at the end of 2007, it spelt the end of Linux desktops at the school. The laptops came with Windows and Office installed - this was not negotiable". He continued [4] that "when users have a problem with Windows they blame Microsoft and then give up, as "everybody uses it" and "this is the way things work". But when the users have a problem with Linux they blame the person who deployed Linux, "it was easier with Windows", "this Linux thing is not like Windows and it sucks", "give me back my trusted Windows"." Luis Felipe Marzagao contributed [5] that "the main problem seems to be the lack of the possibility to simply download programs from the internet and install them", regardless of the danger. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00311.html [2] http://www.itwire.com/content/view/16721/1090/1/0/ [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00312.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00320.html [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00332.html === Best way to announce things? === JonathanRoberts [1] queried: "I'd like some ideas from people. Fedora does *loads* of cool stuff that isn't just development work, but community enabling work...I think we need another mechanism for letting people know about cool infrastructure and community enabling stuff that goes on. Things [like] the new collaboration server; fedorapeople.org; the open build tools; transifex; publican etc...I want to make sure we're doing the best we can and getting the most attention we can for all the *awesome* extra-development stuff that goes on!" MarcWiriadisastra recalled [2] "that there was discussion of a wiki page that pointed to a whole heap of e-marketing links or something. I'm not sure if that page has ever been created." RahulSundaram recommended [3] "we should use [news.fedoraproject.org] extensively and integrate it into the front page via a RSS feed. Other major announcements can go to fedora-announce list. Things like publican for example. We should probably drop mails to journalists directly which we have not been doing yet." Jonathan was more concerned about the other formats besides press releases [4], which led Rahul to agree [5], remarking that "We should be casual, highlight not only the work done but also the people doing the work and let Red Hat do the official press releases." KarstenWade contributed [6] that "You are asking about format, which means...Style of writing [and] Tooling (file format). For the style of writing, I agree with Rahul's suggestion of a casual tone...For tooling, we have a very cool and very simple to use method for writing 'press releases' that can be translated. Getting global coverage is going to require translation...Some announcements might need to be rewritten from scratch in other languages because of idioms, etc. Anyone feel like learning to use this press release tool, then writing up how-to on the wiki? The point would be to follow a rough process like this: 1. Collaborate on a list of what to highlight (ongoing) 2. Collaborate via the wiki to write up draft => ready to release 3. Copy and paste into a press-release shell 4. Finish conversion into press-release and keep these in a version control system [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00314.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00314.html [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00319.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00322.html [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00323.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00330.html === Logo War: Red Hat Takes On DataPortability === Note: Most, if not all, of the following contributors are not lawyers. RahulSundaram reported [1] the following [2]: "Data`Portability Work`Group is a project founded in November 2007 to develop best practices towards letting users move, share, and control their identity, photos, videos and all other forms of personal data stored in social networks and other web services. After months of positive news, the group has had its first hiccup, a cease and desist letter from Red`Hat over their use of the Fedora [logo]" NicuBuculei saw [3] the similarities. JohnBabich contributed {4] a mini-investigation, in which he concluded "this is a well-intentioned group of men and women who just happened to pick a logo similar to the Fedora logo. No malice or intentional confusion is intended, and some in the group would be more than happy to adopt another logo.", to which Duvelle Jones agreed [5]. However, JeffSpaleta believes [6]: "Here's the basic problem..... US trademark law demands ACTIVE policing of a trademark, for the mark to remain protected. This is direct contrast with how copyright and patent law works. If you don't actively police your trademark, then it can lose its protected status...A cease and desist letter is the legal mechanism that the US legal system will recognize in situations where the infringing status is in dispute. If Red Hat doesn't use mechanisms recognized by the US legal system (the system which ultimately determines whether a trademark is still protected), then the trademark on the Fedora logo is jeopardized...The ultimate goal here is the continued protection of the Fedora logo as a registered trademark. There is no malice in the C&D letter. The other logo is similar." GregDeKoenigsberg informed us [7] that he was "discussing this issue with legal now, looking for a sensible compromise. I'll report back." KarstenWade surmised [8]: "Maybe it's not possible or sensible to send a 'nice letter'?...When you put the Fedora and Data Portability logos side-by-side the differences are more apparent. But honestly, when I first saw the Data Portability website, I thought, 'Wow, looks like the Fedora logo.' So, Red Hat is working *for* us in defending the mark. Dilution of that mark means dilution of our work. It's directly related to why we are so careful about keeping non-free and encumbered software out of the distro, as well as the many other actions that make Fedora what it is." Tony Guntharp, who is a member of the Data`Portability Group, appreciating Karsten's remarks, replied [9]: "The DP group (of which I am a member) is an loosely formed community with a purpose very similiar in vein to Open Source / Free Software...A C&D letter should have been sent out as a last resort instead of being the first salvo. By this being the first shot across the bow it only allows for escalation to the court system. If the DP group had been approached sooner by someone from within Red Hat then I think the issue would have still been resolved in the same manner w/o Red Hat looking like the bad guy." Greg agreed [10], saying "You are obviously correct. Sometimes the left hand acts without knowing what the right hand is doing. We're working on an answer to the problem right now, preferably before it hits Slashdot." Finally, Tony informed us [11], "Well Chris Saad (the quasi-leader) of DP is in SF until April 28th (he's in from Australia) if anyone from Red Hat cares to meet up with him. And I'm intimately familiar with the left hand/right hand issues." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00333.html [2] http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/21/logo-war-red-hat-takes-on-dataportability/ [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00335.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00336.html [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00337.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00350.html [7] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00355.html [8] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00351.html [9] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00359.html [10] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00361.html [11] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00362.html === Ubuntu Marketing === Note: This thread and related threads totaled 66 messages. The original message by ValentTurkovic [1] highlighted Ubuntu Cola, the UK's first Cola with Fairtrade Label [2]. It quickly moved onto the subject of Ubuntu's popularity (the linux distribution, not the cola), closed multimedia drivers, how to inform users of non-free drivers, etc. There were important and serious discussions about what "freedom" really is about, integrity, and what end users expect, and other related topics too numerous to list here. ClintSavage provided [3] the best one-liner: "Let me use a phrase from my childhood and say 'if Ubuntu jumped off a cliff, would you?'", which was considered to be the winner in the t-shirt slogan contest by Karsten [4]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00339.html [2] http://www.ubuntu-trading.com/ [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00394.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00406.html === Fedora and alternative desktops === RahulSundaram noted [1] that the Distro`Watch Weekly [2] covered KDE4 and Xfce in Fedora, while the official KDE site [3] listed the "KDE 4 And Fedora Interview". [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00341.html [2] http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20080218#news [3] http://dot.kde.org/1203420709/ === AMD Releases 3D Programming Documentation === RahulSundaram reports [1]: "Another win for Free software. The age old myth about vendors unable to release 3D information for any number of reasons just went out of the door... again. "AMD has just published the first bits of open-source 3D programming documentation for ATI GPUs. This 3D programming documentation covers the R500 series and even goes back with information on the R300/400 series as well. The R600 3D programming guide will also be out soon" [2]" [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-February/msg00413.html [2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_tcore_release&num=1 [[Anchor(Ambassadors)]] == Ambassadors == In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock === Fedora By Night Event Report === FrancescoCrippa reported to the Ambassadors' mailing list on the Fedora at Night event held on February 19th in Lodi, Italy. Highlights of the event include a presentation on the community behind Fedora, a brief overview on how Fedora is built and managed and followed up with a question and answer period. Don't miss Francesco's more detailed blog post and the pictures from the event he posted. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-February/msg00168.html [2] http://people.byte-code.com/fcrippa/2008/02/21/fedora-by-night-the-day-after/ [3] http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcrippa/sets/72157603949413659/ === FOSDEM Reports === The reports [1-6] from FOSDEM 2008 in Brussels, Belgium are beginning to roll in. Fedora is well represented at this conference with an estimated twenty+ ambassadors in attendance to talk about Fedora! MaxSpevack will be updating the FOSDEM Fedora Event page [7] with links to new reports and pictures, so be sure to check that page for updates that did not make it by the Fedora News deadline. [1] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/02/first-fosdem-day-is-over-and-compared.html [2] http://ugolini.livejournal.com/1700.html [3] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/02/fosdem-arrival-arrived-1700-at-brussels.html [4] http://blogs.fedoraunity.org/kanarip/2008/02/23/fosdem-2008-first-day [5] http://fabaff.blogspot.com/2008/02/fosdem-2008-00.html [6] http://blogs.fedoraunity.org/kanarip/2008/02/22/fosdem-2008-coming-up-soon [7] http://fedoraunity.org/Members/kanarip/pictures/2008-fosdem [[Anchor(Developments)]] == Developments == In this section, we cover the problems/solutions, people/personalities, and ups/downs of the endless discussions on Fedora Developments. http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list Contributing Writer: OisinFeeley === Evolution Of Mail Client Preferences === A long thread over the selection of ''evolution'' as the default MUA in Fedora was started[1] by JensPetersen. After carefully donning a figurative asbestos suit Jens noted that ''evolution'' was different enough from the other GNOME applications that it was expensive to maintain and that the release of the Mozilla Foundation's calendaring application ''lightning'' and the stability of their MUA ''thunderbird'' suggested they could be chosen instead. MatthewBarnes asked for elaboration of the assertion that "Evolution [is] basically a different platform [to GNOME]". Jens replied[2], first with a courteous thanks to Matthew for his maintenance work on ''evolution'' and then specified that he was referring to its "custom gtk widgets and gtkhtml". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01750.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01765.html Matthew, who had dug in for "another round of Evolution bashing", acknowledged[3] these points and listed the specific steps he was undertaking to "chip away at [...] the old cruft [and] technology that fell out of favor years ago." The list includes a migration from ''GtkHTML'' (the rendering library) to ''WebKit/GTK+'', a move from custom gtk widgets to modern GTK+ widgets, replacement of parts of the ''GNOME Applications Library'' and rewriting the message composer to not use ''bonobo''. All this work is still in progress and may take some time. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01792.html JohanGudmundsson and MatejCepl thought[4] that a parallel install of Evolution and Thunderbird along with a mail-migration script for Thunderbird should be installed and then the flame-fest should be concentrated on ''Tomboy'' and ''mono''. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01871.html The issue of actual user preference was floated[5] by NicuBuculei when he referenced Mugshot statistics which show a preference for Thunderbird. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01769.html MatejCepl did not believe that Jens original mail was not intended as a flame and posted[6] a list of reasons to distrust ''thunderbird'', including poor IMAP support, poor vfolder support, bad reply-to defaults, a lack of regexes, the use of the working folder for message storage, and finally a proven track record of crashing. Matej's reluctant conclusion was that all email clients sucked but that he would like to find a GUI MUA that sucked as little as ''mutt'' did in the non-GUI space. Further discussion with KevinKofler seemed[7] to suggest that ''KMail'' was a possible contender. It was even revealed[8] to be gaining HTML support, despite "HTML mail [being] a plague infecting the Internet." This latter opinion was disputed[9] by "Gene" who pointed out a business use-case where a HTML table can be filled out more easily than ASCII. AlanCox retorted[10] that "you have no idea what the recipient receives if you do that. HTML isn't a strict formatting specification." He went on to provide a demonstration of how large GIFs, which in themselves take up little space, may be turned into enormous RAM-munching bitmaps causing the recipient's client to die. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01778.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01782.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01899.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01923.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01926.html The banner of "All MUAs suck, it's just a question of which sucks less for a given user/task" was raised again by JohnDennis. The most useful attribute of ''Thunderbird'' for him was its lack of crashing. TomasMraz suggested[11] that Evolution's crashing had stopped after upgrading to Fedora 8, at least for his usage patterns. BennyAmorsen thought[12] ''Evolution'' crashes were due to the Exchange Connector as did TimothySelivanow. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01813.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01836.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01815.html PeteZaitcev laid[14] the blame on HavocPennington for diligently implementing the Open Source Architecture vision[14a] with Evolution plus Epiphany and explained that its "main merit [...] is the integration with calendaring and LDAP". He cautioned that Thunderbird was subject to competing factions which might turn it into a bloated monster and added that for his own personal use ''sylpheed'' was good at not chewing patches. BryanClark wrote[15] an excellent overview of the situation which suggests that Evolution's integration and Exchange capabilities have entrenched it for now. [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01872.html [14a] http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/gov/WHP0005US_FEA.pdf [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01877.html As with all good flamebait there was a lot of anecdotal evidence in the thread with some claiming[16] that Thunderbird was better than Evolution for IMAP folders and yet others flatly contradicting[17] this experience. It appears that there is a good deal of ground to be made up to produce a fast, non-archive destroying, IMAP-aware mail client. [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01752.html [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01756.html === Incompatible Unison Update === The bleeding-edge nature of Fedora came to the fore again when StephenWarren asked[1] whether the decision to update ''unison'' in Fedora 8 to a package which was not backwards compatible with older versions was the right thing to do. JonathanUnderwood gave[2] his opinion that it was correct given the "bleeding edge" nature of Fedora and suggested that Stephen ask for a compatibility package or, better still, made one. Stephen was not pleased[3] and argued that while he expected breakage between major versions of the distro he did not expect it within a stable version. He also thought that he might find another distro if such decisions were actually the norm. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01809.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01810.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01820.html JefSpaleta thought[4] that Jonathan had handled the situation the wrong way. In part this was based on the assumption that Jonathan had closed the bug quickly with "NOTABUG", as suggested in the comments to the entry. ChristopherAillon also agreed with Stephen that the wrong decision had been made and reminded[5] the list that keeping users of the distribution relatively happy unless there were very good over-riding considerations was important. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01828.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01822.html Jef requested[6] more information from Stephen as to the nature of the incompatibility asking him to bear in mind the need to limit the existence of compatibility packages. Responses from Stephen detailing the exact systems that he was using led to a list which Jonathan dismissed[7] as mostly irrelevant due to them being EOL'ed. HansdeGoede thought that breaking a network protocol during a stable release was a problem and also expressed[8] concern over Jonathan's tone. Jonathan apologized[9] for any unintended tone and argued that the bugs fixed by the update were showstoppers for cross-compatibility and thus necessary. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01824.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01834.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01839.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01881.html A lot of the commentary suggested that such changes were unacceptable. AndrewFarris noted[10] that such changes were not uncommon with upstream ''unison'' and ChristopherAillon suggested considering ''rsync'' as an alternative. Andrew explained[11] that ''unison'' did not simply replicate changes from an authoritative master to a slave, but kept both sides in sync with each other. [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01864.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01866.html As things stand there appears to be a compatibility package created by Stephen awaiting[12] review, with quite a deal of discussion already attached. [12] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=433915 === Three Simple Steps To Speed Up Booting / Shutdown === The slow booting of Fedora led ArjanvanderVen to undertake some practical steps to speed things up. He confessed[1] to being "a tad annoyed by why the initscript processing is (in my impatient perception) slow" as each actual initscript is actually relatively quick. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01495.html The practical improvements broke down into six major types of change affecting ''/etc/rc.d/rc'', ''/etc/init.d/functions'' and ''/etc/profile.d/lang.sh''. They include rewriting builtin Bourne-shell inclusive-or tests for files ,e.g. {{{[ -f FOO -o -f BAR ]}}}, to two separate statements testing for each file. The point of this is to reduce the un-needed disk-seeking and I/O of searching for BAR in the cases where FOO exists. BehdadEsfahbod suggested[2] that the BASH short-circuit test, later provided[2a] by AdamGoode as {{{ [[ -f FOO || -f BAR ]] }}}, should be used instead. Behdad had undertaken a similar exercise to Arjan's and agreed that another of the optimizations, namely to not change VGA fonts via initscripts, was important. He extended it to "I'd go as far as saying that unicode_start should only be called from /etc/profile, not other bash invocations." BillNottingham agreed strongly[3], saying "Heck, it should only be called from a udev rule on console initialization." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01501.html [2a] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01522.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01610.html Behdad had concentrated on ''rc.sysinit'' and was disturbed by a script ''/sbin/start_udev'' which it called as it provided its own internal, slower implementation of ''xargs'' instead of calling a real xargs when available. Arjan felt[4] that ''udev'' was "so incredibly slow that it's just outrageous" and referenced a comparison to a much quicker boot with a non-Fedora distribution preloaded on his laptop. HaraldHoyer suggested[5] that it would be useful to "add udevinfo or udevdebug to the kernel command line" to check for some of what he found to be the usual causes of a long startup: slow kernel module loading; firmware loading failing; persistent storage labeling bugs. OlaThoresen noted[6] that if LDAP is used for authentication and the network is not up before udev starts then udev waits for a long timeout. LubomirKundrak remembered[7] that there had been a thread about a year ago in which someone recommended that modprobe dependencies should be cached as udev spent most of its time waiting for this information. In fact this work had been done by HaraldHoyer himself as reported in FWN#103 "Udev Performance"[8]. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01520.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01586.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01624.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01615.html [8] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue103#head-4ff62435e0646dccef282c64ec86f3b2c8350ef3 === When To Introduce Asterisk 1.6 === JeffreyOllie asked[1] what the general feeling was about waiting until Fedora 10 to introduce the latest version of the VOIP server ''asterisk''. Right now packages of version 1.4 of ''asterisk'' are available for Fedora 7 and Fedora 8 but the 1.6 version was reported by Jeff to be in "late beta". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01659.html JefSpaleta wondered[2] why he could not package it after the Fedora 9 ISOs had been released, then drop it into the "updates-testing" repository with appropriate fanfare to alert interested testers, and finally push it into "updates-released" after making any necessary changes. Jeff explained[3] that he wished to "avoid upgrading to a new Asterisk major version in a stable Fedora release" with the reason that Asterisk users tended to be "averse to upgrading" with some still running on 2.4 kernels and Digium still supporting Asterisk-1.2. There seemed to be some support for this position, but BennyAmorsen added[4] the information that the support provided by Digium was for the non-GPL'ed "Business Edition" and extended only to security fixes. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01662.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01668.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01703.html The other side of the argument was put[5] by RichiPlana who stated his preference, as an employee of an enterprise which ships production systems based on the latest Fedora and Asterisk versions, for a package of the beta to be available for testing "even if it doesn't go stable before F10 is released". Richi later argued[6] that as Asterisk itself was moving to a shorter release cycle more synchronized with Fedora's and that this "beta3" seemed from their list traffic to be implementing very conservative changes. The new management features were something which Richi was especially interested in testing. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01705.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01663.html The stability of the beta was raised[7] by KevinKofler as an important factor in the decision. He argued that if the official release was scheduled prior to the release of Fedora 9 then "you should definitely upgrade to the beta now and get the release info F9 final." If, however, it were to be released afterwards then a decision needed to be made based upon the evaluation of the stability of the beta. Kevin noted that the "beta" label itself meant wildly different things for different projects. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01682.html On a related issue JohannGudmundsson asked[8] whether the latest ''ISC-DHCP'' (ver. 4) and ''freeradius'' could be packaged. He also wondered if there were some way to see whether Fedora was shipping the most recent software from a variety of projects. JohnDennis answered[9] that he just needed to find time to get the latest ''freeradius 2'' done and that there was nothing blocking it. FlorianlaRoche posted[10] a link to a handy distrowatch table which may be slightly inaccurate but attempts to provide a tabular view of package versions. KevinKofler reminded[11] Johann that DHCP-4 was already in rawhide. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01670.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01671.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01672.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01683.html === SELinux Smolt Statistics === Seeking clarification on the figures reported by Smolt for SELinux JamesMorris asked[1] whether the report that approximately half of those surveyed (circa 331,000 registered hosts) had SELinux enabled was accurate. James pointed out that as reports on SELinux had only been collected from Fedora 8 onward the true percentage might be closer to 74%. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01621.html YaakovNemoy agreed[2] that more detailed reports were necessary, but was off to FOSDEM and had to put it on a "TODO" list for urgent attention. JamesMorris was[3] keener to get a quick correction up on the web page and some clarification as to how the statistics were calculated. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01622.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01634.html A slightly fraught part of the thread was started[4] by ValentTurkovic when he replied to James' original query with a partial quote which emphasized the original statistic "If this arguments are true for Fedora 8 than it looks like that more people dislike selinux than like it, right?" and ignored the probable confusion which James had pointed out. James responded[5] "Why did you delete the rest of the email, which queried these numbers and suggested that the real figure for enablement was much higher?" He added that off-list he had obtained the raw figures for Fedora 8 systems (the only ones which actually are set up to report whether SELinux is enabled or not) and "the "Enabled=True" value is currently 94%." James qualified this with the caution that there were several factors confounding any simple interpretation. JohnDennis answered[6] that Valent had an "anti SELinux agenda" as referenced by previous threads and Valent countered[7] that this was a misunderstanding and that he was helping by contributing bugs for selinux-policy. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01690.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01704.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01962.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01962.html One of the possible confounding factors was raised by BennyAmorsen, who asked "Does Enabled=True imply enforcing". JamesMorris answered[8] that it did not and this was one of the extra pieces of information which needed to be collected. He also expressed a wish that information on other security features such as ''iptables'' be collected. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01739.html === How To Get Mock To Include Testing Packages In Buildroot === NealBecker asked[1] how it was possible to build against a package which was in ''testing''. He was specifically concerned with the situation that his ''python-igraph'' package had a BuildRequires on ''igraph-devel'' and he wished to build against the latest ''igraph-devel-0.5'' which had just been pushed into testing. IgnacioVazquezAbrams told him to "request a buildroot inclusion from releng" and upon further questioning confirmed[2] that this meant "send an email to releng." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01633.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01647.html A webpage listing the commands used by Koji administrators was linked[3] by AlexLancaster and he suggested adding the "email rel-eng" instructions for ordinary users there. JesseKeating seemed[4] to want to keep that particular page as a reference for the Koji administrators but requested "somebody please suggest a place where [instructions on making this request by email] will be found and used [on the wiki]." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01675.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01676.html "This is not a particularly intuitive mechanism at the moment. How can we automate this better" asked[5] DenisLeroy. Jesse replied[6] with a request for patches. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01637.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01638.html === Auto-rebuild Release Bump Errors === A report[1] by OrionPoplawski of an incorrect bump of the version of his pre-release ''gdl'' package, as a result of the GCC-4.3 autorebuild (see this same FWN#121 "GCC 4.3 Mass Rebuild"), exposed a problem in its naming. The ''gdl 0.9-0.pre6.fc9'' package bad been bumped to ''0.9-1.pre6.fc9'' and Orion noted that it should have been ''0.9-0.pre6.fc9.1''. MichaelSchwendt corrected[2] the original numbering to ''0.9-0.1.pre6%{?dist}''. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01657.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01660.html After JesseKeating agreed with Michael and pointed out that packages which fail to follow the guidelines will be missed by the bumper attention was drawn[3] to the jpp-based java packages by MattWringe. Matt noted that they seemed to have all failed to update properly, yet were following the JPackage naming guidelines. Michael asked[4] whether the original BillNottingham / ElliotLee (sopwith) script in cvs/fedora, used by the old FedoraExtras, was used as "if a different and secret script is used, that's not helpful." Jesse responded[5] that it was one from ''cvs/fedora/rebuild-scripts'' and asked for details of failed jpp packages because the ones which he had examined seemed fine. KevinKofler reported that they were bumped to ''m+1jpp.something'' instead of ''mjpp.n+1'' to which Michael replied[6] that this was now a supported scheme in cvs. In discussion with Kevin further details of the bumper were explained by Michael. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01957.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01968.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01969.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01985.html === GCC 4.3 Mass Rebuild === The announcement that a mass rebuild using ''GCC-4.3'' was made[1] on 18 February 2008 by JesseKeating. JoshBoyer sounded[2] happy that blacklist requests (by the owners of packages which were known in advance to fail to rebuild) would no longer be accepted. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01597.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01601.html JoshBoyer in response to DenisLeroy stated[3] that the algorithm was to "rebuild all except blacklisted AND already rebuilt with gcc 4.3". [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01582.html PERL packages were thought[4] by PaulHowarth to be a problem as he had been waiting for an update to ''PERL 5.10'' in the buildroots before he built his packages. Josh answered[5] that such packages would be rebuilt twice: once now and then another time when the PERL update landed. TomCallaway issued[6] a mea culpa for the lack of a PERL update. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01584.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01590.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg01614.html [[Anchor(Documentation)]] == Documentation == In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject Contributing Writer: JohnBabich === Generating PDFs with Publican === JaredSmith has been testing Publican with a few Fedora Project documents. He stated [1] that he kept "getting errors from FOP when I try to build PDFs." He later added [2] "I think I've made some pretty good progress on tracking down this problem. To make a long short, publican is assuming that we're using FOP 0.20, while what's in rawhide is 0.94. This meant xsltproc was adding fox:destination elements to the .fo file, instead of the new fo:bookmarks instead." To work around this problem, he modified xsltproc parameters in the Makefile. ...That got the .fo file generated so that FOP 0.94 would handle it correctly, but then FOP died complaining that it couldn't find Batik in the classpath...Ah, lo and behold, I was able to render a PDF!" He added that this "raised a few questions: 1) Do we want the toolchain to be able to detect the version of FOP and adjust itself accordingly? 2) Do we want to expose other parameters to xsltproc? In my very rudimentary home-grown toolchain, I create a custom XSLT stylesheet that exposes a bunch of settings (paper.type, double.sided, draft.mode, shade.verbatim, etc.) which imports the standard XSL stylesheet. Would this be more manageable in the long run that passing a bunch of stringparam arguments to xsltproc? 