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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 6 March 2006
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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 6 March 2006.
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==============
1. Gentoo news
==============

Common Portage error message
----------------------------

For those users who encounter a Portage error similar to the following:
"!!! Cannot resolve a virtual package name to an ebuild." during an
'emerge --sync' or an 'emerge --metadata' please do not file a bug about
it. The code may instruct you to do so, however the developers have
already found a fix and it is already on bugzilla, re-emerging Portage or
metadata will suffice. Bug reports filed for this bug will only be marked
as duplicates of bug 114798[1]. Please see that bug report as well as the
Portage project's documentation page[2] for details and a fix for this
issue. Thanks in advance from the Portage Team.

1. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=114798
2. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/doc/common-problems.xml

PPC project meeting 5 March 2005
--------------------------------

The PPC project held a meeting on Sunday, 5 March 2005. The turnout for
was fairly impressive. It was composed of a large majority of the PPC team
members. The items on the agenda included gcc 4.1, the 2006.0 release,
leadership, Genesi/Freescale/IBM developer programs, and installer project
porting. The meeting lasted about one and a half hours, and included some
notes by Mark Loeser[3] for gcc 4.1, and Andrew Gaffney[4] for the
installer project. Minutes for the meeting and a full log can be found at
the Theaimsgroup Archive[5].

3. halcyon@gentoo.org
4. agaffney@gentoo.org
5. http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-dev&m=114159742721701&w=2

Download counts for 2006.0 release
----------------------------------

Gentoo's central address for release images, the bouncer system[6], keeps
track of the number of downloads. Since the 2006.0 release was available
on the mirrors, almost 100,000 images have been downloaded to date.

6. http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml

Gentoo 2006.0 downloads
gentoo-2006.0-livecd 29287
gentoo-2006.0-minimal 40988
gentoo-2006.0-packagecd 3537
gentoo-2006.0-packagecd-32ul 830
gentoo-2006.0-packagecd-64ul 206
gentoo-2006.0-universal 9061

Note: As of Saturday, 4 March 2006. Not included are downloads by those
users who choose one of the mirrors directly rather than going through the
bouncer system, and the above figures are not broken down by architectures.

Similar statistics exist for the Bittorrent fileshares that are monitored
via the Gentoo tracker. During the same one week period since the release
of 2006.0, about 5000 LiveCD downloads were completed via the tracker. The
complete list of available torrents and their statistics can be viewed on
the tracker webpage[7].

7. http://torrents.gentoo.org

=========================
2. Heard in the community
=========================

gentoo-dev
----------

enable UTF8 per default?

After last week's FOSDEM meeting a few ideas were being discussed - among
them enabling UTF-8 in the default profiles. PPC has been doing it for
some time, and it would be helpful to the non-English users. So what has
kept unicode from being enabled by default? There are few known bugs with
unicode, so hopefully it will be enabled per default in the near future.

* enable UTF8 per default? [8]
8. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/36314


2006.0 - me having a bad day?

With the new release come new bugs - and this user seems to have hit all
roadbumps that he could find while trying to download 2006.0. Some very
nice criticism that shows how end-users often get a totally different view
on your product - in this case the download pages - and infra member
Jeffrey Forman jumps into the discussion and tries to fix all issues
reported.

* 2006.0 - me having a bad day?[9]
9. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/


QA Team discussion

The Quality Assurance Team is growing stronger and more active. Until
recently its authority wasn't well-defined, and it could only try to
convince people to fix issues, but now Mark Loeser[10] in his role as QA
lead starts one of the longest threads of the last weeks by offering a
policy for the QA team and asking the council to vote on this policy in
the next meeting, thus enabling the QA team to officially fix bugs and
override developers in the rare cases this may be needed. The proposal as
such has already been modified, the discussion is still going on. During
one of the next Council Meetings this should be decided.

