* [gentoo-gwn] Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 5 September 2005
@ 2005-09-05 0:58 Ulrich Plate
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From: Ulrich Plate @ 2005-09-05 0:58 UTC (permalink / raw
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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 5 September 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
==============
1. Gentoo news
==============
Gentoo developer council elected
--------------------------------
Developer-only polls closed last Wednesday to choose the newly created
Gentoo Council. The Council will be made up of seven developers elected
from a group of 25 candidates[1] on the ballot. The Council's job will be
to support the cooperation of subprojects within Gentoo. The Council will
have responsibility of making distribution-wide decisions that help the
project to make unified steps forward. This election followed the Gentoo
Metastructure election, which earlier this year chose Grant Goodyear's
proposal[2] for a reform of Gentoo's project management, taking Ciaran
McCreesh's amendments[3] into consideration.
1. http://dev.gentoo.org/~slarti/misc/nominees.html
2. http://dev.gentoo.org/~g2boojum/proposal.html
3. http://dev.gentoo.org/~spb/ciaranm-slacker-boot-proposal.txt
The voter turnout was "not too shabby", according to the election
officials, with 148 active Gentoo developers electing the following seven
new council members:
* Seemant Kulleen[4]
* Mike Frysinger[5]
* Aron Griffis[6]
* Ned Ludd[7]
* Martin Schlemmer[8]
* Sven Vermeulen[9]
* Thierry Carrez[10]
4. seemant@gentoo.org
5. vapier@gentoo.org
6. agriffis@gentoo.org
7. solar@gentoo.org
8. azarah@gentoo.org
9. swift@gentoo.org
10. koon@gentoo.org
Congratulations to all those who were elected to the new role (which can
be collectively addressed as "council@gentoo.org"[11], by the way), and
many thanks to all the other nominees and everybody who participated in
the vote.
11. council@gentoo.org
Simultaneous PHP4/PHP5 support in Gentoo
----------------------------------------
The PHP Herd is pleased to announce that it has added new packages to
Portage which will allow Gentoo to provide stable PHP4 and PHP5 packages
on the same box at the same time. These packages have come from the
successful PHP Overlay[12]. At the heart of these packages is the new
dev-lang/php package (which will replace the existing dev-php/php,
dev-php/php-cgi, and dev-php/mod_php packages), and the new dev-php4 and
dev-php5 categories which allow us to provide, and support, PHP extensions
and frameworks that are specific to each version of PHP.
12. http://stu.gnqs.org/diary/gentoo.php
These changes also leave us well-placed for the next major release of PHP
(possibly called PHP-6), which upstream developers are currently brewing.
We hope to move these packages to ~arch (on architectures that the PHP
Herd supports) on Thursday 8th September, as part of our migration
plans[13]. If you find any problems with the packages, please file bugs in
Bugzilla as normal.
13. http://svn.gnqs.org/projects/gentoo-php-overlay/
We are aiming to remove the old dev-php/php-4* et al packages on 8 January
2006; support for non-security issues will cease two months earlier on 8
October 2005. The older dev-php/php-5* et al packages have been removed
today; anyone still using these packages should move across to the new
dev-lang/php package.
Support for other architectures will follow as and when other arch teams
can resource it; you can follow the progress in a metabug[14] set up for
this purpose, and provide feedback to help the arch teams assess the
stability of these packages. The PHP Overlay will continue to be the place
where the PHP Herd does most of its development and testing. You'll find
more packages in the Overlay than in Portage, and new versions of packages
will be tested in the Overlay first.
14. http://bugs.gentoo.org/102649
Gentoo Forums TOR rejection policy alleviated
---------------------------------------------
As reported earlier[15], TOR users were recently blocked from the Gentoo
Forums. Thanks to feedback from the TOR user community the Forums
infrastructure lead, Tom Knight[16], has changed the TOR policy to allow
read-only access to the Forums. All TOR users can now browse the Forums
again without having to change any settings. TOR users who want to post to
the forums will have to add the following to their exit policy:
15.
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20050808-newsletter.xml#doc_chap1_sect2
16. tomk@gentoo.org
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 1.1: |
| Reject Forums - TOR exit policy |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
|ExitPolicy reject 140.211.166.170:80,reject 140.211.166.170:443 |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
If you are receiving a TOR error message while trying to post to the
Gentoo Forums and you do not use TOR please send an email to the Forum
administrators[17] that includes the IP address that is being blocked.
17. forum-mods@gentoo.org
========================
2. Developer of the week
========================
"Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat." -- Mike Doty (KingTaco)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 2.1: Mike Doty aka KingTaco
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050905_kingtaco.jpg
Mike Doty, better known as KingTaco to most, is the AMD64 strategic lead,
a contributor to developer relations/recruitment, and a part-time member
of the infrastructure team (for torrents and as liaison to two hosting
facilities). His role in Gentoo is, in his own words, "providing long term
goals to the amd64 team, as well as ensuring that their efforts are
directed where we need them most." Mike's activities at the developer
relation project cover new developer account administration, recruitment,
and sitting as a judge on the devrel panel. He also acts as the contact
for the hosting provided by Loyola University Chicago[18] and Tavros
Technology Services[19], who both provide bandwidth and equipment to
gentoo.
