From huzaifas at redhat.com Mon Sep 1 10:28:16 2008 From: huzaifas at redhat.com (Huzaifa Sidhpurwala) Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:58:16 +0530 Subject: Fedora Weekly News 141 Message-ID: <48BBC3C0.1060402@redhat.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 141 ============================== Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 141 for the week ending August 30, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141 Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and activities in the Fedora community. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news. Ideas for new beats are always welcome -- let us know how you'd like to contribute. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join = Announcements = In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack Fedora Unity releases Fedora 8 Re-Spin Ben Williams announced[0] that the Fedora Unity team has released a new re-spin of Fedora 8. "These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8 installation media and include all updates released as of August 14th, 2008. The ISO images are available for i386, x86_64 and PPC architectures via Jigdo and Torrent starting Sunday August 24th, 2008. Go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins to get the bits!" [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00014.html = Planet Fedora = In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. http://planet.fedoraproject.org Contributing Writer: Max Spevack Education The Fedora Education Spin is progressing[0], having been "approved by all necessary bodies - Spin SIG, Board, Rel-Eng", reported Sebastian Dziallas. The spin has its own feature page. "Hopefully, we'll be able to have a preview of the spin ready in the next weeks", added Sebastian. [0] http://sdziallas.joyeurs.com/blog/2008/08/status-report-on-fedora-educat.html Greg DeKoenigsberg reminded potential OLPC contributors[1] to surf over to the contributors' program on the OLPC wiki in order to request their own XO for development. Soon, Greg "will be sitting in on the weekly call that decides how these laptops are disbursed". [1] http://gregdek.livejournal.com/34240.html Tech Tidbits Michael DeHaan, holder of the coveted "best blogger on Planet Fedora" title, as determined each week by your correspondent, has penned a treatise[8] concerning the future of systems management software. "Cobbler and Func are very fun, I think they are quite useful, but I'm wondering what are next on the horizon for server management tech, not in terms of a evolutionary improvement but how things can be legitimately improved by fundamental, indeed 'paradigm-shifty' means." Click the link below to read the entire post. [8] http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=702 James Antill has written[9] a tutorial on the Python yum API, which is incredibly useful if you have ever wanted to do stuff with yum, but don't know where to start and are afraid to ask Seth. [9] http://illiterat.livejournal.com/6254.html Events David Nalley shared some details about the upcoming Fedora Ambassadors Day for North America[2]. The event will coincide with Ohio Linux Fest in October. David said, "If you are a Fedora Ambassador, or want to be one, you should try and attend." [2] http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=81 [[ChristophWickert|Christoph Wickert] attended FrOSCon 2008, along with several other other Ambassadors, and shared his event report[3]. "Just like on Linuxtag the Fedora booth was located close to the entrance, so we had quite a lot of visitors. Unfortunately the booth was a little small and we had lot of stuff to show: Two OLPCs, an eeepc, two ALIX Machines and a couple of Laptops. Everything was running Fedora, the Laptops were running Gnome and Xfce, mine also LXDE." Check out the link below for pictures, and the full report. [3] http://www.christoph-wickert.de/blog/2008/08/26/back-from-froscon/ Max Spevack reminded[4] everyone about the upcoming FUDCon Brno. "We currently have 110 people registered for the event," and the list of sessions and hackfests is on the Fedora wiki. Hans de Goede will be attending FUDCon Brno. He wrote an update[5] about webcam support in Fedora, which will be worked on at FUDCon, and also blogged[6] about the session he will give on how to become a Fedora package maintainer. [4] http://spevack.livejournal.com/62369.html [5] http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/5576.html [6] http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/5304.html Fedora List Fedora Board member Chris Tyler wrote[7] about the plans for changing the scope and ownership of fedora-list. Chris says, it is "one of the first lists that most Fedora users join, and therefore quite important to the community. However, it's a high-volume list (and is sometimes perceived to have a high noise level), so many veterans of the Fedora community aren't subscribed... Paul Frields and I have taken on the ownership of the list, and we'd welcome one or two experienced members of the community to join us." [7] http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/134-The-Scope-and-Ownership-of-fedora-list.html = Developments = In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley Approaches to a Minimal Fedora Luya Tshimbalanga alerted[1] the list to a post on FedoraForum.org in which a user "stevea" had produced a 67MB "minimalFedora" system. Jeff Spaleta worried[2] that the bare-bones system was unable to receive updates and that this was something which "we as a project might not officially want to endorse." One way out of that suggested by Jef was that interested parties could produce a derived distribution which pushed out entire updated images. Recent changes in the trademark guidelines make such a move easier. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01304.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01305.html A parallel to the minimal OS appliance image used in the oVirt project was discerned[3] by Daniel Berrange. Daniel reported their 'oVirt managed node' as being less than 64MB and built entirely from the Fedora 9 repositories. Later Daniel posted[4] that the similarities ended with the desire for a small image. The oVirt goal was to use only Fedora as upstream whereas stevea's approach had been to substitute coreutils with busybox. Daniel acknowledged "[...] finding the bits which aren't needed is fun in itself & somewhat of a moving target. So wherever possible we've been filing BZ to get some RPMs split up into finer grained sub-RPMs" and included a link to his project's kickstart %post stanza. Richard Jones suggested[5] that KDE's filelight was useful for finding bloated files and Vasile Gaburici added[6] that there was a GNOME equivalent called baobab. Vasile also included[7] a script which he uses to "keep track of bloatware". [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01307.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01319.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01373.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01374.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01376.html A follow-up post from Daniel concluded[8] that the only bits of upstream Fedora actually used in stevea's approach were the kernel and busybox as even glibc and initscripts had been ditched. Daniel wondered "So not really much trace of Fedora left at all. Not sure why you'd go to the trouble of doing the initial anaconda install at that point - might as well just 'rpm *no-deps' install kernel + busybox RPMs into a chroot & add the custom init script." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01320.html Doubt on the advantages of stripping down Fedora to make it run on embedded targets was cast[9] by Patrice Kadionik when he argued that using the Fedora kernel with all its patches and modules was too bloated. Instead he preferred to use the vanilla kernel with busybox with the result that "[...] you have a Linux kernel (about 1MB) with its root [filesystem] (about 1-2 MB) adapted completely to the target platform." Alan Cox replied[10] that the ability to receive updates and benefit from the maintained and tested code was desirable if there were enough extra space. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01353.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01357.html W. Michael Petullo added a link[11] to his "FedoraNano" project which has the goal of reducing redundancies, identifying probable cases for sub-packaging and documenting a method to install a small Fedora onto solid state drives. [11] http://www.flyn.org/fedoranano/fedoranano.html Using PackageKit Without NetworkManager-Controlled Interfaces A question from Martin Langhoff asked[1]: "[i]s there anything preventing PK from connecting to the network over non-[NetworkManager]-controlled network interfaces?" This question appeared to be predicated on the assumption that PackageKit had a dependency on NetworkManager. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01209.html Jeremy Katz clarified[2] that PackageKit depended on NetworkManager-glib and not on NetworkManager. He added that this was because PackageKit attempted to determine the status of the network connection prior to checking for updates. Dan Williams confirmed[3] that this was the case and expanded on the explanation: "If talking to NM fails, the app should either (a) assume a connection, or (b) could be more intelligent by asking SIOCGIFCONF/netlink for interfaces, and if at least one interface is IFF_UP | IFF_RUNNING and has an IP address, then try." Using NetworkManager in this way allows PackageKit to be restricted to sensible choices about the type of networks over which it is acceptable to receive updates. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01210.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01213.html A further point raised by Martin was that there were a surprising number of dependencies and Dan pointed[4] to bugzilla entry#351101[5] while noting that "[PackageKit] should only depend on NetworkManager-glib, which itself should not pull in NetworkManager in the future." That bug specifically affects multilib systems, that is x86-64 systems with i386 packages on them, and prevents the simple removal of the older version of NetworkManager-glib and replacement with a re-factored one. This will be fixed for Fedora 10 using the installer anaconda. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01214.html [5] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show.bug.cgi?id=351101 In a separate thread Martin asked[6] what debugging facilities were available for network scripts beyond using bash -x. He detailed his "hack du jour" by which /etc/udev/rules.d/60-net.rules invokes net.hotplug.debugger which in turn uses bash -x net.hotplug with STDIN and STDOUT redirected to a logfile. It appeared from the lack of further suggestions that this is a good strategy. He also provided[7] a note which explained that he was upgrading the "School Server" spin to Fedora 9 from Fedora 7. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01263.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01207.html Git-1.6.0 Commands to be Moved Out of PATH A response by Todd Zullinger to a "cvsextras" commit[1] of changes to git questioned[2] whether setting gitexecdir=%{_bindir} was a justified deviation from upstream intent. According to Todd "[..] we've effectively negated upstream's intent to present less binaries in the users path". Currently there are 137 git-commands in the /usr/bin directory. Todd suggested that it was better that individual users added the output of $(git *exec-path) to their PATH environment variable. As a precaution against breaking scripts upon update to git-1.6.0 Todd suggested that this addition to PATH should be made by the package. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-commits/2008-August/msg05593.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01330.html The package maintainer responsible for the change, James Bowes replied[3] that he had recently attempted to do as Todd suggested and that had resulted in complaints. He was worried that although Todd's change made sense there had been no due diligence conducted to see what would break if the git-* commands were moved in such a way. Josh Boyer replied[4] that the original complaint had been about "yank[ing] out commands [...] from a stable release [Fedora 9]". Todd Zullinger discounted such complaints and dreamt[5] that "[...] a warning could be hand delivered by a beautiful naked person of whatever gender the user prefers and many would still scream when the change finally landed. :)" He suggested that in order to achieve predictability and consistency across distributions it was best to follow upstream and use the update to 1.6.0 as a flag day. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01361.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01363.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01389.html In response to queries as to whether there was a need to update Fedora 9 also Josh Boyer replied[6] that a security bug was fixed by git-1.6.0 but that he thought that this might have also been fixed by "a later release of 1.5.6.x." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01390.html Resurrecting Multi-Key Signatures in RPM Spurred on by the disquiet caused by the recent signing of Red Hat packages (but not as far as is known any Fedora packages)[1] it was suggested[2] by Bojan Smojver that multiple GPG signatures of RPM packages would be a good idea. Distributing the signing could include using alternate buildsystems "[...] with no public access [...] to verify package checks before signing[.]" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01136.html Andrew Bartlett thought that the checksum part would be a problem because a build often includes hosts, build times and other specifics and Chris Adams added[3] that even individual files within a package had such information embedded. Bojan decided to find out how many packages were so constrained and Seth Vidal suggested[4] a useful rpm command rpm - -qp *dump pkg.rpm to list all available information about each package. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01140.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01146.html Seth was dubious about the general idea and upon being pressed doubted the security gain and noted the cost incurred on users trying to verify that a package was signed correctly. Bojan expanded[5] upon the idea that for a "[...] multi-key, multi-build system, an attacker would need to get his hands on a lot of private key passwords, break multiple independent build systems [...] It is similar to what a reporter does to confirm a story. One source, not so reliable. Two sources, more reliable. Many sources, most likely reliable." Stephen Smoogen described[6] this a logical fallacy and argued that due to the number of packages all signing would need to be automated and thus probably each of the multiple sources would "[...] get their information from the same top level source." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01198.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01205.html A useful post by Nils Philippsen laid out[7] four practical objections. Prime among these was that there were additional pieces of data, besides those mentioned above, embedded in a specific build even though the source package may have the same tag. The possibility of making the build system vulnerable to a DoS attack was also mentioned. A sub-thread on German banking practices and the value of multiple credentials developed[8] as did one[9] on the problems of determinism in producing identical binaries. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01156.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01275.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01329.html Tom Lane was also among those that expressed[10] a general skepticism that the increased burden of such a scheme was realistic: "Most of us [packagers] are overworked already. We aren't going to jump through any hoops for third-party signatories." Bojan argued[11] that if the system were automated then it probably would be vulnerable but suggested that it would be better if a community effort to absorb the extra non-automatic work would be a solution in line with "open source" practices. Reluctantly he concluded "[n]ever mind, it was just an idea. Probably not even a good one. Back to the drawing board... ;-)" [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01141.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01215.html Intrusion Recovery Slow and Steady A politely phrased request[1] was made on 25-08-2008 by Mike Chambers for information about when normal service would resume in the Fedora Project after the disruptions[1a]. Enigmatically Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski observed[2] that there had been "some speculation on fedora-advisory-board that might explain the information blackout, so please don't jump to conclusions until you really know what happened" This led Chris Adams to observe that the list archives appeared to be offline and to restate the request for information "[...] in the absence of information, rumors and speculation fill the gap (which is not good)." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01102.html [1a] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140#Mysterious_Fedora_Compromise [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01122.html Several days later (on 28-08-2008) a similar request was made[3] by Alan Dunn. He wondered whether bodhi was pushing updates out again, and Josh Boyer responded[4] that planning and implementation of "how to revoke the current gpg key used to sign RPMs" were in progress. Jesse Keating cautioned[5] that the migration to a new key would be slow "I'm currently re-signing all of the 8 and 9 content with these new keys so that we can make them available along with the new updates with the new key for these product lines. This is going to take some time due to the nature of how our signing works." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01308.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01309.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01310.html A proposal mooted[6] on @rel-eng by Warren Togami and others provided some insight into at least the part of the plans that involve the problem of how to distribute a new package signing key. [6] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/rel-eng/2008-August/001627.html "nodata" asked[7] whether the new plans included a means to push out critical security updates even while there was a general outage. The thinking behind this seems to be that an attacker could decide to knock out Fedora infrastructure in order to gain some time to exploit a known vulnerability even if a simple fix existed. Jesse Keating replied[8] confidently that in such a scenario the Fedora Project would do "whatever it takes [...] to get a critical update onto a public webserver should the need arise" and cautioned against wasting time trying to plan for every possible scenario. Toshio Kuratomi added[9] that although it might be possible to speed up recovery "[...] unfortunately if the infrastructure problem is bad enough, there's no way we can push package X out until the problem is at least partially resolved." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01313.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01314.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01316.html On 27-08-2008 Paul Johnson noted that it was possible to "compose and build" and asked "when will updates via yum become available for rawhide?" Jeremy Katz responded[10] that "[a]t the moment, the compose is falling over for new reasons unrelated to the infrastructure changes. Hopefully we'll see a rawhide make its way out to the masses real soon now." [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01249.html Later Mike Chambers and Ola Thoresen reported[11] that updating from Fedora 9 to Rawhide seemed to be working. Several Rawhide Reports also appeared[12]. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01350.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01339.html = Infrastructure = This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala Some noteworty praise Paul W. Frields writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1] Paul forwarded a mail [2] send by Tim Burke, who is the Director of Linux Development inside Red Hat, praising the efforts of fedorans who rose to the occasion to bring things back on track after the recent incidents in Fedora infrastructure. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/msg00149.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01023.html Maintaining a partial cvs workarea Axel Thimm writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [3] Axel described how he was keeping a partial check-out of packages, ie the ones which he was maintaining. Now he would like to be able to cvs up and have all updates flow in, but if he does do so cvs will want to get all other thousand packages in. He is currently using a for loop with pushd/popd, but this process is extremely slow. Axel asked if there was a better way of doing this? [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/msg00156.html rawhide, /mnt/koji and /pub/fedora Jesse Keating writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [4] Jesse created a user "masher" to have the ability to write to /mnt/koji/mash/ but not any of the other koji space. This is useful to prevent too much damage from a horribly wrong rawhide compose. To make things easier in the rawhide compose configs, they decided to run the cron/scripts as the masher user. This is also good because it means things run unprivileged. However he ran into a snag. They have another user, 'ftpsync' that has write access to /pub/fedora/. Previously the rawhide script was ran as root, and thus it was no problem to su ftpsync for the rsync calls. The masher user does not possess the capability of doing this. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/msg00174.html New Key Repo Locations Warren Togami writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [5] Warren proposed the latest draft of New Key repo locations. Jesse Keating points out that the deep levels are necessary because mirrors exclude releases by directory name like "9/" [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/msg00198.html = Artwork = In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei The Echo icon theme and Fedora 10 NicuBuculei asked[1] on @fedora-art about the plans to use the new Echo icon set as a default on Fedora 10: "considering the feature freeze, the Beta release and as Echo is not a feature proposed for F10, is correct the assumption that we won't have Echo as a default for F10, staying with Mist [at least] one more release cycle?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00328.html In reply LuyaTshimbalanga pointed[2] out that it is still possible, due to a slip in the release cycle: "Shall we try to make it as Fedora 10 feature. Thanks to, in some extend, the incident, feature freeze has been moved on September 9th." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00329.html MartinSourada shared[3] his experience "It seems like artwork things are preferred to be decided by the Art Team rather than Fesco. I have a feeling it might be same for Echo." and proposed that this decision should be made together by the Art and Desktop teams "In this case I personally think Echo should be put on evaluation by Art Team and Desktop Team. If both agree it's ready for default we can roll it in ;-)" while NicuBuculei stressed[4] the importance of having Art features listed "from a marketing POV, if we list it as a "feature" it will be picked by more news source and help building the excitement around the new release." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00337.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00343.html Automating the One Canvas workflow In the last FWN[1] issue we covered 'One Canvas workflow', an innovative way to create icons, this week it continued to be a topic on @fedora-art and MartinSourada introduced[2][3] a script that makes the work easier. "[It] greatly simplifies life for Echo artist, since all they need is to make the Source SVG, run the script on it, select which branches they'd like to push it to and write commit message(s) - i.e. it automates most of the process". He also wrote a blog post[4] about this and created a screencast[5] illustrating the process. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140 [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00327.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00368.html [4] http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/08/echo-nodoka-one-canvas-ruby-and-new.html [5] http://mso.fedorapeople.org/screencasts/echo-add-icon-screencast.ogg = Security Advisories = In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley As there have been disruptions to the infrastructure of the Fedora Project this week there are no Security Advisories to report. Please see the Announcements and Development sections for more information. Fedora 9 Security Advisories None Fedora 8 Security Advisories None = Virtualization = In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley Enterprise Management Tools List This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. virt-what Script Detects Running in a Virtual Machine Richard W.M. Jones announced[1] version 1.0 of | virt-what which is a simple shell script that detects if you are running inside a virtual machine, and prints some "facts" about that virtual machine. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00039.html Xen 3.3.0 Released Pasi K?rkk?inen forwarded[1] from xen-devel an announcement of Xen 3.3.0. Pasi also followed up[2] on a thread from July where Daniel P. Berrange said about Fedora 10, "Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00038.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00029.html Testing LiveCD Distros as DomU Guests jean-No?l Chardron posted[1] a howto for testing live cd images by booting them in a DomU with virt-install. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00024.html Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] a todo list for libvirt which was the product of a brainstorming session at Red Hat. Daniel offered this list as a good starting point for those wishing to assist in the development of libvirt. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00718.html Live Migration Sanity Checks Chris Lalancette described[1] a feature that oVirt would like to see. The feature would be a set of sanity checks a caller could make to determine if live migration of a given virtual machine would be likely to succeed. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00757.html sVirt: XML Representation of Security Labels James Morris continued[1] work on the sVirt project by investigating how and when to label the resources accessed by domains and proposed an XML representation of these labels. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00740.html LXC: Making the Private Root Filesystem More Secure After committing the private root filesystem code for LXC Daniel P. Berrange noted[1] that cgroups supports device ACLs which could defend against 'mknod' escapes into the host OS devices. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00734.html Exposing Unique Hypervisor Features Nguyen Anh Quynh asked[1] how libvirt can expose the unique features of a given hypervisor such as the monitor interface of Qemu. Daniel P. Berrange responded[2] by stating the policy for adding new APIs to libvirt is that the conceptual representation has to be applicable to multiple hypervisors and unique concepts may be exposed if they can be represented in a way which would also make sense for other hypervisors in the future. This goal is also stated in the libvirt architecture document. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00693.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00701.html oVirt Devel List This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIu8O/zHDc8tpb2uURArkzAKCZJprWqqb9prB84eXpqiSqvbrDDACgh50M 3H2qF1AMyoMPdcf1comVOwU= =wk+7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From martin.sourada at gmail.com Mon Sep 1 12:17:22 2008 From: martin.sourada at gmail.com (Martin Sourada) Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:17:22 +0200 Subject: Echo Monthly News, Issue 1 Message-ID: <1220271442.28241.34.camel@pc-notebook> The echo-icon-theme development team just officially released its first Echo Monthly News Issue [1]. In this release we cover these sections: 1. New Icons 2. "Huge" icons - 256x256 3. One Canvas Work-Flow 4. Automating the secondary jobs 1. Add a new icon set to Git 2. Setting up Git repository 3. Updating Git repository 4. Creating New Icon from Template 5. RPM package and other issues 5. Echo for Fedora 10? 