announce October 2008

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Announcing Fedora Sugar Spin!
by Sebastian Dziallas 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

Hi everybody, I'm proud to be announce the availability of our Fedora Sugar Spin, which incorporates the Sugar Desktop Environment on a Fedora Live CD. So, what is this in specific? With this spin, you'll be able to run Sugar, which is developed by Sugarlabs and the desktop environment used on the OLPC, directly from a Live CD! You'll find several activities on the image including most notably... * sugar-browse - a web browsing activity based on xulrunner * sugar-write - a word processor based on abiword ...among with several other applications introducing e.g. chat support. We, the OLPC SIG, will be importing further activities into Fedora, which might be installed using 'yum install sugar-*' at a later time. Where can you get it? Easily, here: http://sdz.fedorapeople.org/olpc/sugar-spin.iso Here's the SHA1 checksum, just if you're interested: f032ab45aa116c2728dcd2d676e29a5ee114fd1d sugar-spin.iso And what if you wanted to put it quickly onto your USB Key? Even easier! You'll just need to grab Luke Macken's liveusb-creator, which already includes support for the Sugar Spin. Here's the link: https://fedorahosted.org/releases/l/i/liveusb-creator/liveusb-creator-3.0.z… Thank you everybody, who made this possible! --Sebastian

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Fedora Weekly News #149
by Oisin Feeley 27 Oct '08

27 Oct '08

= Fedora Weekly News Issue 149 = 1.1 Announcements 1.1.1 Features & Final Development Freeze 1.1.2 fedora-wiki list for wiki users and contributors 1.1.3 Fedora 10 Snapshot 3 1.2 Planet Fedora 1.2.1 Events & Trip Reports 1.2.2 Tech Tidbits 1.3 Developments 1.3.1 Splitting Up R 1.3.2 Flinging Poo at libtool-2.2 1.3.3 Livna Migration to RPM Fusion 1.3.4 Sbin Sanity Stays 1.3.5 Packaging Webmin: Should it go in /opt ? 1.4 Translation 1.4.1 Software Translation Deadline Ends 1.4.2 Bugs Filed for Virt-* Package Submissions 1.4.3 Freeze Breaks 1.4.4 Missing Language Files for F10 Release Notes Added 1.4.5 SELinux Tool Translations Not Available 1.5 Infrastructure 1.5.1 Change Freeze Begins Tomorrow 1.5.2 FAS Dump Breakage 1.6 Artwork 1.6.1 Fedora Remix Mark 1.6.2 Echo Icon Theme Future 1.6.3 Sound themes 1.6.4 Four Fs Poster Designs 1.7 Security Advisories 1.7.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories 1.7.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories 1.8 Virtualization 1.8.1 Enterprise Management Tools List 1.8.2 Fedora Xen List 1.8.2.1 DomU I/O Performance Sanity Check 1.8.3 Libvirt List 1.8.3.1 sVirt Initial Prototype Release 1.8.3.2 Hot-add SCSI/VirtIO Disks for KVM Guests 1.8.3.3 Domain Events Support Completed 1.8.4 oVirt Devel List 1.8.4.1 New Model for Network Interface Configuration 1.9 OLPC Fedora SIG 1.9.1 Merging OLPC with Rawhide 1.9.2 Pre-orders for Fedora 10 XO cards Open October 28th 1.9.3 Fedora XO Network Test Meeting 1.9.4 XO - XFCE Fedora 10 Test Team 1.9.5 Sugar Review Activity 1.9.6 OLPC-Community Updates Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 149 for the week ending October 26, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue149 We are happy to announce a new beat covering the development of the OLPC XO laptop and the Sugar interface authored by Pascal Calarco. This week samples of beat contents include: OLPC detailing "Merging OLPC with Rawhide"; Announcements alerts us to "Fedora 10 Snapshot 3"; PlanetFedora rounds-up "Events & Trip Reports"; an emotional Developments stares at "Flinging Poo at libtool-2.2"; Translations brings news of "Freeze Breaks"; Infrastructure examines some "FAS Dump Breakage"; Artwork sounds out "Sound Themes" and a new "Four Fs Poster Designs"; SecurityAdvisories faithfully lists this weeks important updates; and Virtualization is again compelling reading with a "New Model for Network Interface Configuration" in its oVirt subsection. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === Features & Final Development Freeze === John Poelstra announced[0] that "if all goes as planned, the final development freeze[1] will arrive... on October 28, 2008." All features and their associated feature pages must be at 100% completion by this date. [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg00013.… [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/FinalFreezePolicy fedora-wiki list for wiki users and contributors Ian Weller wrote[2] about a new fedora-wiki mailing list[3]. "Among the discussions will be policy, announcements, and editing tips. The list has been created to bring together the wider wiki community split apart between different sub-projects of Fedora." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-October/msg00009.h… [3] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fedora-wiki Fedora 10 Snapshot 3 Jesse Keating announced[4] the availability of another Fedora 10 snapshot. "This is the final snapshot before our final devel freeze and subsequent preview release. On the torrent site you'll find install images and live images for testing." [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-October/msg00010.h… == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. http://planet.fedoraproject.org Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === Events & Trip Reports === Yaakov Nemoy wrote[0] about his trip to the Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference. [0] http://loupgaroublond.blogspot.com/2008/10/cposc-endnotes.html Max Spevack posted[1] about his experiences at Athens Digital Week, as did Diego Zacarao[2]. [1] http://spevack.livejournal.com/67628.html [2] http://diegobz.net/2008/10/18/athens-digital-week-day-1-and-2/ Greg DeKoenigsberg and Chris Tyler both[3] posted[4] about the first day of FSOSS in Toronto. Of particular interest is the "Teaching Open Source" track[5], as well as the FSOSS planet[6] and flickr[7] page. Jack Aboutboul posted[8] about his first day at FSOSS, as did[9] Paul Frields. [3] http://gregdek.livejournal.com/37958.html [4] http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/145-FSOSS-Begins.html [5] http://fsoss.senecac.on.ca/2008/?q=node/78 [6] http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/~chris.tyler/fsoss-planet/ [7] http://flickr.com/photos/tags/fsoss2008 [8] http://jaboutboul.blogspot.com/2008/10/id-rather-be-with-animal-part-1.html [9] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1243 Sandro Mathys had done a fantastic job preparing for FAD EMEA, and he posted the latest status update about that event to all the Ambassadors[10]. [10] http://blog.sandro-mathys.ch/2008/10/23/fad-emea-2008-3-weeks-to-go Tech Tidbits Fabian Affolter prepared[11] five activities for the XO, and submitted the packages for review. [11] http://fabaff.blogspot.com/2008/10/xo-activities-for-fedora-part-ii.html Jeremy Katz discussed[12] some tips about the best way to make the Fedora 10 Snapshot 2 work on the XO. [12] http://katzj.livejournal.com/441143.html Dan Walsh wrote[13] an interesting blog post about "security vs. usability" tradeoffs, based on his experiences at a conference in Washington. The full post is related to both SELinux and Xen. [13] http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/25265.html John Poelstra posted[14] an article that emphasisizes the WHY, as opposed to the HOW, of bug triage. Two of the reasons that he mentions are that triage "saves package maintainers time chasing down missing information in bug reports" and that it "allows maintainers to spend their finite time on bugs that are ready to be worked on". [14] http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/why-bug-triage/ == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === Splitting Up R === Tom Callaway alerted[1] the list that he intended to merge the R-devel package with the base R[2] package. Tom's motivation was that many complaints had been received from users who attempted to install extensions from the external CRAN[3] repository using R's built-in package system. "This doesn't work unless you have R-devel installed. The average R user is a professor or a student, and neither of them are going to necessarily possess the necessary Linux/Fedora knowledge to be able to understand why this doesn't work like the R documentation says it should." Tom recognized that this was a violation of the Fedora Packaging Guidelines[4] and that he was "[...] not entirely sure if I need FESCo or FPC approval to take this action, if so, this is my notice of requesting it. ;)" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02240.html [2] R is an interpreted language based upon S and Scheme intended to be used for statistical computation: http://www.r-project.org/ [3] http://cran.r-project.org/ [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines Enrico Scholz suggested[5] instead: "[...] add it to comps.xml [or] move 'R' to Rcore, and add 'R' which depends on 'R-core' + 'R-devel"' which have the major advantage of not missing all of R-devel's dependencies. Tom accepted[6] these points because "[...] the suggested R/R-core/R-devel split instead [would allow users] to get everything with yum install R, it would meet the guidelines, and minimal installs with R can simply have R-core." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02249.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02251.html James Antill agreed that the general model of "foo-core + additions" was maintained by such a split but asked[7] "[...] why don't we just package more of the R modules so CRAN usage isn't a requirement?" José Matos answered[8] that there were far too many R modules "[...] more than 1500 modules (the have been growing at an exponential rate in the last years). So while we would like to see more R packages in Fedora in are not even near to have a reasonable subset of R packaged." James worried[9] that "[...] you could use that argument a lot (there are probably still more unpackaged libc using things than packaged)." James showed that there were many more unpackaged users of libc than packaged using: repoquery -whatrequires '*-devel' | \ fgrep -v - '-devel-' | \ fgrep -v - '-static-' [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02267.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02272.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02274.html The availability of a tool named R2spec to convert R package formats to rpm packages was mentioned[10] by Matthew Salzman. Later threads which appeared in part only on @fedora-r-devel investigated the problem of languages implementing their own packaging systems. José Matos played[11] Devil's Advocate with the remark that "[...] each language is building its own repository and packaging system in a sense we have lots of equivalents of (yum+rpm) for each language (perl, php, python, R, tex, ...) [but] for the system to be really useful it must use the least possible denominator (read the dumbest wins- pun intended ;-) )." José suggested that R2spec could also be tweaked to discover dependencies and include them in its generated spec files. It appeared[12] that Pierre-Yves had a "[...] small script to update the spec file when there is a new release of an already package R-library. This might be something that I should develop maybe a bit more now (especially since Bioconductor[12a] 2.3 has been released with R 2.8.0)" [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02288.