18. http://www.cs.luc.edu
19. http://www.tavros.net
In terms of PR, Mikes biggest achievement to date is the ArchTester
project[20] which started as an experiment to help power users get more
involved with Gentoo, quickly received wide public attention, and brought
in several new devs to the AMD64 team.
20. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/amd64/tests/index.xml?part=1&chap=1
"Believe it or not, I was kicked out of Loyola University Chicago for not
attending class," says Mike, who now works for Tavros Technology Services
as a consultant. But he hasn't cut his ties with the university
completely, working with a research group at Loyola doing research on
cluster- and grid computing. Mike is experimenting there with complex
topologies using commodity hardware, mostly ieee1394a ("firewire")
interconnects. At the moment that is mostly done on an 8-node AMD64
cluster with a cube topology, but this might be expanded to 64 nodes soon
- and of course all these nodes run Gentoo! "Outside of work, research,
and Gentoo I sometimes find time to play with my cats and watch South
Park."
Before being submerged into the Gentoo experience, Mike was a coder and
admin for StrangeMUD[21], but these days his time is shared mostly between
work and Gentoo. The hardware he keeps in his home demands some attention,
too: an AMD Athlon64 3000+ 1280MB RAM with dual monitors serves as the
main development box, another AMD AthlonXP 1800+ 768MB RAM as
file/web/VoIP server and secondary router. Keeping those two company are a
sturdy old Intel pII 350 256MB RAM (his primary router), a VIA C3/800 ITX
384MB RAM that's destined to become the new web/email server, and two
Intel pIII 600 laptops, one for traveling, one as a test box for other
distros. Mikes preferred window manager is xfce4, complemented by his
choice of applications: Emacs, Firefox, Thunderbird, beep-media-player,
xchat, xterm, and gxine.
21. http://strangemud.net
=========================
3. Heard in the community
=========================
Web forums
----------
Gentoo events worldwide
The forums have had a special place in "Gentoo Chat" to try and organize
Gentoo events and meetings. It's constantly updated, if you've got an
event the community at large should know about, all you need to do is
sending a personal message to the Forum moderators[22].
22. moderators@gentoo.org
* Gentoo events and meetings[23]
23. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-250393.html
gentoo-dev
----------
x86 arch team
What started as a proposal to put x86 and amd64 under one shared keyword,
causing a long and heated debate which got summarized by Chris White[24]
in a separate thread, finally moved on to a different proposal: creating
an x86 arch team that should focus on Quality Assurance and x86-specific
problems.
24. chriswhite@gentoo.org
* combining x86 and amd64 arch keywords [25]
* ChrisWhite's summary [26]
* tentative x86 arch team GLEP [27]
25. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/30952
26. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/31028
27. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/31060
=======================
4. Gentoo international
=======================
Japan: Gentoo booth and conference participation at OSC 2005
------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 4.1: Router, firewall, web server: The OpenBlockS, on display at
the Gentoo booth
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20050905_obs.jpg
Tokyo's annual Open Source Conference[28] is scheduled for 17 September
this year, and the GentooJP[29] activists are gearing up for a hands-on
seminar that will present a complete 2005.1 stage 3 installation, and a
display of their own: the OSC Gentoo booth is placed under the motto
"Actually, this runs Gentoo, too..." and will be predominantly showing off
pocekt-sized systems like the OpenBlockS[30], some individually assembled
no-name x86 PCs, and other hardware. Books about Gentoo will be on sale,
and CDs of the 2005.1 release will be distributed to visitors, of course.
If you're in Tokyo on 17 September, don't miss this event.
28. http://www.ospn.jp:16080/osc2005-fall/
29. http://www.gentoo.gr.jp
30. http://www.plathome.co.jp/products/openblocks/openblocks266/index.html
======================
5. Gentoo in the press
======================
Linux User & developer (September 2005)
---------------------------------------
In their current issue, the British Linux User & Developer[31] magazine
published an enthusiastic review of Genesi's Open Desktop Workstation with
pre-installed Gentoo Linux for PPC (that can be purchased via Gentoo's
vendors page[32], with ten percent of each sale going to the Gentoo
foundation). The article gives full marks to the "powerful yet inexpensive
PowerPC workstation aimed squarely at the Linux market," calls Gentoo and
the handful of other Linux/PPC distributions that come pre-installed on
the ODW "robust and basically identical to their Intel counterparts,"
although one of the cons among a majority of pros in this review is that
"PowerPC Linux still lags being x86 Linux in terms of popularity," and
concludes that - at least for PPC developers - "it's hard to see the Open
Desktop Workstation as anything other than perfect." The magazine is
available to subscribers only, but Gentoo sponsor Genesi has a reprint
permission, and the full article can be downloaded from their website.[33]
31. http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/
32. http://vendors.gentoo.org/index.cgi?page=1&comGroup=1
33. http://genesi.pegasosppc.com/press.php?date=20050901
==================
6. Tips and tricks
==================
Searching for kernel features
-----------------------------
If you cannot find what you are looking for in the kernel then there is a
minimal search function provided by the "/" (slash) key. Just
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 6.1: |
| make menuconfig |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
|# make menuconfig Hit the slash key, then your search term |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
and try it out, perhaps with something easy first, like DMA.
===========================
7. 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:
* Edgar Hucek (gimli) - Xbox
* Stefaan De Roeck (stefaan) - OpenAFS filesystem
* Marco Morales (soulse) - netmon herd
Changes
-------
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux
project:
* None this week
==================
8. Gentoo Security
==================
lm_sensors: Insecure temporary file creation
--------------------------------------------
lm_sensors is vulnerable to linking attacks, potentially allowing a local
user to overwrite arbitrary files.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[34]
34. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200508-19.xml
phpGroupWare: Multiple vulnerabilities
--------------------------------------
phpGroupWare is vulnerable to multiple issues ranging from information
disclosure to a potential execution of arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[35]
35. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200508-20.xml
phpWebSite: Arbitrary command execution through XML-RPC and SQL injection
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
phpWebSite is vulnerable to multiple issues which result in the execution
of arbitrary code and SQL injection.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[36]
36. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200508-21.xml
pam_ldap: Authentication bypass vulnerability
---------------------------------------------
pam_ldap contains a vulnerability that may allow a remote attacker to gain
system access.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[37]
37. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200508-22.xml
MPlayer: Heap overflow in ad_pcm.c
----------------------------------
A heap overflow in MPlayer might lead to the execution of arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[38]
38. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200509-01.xml
Gnumeric: Heap overflow in the included PCRE library
----------------------------------------------------
Gnumeric is vulnerable to a heap overflow, possibly leading to the
execution of arbitrary code.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[39]
39. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200509-02.xml
===========
9. Bugzilla
===========
Summary
-------
* Statistics
* Closed bug ranking
* New bug rankings
Statistics
----------
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[40]) to record and
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the
development team. Between 21 August 2005 and 28 August 2005, activity on
the site has resulted in:
40. http://bugs.gentoo.org
* 791 new bugs during this period
* 391 bugs closed or resolved during this period
* 51 previously closed bugs were reopened this period
Of the 8038 currently open bugs: 103 are labeled 'blocker', 198 are
labeled 'critical', and 529 are labeled 'major'.
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period
are:
* AMD64 Porting Team[41], with 47 closed bugs[42]
* PHP Bugs[43], with 29 closed bugs[44]
* Gentoo Science Related Packages[45], with 18 closed bugs[46]
* Gentoo Security[47], with 16 closed bugs[48]
* Xavier Neys[49], with 15 closed bugs[50]
* Gentoo net-p2p team[51], with 15 closed bugs[52]
* Gentoo KDE team[53], with 15 closed bugs[54]
* Gentoo Games[55], with 15 closed bugs[56]
41. amd64@gentoo.org
42.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
43. php-bugs@gentoo.org
44.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=php-bugs@gentoo.org
45. sci@gentoo.org
46.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=sci@gentoo.org
47. security@gentoo.org
48.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@gentoo.org
49. neysx@gentoo.org
50.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=neysx@gentoo.org
51. net-p2p@gentoo.org
52.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=net-p2p@gentoo.org
53. kde@gentoo.org
54.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=kde@gentoo.org
55. games@gentoo.org
56.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=games@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[57], with 22 new bugs[58]
* Perl Devs @ Gentoo[59], with 20 new bugs[60]
* media-video herd[61], with 13 new bugs[62]
* Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[63], with 11 new bugs[64]
* AMD64 Porting Team[65], with 8 new bugs[66]
* Gentoo Toolchain Maintainers[67], with 7 new bugs[68]
* Gentoo Sound Team[69], with 7 new bugs[70]
* Net-Mail Packages[71], with 7 new bugs[72]
57. maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
58.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
59. perl@gentoo.org
60.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=perl@gentoo.org
61. media-video@gentoo.org
62.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=media-video@gentoo.org
63. gnome@gentoo.org
64.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
65. amd64@gentoo.org
66.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=amd64@gentoo.org
67. toolchain@gentoo.org
68.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=toolchain@gentoo.org
69. sound@gentoo.org
70.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=sound@gentoo.org
71. net-mail@gentoo.org
72.
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-08-21&chfieldto=2005-08-28&assigned_to=net-mail@gentoo.org
================================
10. GWN subscription information
================================
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gentoo-gwn+subscribe@gentoo.org.
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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
Aron Griffis <agriffis@gentoo.org> - Author
Stuart Herbert <stuart@gentoo.org> - Author
Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> - Author
Curtis Napier <curtis119@gentoo.org> - Author
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