Fedora Weekly News 204

Pascal Calarco pcalarco at nd.edu
Mon Nov 30 21:33:16 UTC 2009


           o 1.1 Announcements
                 + 1.1.1 More Fedora 12 Reviews
                 + 1.1.2 FEDORA ANNOUNCE LIST
                       # 1.1.2.1 Fedora Project Election Town Halls
                 + 1.1.3 FEDORA EVENTS
                       # 1.1.3.1 Upcoming Events
                       # 1.1.3.2 Past Events
           o 1.2 Planet Fedora
                 + 1.2.1 General
           o 1.3 Quality Assurance
                 + 1.3.1 Test Days
                 + 1.3.2 Weekly meetings
                 + 1.3.3 Increasing the grub timeout
                 + 1.3.4 Fedora 12 QA retrospective
           o 1.4 Ambassadors
                 + 1.4.1 Fedora at NYSCATE
                 + 1.4.2 Fedora 12 is here
           o 1.5 Translation
                 + 1.5.1 Fedora 12 Translation Schedule Tasks
                 + 1.5.2 Accessibility Guide
                 + 1.5.3 New Members
           o 1.6 Artwork
                 + 1.6.1 Interaction Design Hackfest
                 + 1.6.2 Game Screenshots Ready. Better Navigation Next
           o 1.7 Security Advisories
                 + 1.7.1 Fedora 12 Security Advisories
                 + 1.7.2 Fedora 11 Security Advisories
                 + 1.7.3 Fedora 10 Security Advisories

- Fedora Weekly News Issue 204 -

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 204[1] for the week ending November 
29, 2009. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

We start this week's issue off with a couple additional Fedora 12 
reviews to highlight, and also lots of Fedora Project Election 
information to inform and engage the user community! In news from the 
Fedora Planet this week, comparing the Nokia Maemo and Google Android 
platforms, thoughts on sustainable open source engineering, and a review 
of the 0.4 Eclipse Linux Tools. In the Quality Assurance beat, much 
detail on this past week's QA team activities, and an interesting Fedora 
12 QA retrospective. Ambassadors news this week gives us an event report 
from the recent New York State Association for Technology and Computers 
in Education meeting. In Translation happenings, 0-day Fedora 12 
translation polishing, and new members to the Fedora Localization 
Project for Italian, Sinhala and German. The Art/Design beat shows off 
discussion on an interactive design hackfest and wrapup of screenshots 
for a Fedora Game Spin. This issue wraps up with security patches 
released last week for Fedora 10, 11 and 12. Please enjoy FWN 204!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see 
our 'join' page[2]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list at redhat.com

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue204
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

--  Announcements --

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, 
including general announcements[1], development announcements[2] and 
Events[3].

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/
    2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events

---  More Fedora 12 Reviews ---

Last week, we highlighted several Fedora 12 reviews from around the 
globe. Here are a few more than came in over the past week:

     * Distrowatch, "First look at Fedora 12" [1]
     * Linux Planet "Fedora 12 pushes bleeding edge of Linux networking" 
[2]

    1. http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20091123#feature
    2. http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6910/1/

---  FEDORA ANNOUNCE LIST ---

----  Fedora Project Election Town Halls ----

There are a number of high-profile and important elections for the 
Fedora Project leadership in process right now, and there's lots on the 
wiki to inform the user community on the candidates[1]. See the linked 
page for a log of town hall discussions, and upcoming town halls[2] 
through December 3rd! Who can vote? Check out the Fedora Elections Guide![3]

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections#IRC_Town_Halls
    3. http://nigelj.fedorapeople.org/feg/

---  FEDORA EVENTS ---

Fedora events are the source of marketing, learning and meeting all the 
fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the 
following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

----  Upcoming Events ----

     * North America (NA)[1]
     * Central & South America (LATAM) [2]
     * Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)[3]
     * India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)[4]

    1. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November_2009.29
    2. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November_2009.29_2
    3. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November_2009.29_3
    4. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY10_Q3_.28September_2009_-_November_2009.29_4

----  Past Events ----

Archive of Past Fedora Events[1]

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#Past_Events


--  Planet Fedora --

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora[1] - an 
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

    1. http://planet.fedoraproject.org

---  General ---

Gerard Braad installed[1] the Maemo 5 SDK on Fedora 12. However, there 
were a few minor quirks with the installation process to be aware of.

Steven Moix compared[2] the Maemo platform (Nokia N900) with Android (Hero).