6. Future plans 7. Request for feedback Since it's our first release it is not perfect and therefore we will appreciate any feedback, suggestions for improvement, etc. at the fedora-art-list and #fedora-art at irc.freenode.net :) References: [1] https://fedorahosted.org/echo-icon-theme/wiki/MonthlyNews/Issue1 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From jkeating at redhat.com Fri Sep 5 16:09:10 2008 From: jkeating at redhat.com (Jesse Keating) Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:09:10 -0700 Subject: Fedora 8 and 9 updates status Message-ID: <1220630950.4273.14.camel@luminos.localdomain> As you well know, we have been working hard to get updates for 8 and 9 flowing again, complete with new package signing keys. Discussion has been somewhat quiet on this front as we've all had our heads down and have been working hard toward a solution, one that involves little to no manual effort on behalf of our users. Today we've reached a major milestone in this progress. We have done a successful compose of all the existing and as of yesterday pending updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, all signed with our new keys. These updates will soon hit mirrors in a new set of directory locations. What we don't have quite yet is the updated fedora-release package in the old updates location that will get you the new keys and the new repo locations. The last mile testing of this update requires that new updates be live on the mirrors. Due to the size of the resigned updates, it may take a good while for our sync process. This may delay getting the new fedora-release out until tomorrow, but we'll be working hard on it. While we're working on this update, we'll also be drafting a FAQ page to explain to users what it is that we're doing, and hopefully answer some of the questions that will come up. This document will be living though, and as you encounter questions yourself, or questions via one of our many avenues of support (email, IRC, forums, LUGS, etc..) please help us in growing that document. Announcements regarding the location of said document and how to help with content will be coming shortly. We deeply appreciate the enormous magnitude of patience you the greater community has shown us the Fedora project as we work though these serious issues. It is a great testament to how wonderful it is to work in and with the Fedora community. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom? is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From kevin at scrye.com Fri Sep 5 21:11:59 2008 From: kevin at scrye.com (Kevin Fenzi) Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 15:11:59 -0600 Subject: FESCo Issue tracking Message-ID: <20080905151159.74161fb7@ohm.scrye.com> Greetings. In the past, interested parties could bring matters to the attention of FESCo in several ways: Mailing the chair, following up to the schedule posting on the devel list asking for a new topic to be added, or attending meetings on irc and bringing up the topic at the end of the meeting in the Open Discussion phase. While these methods work well for issues that simply need a bit of discussion and a decision, longer term issues that should be tracked and discussed further sometimes are forgotten. To help solve this issue, and to make it easier for folks to bring an issue before FESCo, I have asked Fedora Infrastructure to setup a trac instance for FESCo to track tasks and handle new issues. New issues for FESCo can now be filed at: https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ Please feel free to file issues there. Note that FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) handles the process of accepting new features, the acceptance of new packaging sponsors, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and SIG Oversight, the packaging process, handling and enforcement of maintainer issues and other technical matters related to the distribution and its construction Thanks. kevin -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stickster at gmail.com Sat Sep 6 13:33:30 2008 From: stickster at gmail.com (Paul W. Frields) Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2008 09:33:30 -0400 Subject: Fedora Board IRC meeting 1800 UTC 2008-09-09 Message-ID: <1220708010.13357.12.camel@localhost.localdomain> ?The Board is holding its monthly public meeting on Tuesday, 9 September 2008, at 1800 UTC on IRC Freenode. The public is invited to do the following: * Join #fedora-board-meeting to see the Board's conversation. This channel is read-only for non-Board members. * Join #fedora-board-public to discuss topics and post questions. This channel is read/write for everyone. The moderator will direct questions from the #fedora-board-public channel to the Board members at #fedora-board-meeting. This should limit confusion and ensure our logs are useful to everyone. ?The Board has set aside one meeting of each month as a public "town hall" style meeting. We are *still* hoping to hold an audio-based meeting at some point in the near future using some of the new resources being developed by the Infrastructure team. More news on this will be forthcoming. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. -- Paul W. Frields gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://paul.frields.org/ - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From huzaifas at redhat.com Mon Sep 8 09:41:37 2008 From: huzaifas at redhat.com (Huzaifa Sidhpurwala) Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:11:37 +0530 Subject: Fedora Week News, Issue 142 Message-ID: <48C4F351.2040401@redhat.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 142 ============================= Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 142 for the week ending September 7, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142 This week in Announcements we alert you to the "Fedora 10 Beta Freeze Coming Soon" and the new "FESCo Issue Tracking". In PlanetFedora "Tech Tidbits" contains some juicy morsels on evaluating package sizes and Haskell. In Developments we examine the process of "Getting Back On Our Feet" after the intrusions. SecurityAnnouncements finally has some content. Artwork covers "Working on a Sound Theme" and the acceptance of the "Echo Icon Theme as a Fedora 10 Feature" Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and activities in the Fedora community. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join =Announcements= In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack Echo Monthly News, Issue 1 Martin Sourada announced[0] the availability of the premiere issue of "Echo Monthly News[1]." Said Martin, "Since it's our first release it is not perfect and therefore we will appreciate any feedback, suggestions for improvement, etc. at the fedora-art-list and #fedora-art at irc.freenode.net." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00001.html [1] https://fedorahosted.org/echo-icon-theme/wiki/MonthlyNews/Issue1 Fedora 10 Beta Freeze Coming Soon Jesse Keating discussed[2] the Fedora 10 Beta schedule. "The new freeze date is Sept. 9, which is in 7 days. This is a friendly reminder that the freeze is coming up, and coming up quickly. I realize that rawhide has been less than great lately, and we're working quite hard to fix the issues." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00000.html Fedora 8 and 9 Updates Status Jesse Keating wrote[3] about the status of updates on Fedora 8 and Fedora 9. "We have done a successful compose of all the existing and as of yesterday pending updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, all signed with our new keys. These updates will soon hit mirrors in a new set of directory locations. What we don't have quite yet is the updated fedora-release package in the old updates location that will get you the new keys and the new repo locations. The last mile testing of this update requires that new updates be live on the mirrors." For the full announcement, follow the link below. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00002.html FESCo Issue Tracking Kevin Fenzi announced[4] the new FESCo issue-tracking tool. "In the past, interested parties could bring matters to the attention of FESCo in several ways: Mailing the chair, following up to the schedule posting on the devel list asking for a new topic to be added, or attending meetings on irc and bringing up the topic at the end of the meeting in the Open Discussion phase. While these methods work well for issues that simply need a bit of discussion and a decision, longer term issues that should be tracked and discussed further sometimes are forgotten." [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00003.html =Planet Fedora= In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. http://planet.fedoraproject.org Contributing Writer: Max Spevack Cambridge John Poelstra wrote[0] about the revised Fedora 10 schedule, which as been moved to account for the infrastructure problems that we faced a few weeks ago. "Last week the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) ratified the updated schedule proposed by the Release Engineering team. This resulted in feature freeze for Fedora moving to 2008-09-09 and GA to 2008-11-18. This three week change to the schedule was to accommodate the recent infrastructure outages." [0] http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/fedora-10-schedule-update/ Another Fedora Test Day is in the books, and James Laska wrote[1] about it on his blog. "There was a really strong developer turn out for this Test Day. In addition to David Huff, the appliance-tools developer, some of the oVirt team showed up to help walk through oVirt's use of appliance-tools. This was tremendously helpful to see how appliance-tools can be used by other projects. Thanks to Alan Pevec, Bryan Kearney and Darryl Pierce from the oVirt team for joining the event. Having such a tight feedback loop with the developers during Test Days has been very helpful, I hope we can continue with that format." [1] http://jlaska.livejournal.com/1444.html =Artwork= Nicu Buculei posted[2] the latest iterations of some of the potential Fedora 10 artwork themes. "The second round in the process of creating a visual theme for Fedora 10 ended yesterday, those are the proposals meeting the requirement and which will pass into the third (last) round (listed in chronological order)." Your beat writer is particularly fond of the Gears/Steampunk theme as well as the Solar theme, but thinks that all four are fantastic pieces of art, and should be carried over into Fedora 11's proposals. [2] http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2008/09/fedora-10-themes-round-2.html Tech Tidbits Yaakov Nemoy reported[3] on the state of Haskell in Fedora. "After nearly 9 months, I am finally at the point I wanted to be regarding Haskell. Last January i wanted to submit packages for my favourite window manager to Fedora. I got blocked because of a lack of packaging guidelines and familiarity with Haskell or the Glasgow Haskell Compiler." [3] http://loupgaroublond.blogspot.com/2008/09/finally-done-with-haskell-things.html Continuing his habit of posting yum-related tutorials, James Antill posted[4] a quick explanation of packages sizes in yum and rpm. "It's pretty common to think that a specific thing always has a specific size, and people tend to think of an "rpm package" as a single object thus. the it's common to ask what is "the size of an rpm". However if you have a 1MB text file, and gzip compresses it to 50KB which you then upload to a HTTP server you now have at least 3 different sizes: text size; compressed size and upload size (includes HTTP headers etc.) and asking for the size. So it is with rpm packages, and their many sizes." [4] http://illiterat.livejournal.com/6439.html FUDCon Brno FUDCon Brno is happening as Fedora Weekly News freezes, but there are a bunch of photos online[5] and Max Spevack has been providing frequent updates[6] about the event on his blog. [5] http://flickr.com/groups/fudconbrno/pool/ [6] http://spevack.livejournal.com =Developments= In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley Getting Back on our Feet On 05-09-2008 Jesse Keating posted[1] the good news that "[...] we have done a successful compose of all the existing[,] and as of yesterday[,] pending updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, all signed with our new keys." He cautioned that the size of this backlog of updates meant that it would take some time to get them out to mirrors. The updates will be in new directory locations and there will be an "[...] updated fedora-release package in the old updates location that will get you the new keys and the new repo locations." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00329.html Jesse was keen to point out that there would be a FAQ to which we can all contribute and that its location will be announced shortly. Sean Darcy, after thanking Jesse for all the work he had put in, asked[2] how he could get the new key for updates right now without having to wait for the fedora-release package to be placed in the old repository location. A variety of answers followed and the canonical one appeared[3] to be that given by Todd Zullinger in which he suggested obtaining fedora-release from CVS and then checking that the fingerprints matched those published[4] on the FedoraProject website. Some minor confusion followed[5] as the example presented on the web page uses the old key signed by "fedora at redhat.com" but the new key is signed by "fedora at fedoraproject.org". Similarly the use of "PUBKEY" as a placeholder variable on the web page caused some difficulties which Todd cleared[6] up again. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00392.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00396.html [4] https://fedoraproject.org/keys [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00406.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00417.html Jeffrey Ollie made[7] the good point that using a GPG WoT would make it easier for Fedorans to have confidence that they had obtained the correct key and hoped that those at the Brno FUDCon could "arrange an impromptu keysigning[.]" [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00411.html Early in the week on 02-09-2008 Stefan Grosse asked[8] politely when the resigned Fedora 9 updates would be available. Bruno Wolff III suggested[9] "If you are worried about something in particular, you can look at bodhi to see pending updates and updates-testing and get rpms from koji if there is something you want right now." A brief discussion between Till Maas, Jesse Keating and Bruno Wolff explored whether it was possible to download from Koji using SSL if one did not have a FAS account. Bruno testified[10] "I needed certs (two from fedora and mine) to get the bodhi client to work. I used this to grab a list of stable updates last week [...] I didn't bother with ssl when grabbing them from koji." Till was[11] using wget to grab the packages from Koji and found it necessary to use certificates. Jesse showed[12] that it was possible to do a koji download-build to get packages anonymously. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00083.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00086.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00089.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00092.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00096.html In a separate thread Jesse Keating announced[13] that the revised Fedora 10 freeze date would be 09-09-2008 and as part of a friendly reminder that it was coming up quickly observed "I realize that rawhide has been less than great lately, and we're working quite hard to fix the issues. The installer images from the 30th may be of use in getting rawhide installed and then updating to what is in the public repos. See http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/mash/rawhide20080830/development/ (please only grab the installer images from there, not the entire tree)." Matt Miller reported[14] a successful net install from the Fedora 10 alpha images using the rawhide repository. [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00091.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00107.html Removing Packages with Long-standing FTBFS Failures Matt Domsch posted[1] a list of ninety packages which "Fail To Build - From Source" (FTBFS)[2]. Matt noted that some of these packages have failed since 02-2008 and that "[...] packages with unresolved FTBFS bugs immediately following the Alpha release will be removed from the distribution" in line with a proposal passed by FESCo. He asked that concerned parties help to resolve the problems and noted that several of them had easy fixes. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00319.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FTBFS Response was fairly quick and positive from both those listed as maintainers and concerned parties that needed the packages in Fedora 10. One interesting ramification of the removal of such packages was mentioned[3] by Daniel Berrange who asserted "[t]his list is far from complete - if you want to remove these 90, the dependency chain ripple, will entail the removal of tonnes of other packages which depend on these." He asked Matt to generate a report which "[...] shows the ripple effect for each proposed package. If something is just a leaf-node, it isn't very important to worry about, but if something triggers removal of 50 dependant packages that's pretty damn important to fix. This info would be useful in prioritizing which builds need fixing most urgently." SethVidal modified[4] a script written by James Antill so that it did exactly that and Matt posted[5] a link to the script and an example run. Till Maas suggested[6] that it would be useful make sure that a src.rpm responsible for several dependent packages is only counted once. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00320.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00363.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00361.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00371.html The practical consequence of neglecting such dependencies was highlighted[7] by Matthias Clasen when he commented that "djvulibre-devel is a BuildRequires for evince. If you remove djvulibre, evince will become unbuildable." Jesse Keating responded that Daniel, or his team should fix the package as "[i]f we have to do a chained rebuild for various reasons, evince would fail due to this package not building first." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00323.html The inclusion of monodevelop in the list had the side effect of spurring the Mono maintainers including Michel Salim, David Nielsen and Paul Johnson to decide[8] to attempt a co-ordinated push of "Mono-2.0". [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00385.html MinGW on Fedora The availability of a MinGW development repository was announced[1] by Richard Jones. "MinGW" provides a GNU toolchain on Windows allowing the development of Free native Windows binaries. Richard credited Daniel Berrange with a good deal of the work. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00296.html In response to Farkas Levente's question, as to when it would be available in Fedora, Daniel replied[2] that due to the need for "infrastructure" to create a separate repository and dedicated build root it was impossible to predict. Jef Spaleta seemed[3] to be trying to move the process forward and published a draft which explained that "[t]he initial impetus for this effort has been ovirt developers who desire to more easily use Fedora installations as development environments for the work they are doing to build open source cross-platform virtualization tools." The possible impact on FedoraProject resources appears to have led to the compromise of creating a separate repository which could be strictly confined in size. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00298.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00364.html Richard Jones encouraged[4] Farkas to try out MinGW without waiting for official inclusion in Fedora "[...] if you want to download and play with it, and send patches :-) It's currently buildable on Rawhide, and possibly on earlier versions of Fedora too." Farkas then revealed that he currently used an older MinGW on RHEL5 and Richard responded[5] that although there were no srpms at this moment it should be possible to use the specfiles and patches (both in the mercurial repository[6]) to rebuild everything. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00300.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00330.html [6] http://hg.et.redhat.com/misc/fedora-mingw--devel/ Dependency Loops Considered Harmful? [[MiroslavLichvar|Miroslav Lichvar] raised[1] the issue of a considerable number of packages (354 by his count) which are components of dependency loops in the rawhide repository. Miroslav provided[2] a list. In such loops two or more RPM packages require each other as dependencies in their spec files with the result that it can become confusing for users trying to remove selected packages manually with yum or rpm. Miroslav wondered whether such loops were acceptable and specifically "why games data depend on binaries?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00149.html [2] http://fedorapeople.org/~mlichvar/tmp/rawhide.i386.loops A substantial conversation resulted which exposed the different needs of packagers and users, some possible limitations due to the design of rpm and varied philosophies concerning the correct way to specify dependencies. One of the central examples chosen were the game packages which tend to be split into a "binary" or "engine" package and a companion "data" package for graphics, sound and levels. The central concerns expressed were that occasionally an install followed by a remove will leave "orphaned" packages behind. Also in contention was the specific case of developers experiencing the problem of maintaining a stable environment when there is no easy way of tracking changes to system libraries. The package manager aptitude was mentioned favorably due to its ability to distinguish between packages installed automatically to satisfy dependencies and those which are installed manually. On the one hand Chris Snook and Michael Schwendt advocated[3] that instead of using Requires: foo >= X in their spec files packagers should choose Conflicts: foo < X . The possible downside to this would be installing game data yet having no game engine/binary installed. This was seen as a non-serious problem. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00211.html On the other hand Jon Ciesla argued[4] that the advantage of having games data depend on their binaries from a packagers perspective is that it ensures that attempting to upgrade the binary Version without also upgrading the data will fail. The case of allowing minor fixes without forcing users to download a big bundle of data can be handled by bumping the Release of the package. More concisely he answered[5] that the reason for the dependencies was that "[...] so when you remove the game, you remove the data." Michael responded[6] that Jon's example could be handled by using a Requires: foo-data = X without exposing the increased risk of needing to "bump'n'rebuld" the data package each time the engine package incremented its Version while still working with the same data. He characterized such dependencies as "superfluous [...] try[ing] to enhance 'yum remove'." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00150.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00151.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00161.html This was not accepted as accurate by Jon and he described the current situation as "require on name and version" for game data which allows Release to be changed without affecting the match on Name and Version "If new data is required, it will change the version. If not, we only increment the binary rpm's release, so the data rpm matches on version and needs no rebuild." Michael responded[7] by laying out two cases, the first of which illustrated the problem of having to update the data package solely to keep in step with updates to the version so that yum remove would function properly. His alternate case used non-versioned dependencies in the data package and strict dependencies in the engine package. Hans de Goede seemed a bit irritated and asked Michael to "Please take an actual look at game spec files before making up all kinds of BS, it's really easy" and argued that for games there was a one-to-one mapping between the engine and the data. He added that just because other cases resulted in dependencies being sucked in by an install and left behind on a remove there was no reason to change the way things were done for games. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00167.html Stephen Gallagher suggested that the "groups" exposed through yum should be used to bundle together the multiple packages for an application instead of using looped dependencies to which Callum Lerwick replied[8] that it was actually time to "implement the per-package 'explicitly installed/pulled in as a dep' flag that has been discussed several times in the past, and is already implemented (thus proven) in the 'aptitude' apt front end." He followed this with an amusing piece of hyperbole about "the looming dark future of closed DRM-laden content delivery services[.]" [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00193.html Toshio Kuratomi raised[9] the problem faced by developers using system libraries that could come and go due to packages being updated or removed. Callum's suggestion was[10] that developers should be "RPM packag[ing] your app. Apps on your system that are not tracked by RPM are a ticking time bomb of dependency breakage whether or not the 'leaf culling' is performed manually or is assisted by a 'pulled in as dep' flag. A package or distribution update could very well break your app too." Needless to say Toshio had[11] several objections to this including the impact on developer workflow imposed by packaging up everything and the inadvisability of forcing developers to become expert administrators. He suggested that "If we implement this, it needs to be at a low enough level that anyone installing packages on the system will be storing the information. That could mean rpm (since rpm is responsible for taking the package and turning it into files on the filesystem) or that could mean yum since yum is the one that actually knows whether a package is being installed due to depsolving or user request. Doing this at a higher level means that information gets lost (for instance, if you do this in PackageKit, there won't be any information about what anaconda chose to install due to checkboxes being clicked and which things were installed due to dependencies). With that said, there needs to be a way for a developer to tell yum not to prune away leaf packages if they want." A very detailed and amusing discussion with (among others) Matthew Woehlke followed in which Matthew argued[12] for a script which essentially produced a parallel iuserj rpm database so that quick and dirty rpms could be produced locally for developers. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00195.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00209.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00214.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00278.html Jef Spaleta wondered[13] what actual examples revealed about the amount of harddrive space being consumed by dependencies and remarked "I hope the packagekit people are watching this discussion. The game data subpackaging issue should be right up their ally in terms of end-user ease of use issues." He discounted the polluting of the packagelist but MichaelSchwendt pointed out[14] that as the packagelist increases then "[because of] the frequent updates common in Fedora land, you need to download and update more[.]" [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00162.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00170.html The idea of keeping game data outside of any package management was mentioned[15] by James Antill as an "obvious fix" and he discounted the probability of PackageKit being able to do anything about the issue if yum or rpm could not. Jef responded[16] that "[a]t some point someone is going to have to wade into rpm itself for ease of use of removals to get better" and pointed out that he was "[...] making sure that the people with the right motivation and the right skills find the right way to handle it. That's not going to happen just by telling the current maintainers who are abusing the available requires syntax that they are abusing the syntax and slapping their wrists." Richard Hughes showed[17] that the PackageKit developers were indeed listening to the conversation and mentioned that he had considered "[...] running through a large "get-depends" output into the basename filter, so that the user only sees the 'applications' by default, rather than a huge list[.]" [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00184.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00185.html [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00212.html There is a lot more to this conversation than reported here, but the main thrust is that the limitations of rpm have resulted in package maintainers wrangling spec files to do what they want which in some cases has undesirable effects. Fedora Security Tools Spin A suggestion was made[1] by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala to produce a Security Tools spin similar to the "Knoppix Security Tools Distribution"[2] . [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00108.html [2] http://knoppix-std.org/index.html Todd Zullinger responded[3] that there was already a spin similar to this being curated by Luke Macken. The SecuritySpin[4] mentioned by Luke seemed to be roughly what Huzaifa was searching for, except that he thought it should have "more tools and [be] more bare bones". [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00110.html [4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SecuritySpin Adrian Pilchowiec mentioned[5] a free fork of nessus named OpenVAS[6] as a desirable part of the spin. Luke drew[7] attention to the need for more people to help out with packaging missing tools. Subsequently the wishlist of the project recorded that Huzaifa was packaging up OpenVAS and labrea. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00275.html [6] http://www.openvas.org/ [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00183.html =Infrastructure= This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala New Key Repo Locations v2 Warren Togami writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1] Warren sent out a mail enlisting the new repo locations. Also the repo names have been changed so debuginfo and source are always at the end. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00001.html archives on secondary1 Matt Domsch writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [2] Matt asked if archives.fp.o is on secondary1.fp.o There are 2 separate rsyncd.conf files in puppet, one for archives,one for secondary. Given they land at the same place on the same machine, only the one for secondary is actually in effect. If they're going to be on the same machine, we need to merge them. On this Mike replied with an affirmative saying that they need to be merged. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00030.html =Artwork= In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei Art Schedule for Fedora 10 JohnPoelstra showed[1] on @fedora-art a tentative schedule[2]for the Artwork activities and asked for help with it: "1) Which tasks no longer apply and should be removed 2) New tasks which should be added 3) Existing tasks that are wrong" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00388.html [2] http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-10/f-10-art-tasks.html He received corrections about dates from MairinDuffy[3] and tasks from NicuBuculei[4] [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00390.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00001.html Working on a Sound Theme ChrisNorman uploaded[1] a first preview of a new desktop sound theme created for Fedora and he received[2] some feedback about length and content from NicuBuculei: "I am not sure about speaking the English word 'attention' - some people not speaking English may not be that happy. And maybe, just maybe, a few sounds, like 'window-close.wav' are a bit too long". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00012.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00013.html Echo Icon Theme as a Fedora 10 Feature LuyaTshimbalanga reported[1] about FESCO acceptance of the new Echo icon set as a default in Fedora 10: "Fesco has accepted echo-icon-theme as default icon theme for Fedora 10.[1] Which means we need to push harder to include as many icons as possible using guideline and echo-artist tool now available on rawhide and is waiting for people to get them on both Fedora 8 and 9" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00028.html MatthiasClasen outlined[2] the importance of having Echo as a default in the upcoming beta release "I think we need to act quickly to make Echo the default for the beta, to test the waters before F10" and soon after that he operated the change[3]. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00044.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00056.html MartinSourada noted that the feature depends on the icon coverage "Just a note that Fesco (and many art team members as well) has some concerns about coverage. Simply said if we don't achieve the Mist/gnome icon themes coverage, we'll be rolled back to Mist and wait for another release" and offered to mentor new contributors. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00031.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00069.html Security Advisories In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley As we recover from the disruptions to the infrastructure Security Advisories are starting to reappear. As of 07-09-2008 the following four advisories are however just the results of testing a push after all packages have been signed with the new GPG keys. Please see the Announcements and Developments sections of FWN for more information. =Fedora 9 Security Advisories= * samba-3.2.3-0.20.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00002.html * wordpress-2.6.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00040.html * bitlbee-1.2.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00045.html Fedora 8 Security Advisories * xastir-1.9.2-8.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00046.html =Virtualization= In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley Enterprise Management Tools List This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list Use Avahi to Discover Local Servers in Virt-manager Cole Robinson committed[1] a patch[2] to add support for avahi polling in the virt-manager 'Open Connection' dialog. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00000.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-August/msg00123.html Virtio Support in Libvirt and Virt-manager Emre Erenoglu asked[1] if virtio[2] would be supported in virt-manager. Daniel P. Berrange said[3] libvirt supports it as of 0.4.4 and virt-manager will soon automatically enable virtio for disks known to include it. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00010.html [2] http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Virtio [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00011.html The design paradigm[4] for virt-manager is to allow selection of OS Type and Variant which informs the features to be enabled, rather than exposing individual features toggles. Cole Robinson agreed[5] exposing the option to enable virtio disks for an unknow virtio-enabled distribution might not be a bad idea. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00013.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00015.html New Virt-manager and Virtinst Releases Pending Cole Robinson announced[1] that with the pending Fedora 10 beta freeze on Tuesday, September 9th new releases of virt-manager + virtinst are imminent. Daniel P. Berrange concurred[2] that libvirt would roll out a new release around that time as well. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00002.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00005.html Virt-install Patch for Disk Size and Sparse Cole Robinson patched[1] virt-install's new --disk option to specify size of new storage, and whether it be create it as a sparse file. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00004.html Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. Nothing to report this week. Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. Libvirt vs XenAPI Atif Bajwa asked[1] about the advantages of using libvirt over XenAPI and what platforms libvirt supports. Atsushi Sakai pointed to a list[2] of which libvirt calls work on which drivers / hypervisors. Daniel P. Berrange replied[3] that libvirt is available for every major Linux distro, and listed several benefits such as: * avoids locking applications to a particular hypervisor * provides a guaranteed stable API that can be used both locally and remotely * remote security options include SSL + x509 certificates, SSH tunnel, Kerberos GSSAPI single sign on, and username + password * works with every version of Xen 3.0.x or later while XenAPI is only usable in Xen 3.1.0 and later Richard W.M. Jones mentioned[4] that although there are no binaries yet, libvirt client code can be compiled on windows. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00002.html [2] http://libvirt.org/hvsupport.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00008.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00016.html Latest MinGW Patches Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] patches to allow building on F10 of libvirt-0.dll and virsh.exe which run successfully under Wine, provided only 'test' and 'remote' drivers are turned on. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00065.html Does Libvirtd Need to Always be Running Yushu Yao asked[1] a basic question which may be helpful to point out. Does libvirtd need to always be running? Richard W.M. Jones answered[2] "yes and no". The local Xen hypervisor can be managed by direct hypervisor calls and/or a connection to xend. Warnings that libvirtd isn't running may be ignored. Libvirtd must be running to support the following, however. * remote access * non-root access * if you use the network or storage features * managing QEMU and KVM instances [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00085.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00103.html oVirt Devel List This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. Renaming oVirt RPMs Alan Pevec proposed[1] renaming the oVirt packages which turned into a discussion with Daniel P. Berrange about how to organize the git repos and how to continue support build-all after such a change. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00029.html WUI Management of Underlying Hardware Chris Lalancette posted[1] a series of patches to allow the Web User Interface to manage the underlying hardware it is running on. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00081.html Network Interface Bonding and Failover Darryl L. Pierce began[1] a discussion on implementing support for ethernet bonding multiple interfaces for load balancing and failover. Special consideration for different hardware scenarios such as blade servers lead Konrad Rzeszutek to ask how these extra parameters would be passed in to the bonding setup. Darryl explained[2] that on boot the node identifies itself to the oVirt server, and downloads a configuration file to be processed by augtool[3]. The managed node then restarts the network service to apply the network configuration that it just retrieved. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00064.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00075.html [3] http://augeas.net/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIxPNQzHDc8tpb2uURAtzRAKCTj5iymYizSAMtmu66r7pJ4mgRdwCbBs5T omV746s+xUeo9Z9izdu6twg= =dkej -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From jkeating at redhat.com Mon Sep 8 21:06:47 2008 From: jkeating at redhat.com (Jesse Keating) Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:06:47 -0700 Subject: Fedora 8 and 9 updates status In-Reply-To: <1220630950.4273.14.camel@luminos.localdomain> References: <1220630950.4273.14.camel@luminos.localdomain> Message-ID: <1220908007.17700.38.camel@luminos.localdomain> On Fri, 2008-09-05 at 09:09 -0700, Jesse Keating wrote: > Announcements regarding the location > of said document and how to help with content will be coming shortly. Time for another update on the F8 and F9 updates status. Our testing with the live update content as gone well. We identified a couple issues with the current PackageKit and thanks to Richard Hughes we'll have an updated PackageKit to offer as well as an updated fedora-release package for our users. The combination of the two (or just the fedora-release package for you non-packagekit users) will be all that you will need in order to gain access to our newly signed and relocated updates. We're in the final stages of testing a few corner cases, and preparing the official builds of fedora-release, PackageKit, gnome-packagekit, and unique (needed as a new dep for gnome-packagekit). All existing updates in the old update locations will be purged, and just these updates will be put in their place, signed with our old key. Once you've updated to these packages, the next update attempt will point you to our new locations with our new keys and you should be able to process any further pending updates. You'll be prompted to import the new key along the way. A wiki page has been created that covers some of this, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Enabling_new_signing_key and will be updated throughout the day as we finish the above listed tasks. A more formal announcement along with links to the official FAQ will be published to same lists this mail is going out to, and likely picked up by various news sites. We expect things to wrap up by the end of today or early tomorrow. Once again we thank you for your continued patience and be aware that we're nearly there! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom? is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From jkeating at redhat.com Wed Sep 10 06:34:35 2008 From: jkeating at redhat.com (Jesse Keating) Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:34:35 -0700 Subject: Fedora 8 and 9 updates re-enabled Message-ID: <1221028475.3388.132.camel@luminos.localdomain> In a few hours, updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 will start hitting mirrors. These updates are designed to transition users from our old repo locations to new locations that have all our updates re-signed with a new set of keys. Most users will simply need to apply the offered updates, and later apply any further updates, and verify/import the new GPG key. The process to getting new updates is two stage. Stage 1) Users configured to get updates from existing repos will see a small set of updates available in the next few hours/days. These updates include fedora-release, PackageKit, gnome-packagekit, and unique (for Fedora 8, only fedora-release is offered). These updates should be applied as soon as possible. Stage 2) Once the above updates have been applied, your update tools (yum, PackageKit, pirut) will see a new repository and a larger set of updates available. This is your new standard flow of updates, that will continue to see new updates as the lifetime of Fedora 8 and 9 progress. There will be further milestones in the future that involve redirection of release package repos to match that of updates, and removing of old gpg key from rpm trust. For more details and an FAQ, please see https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Enabling_new_signing_key -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom? is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From huzaifas at redhat.com Mon Sep 15 10:01:18 2008 From: huzaifas at redhat.com (Huzaifa Sidhpurwala) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:31:18 +0530 Subject: Fedora Week News, Issue 143 Message-ID: <48CE326E.9090104@redhat.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 143 ============================ Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 143 for the week ending September 7, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143 This week Announcements trumpets the arrival of a new version of Bodhi, the freeze of Rawhide and some essential reading on the new package keys. In Developments we shock you with "Non-X System Consoles to be Removed". Virtualization alerts you to "Virt-manager 0.6.0 Released" and dives into how developers are "Laying the Groundwork for Xen Domain 0 Support". The ever entertaining Artwork beat examines "How to Select a Winning Theme" and SecurityAdvisories provides a handy list for your perusal. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join =Announcements= In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack Fedora 8 and 9 Updates Jesse Keating wrote more[0] about the status of updates on Fedora 8 and Fedora 9. "We're in the final stages of testing a few corner cases, and preparing the official builds of fedora-release, PackageKit, gnome-packagekit, and unique (needed as a new dep for gnome-packagekit). All existing updates in the old update locations will be purged, and just these updates will be put in their place, signed with our old key. Once you've updated to these packages, the next update attempt will point you to our new locations with our new keys and you should be able to process any further pending updates. You'll be prompted to import the new key along the way." Additionally, "these updates are designed to transition users from our old repo locations to new locations that have all our updates re-signed with a new set of keys[1]." I encourage everyone to read both announcements, and also to visit the information page on the Fedora wiki[2]. [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00006.html [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00007.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Enabling_new_signing_key Bodhi 0.5! Luke Macken has been very active in Bodhi development lately[3]. "One of the most noticable changes is that bodhi is much more responsive. Previously, bodhi was a single python process, running on a single server. This single server was also responsible for composing the updates repositories, and rawhide, among lots of other bodhi-related churn. This lead to much pain and suffering for all. The bodhi deployment has since changed. All bodhi requests are now load balanced to a bunch of app servers, each running mod_wsgi with multiple bodhi processes, each with multiple threads. All of the hard work is now done on an isolated releng server. This separate bodhi "masher" is now responsible for composing repositories, updating bugs, generating update notices, sending emails, extended metadata generation, and calculating metrics. I also added support for inter-bodhi communication, which allows our bodhi web frontends to kick off push requests to our bodhi-masher instance." Plenty more new-feature discussion in the full email. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00008.html Frozen for Fedora 10 Beta Jesse Keating announced[4] that Rawhide is now frozen for Fedora 10 Beta. "Rawhide will compose from the frozen content so that we all are aware of what Beta is going to be comprised of. Extra scruitiny and testing of rawhide over the next week is greatly appreciated." [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00009.html =Developments= In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley External Repositories and the New Keys As a result of the re-signing all the packages with a new key as a security precaution[1] some problems with packages from third-party repositories were reported[2] by Callum Lerwick. The specific example was an update of the non-Free "xine-lib-extras-nonfree". Seth Vidal suggested[3] a simple fix of yum --skip-broken update. [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142#Getting.Back.on.our.Feet [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01070.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01072.html Jef Spaleta experienced[4] no such error and speculated that it was due to some mirrors being temporarily out of sync, which Matthew Woehlke agreed[5] was likely. Kevin Kofler disagreed[6] and diagnosed the problem as a "chicken and egg" one in which it was impossible to get the new repository key which in turn would enable the new, matching xine-lib to be obtained. He suggested that while it was possible to use yum - --skip-broken or yum --exclude for a selective update it would be better for new users to "[...] use the PackageKit GUI, click on "Review updates" and uncheck the xine-lib-extras-nonfree update, then apply." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01073.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01090.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01124.html Thorsten Leemhuis thought[7] that this was a general problem for the livna repository in which they can only "push [too] early or [too] late". He had outlined the problem previously (see FWN#138 "Solving the Unsynchronized Release of Package Dependencies"[8]) but his suggested solution of adding a brief time period during which yum keeps checking for missing dependencies had not obtained traction. Thorsten explained again: "[...] the problem happens each time when Livna/RPM Fusion packages with deps on a specific Fedora packages get pushed in sync; that creates a lot of trouble * I'd say once for 24 hours each two weeks." He conceded[9] that yum --skip-broken was "[...] best answer, but that's not enabled by default in Fedora. Livna/RPM Fusion could fix that via its releasepackages, but that's not nice and I want to avoid going that route." On the foot of a suggestion made[10] by Harald Hoyer to add "More Information button in PackageKit dialogs, which explains the situation and that this might only just take some days to resolve[.]" Richard Hughes asked[11] for specific suggestions to improve the current dialogs. He added that "[m]y personal view is that by showing an error dialog, we've lost, and should avoid doing it at all costs." Thorsten responded[12] to Harald that he believed that it was best to "[...] enable skip-broken by default, but show the error to the user if security updates are involved *or* if the problem doesn't vanish within 72 hours after it had been hit on the client for the first time" and that for the latter cases PackageKit could show some more information. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01097.html [8] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue138#Solving.the.Unsynchronized.Release.of.Package.Dependencies [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01080.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01143.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01149.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01144.html Non-X System Consoles to be Removed ArthurPemberton was concerned[1] about the best way to help debug the many [PulseAudio] issues which he was experiencing on Fedora 9. He asked "[w]hat information should I gather, how, and where should I present it?" This innocent enquiry spawned several sub-threads which avoided answering his question. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00982.html In the first Bill Crawford recommended[2] disabling PulseAudio and although Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams listed features unique to it Karel Zak was[3] skeptical that "ordinary" users would need them. Toshio Kuratomi responded[4] that the network transport features were very useful for thinclients. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01053.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01107.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01110.html Janina Sajka chimed in[5] to agree with Arthur that while the idea of PulseAudio was appealing and "[...] holds great promise for accessibility [...]" there appeared to be practical problems to sort out. Janina referenced SpeakupModified.org, which provides repositories for a Fedora-derived distribution tailored towards users that rely on audio cues instead of visual ones, and noted that it was currently necessary to disable PulseAudio because "[...] one gets no audio until after a user logs in on the GUI. So, how are those who need screen reader support supposed to use the a11y features of GDM? As it stands, there seems no way to get console audio without that GUI login. Also a nonstarter in the screen reader user community." She asked if anyone had a "working init script for pulseaudio as a system daemon?" None of the many message that followed appeared to have an answer to this question. In part this appeared[6] to be because < Orca can handle the audio rendering of the GDM login screen. Colin provided[7] references that should make it possible to configure GDM to work this way out of the box using GConf settings. It seemed[8] that this was a possible solution. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01179.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01189.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01213.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01240.html At this point Colin Walters set off a firestorm of complaints and queries when he announced[9], as an aside, that "[w]e're going to be removing the legacy non-X system consoles by default in the long run." [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01180.html Jerry james listed[10] three scenarios in which he felt it would be very useful to have text consoles. The advantages included faster startup than with Xorg and independence from a damaged X session. Colin rebutted[11] most of these with the argument that "login is slow" was a bug which should be fixed and that the other scenarios also were constructed on the basis of bugs which should be fixed (in the applications themselves and in Xorg's ability to handle crashes.) [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01186.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01190.html Matthew Woehlke also wondered what would happen if Xorg itself was broken and Colin asked[12] rhetorically "What happens when the linux kernel is broken? What happens when /bin/sh is broken? What happens when NetworkManager is broken?" He added that a compressed recovery image should be included by default in a Fedora install. Matthew's response suggested[13] that although it would be possible to recover it would mean having to find a rescue disk and to reboot. He expressed a preference for "[having] X fail to start and dump me at a normal console from which I can fix the problem *without rebooting*, much less needing to dig up a rescue disk :P" and compared the alternative to the fragility of Windows. The issue then became a little clouded when Colin stated "I believe we already do that today, and am not advocating removing that functionality if possible. Anyways, I've said what I need to, so hopefully people won't be surprised later." Further requests[14][15] for clarification on the previous statement produced no simple response, although later Colin did appear to confirm[16] the impression that he saw this as an essential change for the evolution of Fedora as a Desktop. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01194.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01197.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01199.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01203.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01209.html make force-tag Gone The removal of make force-tag was objected to[1] by Bastien Nocerra as it forced bumping the Release of packages even for trivial changes. A massive thread resulted with a good deal of agreement expressed with Bastien. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00675.html Mike McGrath made[2] the case that if maintainers tested packages before committing them and adduced the necessity of the current workflow in producing an audit trail for licensing as a concrete reason. Jon Ciesla had earlier mentioned using TAG_OPTS=-F make tag as a work around and now asked[3] if "the Makefile can be modified to prevent it, so that others who didn't know [that this invalidates the audit trail] stop doing it?" Doug Ledford responded[4] that this would be unenforceable as it would still allow the CVS command to be run by hand and "[i]f our recent 'incident' showed us anything, it's that things like this need to be enforced on the CVS server if they are going to be enforced at all." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00725.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00736.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00904.html Jesse Keating argued[5] that the issue was more GPL compliance than an audit trail and outlined why he would personally prefer to move away from building from CVS tags. Jef Spaleta suggested[6] that Mike McGrath had misspoken: "You are of course free to make 300 small separate specfile changes between each build attempt. There is a desire to move to a point where we can be reasonably sure that a cvs tag corresponds to a specific build. Since we have no way of making only tags corresponding to successfully built packages immutable, all tags must be immutable" and like Mike asked for a way to mark as immutable a subset of CVS tags corresponding to a successful Koji build. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00740.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00786.html The thread is recommended reading for package maintainers and the brief summary above misses many important points. Graphics Modesetting Changes A post by Dave Airlie reminded[1] the list that [KernelModesetting][2] was going to be one of the notable features of Fedora 10 for recent Radeon "r300 to r500 (and possibly r600/r700)" and Intel "from i830 to GM45 (though it may end up i915 and up only)" GPUs . Adam Jackson responded[3] to Bill Crawford that r200 class hardware would probably not get modesetting in Fedora 10. Among other things this will have cosmetic advantages such as removing flickers from the startup sequence, reducing Xorg startup times and practical advantages such as oops/panic messages while Xorg is running and improved suspend/resume support. Dave cautioned that only a subset of the GPUs were working for the beta release "[...] r300 to r500 class of hardware, while we await upstream changes to the Intel driver" and noted that to disable modesetting one should append nomodeset to the kernel command line via GRUB. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00991.