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02301.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02306.html [12a] Modules primarily for bioinformatics and genomics. === Flinging Poo at libtool-2.2 === A discussion on the future of libtool in Fedora is worth reporting although it is slightly older. Orion Poplawski wondered[1] whether it was the correct time to integrate libtool-2.2.X into Fedora 11. Benjamin Kosnik wanted[2] it available in Fedora before GCC was bumped to gcc-4.4.x as that will depend on libtool-2.2.6. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00467.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00516.html A possible need for FESCo approval was expressed[3] by Karsten Hopp as he was worried that "[...] it breaks up to 300 packages according to my mass rebuilds. I'm going to prepare a Wiki page with details about that." That prompted the first of several queries about the purpose and suitability of libtool. David Woodhouse asked[4] "[i]sn't the whole point of libtool that it should make things _easier_, not break huge swathes of packages whenever we change it? How about we fix those 300 packages by making them _not_ use libtool, rather than making them use the latest version?" Toshio Kuratomi thought[5] that "If the state of the art has advanced and there's a tool that can replace libtool so a developer can say `I want a shared library' and the tool builds it on all platforms then we could look into getting upstreams to switch but simply getting rid of libtool in favour of handcoding Makefiles to build shared libraries is a step in the wrong direction." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00479.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00730.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00737.html AdamJackson offered[6] that gcc was available on Solaris, Windows, *BSD and OSX with the conclusion "[m]st of the complexity in libtool (and autotools in general) is to support systems that simply are not worth supporting and that practically speaking don't exist anymore. I'm being slightly flip in saying 'gcc -shared' but really not by much. Honestly for any fringe platform the correct thing to do is port gcc/binutils/gmake first." There were many disagreements on this point and Sam Varshavchik posted[7] a convincing potted summary of them: "There's much more to libtool then just building shared libraries. If you remove everything from libtool that supports ancient platforms, you'll still have quite a bit left. For example, libtool builds both shared and static libraries in parallel. That, alone, saves you from dealing with a massive hairball in your makefiles. Ask anyone who works on a large, complicated app, that links with its own shared libraries. The option to easily build a statically-linked version is quite invaluable, for debugging purposes." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00744.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00791.html The practical experience of the MinGW project related[8] by DanielBerrange was also that gcc -shared was insuOEcient i[...] if you're trying to build for windows. The mingw32 work has only been made viable because libtool has basically taken care of the horrible shared library build process required by Windows.j Further details were supplied[9] at Adam's request and KevinKoAEer confirmed[10] that producing a DLL involved several complications. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00743.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00755.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00780.html Discussion of alternatives veered[11] towards CMake. Braden McDaniel was unconvinced[12] that this was a realistic suggestion for replacing libtool in approximately three hundred upstream projects. Kevin Kofler took[13] a detailed look at the problem and argued that attempting to "[...] convince the automake developers to use something other than libtool is pointless, because automake should also go away, it's at least as obsolete, buggy, unable to maintain backwards compatibility, annoying, a massive time waster at build time and a major PITA for developers to code with as libtool is. The whole autotools stack sucks. It always did, we just didn't have anything better. We now do, so why are people still using autotools?" His critique seemed convincing and he later added[14] that "CMake is used by all of KDE 4 [...]" and in an exchange with Richard W. M. Jones explained[15] that Gnulib was also not a good replacement for autotools: "[...] a "library" which works by copying itself into the source code of the project is a horribly broken concept." [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00780.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00775.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00799.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01017.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01142.html Lennart Poettering and Ralf Corsepius were[16] suspicious of the attempt to replace autotools with CMake. Ralf argued that "Cmake is imake in new clothes and suffers from the same design flaws as imake did. It's only the limited set of requirements being used by the limited set of use cases it's proponents apply which lets them think 'cmake is better'." StephenSmoogen saw[17] a need to halt the conversation when he examined it from a human neuropsychology viewpoint: "So basically this conversation is a 'dead' conversation. People have their hairs on their necks up, [enough] testosterone pumping to put [out] 3 or 4 beards in a day, and are [on] to the flinging poo part. At this point, there is no way either side is going to say that Cmake is better at this, or Autotools is better than that. Wait a week, and see if one can bridge the gap with some diplomatic discourse[.]" [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00954.html [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01023.html Later a new thread was started[18] by Braden McDaniel to recommend that autoreconf should be explicitly forbidden to be run by rpm packages. He explained that he saw the problems caused by running autoreconf or libtoolize as "[b]y running autoreconf, the RPM build becomes exposed to different versions of autoconf, automake, and libtool than were used by the upstream developer to create the upstream source package. Newer versions of these tools have the potential to introduce incompatibilities, breaking the RPM build. Rather than patching configure.[ac,in] and Makefile.am, a more resilient approach is to patch the configure script and Makefile.in files."TillMaas added[19] a link to a wiki draft on the subject and suggested that "[...] one should run autoreconf locally and create a patch from this, that is then used within the spec." The conversation veered[20] into sharp disagreement as to whether autotool generated files should be treated similarly to "binary JARs (for which the packaging guidelines mandate that they have to be removed and rebuilt from source)" or this should be avoided in order to avoid "potential breakage". This issue seems destined to generate further disagreement. [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00866.html [19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00869.html [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00970.html === Livna Migration to RPM Fusion === Several of the third-party repositories external to the Fedora Project agreed some time ago to merge into a single new entity named "RPM Fusion"[1]. The current partners include Dribble, Freshrpms and Livna. Thorsten Leemhuis reported[2] that "[...] nearly all of livna's packages have been imported and build for RPM Fusion, but a few are still missing. So you should leave livna repos enabled for now if you want everything [.]" Thorsten explained the migration process in this post with the important details that "[...] all users that installed livna properly (e.g. by installing the livna-release package) and enabled the testing repos will now get RPM Fusion enabled automatically." [1] http://rpmfusion.org [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02367.html A suggestion was made[3] by Nicolas Mailhot to either use the "modern proxyfriendly createrepo" or else "define http.caching=packages" in the yum repo files. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02368.html Users who currently have the Livna repository enabled can transition to the new RPM Fusion repository by: yum install rpmfusion-free-release rpmfusion-nonfree-release === Sbin Sanity Stays === The latest FESCo meeting[1] logs record that the decision to add /sbin to each users PATH variable (see FWN#146[2]) will be kept until a working alternative for both non-root and root users is available. The brief deliberations indicate that FESCo members tended to manually add /sbin to their own paths and distilled the objections to the sole point of "". Thorsten Leemhuis was dismayed[3] and agreed with Ville Skyttä that the change would4 result in many confused users. Thorsten wished to "[...] help Ville and Matthew making a real solution, where sbin stays "root commands" only, and where package that are right now get into he search path for ordinary users (either with symlinks or by moving the binaries). But it's IMHO best for everyone if we do that for F11. Come on, we had /sbin not in the path for more then how many years, so what is one half year more (especially as everyone that dislikes it is used to enable it already)?" Jon Masters disagreed[5] on the basis that any script should be using an explicit and absolute binary location anyway: "If you're writing scripts and not explicitly calling out the binary location, then it's not surprising if your scripts break later. I know it's nice to always assume a particular PATH, but it's not good practice any more than including or not including sbin in the PATH to begin with." He also cautioned that most other distributions had made this change a long time ago and that "[...] everyone else is already laughing that Fedora didn't do this, so really it doesn't need to wait for yet another 1.5 years to get done :)" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02273.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue146#PATH:.2Fsbin.Tab.Confusion [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02294.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02180.