3) Makefile.templates currently tells FOP to use the fop configuration file in $(COMMON_CONFIG)/fop/fop-0.20.5.xconf, but that doesn't come as part of the publican package. Should we remove the reference (and assume people have a valid FOP config file in /etc/fop.conf), or expose this via a variable in the Makefile? (This isn't a big deal -- I just thought I'd mention it in passing while I was thinking about it.) 4) Can somebody take a look at why fop isn't seeing batik in the classpath? My Java skills are obviously too weak to fix this problem." JeffFearn, one of main developers of Publican, replied [3] that there were differences introduced by using different versions of FOP and that customization of brands at this stage is difficult. However, there are ways to customize PDF output by making a new xsl files. It is possible to add extra build targets, but it's a little tricky since it involves modifyng Makefiles. Jeff later announced [4] "I came up with a way that can support an arbitrary number of config files". Jared responded [5] "I currently have FOP 0.94 working just fine with Publican in Rawhide, with the exception of support for SVG graphics." KarstenWade reminded [6] the team "IIRC, Batik originally had some dependencies for graphics processing that couldn't be cleanly included under IcedTea. It may not yet be able to process SVG?" [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00102.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00103.html [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00104.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00119.html [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00121.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00123.html === F9 Toolchain === KarstenWade writes [1] While all this toolchain talk is in the air ... We've got several major activities going on that are relying upon our current-and-working toolchain: * Release notes need to build properly by 16 March... * Updates to existing guides (IG, SMG) by mid-March... * New guides going into Beta in March (DUG, AG) Beyond being confident the guides can build cleanly, which Jared has demonstrated in the one case, we need to know that they can match whatever MUST list we put together. Some SHOULD items are OK, too. For starters: * Must be possible to go from Wiki to usable XML with similar process/hassle as current pathway * Must be able to pull book from CVS and build in Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 tests (Alpha, Beta, RC, Sulphur) - follows the tradition of not requiring docs tools to work for Fedora N-1 * Should be able to build in Fedora 7 * Must produce PO files that are line-for-line identical to the one produced in the last version - this is to minimize re-translation or having to re-check already translated strings on content that is already translated (IG, Relnotes) * Must process PO and POT so as to not put a burden on translation and Transifex (line-for-line identical or close enough) * Must be usable by Release Engineering in composing the build * Must be hostable by Fedora Infrastructure for Docs, L10n, or Rel``Eng build systems * Must have a reliable upstream, should be relied upon for at least 12 months * Must have a packager who affirms to maintain the package, should be affirmed for at least 12 months * Should build RPMs that match the RPM capability of /cvs/docs - need to list these out Anything else? MarcWiriadisastra mentioned [2] that he "would love to be able to transfer to xml as in know how to transfer to xml so I can actually work on the DuG. It's at the stage were it is edit ready so the reason why there hasn't been any discussion is because I have no idea of how to proceed from now." Karsten said [3] he was waiting for the "CVS module and bugzilla component." Marc asked where the style guide was located, to which Karsten cheerfully replied. JaredSmith responded [4] that "Just to be clear... I'm *not* pushing for a change to a new toolchain before F9. I think it would be awfully rash of us to do so at this point in the game. I also don't want anybody to mistake my enthusiasm for publican as somehow knocking the current tool chain. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know the current tool chain very well. Additionally, I don't think we've tested publican enough (as far as the translations go, especially) to know whether or not it's a good fit for what we do. What I *am* enthusiastic about is how quickly publican allows people to hit the ground running, especially those who are new to DocBook and their tool chains. If I had to prognosticate at this point, I'd say that in two years' time, we'll have taken the best pieces of publican and the current tool chain and welded them together." Jared also asked [5] for feedback on his conversion of the Software Management Guide using Publican. Karsten concluded [6] that "clearly, the interest in publican and it's (apparent) ease to get started with an XML book is a feature we've been missing in the Fedora Docs toolchain. Honestly, though, we have been pursuing the higher gain. Across open source projects, the wiki is where the developers and other contributors do their community documentation. When we focused exclusively on XML, we had very interested or enabled contributors. Some years back I spoke with the Mozilla Dev documentation folks, who had then changed from DocBook XML to a fully wiki-based system...Switching to the wiki, they saw 10x increase from developers, even the ones who knew DocBook well enough. In addition, many new contributors came in to help, which increased the editorial and content group. It's unclear to me how much these features of publican matter to Fedora Docs. For example, the people who have dropped by #fedora-docs looking for publican help seem to be working on their own content. While maintaining tools that allow the creation of free content is a part of the Docs charter, it's definitely a lower priority than enabling Fedora contributors to create content for Fedora. Right now that means helping to maintain the wiki: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/WikiGardening Finally, he agreed with Jared that an open community development for Publican from this point forward is definitely to be desired. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00122.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00124.html [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00128.html [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00125.html [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00126.