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KernelModesetting [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01019.html In response to Hans de Goede Dave welcomed[4] bug reports of the "output doesn't light up" type and suggested using an ssh session to reboot to runlevel 3 with nomodeset and then rmmod radeon drm; modprobe drm debug=1; modprobe radeon modeset=1 and attach dmesg and an Xorg log to the bugzilla entry. Following this recipe produced[5] no luck for "Joshua C." as everything froze once he followed the last step. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01004.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01018.html Skepticism about inserting the Intel driver code after the beta testing period was expressed[6] by Jeremy Katz on the foot of such late changes lacking both the visibility necessary for testing and the time to fix any bugs revealed. Jeremy was mildly scathing: "Yeah, I've seen intel's 'mature' code before. Excuse me if this is anything but reassuring." Jesse Keating and Christopher Snook seemed[7] to accept Jeremy's point and leaned towards the idea of implementing the KernelModesetting contingency plan[8] of including the modesetting code disabled by default, but allowing users to enable it on the kernel command line. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01036.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01055.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01055.html Adam Jackson wondered whether Jeremy was advocating removing all the new code or testing it all and Jeremy suggested[9] the third option of only enabling the radeon code for now and waiting for Fedora 11 to enable the Intel code. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01068.html When "Joshua C." asked[10] for a list of working radeon cards and suggested applying the contingency plan because "f10 is just a month away" he was corrected [11] by Paul Frields that it was approximately two months away with a development freeze in six weeks. Dave asked[12] Joshua to "[...] stop scare mongering[,] it's a beta release, if it still doesn't work at devel freeze I'll blacklist all the broken machines" which reaction surprised[13] Joshua a little. [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01077.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01115.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01117.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01147.html Root Login Disallowed on GDM Surprise was expressed[1] by "Dr. Diesel" when he attempted to log in as root via GDM[2] to a rawhide install. "Dr. Diesel" reported that it was possible to log in via the console in runlevel 3. He asked if he should file a bugzilla entry. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01205.html [2] http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/ Darrell Pfeifer quoted[3] the changelog as evidence that this restriction was intentional to which "Dr. Diesel" responded that it would be a good idea to change the prompt to "[...] something like 'Root login disabled'[.]". Matthew Woehlke was disturbed and wondered "[...] what exactly are we supposed to do when the user login gets hosed? Reach for a rescue disk? (Seriously, what's with the sudden trend to make fixing problems harder by making recovery modes inaccessible in an apparent bid to hide the "confusing/potentially dangerous" bits of the system from the user?)" The latter part of this apparently being a reference to another recent thread (see this FWN#143 "Non-X System Consoles to be Removed".) [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01206.html Benjamin Lewis presented[4] a straightforward, obvious way of fixing such problems: "CTRL+ALT+F1, login as root, fix it, CTRL+ALT+F7 to get back to GDM" and Martin Sourada added "[or] boot to runlevel 3, login as root there and startx..." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01225.html The discussion was moved on[5] by Nigel Jones with a suggestion that the default setup should configure sudo to allow the first user configured during firstboot to have "full access w/ password." Steven Moix disagreed[6] as this all seemed like the "Ubuntu 'protect us from ourselves' way" which removed the conscious choice to log in as root. Martin Sourada was also filled[7] with dismay at the idea, but his objection was that PolicyKit was a superior solution to sudo. This preference was confronted[8] by Thorsten Leemhuis with a request to "[...] please tell me how for example read /var/log/messages or other log files from /var/log/ using PolicyKit from a -gnome,kde-terminal with an easy to remember and fast to type command (like 'sudo') [.]" Thorsten also suggested that firstboot could present a checkbox labeled "User is the sysadmin for this system" that when checked would configure sudo and/or PolicyKit or any other desiderata for allowing root privileges for the user. Matthew Miller largely agreed with this and suggested that "uncommenting the wheel group in /etc/sudoers, and having said checkbox add the user to the wheel group" would be the way to do it, but Seth Vidal raised[9] the problem of "[...] the wheel group, on systems which are using some other form of nss than local files, can be mucked with too easily." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01222.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01224.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01228.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01233.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01238.html All this was strangely reminiscent of previous discussions, e.g. FWN#103 "Root Login And Display Managers In Rawhide"[10] except that PolicyKit now offers some possible new directions as Martin Sourada outlined[11:] "What I am mostly against is having full access to sudo without password by default by any user. I believe PolicyKit is designed to solve this issue by granting rights (by admin) to user to do this and that and not do other admin tasks [...] the implementation should IMHO be like cat/nano/vi/whatever detects that you are trying to access some file you don't have enough rights to access, then it asks PolicyKit whether to allow it or not and PolicyKit handles the rest (i.e. checks whether your admin already allowed that access for you, if not asks for root password for allowing the access and if succeeded sends back that its OK for you to access the file). Ideally it wouldn't require any additional command (like sudo) [...] When I want to view logs (though I don't very much understand why I cannot read them as normal user) I just log in as root (in console/gnome-terminal only!). Yeah it's not pleasant to write root password every time I want to do some admin task - and that's probably one of the reasons why PolicyKit has been developed - but I think allowing full access to sudo without password for normal user account is a big security hole." [10] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue103#Root.Login.And.Display.Managers.In.Rawhide [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01237.html Missing Screen Locking Spurs Inquiry Into User-state Maintenance When John Ellson enquired[1] why "[...] my userid, and only my userid, has no Lock Screen menu item or applet?" a brief thread revealed the many places in which user state is kept. The answer, for the impatient, turned out[2] to be that John had experimented with Pessulus[3], which allows administrators to enforce mandatory GConf settings on users. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01027.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01108.html [3] http://live.gnome.org/Pessulus John's first pass at the problem was to wipe out some dot files rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity and this failed to restore the default. Chris Snook suggested[4] that he consider /tmp as another location where "per-user state is kept" but John had investigated[5] both /tmp and /var/tmp. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01031.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01034.html Jesse Keating wondered[6] if "[...] it's not a ConsoleKit interaction making the session think your user isn't at the console?" John replied that he had gone to the extraordinary lengths of "moving aside my home directory, deleting my userid, removing everything in /tmp and /var/tmp, rebooting creating a new userid with the same name (but different user and group numbers), and it still has no Lock Screen!!!" Jef Spaleta made[7] the disclaimer that he did not "[...] understand PolicyKit/ConsoleKit well enough to help you track it down in the filesystem with 100% confidence[...]" but suggested searching in /var/lib/PolicyKit and /var/lib/PolicyKit-public for per-user authorization rules. This was reported[8] as fruitless by John, as was running polkit-auth. John wondered where the output of polkit-auth came from as "Removing /var/lib/PolicyKit/user-ellson.auths doesn't change the output." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01040.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01050.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01059.html MatthiasClasen cut straight to the chase and suggested[9] a good, old-fashioned backtrace "Why don't we stop all this blind guessing, and attach a debugger to the panel instead ? It would be so much easier..." Although John wondered[10] why gnome-panel sprang to Matthias' mind as a culprit a later suggestion[11] to "[...] break in panel_lock_screen_action_available [...]" gave him a clue as to the problem. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01064.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01074.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01076.html Pessulus has been around since Fedora 7 at least and the process above was a bit of a wild goose chase, but what is interesting is how difficult it is to solve such a problem due to the many places in which such information is stored. =Infrastructure= This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala More puppet training! Mike McGrath writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1] Mike proposed that he is going to hold a couple of trainings for Puppet on fedora-infrastructure. And asked if any one had questions etc to be included in the training. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00001.html Removal of old projects from fedorahosted. susmit shannigrahi writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [2] Susmit reminded the list that, Fedora has a policy to remove _any_ hosted projects that are not altered or updated for last six months. And provided a list of projects, which falls into this category and they will soon be removed. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00050.html Beta Freeze Mike McGrath writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [3] Mike reminded everyone that the beta freeze is going to live and it will end on 2008-09-24. This is the first pre-release freeze type the infrastructure team has had [4] [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00096.html [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/SOP/Release#Change_Freeze =Artwork= In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei How to Select a "Winning" Theme MairinDuffy opened[1] a debate on @fedora-art about the best way to select the final theme in a release: "We have not yet had a case where more than one theme met this basic requirement. In case we do have multiple themes that meet this requirement, we need a fair method to choose which theme is selected as the default" and going further, she proposed a solution and asked for opinions: "My suggestion is that we have a vote within the set of active Fedora art team contributors. The problem is how do we determine who is allowed in this vote - who is active? " [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00095.html SamueleStorari opted[2] for a wide vote in the community "I think the vote will be totally open to the whole community." arguing that "the graphic it's made for all, think about art, think about expression, it comes from the inside need of someone to express to other, to comunicate.", an opinion endorsed by MariaLeandro[3] and IanWeller who proposed[4] an alternate and complex system "Or, perhaps even better, take a two-part voting approach; 50% of the vote allocated to current Art Team members (recent contributions, 6 months, yada yada) and 50% for the community." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00099.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00105.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00114.html On the other hand, NicuBuculei opposed[5] the community vote invoking the notion of competence "the trouble is that the large community knows little about usability and good design", an opinion similar to that expressed[6] by MatthiasClasen "Taste is not something that can be decided with simple majority. Voting for the default theme would pretty much devolve into 'which is the coolest looking background when glancing at a bunch of screenshots', which is not at all what a good default theme is about. This forum is the place for qualified and interested people to work on the art that makes up the default theme. It should also be the place where the default theme gets put together." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00101.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00116.html Another argument against a community-wide vote was raised[7] by MairinDuffy "we don't really have time to plan for a Fedora-wide vote, and since there's not much time to wait on people to vote and to get the word out, we won't have a good representation of our base in the vote results." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00106.html - From his position as a Fedora Board member, JeffSpaleta came to the conclusion "I consider the multiple rounds of discussion over the themes as a prolonged 'community' decision. The final artwork decision is a culminating event in a process. Are people encouraged to participate in the earlier stages of that process as part of the art team? if they choose not to participate in the previous rounds do they have the context to make informed decisions at the final stage? Have they earned the right to be a part of the final decision? I'm not sure they do." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00111.html As a solution to get the themes as soon as possible into the hands of the users and receive early feedback MairinDuffy issued a last-minute call[9] for packaging the current proposals into Fedora 10 Beta "if we could get a package put together with the wallpapers that are in the running so far it could make the Beta." The call answered quickly by MartinSourada [10], who created the packages.The packages were reviewed and are already available in Rawhide. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00123.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00137.html =Security Advisories= In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley Fedora 9 Security Advisories * amarok-1.4.10-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00057.html * libtiff-3.8.2-11.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00102.html * awstats-6.8-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00107.html * openoffice.org-2.4.1-17.6.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00120.html * Django-0.96.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00131.html * gnome-packagekit-0.2.5-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00136.html * fedora-release-9-5.transition - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00137.html * PackageKit-0.2.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00138.html * bitlbee-1.2.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00160.html * bluez-libs-3.35-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00233.html * bluez-utils-3.35-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00234.html * rpy-1.0.3-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00253.html * R-2.7.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00254.html * samba-3.2.3-0.20.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00271.html * wordpress-2.6.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00278.html * xastir-1.9.2-9.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00307.html * libxml2-2.6.32-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00347.html * xine-lib-1.1.15-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00385.html * adminutil-1.1.7-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00449.html * drupal-6.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00508.html * fedora-ds-base-1.1.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00521.html * wordpress-2.6.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00629.html * bitlbee-1.2.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00692.html * poppler-0.8.1-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00697.html * httrack-3.42.93-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00707.html * fedora-release-9-5.transition - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00709.html * tomcat6-6.0.18-1.1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00712.html * wireshark-1.0.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00713.html * libHX-1.23-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00723.html * gnome-packagekit-0.2.5-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00728.html * pam_mount-0.47-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00729.html * PackageKit-0.2.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00731.html * ipa-1.1.0-7.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00743.html Fedora 8 Security Advisories * fedora-release-8-6.transition - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00073.html * Django-0.96.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00091.html * amarok-1.4.10-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00097.html * libtiff-3.8.2-11.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00121.html * libxml2-2.6.32-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00162.html * xine-lib-1.1.15-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00174.html * xastir-1.9.2-8.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00199.html * adminutil-1.1.7-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00218.html * rpy-1.0.3-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00219.html * R-2.7.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00220.html * yelp-2.20.0-12.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00222.html * drupal-5.10-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00259.html * bitlbee-1.2.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00335.html * awstats-6.8-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00355.html * openoffice.org-2.3.0-6.16.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00494.html * wordpress-2.6.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00502.html * bitlbee-1.2.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00587.html * wordpress-2.6.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00607.html * fedora-ds-base-1.1.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00708.html * httrack-3.42.93-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00711.html * wireshark-1.0.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00715.html * libHX-1.23-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00721.html * pam_mount-0.47-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00730.html * ipa-1.1.0-4.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00733.html =Virtualization= In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley Enterprise Management Tools List This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list Virt-manager 0.6.0 Released Cole Robinson announced[1] the release of virt-manager[2] 0.6.0. Features include: * Remote storage management and provisioning * Remote VM installation * Use Avahi to list libvirtd instances * Virtio and USB options when adding a disk device and many more. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00026.html [2] http://www.virt-manager.org Virtinst 0.400.0 Released Cole Robinson announced[1] the release of virtinst 0.400.0. Features include: * New tool 'virt-convert' * New tool 'virt-pack' * Support for remote VM installation * Use virtio disk/net drivers if chosen os entry supports it and many more. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00027.html Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. Laying the Groundwork for Xen Domain 0 Support There are further developments in the state of Xen in upstream Linux (see FWN#137[3]). Pasi K?rkk?inen forwarded[1] a patch announcement[2] from xen-devel list. This set of seven patches begin to lay the groundwork for Xen domain 0 support. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00001.html [2] http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2008-09/threads.html#00170 [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#State_of_Xen_in_Upstream_Linux Daniel P. Berrange said[4] these patches will make their way into rawhide when they are merged into the LKML[5] dev tree line used by rawhide at that time. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00003.html [5] http://lkml.org Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. Libvirt 0.4.5 Released Daniel Veillard announced[1] the release of libvirt 0.4.5. In addition to a long changelog, the "main features are the improvement of OpenVZ and LXC, the uniform XML handling (and hence format) th[r]ough all drivers, improvements in devices handling for QEmu/KVM and storage pool source discovery." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00186.html Segfault if no Qemu Emulator Passed Cole Robinson patched[1] a bug that resulted in a segfault if a Qemu domain is defined without an emulator value. Daniel Berrange expressed[2] displeasure at letting this bug slip through and proposed a "brown paper bag" release. Daniel Veillard advised[3] against rushing the fix, and offered to push the patch to Fedora's build while other distributions could pick up the fix in a week or two when libvirt 0.4.6 would presumably be released. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00199.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00202.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00206.html Daniel Berrange pointed out code test coverage reports[4] on the build server, and highlighted the need to create a functional test rig for the mass of code that is simply not possible to unit test due to interactions with host OS state / functionality. [4] http://builder.virt-manager.org/module-libvirt--devel.html Ability to Nice KVM Processes Henri Cook expressed[1] a desire to nice KVM processes, and proposed a means to pass arbitrary command string parameters to the process startup. As mentioned[2] in FWN #141, Daniel Berrange pointed out[3] the goal of libvirt is consistent API representation across hypervisors. Fortunately there is a 'schedular parameters' API in libvirt. All that's needed is for someone to implement the schedular parameters driver API for KVM. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00209.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141#Exposing_Unique_Hypervisor_Features [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00210.html RFC Thoughts on Open Source Hypervisor Management Nathan Charles described[1] his ideal clustered VM provisioning system. Features would include * cluster administration is done from the command line * cluster administration can be performed from any node * a new node can join a cluster on a local subnet with one command * local storage resources are presented to the cluster so there is no need to have predefined NAS/SAN/iSCSI * cluster will load balance vm instances from node to node * a node shouldn't need more than one nic but adding additional nic's provides failover and load balancing Nathan acknowledged oVirt's virtues, but stated it requires a lot of substantial changes and significant modification to work with an existing provisioning infrastructure. Nathan requested comments on his thoughts. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00195.html The only reply[2] so far came from Stefan de Konink, who pointed to some code[3] which seems[4] to be a "handler for libvirt using avahiclient". [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00196.html [3] http://repo.or.cz/w/handlervirt.git [4] http://kinkrsoftware.nl/projecten.html#virt oVirt Devel List This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. oVirt Source Repository Refactored Perry N. Myers announced[1] the completion of the restructuring of the oVirt source mentioned in FWN #142[2]. This reorganization resulted in commits of numerous spec files and other changes making an RPM-based install more feasible. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00145.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142#Renaming_oVirt_RPMs oVirt Migration Status Atsushi SAKAI asked[1] if the following assumptions were true. KVM supports migration, while Qemu does not. Ovirt release supports migration, developer version does not. Chris Lalancette clarified[2] "there is live migration code in upstream kvm userspace, but not in upstream qemu" and fully emulated guests can be live migrated as long as the KVM binary is used to do it (which ovirt does). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00107.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00108.html Atsushi inquired of the fake managed nodes, and Chris Lalancette explained[3] the fake managed nodes are abstractions to allow experimenting oVirt with limited hardware. Perry N. Myers added[4] there is work underway to remove the 'fake node' concept. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00110.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00111.html Network Interface Bonding and Failover Work Continues Darryl L. Pierce continued[1] work on NIC bonding and failover (see FWN #142[2]) laying out the process a node will use to configure interfaces on bootup and the selection of bonding type which must be selected on the server. Types include * Load Balancing * Failover * Broadcast * Link Aggregation [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00243.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142#Network_Interface_Bonding_and_Failover Daniel P. Berrange inquired[3] if those four options was a limit of the bonding driver or a design choice, since more complex bonding configurations are plausible. Darryl L. Pierce affirmed[4] it is a design choice to keep things simple initially. Chris Lalancette pointed[5] out there are many combinations of bridges, bonds, and VLANs, and "we have to figure out which combinations are completely insane, which are valid and make sense, and then make sure we can handle those." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00244.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00245.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00246.html Related discussion occurred in another[6] thread on how to configure multiple bondings for a host in the UI. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00262.html Other Virtualization News This section contains virtualization news which may not have been directly discussed on the above mailing lists. Red Hat Acquires Makers of KVM, Qumranet Inc. On September 4, 2008 Red Hat acquired[1][2] Qumranet, Inc., the inventor and key maintainer of KVM. Qumranet also develops Solid ICE[3] which runs a user's desktop in a KVM virtual machine in the data center with users connecting via thin client or other options. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIzjJtzHDc8tpb2uURAt7cAJ4wbxy9uFmQ8YBiE4+4mhWr3ZVewgCdFbzR EQCCTko6S8KVR4HASblGW+g= =toBe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From stickster at gmail.com Fri Sep 19 00:41:29 2008 From: stickster at gmail.com (Paul W. Frields) Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:41:29 -0400 Subject: Fedora intrusion update, 2008-09-19 UTC 0230 Message-ID: <1221784889.6988.1.camel@localhost.localdomain> Work on the Fedora infrastructure has returned to normal at this point. Updates are once again available for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, our current releases, using the new package signing key we've implemented. To read more about the new package signing key, refer to: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/New_signing_key https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Enabling_new_signing_key In addition, Rawhide has returned to service, as well as our other services such as Fedora Hosted. As always, our team of system administrators makes incremental improvements constantly. Sometimes these improvements involve temporary outages, and such outages may occur in the future as part of normal operations. At this time, however, we believe Fedora's recovery efforts are complete. To reiterate our previous statement, we have not found any security vulnerabilities in any Fedora software as a result of our efforts. The security investigation into the intrusion is still in progress. When that investigation is completed, the Fedora Project's intention is to publish a more detailed report on the matter. We will issue further updates as more information becomes available. -- Paul W. Frields gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://paul.frields.org/ - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From kanarip at kanarip.com Sun Sep 21 01:25:45 2008 From: kanarip at kanarip.com (Jeroen van Meeuwen) Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 03:25:45 +0200 Subject: Orange Sombrero 9 Released - based on Fedora Message-ID: <48D5A299.6000908@kanarip.com> One more Software Freedom Day well spent ;-) I'm proud to announce a new minor player in the world of insignificant clones of major, important Free and Open Source Linux Distributions, *bling* Orange Sombrero - /based on Fedora/ *bling* Orange Sombrero starts with releasing version number 9 - the same version number as the upstream distribution, Fedora, to avoid confusion. Has anything been changed? Yeah, a patch to anaconda[1,2] that didn't make it in in time for the Fedora 10 Beta freeze has been applied to compose this release -which is sort of the entire use case behind the patch anyway. Also, a different branch of Revisor has been used that uses the patch to anaconda[3]. Since I've got limited bandwidth and disk space, this is a 1 CD distribution. If I had bandwidth and disk space, I might have thrown in a mid-release Everything Spin but I couldn't. Also, given that this is a 1 CD distribution, I've added an install class to anaconda so that it selects the correct groups of packages. Who needs "Office & Productivity" if there's only @core and @base, right? "Base System" FTW! It was fun, it took me 4 koji scratch builds of anaconda and another number of composes to get it "right". Note that despite these changes the installed system will behave just the same as Fedora. In fact, if you look really hard, there's the occasional "Fedora" in there, still -maybe that's because I used fedora-release, which I should be able to do without trademark violations, even though /etc/fedora-release still says "Fedora" ;-) Why bother? Trademark guidelines right now say a derivative distribution cannot use "based on Fedora" -which is bad, and Orange Sombrero is now raising some red flags about it. Work is well on it's way to improve that situation[4] though, for which I thank everyone involved. I hope soon, very soon, derivative's of Fedora pop up everywhere, like mushrooms in autumn. Where is it? http://orangesombrero.org (torrents) On behalf of the entire Orange Sombrero Community (e.g. ~1 person), Kind regards, Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip [1] http://tinyurl.com/49eq5n [2] http://tinyurl.com/47v38s [3] http://tinyurl.com/4le262 [4] http://tinyurl.com/6d3ykf From huzaifas at redhat.com Mon Sep 22 09:17:29 2008 From: huzaifas at redhat.com (Huzaifa Sidhpurwala) Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:47:29 +0530 Subject: Fedora Week News, Issue 144 Message-ID: <48D762A9.2@redhat.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 ============================ Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 for the week ending September 20, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue144 Selected Contents: In this issue we cover the upcoming plans for North America Fedora Ambassador Day, update the happenings across the Fedora Planet, report on numerous work towards Fedora 10 in artwork, internationalization and reports on FUDCon 2008 in Brno, Czech Republic and Linux Demo Day in Charleston, SC USA. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack == Fedora 10 feature owners--rescue your unfinished feature pages! John Poelstra reminded[0] everyone that the feature freeze for Fedora 10 is coming soon, and that feature owners need to get their pages updated to ensure that the features that belong in F10 get in, and that the features that need to be deferred to F11 are deferred. "Please complete this as soon as possible so that we can prepare an accurate beta release announcement. FESCo will also be reviewing the complete feature list at its next meeting on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, and determining which incomplete features should remain." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00011.html == Updates to Fedora Packaging Guidelines Tom Callaway announced[1] the most recent set of revisions to the Packaging Guidelines, including including Haskell, Lisp, and several other areas. For the full announcement, read the link below. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00012.html == Fedora 10 and translations: String freeze and repackaging Dimitris Glezos reminded[2] us "that shipped packages for which Fedora is upstream for are string frozen since the Beta freeze of September 11: no translatable strings can be added or modified for Fedora 10." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00013.html == Fedora intrustion update Paul Frields issued[3] his latest updated regarding the Fedora security breach that has been news during the past few weeks. "Work on the Fedora infrastructure has returned to normal at this point. Updates are once again available for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, our current releases, using the new package signing key we've implemented." For the full announcement, follow the link. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009.html == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. http://planet.fedoraproject.org Contributing Writer: Max Spevack == Tech Tidbits Warren Togami announced the creation of a new list for NSPluginWrapper. "NSPluginwrapper Development discussion with the goal of isolating issues and collaboratively working on solutions should go on this list. There was some interest from other Linux distributions and even Adobe to cooperate on the future of nspluginwrapper development." http://wtogami.livejournal.com/28380.html https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/nspluginwrapper-devel-list Jesus Rodriguez announced the release of Spacewalk 0.2, the open-source upstream for Red Hat Satellite. There is a list of features, enhancements, bug fixes, and credits on Jesus' blog. http://zeusville.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/spacewalk-02/ http://spacewalk.redhat.com/ Greg DeKoenigsberg is helping the OLPC folks recruit volunteers to be part of their growing infrastructure team. "OLPC builds a lot of packages. They are looking to set up and maintain an infrastructure that will allow them to meet their own unique packaging needs. They need a volunteer with a strong understanding of the Fedora packaging process -- one who either understands koji now, or can learn to understand it in fairly short order." http://gregdek.livejournal.com/35595.html My favorite Planet post this week comes from Fedora Board member Matt Domsch, and it is worth people's time to read the entire post, to gain a lot of insight into how Fedora's mass rebuilds work, and what triggers them. "One challenge to self-hosting a project the size of Fedora (now with about 6200 source packages) is dealing with the interdependencies between packages. When a major component, such as the compiler or an often-used library, upgrades to a new version, you should rebuild all packages that depend upon that major component, to ensure they continue to work. Often, simply re-compiling or re-linking each package using the updated compiler or library is all that is needed. In some cases though, applications which once built, no longer do - bitrot has set in." http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/09/19/use-the-source-luke.aspx == Legal Tom Callaway wrote a lengthy post about the Mozilla EULA controversy, which reared its head again this week in the context of Ubuntu and Mozilla. However, Fedora dealt with this problem several months ago, at the end of the Fedora 9 release cycle. Spot's entire post is worth reading, as is the commentary that follows it. Here is one excerpt: "[The] goal was always to ensure that we could walk away with license terms from Mozilla that: 1. Permitted Fedora to continue using the Firefox trademarks 2. Clearly upheld the MPL as the valid software license terms for the Firefox binaries and source (not just for Fedora, but for everyone) 3. Meet the criteria for Free Software 4. Are presented to the user in a non-obtrusive, non-clickthrough agreement way" http://spot.livejournal.com/299409.html Anthony Green wrote a post that referenced SGI altering its Free B license, which has long been a thorn in the side of various distros. http://spindazzle.org/greenblog/index.php?/archives/121-Thank-you,-SGI..html http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2008/september/opengl.html == Events & Ambassadors == The North American Fedora Ambassador Day is coming up at Ohio Linux Fest in October, and there were a few posts about it on Planet this week. Brian Powell gave an update on the organization, saying: "There have been quite a few discussions and meetings recently in regards to FAD planning. There has been a lot of good progress and great ideas coming out of these. With time getting close, we are looking at finalizing the Agenda and Schedule for FADNA shortly. If you are a North American Ambassador I would ask that you take a moment to look at what we have come up with so far and a 'tentative' schedule of events located at the FADNA2008 wiki page. If you have anything to add feel free to do so." http://blog.rhatters.org/2008/09/17/fadna-2008-update/ Additionally, Karsten Wade wrote a post about strategies for handling remote meetings, and making a physical gathering of a small number of people into a larger meeting that remotees can attend and still get value out of, whether that attendance is via IRC, telephone, or something collaborative like gobby. "Think about your sessions and how it can help to interact with the rest of us. I recommend a minimum of: live video feed, live audio feed, and IRC, Gobby, and wiki editing projected on the wall. We can also keep a VoIP conference room open, but my instinct is to limit the flow on the incoming voices by subject matter. Beyond that recommendation, a live IRC and wiki-based abd/or Gobby note taking with many laptops in the in-person session is the bare bones, with regular usage of talk.fedoraproject.org." http://iquaid.org/2008/09/16/formula-for-making-distance-work/ David Nalley wrote up a trip report for Linux Demo Day in Charleston, SC. "About 60 people showed up. Charleston?s LUG is relatively new, and this was their first event. They seemed very pleased. I handed about 30 LiveCDs out and talked with a number of Fedora. In addition I spoke to 2-3 people who were intrigued with contributing to Fedora in one way or another. I?ll be following up with these individuals." This is a great example of an event -- low cost, but high touch! http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=96 == Marketing == In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing The history of Fedora is now available in video format. [1] [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/16/video-the-history-of-fedora/ == FUDCon Brno 2008 Max Spevack reported[1] the result of FUDCon Brno 2008. [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/09/fudcon-brno-2008/ == The beauty found in Fedora. Very interesting point of view of a Fedora user[1] [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=47 == Plug and Run Fedora on a TOSHIBA A300D laptop Adventures with Fedora and very tricky laptop [1] It is always good to know for such success stories. Some laptops do not even start GNU/Linux at all! But that one seems to work pretty well with Fedora. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=51 == First look at Fedora The video article "First look at Fedora" shows what one can sees for the first time [1] Very useful for novice users. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=55&Itemid=49 == Translation == This section, we cover the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee == 14th October 2008 declared as the Package Translation deadline for Fedora 10 The last date of submission of translations for Fedora 10 packages has been announced as 14th October 2008 (Tuesday).[1] This announcement was made after an unanimous decision by the Fedora L10n Steering Committee (FLSCo) members. The last date for the translation of Documents remains as 21st October 2008 (Tuesday). A request for rebuilding of packages post the translation freeze date, was also made to the Fedora-Devel-Announcement List.[2] "Maintainers of the above packages need to put a reminder to issue a new build *later* than this date and before the Development Freeze of 21/10. The closer to the development freeze the rebuild takes place, the better for our translators. If you have not received any translations since the last build, a rebuild is not necessary." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00050.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00013.html == Renewed call for volunteers for the L10n Infrastructure Another call was made at the FLSCo meeting held on 16th September 2008[3] seeking volunteers for the Fedora L10n infrastructure.[4] The earlier call was made in April 2008.[5] Meanwhile, Asgeir Frimannsson announced a proposed plan for a new L10n infrastructure which is currently being discussed in various relevant mailing lists.[6][7] [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00047.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00051.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-April/msg00020.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00108.html [7] http://groups.google.com/group/transifex-devel/browse_thread/thread/f9b1e06362386539 == Infrastructure == This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala == Planning a future L10N infrastructure (including Fedora) Asgeir Frimannsson wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [1] about his views on the current localisation infrastructure. He summarises the current infrastructure which is used by the localisation team, which includes the version control system and other online tools. He also discusses transifex. He also discusses the requirements for a system where the translation lifecycle would be managed within 'Translation Repositories' [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00108.html == Puppet training Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [2] that he is going to hold a puppet training next wednesday. He also posted an ogg and the slide deck [3] to which his live training will be identical. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00124.html [3] http://mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/puppet/ == Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting John Poelstra wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [4] about the Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting. He has also posted the list of participants and the meeting logs. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00135.html == Infrastructure update notice Paul W. Frields wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [5] about the announcement which went out on the fedora-announce-list [6]. Paul confirmed that all of our services were back online now. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00140.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009.html == app2 disk space Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list[7] about the recent disk alerts on app2. It seems that the host was not built with enough disk space similar to app1. It does raise a point about storage for transifex though. Basically each host running transifex or damned lies, keeps a local copy of every scm as part of its usage. For performance reasons that should not change but its something we'll want to figure out long term. So after the freeze the host is going to be rebuilt. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00155.html == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei == Near to the Echo Pursuing the declared goal of having the new Echo icon theme ready to be used as a default in Fedora 10, Martin Sourada and Luya Tshimbalanga continued the development and posting updates[1], [2], gathering feed-back and improvement proposals on @fedora-art. Martin even created an animated demo "also prepared animated gif (slideshow) [3] so you can see all the icons in one batch" and blogged about it. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00202.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00248.html [3] http://mso.fedorapeople.org/echo/Actions/mail-all.gif [4] http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/09/batch-of-new-mail-echo-icon.html == Freedom for a game Nicu Buculei relayed[1] to @fedora-art a request from the Hans deGoede, of Games SIG fame: the Project: Starfighter game[2], which used to be included in Fedora, was discovered of having some non-free graphic files and need free replacements to be re-included. Erick Henrique offered[3] his help "I go to unpack the archive starfighter.pak and to study a form of I redesign everything in a new style" and Hans promised[4] to code a needed utility "About recreating the .pak file I need to write a little utility for that, hopefully I'll have time for that this weekend." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00231.html [2] http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/starfighter.php [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00246.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00291.html == Infrastructure change for Fedora Art After an IRC consultation with Mairin Duffy, Martin Sourada proposed[1] using fedorahosted.org services for the Art team "it might be worth setting up a fedorahosted.org instance for the Fedora Art Team. Primary purpose would be to host our release graphics, but it could serve other purposes as well (e.g. using ticket system for design service come to my mind)", an initiative received with open arms by Luya Tshimbalanga and with some skepticism[3] by Ian Weller "I'm personally all for the idea, but I knew there were some caveats that we should definitely look into before we even think about proceeding. I'd also like to see Mo's input, of course." and Nicu Buculei[4] "I am strongly against something which would raise the barrier to entry, so a NO-NO would be to require git to upload sketches (proposals) for the upcoming release." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00242.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00247.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00263.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00267.html ==Security Advisories== In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley == Fedora 9 Security Advisories * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00859.html * fedora-package-config-smart-9-13.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00800.html * fedora-package-config-apt-9-3.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00799.html * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00768.html == Fedora 8 Security Advisories * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc8.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00757.html * fedora-package-config-apt-8-2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00844.html * fedora-package-config-smart-8-12.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00846.html * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00889.html ==Virtualization== In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley == Enterprise Management Tools List This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list == Virt-manager and Virtinst Closely Related After upgrading virt-manager to 0.6.0, Maikel Doll? received[1] the error ImportError: cannot import name Storage. Cole Robinson explained[2] virt-manager is tied closely with virtinst and installing virtinst 0.400.0 would likely fix the problem. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00038.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00039.html == Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI Shigeki Sakamoto followed[1] up on a previous[2] request for comments on a patch, submitted by same, which works to allow the migration of domains from within the virt-manager GUI. Daniel P. Berrange suggested[3] using a submenu rather than a pop-up window, and commented on the sanity checks[4] in libvirt. Live Migration Sanity Checks were recently discussed on @libvir list (see FWN #141 Live Migration Sanity Checks[5]). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00045.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00016.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00046.html [4] http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/TodoPreMigrationChecks [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141#Live_Migration_Sanity_Checks == Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. == DomU Network Interface Problem Leads to Discussion of HVM Requirements Guillaume[1] asked[1] about a paravirtualized domU which did not show any network interfaces. There was a suggestion made that this could be due to a lack of HVM support in the host hardware, which isn't the case. Paul Wouters cleared[2] up such confusion by describing the main virtualization techniques used in Fedora. Quoting: * Xen hypervisor for para_virt guests does not need HVM. Problem here is that Fedora 8 is the last release to support this setup on x86_64, though work is in progress to add this support to Fedora 9/10. Para_virt guests are booted via kernel= and rootfs images, or via pygrub, which is just a wrapper for grabbing kernel from bootable disk images. * Qemu is a software emulator for various architectures including PC hardware. It requires no HVM instructions, but it can use them if they exist via the kernel "kvm" code. This is how Fedora9 does its VM's via the libvirt and virt-install. This does NOT [sic] use or require a xen hypervisor. * Xenner is a software emulation for the Xen hypervisor. It requires HVM because it uses the kernel "kvm" code. The idea behind Xenner is that you can run VM's based on kernel-xen kernels (eg migration from Fedora8) Paul went on to mention other[5] virtualization technologies such as VirtualBox/Vmx, lguest, uml, virtuoso, and openvz. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00018.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00021.html In another post[3] Paul suggested that Guillaume's domU may have an initrd which lacks xenblk and xennet, and pointed[4] to a debate in the FC6 era concerning the xenblk kernel module. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00022.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2007-April/msg00054.html [5] http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison == Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. == Minimal Client-only Libvirt Build Ben Guthro patched[1] the libvirt spec file to allow for a minimal client-only build. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00264.html == Access to CPU Flags Ben Guthro needed[1] to access CPU flags to determine if VMX features were available, and suggested src/nodeinfo.c would be the place to parse this. This however raised a concern that adding to the nodeinfo struct breaks the API. Additionally, since this is an x86 specific change, Ben wondered if it would be acceptable. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00271.html Daniel P. Berrange stated[1] "any struct or API in include/libvirt/libvirt.h is immutable to preserve ABI", and the API shouldn't be specifically x86. Daniel did offer that the most likely place for exposing CPU flags would be in the capabilities[3] XML format. Where PAE, VMX, and SVM flags are already exposed. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00273.html [3] http://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html#virConnectGetCapabilities Ben noted[4] that Xen will report those flags, but oVirt running KVM does not, and said "It seems to me that it might be useful for some sort of "node" info driver, where we might be able to share code for hypervisor independent info about the physical machine it is running on." Daniel pointed[5] to src/nodeinfo.c as "a place for this useful reusable node info code". [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00292.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00316.html == OpenVZ Support Anton Protopopov pointed[1] to a previous thread[2] on xml format for OpenVZ driver, and asked if libvirt supported the xml format for OpenVZ[3] driver. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00320.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-July/msg00312.html [3] http://wiki.openvz.org Evgeniy Sokolov replied[4] that OpenVZ uses the XML format common for all libvirt drivers. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00331.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFI12KpzHDc8tpb2uURAkfBAKCRE3RY1Gaebh3KspQEkqafSlLHLwCeNaUc hKkU6fOXL6zJNeKuY1cKjXM= =6E3y -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From oisinfeeley at imapmail.org Mon Sep 22 19:19:02 2008 From: oisinfeeley at imapmail.org (Oisin Feeley) Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:19:02 -0400 Subject: Fedora Weekly News #144 Message-ID: <1222111142.6034.1275349213@webmail.messagingengine.com> = Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 = Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 for the week ending September 20, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue144 In this action packed issue Announcements reminds you of important Fedora 10 freeze dates and the latest on the post security scare clean-up. PlanetFedora muses on some "Legal" issues. Our new Marketing beat-writer Svetoslav Chukov unveils the "Beauty found in Fedora". Developments reveals "Fedora not Free Enough for GNU". News of imminent deadlines in Translations is brought to you by another new writer Runa Bhattacharjee. Infrastructure alerts you to "More Puppet Training!". Artwork offers "Freedom for a Game" and SecurityAdvisories brings you the weeks latest in one handy spot. Virtualization shares information on "Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI". Contents: o 1.1 Announcements + 1.1.1 Fedora 10 feature owners--rescue your unfinished feature pages! + 1.1.2 Updates to Fedora Packaging Guidelines + 1.1.3 Fedora 10 and translations: String freeze and repackaging + 1.1.4 Fedora intrustion update o 1.2 Planet Fedora + 1.2.1 Tech Tidbits + 1.2.2 Legal + 1.2.3 Events & Ambassadors o 1.3 Marketing + 1.3.1 Video History of Fedora + 1.3.2 FUDCon Brno 2008 + 1.3.3 The Beauty Found in Fedora. + 1.3.4 Plug and Run Fedora on a TOSHIBA A300D laptop + 1.3.5 First look at Fedora o 1.4 Developments + 1.4.1 Removal of non-X Consoles (continued) + 1.4.2 OpenVPN and resolv.conf + 1.4.3 Fedora 10 Feature Owner Request + 1.4.4 system-autodeath Becomes Reality + 1.4.5 Fedora Not "Free" Enough for GNU? o 1.5 Translation + 1.5.1 2008-10-14 Declared Fedora 10 Package Translation Deadline + 1.5.2 Renewed Call for Volunteers for the L10n Infrastructure o 1.6 Infrastructure + 1.6.1 Planning a future L10N infrastructure (including Fedora) + 1.6.2 Puppet training + 1.6.3 Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting + 1.6.4 Infrastructure update notice + 1.6.5 app2 disk space o 1.7 Artwork + 1.7.1 Near to the Echo + 1.7.2 Freedom for a Game + 1.7.3 Infrastructure Change for Fedora Art o 1.8 Security Advisories + 1.8.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories + 1.8.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories o 1.9 Virtualization + 1.9.1 Enterprise Management Tools List # 1.9.1.1 Virt-manager and Virtinst Closely Related # 1.9.1.2 Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI + 1.9.2 Fedora Xen List # 1.9.2.1 DomU Network Interface Problem Leads to Discussion of HVM Requirements + 1.9.3 Libvirt List # 1.9.3.1 Minimal Client-only Libvirt Build # 1.9.3.2 Access to CPU Flags # 1.9.3.3 OpenVZ Support + 1.9.4 oVirt Devel List == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack Fedora 10 feature owners--rescue your unfinished feature pages! John Poelstra reminded[0] everyone that the feature freeze for Fedora 10 is coming soon, and that feature owners need to get their pages updated to ensure that the features that belong in F10 get in, and that the features that need to be deferred to F11 are deferred. "Please complete this as soon as possible so that we can prepare an accurate beta release announcement. FESCo will also be reviewing the complete feature list at its next meeting on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, and determining which incomplete features should remain." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00011.html Updates to Fedora Packaging Guidelines Tom Callaway announced[1] the most recent set of revisions to the Packaging Guidelines, including including Haskell, Lisp, and several other areas. For the full announcement, read the link below. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00012.html Fedora 10 and translations: String freeze and repackaging Dimitris Glezos reminded[2] us "that shipped packages for which Fedora is upstream for are string frozen since the Beta freeze of September 11: no translatable strings can be added or modified for Fedora 10." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00013.html Fedora intrustion update Paul Frields issued[3] his latest updated regarding the Fedora security breach that has been news during the past few weeks. "Work on the Fedora infrastructure has returned to normal at this point. Updates are once again available for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, our current releases, using the new package signing key we've implemented." For the full announcement, follow the link. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009.html == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. http://planet.fedoraproject.org Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === Tech Tidbits === Warren Togami announced[1] the creation of a new list for NSPluginWrapper. "NSPluginwrapper Development discussion with the goal of isolating issues and collaboratively working on solutions should go on this list. There was some interest from other Linux distributions and even Adobe to cooperate on the future of nspluginwrapper development[2]." [1] http://wtogami.livejournal.com/28380.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/nspluginwrapper-devel-list Jesus Rodriguez announced[3] the release of Spacewalk 0.2[4], the open-source upstream for Red Hat Satellite. There is a list of features, enhancements, bug fixes, and credits on Jesus' blog. [3] http://zeusville.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/spacewalk-02/ [4] http://spacewalk.redhat.com/ Greg DeKoenigsberg helped[5] the OLPC folks recruit volunteers to be part of their growing infrastructure team. "OLPC builds a lot of packages. They are looking to set up and maintain an infrastructure that will allow them to meet their own unique packaging needs. They need a volunteer with a strong understanding of the Fedora packaging process -- one who either understands koji now, or can learn to understand it in fairly short order." [5] http://gregdek.livejournal.com/35595.html My favorite Planet post this week came[6] from Fedora Board member Matt Domsch, and it is worth people's time to read the entire post, to gain a lot of insight into how Fedora's mass rebuilds work, and what triggers them. "One challenge to self-hosting a project the size of Fedora (now with about 6200 source packages) is dealing with the interdependencies between packages. When a major component, such as the compiler or an often-used library, upgrades to a new version, you should rebuild all packages that depend upon that major component, to ensure they continue to work. Often, simply re-compiling or re-linking each package using the updated compiler or library is all that is needed. In some cases though, applications which once built, no longer do - bitrot has set in." [6] http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/09/19/use-the-source-luke.aspx Legal Tom Callaway wrote[1] a lengthy post about the Mozilla EULA controversy, which reared its head again this week in the context of Ubuntu and Mozilla. However, Fedora dealt with this problem several months ago, at the end of the Fedora 9 release cycle. Spot's entire post is worth reading, as is the commentary that follows it. Here is one excerpt: "[The] goal was always to ensure that we could walk away with license terms from Mozilla that: 1. Permitted Fedora to continue using the Firefox trademarks 2. Clearly upheld the MPL as the valid software license terms for the Firefox binaries and source (not just for Fedora, but for everyone) 3. Meet the criteria for Free Software 4. Are presented to the user in a non-obtrusive, non-clickthrough agreement way" [1] http://spot.livejournal.com/299409.html Anthony Green wrote[2] a post that referenced SGI's alteration[3] of its Free B license, which has long been a thorn in the side of various distros. [2] http://spindazzle.org/greenblog/index.php?/archives/121-Thank-you,-SGI..html [3] http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2008/september/opengl.html === Events & Ambassadors === The North American Fedora Ambassador Day is coming up at Ohio Linux Fest in October, and there were a few posts about it on Planet this week. Brian Powell gave[1] an update on the organization, saying: "There have been quite a few discussions and meetings recently in regards to FAD planning. There has been a lot of good progress and great ideas coming out of these. With time getting close, we are looking at finalizing the Agenda and Schedule for FADNA shortly. If you are a North American Ambassador I would ask that you take a moment to look at what we have come up with so far and a 'tentative' schedule of events located at the FADNA2008 wiki page. If you have anything to add feel free to do so." [1] http://blog.rhatters.org/2008/09/17/fadna-2008-update/ Additionally, Karsten Wade wrote[2] a post about strategies for handling remote meetings, and making a physical gathering of a small number of people into a larger meeting that remotees can attend and still get value out of, whether that attendance is via IRC, telephone, or something collaborative like gobby. "Think about your sessions and how it can help to interact with the rest of us. I recommend a minimum of: live video feed, live audio feed, and IRC, Gobby, and wiki editing projected on the wall. We can also keep a VoIP conference room open, but my instinct is to limit the flow on the incoming voices by subject matter. Beyond that recommendation, a live IRC and wiki-based abd/or Gobby note taking with many laptops in the in-person session is the bare bones, with regular usage of talk.fedoraproject.org." [2] http://iquaid.org/2008/09/16/formula-for-making-distance-work/ David Nalley wrote up[3] a trip report for Linux Demo Day in Charleston, SC. "About 60 people showed up. Charleston?s LUG is relatively new, and this was their first event. They seemed very pleased. I handed about 30 LiveCDs out and talked with a number of Fedora. In addition I spoke to 2-3 people who were intrigued with contributing to Fedora in one way or another. I?ll be following up with these individuals." This is a great example of an event -- low cost, but high touch! [3] http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=96 == Marketing == In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: Svetoslav Chukov === Video History of Fedora === The history of Fedora as recounted by GregDeKonigsberg is now available[1] in video format [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/16/video-the-history-of-fedora/ === FUDCon Brno 2008 === Max Spevack reported[1] the result of FUDCon Brno 2008. [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/09/fudcon-brno-2008/ === The Beauty Found in Fedora === A very interesting point of view[1] of a Fedora user. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=47 Plug and Run Fedora on a TOSHIBA A300D laptop This post recounted[1] some adventures with Fedora and a very tricky laptop. It is always good to know about such success stories. Some laptops do not even start GNU/Linux at all! But this one seemed to work pretty well with Fedora. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=51 === First look at Fedora === The video article "First look at Fedora" showed[1] what one can see for first time use. Very useful for novice users. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=55&Itemid=49 == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === Removal of non-X Consoles (continued) === The furore over the future removal of text-mode consoles (see FWN#144 "Non-X System Consoles to be Removed"[1]) continued throughout the week. The original thread saw some support for the idea expressed[2] by Nicolas Mailhot on the basis that "[...] non-X-console input is a mess [...] font support has fossilized, and support for modern high resolution screens is severely lacking [...]" Nicholas was especially concerned[3] with the maintenance burden imposed by the text-mode console "[...] as someone who is an upstream maintainer for my language of some of the bits the console use[s]." [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Non-X.System.Consoles.to.be.Removed [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01341.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01347.html Upon being pressed by Dominik Mierzejewski for evidence of a lack of proper maintenance Nicolas listed[4] a series of problems including the stagnation of the console layout database and the console font set. Dmitry Butskoy begged[5] to separate the concepts of "console" and "serial tty" and also for the retention of the text-mode console. Dominik promised to try to find a colleague to shoulder the maintenance burden but Nicolas had already given up[6] in disgust. In response elsewhere to Seth Vidal's argument that the text console did no harm and should be left alone Nicholas expanded[7] on the maintenance costs of "all sorts of packaging rules designed to avoid hitting console limitations and problems" and bugs filed because of the confusion caused by two text stacks. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01373.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01381.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01388.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01396.html Les Mikesell got to the heart of the problem when he asked[8] "I think I'm confused by the term 'non X consoles'. Is that something different than the native text mode you see before X starts?" He also recommended using FreeNX/NX instead of using the console. Nicolas responded[9] that there were "[...]two different things. A VT to which you can attach an X session, a serial port, a remote SSH, mingetty... and the software stack used to display locally the VT text and collect user input." Nicolas saw the "low-level VT bit" as fundamentally sound but the "current console software stack" as "rotten." Les sought[10] further clarification of this distinction between "[...] the low level part that works in character mode and expects some hardware to supply and render the fonts [...]" and "[...] software other than X that renders custom fonts[.]" [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01353.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01354.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01422.html Denis Leroy wondered[11] if there was "[...] an X-based mingetty replacement actually exists ? Something that's proven to be sufficiently fail-safe (will work even with half-broken X configurations and such?)" and although Nicolas did not know of one he speculated[12] "[...] as soon as much of the hardware pocking is moved from xorg to the kernel and X can be run as a normal user "X-based mingetty replacement" will be just running a x term fullscreen in an autoconfigured X instance. Of course one could theoretically write a much lighter solution using only freetype (cairo, pango?) and an xkb-config parser." Denis's concern seemed to be that often a Ctrl+Alt+F1 to mingetty was the only way to kill hanging desktop applications. Colin Walters suggested[13] making "[...] Ctrl-Alt-Backspace just break server grabs instead of killing the server (and of course fix the bugs in the apps that hang while holding a server grab)." [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01401.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01407.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01366.html There were multiple expressions of disapprobation often coupled with use cases. Some of these led Chris Snook to exclaim[14] "Unless I've missed something huge, virtual terminals aren't going away. What may or may not be going away is the x86 video BIOS text mode, to be replaced with a kernel framebuffer, which precludes the use of console fonts, which very few people ever mess with. The console itself will remain. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong." [[DaveAirlie|Dave Airlie] confirmed[15] this understanding and added "[...] vga text mode will not be enabled by default, you will need to pass nomodeset if you want to use vga text mode. Welcome to the 1990s." Alan Cox made[16] the correction that framebuffer console support fonts but that framebuffers did not work on all machines, screen reader technology and remote management cards. [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01417.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01445.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01484.html === OpenVPN and resolv.conf === Ahmed Kamal asked[1] for help in scratching an itch and started a concise, meaty thread. His particular problem was that he wanted to overwrite /etc/resolv.conf with new DNS servers obtained over a vpn tunnel, this is apparently done automatically in "Windows". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01304.html The suggestion to use NetworkManager was made by Paul Wouters and Dan Williams agreed[2] and added the explanation that it "[...] mediate[d] between services [including PPP, PPtP, DHCP, openvpn, and vpnc] that need to update your DNS information." The alternative is that each service needs to handle /etc/resolv.conf itself. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01313.html The idea of a default caching daemon was floated[3] by Simo Sorce. As he envisioned it, the services/tools, such as OpenVPN, would "[...] tell the caching daemon which IP ranges and which domains their provided forwarders should be consulted for. All dynamic so that as soon as one daemon goes away, the caching DNS will notice and revert queries to the default DNS.} Nils Philippsen agreed[4] heartily and added that "[i]deally, it should be something which isn't restricted to class A/B/C like reverse DNS (seems to be), but which would route DNS requests based on arbitrary domain name or IP-range criteria to the desired name servers" and Paul Howarth provided[5] the further reason that changes to /etc/resolv.conf are often not picked up by processes. This latter point spawned a discussion on the demerits of the glibc stub resolver (which is too simplistic) and the consequent use of the deprecated gethostbyname in individual applications. Dan Williams recommended using lwresd (a stripped-down, caching-only nameserver available to clients which use the BIND 9 lightweight resolver library) or for more complex setups a local caching nameserver. Although Simo Sorce disagreed[6] with Dan that many applications were simply using gethostbyname he agreed that "[a] caching nameserver that can be instructed what to do when conditions change is what we really need." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01349.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01485.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01490.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01632.html Ahmed asked[7] whether dnsmasq or other daemons were able to "[direct] name resolution to specific servers according to IP ranges and/or domain names, with the option of adding/removing servers on the fly?" and Richard W.M. Jones[8] confirmed that this was indeed possible. Adam Tkac suggested[9] that this could be done with view statements in BIND and the gauntlet of how to do this for CIDR and domain names was thrown down[10] by Nils. A detailed sub-thread followed which indicated what while possible it was not pretty. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01498.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01500.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01508.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01523.html Adam Tkac shared[11] the information that his TODO list includes the addition of NetworkManager support to BIND and Simo Sorce explained [12] that nscd was not a solution for a local caching nameserver "[...] as not all type of queries can be fulfilled by the glibc interface. For example SRV/TXT records ... Also nscd is not smart enough to understand network condition and adapt it's behavior." Simo agreed that it would be nice if "[...] bind could consult different DNSs based 1) on the DNS name to be queried, and B) the reverse IP to be queried" so that on slow links only the necessary queries would be directed through the VPN. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01509.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01510.html === Fedora 10 Feature Owner Request === John Poelstra requested[1] all those owning a Feature[2] to take some actions on their feature page so that the beta release notes and announcements are accurate. He provided a list of twenty one feature pages which "have not been updated since the Feature Freeze on 2008-09-11 and/or are not 100% complete." Kevin Kofler was among those who had been watching the progress of OpenChange (see FWN#133 "Help Wanted: Samba4, Heimdahl, OpenChange"[3]) and noted[4] that due to the decision[5] of Andrew Bartlett to orphan the feature it needed a new owner if Fedora 11 was to offer OpenChange. Another of the listed pages was that for the Echo icon theme and Luya Tshimbalanga asked if he should add a release note to the effect that echo was now the default. Rahul Sundaram confirmed that this would be helpful. The Eclipse-3.4 (Ganymede) page was updated[6] by [JeffJohnston|Jeff Johnston]]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01471.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy/Definitions [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue133#Help.Wanted:.Samba4.2C.Heimdahl.2C.OpenChange [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01482.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00522.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01548.html === system-autodeath Becomes Reality === Seth Vidal announced[1] that he had implemented his previously discussed (FWN#140 "System Autodeath"[2]) idea to automatically remove networking capabilities from machines which lacked system updates. The intent is to prevent non-maintained machines from being exploited. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01716.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140#System.Autodeath Seth implemented the concept as a daily cronjob which tests a configured "death date" against the current time. For the week leading up to the "death date" log messages warn that on the specific date the default route will be deleted. He requested feedback and improvements. Matt Miller was content but suggested[3] beefing up the manpage with details of the consequences of removing the default route. Seth noted that he was happy to accept patches. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01779.html A fraught note was introduced when Stephen Warren declared[4] that if this were a default then, in combination with the proposed textconsole removal (see this FWN#144 "Removal of non-X Consoles (continued)") and the modesetting changes[5], he was thinking about switching distros. Rahul Sundaram responded[6] that modesetting was going to be a feature of all distros soon and the conversation veered[7] into explaining that the replacement for RHGB, named "Plymouth" had a sane text-mode fallback for unsupported chipsets. As much of Stephen's angst was due to a perceived abandonment of those using non-Free drivers Rahul pointed out that the nouveau drivers might work. Richard Hughes listed[8] 2-D and xrandr as supported with kernel modesetting coming soon due to Maarten Maathuis's work. He warned: "Don't even try 3D yet. It does work, but only if the moon is waxing, and your pet cat is called Oliver." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01782.html [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Graphics.Modesetting.Changes [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01783.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01789.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01802.html Back on the main topic of the thread Seth stated[9] that system-autodeath was not intended to be part of the default install: "This is just a nicety for sysadmins or local-respin maintainers who would like to put a dropdead date on their releases." In response to Stephen's recollection Seth also stated[10] this point clearly. A general disagreement with the idea of exposing such a feature was expressed[11] by James Hubbard on the basis that the user should be forced to change a config file to prevent against accidental installation errors. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01784.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01788.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01850.html === Fedora Not "Free" Enough for GNU? === A long-running thread which was started[1] on 07-09-2008 by Michel Salim continues to attracted some heated discussion over the fact that Fedora is not recognized as a 100% Free software distribution by GNU although a derivative named "BLAG" (see also FWN#139[2]) is recognized as FLOSS. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00428.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue139#Small.Machine.SIG The central stumbling block seemed[3] to be best stated by Gregory Maxwell as "[...] Fedora doesn't yet strip the binary firmware provided by the Linux kernel (and still provides some re-distributable binary firmware in other packages, the microcode package and alsa-firmware I think)." Gregory described the situation as unfortunate due to both the lack "[...] of acknowledgement it deserves, and the FSF is indirectly promoting Ubuntu, a distribution which is, as far as I can tell, a primary driving factor in new users using and depending on proprietary software." This latter being a reference to the recognition of gNewSense as FLOSS. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00435.html There had been previous very heated threads on this subject (during one of FWN's holidays) centered around the efforts of Alexandre Oliva to produce a "kernel-libre" and the interaction of this project with other efforts and approaches within the kernel community. David Woodhouse added[4] the excellent news that "We are almost at the point where we can do a spin which remedies [the difficulties of stripping out the non-Free firmware]." He explained that soon a completely separate package instead of a sub-package of the normal kernel build will allow others to produce alternative packages of firmwares for which source code is available. Tom Callaway was worried[5] that there was still firmware entangled in the kernel source code and noted the need for an audit. Rahul Sundaram supplied[6] a link to a Debian inventory of firmwares. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01603.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01605.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01606.html Other interesting points in the discussion touched on the rationales which have been often advanced for refusing to supply source to firmwares. These involve regulatory compliance (often for radio devices). Alan Cox was suspicious of such arguments based[7] on the history of examples such as ISDN code which "[...] was approved. You could change it but then it became unapproved and not permitted in some countries." He described this as a racket run by the phone companies which imploded once the need to ensure robustness became important (due to terrorist threats.) Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams listed[8] some of the other rationales. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01745.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01737.html == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === 2008-10-14 Declared Fedora 10 Package Translation Deadline === The last date for submission of translations for Fedora 10 packages was announced[1] as 2008-10-14 (Tuesday). This announcement was made after an unanimous decision by the Fedora L10n Steering Committee (FLSCo) members. The last date for the translation of Documents remains as 2008-10-21 (Tuesday). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00050.html A request for rebuilding of packages post the translation freeze date, was also made[2] to the @fedora-devel-announcement list. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00013.html "Maintainers of the above packages need to put a reminder to issue a new build *later* than this date and before the Development Freeze of 21/10. The closer to the development freeze the rebuild takes place, the better for our translators. If you have not received any translations since the last build, a rebuild is not necessary." === Renewed Call for Volunteers for the L10n Infrastructure === Another call was made[3] at the FLSCo meeting held[ on 16th September 2008[4] seeking volunteers for the Fedora L10n infrastructure. The earlier call was made[5] in April 2008. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00047.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00051.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-April/msg00020.html Meanwhile, Asgeir Frimannsson announced[6] a proposed plan for a new L10n infrastructure which is currently being discussed[7] in various relevant mailing lists. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00108.html [7] http://groups.google.com/group/transifex-devel/browse_thread/thread/f9b1e06362386539 == Infrastructure == This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala === Planning a future L10N infrastructure (including Fedora) === Asgeir Frimannsson wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [1] about his views on the current localisation infrastructure. He summarises the current infrastructure which is used by the localisation team, which includes the version control system and other online tools. He also discusses transifex. He also discusses the requirements for a system where the translation lifecycle would be managed within 'Translation Repositories' [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00108.html === Puppet Training === Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [2] that he is going to hold a puppet training next wednesday. He also posted an ogg and the slide deck [3] to which his live training will be identical. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00124.html [3] http://mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/puppet/ === Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting === John Poelstra wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [4] about the Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting. He has also posted the list of participants and the meeting logs. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00135.html === Infrastructure update notice === Paul W. Frields wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [5] about the announcement which went out on the fedora-announce-list [6]. Paul confirmed that all of our services were back online now. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00140.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009.html === app2 Disk Space === Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list[7] about the recent disk alerts on app2. It seems that the host was not built with enough disk space similar to app1. It does raise a point about storage for transifex though. Basically each host running transifex or damned lies, keeps a local copy of every scm as part of its usage. For performance reasons that should not change but its something we'll want to figure out long term. So after the freeze the host is going to be rebuilt. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/msg00155.html == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Near to the Echo === Pursuing the declared goal of having the new Echo icon theme ready to be used as a default in Fedora 10, Martin Sourada and Luya Tshimbalanga continued[1] the development and posted updates[2], while gathering feed-back and improvement proposals on @fedora-art. Martin even created[3] an animated demo "also prepared animated gif (slideshow) so you can see all the icons in one batch" and blogged about it. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00202.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00248.html [3] http://mso.fedorapeople.org/echo/Actions/mail-all.gif [4] http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/09/batch-of-new-mail-echo-icon.html === Freedom for a Game === Nicu Buculei relayed[1] to @fedora-art a request from the Hans deGoede, of Games SIG fame: the Project: Starfighter game[2], which used to be included in Fedora, was discovered to have some non-free graphic files and needed free replacements for them. Erick Henrique offered[3] his help "I go to unpack the archive starfighter.pak and to study a form of I redesign everything in a new style" and Hans promised[4] to code a needed utility "About recreating the .pak file I need to write a little utility for that, hopefully I'll have time for that this weekend." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00231.html [2] http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/starfighter.php [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00246.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00291.html === Infrastructure Change for Fedora Art === After an IRC consultation with Mairin Duffy, Martin Sourada proposed[1] using fedorahosted.org services for the Art team "it might be worth setting up a fedorahosted.org instance for the Fedora Art Team. Primary purpose would be to host our release graphics, but it could serve other purposes as well (e.g. using ticket system for design service come to my mind)[.]" This initiative was received with open arms by Luya Tshimbalanga and with some skepticism[3] by Ian Weller "I'm personally all for the idea, but I knew there were some caveats that we should definitely look into before we even think about proceeding. I'd also like to see Mo's input, of course." and Nicu Buculei stated[4] "I am strongly against something which would raise the barrier to entry, so a NO-NO would be to require git to upload sketches (proposals) for the upcoming release." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00242.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00247.