With our sincere apologies for the delay:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 9 May 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
==============
1. Gentoo News
==============
Recruiting printing experts
---------------------------
The printing herd is looking for help with some of their packages,
particularly to close some of the more than a hundred bugs[1] that have
accumulated because the team is severely understaffed. People with
considerable experience in both Gentoo and applications or utilities like
CUPS, Ghostscript, gimp-print, xpdf, acroread and more, are vigorously
encouraged to approach Heinrich Wendel[2] directly, or contact the Gentoo
developer relations[3] with a short self-introduction including a few
words on your experiences in the field.
1. http://shorl.com/gunygraprifatra
2. lanius@gentoo.org
3. recruiters@gentoo.org
News from the Forums
--------------------
Staff shuffle at the Forums[4] again. Administrator Christian Hartmann[5]
is back in play after a timeout of several weeks. During his absence,
fellow admin Tom Knight[6] has updated the forum software to the latest
phpBB version 2.0.15, and made some useful changes to the search function.
The collection of these and other announcements can always be found in the
News & Announcements forum[7].
4. http://forums.gentoo.org
5. ian@gentoo.org
6. tomk@forums.gentoo.org
7. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-16.html
========================
2. Developer of the week
========================
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry." -- Danny van Dyk
(kugelfang)
-----------
Figure 2.1: Danny van Dyk aka kugelfang
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050505_kugelfang.jpg
This weeks featured develeoper is Danny van Dyk[8], the Operational Lead
(with Mike Doty[9]) and Gentoo/AMD64 Release Coordinator, as well as a
member of the Gentoo Scientific Project. "My work as operational lead
developer for Gentoo/AMD64 mainly requires me to be update on the things
the other devs do, coordinate their work, and apart from that I try to fix
as many open bugs as possible, which is how I was recruited onto the team
in the first place."
8. kugelfang@gentoo.org
9. kingtaco@gentoo.org
Gentoo is Danny's first OSS project, and he takes quite some pride in the
work he has done for Gentoo Linux on AMD64. He is a student of physics at
the University of Dortmund and spends a lot of his time on Gentoo. When he
isn't busy studying himself he works as a tutor and helps other students
with trivial things such as mathematics, physics and programming
languages, although he is for hire at the moment since his tutor job has
ended.
He was appointed as release coordinator for AMD64 quite recently. Jason
Huebel[10] had him step in to make the 2005.0 release media (LiveCDs,
stages, package-CD). His computers all have greek letters as host names to
make them more interesting, and his collection of machine covers most of
x86, ppc and amd64. His most important tool seems to be a HP LaserJet 4+,
while on the software side he shows how open-minded he can be by using KDE
along with Mozilla Thunderbird and XMMS, showing off the friendly
coexistence of things Qt and Gtk.
10. jhuebel@gentoo.org
Even more amazingly he plays the flute and loves to cook, especially new
and untested meals that show what real hackers can do in real life. To any
females in the appropriate age range in Witten (where Danny lives:) He is
single, and has an impressive set of skills. Danny's motto is borrowed
from Robert Oppenheimer, and there's more to it than just the headline
above: "There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and
must be free to ask any questions, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any
evidence, to correct any errors."
