---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 4 April 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
==============
1. Gentoo News
==============
April fools
-----------
Impossible to catch all IT-related April fool's jokes this year, they were
everywhere, on Google, OpenBSD, some even found their way into Gentoo
ebuilds. One seems to have qualified for the 2005 best of April fool's
shortlist at many publications: The GeNToo project[1], Gentoo for the NT
kernel, alas, is a complete and utter joke. If you believed a word of it,
you've been had.
1. http://gentooexperimental.org/nt
Of the several pranks played at Gentoo this year, the GeNToo plot was the
most elaborate, and actually dating back to a group of three developers
splitting away from the rest of the lot at FOSDEM in February for a
spontaneous hacking and belgian fries session: Karl Trygve Kalleberg[2],
Patrick Lauer[3] and Marius Mauch[4]. Under the influence of too many
Belgian fries, karltk was the first to point out the epiphany hidden in
the name of the project: "You see, when you write 'Gentoo', it has NT in
the middle," said the Norwegian developer. And thinking aloud: "Now if one
took the NT kernel ... there is a POSIX layer for it ... put Portage on it
..." As he drew the surreal picture in increasingly shrill colors, the
three devs quickly realized that the only possible release date for this
particularly fine piece of vaporware would have to be the first of April.
2. karltk@gentoo.org
3. patrick@gentoo.org
4. genone@gentoo.org
So, with the idea floating since February, there was time to back the
story up with ample documentation and even screenshots (which were taken
from VMware during a regular boot of Windows 2000 in "Safe Mode"), with a
coating of a handmade bootlog text that was a rather good approximation of
how emerge info might actually look on such a system.
When the announcement was posted to the website and the topics of two IRC
channels almost simultaneously around noon UTC, the traffic statistics on
the website where the project description was hosted went simply through
the ceiling. An amazingly constant stream of traffic, weighing in at
around one hit per second or 100MB per hour, was sustained over almost the
entire day -- considering that the whole website is only 165KB,
estimations are that the GeNToo hoax got around 600 visitors per hour.
Figure 1.1: Traffic load on the fake GeNToo project pages: Right after the
announcement
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_bonsai.png
Figure 1.2: Traffic load on the fake GeNToo project pages: Slashdot effect
after 22:00
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_slashdot.png
To make the illusion even more believable, a channel on Freenode was
created, too: #gentoo-nt, the perfect place to discuss something that
didn't even exist. An interesting twist came about when some of the first
to be fooled later turned into devoted GeNToo evangelists, perpetuating
the myth in the IRC channel and taking the charade even further: One
produced "a patched NT kernel" and offered it online at his own website.
When looked at closely, it bore a striking familiarity with a 2.6.11 Linux
kernel, but nevertheless -- declared as a "GeNToo binary" -- found many
curious downloaders.
While the #gentoo-nt channel on Freenode was still continuing its
makebelief stance well past the dateline into Saturday 2 April, nobody was
sad when the atrocities behind the other prominent Gentoo April fool's
joke were taken down again. People who had followed the announcement[5] in
the Gentoo forums that the redesign had now been finished and could be
applied by simply switching the user profile, quickly complained about
headache, sudden bursts of claustro- and other phobia. Small wonder,
looking at the effect the "redesign" had on posts:
5. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317053.html
Figure 1.3: Kallamej's announcement, rendered in the freshly redesigned
Forum layout
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_forum.png
Reactions were mixed, while some people figured out the joke pretty fast,
others complained about eyestrain. While moderators were watching and
merging duplicated spawn to the central thread[6], they decided to create
even more confusion by renaming moderators to "Ninjas" and administrators
to "Ninja Masters". Bodhisatvas (the rank for ex-mods and -admins) decided
not to follow this trend -- and were renamed to HAL 9000. How subtle
moderator interference at the forums really is was best displayed by the
fact that it took almost all day before people started noticing[7] the
change!
6. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317056.html
7. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317461.html
emerge webrsync reloaded
------------------------
Portage developer Brian Harring[8] has implemented a more
resource-friendly version of emerge webrsync. Instead of pulling in the
whole tarball, it only uses compressed patches between (daily) versions.
That way a user can keep up-to-date with only minimal overhead even when
rsync is not available (firewalls and dialup users mostly). A description
and howto can be found at his blog[9]. First estimates give up to 99%
bandwidth saved compared to webrsync.
8. ferringb@gentoo.org
9.
http://dev.gentoo.org/~ferringb/blog/archives/2005-03.html#e2005-03-29T17_1
4_42.txt
Donations surpassing expectations
---------------------------------
Last week's announcement of the return of PayPal donations has triggered a
delightful response from the community, as Corey Shields, one of the trustees
of the Gentoo Foundation, has reported last week.
The opening balance for the bank account was spontaneously paid in full by
Gentoo sponsor Genesi, who wired an advance payment on commissions for the
sales of PegasosPPC Open Desktop Workstations.
========================
2. Developer of the week
========================
"Why Gentoo? It's cool." -- Michael Hanselmann (hansmi)
-------------------------------------------------------
Figure 2.1: Michael Hanselmann aka hansmi
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_hansmi.jpg
This weeks featured dev is Michael Hanselmann, known to most as
hansmi[10]. He does "various stuff" in Gentoo/PPC, Gentoo/HPPA and the
qmail herd, which mostly boils down to marking packages stable, fixing
bugs and hanging out on IRC a lot. He is the administrator of a hosting
experiment (a project called forkbomb.ch[11]), has written some software
of his own[12], used to do some work with fli4l and still does busy
himself with the m0n0wall project, but his greatest contributions he still
sees in Gentoo, including a stint on the Mac OS X team where he
contributed a Mac OS panel application for setting Portage preferences.
10. hansmi@gentoo.org
11. http://www.forkbomb.ch
12. http://www.hansmi.ch/software
Currently he is doing a programmer apprenticeship in Liechtenstein which
will be finished this summer -- job offers in Switzerland are therefore
highly appreciated! His favourite applications are the vim, mutt and
qmail, which all runs somewhere on a heterogenous mix of x86, sparc, hppa
and ppc, with fluxbox quite possibly being the only element that binds
them all together. Asked what the first application to launch after he
boots his systems, he insists on an appropriately geeky answer:
"Technically, /sbin/init is the first application I (or my kernel)
launches at startup. Or maybe you mean bash when logging in. In a
graphical environment, it's aterm and ssh."
In those rare moments when he is not attached to computer peripherals he
fiddles with electronics, building or breaking stuff, and sometimes really
considers "real" life less interesting than computers.
=========================
3. Heard in the community
=========================
Web forums
----------
Banned from OTW
A new feature, originally introduced by ex-developer Christian Hartmann
and available to forum administrators since about a month ago has now been
officially announced to the public. The OTW ban button provides the forum
admins with a finer-grained ability to ban someone for disregarding the
guidelines for postings in Off the Wall, while leaving their ID intact and
activated for posts in the technical support forums. People can be
hotheads and still eager (and competent) to help others with their Linux
problems. Until the new feature was introduced, banning resulted in a full
ban from the forums altogether.
* Bans from OTW[13]
13. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317818.html
gentoo-dev
----------
The Pluggable Hell - PAM
Diego Petten嘆[14] explains his work with getting PAM (Pluggable
Authentication Modules) to behave the same on non-Linux Gentoos as on
normal Linux. For anyone interested in porting software this should be an
interesting read, showing how small differences can make you life really
difficult when trying to get something to work properly ...
14. flameeyes@users.berlios.de
* Pluggable Hell Part 1 [15]
* Pluggable Hell Part 2 [16]
* pam_console headaches [17]
15. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26664
16. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26726
17. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26731
GTK / GTK2 USE flag madness
As it happens every 6 months or so, a discussion on the (ab)use and the
combinations of GTK and GTK2 USEflags was started. There are many ideas to
improve the situation, but no real consensus on what "-gtk gtk2" would
mean has been reached (yet)
* GTK und GTK2 Use Flag [18]
18. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26681
ApRiL FoOlS!!!
