--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/38/ Debian Weekly News - October 1st, 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community, which includes items by Ludovic Rousseau and Andrew Pollock this time. After over four years (1757 days) of computation effort and millions of cpu-hours of work, [1]distributed.net has [2]brute forced the key to RSA Security's 64 bit encryption [3]challenge, winning a US$ 10,000 prize. 1. http://www.distributed.net/ 2. http://www.rsasecurity.com/news/releases/pr.asp?doc_id=1400 3. http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/ High-profile Uses of Debian. Colin Walters [4]announced that he is gathering information about high-profile [5]usage of Debian. Good examples include deployment as a standard workstation at a university or college, as a server for well known web sites such as Sourceforge and Thawte.com, or in a high-reliability/availablity context (such as a life support system in a hospital). 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01609.html 5. http://www.debian.org/users/ Support for Smart Cards. Ludovic Rousseau packaged most of the [6]MuscleCard utilities provided by [7]Muscle (Movement for the Use of Smart Card in a Linux Environment). This includes high-level abstraction libraries as [8]libcflexplugin for a Schlumberger Cryptoflex card and [9]libmcardplugin for the generic JavaCard card. On top of these [10]libmusclepkcs11 provides a [11]PKCS#11 API (Application Program Interface). 6. http://linuxnet.com/musclecard/index.html 7. http://linuxnet.com/ 8. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libcflexplugin.html 9. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libmcardplugin.html 10. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libmusclepkcs11.html 11. http://developer.netscape.com/support/faqs/pkcs_11.html Using Smart Cards. The API mentioned above is used by Mozilla to delegate cryptographic functions to a cryptographic token (like a smart card). So your authentication and signing key used by Mozilla will never leave your smart card and will not be stored on the computer (RSA key pairs are generated onboard the smart card). Additionally [12]xcardii provides a graphical user interface and [13]muscletools a commandline frontend to manage your smart card. 12. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/xcardii.html 13. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/muscletools.html Using CVS for Manpage Translations. Julien Louis [14]wondered how to coordinate the translation of Debian specific manpages. This effort could be maintained through CVS, sorted by language and section. Denis Barbier [15]adds that the [16]cvs directory already exists and that we could use similar tools to those that are used for maintaining translations of the website. 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc-0209/msg00113.html 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc-0209/msg00134.html 16. http://cvs.debian.org/manpages/?cvsroot=debian-doc Debiandoc versus Docbook. Susan Kleinman [17]believed that it would be a good idea to revise the policy stating that all debian documentation should be written in debiandoc. Susan proposed that Debian adopts an XML based language. The following discussion lists several pros and cons against this proposal. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc-0209/msg00094.html Is Debian Losing Influence? A [18]comment on Debian Planet discussed the little attention Debian has received from GNU/Linux websites following the release of woody two months ago in comparison to other distributions. There are very few online reviews of Debian 3.0, compared to Red Hat 7.3, for example, which has had four reviews since it's release around five months ago. Should the Debian community be concerned about the lack of popular interest in it's distribution? 18. http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=813 Bootable ISO-Image for SGI Indy. Florian Lohoff [19]announced the first ISO image for Debian/mips which is bootable on SGI I2 and SGI Indy machines. All you need to do is enter the PROM and click on Software installation from local cdrom. Then follow the usual steps to install Debian on the machine. This was [20]developed during this year's [21]developers meeting. 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-mips-0209/msg00055.html 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-mips-0209/msg00048.html 21. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2002/ Debian at Spanish National Hackmeeting. Eric Van Buggenhaut reported that the [22]Spanish National Hackmeeting will be held in Madrid this year, on October 4th - 6th. This show is the largest annual concentration of geeks and Free Software in Spain. Several Debian developers will be present and run a Debian booth to demonstrate the benefits of our favourite system to the public. 22. http://www.sindominio.net/hackmeeting/eng/madhack.html Enabling Daemons. Noah Meyerhans [23]noted that Debian currently doesn't support situations when a daemon package is installed and the daemon isn't started upon startup. Noah wondered why Debian doesn't support the BSDish /etc/rc.conf system which contains a variable for each daemon. 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0209/msg01760.html New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the Debian archive recently or contain important updates. * [24]basilisk2 -- 68k Macintosh emulator. * [25]tcptrace -- Tool for analyzing tcpdump output. * [26]umlrun -- Run commands inside User-Mode Linux. 24. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/basilisk2.html 25. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/tcptrace.html 26. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/umlrun.html Orphaned Packages. 20 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 139 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [27]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. 27. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [28]argus -- IP network transaction auditing tool. ([29]Bug#163005) * [30]argus-client -- IP network transaction auditing tool. ([31]Bug#163006) * [32]blt -- the BLT libraries for TK/TCL. ([33]Bug#162857) * [34]chkrootkit -- Checks for signs of rootkits on the local system. ([35]Bug#163009) * [36]eeyes -- The Electric Eyes graphics viewer/editor. ([37]Bug#162305) * [38]generator -- Genesis emulator. ([39]Bug#162407) * [40]ggradebook -- A Gradebook to help teachers manage student grades. ([41]Bug#162059) * [42]gnome-vfs-extras -- GPL gnome-vfs modules, includes SMB support. ([43]Bug#162408) * [44]gnome-vfs-extras2 -- GPL gnome-vfs modules, includes SMB and Rio500 support. ([45]Bug#162409) * [46]gtk-engines-cleanice -- CleanIce theme for GTK+ 1.2. ([47]Bug#162410) * [48]gtk-engines-cleanice2 -- CleanIce theme for GTK+ 2.x. ([49]Bug#162411) * [50]gtk-engines-mgicchikn -- Magic Chicken theme for GTK+ 2.x. ([51]Bug#162412) * [52]libhdf4g -- The Hierarchical Data Format, version 4. ([53]Bug#162608) * [54]saml -- Simple Algebraic Math Library. ([55]Bug#162536) * [56]screem -- GNOME website development environment. ([57]Bug#162887) * [58]tct -- Forensics related utilities. ([59]Bug#163007) * [60]thttpd -- tiny/turbo/throttling HTTP server. ([61]Bug#163004) * [62]utah-glx -- Hardware accelerated GLX module for XFree86. ([63]Bug#162609) * [64]xfonts-gimpers -- X11 fonts created by Artwiz, TigerT and Daniel Erat. ([65]Bug#162476) * [66]xwave -- Wave sound file editor. ([67]Bug#162607) 28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/argus-server.html 29. http://bugs.debian.org/163005 30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/argus-client.html 31. http://bugs.debian.org/163006 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/blt.html 33. http://bugs.debian.org/162857 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/chkrootkit.html 35. http://bugs.debian.org/163009 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/eeyes.html 37. http://bugs.debian.org/162305 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/generator.html 39. http://bugs.debian.org/162407 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/ggradebook.html 41. http://bugs.debian.org/162059 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gnome-vfs-extras.html 43. http://bugs.debian.org/162408 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gnome-vfs-extras2.html 45. http://bugs.debian.org/162409 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gtk-engines-cleanice.html 47. http://bugs.debian.org/162410 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gtk-engines-cleanice2.html 49. http://bugs.debian.org/162411 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gtk-engines-mgicchikn.html 51. http://bugs.debian.org/162412 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libhdf4g.html 53. http://bugs.debian.org/162608 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/saml.html 55. http://bugs.debian.org/162536 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/screem.html 57. http://bugs.debian.org/162887 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/tct.html 59. http://bugs.debian.org/163007 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/thttpd.html 61. http://bugs.debian.org/163004 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/utah-glx.html 63. http://bugs.debian.org/162609 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xfonts-gimpers.html 65. http://bugs.debian.org/162476 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/xwave.html 67. http://bugs.debian.org/162607 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 [68]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [69]dwn@debian.org. 68. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 69. mailto:dwn@debian.org
Debian Weekly News – October 1st, 2002
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