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00263.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00267.html == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00859.html * fedora-package-config-smart-9-13.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00800.html * fedora-package-config-apt-9-3.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00799.html * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00768.html === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc8.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00757.html * fedora-package-config-apt-8-2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00844.html * fedora-package-config-smart-8-12.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00846.html * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg00889.html == Virtualization == In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley === Enterprise Management Tools List === This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list ==== Virt-manager and Virtinst Closely Related ==== After upgrading virt-manager to 0.6.0, Maikel Doll? received[1] the error ImportError: cannot import name Storage. Cole Robinson explained[2] virt-manager is tied closely with virtinst and installing virtinst 0.400.0 would likely fix the problem. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00038.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00039.html ==== Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI ==== Shigeki Sakamoto followed[1] up on a previous[2] request for comments on a patch, submitted by same, which works to allow the migration of domains from within the virt-manager GUI. Daniel P. Berrange suggested[3] using a submenu rather than a pop-up window, and commented on the sanity checks[4] in libvirt. Live Migration Sanity Checks were recently discussed on @libvir list (see FWN #141 Live Migration Sanity Checks[5]). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00045.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00016.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00046.html [4] http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/TodoPreMigrationChecks [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141#Live_Migration_Sanity_Checks === Fedora Xen List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ==== DomU Network Interface Problem Leads to Discussion of HVM Requirements ==== Guillaume[1] asked[1] about a paravirtualized domU which did not show any network interfaces. There was a suggestion made that this could be due to a lack of HVM support in the host hardware, which isn't the case. Paul Wouters cleared[2] up such confusion by describing the main virtualization techniques used in Fedora. Quoting: * Xen hypervisor for para_virt guests does not need HVM. Problem here is that Fedora 8 is the last release to support this setup on x86_64, though work is in progress to add this support to Fedora 9/10. Para_virt guests are booted via kernel= and rootfs images, or via pygrub, which is just a wrapper for grabbing kernel from bootable disk images. * Qemu is a software emulator for various architectures including PC hardware. It requires no HVM instructions, but it can use them if they exist via the kernel "kvm" code. This is how Fedora9 does its VM's via the libvirt and virt-install. This does NOT [sic] use or require a xen hypervisor. * Xenner is a software emulation for the Xen hypervisor. It requires HVM because it uses the kernel "kvm" code. The idea behind Xenner is that you can run VM's based on kernel-xen kernels (eg migration from Fedora8) Paul went on to mention other[5] virtualization technologies such as VirtualBox/Vmx, lguest, uml, virtuoso, and openvz. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00018.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00021.html In another post[3] Paul suggested that Guillaume's domU may have an initrd which lacks xenblk and xennet, and pointed[4] to a debate in the FC6 era concerning the xenblk kernel module. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00022.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2007-April/msg00054.html [5] http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== Minimal Client-only Libvirt Build ==== Ben Guthro patched[1] the libvirt spec file to allow for a minimal client-only build. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00264.html ==== Access to CPU Flags ==== Ben Guthro needed[1] to access CPU flags to determine if VMX features were available, and suggested src/nodeinfo.c would be the place to parse this. This however raised a concern that adding to the nodeinfo struct breaks the API. Additionally, since this is an x86 specific change, Ben wondered if it would be acceptable. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00271.html Daniel P. Berrange stated[1] "any struct or API in include/libvirt/libvirt.h is immutable to preserve ABI", and the API shouldn't be specifically x86. Daniel did offer that the most likely place for exposing CPU flags would be in the capabilities[3] XML format. Where PAE, VMX, and SVM flags are already exposed. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00273.html [3] http://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html#virConnectGetCapabilities Ben noted[4] that Xen will report those flags, but oVirt running KVM does not, and said "It seems to me that it might be useful for some sort of "node" info driver, where we might be able to share code for hypervisor independent info about the physical machine it is running on." Daniel pointed[5] to src/nodeinfo.c as "a place for this useful reusable node info code". [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00292.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00316.html ==== OpenVZ Support ==== Anton Protopopov pointed[1] to a previous thread[2] on xml format for OpenVZ driver, and asked if libvirt supported the xml format for OpenVZ[3] driver. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00320.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-July/msg00312.html [3] http://wiki.openvz.org Evgeniy Sokolov replied[4] that OpenVZ uses the XML format common for all libvirt drivers. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00331.html === oVirt Devel List === This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. Check back next week. -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley From jkeating at redhat.com Wed Sep 24 23:47:35 2008 From: jkeating at redhat.com (Jesse Keating) Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:47:35 -0700 Subject: Schedule updates for Fedora 10 Message-ID: <1222300055.1895.5.camel@luminos.localdomain> Due to needing some more time for new features to mature a bit before we cut our Beta, we've decided to move the Beta release date back to Tuesday Sept 30th. This move, combined with previous schedule slips has also driven us to extend the rest of the Fedora 10 schedule dates by a week, resulting in a final release date of Tuesday Nov. 25th. For full schedule information, please see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Schedule -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom? is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From pcalarco at nd.edu Mon Sep 29 17:48:49 2008 From: pcalarco at nd.edu (Pascal Calarco) Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:48:49 -0400 Subject: Fedora Weekly News #145 Message-ID: <48E11501.3090802@nd.edu> Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 145 for the week ending September 28, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue145 This week's issue brings plenty of insights into the Fedora 10 theme decisions, as covered by longtime FWN writer, Nicu Buculei. Max Spevak reports on several recent linux events and the Fedora acivity there, as well as relays final Fedora 10 schedule changes and other announcements. Oisin Feeley updates us on Fedora development activity with deactivation of some dormant services and discussion of PackageKit. Jason Taylor highlights the many release notes completed for the upcoming Fedora 10 release. Dale Bewley brings us up to date on activity with four separate discussion lists in Fedora virtualization. Svetoslav Chukov, in the marketing beat, celebrates Fedora's fifth birthday with a wonderful, generous reflection of the project by OpenSUSE's community manager, Joe Brockmeier, and Runa Bhattacharjee covers the freeze activities surrounding translation and internationalization for Fedora 10. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join Contents * 1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 145 o 1.1 Announcements + 1.1.1 Schedule updates for Fedora 10 + 1.1.2 Fedora Test Day - 2008-09-25 - Live Beta Images and FirstAidKit o 1.2 Planet Fedora + 1.2.1 Events + 1.2.2 Tech Tidbits o 1.3 Marketing + 1.3.1 Happy birthday Fedora! + 1.3.2 Lessons learned from five years of Fedora + 1.3.3 The sweet features of Fedora - Smolt + 1.3.4 Plug and Run Fedora on a Toshiba A300D laptop, Part II o 1.4 Developments + 1.4.1 Default Deactivation of Services + 1.4.2 specspo and PackageKit + 1.4.3 Are Other Distros Controlling Fedora through PackageKit ? + 1.4.4 /sbin and /bin Linked to /usr/lib o 1.5 Documentation + 1.5.1 Release Notes Galore + 1.5.2 Documentation Repository Changes o 1.6 Translation + 1.6.1 String freeze breakage alarms + 1.6.2 Fedora Docs moved to git repository + 1.6.3 Translation schedule to be further discussed for clarity of tasks o 1.7 Artwork + 1.7.1 The desktop theme for Fedora 10 was chosen + 1.7.2 The fight for the theme + 1.7.3 The theme soap opera + 1.7.4 Lessons from the flamewar + 1.7.5 Echo icon theme and Fedora 10 o 1.8 Security Advisories + 1.8.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories + 1.8.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories o 1.9 Virtualization + 1.9.1 Enterprise Management Tools List # 1.9.1.1 Maximum Number of Attached CDROMs in Xen # 1.9.1.2 Parallel Port Support in virt-manager # 1.9.1.3 VMWare VMX Output from virt-convert # 1.9.1.4 Disk Image Signature Verification + 1.9.2 Fedora Xen List # 1.9.2.1 Continued Trouble with 32bit Fedora 9 DomU on Fedora 8 Dom0 + 1.9.3 Libvirt List # 1.9.3.1 Libvirt 0.4.6 Released # 1.9.3.2 RFC: Events API # 1.9.3.3 Windows Binaries + 1.9.4 oVirt Devel List # 1.9.4.1 oVirt 0.93-1 Released # 1.9.4.2 Modeling LVM Storage Fedora Weekly News Issue 145 -- Announcements -- In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack -- Schedule updates for Fedora 10 -- Jesse Keating announced[0] the schedule changes for Fedora 10, "resulting in a final release date of Tuesday Nov. 25th." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00013.html -- Fedora Test Day - 2008-09-25 - Live Beta Images and FirstAidKit James Laska advertised[1] the next Fedora Test Day, which has been a recurring theme during the Fedora 10 cycle. "Testing efforts will focus on testing Fedora 10 Beta Live images as well as system recovery using FirstAidKit."[2] [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00016.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2008-09-25 -- Planet Fedora -- In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. http://planet.fedoraproject.org Contributing Writer: Max Spevack -- Events -- Several Fedora Ambassadors posted about OpenExpo, in Switzerland. Joerg Simon posted[0] some pictures of the event, and Max Spevack and Sandro Mathys both[1] posted[2] their own trip reports. [0] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/09/open-expo-winterthur-switzerland-2008.html [1] http://spevack.livejournal.com/66777.html [2] http://blog.sandro-mathys.ch/2008/09/27/openexpo-2008-zurich-in-winterthur-review/ Susmit Shannigrahi wrote[3] about the preparations for AXIS '08. "Fedora will have a 1.5 hour session on 26th for talk and 2 hour slot with a media lab for conducting workshops." [3] http://susmit.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/we-are-leaving-for-axis08/ Finally, Clint Savage posted[4] about Fedora Ambassador Day North America, which will be taking place in parallel with Ohio Linux Fest in October. [4] http://sexysexypenguins.com/2008/09/24/fadna-at-olf2008/ -- Tech Tidbits -- We begin this section with Jonathan Roberts, and his[5] many[6] posts[7] about the Dell Mini and how it functions[8] with Fedora. Credit JonRob for being tough-minded enough to get the machine to work, despite sound and wireless problems. "I've gone ahead and created a wiki page documenting everything you need to do, as well as joined the Fedora Mini SIG. I've already got some packages waiting to be sorted that would be appropriate for the SIG, so I'll attach them to their tracker bug at some point in the near future." [5] http://jonrob.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/dell-mini-inspiron-9/ [6] http://jonrob.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/dell-mini-inspiron-9-q-a/ [7] http://jonrob.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/final-mini-post/ [8] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Dell_Mini_Inspiron Dimitris Glezos posted[9] about translations and release engineering. "There are more than 400 active Fedora translators contibuting in a lot of languages. Anaconda, the Fedora installer, is shipped to more than 60 languages (counting only those with a considerable completion percentage). The Fedora website speaks more than 20 languages. Considering that this is almost exclusively volunteer community work, I?d say our groups of translators are doing an amazing job." [9] http://dimitris.glezos.com/weblog/2008/09/23/release-engineering-and-translations/ Lennart Poettering wrote[10] several[11] articles[12] about the Linux audio stack this week. His impetus: "At the Audio MC at the Linux Plumbers Conference one thing became very clear: it is very difficult for programmers to figure out which audio API to use for which purpose and which API not to use when doing audio programming on Linux." [10] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis.html [11] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-linux-audio-stack.html [12] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis-followup.html -- Marketing -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: Svetoslav Chukov -- Happy birthday Fedora! Five years ago this past week, the Fedora project became a reality, and it is amazing to see how far we have come. Happy birthday, Fedora! -- Lessons learned from five years of Fedora Rahul Sundaram highlighted [1] the OpenSUSE Community Manager, Joe Brockmeier, in his blog posting posting, "Lessons learned from five years of Fedora". Brockmeier reflects on building open source community projects, and the success Fedora has had in this regard. "The most valuable thing I?ve learned watching Fedora is this: Patience. It takes time and steady, incremental growth to build a solid community. If you?d asked me two years into Fedora?s development whether the project would succeed, I?d have been somewhat skeptical, but looking at the project five years down the road, I?m convinced." [1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/?p=111 -- The sweet features of Fedora - Smolt -- The blog "Spread Fedora" offered a short story on Fedora's hardware profiler, Smolt.[1] "It would be very beautiful and comfortable if there were some GNU/Linux distribution that keep track of used hardware of the users or just could provide information how the particular hardware would perform. I know such a distribution - Fedora. " [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Itemid=52 -- Plug and Run Fedora on a Toshiba A300D laptop, Part II The blog "Spread Fedora" also offered part II of their experience installing and configuring Fedora on a Toshiba A300D laptop.[1] Part I[2] was highlighted in last week's FWN. In this week, configuring the USB to ethernet and sound card tweaking. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=53 [2] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=51 -- Developments -- In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley -- Default Deactivation of Services -- Christoph H?ger initiated[1] this week's mammoth thread with a request to disable four services currently activated by default: sendmail, ip6tables, isdn and setroubleshootd. Christoph invited the list to "go on and punish me" after supplying some brief reasons for the deactivations. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02197.html Discussion mostly centered on the sendmail problem with suggestions ranging from starting it asynchronously and late, as suggested[2] by Alan Cox, to replacing it with one of the "send-only" MTAs such as ssmtp. Part of the interest over this seemed to be stimulated by the information posted[3] by Colin Walters that the "[...] desktop image no longer installs sendmail by default." This led to a need to distinguish between the desktop LiveCD and regular installs, as was done[4] by Bill Nottingham. Some apparent legal threats posted by Matthew Woehlke led[5] Seth Vidal to point him to the nearest convenient exit. Ralf Ertzinger noted[6] the deeply entrenched nature of sendmail: "Unfortunately, sendmail isn't just a program, it's an API. Calling /usr/lib/sendmail has been the way to get mail out (wherever out is) in UNIX for, well, as long as sendmail exists, which is quite some time." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02410.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02203.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02308.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02384.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02505.html The problem of lack of local delivery with the proposed replacements was brought up[7] by Patrice Dumas. This was seen as a stumbling block because cron needs it and led Jesse Keating to argue[8]: "[W]e shouldn't be using local delivery for this stuff. Instead we should ask in firstboot where you'd want the mail delivered to." Matt Miller replied[9] with a link to a bugzilla entry in which he had proposed just such a thing in 2004. Other aspects of the problem of disentangling potentially important log data from the mail delivery mechanism were touched[10] upon in other parts of the thread. Deep in the thread Arjan van de Ven pointed[11] to aliases generation as the reason for sendmail being slow to start up. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02246.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02253.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02349.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02411.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02217.html The complaint about setroubleshootd was addressed[12] by Steve Grubb. He explained that he had intended it to be a plugin to audispd it but had ended up being implemented as a standalone daemon by another author. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02322.html ip6tables was defended on two fronts. On the first Daniel P. Berrange explained[13] how accessible IPv6 was and how likely it was that all machines on a network could automatically acquiring IPv6 addresses. Typical of the reaction on the other front Gregory Maxwell was startled[14] at the idea of being exposed without firewalling upon plugging into an IPv6 enabled network. He added the statistic that "About 4% of the web browsers hitting English language Wikipedia are IPv6 enabled. IPv6 enabled web clients may even become more numerous than Linux desktops this year, almost certainly by next year, so be careful what you call rare. :)" Stephen John Smoogen also explained[15] that if there were no IPv6 firewall a ping6 -I eth0 ff02::1 would enable an attacker to "walk the hosts with no firewalls." He suggested that completely disabling IPv6 would be preferable but might affect IPsec and related components. [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02286.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02271.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02206.html No one seemed particularly concerned at the idea of disabling isdn by default as it explicitly requires further configuration to be useful. -- specspo and PackageKit -- A quick query was posted[16] by Richard Hughes asking whether PackageKit should dump its dependency on specspo[17]. The advantage would be a savings of 27Mb installed size and 6.9Mb download size. Tim Lauridsen was against a hard dependency and argued[18] that as specspo was part of the @base group it would be installed by default on a normal desktop and could then be used, whereas on the LiveCD its absence was desired due to the space constraints. [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02026.html [17] "specspo" is the rpm package which contains all the portable object catalogues which provide translations for Fedora packages. [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02034.html An interesting discussion about alternate methods to provide translated package descriptions ensued when Seth Vidal suggested[19] that instead of using specspo "translating pkgs might best be served by translating the metadata in external files." In response to Bill Nottingham's skepticism that this was just moving bloat to a new location Seth explained[20] that it would allow only the data specific to the requested language to be fetched. In a further explanation he provided[21] an overview of the ideal mechanism which would allow translations only for the language in use to be installed. This involved yum downloading translations from a language-segmented repodata and inserting those translations into the local rpmdb. A further reason to find an alternative to specspo was advanced[22] by Stepan Kaspal when he drew attention to its lack of friendliness to third-party repositories: "the specspo solution is not extensible at all; if you add a third part repository, the messages just are not there. And the repository cannot install another catalogue, rpm uses just 'the catalogue'." [19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02058.html [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02125.html [21] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02164.html [22] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02160.html Bill Nottingham's objections seemed[23] to involve both the resource intensiveness of doing this during the composition of the repodata and also that "[...] this is all stuff that exists." [23] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02165.html -- Are Other Distros Controlling Fedora through PackageKit ? -- A thread initiated[24] by Thorsten Leemhuis explored some details on how information on packages is created and stored at the distribution level and the challenges this presents both to independent repositories and to tools which wish to use this data. One heated aspect of this discussion concerned the manner in which the PackageKit[25] application installer defines and presents groupings of packages. PackageKit is designed to be a distribution-independent tool and it appeared to some in the discussion that its direction was inimical to the best release-engineering practices of the Fedora Project. The central issue appeared to be that PackageKit developers were not spending time helping to refine the comps.xml file which defines how packages are bundled during installation and is used by every other tool. [24] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01813.html [25] http://packagekit.org/pk-intro.html Thorsten asked a series of questions about the correct use of comps.xml and how it interacted with anaconda, PackageKit and yum. Thorsten was concerned that there appeared to be 1711 packages missing from comps.xml in order that "[...] people can find and select them right during install with anaconda. Do we care?" After some investigation with the latest PackageKit, which Rahul Sundaram pointed out[26] uses comps.xml, Thorsten deduced[27] in discussion with Tim Lauridsen that "[...] adding packages to a group in comps.xml as '' is only worth the trouble if you want to make the package selectable in anaconda, as that information is not used by pk-application." Tim Lauridsen explained[28] that PackageKit used the comps.xml groups as "meta-packages" but James Antill disagreed[29] that they were similar. [26] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01819.html [27] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01861.html [28] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01859.html [29] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01889.html Alex Lancaster agreed[30] with Thorsten's concern that many packagers were not using comps.xml and posted a link that showed that both he and Toshio Kuratomi had been thinking about using PackageDB to generate comps.xml for some time[31]. [30] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01893.html [31] See also http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue136#Application.Installer..22Amber.22.Provides.Browser.Interface.to.Packages and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue82#Presto.Server.Back.Up...Interesting..25doc.Behaviour..Presto.Now.in.Extras.21 In sustained discussion with Kevin Kofler a defense of PackageKit was mounted[32] by Richard Hughes using the argument that it was intended to be a compliment to yum rather than a replacement. Its intent is to occupy a very narrow niche for the specific type of user identified by "profiles" produced by the PackageKit developers. [32] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02015.html James Antill had done[33] some investigation of the difference between how PackageKit and yum presented groups of packages and was not impressed: "In short it's arbitrarily different, hardcoded and just plain wrong. But hey, you've done "substantial user research" while we're just lowly developers, so feel free to keep ignoring us." [33] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02008.html The evolution of comps.xml to its current complexity was advanced[34] by Nicolas Mailhot as the result of multiple constraints of engineering, maintenance and legality, he argued that "[i]t's always easy to present one-shot specialized solutions. The difficulty is scaling because separate maintenance of specialized overlapping package collections is not efficient). When you refuse to look at scaling problems you're missing the core of the problem." [34] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02089.html When it seemed that PackageKit was being designed[35] to take the needs of other distributions into account and that this might have a negative effect on Fedora there was a great deal of disapprobation expressed[36] by Jesse Keating: "If I'd known that upstream was actively looking to destroy our package classifications, rather than actually work with us to clean them up a bit maybe I would have joined the conversation. A heads up might have been in order. I fear that any conversation now will just be too little too late." Matthias Clasen characterized[37] this as Jesse being more interested in confrontation than making things better but Nicolas Mailhot also saw[38] the decisions being made about PackageKit's design as "non-representative" of developers focused on Fedora. Interestingly he tied this in with an observation on "[...] desktop team mislike for the common distro communication channel [.]" A slight rapprochement seemed[39] to be in effect towards the end of the thread as tempers cooled. [35] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01957.html [36] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01974.html [37] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01976.html [38] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02012.html [39] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02022.html The issue of binary packages (several of which can be produced from any single source package) was attacked when Toshio Kuratomi listed[40] PackageDB, amber, koji,comps.xml, repoview and Fedora collection as all "[...] doing a subset of the work in this area." He asked for some clarity as to the storage, interface and presentation layers. Kevin Fenzi agreed but added[41] mash as another player and suggested that perhaps all the developers of the respective systems could meet to hash out some agreed plan. Jesse Keating confirmed[42] Kevin's description and elaborated: "it's mash that pulls comps out of cvs and 'makes' it and uses it when generating repodata. Mash is used during rawhide production and during update repo generation. When we make releases, that uses pungi which consumes the comps data that mash generated and merges in data from any other repo pungi is configured to use. Then pungi calls repoview to create data based on that merged comps." [40] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01949.html [41] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02182.html [42] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02185.html -- /sbin and /bin Linked to /usr/lib -- Steve Grubb posted[43] the output from a utility which he had authored to check whether applications in the /bin and /sbin directories link against anything in the /usr directory. In the ensuing discussion Bill Crawford suggested[44] that one of the listed applications, /bin/rpm was useful in its present location because of the "[...](admittedly quite odd situations) where you need to, say, reinstall grub or a kernel because you broke something[.]" He added that a "rescue" initrd would help for machines without optical drives. [43] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02315.html [44] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02458.html -- Documentation -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject Contributing Writer: Jason Taylor -- Release Notes Galore -- With the approaching F10 release[1] the Docs team spent time this week getting release note beats updated and organized. A lot of progress was made updating the beats to include pertinent package information as well as all the new features[2] and it looks like there may be a new format for the release notes as well[3]. There has also been a lot of work on getting the release-note structure to be compatible with publican[4]. Once compatible with publican the release-notes will support additional formats (HTML, PDF, etc.). [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Schedule [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Release_notes_structure_for_F10 [4] https://fedorahosted.org/publican -- Documentation Repository Changes -- The Docs Project has been working to convert from CVS as the main repository for published documents to git[1]. More progress on that front was made this week as the Install-Guide[2] was moved over. The implementation of git and trac[3] allows for better group communication and work flow management with contributors. [1] http://git.or.cz/ [2] https://fedorahosted.org/install-guide/ [3] http://trac.edgewall.org/ -- Translation -- This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee -- String freeze breakage alarms -- Noriko Mizumoto reported[1] about suspected string freeze breakage for a few modules, during the week that modified the translation status figures[2]. These modifications (except for one: comps) turned out to be the result of delayed creation of new template files which caused confusion about the string freeze. The template files are generally scheduled for creation by the respective package maintainers before the start of the string freeze period. Fedora packages are currently string frozen for Fedora 10[3] i.e. no new translated messages can be added without the prior permission of the Fedora Localization Team as per the String Freeze Policy[4]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00053.