=========================
3. Heard in the community
=========================
Web forums
----------
Sudden strictness catching users unaware
FEATURES="strict" was enabled several weeks ago, but the number of people
who've been confused by new error messages and outright installation
errors hasn't declined. Maybe that's because there was no "official"
announcement of the change? This thread has been made sticky to allow for
quick referral of people with the same errors:
* Portage does more security checks? Digest verification fails[11]
11. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-325007.html
Next generationinitreplacement
Yet another community project[12] originating from the apocryphic
sidelines of the greater Gentoo realm has attracted not only hundreds of
replies to the original thread in the Forums, it's already carried on
Freshmeat and getting some media coverage. Swedish forum user Jimmy
Wennlund has devised this "replacement for the old and in many ways
deprecated sysvinit" that just made it into the official Portage tree last
weekend:
12. http://jw.dyndns.org/initng/
* Beta test New Init system, realy improved boot time.[13]
* Initng in Portage[14]
13. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-331844.html
14. http://packages.gentoo.org/ebuilds/?initng-0.0.10
Inofficial install media released
Together with a small team of contributors[15], Bob Perdaina (a forum
regular and author of a popular howto on installing Gentoo with an
underlying NPTL structure) has released a series of bootable CDs
containing stage 3 tarballs made to work as if you were installing from
stage 1. The name of the project takes some getting used to, though:
15. http://jackass.homelinux.org/
* Jackass! 2005.0 is Released![16]
* Installing Gentoo 2005.0: Stage 1 NPTL on a Stage 3 Tarball[17]
16. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-334276.html
17. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-319349.html
gentoo-dev
----------
Splitting up dev-perl (phase one of a million)
Michael Cummings[18] brings good news from the perl camp: "This weekend I
intend to start splitting dev-perl into sub categories, starting with
perl-core. If anyone doesn't think there are enough packages in the
current dev-perl, resync your tree because it's been years since the last
time you did :) perl-core will contain ebuilds for those modules that are
also distributed with the core installs of perl (though versions and
patches may vary from the version you have installed). Anyone wishing to
provide input on this multi-phased migration can always post on bug 75435
[19]"
18. mcummings@gentoo.org
19. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75435
* Splitting up dev-perl [20]
20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/27699
Certified Gentoo?
An interested Gentooist who works with IBM hardware asks what can be done
to get Gentoo IBM-certified. Other Gentooists join in with their questions
how to get Gentoo certified for other commercial software. It seems that
IBM will only certify distributions that have a commercial backend
(because of Service Level Agreements etc.), but it is always good to see
people trying to take Gentoo to the next level.
* Certified Gentoo? [21]
21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/27626
Portage as a secondary package manager
Since Portage can do software management quite well, why not use it on
other distros for your own customizations? A similar thought must have
motivated this GLEP draft that wants to enhance portage to be able to
install and manage software in arbitrary locations, and also as a
secondary package manager when rpm just isn't good enough.
* Portage as a secondary package manager [22]
22. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/27569
=======================
4. Gentoo International
=======================
Belgium: Gentoo website brought online
--------------------------------------
Last Sunday, Gentoo developer Jochen Maes[23] has set up a server that
hosts Gentoo's regional Belgian web presence[24]. As many of the other
country-specific Gentoo community sites, this one also has a number of
features besides syndicalised content from the official Gentoo website,
including a user forum, photo gallery and other community functions. The
site is so new that it doesn't even have a logo of its own yet, hence a
call for contributions to a logo contest held until the end of the month.
A special section in the forum has been set aside for this purpose, check
the site for instructions.
23. sejo@gentoo.org
24. http://www.gentoo.be/
Canada: Elementary school Gentoo LTSP installation
--------------------------------------------------
Cory Oldford is the vice-president of Prairie Linux User Group[25] and
manager for a remarkable community project in Winnipeg. His group was
approached some time ago[26] to switch a lab at a local private elementary
school to Gentoo Linux. The lab consisted of about 30 workstations ranging
from a P75 with 16MB RAM to a handful of PIII 667mhz with 128MB RAM. The
machines were constantly plagued with issues caused by hardware failures
and outdated operating systems and software.
25. http://plug.ca
26. 20050110-newsletter.xml#doc_chap5
It was originally thought the PIIIs wouldn't be able to handle the
workload, and that administering several LTSP servers would be too
cumbersome. The solution devised by the HC-Linux team [27] (as in "Holy
Cross", the name of the school) was an openMosix-enabled LTSP, Gentoo
Linux server. After the server's filesystem was built, however, the
administrator at the school scraped up much more suitable server hardware,
an AMD Sempron 2500 with 1.2GB of RAM.
