[gentoo-gwn] Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 17 October 2005

[Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org>]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 17 October 2005.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
==============
1. Gentoo news
==============
  
New USE flag editor released
----------------------------
  
Damien Krotkine[1] has added a new command line interface tool called 
flagedit to his growing collection of configuration editors[2]. On top of 
everything profuse does with its choice of three GUIs, the new flag editor 
also edits /etc/portage/package.keywords, thus offering a simple way to 
add a platform not yet supported to a package you'd like to test: 
 1. dams@gentoo.org
 2. http://www.damz.net/gentoo/
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 1.1:                                                       |
| Adding package.keywords                                                 |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|# flagedit net-im/amsn -- +~ppc +~x86                                    |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
Besides keywords, flagedit lets you edit the USE flags of /etc/make.conf, 
as well as those in the /etc/portage/package.use file, either for a 
particular ebuild, or for the whole system. And of course, a backup of 
each modified file lets you roll back easily. 
    
Subforums introduction at Gentoo Forums
---------------------------------------
  
Subforums are a feature that had been requested by users for quite a long 
time. While the general policy on the Gentoo Forums was to use vanilla 
phpBB[3], the administrators have recently adopted a more open attitude 
towards patches and modifications. The most recent consequence is the 
arrival of a subforums modification, mainly written by forums 
administrator Tom Knight[4]. Before using it on the production system some 
testing was done on forum administrator Christian Hartmann's[5] test 
server[6] which is usually not available to the general public. The test 
server is still open and the forums team would greatly appreciate some 
more feedback and testing before using the subforums on the main server. 
Please see this thread[7] for more information. 
 3. http://www.phpbb.com/
 4. tomk@gentoo.org
 5. ian@gentoo.org
 6. http://fgo.iansview.com
 7. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-391659.html
    
=========================
2. Heard in the community
=========================
  
Web forums
----------
  
MySQL 4.1 to be stabilized
 
The forum admins predict some fallout from the MySQL version 4.1 that's 
being moved up to the stable tree these days. As the upgrade has the 
potential for being a bumpy one, a sticky thread in the Forums tries to 
prevent users from falling prey to it: 
 
 * Stabilisation of dev-db/mysql-4.1.14[8]  
 8. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-392443.html
 
OpenVPN and TAP
 
OpenVPN[9], a VPN application that offers remote access, site-to-site 
VPNs, WiFi security and other VPN accessories is made into a How-To for 
those who wish to use TAP instead of TUN by user cchee[10]: 
 9. http://openvpn.net
 10. http://forums.gentoo.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=25884
 
 * OpenVPN 2.0 TAP mini-HOWTO (linux 2 wifi-linux, wifi-xp)[11]  
 11. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-233080.html
    
gentoo-dev
----------
  
Handling multiple compatible tools
 
Sometimes there's more than one tool to do the job. For example, bsdtar 
and GNU tar are mostly compatible. Diego Pettenò[12] asks if there is an 
easy way for the user to select between such tools. 
 12. flameeyes@gentoo.org
 
 * Handling multiple compatible tools [13] 
 13. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/32099
 
End of lifecycle for unmaintained packages
 
The media-video ebuilds are getting cleaned up these days, and a few 
unmaintained applications will most likely be removed soon: avifile, vcr, 
zphoto, drip, divx4linux, and quicktime4linux 
 
 * last rites for a few apps [14] 
 14. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/32112
 
People needed for net-p2p
 
Developer Marcin Kryczek[15] is on the lookout for new developers in the 
net-p2p herd, especially those with Java experience. 
 15. mkay@gentoo.org
 
 * net-p2p needs more developers[16]  
 16. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/32036
 
Portage: where forward?
 