As it happens every year, a few jokes were sent to the -dev mailinglist on
April 1. Here's a list of those messages:
* Uniting x86 and AMD64 keywords [19]
* New "warez" useflag [20]
* GeNToo, Gentoo with Microsoft NT kernel [21]
* new dev mr_t [22]
19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26744
20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26752
21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26756
22. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26760
======================
4. Gentoo in the press
======================
NewsForge (28 March 2005)
-------------------------
Bruce Byfield discusses the upcoming OpenOffice.org version 2.0 and the
implications of its move towards Java: "Since Java's license is neither
free nor open source, a small but vocal minority has responded both
strongly and negatively," says Byfield, and explains in detail why there
are fears of platform support for OOo falling apart (FreeBSD and Linux for
PPC, for example, currently "have no official version of Java," as he
notes), and of alienating users. In his article with the provocative title
"Java fallout: OpenOffice.org 2.0 and the FOSS community"[23], he looks at
the plans at major distributors of how to go about the issue of OOoand
Java inclusion, he quotes Gentoo developer Paul de Vrieze[24] as
preferring an open-source implementation of Java such as GCJ, but being
open to include Java proper if no alternative is available.
23. http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/22/204244&tid=93
24. pauldv@gentoo.org
Summary of release coverage (28 March 2005 and later)
-----------------------------------------------------
The long-awaited release of 2005.0 received a lot of attention throughout
the week, here's a compilation of some major sightings:
* OS News[25]
* InternetNews.com[26]
* Blogged IT News[27]
* Desktop Linux[28]
* Linux Electrons[29]
* LinuxFR[30]
* Der Standard (Austrian daily newspaper, in German)[31]
* Golem.de (German)[32]
* DSL Team (German)[33]
* Pro-Linux (German)[34]
* LinuxHelp (Italian)[35]
25. http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10121
26. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3493541
27. http://bloggeditnews.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-gentoo-release.html
28. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2703815206.html
29. http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20050328065233355
30. http://linuxfr.org/2005/03/29/18615.html
31. http://derstandard.at/?id=1995209
32. http://www.golem.de/0503/37161.html
33. http://www.dslteam.de/news2538.html
34. http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2005/7960.html
35. http://www.linuxhelp.it/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2781
===========================
5. Moves, adds, and changes
===========================
Moves
-----
The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
* Chris White
Adds
----
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
* Joe Sapp (nixphoeni) - gDesklets
* Jory Pratt (anarchy) - qmail
Changes
-------
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux
project:
* None this week
==================
6. Gentoo security
==================
mpg321: Format string vulnerability
-----------------------------------
A flaw in the processing of ID3 tags in mpg321 could potentially lead to
the execution of arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[36]
36. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-34.xml
Smarty: Template vulnerability
------------------------------
Smarty's "Template security" feature can be bypassed, potentially allowing
a remote attacker to execute arbitrary PHP code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[37]
37. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-35.xml
netkit-telnetd: Buffer overflow
-------------------------------
The netkit-telnetd telnet client is vulnerable to a buffer overflow, which
could allow a malicious telnet server operator to execute arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[38]
38. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-36.xml
LimeWire: Disclosure of sensitive information
---------------------------------------------
Two vulnerabilities in LimeWire can be exploited to disclose sensitive
information.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[39]
39. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-37.xml
telnet-bsd: Multiple buffer overflows
-------------------------------------
The telnet-bsd telnet client is vulnerable to two buffer overflows, which
could allow a malicious telnet server operator to execute arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[40]
40. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-01.xml
Sylpheed, Sylpheed-claws: Buffer overflow on message display
------------------------------------------------------------
Sylpheed and Sylpheed-claws contain a vulnerability that can be triggered
when displaying messages with specially crafted attachments.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[41]
41. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-02.xml
===========
7. Bugzilla
===========
Summary
-------
* Statistics
* Closed bug ranking
* New bug rankings
Statistics
----------
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[42]) to record and
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the
development team. Between 27 March 2005 and 03 April 2005, activity on the
site has resulted in:
42. http://bugs.gentoo.org
* 911 new bugs during this period
* 489 bugs closed or resolved during this period
* 32 previously closed bugs were reopened this period
Of the 8410 currently open bugs: 87 are labeled 'blocker', 235 are labeled
'critical', and 633 are labeled 'major'.