27. http://plug.ca/article.php?story=20050410105433363
openMosix worked great for a time, says Cory, but in the class room
environment it turned into a liability, because students would insist on
powering off the machines. Currently openMosix is disabled, but could be
fired up anytime simply by starting the service. The diskless clients
don't share their own load, so they just wait for openMosix on the server
to farm out processes anyway.
LTSP[28] functioned as expected after a few network issues were resolved,
but the desired desktop environment presented a challenge at first: The
memory requirements of up to 30 instances of KDE and Konqueror caused the
server to start swapping under load. With only one slow 40GB IDE drive,
the performance of the server went down dramatically when 30 students were
working in the lab. Switching to icewm and a simplified (kludged)
ROX-Filer resolved this. The switch to a less voracious desktop
environment also left enough RAM to precache the major applications and
related libraries on a RAM disk for a greater performance boost.
28. http://ltsp.org
The HC-Linux PLUGgers get called in for minor issues from time to time,
but the server has been running reliably for months now. Cory is grateful
for the support he received from the community: "Thanks to Michael
Imhof[29] and the rest of the cluster team, and to all the other Gentoo
developers for their hard work."
29. tantive@gentoo.org
Figure 4.1: Gentoo on historic hardware - Pentium 75MHz with 16MB RAM
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/200505009_winnipeg.jpg
Note: Photo courtesy of Cory Oldford
======================
5. Gentoo in the press
======================
Coyotegulch (2 May 2005)
------------------------
Last week Scott Robert Ladd[30], the author of a tool for compiler
analysis called Acovea[31], conducted a benchmarking test[32] to compare
the performance of both compilation and compilate using the GNU C compiler
(gcc) version 3.4.3, and the new 4.0 that Was released just two weeks ago.
"No matter which compiler options I choose, someone is likely to send me
e-mail telling me I got it all wrong," says the author of the review,
fully aware of the pitfalls of benchmarking, and he also refrains from
comparing gcc with Intel's or other commercial C compilers. The platforms
he uses for the benchmark test are an AMD64 Dual Opteron and a plain x86
Pentium 4 host -- both running Gentoo Linux, which he's unlikely to
recompile with 4.0 right away: "Version 4.0.0 is laying a foundation for
the future, and should be seen as a technological step forward with new
internal architectures and the addition of Fortran 95. If you compile a
great deal of C++, you'll want to investigate GCC 4.0," says Scott Ladd.
If that's not the case, looks like the 3.4 series is still the way to go.
30. scott.ladd@coyotegulch.com
31. http://www.coyotegulch.com/products/acovea/index.html
32. http://www.coyotegulch.com/reviews/gcc4/index.html
Desktoplinux (8 May 2005)
-------------------------
The survey results[33] of Desktoplinux' annual reader poll show a
remarkable decline in the number of respondents, an inexplicable
disappearance of about two thirds of the Debian user community, and a
comfortable growth of Gentoo to about twice the market share of 2003, up
at 10 percent of all desktop Linux installations chez Desktoplinux
readers. There is, however, room for belief that there may be a fairly
large portion of market reality not covered by this particular research.