Developers Jason Stubbs[17] and Brian Harring[18] talk about where they 
are up to with portage and what they feel the road ahead should be. 
 17. jstubbs@gentoo.org
 18. ferringb@gentoo.org
 
 * The road ahead...[19]  
 19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.portage.devel/1140
 
Vim 6.4 beta tester wanted
 
Ciaran McCreesh[20] is looking for people to test out the new 
vim-6.4_beta: 
 20. ciaranm@gentoo.org
 
 * vim-6.4_beta tester[21]  
 21. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/32024
    
=======================
3. Gentoo international
=======================
  
USA: Professional support for Gentoo
------------------------------------
  
Los-Angeles-based GenUX[22] is in its final days of a trial offer for 
professional services to Gentoo users. From today until the end of the 
year, GenUX will be offering support incidents at 25 percent of their 
original charge, and the second hour of desktop support free for anyone 
who purchases professional services until the end of the year. CEO Joseph 
Cohen also announced that GenUX will be donating a portion of the funds 
collected from support to the Gentoo Foundation! The company already 
sponsors the project and has Gentoo developers Deedra Waters[23], Jeremy 
Huddleston[24] and Homer Parker[25] on their pay roll. 
 22. http://www.gen-ux.com
 23. dmwaters@gentoo.org
 24. eradicator@gentoo.org
 25. hparker@gentoo.org
    
Switzerland: Installfest in Aargau featuring Gentoo
---------------------------------------------------
  
The LUG-AG[26] in Aargau is organizing an installation party for 
interested users, this coming Friday, 21 October, at the premises of the 
Aargauischer Computer Club Brugg[27]. The announcement[28] speaks of 
Debian as the LUG-AG's usual Linux flavor of choice, but "if you want to 
do something different like installing Gentoo or FreeBSD", they're 
apparently friendly enough to allow for that, too. You may want to bring 
your own installation media, just to be on the safe side... 
 26. http://www.lug-ag.ch/
 27. http://www.accb-brugg.ch/
 28. http://www.symlink.ch/article.pl?sid=05/10/11/0755208
    
======================
4. Gentoo in the press
======================
  
Newsforge (14 October 2005)
---------------------------
  
An article in Newsforge[29] reports that a "New national center to assist 
governments with open-source applications" has been created at GOSCON 
2005[30] in Portland, Oregon, hosted by Gentoo-supporter OSL[31]. Like 
other prospective partners in the new venture called "National Center for 
Open Source Policy and Research" (NCOSPR[32]), OSL's associate director 
Scott Kveton, too, is "not sure what they'll be doing" yet, but the same 
people now actively supporting Gentoo inside the OSL will be able to make 
the new center benefit from their experience with open-source development. 
 29. http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/05/10/14/1446204.shtml?tid=138
 30. http://www.goscon.org/
 31. http://osuosl.org/
 32. http://www.ncospr.org/
    
Hardware Upgrade (14 October 2005, in Italian)
----------------------------------------------
  
"Build a home server with Gentoo[33]" is the title of a tutorial by Andrea 
Raviola[34] published on an Italian website dedicated to hardware for 
personal computing that's been around since 1997 already. The Gentoo 
installation goes on "a bit of recovered material", i.e. recombined scraps 
that end up making a rock-solid server for all-purpose use at home. 
 33. http://www.hwupgrade.it/articoli/software/1360/
 34. andrea.raviola@hwupgrade.it
    
==================
5. Tips and tricks
==================
  
Tune your filesystem
--------------------
  
ext2/3 are the main filesystems for a large amount of users but what a lot 
of people don't know is that you can get almost Reiser4 speed out of it 
without any of the instability they'd associated with Reiser4. One of the 
great features of ext2/3 is the ability to tune it by adjusting various 
parameters. 
 
Let's take some precautions, first of all by finding out if some of those 
parameter are already enabled, by running 
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 5.1:                                                       |
| Check partition first                                                   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|# tune2fs -l /dev/hdXX                                                   |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
(replacing XX with your drive and partition your ext2/3 filesystem resides 
in). If you don't see tune2fs in the list then we can enable it, and just 
in case you do see 'dir_index' in 'Filesystem features' then you have 
either enabled it already or it was automatically enabled for you. 
 
You are going to need a Gentoo LiveCD because changing perameters on 
mounted filesystems can cause problems, so in the interest of safety we 
are booting off the CD. At the start phase the Gentoo install system is 
booted into what's called a "ramdisk" which is where the files needed are 
put into RAM to be used. mke2fs, tune2fs and other parts of the e2fsprogs 
package will be present at this stage. 
 
Now let's turn on the feature with 
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 5.2:                                                       |
| Tune the filesystem                                                     |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|# tune2fs -O dir_index /dev/hdXX                                         |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
Do a filesystem check with 
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 5.3:                                                       |
| Filesystem check                                                        |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|# e2fsck -D /dev/hdXX                                                    |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
Do that on any ext2 or ext3 partition and then reboot. You should notice 
the difference straight away. 
    
===========================
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: 
 
 * None this week 
    
Changes
-------
  
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux 
project:
 
 * None this week 
    
==================
7. Gentoo Security
==================
   
uw-imap: Remote buffer overflow
-------------------------------
  
uw-imap is vulnerable to remote overflow of a buffer in the IMAP server 
leading to execution of arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[35] 
 35. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200510-10.xml
    
OpenSSL: SSL 2.0 protocol rollback
----------------------------------
  
When using a specific option, OpenSSL can be forced to fallback to the 
less secure SSL 2.0 protocol. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[36] 
 36. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200510-11.xml
    
KOffice, KWord: RTF import buffer overflow
------------------------------------------
  
KOffice and KWord are vulnerable to a buffer overflow in the RTF importer, 
potentially resulting in the execution of arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[37] 
 37. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200510-12.xml
    
SPE: Insecure file permissions
------------------------------
  
SPE files are installed with world-writeable permissions, potentially 
leading to privilege escalation. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[38] 
 38. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200510-13.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 09 October 2005 and 16 October 2005, activity on 
the site has resulted in: 
 39. http://bugs.gentoo.org
 
 * 849 new bugs during this period 
 * 431 bugs closed or resolved during this period 
 * 17 previously closed bugs were reopened this period 
 
Of the 8607 currently open bugs: 106 are labeled 'blocker', 183 are 
labeled 'critical', and 545 are labeled 'major'. 
    
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
  
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period 
are: 
 
 * Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[40], with 26 closed bugs[41]  
 * Stefano Rossi[42], with 20 closed bugs[43]  
 * Roy Marples[44], with 19 closed bugs[45]  
 * Lukasz Damentko[46], with 17 closed bugs[47]  
 * AMD64 Testing Team[48], with 17 closed bugs[49]  
 * PPC Porters[50], with 16 closed bugs[51]  
 * Netmon Herd[52], with 15 closed bugs[53]  
 * Gentoo Games[54], with 13 closed bugs[55]  
 40. gnome@gentoo.org
 41. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
 42. so@gentoo.org
 43. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=so@gentoo.org
 44. uberlord@gentoo.org
 45. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=uberlord@gentoo.org
 46. rane@gentoo.org
 47. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=rane@gentoo.org
 48. amd64-test@gentoo.org
 49. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=amd64-test@gentoo.org
 50. ppc@gentoo.org
 51. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=ppc@gentoo.org
 52. netmon@gentoo.org
 53. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=netmon@gentoo.org
 54. games@gentoo.org
 55. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&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[56], with 60 new bugs[57]  
 * Default Assignee for Orphaned Packages[58], with 15 new bugs[59]  
 * AMD64 Testing Team[60], with 12 new bugs[61]  
 * Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[62], with 11 new bugs[63]  
 * Project Gentopia[64], with 9 new bugs[65]  
 * Portage Utilities Team[66], with 8 new bugs[67]  
 * Gentoo Kernel Bug Wranglers and Kernel Maintainers[68], with 8 new 
bugs[69]  
 * Java team[70], with 8 new bugs[71]  
 56. maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
 57. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=maintainer-wanted@gentoo.org
 58. maintainer-needed@gentoo.org
 59. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=maintainer-needed@gentoo.org
 60. amd64-test@gentoo.org
 61. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=amd64-test@gentoo.org
 62. gnome@gentoo.org
 63. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=gnome@gentoo.org
 64. gentopia@gentoo.org
 65. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=gentopia@gentoo.org
 66. tools-portage@gentoo.org
 67. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=tools-portage@gentoo.org
 68. kernel@gentoo.org
 69. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=kernel@gentoo.org
 70. java@gentoo.org
 71. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2005-10-09&chfieldto=2005-10-16&assigned_to=java@gentoo.org
    
===============
9. GWN feedback
===============
   
Please send us your feedback[72] and help make the GWN better. 
 72. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org
    
================================
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================================
   
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===================
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===================
   
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
 
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 73. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
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Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Editor
Wernfried Haas <amne@gentoo.org> - Author
Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> - Author
David Nielsen <david@lovesunix.net> - Author
George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> - Author

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