Richard W.M. Jones decided to take a look[3] into the Fedora and Ubuntu 
Live CDs to see if it was possible "to quickly create a Fedora or Ubuntu 
“all-defaults” virtual machine." Part 2 continues[4] with some 
optimization that drastically reduce the time taken to install (one 16 
minutes operation in particular ends up taking 2 1/2 minutes after 
optimization).

Andrew Overholt announced[5] release 0.4.0 of the Eclipse Linux Tools, 
complete with SystemTap call graphs, GProf integration and better 
autotools support.

John Palmier explained[6] "why do we care about push messaging"? (in the 
form of a comic strip). This is all in preparation for a presentation on 
AMQP and qpid for the upcoming FUDCon.

Karsten Wade discussed[7] "building a business around sustainable open 
source engineering". Karsten wanted to "lay out a definition for 
sustainable open source engineering, provide some examples you may not 
have thought of, and find out who else is doing a good job at it (or 
trying to, at the very least!)"

Mike McGrath says[8]: "I'm happy to announce today we finally have 
context based sponsorship listings. What does this mean? Well, when you 
go to http://fedoraproject.org/ you end up hitting one of several 
reverse proxy servers. These hosts are located all over the world by 
different hosting providers."

Pavol Rusnak took a look[9] at community engagement in the OpenSUSE and 
Fedora communities. Many pie graphs ensued.

Ray Strode talked[10] about the point in the bootup process where it 
transitions from Plymouth to X. "f you haven’t seen it, when boot up 
finishes, plymouth settles down the boot splash to a transitionable 
animation frame, then the mouse pointer shows up, and GDM’s background 
cross fades in while the login window maps and expands to show 
frequently logged in users. In the best case, this transition all 
happens without any flicker, resolution changes, black intermediate 
screens, or console text showing up."

    1. http://blog.gbraad.nl/2009/11/maemo-5-sdk-on-fedora-12.html
    2. 
http://www.alphatek.info/2009/11/22/maemo-or-android-n900-versus-hero/
    3. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/prebuilt-distributions-part-1/
    4. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/prebuilt-distributions-part-2/
    5. http://overholt.ca/wp/?p=139
    6. http://www.j5live.com/2009/11/23/fudcon-the-amqp-story/
    7. 
http://iquaid.org/2009/11/23/building-a-business-around-sustainable-open-source-engineering/
    8. http://mmcgrath.livejournal.com/31686.html
    9. 
http://stick.gk2.sk/blog/2009/11/fedora-and-opensuse-community-engagement/
   10. 
http://blogs.gnome.org/halfline/2009/11/28/plymouth-%E2%9F%B6-x-transition/

--  Quality Assurance --

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1].

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA

---  Test Days ---

There was no Test Day last week, and no Test Day is currently planned 
for this week. If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for 
the Fedora 13 cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or 
file a ticket in QA Trac[1].

    1. http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/

---  Weekly meetings ---

The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-11-23. The full log is 
available[2]. James Laska noted that a common bugs page entry had been 
added[3] to cover the known issue with preupgrade and free space in the 
/boot partition, and Rui He had been working to update the preupgrade 
test cases to catch similar problems in future[4].

James Laska admitted that he had not yet sent out the request for 
feedback for the Fedora 12 QA retrospective, but promised to do it soon. 
John Poelstra asked whether the group would be interested in a 
project-wide retrospective at the upcoming FUDCon; James offered to 
discuss the idea with John after the meeting.

The group discussed the question of privilege escalation testing, 
following the PackageKit installation permission controversy[5]. James 
Laska wanted to discuss the plan Tom 'spot' Callaway had proposed via a 
blog post[6] and create a test plan based around it. Adam Williamson 
felt it was too early to begin planning testing, since Tom's blog post 
was only a proposal, and there was no official policy or guideline for 
privilege escalation issues on which a test plan could be based. Adam 
was also worried about defining the scope of testing, as checking every 
package in the distribution would be impractical given the size of the 
QA team. The group agreed that for any useful testing to be done, two 
things would be needed: a project-wide policy or set of policies and 
guidelines, and a tool for generating a list of packages which are 
capable of privilege escalation. Adam agreed to start a discussion of 
this on the development and security mailing lists. Will Woods offered 
to work on the tool for identifying escalation-capable packages.

James Laska brought up John Poelstra's plan to improve the release 
criteria[7], and asked the group to provide feedback. John noted that he 
was hoping people could get together to work on finalizing the new 
criteria at FUDCon.