10. halcy0n@gentoo.org

* [RFC] QA Team's role [11]
* QA Roles v2 [12]
11. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/36188
12. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/36438


=======================
3. Gentoo international
=======================

USA: Gentoo seminar at Embedded Systems Conference
--------------------------------------------------

Sergei Larin, Senior Applications Engineer at Freescale Semiconductor[13]
will give his first class on Gentoo[14] on 4 April at the Embedded Systems
Conference in San Jose (3 to 7 April at the McEnery Convention Center).
His joint presentation with Gentoo developer Pieter Van den Abeele[15]
explores the possibilities of reducing the time to market for
PowerPC-based devices using open-source software. Freescale decided to go
with Gentoo as the foundation for that approach because of its
configurability and the ease of applications in the embedded market. The
scope of this Linux design seminar will be how to build a "Home Media
Center with Linux on the PowerPC archiecture." Freescale is planning to
give similar classes at LinuxWorld in Boston and other events in the
future.

13. http://www.freescale.com
14. https://www.cmpevents.com/ESCw06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1102
15. pvdabeel@gentoo.org

UK: Gentoo UK Conference preparations underway
----------------------------------------------

George Prowse[16] and some UK-based Gentoo developers and users have
started initial planning for a 2006 Gentoo UK users-and-developers
conference, based upon the success of the 2004[17] and 2005[18] events.

16. cokehabit@gmail.com
17. http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/2004
18. http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/2005

This year's event will be hosted in London, and the provisional dates are
10th/11th June 2006. The exact location is yet to be decided.

In order to cover costs, we are seeking sponsorship from interested
organisations. If you are in contact with an organisation who may be able
to help, please email George Prowse[19] with any available information.
For those interested in attending, watch this space for updates.

19. cokehabit@gmail.com

Germany: Call for papers for FrOSCon
------------------------------------

FrOSCon is a two-day conference on free software and open source, which
takes place on 24th and 25th June 2006 at the University of Applied
Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, in St. Augustin near Bonn, Germany. One of its
organizers is Gentoo developer Sebastian Bergmann[20]. The focus of the
conference is a comprehensive range of talks about current topics in free
software and open source. Furthermore, space will be provided for
developers of free software and open-source projects to organize their own
developer meetings or even their own program. FrOSCon is organized for the
first time in 2006 by the department of computer science in collaboration
with the Linux/Unix User Group Sankt Augustin, the student body and the
FrOSCon e.V., and aims to establish itself as the largest event of its
kind in Rhineland. The call for papers[21] is still open until 15 March,
and developer rooms and booth space are also available to interested
projects.

20. sebastian@gentoo.org
21. http://www.froscon.org/wiki/CallforPapers

======================
4. Gentoo in the press
======================

Riverbanks Zoo (4 March 2006)
-----------------------------

Riverbanks Zoo and Garden (in Columbia, South Carolina) has ten Gentoo
penguins that haven't been named yet. The Zoo's administrators have
decided that they are too many to be named by the staff, and call upon the
general public to submit suggestions. The "Riverbanks' Penguin Naming
Contest"[22] continues to accept entries until 15 March, with the winners
to be announced on 20 March.

22. https://ssl29.pair.com/riverban/contest.shtml

SageTV (March 2006)
-------------------

SageTV[23] has released a "Linux OEM edition" of their media center --
based on Gentoo Linux: "The installation medium is a customised Gentoo
install CD, you can modify it for the needs of your company if you plan to
build many identical systems," says the SageTV website[24]. They are
looking for hardware manufacturers who would be interested in including
the Gentoo-driven personal video recorder software in their offerings.

23. http://sagetv.com/
24. http://sagetv.com/linuxOEMinstall.html

Techgage (1 March 2006)
-----------------------

Pars pro toto: Rob Williams, an author for Techgage[25], has written a
very enthusiastic review of Gentoo 2006.0[26], with a close look at the
new graphical installer.

25. http://techgage.com
26. http://techgage.com/review.php?id=4334

Heise (2 March 2006, in German)
-------------------------------

This week Germany's most important computer magazine carried a sneak
preview on an article[27] that will be officially published in the
"Open-source yearbook[28]" that will be published later this month. Bill
Hilf, Platform Technology Strategy Director at Microsoft and responsible
for the Linux and open-source lab there, gives some interesting insights
to what the "open-source bubble in a Microsoft sea" does, how it's
equipped etc. The article isn't entirely up-to-date (it still mentions
Daniel Robbins as a prominent member of the team), but it identifies
Gentoo and Portage as fields of research and explains what Microsoft's
"shared source" project is about.

27. http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/70300
28. http://www.opensourcejahrbuch.de

=========================
5. Gentoo developer moves
=========================

Moves
-----

The following developers recently left the Gentoo project:

* Brian Harring

Adds
----

The following developers recently joined the Gentoo project:

* Boris Fersing (kernelsensei) - Forums staffer

Changes
-------

The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo project:

* None this week

==================
6. Gentoo Security
==================

WordPress: SQL injection vulnerability
--------------------------------------

WordPress is vulnerable to an SQL injection vulnerability.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[29]

29. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200603-01.xml

teTeX, pTeX, CSTeX: Multiple overflows in included XPdf code
------------------------------------------------------------

CSTeTeX, pTeX, and teTeX include vulnerable XPdf code to handle PDF files,
making them vulnerable to the execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[30]

30. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200603-02.xml

MPlayer: Multiple integer overflows
-----------------------------------

MPlayer is vulnerable to integer overflows in FFmpeg and ASF decoding that
could potentially result in the execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[31]

31. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200603-03.xml

===========
7. Bugzilla
===========

Statistics
----------

The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[32]) to record and
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the
development team. Between 26 February 2006 and 05 March 2006, activity on
the site has resulted in:

32. http://bugs.gentoo.org

* 908 new bugs during this period
* 405 bugs closed or resolved during this period
* 20 previously closed bugs were reopened this period

Of the 9549 currently open bugs: 66 are labeled 'blocker', 152 are labeled
'critical', and 518 are labeled 'major'.

Closed bug rankings
-------------------

The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period
are:

* Portage team[33], with 32 closed bugs[34]
* Xavier Neys[35], with 24 closed bugs[36]
* Gentoo KDE team[37], with 20 closed bugs[38]
* Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[39], with 13 closed bugs[40]
* Gentoo Security[41], with 12 closed bugs[42]
* Apache Herd - Bugzilla Reports[43], with 12 closed bugs[44]
* Gentoo Games[45], with 11 closed bugs[46]
* Gentoo Linux Installer[47], with 10 closed bugs[48]
33. dev-portage@gentoo.org
34.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=dev-portage@gentoo.org
35. neysx@gentoo.org
36.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=neysx@gentoo.org
37. kde@gentoo.org
38.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
39. base-system@gentoo.org
40.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=base-system@gentoo.org
41. security@gentoo.org
42.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@gentoo.org
43. apache-bugs@gentoo.org
44.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=apache-bugs@gentoo.org
45. games@gentoo.org
46.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=games@gentoo.org
47. gli-bugs@gentoo.org
48.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=gli-bugs@gentoo.org


New bug rankings
----------------

The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during
this period are:

* Default Assignee for New Packages[49], with 51 new bugs[50]
* Default Assignee for Orphaned Packages[51], with 11 new bugs[52]
* AMD64 Porting Team[53], with 9 new bugs[54]
* Gentoo Sound Team[55], with 7 new bugs[56]
* media-video herd[57], with 7 new bugs[58]
* Gentoo KDE team[59], with 7 new bugs[60]
* Gentoo Games[61], with 7 new bugs[62]
* Portage team[63], with 7 new bugs[64]
49. maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
50.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
51. maintainer-needed@gentoo.org
52.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=maintainer-needed@gentoo.org
53. amd64@gentoo.org
54.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
55. sound@gentoo.org
56.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
57. media-video@gentoo.org
58.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=media-video@gentoo.org
59. kde@gentoo.org
60.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
61. games@gentoo.org
62.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=games@gentoo.org
63. dev-portage@gentoo.org
64.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=dev-portage@gentoo.org


===============
8. GWN feedback
===============

Please send us your feedback[65] and help make the GWN better.

65. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org

===============================
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===============================

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===================
10. Other languages
===================

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66. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
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78. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml
79. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml


Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Editor
Sebastian Bergmann <sebastian@gentoo.org> - Author
Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> - Author
George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> - Author
Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> - Author
Chris White <chriswhite@gentoo.org> - Author

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