33. http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2127420238.html
===========================
6. Moves, adds, and changes
===========================
Moves
-----
The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
* None this week
Adds
----
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
* Duncan Coutts (dcoutts) - Haskell
Changes
-------
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux
project:
* Tobias Scherbaum (dertobi123) - joined the PPC team
* Bryan Ostergaard (kloeri) - new Alpha architecture co-lead
==================
7. Gentoo security
==================
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[34]
34. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-02.xml
Dnsmasq: Poisoning and Denial of Service vulnerabilities
--------------------------------------------------------
Dnsmasq is vulnerable to DNS cache poisoning attacks and a potential
Denial of Service from the local network.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[35]
35. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-03.xml
mit-krb5: Multiple buffer overflows in telnet client
----------------------------------------------------
The mit-krb5 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[36]
36. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-04.xml
Gaim: Denial of Service issues
------------------------------
Gaim contains multiple vulnerabilities that can lead to a Denial of
Service.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[37]
37. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-05.xml
sharutils: Insecure temporary file creation
-------------------------------------------
The unshar utility is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing
a local user to overwrite arbitrary files.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[38]
38. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-06.xml
===========
8. Bugzilla
===========
Summary
-------
* Statistics
* Closed bug ranking
* New bug rankings
Statistics
----------
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[39]) to record and
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the
development team. Between 01 May 2005 and 08 May 2005, activity on the
site has resulted in:
39. http://bugs.gentoo.org
* 833 new bugs during this period
* 433 bugs closed or resolved during this period
* 27 previously closed bugs were reopened this period
Of the 8576 currently open bugs: 95 are labeled 'blocker', 219 are labeled
'critical', and 629 are labeled 'major'.
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period
are:
* Gentoo Games[40], with 25 closed bugs[41]
* AMD64 Porting Team[42], with 25 closed bugs[43]
* media-video herd[44], with 21 closed bugs[45]
* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[46], with 19 closed bugs[47]
* PHP Bugs[48], with 17 closed bugs[49]
* Jeremy Huddleston[50], with 14 closed bugs[51]
* Gentoo Sound Team[52], with 13 closed bugs[53]
* Xavier Neys[54], with 13 closed bugs[55]
40. games@gentoo.org
41.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=games@gentoo.org
42. amd64@gentoo.org
43.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
44. media-video@gentoo.org
45.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=media-video@gentoo.org
46. base-system@gentoo.org
47.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
48. php-bugs@gentoo.org
49.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=php-bugs@gentoo.org
50. eradicator@gentoo.org
51.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=eradicator@gentoo.org
52. sound@gentoo.org
53.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
54. neysx@gentoo.org
55.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=neysx@gentoo.org
New bug rankings
----------------
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during
this period are:
* Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[56], with 31 new bugs[57]
* Gentoo KDE team[58], with 16 new bugs[59]
* Gentoo Sound Team[60], with 15 new bugs[61]
* AMD64 Porting Team[62], with 10 new bugs[63]
* Gentoo Science Related Packages[64], with 9 new bugs[65]
* Gentoo Release Team[66], with 9 new bugs[67]
* Python Gentoo Team[68], with 8 new bugs[69]
* Netmon Herd[70], with 8 new bugs[71]
56. gnome@gentoo.org
57.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
58. kde@gentoo.org
59.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
60. sound@gentoo.org
61.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
62. amd64@gentoo.org
63.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
64. sci@gentoo.org
65.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=sci@gentoo.org
66. release@gentoo.org
67.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=release@gentoo.org
68. python@gentoo.org
69.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=python@gentoo.org
70. netmon@gentoo.org
71.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=netmon@gentoo.org
===============
9. GWN feedback
===============
Please send us your feedback[72] and help make the GWN better.
72. 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
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===================
11. Other languages
===================
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
* Danish[73]
* Dutch[74]
* English[75]
* German[76]
* French[77]
* Japanese[78]
* Italian[79]
* Polish[80]
* Portuguese (Brazil)[81]
* Portuguese (Portugal)[82]
* Russian[83]
* Spanish[84]
* Turkish[85]
73. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
74. http://www.gentoo.org/news/nl/gwn/gwn.xml
75. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/gwn.xml
76. http://www.gentoo.org/news/de/gwn/gwn.xml
77. http://www.gentoo.org/news/fr/gwn/gwn.xml
78. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ja/gwn/gwn.xml
79. http://www.gentoo.org/news/it/gwn/gwn.xml
80. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pl/gwn/gwn.xml
81. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt_br/gwn/gwn.xml
82. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt/gwn/gwn.xml
83. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ru/gwn/gwn.xml
84. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml
85. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml
Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Editor
Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> - Author
Cory Oldford <> - 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 9 May 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
==============
1. Gentoo News
==============
Recruiting printing experts
---------------------------
The printing herd is looking for help with some of their packages,
particularly to close some of the more than a hundred bugs[1] that have
accumulated because the team is severely understaffed. People with
considerable experience in both Gentoo and applications or utilities like
CUPS, Ghostscript, gimp-print, xpdf, acroread and more, are vigorously
encouraged to approach Heinrich Wendel[2] directly, or contact the Gentoo
developer relations[3] with a short self-introduction including a few
words on your experiences in the field.