Will Woods and Kamil Paral reported on the progress of the AutoQA 
project. Will had completed the redesign of the autoqa code to be based 
around a Python shared library containing functions commonly used in 
multiple watchers and tests. The new post-koji-build test hook is also 
included, and autoqa is currently running an rpmlint test on every Koji 
build to test the hook. He said the next objective was to solidify the 
post-koji-build hook, help package maintainers add post-build tests, and 
get the rpmguard test running. A later objective is to work on a 
post-bodhi-update hook and dependency check test so that all updates 
submitted to Bodhi will be checked for dependency consistency, to 
hopefully end the situation where updates are pushed which break 
dependency chains. Kamil had been working on the Wiki documentation, and 
had created a new front page[8] which briefly explains the project and 
contains links to the most important relevant pages. He also pointed out 
that James Laska had been drafting further improvements to this page[9].

Jesse Keating proposed a talk during FUDCon to explain how several new 
ideas across the release engineering and QA groups - no frozen rawhide, 
autoqa, autosigning, and new milestones - would fit together in upcoming 
Fedora release cycles. The group thought this was a good idea, and Jesse 
said he would take the lead in arranging it.

The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[10] was held on 2009-11-24. The full 
log is available[11]. The group discussed housekeeping tasks, 
particularly updating the components and triagers page[12]. Adam 
Williamson thought the list of triagers should be kept (rather than 
being emptied as was previously the case with each new release) but 
pruned, with triagers known to be inactive being removed. Edward Kirk 
volunteered to look into a method for updating the component list, based 
on the current critical path package list.

The group then discussed the topic of mentoring new members, with Edward 
Kirk encouraging experienced group members to help mentor new ones to 
make sure they got a good start on their triaging careers. He also 
thought it would be good for existing members to join in welcoming new 
members to the group when they posted their introduction emails. Adam 
Williamson suggested doing this via private mail to avoid cluttering up 
the list.

Matej Cepl brought up a problem related to the recently-implemented 
change in the method of marking bugs that had been triaged. He had found 
that the fact that this was now being done differently for different 
releases made it impossible to construct a Bugzilla search for all 
triaged or un-triaged bugs in a given component across all releases. To 
address this problem, he proposed adding the new Triaged keyword to all 
bugs in ASSIGNED state for existing supported releases (Fedora 10 
through 12), which would allow searches to be performed using the 
keyword in all releases. The group could see no problems with this idea, 
as long as it was done without generating a large amount of email, and 
approved the plan for Matej to approach the Bugzilla maintainer for help 
in implementing it.

Matej Cepl pointed out that the level of duplicate bugs being filed via 
the abrt[13] automated bug reporting tool was increasing the triage 
workload on some components significantly. After a long discussion, the 
group agreed a plan to try and address this. Will Woods would talk to 
the abrt team about the idea of reporting issues to an intermediate, 
abrt-specific server rather than directly to Bugzilla, based on the 
kerneloops.org[14] model. Matej would talk to the abrt team about their 
plans to improve abrt's own automatic duplicate detection and about 
having abrt format its reports in ways that would aid triagers in manual 
duplicate detection. Adam Williamson would respond to the existing 
thread on the development mailing list about the problem to raise the 
group's concerns, and ask the abrt team whether future improvements to 
abrt's duplicate detection logic could be retrospectively applied to 
bugs already filed by older versions of abrt.

The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-11-30 at 1600 UTC in 
#fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-12-01 at 
1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
    2. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-11-23/fedora-meeting.2009-11-23-16.00.log.html
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F12_bugs#preupgrade-boot
    4. http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/ticket/30
    5. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047
    6. http://spot.livejournal.com/312216.html
    7. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg00926.html
    8. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AutoQA
    9. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Jlaska/Draft
   10. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
   11. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-11-24/fedora-meeting.2009-11-24-15.11.log.html
   12. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Components_and_Triagers
   13. http://fedorahosted.org/abrt/wiki
   14. http://www.kerneloops.org

---  Increasing the grub timeout ---

Scott Robbins started a long thread[1] with the suggestion to increase 
the default timeout for the Fedora boot loader from its current default 
setting of 0 (which causes the boot loader menu never to be shown at 
all). There were many opinions on this idea, but the general response 
was positive enough for Scott to file a feature request[2] on the idea, 
where some compromises were suggested. Richard Ryniker suggested having 
the system detect unclean shutdowns and force the boot menu to be 
displayed on the next boot (much as Windows does). Stewart Adam 
suggested having grub initially installed with a non-zero timeout, and 
have firstboot change it to zero on the assumption that a system that 
can get to firstboot must have a properly configured bootloader.

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01012.html
    2. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=541315

---  Fedora 12 QA retrospective ---

James Laska posted a request[1] for feedback on the Fedora 12 QA cycle 
from anyone, both on things that went well and areas that could be 
improved. Many group members posted replies, including Adam 
Williamson[2], Jóhann Guðmundsson[3], and Rahul Sundaram[4].