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period
are:
* media-video herd[43], with 48 closed bugs[44]
* AMD64 Porting Team[45], with 36 closed bugs[46]
* Java team[47], with 27 closed bugs[48]
* Gentoo LiveCD Team[49], with 19 closed bugs[50]
* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[51], with 16 closed bugs[52]
* Gentoo Security[53], with 15 closed bugs[54]
* PPC Porters[55], with 13 closed bugs[56]
* Gentoo Sound Team[57], with 12 closed bugs[58]
43. media-video@gentoo.org
44.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=media-video@gentoo.org
45. amd64@gentoo.org
46.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
47. java@gentoo.org
48.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=java@gentoo.org
49. livecd@gentoo.org
50.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=livecd@gentoo.org
51. base-system@gentoo.org
52.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
53. security@gentoo.org
54.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@gentoo.org
55. ppc@gentoo.org
56.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=ppc@gentoo.org
57. sound@gentoo.org
58.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
New bug rankings
----------------
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during
this period are:
* AMD64 Porting Team[59], with 23 new bugs[60]
* Gentoo Sound Team[61], with 16 new bugs[62]
* Gentoo KDE team[63], with 14 new bugs[64]
* Gentoo Toolchain Maintainers[65], with 13 new bugs[66]
* Gentoo Kernel Bug Wranglers and Kernel Maintainers[67], with 12 new
bugs[68]
* Gentoo X-windows packagers[69], with 11 new bugs[70]
* Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[71], with 11 new bugs[72]
* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[73], with 11 new bugs[74]
59. amd64@gentoo.org
60.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
61. sound@gentoo.org
62.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
63. kde@gentoo.org
64.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
65. toolchain@gentoo.org
66.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=toolchain@gentoo.org
67. kernel@gentoo.org
68.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=kernel@gentoo.org
69. x11@gentoo.org
70.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=x11@gentoo.org
71. gnome@gentoo.org
72.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
73. base-system@gentoo.org
74.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
====================
8. Contribute to GWN
====================
Interested in contributing to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter? Send us an
email[75].
75. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org
===============
9. GWN feedback
===============
Please send us your feedback[76] and help make the GWN better.
76. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org
================================
10. GWN subscription information
================================
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===================
11. Other languages
===================
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
* Danish[77]
* Dutch[78]
* English[79]
* German[80]
* French[81]
* Japanese[82]
* Italian[83]
* Polish[84]
* Portuguese (Brazil)[85]
* Portuguese (Portugal)[86]
* Russian[87]
* Spanish[88]
* Turkish[89]
77. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
78. http://www.gentoo.org/news/nl/gwn/gwn.xml
79. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/gwn.xml
80. http://www.gentoo.org/news/de/gwn/gwn.xml
81. http://www.gentoo.org/news/fr/gwn/gwn.xml
82. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ja/gwn/gwn.xml
83. http://www.gentoo.org/news/it/gwn/gwn.xml
84. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pl/gwn/gwn.xml
85. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt_br/gwn/gwn.xml
86. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt/gwn/gwn.xml
87. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ru/gwn/gwn.xml
88. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml
89. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml
Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Editor
Wernfried Haas <w.haas@xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at> - Author
Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> - Author
--
gentoo-gwn@gentoo.org mailing list
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 4 April 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
==============
1. Gentoo News
==============
April fools
-----------
Impossible to catch all IT-related April fool's jokes this year, they were
everywhere, on Google, OpenBSD, some even found their way into Gentoo
ebuilds. One seems to have qualified for the 2005 best of April fool's
shortlist at many publications: The GeNToo project[1], Gentoo for the NT
kernel, alas, is a complete and utter joke. If you believed a word of it,
you've been had.
1. http://gentooexperimental.org/nt
Of the several pranks played at Gentoo this year, the GeNToo plot was the
most elaborate, and actually dating back to a group of three developers
splitting away from the rest of the lot at FOSDEM in February for a
spontaneous hacking and belgian fries session: Karl Trygve Kalleberg[2],
Patrick Lauer[3] and Marius Mauch[4]. Under the influence of too many
Belgian fries, karltk was the first to point out the epiphany hidden in
the name of the project: "You see, when you write 'Gentoo', it has NT in
the middle," said the Norwegian developer. And thinking aloud: "Now if one
took the NT kernel ... there is a POSIX layer for it ... put Portage on it
..." As he drew the surreal picture in increasingly shrill colors, the
three devs quickly realized that the only possible release date for this
particularly fine piece of vaporware would have to be the first of April.
2. karltk@gentoo.org
3. patrick@gentoo.org
4. genone@gentoo.org
So, with the idea floating since February, there was time to back the
story up with ample documentation and even screenshots (which were taken
from VMware during a regular boot of Windows 2000 in "Safe Mode"), with a
coating of a handmade bootlog text that was a rather good approximation of
how emerge info might actually look on such a system.
When the announcement was posted to the website and the topics of two IRC
channels almost simultaneously around noon UTC, the traffic statistics on
the website where the project description was hosted went simply through
the ceiling. An amazingly constant stream of traffic, weighing in at
around one hit per second or 100MB per hour, was sustained over almost the
entire day -- considering that the whole website is only 165KB,
estimations are that the GeNToo hoax got around 600 visitors per hour.
Figure 1.1: Traffic load on the fake GeNToo project pages: Right after the
announcement
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_bonsai.png
Figure 1.2: Traffic load on the fake GeNToo project pages: Slashdot effect
after 22:00
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_slashdot.png
To make the illusion even more believable, a channel on Freenode was
created, too: #gentoo-nt, the perfect place to discuss something that
didn't even exist. An interesting twist came about when some of the first
to be fooled later turned into devoted GeNToo evangelists, perpetuating
the myth in the IRC channel and taking the charade even further: One
produced "a patched NT kernel" and offered it online at his own website.
When looked at closely, it bore a striking familiarity with a 2.6.11 Linux
kernel, but nevertheless -- declared as a "GeNToo binary" -- found many
curious downloaders.
While the #gentoo-nt channel on Freenode was still continuing its
makebelief stance well past the dateline into Saturday 2 April, nobody was
sad when the atrocities behind the other prominent Gentoo April fool's
joke were taken down again. People who had followed the announcement[5] in
the Gentoo forums that the redesign had now been finished and could be
applied by simply switching the user profile, quickly complained about
headache, sudden bursts of claustro- and other phobia. Small wonder,
looking at the effect the "redesign" had on posts:
5. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317053.html
Figure 1.3: Kallamej's announcement, rendered in the freshly redesigned
Forum layout
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_forum.png
Reactions were mixed, while some people figured out the joke pretty fast,
others complained about eyestrain. While moderators were watching and
merging duplicated spawn to the central thread[6], they decided to create
even more confusion by renaming moderators to "Ninjas" and administrators
to "Ninja Masters". Bodhisatvas (the rank for ex-mods and -admins) decided
not to follow this trend -- and were renamed to HAL 9000. How subtle
moderator interference at the forums really is was best displayed by the
fact that it took almost all day before people started noticing[7] the
change!
6. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317056.html
7. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317461.html
emerge webrsync reloaded
------------------------
Portage developer Brian Harring[8] has implemented a more
resource-friendly version of emerge webrsync. Instead of pulling in the
whole tarball, it only uses compressed patches between (daily) versions.
That way a user can keep up-to-date with only minimal overhead even when
rsync is not available (firewalls and dialup users mostly). A description
and howto can be found at his blog[9]. First estimates give up to 99%
bandwidth saved compared to webrsync.
8. ferringb@gentoo.org
9.
http://dev.gentoo.org/~ferringb/blog/archives/2005-03.html#e2005-03-29T17_1
4_42.txt
Donations surpassing expectations
---------------------------------
Last week's announcement of the return of PayPal donations has triggered a
delightful response from the community, as Corey Shields, one of the trustees
of the Gentoo Foundation, has reported last week.
The opening balance for the bank account was spontaneously paid in full by
Gentoo sponsor Genesi, who wired an advance payment on commissions for the
sales of PegasosPPC Open Desktop Workstations.
========================
2. Developer of the week
========================
"Why Gentoo? It's cool." -- Michael Hanselmann (hansmi)
-------------------------------------------------------
Figure 2.1: Michael Hanselmann aka hansmi
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050404_hansmi.jpg
This weeks featured dev is Michael Hanselmann, known to most as
hansmi[10]. He does "various stuff" in Gentoo/PPC, Gentoo/HPPA and the
qmail herd, which mostly boils down to marking packages stable, fixing
bugs and hanging out on IRC a lot. He is the administrator of a hosting
experiment (a project called forkbomb.ch[11]), has written some software
of his own[12], used to do some work with fli4l and still does busy
himself with the m0n0wall project, but his greatest contributions he still
sees in Gentoo, including a stint on the Mac OS X team where he
contributed a Mac OS panel application for setting Portage preferences.
10. hansmi@gentoo.org
11. http://www.forkbomb.ch
12. http://www.hansmi.ch/software
Currently he is doing a programmer apprenticeship in Liechtenstein which
will be finished this summer -- job offers in Switzerland are therefore
highly appreciated! His favourite applications are the vim, mutt and
qmail, which all runs somewhere on a heterogenous mix of x86, sparc, hppa
and ppc, with fluxbox quite possibly being the only element that binds
them all together. Asked what the first application to launch after he
boots his systems, he insists on an appropriately geeky answer:
"Technically, /sbin/init is the first application I (or my kernel)
launches at startup. Or maybe you mean bash when logging in. In a
graphical environment, it's aterm and ssh."
In those rare moments when he is not attached to computer peripherals he
fiddles with electronics, building or breaking stuff, and sometimes really
considers "real" life less interesting than computers.
=========================
3. Heard in the community
=========================
Web forums
----------
Banned from OTW
A new feature, originally introduced by ex-developer Christian Hartmann
and available to forum administrators since about a month ago has now been
officially announced to the public. The OTW ban button provides the forum
admins with a finer-grained ability to ban someone for disregarding the
guidelines for postings in Off the Wall, while leaving their ID intact and
activated for posts in the technical support forums. People can be
hotheads and still eager (and competent) to help others with their Linux
problems. Until the new feature was introduced, banning resulted in a full
ban from the forums altogether.
* Bans from OTW[13]
13. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-317818.html
gentoo-dev
----------
The Pluggable Hell - PAM
Diego Petten嘆[14] explains his work with getting PAM (Pluggable
Authentication Modules) to behave the same on non-Linux Gentoos as on
normal Linux. For anyone interested in porting software this should be an
interesting read, showing how small differences can make you life really
difficult when trying to get something to work properly ...
14. flameeyes@users.berlios.de
* Pluggable Hell Part 1 [15]
* Pluggable Hell Part 2 [16]
* pam_console headaches [17]
15. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26664
16. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26726
17. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26731
GTK / GTK2 USE flag madness
As it happens every 6 months or so, a discussion on the (ab)use and the
combinations of GTK and GTK2 USEflags was started. There are many ideas to
improve the situation, but no real consensus on what "-gtk gtk2" would
mean has been reached (yet)
* GTK und GTK2 Use Flag [18]
18. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26681
ApRiL FoOlS!!!
As it happens every year, a few jokes were sent to the -dev mailinglist on
April 1. Here's a list of those messages:
* Uniting x86 and AMD64 keywords [19]
* New "warez" useflag [20]
* GeNToo, Gentoo with Microsoft NT kernel [21]
* new dev mr_t [22]
19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26744
20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26752
21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26756
22. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/26760
======================
4. Gentoo in the press
======================
NewsForge (28 March 2005)
-------------------------
Bruce Byfield discusses the upcoming OpenOffice.org version 2.0 and the
implications of its move towards Java: "Since Java's license is neither
free nor open source, a small but vocal minority has responded both
strongly and negatively," says Byfield, and explains in detail why there
are fears of platform support for OOo falling apart (FreeBSD and Linux for
PPC, for example, currently "have no official version of Java," as he
notes), and of alienating users. In his article with the provocative title
"Java fallout: OpenOffice.org 2.0 and the FOSS community"[23], he looks at
the plans at major distributors of how to go about the issue of OOoand
Java inclusion, he quotes Gentoo developer Paul de Vrieze[24] as
preferring an open-source implementation of Java such as GCJ, but being
open to include Java proper if no alternative is available.
23. http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/22/204244&tid=93
24. pauldv@gentoo.org
Summary of release coverage (28 March 2005 and later)
-----------------------------------------------------
The long-awaited release of 2005.0 received a lot of attention throughout
the week, here's a compilation of some major sightings:
* OS News[25]
* InternetNews.com[26]
* Blogged IT News[27]
* Desktop Linux[28]
* Linux Electrons[29]
* LinuxFR[30]
* Der Standard (Austrian daily newspaper, in German)[31]
* Golem.de (German)[32]
* DSL Team (German)[33]
* Pro-Linux (German)[34]
* LinuxHelp (Italian)[35]
25. http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10121
26. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3493541
27. http://bloggeditnews.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-gentoo-release.html
28. http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2703815206.html
29. http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20050328065233355
30. http://linuxfr.org/2005/03/29/18615.html
31. http://derstandard.at/?id=1995209
32. http://www.golem.de/0503/37161.html
33. http://www.dslteam.de/news2538.html
34. http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2005/7960.html
35. http://www.linuxhelp.it/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2781
===========================
5. Moves, adds, and changes
===========================
Moves
-----
The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
* Chris White
Adds
----
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
* Joe Sapp (nixphoeni) - gDesklets
* Jory Pratt (anarchy) - qmail
Changes
-------
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux
project:
* None this week
==================
6. Gentoo security
==================
mpg321: Format string vulnerability
-----------------------------------
A flaw in the processing of ID3 tags in mpg321 could potentially lead to
the execution of arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[36]
36. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-34.xml
Smarty: Template vulnerability
------------------------------
Smarty's "Template security" feature can be bypassed, potentially allowing
a remote attacker to execute arbitrary PHP code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[37]
37. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-35.xml
netkit-telnetd: Buffer overflow
-------------------------------
The netkit-telnetd telnet client is vulnerable to a buffer overflow, which
could allow a malicious telnet server operator to execute arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[38]
38. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-36.xml
LimeWire: Disclosure of sensitive information
---------------------------------------------
Two vulnerabilities in LimeWire can be exploited to disclose sensitive
information.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[39]
39. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200503-37.xml
telnet-bsd: Multiple buffer overflows
-------------------------------------
The telnet-bsd telnet client is vulnerable to two buffer overflows, which
could allow a malicious telnet server operator to execute arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[40]
40. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-01.xml
Sylpheed, Sylpheed-claws: Buffer overflow on message display
------------------------------------------------------------
Sylpheed and Sylpheed-claws contain a vulnerability that can be triggered
when displaying messages with specially crafted attachments.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[41]
41. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-02.xml
===========
7. Bugzilla
===========
Summary
-------
* Statistics
* Closed bug ranking
* New bug rankings
Statistics
----------
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[42]) to record and
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the
development team. Between 27 March 2005 and 03 April 2005, activity on the
site has resulted in:
42. http://bugs.gentoo.org
* 911 new bugs during this period
* 489 bugs closed or resolved during this period
* 32 previously closed bugs were reopened this period
Of the 8410 currently open bugs: 87 are labeled 'blocker', 235 are labeled
'critical', and 633 are labeled 'major'.
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period
are:
* media-video herd[43], with 48 closed bugs[44]
* AMD64 Porting Team[45], with 36 closed bugs[46]
* Java team[47], with 27 closed bugs[48]
* Gentoo LiveCD Team[49], with 19 closed bugs[50]
* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[51], with 16 closed bugs[52]
* Gentoo Security[53], with 15 closed bugs[54]
* PPC Porters[55], with 13 closed bugs[56]
* Gentoo Sound Team[57], with 12 closed bugs[58]
43. media-video@gentoo.org
44.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=media-video@gentoo.org
45. amd64@gentoo.org
46.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
47. java@gentoo.org
48.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=java@gentoo.org
49. livecd@gentoo.org
50.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=livecd@gentoo.org
51. base-system@gentoo.org
52.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
53. security@gentoo.org
54.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@gentoo.org
55. ppc@gentoo.org
56.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=ppc@gentoo.org
57. sound@gentoo.org
58.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
New bug rankings
----------------
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during
this period are:
* AMD64 Porting Team[59], with 23 new bugs[60]
* Gentoo Sound Team[61], with 16 new bugs[62]
* Gentoo KDE team[63], with 14 new bugs[64]
* Gentoo Toolchain Maintainers[65], with 13 new bugs[66]
* Gentoo Kernel Bug Wranglers and Kernel Maintainers[67], with 12 new
bugs[68]
* Gentoo X-windows packagers[69], with 11 new bugs[70]
* Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[71], with 11 new bugs[72]
* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[73], with 11 new bugs[74]
59. amd64@gentoo.org
60.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
61. sound@gentoo.org
62.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
63. kde@gentoo.org
64.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
65. toolchain@gentoo.org
66.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=toolchain@gentoo.org
67. kernel@gentoo.org
68.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=kernel@gentoo.org
69. x11@gentoo.org
70.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=x11@gentoo.org
71. gnome@gentoo.org
72.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
73. base-system@gentoo.org
74.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-03-27&chfieldto=2005-04-03&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
====================
8. Contribute to GWN
====================
Interested in contributing to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter? Send us an
email[75].
75. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org
===============
9. GWN feedback
===============
Please send us your feedback[76] and help make the GWN better.
76. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org
================================
10. GWN subscription information
================================
To subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank email to
gentoo-gwn-subscribe@gentoo.org.
To unsubscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank email to
gentoo-gwn-unsubscribe@gentoo.org from the email address you are
subscribed under.
===================
11. Other languages
===================
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
* Danish[77]
* Dutch[78]
* English[79]
* German[80]
* French[81]
* Japanese[82]
* Italian[83]
* Polish[84]
* Portuguese (Brazil)[85]
* Portuguese (Portugal)[86]
* Russian[87]
* Spanish[88]
* Turkish[89]
77. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
78. http://www.gentoo.org/news/nl/gwn/gwn.xml
79. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/gwn.xml
80. http://www.gentoo.org/news/de/gwn/gwn.xml
81. http://www.gentoo.org/news/fr/gwn/gwn.xml
82. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ja/gwn/gwn.xml
83. http://www.gentoo.org/news/it/gwn/gwn.xml
84. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pl/gwn/gwn.xml
85. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt_br/gwn/gwn.xml
86. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt/gwn/gwn.xml
87. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ru/gwn/gwn.xml
88. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml
89. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml
Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Editor
Wernfried Haas <w.haas@xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at> - Author
Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> - Author
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