1. http://shorl.com/gunygraprifatra
2. lanius@gentoo.org
3. recruiters@gentoo.org
News from the Forums
--------------------
Staff shuffle at the Forums[4] again. Administrator Christian Hartmann[5]
is back in play after a timeout of several weeks. During his absence,
fellow admin Tom Knight[6] has updated the forum software to the latest
phpBB version 2.0.15, and made some useful changes to the search function.
The collection of these and other announcements can always be found in the
News & Announcements forum[7].
4. http://forums.gentoo.org
5. ian@gentoo.org
6. tomk@forums.gentoo.org
7. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-16.html
========================
2. Developer of the week
========================
"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry." -- Danny van Dyk
(kugelfang)
-----------
Figure 2.1: Danny van Dyk aka kugelfang
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050505_kugelfang.jpg
This weeks featured develeoper is Danny van Dyk[8], the Operational Lead
(with Mike Doty[9]) and Gentoo/AMD64 Release Coordinator, as well as a
member of the Gentoo Scientific Project. "My work as operational lead
developer for Gentoo/AMD64 mainly requires me to be update on the things
the other devs do, coordinate their work, and apart from that I try to fix
as many open bugs as possible, which is how I was recruited onto the team
in the first place."
8. kugelfang@gentoo.org
9. kingtaco@gentoo.org
Gentoo is Danny's first OSS project, and he takes quite some pride in the
work he has done for Gentoo Linux on AMD64. He is a student of physics at
the University of Dortmund and spends a lot of his time on Gentoo. When he
isn't busy studying himself he works as a tutor and helps other students
with trivial things such as mathematics, physics and programming
languages, although he is for hire at the moment since his tutor job has
ended.
He was appointed as release coordinator for AMD64 quite recently. Jason
Huebel[10] had him step in to make the 2005.0 release media (LiveCDs,
stages, package-CD). His computers all have greek letters as host names to
make them more interesting, and his collection of machine covers most of
x86, ppc and amd64. His most important tool seems to be a HP LaserJet 4+,
while on the software side he shows how open-minded he can be by using KDE
along with Mozilla Thunderbird and XMMS, showing off the friendly
coexistence of things Qt and Gtk.
10. jhuebel@gentoo.org
Even more amazingly he plays the flute and loves to cook, especially new
and untested meals that show what real hackers can do in real life. To any
females in the appropriate age range in Witten (where Danny lives:) He is
single, and has an impressive set of skills. Danny's motto is borrowed
from Robert Oppenheimer, and there's more to it than just the headline
above: "There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and
must be free to ask any questions, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any
evidence, to correct any errors."