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01126.html
    2. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01127.html
    3. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01149.html
    4. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg01128.html


--  Ambassadors --

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

---  Fedora at NYSCATE ---

Karlie Robinson posted a follow-up to New York State Association for 
Technology and Computers in Education in her blog. Karlie had a variety 
of Fedora and XO materials available at the event.

Her blog is at: 
http://karlierobinson.blogspot.com/2009/11/nyscate-2009-bringing-open-source-to.html

"It was a good event and I hope we can do more next year," she says.

---  Fedora 12 is here ---

With Fedora 12 Constantine now here, this is a reminder that posting an 
announcement of your event on Fedora Weekly News can help get the word 
out. Contact FWN Ambassador correspondent Larry Cafiero at 
lcafiero-AT-fedoraproject-DOT-org with announcements of upcoming events 
-- and don't forget to e-mail reports after the events as well.


--  Translation --

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) 
Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

---  Fedora 12 Translation Schedule Tasks ---

The Translation Schedule for this week included the completion of the 0 
day Release Notes for Fedora 12, to be published on 
docs.fedoraproject.org. This task ended on 26th November 2009[1].

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00123.html

---  Accessibility Guide ---

Eric Christensen announced the availability of the Fedora Accessibility 
Guide[1]. However, this Guide is not yet ready for translation via 
translate.fedoraproject.org due to the older version of Transifex that 
is currently being used here[2][3].

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00116.html
    2. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00117.html
    3. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=518348

---  New Members ---

Votta Luigi (Italian)[1], Yajith Ajanta (Sinhala)[2], Thomas Spitzmann 
(German)[3] joined the Fedora Localization Project last week.

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00148.html
    2. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00152.html
    3. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00136.html

--  Artwork --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team[1].

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

---  Interaction Design Hackfest ---

Máirín Duffy announced[1] on @design-team an interaction design hackfest 
" I am planning to hold a Fedora interaction design hackfest next 
Tuesday to work on establishing a set of personas for Fedora" and 
followed on her blog with a detailed plan[2] " 1. Learn about how 
interaction design is done. 2. Pick up some interaction design and user 
research skills. 3. Get involved in an open design project. 4. Help make 
Fedora better!". After the IRC meeting, she also published[3] a summary 
and logs.

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-November/001477.html
    2. 
http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/want-to-learn-design-skills-want-to-help-fedora-fedora-interaction-design-hackfest-tuesday-24-nov/
    3. 
http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/fedora-interaction-design-hackfest-summary/

---  Game Screenshots Ready. Better Navigation Next ---

Máirín Duffy reported[1] the accomplishment of distributed the task to 
gather screenshots for the Games Spin[2] "We are done. I just checked in 
the last of the games images and we now have complete coverage. You 
rock. 127 games. This may be the most complete set of free game 
screenshots around. Congrats!" and opened a discuss for improving the 
navigation of the page "I'd like to design it such that maybe the games 
could be browsed slide-show style by category". James Mulroy proposed a 
set of mockups[3]. "I did a few very rough mock ups of an idea i had for 
this, my idea would be to create a ajax browser for the screen shots" 
and the discussion continued, exploring ways to categorize the content.

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-November/001489.html
    2. http://spins.fedoraproject.org/games/
    3. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-November/001491.html

--  Security Advisories --

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.

http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

---  Fedora 12 Security Advisories ---

     * tomcat6-6.0.20-1.fc12 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01216.html
     * bind-9.6.1-13.P2.fc12 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01188.html
     * php-pear-Net-Traceroute-0.21.2-1.fc12 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01110.html
     * php-pear-Net-Ping-2.4.5-1.fc12 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01044.html
     * bugzilla-3.4.4-1.fc12 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg00822.html 


---  Fedora 11 Security Advisories ---

     * bind-9.6.1-7.P2.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01172.html
     * tomcat6-6.0.20-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01156.html
     * php-pear-Net-Ping-2.4.5-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01152.html
     * php-pear-Net-Traceroute-0.21.2-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg00998.html
     * snort-2.8.5.1-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg00864.html
     * asterisk-1.6.1.9-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg00789.html 


---  Fedora 10 Security Advisories ---

     * tomcat6-6.0.20-1.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01246.html
     * php-pear-Net-Ping-2.4.5-1.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01130.html
     * php-pear-Net-Traceroute-0.21.2-1.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg01007.html
     * asterisk-1.6.0.17-2.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg00838.html
     * snort-2.8.5.1-1.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-November/msg00808.html 


- end FWN 204 -

--
Pascal Calarco, Fedora Ambassador, Indiana, USA




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