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00131.html [[Anchor(Infrastructure)]] == Infrastructure == In this section, we cover the Fedora Infrastructure Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala === Koji Bandaid === MikeMcGrath writes[1], The Koji builders don't check back in automatically when they lose a connection to the host. Mike put a script to fix it. The script could be run as a cron job or as nagios event. The problem is that we don't have currently, nagios take an action when an event occurs. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00094.html === news.fp.o === JonathanRoberts writes[3], There is an open ticket [2] for news.fedoraproject.org site but unfortunately it's not been updated in the past 4 months. There was some discussion about what news software to use and if wordpress will do the trick. [2] https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/178 [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00095.html === Mailman List Policy for Fedora Hosted === JeffreyOllie writes[4], Since we have most of the technical bits in place for Mailman for Fedora Hosted. Now we just need to figure out a few policy items like who can request a list etc. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00101.html [[Anchor(Artwork)]] == Artwork == In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: NicuBuculei === Theming the distro: the new GDM === Theming the distro requires multiple graphics, not only a background wallpaper, and with the fast changed in Fedora there are some areas not fully documented. Such one is the new GDM (GNOME Display Manager), and after some incertitude on the fedora-art list[1], NicuBuculei takes the problem to the fedora-desktop-list[2], where he receive a comprehensive answer about the status from WilliamJonMcCann: while the feature was reverted in GNOME 2.22 due to time constraints, there is enough time until the Fedora 9 release, and this feature[3] is still on track for inclusion, another fine example of Fedora leading the innovation. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00175.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-February/msg00042.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NewGdm === EeeDora Artwork === Among the many Fedora derivatives, EeeDora[1] is a customization of the distribution for the very popular Eee PC. On the fedora-art list[2] ValentTurkovic urges the team to take into consideration that's laptop unusual screen size when creating the graphics for the upcoming Fedora 9, to have a good experience for the users of such hardware platforms. [1] http://eeedora.rmbsanalytics.com/ ( Editor's Note: the site was down at the time of editing. See http://wiki.eeeuser.com/eeedora:installing ) [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-February/msg00171.html [[Anchor(SecurityWeek)]] == Security Week == In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora. Contributing Writer: JoshBressers === CUPS flaw === A rather scary looking bug was noticed in CUPS last week: CUPS "process_browse_data()" Double Free Vulnerability[1] This is always one of the things that makes security and Open Source quite the challenge, yet also something positive. This bug was reported to the CUPS project in January, but nobody noticed until last week that it was even there. In a closed source project, a bug such as this would probably go unnoticed, and never be called a security issue. The "many eyes" aspect of Open Source is what got this noticed, and thanks to Secunia, the various interested vendors shipping a vulnerable version of CUPS were able to apply the fix to keep their users secure. [1] http://secunia.com/advisories/28994/ === Disk Encryption Isn't So Safe === New Research Result: Cold Boot Attacks on Disk Encryption[1] This research paper is quite brilliant, while also being amazingly simply when you really think about it. It's never been a secret that RAM can hold its contents for an extended period of time. It's assumed that it should be possible to inspect RAM under an electron microscope and reveal the previous contents long after a machine has been powered off. The scary thing about this paper is that simply quickly rebooting a machine should make it quite possible to extract previous RAM contents. While I don't think it's worth building a bomb shelter in your backyard over this, any paranoid tech traveler should be aware of this paper. [1] http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1257 [[Anchor(SecurityAdvisories)]] == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * pcre-7.3-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00632.html * moin-1.5.8-4.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00752.html === Fedora 7 Security Advisories === * moin-1.5.8-4.fc7 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-February/msg00726.html [[Anchor(EventsMeetings)]] == Events and Meetings == In this section, we cover event reports and meeting summaries from various Projects and SIGs. Contributing Writer: ThomasChung === Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2008-02-19 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Meetings/2008-02-19 === Fedora Community Architecture Meeting 2008-02-18 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CommunityArchitecture/Meetings/2008-02-18 === Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2008-02-20 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-February/msg00120.html === Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2008-02-21 === * https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-February/msg00140.html === Fedora Bug Zappers Meeting 2008-02-20 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Agenda-2008-Feb-20 === Fedora SIG EPEL Report Week 07/2008 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/Reports/Week07 === Fedora SIG KDE Report Week 2008-02-19 === * http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/Meetings/2008-02-19 -- Thomas Chung http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ThomasChung