=========================
3. Heard in the community
=========================
Web forums
----------
Sudden strictness catching users unaware
FEATURES="strict" was enabled several weeks ago, but the number of people
who've been confused by new error messages and outright installation
errors hasn't declined. Maybe that's because there was no "official"
announcement of the change? This thread has been made sticky to allow for
quick referral of people with the same errors:
* Portage does more security checks? Digest verification fails[11]
11. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-325007.html
Next generationinitreplacement
Yet another community project[12] originating from the apocryphic
sidelines of the greater Gentoo realm has attracted not only hundreds of
replies to the original thread in the Forums, it's already carried on
Freshmeat and getting some media coverage. Swedish forum user Jimmy
Wennlund has devised this "replacement for the old and in many ways
deprecated sysvinit" that just made it into the official Portage tree last
weekend:
12. http://jw.dyndns.org/initng/
* Beta test New Init system, realy improved boot time.[13]
* Initng in Portage[14]
13. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-331844.html
14. http://packages.gentoo.org/ebuilds/?initng-0.0.10
Inofficial install media released
Together with a small team of contributors[15], Bob Perdaina (a forum
regular and author of a popular howto on installing Gentoo with an
underlying NPTL structure) has released a series of bootable CDs
containing stage 3 tarballs made to work as if you were installing from
stage 1. The name of the project takes some getting used to, though:
15. http://jackass.homelinux.org/
* Jackass! 2005.0 is Released![16]
* Installing Gentoo 2005.0: Stage 1 NPTL on a Stage 3 Tarball[17]
16. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-334276.html
17. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-319349.html
gentoo-dev
----------
Splitting up dev-perl (phase one of a million)
Michael Cummings[18] brings good news from the perl camp: "This weekend I
intend to start splitting dev-perl into sub categories, starting with
perl-core. If anyone doesn't think there are enough packages in the
current dev-perl, resync your tree because it's been years since the last
time you did :) perl-core will contain ebuilds for those modules that are
also distributed with the core installs of perl (though versions and
patches may vary from the version you have installed). Anyone wishing to
provide input on this multi-phased migration can always post on bug 75435
[19]"
18. mcummings@gentoo.org
19. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75435
* Splitting up dev-perl [20]
20. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/27699
Certified Gentoo?
An interested Gentooist who works with IBM hardware asks what can be done
to get Gentoo IBM-certified. Other Gentooists join in with their questions
how to get Gentoo certified for other commercial software. It seems that
IBM will only certify distributions that have a commercial backend
(because of Service Level Agreements etc.), but it is always good to see
people trying to take Gentoo to the next level.
* Certified Gentoo? [21]
21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/27626
Portage as a secondary package manager
Since Portage can do software management quite well, why not use it on
other distros for your own customizations? A similar thought must have
motivated this GLEP draft that wants to enhance portage to be able to
install and manage software in arbitrary locations, and also as a
secondary package manager when rpm just isn't good enough.
* Portage as a secondary package manager [22]
22. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/27569
=======================
4. Gentoo International
=======================
Belgium: Gentoo website brought online
--------------------------------------
Last Sunday, Gentoo developer Jochen Maes[23] has set up a server that
hosts Gentoo's regional Belgian web presence[24]. As many of the other
country-specific Gentoo community sites, this one also has a number of
features besides syndicalised content from the official Gentoo website,
including a user forum, photo gallery and other community functions. The
site is so new that it doesn't even have a logo of its own yet, hence a
call for contributions to a logo contest held until the end of the month.
A special section in the forum has been set aside for this purpose, check
the site for instructions.
23. sejo@gentoo.org
24. http://www.gentoo.be/
Canada: Elementary school Gentoo LTSP installation
--------------------------------------------------
Cory Oldford is the vice-president of Prairie Linux User Group[25] and
manager for a remarkable community project in Winnipeg. His group was
approached some time ago[26] to switch a lab at a local private elementary
school to Gentoo Linux. The lab consisted of about 30 workstations ranging
from a P75 with 16MB RAM to a handful of PIII 667mhz with 128MB RAM. The
machines were constantly plagued with issues caused by hardware failures
and outdated operating systems and software.
25. http://plug.ca
26. 20050110-newsletter.xml#doc_chap5
It was originally thought the PIIIs wouldn't be able to handle the
workload, and that administering several LTSP servers would be too
cumbersome. The solution devised by the HC-Linux team [27] (as in "Holy
Cross", the name of the school) was an openMosix-enabled LTSP, Gentoo
Linux server. After the server's filesystem was built, however, the
administrator at the school scraped up much more suitable server hardware,
an AMD Sempron 2500 with 1.2GB of RAM.
27. http://plug.ca/article.php?story=20050410105433363
openMosix worked great for a time, says Cory, but in the class room
environment it turned into a liability, because students would insist on
powering off the machines. Currently openMosix is disabled, but could be
fired up anytime simply by starting the service. The diskless clients
don't share their own load, so they just wait for openMosix on the server
to farm out processes anyway.
LTSP[28] functioned as expected after a few network issues were resolved,
but the desired desktop environment presented a challenge at first: The
memory requirements of up to 30 instances of KDE and Konqueror caused the
server to start swapping under load. With only one slow 40GB IDE drive,
the performance of the server went down dramatically when 30 students were
working in the lab. Switching to icewm and a simplified (kludged)
ROX-Filer resolved this. The switch to a less voracious desktop
environment also left enough RAM to precache the major applications and
related libraries on a RAM disk for a greater performance boost.
28. http://ltsp.org
The HC-Linux PLUGgers get called in for minor issues from time to time,
but the server has been running reliably for months now. Cory is grateful
for the support he received from the community: "Thanks to Michael
Imhof[29] and the rest of the cluster team, and to all the other Gentoo
developers for their hard work."
29. tantive@gentoo.org
Figure 4.1: Gentoo on historic hardware - Pentium 75MHz with 16MB RAM
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/200505009_winnipeg.jpg
Note: Photo courtesy of Cory Oldford
======================
5. Gentoo in the press
======================
Coyotegulch (2 May 2005)
------------------------
Last week Scott Robert Ladd[30], the author of a tool for compiler
analysis called Acovea[31], conducted a benchmarking test[32] to compare
the performance of both compilation and compilate using the GNU C compiler
(gcc) version 3.4.3, and the new 4.0 that Was released just two weeks ago.
"No matter which compiler options I choose, someone is likely to send me
e-mail telling me I got it all wrong," says the author of the review,
fully aware of the pitfalls of benchmarking, and he also refrains from
comparing gcc with Intel's or other commercial C compilers. The platforms
he uses for the benchmark test are an AMD64 Dual Opteron and a plain x86
Pentium 4 host -- both running Gentoo Linux, which he's unlikely to
recompile with 4.0 right away: "Version 4.0.0 is laying a foundation for
the future, and should be seen as a technological step forward with new
internal architectures and the addition of Fortran 95. If you compile a
great deal of C++, you'll want to investigate GCC 4.0," says Scott Ladd.
If that's not the case, looks like the 3.4 series is still the way to go.
30. scott.ladd@coyotegulch.com
31. http://www.coyotegulch.com/products/acovea/index.html
32. http://www.coyotegulch.com/reviews/gcc4/index.html
Desktoplinux (8 May 2005)
-------------------------
The survey results[33] of Desktoplinux' annual reader poll show a
remarkable decline in the number of respondents, an inexplicable
disappearance of about two thirds of the Debian user community, and a
comfortable growth of Gentoo to about twice the market share of 2003, up
at 10 percent of all desktop Linux installations chez Desktoplinux
readers. There is, however, room for belief that there may be a fairly
large portion of market reality not covered by this particular research.
33. http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2127420238.html
===========================
6. Moves, adds, and changes
===========================
Moves
-----
The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
* None this week
Adds
----
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
* Duncan Coutts (dcoutts) - Haskell
Changes
-------
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux
project:
* Tobias Scherbaum (dertobi123) - joined the PPC team
* Bryan Ostergaard (kloeri) - new Alpha architecture co-lead
==================
7. Gentoo security
==================
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[34]
34. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-02.xml
Dnsmasq: Poisoning and Denial of Service vulnerabilities
--------------------------------------------------------
Dnsmasq is vulnerable to DNS cache poisoning attacks and a potential
Denial of Service from the local network.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[35]
35. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-03.xml
mit-krb5: Multiple buffer overflows in telnet client
----------------------------------------------------
The mit-krb5 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[36]
36. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-04.xml
Gaim: Denial of Service issues
------------------------------
Gaim contains multiple vulnerabilities that can lead to a Denial of
Service.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[37]
37. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-05.xml
sharutils: Insecure temporary file creation
-------------------------------------------
The unshar utility is vulnerable to symlink attacks, potentially allowing
a local user to overwrite arbitrary files.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[38]
38. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200504-06.xml
===========
8. Bugzilla
===========
Summary
-------
* Statistics
* Closed bug ranking
* New bug rankings
Statistics
----------
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[39]) to record and
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the
development team. Between 01 May 2005 and 08 May 2005, activity on the
site has resulted in:
39. http://bugs.gentoo.org
* 833 new bugs during this period
* 433 bugs closed or resolved during this period
* 27 previously closed bugs were reopened this period
Of the 8576 currently open bugs: 95 are labeled 'blocker', 219 are labeled
'critical', and 629 are labeled 'major'.
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period
are:
* Gentoo Games[40], with 25 closed bugs[41]
* AMD64 Porting Team[42], with 25 closed bugs[43]
* media-video herd[44], with 21 closed bugs[45]
* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[46], with 19 closed bugs[47]
* PHP Bugs[48], with 17 closed bugs[49]
* Jeremy Huddleston[50], with 14 closed bugs[51]
* Gentoo Sound Team[52], with 13 closed bugs[53]
* Xavier Neys[54], with 13 closed bugs[55]
40. games@gentoo.org
41.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=games@gentoo.org
42. amd64@gentoo.org
43.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
44. media-video@gentoo.org
45.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=media-video@gentoo.org
46. base-system@gentoo.org
47.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
48. php-bugs@gentoo.org
49.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=php-bugs@gentoo.org
50. eradicator@gentoo.org
51.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=eradicator@gentoo.org
52. sound@gentoo.org
53.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
54. neysx@gentoo.org
55.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&ch
field=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05-08&resolution=FIX
ED&assigned_to=neysx@gentoo.org
New bug rankings
----------------
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during
this period are:
* Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[56], with 31 new bugs[57]
* Gentoo KDE team[58], with 16 new bugs[59]
* Gentoo Sound Team[60], with 15 new bugs[61]
* AMD64 Porting Team[62], with 10 new bugs[63]
* Gentoo Science Related Packages[64], with 9 new bugs[65]
* Gentoo Release Team[66], with 9 new bugs[67]
* Python Gentoo Team[68], with 8 new bugs[69]
* Netmon Herd[70], with 8 new bugs[71]
56. gnome@gentoo.org
57.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
58. kde@gentoo.org
59.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
60. sound@gentoo.org
61.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
62. amd64@gentoo.org
63.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
64. sci@gentoo.org
65.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=sci@gentoo.org
66. release@gentoo.org
67.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=release@gentoo.org
68. python@gentoo.org
69.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=python@gentoo.org
70. netmon@gentoo.org
71.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_s
tatus=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-05-01&chfieldto=2005-05
-08&assigned_to=netmon@gentoo.org
===============
9. GWN feedback
===============
Please send us your feedback[72] and help make the GWN better.
72. 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[73]
* Dutch[74]
* English[75]
* German[76]
* French[77]
* Japanese[78]
* Italian[79]
* Polish[80]
* Portuguese (Brazil)[81]
* Portuguese (Portugal)[82]
* Russian[83]
* Spanish[84]
* Turkish[85]
73. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
74. http://www.gentoo.org/news/nl/gwn/gwn.xml
75. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/gwn.xml
76. http://www.gentoo.org/news/de/gwn/gwn.xml
77. http://www.gentoo.org/news/fr/gwn/gwn.xml
78. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ja/gwn/gwn.xml
79. http://www.gentoo.org/news/it/gwn/gwn.xml
80. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pl/gwn/gwn.xml
81. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt_br/gwn/gwn.xml
82. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt/gwn/gwn.xml
83. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ru/gwn/gwn.xml
84. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml
85. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml
Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Editor
Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> - Author
Cory Oldford <> - Author
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