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00076.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00013.html [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/StringFreezePolicy -- Fedora Docs moved to git repository -- The Fedora documentation (including the Installation Guide, Release Notes etc.) were moved to the Fedora git repo[5]. Translation submissions can be continued via the Transifex interface[6]. However, Piotr Drag writes in that the statistics page will not be able to present the status for these documentation modules, as documents compiled with publican are not supported by Damned Lies yet[7]. As per Dimitris Glezos, support for publican documents could be achieved if patches for this functionality can be developed by interested volunteers[6]. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00084.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00099.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00093.html -- Translation schedule to be further discussed for clarity of tasks -- John Poelstra and Dimitris Glezos are scheduled to meet on Monday 29th September 08[8], to discuss about the details of the Fedora 10 translation schedule to clearly define all the tasks and integrate them in the schedule. The meeting is open for others to join in. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00100.html -- Artwork -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei -- The desktop theme for Fedora 10 was chosen Mairin Duffy announced[1] the vote for the default theme in Fedora 10 on @fedora-art "Nigel Jones set up a vote for us to vote on round 3. You must be a member of the art group in the accounts system to be eligible to vote" and after the voting process ended, Michael Beckwith announced[2] the winner, the Solar theme[3] "We weren't feeling completely InvinXble. However, being the FOSS advocates we are, and with our support of Fedora, we were not afraid of of the unknown frontier. The Gears of time shown bright with a healthy Neon glow, but neither of these had very much effect on the course of destiny. Come join us as we sail into the Solar future for Fedora 10 later this year" and Max Spevack drew the conclusion: "They are all beautifully done pieces of artwork, and I really hope that everyone in the Art Team is proud of what the group has collectively achieved. I say 'congrats' to everyone on the Art Team." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00364.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F10Themes/Solar [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00455.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00456.html -- The fight for the theme -- As the vote for the Fedora 10 theme was closed to the members of the Art Team, a lot of people tried to vote even if they weren't members of the team, as Mairin Duffy noted[1]: "Since i announced the F10 theme vote, we've received a deluge of art group membership requests, some clearly approveable but many not" and she reminded the requirements to become a member, which are listed on the project's page[2]. David Nielsen tried an appeal on her blog[3] "Maybe the solution is to open the vote, even if we are not inclined to contribute in your area of Fedora we might still have an opinion. Do you want other contributors to make decisions on the projects collective future without including you?" but Mairin remained firm "As an artist, I don't expect to have a vote on many technical decisions. I wonder how someone without both the experience and inclination to provide artwork for Fedora would have the expertise necessary to make an informed decision" and concluded "Everyone has an opinion. Not everyone is willing to put their money where their mouth is. It is a shame." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00371.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork#First_Steps [3] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/62031.html -- The theme soap opera -- While the vote for the Fedora 10 theme was ongoing, Seth Kenlon reminded[1] an old issue with one of the contenders and asked for an update "I am not clear, is this to be the final katana or is it still being swapped out with a newly photographed one? I recall there being an issue with licensing, and thought we would be seeing a different sword...but maybe I missed the thread in which all of this was solved" on which Nicu Buculei expressed[2] his remaining doubts "Honestly, I have some doubts about that: sstorari *claimed* he remade the image using his own (Free) photo as a base and he posted the reference photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sstorari/2826852493/ While it looks pretty much like a katana (just like the photos used previously), the sword in the photo is not at the same angle as the sword in the wallpaper (so the hilt looks different), which make me have some doubts", which raised an angry answer[3] from Samuele Storari, the theme author, who claimed innocence "If u take a look in the source before write something u can see that the problem was solved creatin' the blade from 0." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00369.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00383.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00386.html When the discuss started to look like a classic flamewar, Paul Frields dropped a bomb by showing[4] a movie poster identical with the theme discussed "Samuele, I'm a big fan of Quentin Tarantino, and collected some desktop backgrounds when Kill Bill Vol. 1 was going to be released. One of the backgrounds features a katana sword which looks to me to be identical to the one in your source .XCF file" and outlined the importance of having all of the elements of a design Free in order to have the result Free "When we talk about having an entirely free desktop theme, it means that *all* the elements must be created from free sources." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00394.html As Samuele continued to deny any wrongdoing "the Blade wasn't the same cos the blade was totally recreated. Take a look to the source file and please post something similar", Nicu Buculei created and posted[6] a short video[7] revealing the similarities "What can I say? rotate the image 180 degrees and the resemblance is, uh..., uncanny" [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00397.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00398.html [7] http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/invinxible.ogv During the heated debate, Martin Sourada expressed[8] his doubts regarding the allegations against the two themes proposed by Samuele. "First, I have an impression that Mo and Nicu are somehow biased against Samuele's work. First, some weeks ago, Mo kept asking Samuele about Moon brushes in the Solar theme, when the Moons were already removed from the artwork, next there is the problem in katana. As nicu pointed out, the original design indeed resembles the Kill Bill poster, but even though I saw the .ogv file he provided, I am not 100% convinced Samuele used that katana" and "I believe both Mo and Nicu are just trying to prevent any legal issues that might arose in the future otherwise" but after seeing additional evidence provided by Mairin Duffy[9] and Charlie Brej[10] he changed his position "Mo and Nicu, I'd like to apologize for accusing you from being biased and pointing out outdated issues. It was me who was wrong and I should have checked the sources first. While part of the sword was replaced, the tilt was indeed from the same source image and I was wrong in arguing otherwise." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00436.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00437.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00438.html After the vote ended and after a long and heated debate, Samuele Storari apologised for his misunderstandings about licensing "First of all I want to apologize with all art-team and mailing list member for last two days mails. This is my first work in FOSS environment and I didn't understand all implication and I saw your continue checking on my work as a way to find something wrong" and started to work fixing his two themes proposals and remove a number of tainted graphic elements from them. At the moment of this report, Samuele is closely collaborating with other members of the team on this task and the Solar theme cleaned almost completely. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00463.html -- Lessons from the flamewar -- In parallel with the debate surrounding the license of a couple of theme proposals for Fedora 10, Mairin Duffy opened a debate[1] about the policy to apply when finding license infringements "Here are the options as I see them and/or as have been suggested to me: 1 - disqualify invinXble as a theme, even if invinXble wins, the 2nd-place winner will win 2 - if invinXble (or any theme that has photos we aren't able to source) wins, replace any sourced photographs in it with properly-licensed ones 3 - disqualify any themes that use images we cannot find properly-licensed photo source references for", she noted the pros and contras for each option and expressed her option for one of the first two. David Nielsen raised the case[2] for a written policy "I would favor option 2 with the understanding that a proper policy be written and must be agreed upon when submitting artwork for Fedora in the future. This way we do not lose the two most developed themes this late in the game and we still get to correct the problem. This at least would be similar to what we have done in other parts of the distro when such unfortunate issues have arisen", a policy considered not needed[4] by Nicu Buculei "Well, I propose a simple guideline: 'Don't like. When people ask about the source of your work, be honest and tell the truth.' That would have solved all of our problems *weeks* ago, but I think it is common-sense and we should not have to have this as a written guideline. " [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00425.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00432.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00460.html As a lesson from the happening, Mairin Duffy asked[4] on @fedora-art about unclarities some member of the team may have about licensing: "Did any of you joining the art team have doubts/questions/confusion over copyright law and licensing as it pertains to the usage of externally-sourced images used in artwork? Were you unsure of what licenses were acceptable to use in Fedora artwork? What kinds of questions / uncertainties did you have, if any?" and proposed a few measures, on which David Nielsen completed[5] with a couple of simple guidelines "* Unsure about source licensing terms, don't use it. * Unable to document source licensing terms, don't use it." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00426.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00434.html -- Echo icon theme and Fedora 10 -- Bill Nottingham raised[1] a cross-question to @fedora-art and @fedora-desktop about the status of the Echo icon theme "When we approved Echo as the default icon theme for F10, I was under the assumption that this was already more or less known as a feature to the Desktop group, and they were OK with the coverage provided and the experience given. Is that the case?" on which William Jon McCann expressed[2] his opposition to the new theme "I strongly disagree with the decision to use the Echo icon theme. For one, there is simply not enough time before Fedora 10 to fix the problems that you point out. There is also the fact that the quality of the artwork is noticeably lower than the upstream GNOME and Tango icon themes" and preference for the Tango set "Encourage Fedora artists to become involved with the upstream GNOME and Tango artist communities" while Mairin Duffy pointed[3] the inclusion of Echo as a default in Rawhide as a means to enable wider testing and accelerate development |I also was under the understanding that Echo was set as the default in rawhide to enable the folks working on it a chance to get fuller coverage, and that if it was deemed to not have appropriate coverage, it would be pulled." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00441.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00442.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00443.html Martin Sourada pointed[4] that some of the concern raised in Bill's original questions are also valid for the current situation "With Mist, there are still new gnome styled icons, old gnome styled icons and bluecurve. In some places we reduced the old gnome and bluecurve to minimum, in others not yet. Check the System -> Administration menu as an example" and reminded there is still development time until the final decision about inclusion will be made "Our general idea is that some time around the final freeze it will be decided by art and desktop teams whether we are ready. If not, echo will be pulled back and submitted again for F11. I'd be for voting, enabled for art and desktop fas groups members regarding this issue" and Jaroslav Reznik showed the enthusiasm of the KDE SIG[5] regarding the new set and his openness to work for getting it in a good shape "We (KDE SIG) are trying to use Echo theme as default for KDE but currently there are still some icons missing. We are preparing list of to-be-done icons. So can we fill it as ticket for echo-icon-theme and edit Todo on Wiki?" [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00457.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00471.html -- Security Advisories -- In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley -- Fedora 9 Security Advisories -- * viewvc-1.0.6-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01101.html * initscripts-8.76.3-1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01135.html * rkhunter-1.3.2-5.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01204.html * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01290.html * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01228.html -- Fedora 8 Security Advisories -- * viewvc-1.0.6-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01142.html * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01137.html * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01155.html * rkhunter-1.3.2-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg01279.html -- Virtualization -- In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley -- Enterprise Management Tools List -- This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list -- Maximum Number of Attached CDROMs in Xen -- Alexander Todorov asked[1] why only 3 CDROM devices could be attached in virt-manager. Cole Robinson replied[2] "Xen uses a forked qemu for HVM device emulation" and the version on RHEL is limited to 4 IDE devices. The newer qemu found in Fedora 9 allow attaching SCSI disks and CDROMs, and thereby more devices. This ability already in libvirt is not yet exposed in the virt-manager GUI. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00062.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00065.html -- Parallel Port Support in virt-manager -- Bob Tennent asked if virt-manager supports adding a parallel port to a guest OS. Cole Robinson answered[2] this functionality is[3] in libvirt, but not exposed in virt-manager yet. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00048.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00051.html [3] http://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsConsole -- VMWare VMX Output from virt-convert -- Joey Boggs posted[1] a patch which provides VMWare vmx[2] output from virt-convert. "This will replace the virt-pack command and supplemental Unware.py file and integrate them into virt-convert directly as a module." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00057.html [2] http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html -- Disk Image Signature Verification -- Joey Boggs posted patches for virtinst[1] and for virt-convert[2] that "will add in disk signature support for ISV's and others folks that wish to verify the disk has not been altered prior to running virt-image. Supports MD5 and SHA1 signatures." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00068.htmlk [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00096.html -- Fedora Xen List -- This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. -- Continued Trouble with 32bit Fedora 9 DomU on Fedora 8 Dom0 -- Fred Brier followed[1] up on a thread[2] from June 2008. It seems that on a 32bit system running Fedora 8 dom0, the shutdown or restart of a Fedora 9 domU results in that guest being inaccessible to libvirt tools until a dom0 reboot or xend restart. There are at least two similar bugs[3],[4] filed for this issue. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00029.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-June/msg00029.html [3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=429403 [4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=453276 -- Libvirt List -- This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. -- Libvirt 0.4.6 Released -- Daniel Veillard announced[1] the release of libvirt 0.4.6. "There is no major change in this release, just the bug fixes a few improvements and some cleanup". Improvements include: * add storage disk volume delete (Cole Robinson) * KVM dynamic max CPU detection (Guido G?nther) * spec file improvement for minimal builds (Ben Guthro) * improved error message in XM configuration module (Richard Jones) * network config in OpenVZ support (Evgeniy Sokolov) * enable stopping a pool in logical storage backend and cleanup deletion of pool (Chris Lalancette) [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00380.html After finding no F8 build newer than 0.4.4 in Bodhi, Dale Bewley asked[2] if the Xen users stuck[3] on Fedora 8 could expect an update[4]. Daniel Veillard responded[5] it was unclear the release would fix anything for Xen users and "It was looking more risky than potentially useful to update there." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00400.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#kernel-xen_is_Dead [4] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00401.html -- RFC: Events API -- David Lively began[1] a discusion on implementation of events in libvirtd. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00321.html -- Windows Binaries -- Richard W.M. Jones pointed[1] out that -- while not an official distribution -- binaries for libvirt-0.dll and virsh.exe are available[2] in the mingw32-libvirt package. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00393.html [2] http://www.annexia.org/tmp/mingw/fedora-9/ -- oVirt Devel List -- This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. -- oVirt 0.93-1 Released -- Perry N. Myers [1] both the oVirt Node and oVirt Server Suite. New features in this release include: * Addition of 'Smart Pools' in the Web user interface for organizing pools on a per user basis. * Additions to the Edit VM screen to allow re-provisioning of a guest as well editing other guest settings. * oVirt Appliance manages VMs directly on the host it is running on. This eliminates the 'fake nodes' used in previous versions. * oVirt API (Ruby Bindings) * Support for configuring more than one NIC per Node. UI support for this will be integrated shortly. * Support for bonding/failover of NICs. UI support for this will be integrated shortly. * SELinux support on oVirt Node * Rewrite of performance graphing visualization Instructions for configuring yum to point to the ovirt.org repository: http://www.ovirt.org/download.html Instructions for using the Appliance and Nodes: http://www.ovirt.org/install-instructions.html [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00491.html -- Modeling LVM Storage -- Chris Lalancette described[1] the outcome of a IRC chat about carving up storage with LVM. The existing StoragePool in the current model contains zero or more StorageVolumes. Chris described adding a StorageVolume of type LVM which contains one or more iSCSI StorageVolumes and presumably fiberchannel in the future. After the model is modified and the backend "taskomatic" code is in place, then while provisioning a guest VM the user will either choose an entire LUN guest, choose an existing logical volume, or create a new volume. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00313.html Scott Seago clarified[2] that "volumes must be of the same 'type' as the pool". An IscsiStoragePool contains IscsiStorageVolumes an LvmStoragePool contains LvmStorageVolumes. "In additon, for LvmStoragePools, we have a new association defined between it and StorageVolumes. an LvmStoragePool has 1 or more "source storage volumes""... "which for the moment must be IscsiStorageVolumes." "When determining which storage volumes are available for guests, we'll have to filter out storage volumes which are connected to LvmStoragePools." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00315.html Steve Ofsthun asked[3] how will oVirt distinguish between logical volumes created on a whole disk assigned to a guest versus volumes used by the host. Daniel P. Berrange suggested[4] this could accomplished by creating a partition on the disk and assigning this to the guest, thereby making the guest LVM one step removed from the host. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00317.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00322.html --- End FWN 145 --- From metherid at gmail.com Sat Sep 27 05:33:35 2008 From: metherid at gmail.com (Rahul Sundaram) Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2008 11:03:35 +0530 Subject: Omega 10 released Message-ID: <48DDC5AF.8010808@gmail.com> We proudly present to you, dear users with Omega. Omega is a Linux based operating system suitable for desktop and laptop users. It is a Live CD for regular PC (i686 architecture) systems that includes a variety of free and open source software from Fedora and Livna repository. You can try it out on a computer or install it to the hard disk. This is a BETA release with a snapshot of the latest bleeding edge development packages for early testing and feedback. It is roughly similar to the upcoming Fedora 10 Beta release. Highlights ---------- * GNOME 2.23 Desktop Environment * Firefox 3.0 Web Browser * A variety of media players including vlc, mplayer and xine * Extra Gstreamer and xine multimedia codecs Get Omega --------- ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/spins/omega-desktop-livecd-10-beta.iso You can verify this ISO image using SHA1SUM available at ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/spins/SHA1SUM Participate ------------ If you have any feedback or wish to help, do let me know. Rahul From jkeating at redhat.com Tue Sep 30 14:12:14 2008 From: jkeating at redhat.com (Jesse Keating) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:12:14 -0700 Subject: Cambridge (F-10) Beta release announcement Message-ID: <1222783934.3985.2.camel@luminos.localdomain> Fedora 10 Beta: Cambridge's foundations are laid Just on the heels of the Fedora Project's fifth anniversary, the Beta of Fedora Linux version 10 (code-named Cambridge) is now available: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease There is also a Beta contest! Test five things in the Beta that are important to you as a user. If you find a bug *and* report it, you get the free attention of a package maintainer on a problem personally important to you! https://bugzilla.redhat.com Do your part to make Fedora 10 that much better. Among the new, fun, and interesting features: * New NetworkManager with connection sharing * Improved printer handling * Remote virtualization and easier virt storage * Sectool, an auditing and security testing framework * RPM 4.6, the first big RPM change in several years ... and more ... * New version of PackageKit for managing software, with more fixes and enhancements (which benefits all distributions) * New version of PulseAudio (which benefits all distributions) * Kernel 2.6.27, including better support for WiFi * Better support for the EFI for Apple Macintosh hardware * Faster graphical start-up by Plymouth, replacing the venerable RHGB * Better support for webcams through the hard work in kernel 2.6.27 (which benefits all distributions) * New icon theme "Echo", to be completed with the theme graphic "Solar" in the Fedora 10 release * Gnome 2.24 * KDE 4.1 * Adding the NetBeans IDE * Eclipse 3.4 * Automatic installation of multimedia codecs * Better HDTV support in X.org * "Sugar" graphical environment (from OLPC) available for use, testing, and development A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList For release information, including common and known bugs, please see our release notes: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Beta/ReleaseNotes -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom? is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From jkeating at redhat.com Tue Sep 30 19:35:58 2008 From: jkeating at redhat.com (Jesse Keating) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:35:58 -0700 Subject: Updated Beta images for x86_64 Live KDE and x86_64 Live XFCE Message-ID: <1222803358.3985.34.camel@luminos.localdomain> There was a small problem during image creation that led to the x86_64 Live KDE actually being the content for the x86_64 Live XFCE. I have recreated these images and updated the master mirror and the torrent server. For full disclosure, here are the SHA1SUMs of each: 6f32b75c09838a407371aec211e1951d357baf03 *F10-Beta-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso 04195ea383229bdd356188e86ba8c39985118abb *F10-Beta-x86_64-Live-XFCE.iso Note that while some of the other torrents have SHA1SUM files that may reference the old sha1sums of these, they will not be replaced at this time as that would reset existing down-loaders of other content and cause undue complications. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom? is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From stickster at gmail.com Tue Sep 30 23:16:16 2008 From: stickster at gmail.com (Paul W. Frields) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:16:16 -0400 Subject: Fedora Board IRC meeting 1800 UTC 2008-10-07 Message-ID: <20080930231616.GB28744@victoria-eth.internal.frields.org> he Board is holding its monthly public meeting on Tuesday, 7 October 2008, at 1800 UTC on IRC Freenode. The public is invited to do the following: * Join #fedora-board-meeting to see the Board's conversation. This channel is read-only for non-Board members. * Join #fedora-board-public to discuss topics and post questions. This channel is read/write for everyone. The moderator will direct questions from the #fedora-board-public channel to the Board members at #fedora-board-meeting. This should limit confusion and ensure our logs are useful to everyone. ?The Board has set aside one meeting of each month as a public "town hall" style meeting. We are *still* hoping to hold an audio-based meeting at some point in the near future using some of the new resources being developed by the Infrastructure team. More news on this will be forthcoming. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. -- Paul W. Frields gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://paul.frields.org/ - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: