--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/43/ Debian Weekly News - November 5th, 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 43rd issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. This week we are pleased to include items by Matt Black and David Kimdon. A [1]survey about trends in the information technology of the German computer magazine iX shows Debian as an outperformer among the GNU/Linux distributions with a growth from 6 % to 20 % compared with the last survey. 1. http://www.heise.de/ix/artikel/2002/11/012 Debian Security Survey. A member of the security team sent [2]letter trying to gather information about what users and organisations think about and expect from the Debian Security Team. Since the security team naturally cannot support potato endlessly, security updates for potato will end some day. However, there are still organisations that cannot simply upgrade their potato environment to woody, hence, some negotiation is required. 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0211/msg00001.html Is Debian an Anarchist Organization? Jonathan Walther [3]heard some people saying that the Debian project is a good example of anarchy in action. He wanted to know what to tell people who ask if Debian is anarchic? Sean Perry [4]wondered how a group of people numbering around a thousand and at any one point in time having at least a hundred active members could claim to be anarchistic? He also points out that anarchy like dictatorship is an extreme and extremes do not work well with people. Russell Coker [5]acknowledged that Debian has some anarchistic tendencies, though. 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0210/msg02466.html 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0210/msg02468.html 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0210/msg02469.html Installing and Configuring ALSA Sound Modules. Linux Orbit [6]explains how to install and configure ALSA sound modules with Debian GNU/Linux. The HOWTO starts with compiling a custom kernel and modules and continues with a detailed explanation how to set up ALSA using the script provided by Debian so that modules are automatically loaded and unloaded, and your mixer levels are saved and restored on boot up. 6. http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=541 Update for the Woody Distribution. More than three months after Debian 3.0 was released the stable release manager [7]sent a status report about his [8]preparations for an update of the stable distribution. The update will mostly consist of security updates but also include updates to packages that got lost during the freeze of woody. 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0211/msg00002.html 8. http://master.debian.org/~joey/3.0r1/ Files in /usr/share must be World-Readable. Matthew Swift filed a [9]general bug suggesting that all files in /usr/share ought to be world-readable since they are to be shared among different machines. He also pointed out that this is a requirement in the [10]Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. For example, Matthew had found that certain files from several packages were not world-readable. Steve Greenland [11]replied that the [12]Debian policy already requires this. 9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0211/msg00110.html 10. http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0211/msg00148.html 12. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s11.9 TWAIN Image Acquisition for Debian. Bdale Garbee [13]announced that he has received a request from the [14]TWAIN Working Group for a contact to work with in Debian. They want to know how a new port of the TWAIN drivers to Unix and GNU/Linux could best be made available to Debian users. Bdale's personal needs are currently adequately met by the SANE driver and it's been a long time since he looked at anything TWAIN related, so he asks if anyone is interested? 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0210/msg02617.html 14. http://www.twain.org/ Setting up a Debian Log Server. Vincent Hillier has written an [15]article about how to deploy a remote logging server using Debian. The article is quite detailed with an emphasis on securing the server to ensure it is not compromised. The target audience is newcomers to GNU/Linux, although experienced users should find it to be a good reference. 15. http://plutonium.homeunix.com/papers/dls.pdf Setting up X-Terminals with Debian. Alan W. Irwin wrote [16]instructions for setting up GNU/Linux-based X-Terminals with Debian. The goal is to run all your X clients (KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice, etc.) in a transparent manner on a powerful computer and simply use a slow computer (the X-Terminal) to display the results and control that display with keyboard and mouse. This setup is particularly useful for bringing an old PC back to useful life. 16. http://www.vlug.org/vlug/meetings/X-terminal_presentation/details.html Licensing Issues with UnrealIRCd. Mika Fischer [17]asked for advice on a new UnrealIRCd license clause that seemed to imply that the license could be modified retrospectively. Branden Robinson and others [18]pointed out that this would violate the [19]Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). Branden was also [20]concerned about the apparent requirement for a click-through license acceptance ceremony. Mika talked to the UnrealIRCd author, who [21]amended the license to clarify that it was not meant to apply retrospectively. However, Branden [22]feels that the requirement of a click-through license acceptance ceremony, if in fact it is a requirement, could be problematic. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00304.html 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00310.html 19. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00313.html 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00341.html 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00348.html Does the Source CD1 correspond to Binary CD1? The GNU [23]General Public License [24]requires somebody distributing binaries to also provide the source code or an offer (valid for three years) to provide that source code. Blars Blarson [25]wondered whether the entire sourcecode for woody's first binary CD could be found on the first source CD, or whether he would need to grab all the source CDs in order to distribute the first binary CD. Raphaël Hertzog [26]advised that although source packages are generally added to CDs in a similar order as the binary packages, there are several reasons why the CDs will not exactly correspond. People who do not wish to redistribute the full set of Debian CDs could generate their own CD of matching source code if they wish to avoid collecting the entire set of source code CDs. 23. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html 24. http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/legal 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd-0210/msg00144.html 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd-0211/msg00001.html Low-cost Computing for Rural Spain. The Washington Post [27]reports about a Debian-based [28]distribution for the Extremadura, a rural region of western Spain. To eliminate some of the headaches, the Extremadura government paid a Spanish company, to take one of the free versions of GNU/Linux and make it suitable for public distribution. It is great to see Debian's ease of [29]customization and open structure put to such good use. With so many Debian-based distributions popping up perhaps we need a more organized way of pulling fixes and enhancements back into Debian. 27. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59197-2002Nov2.html 28. http://www.linex.org/ 29. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51994,00.html Leaving the LZW Algorithm in Source Files? Chris Halls [30]asked if he may leave a source file that implements a patented algorithm (LZW compression for GIFs) in the source tarball for OpenOffice.org. The file is not built or distributed in the binary packages, though. Walter Landry [31]claims that you are not allowed to distribute an implementation of a patent and Branden Robinson [32]added that Debian should not be shipping anything in "main" that isn't DFSG-free. 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00244.html 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00251.html 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00273.html Problems with Wordlist. Kevin Atkinson [33]reported that due to the [34]discussion of a possible problem with the license for aspell-en, the new version 0.50 may not get uploaded to Debian. One of the included wordlists comes from the DEC Systems Research Center which has a license that is not DFSG-compliant as written. 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0211/msg00018.html 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0210/msg00204.html Re-Packaging GNOME 1. Josselin Mouette [35]stated that he is willing to make it possible to install Gnome 1 on a Debian system, without confliciting with Gnome 2. He believes that the GNOME desktop version 2 lacks large parts of GNOME 1.4's functionality, and suffers from incompatibilities. Colin Walters [36]pondered if it wouldn't be better to just work on adding back missing functionality. 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0211/msg00006.html 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0211/msg00014.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [37]Kerberos 4 -- Buffer overflow. * [38]Heimdal -- Buffer overflow. * [39]log2mail -- Buffer overflow. * [40]Apache -- Several vulnerabilities. * [41]Apache-SSL -- Several vulnerabilities. 37. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-184 38. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-185 39. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-186 40. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-187 41. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-188 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the Debian archive recently or contain important updates. * [42]acl2 -- Applicative Common Lisp: A Computational Logic. * [43]amoeba -- Fast-paced, polished OpenGL demonstration by Excess. * [44]blop -- Bandlimited wavetable-based oscillator plugins for LADSPA hosts. * [45]docker -- System tray for KDE3/GNOME2 docklet applications. * [46]domesday -- Automatic website index generator. * [47]drupal -- Fully-featured content management/discussion engine. * [48]filtergen -- Packet filter generator for various firewall systems. * [49]fsh -- Fast remote command execution over rsh/ssh/lsh. * [50]ggobi -- Data visualization system for high-dimensional data. * [51]gnometab -- WYSISYG GNOME2 Program for creating guitar tabs. * [52]idecrypt -- Decrypt an encrypted response from pidentd. * [53]iso-codes -- ISO language, territory codes and their translations. * [54]isoqlog -- Mail Transport Agent log analysis program. * [55]jenova -- Say2 chat server. * [56]lsmbox -- List number of total/unread messages for mailboxes. * [57]ltp -- The Linux Test Project test suite. * [58]mico -- A fully compliant CORBA implementation, executables. * [59]netmon-applet -- GNOME2 Network Load Applet. * [60]netspeed -- Traffic monitor applet for Gnome2. * [61]osflash -- Reflash the OS of a Palm Computing Device. * [62]passwdgen -- Small utility for generating random passwords. * [63]pia -- Movie Player. * [64]pngmeta -- Display metadata information from PNG images. * [65]quick-lounge-applet -- GNOME 2 Panel Applet to organize your preferred applications. * [66]quicktime-utils -- Quicktime Utilities. * [67]randomize-lines -- Randomize lines of input text. * [68]romeo -- The Palm ROM Discombobulator. * [69]rssh -- A restricted shell allowing only scp and/or sftp. * [70]simulavr -- Atmel AVR simulator. * [71]spamoracle -- A statistical analysis spam filter based on Bayes' formula. * [72]tv-fonts -- X11 fonts for TV applications. * [73]waimea -- A highly customizable window manager based on blackbox. 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/acl2.html 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/amoeba.html 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/blop.html 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/docker.html 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/domesday.html 47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/drupal.html 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/filtergen.html 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/fsh.html 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/ggobi.html 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/gnometab.html 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/idecrypt.html 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/iso-codes.html 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/isoqlog.html 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/jenova.html 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/lsmbox.html 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/ltp.html 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/mico.html 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/netmon-applet.html 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/netspeed.html 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/osflash.html 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/passwdgen.html 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/pia.html 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/pngmeta.html 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/quick-lounge-applet.html 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/quicktime-utils.html 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/randomize-lines.html 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/romeo.html 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/rssh.html 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/simulavr.html 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/spamoracle.html 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/tv-fonts.html 73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/waimea.html Orphaned Packages. 5 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 141 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [74]WNPP pages for the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package. 74. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [75]bug -- Bug Reporting Tool interfacing with the Bug Tracking System. ([76]Bug#166957) * [77]gnudip -- Scripts to enable a server to provide dynamic IP to name mappings. ([78]Bug#167467) * [79]libming -- Library to generate SWF (Flash) Files. ([80]Bug#166973) * [81]libming-fonts-openoffice -- Fonts for use with the Ming Library for SWF Creation. ([82]Bug#166990) * [83]tux-aqfh -- 3D Puzzle Game with Tux the Penguin. ([84]Bug#166977) 75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/bug.html 76. http://bugs.debian.org/166957 77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/gnudip.html 78. http://bugs.debian.org/167467 79. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libming.html 80. http://bugs.debian.org/166973 81. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/libming-fonts-openoffice.html 82. http://bugs.debian.org/166990 83. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/tux-aqfh.html 84. http://bugs.debian.org/166977 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. Currently, it's mostly a one-man show, which is anticipated to fail in the long term. We urgently need volunteer writers who prepare items. Please see the [85]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [86]dwn@debian.org. 85. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 86. mailto:dwn@debian.org
Debian Weekly News – November 5th, 2002
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