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02296.html === Packaging Webmin: Should It Go In /opt ? === Andy Theuninck asked[1] for some help in "[...] trying to put a package together for webmin. It wants to install to libexec, but if I do that rpmlint (rightly) complains that there are non-executable text files. Perl files & HTML files are intermixed and separating them out would be a patching nightmare [...] as I read FHS /opt would be the most appropriate place [but] if I try to use /opt/webmin [then] rpmlint pitches a fit about using /opt." Toshio Kuratomi quoted[2] the FHS[3:] "The FHS says: /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages. Anything packaged by Fedora is part of the system packaging rather than an addon so we stay out of /opt." He also suggested that separating the different files types and getting webmin's upstream[4] to accept patches to do this was a preferred path in the Fedora Project. Failing this it was possible to separate the files and symlink them to the upstream-enforced layout. Another useful link[5] to the Fedora Project's web application packaging guidelines in Toshio's post indicated that non-executable files might best be put into /usr/share. Andy seemed[6] to like the idea of "[m]oving as much as possible over to /usr/share and symlinking against the files that are actually needed[...]" as this would allow upstream to continue to support many OSes by the simple expedient of "sticking everything into a single directory." Nicolas Mailhot disparaged[7] the use of /opt as "[...] he right place to dump messes and is good enough for ISVs with no ambitions but Fedora does not package messes [.]" Casey Dahlin cautioned[8] Nicolas "Easy, he's here because he wants to do the right thing, and he's not upstream, so there's no reason to clueby4 him just yet" and went on to suggest a similar path to that above: "You might do what apache does and simply place the files where they go, then symlink them to a conf directory in /etc . You'd be doing it on a much larger scale than apache, but until you get upstream to suck less, you at least have a precedent for it (though doing it for apache hasn't particularly encouraged them to change their goofy-as-hell recommended file layout)." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02289.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02291.html [3] Filesystem Hierarchy Standard: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ [4] http://www.webmin.com/ [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#Web.Applications [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02327.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02297.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02300.html == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === Software Translation Deadline Ends === The software translation deadline for nearly all modules in Fedora ended on 21st October 2008. A few special modules like Anaconda would still be updated until prior to release time. Currently, the Fedora Translation Project members are concentrating their efforts on the documents, especially the Fedora Release Notes. The deadline for translations of the GA version of the F10 Release Notes is 13th November 2008[1] [1] http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-10/f-10-trans-tasks.html === Bugs Filed for Virt-* Package Submissions === NorikoMizumoto[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and AnkitPatel[9] announced the bug numbers on Red Hat bugzilla, which would be used to submit the various virt-* modules. These modules are not available for submission via translate.fedoraproject.org interface at the moment. Bugs for submitting translations for System-config-display[11] and desktop-effects[10] modules were also filed. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00147.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00148.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00149.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00150.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00151.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00152.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00153.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00174.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00145.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00146.html === Freeze Breaks === System-config-firewall[12], Comps[13] and Packagekit[14] modules underwent string freeze breaks this week due to feature inclusion and typo correction in the main modules. The maintainers have assured that the packages would be rebuilt to ensure the inclusion of the updated translations. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00143.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00166.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00175.html === Missing Language Files for F10 Release Notes Added === Files for a few languages were added in the git repository for the F10 Release Notes by KarstenWade[15]. As a result, translators can easily find relevant files in the translate.fedoraproject.org interface and submit the translations too. [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00195.html === SELinux Management and Policy Generation Tool Translations Not Available === IgorSoares reported[16] the non-availability of the translations for the SELinux Management and Policy Generation Tools on the user interface. A bug has been filed[17] as well. [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00199.html [17] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=468383 == Infrastructure == This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: Huzaifa Sidhpurwala === Change Freeze Begins Tomorrow === Mike McGrath wrote[1] on the @fedora-infrastructure-list sent out a reminder that another pre-release change freeze will start and last till 11-05-2008. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg… === FAS Dump Breakage === Michael Schwendt wrote[2] on the @fedora-infrastructure-list that there has been an invalid entry returned by the FAS group dump for some time: bbs,disabled,james francis toy iv,user,0. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg… To this Nigel Jones added[2] that "The comma is part of the persons name, it needs to be either escaped or the delimiter changed (maybe a | or something)." Mike, however, said[3] that there aren't any comma's in that persons name, its in his email address. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg… [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg… == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Fedora Remix Mark === A few weeks ago when the process started, we reported about the request for a secondary trademark design for "Fedora Remix", a process which closed to the decision. On a cross-thread on both @fedora-art and @fedora-advisory-board Greg DeKoenigsberg opined[1] for leaving the ultimate decision to the Art team "I don't suppose we could just defer to the Fedora Art team to make a decision, since we have set them up to be the authoritative voice on precisely these kinds of matters?" This opinion was backed by a number of other members. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00152.html With the decision chain established, the Art team quickly converged[2] to a final design[3] by Nicu Buculei and its usage guidelines[4] by Máirín Duffy. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00199.html [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:Fedora_secondary_logo_drafts_nicubunu_… [4] https://fedoraproject.org/w/uploads/2/29/Fedora_secondary_logo_draft_guidel… === Echo Icon Theme Future === In a long mail to @fedora-art Martin Sourada exposed[1] his plans for the future of the Echo icon set "I'd like to focus on (nearly) full coverage of Desktop Live Spin, KDE Live Spin and XFCE Live Spin (others as well, but I don't have them all in memory)". He also pointed to some criticism about the set "we are a lot criticized for inconsistencies in the projection we use in echo" and talked about the various perspectives used "strictly speaking we are using 3 different types of projections and we have rules which is used where and we are pretty much consistent with that", a topic covered also on his blog[2] and proposed a simplification "But on the other side it turns out that having three main types of projections is too much for an icon set and that having two is about the right number." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00229.html [2] http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/10/echo-icon-theme-perspective-part… Hylke Bons, an Ubuntu developer, weighed in[3] against the isometric perspective in Echo "I'm still not a fan of the isometric view of the bigger icons, i think it causes most of the noise in the icons. Also, I do not see a need for that particular viewpoint", while Luya Tshimbalanga proposed[4] a simpler perspective for some image sizes "I remember having a discussion with Máirín about setting perspective for 24x24 and less icons. Perhaps applying that illustrated perspectivs to all categories at those sizes might help. Spherical icons will have much impact." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00230.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00231.html === Sound Themes === Nicu Buculei relayed[1] to @fedora-art a blog post[2] where Lennart Pottering raised a call for XDG sound themes and also expressed his concerns about how the team may have not encouraged a contributor "I am afraid we may have driven away Chris with the lack of feedback when he tried to create one" and a possible conflict with with the Desktop Team agenda "Also, with the Echo experience fresh in mind, I wonder if we create a new set only to get it called a 'charade' and 'if you think what you're doing is 'value add' that makes Fedora look better than the 'competition' you are wrong'." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00235.html [2] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/free-sound-themes.html William Jon McCann replied[3] pointing to the lack of quality of the earlier theme proposal "However well intentioned Chris' effort may have been, the results are not suitable for use in a high quality desktop product. Have you actually listened to the theme that you reference here?" and likened it to the work on icons: "This is the same problem that some of us have with the way the icon theme and background art work has been handled in Fedora. I personally love to see lots of energy and experimentation going on. But at the end of the day we have to be concerned about our audience and how everything integrates into a coherent product" and also on wallpapers: "I think that the desktop wallpapers we've used by default are a good example of this". [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00246.html Máirín Duffy felt patronized[4] "I trust that was meant with the best of intentions, so I'm sad to admit I can't help finding this somewhat patronizing, sorry" and likened the open artwork creation with the open code creation "Just as you can't follow a formula like the GNOME HIG and pop out a beautiful, usable interface, you can't follow a formula like the Fedora theme guidelines and pop out a beautiful theme. The magic in between that makes something good is design. I'm quite saddened by the fact that you don't seem to believe this team has or is capable of having that magic, but I suppose to relate it to coding as you did in your message, perhaps not everyone felt Linus had the magic or capability to develop the magic necessary to start a real, usable operating system." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00248.html Paul Frields defended[5] the art team "The Artwork team has always been open, in my experience, to criticism and suggestions about artwork. They exemplify the way Fedora teams work openly and transparently in a cooperative effort. And they've consistently turned out designs that are always solid, and often spectacular, not just for the desktop but for a variety of other uses too" and "At the end of the day, the Fedora Artwork team has been charged with the responsibility of the look and feel of Fedora. They're expected to do -- and have done -- that work in a community-friendly way, and people who want to have input into the process should do the same." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00250.html Nicu Buculei showed[6] that open art should be developed in the same way as open software "Yes, I listened to the theme and found it not perfect. But know what? It was NOT supposed to be perfect... the 'release early, release often' mantra in FOSS is exactly that, put your work in the open as soon as possible so other can play with it, comment or contribute. How can the author improve his work without our feedback, knowing which parts are good and which suck?" [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00262.html === Four Fs Poster Designs === Máirín Duffy showed[1] to @fedora-art and @fedora-marketing a number of posters[2] for the new "Four F's" (freedom|friends|features|first) Fedora slogan, posters received with awe by the community,a sentiment probably described[3] best by Ian Weller: "I saw these and my mouth was gaping open. These are very, very, very, very, very, very cool! Now I want to frame them and put them in my room." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00247.html [2] http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/collateral/fourfs/individual%20posters/ [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-October/msg00231… == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * cman-2.03.08-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * jhead-2.84-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg005… * php-Smarty-2.6.20-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg005… * squirrelmail-1.4.16-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * gfs2-utils-2.03.08-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * kernel-2.6.26.6-79.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * git-1.5.6.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg007… * ktorrent-3.1.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg007… * mantis-1.1.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg005… === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * jhead-2.84-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg005… * php-Smarty-2.6.20-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * mantis-1.1.4-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * rgmanager-2.03.08-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * kernel-2.6.26.6-49.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg006… * squirrelmail-1.4.16-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg007… * drupal-5.12-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg007… == Virtualization == In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley === Enterprise Management Tools List === This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list === Fedora Xen List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ==== DomU I/O Performance Sanity Check ==== Ask Bjørn Hansen asked[1] if the disk throughput he experienced matched what others see. The dom0 host achieved 120MB/sec sequential write speed, and a domU only 22MB/sec. Troels Arvin's experiences with paravirt Xen on raw devices were fine for normal I/O but bad for low-level operations like file system creation. Troel also posted[3] some benchmark results in 2007. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00012.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00013.html [3] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.xen.user/29483 === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== sVirt Initial Prototype Release ==== James Morris requested[1] comments on an initial prototype of sVirt[2] v0.10. sVirt was first mentioned in FWN #138[3]. "The purpose of this release is to establish a proof of concept of applying security labels to VMs, and for discussion of the underlying technical approach." "With this release, it is possible to define a security label for a KVM/QEMU domain in its XML configuration ('virsh edit'), launch the domain and have it transition to the specified security label ('virsh start'), then query the security label of the running domain ('virsh dominfo')." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00478.html [2] http://www.selinuxproject.org/page/SVirt [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue138#sVirt_project_to_Integrate_SELin… ==== Hot-add SCSI/VirtIO Disks for KVM Guests ==== Guido Günther supplied[1] a patch to add hot plugging and unplugging[2] of SCSI/VirtIO disks for KVM guests. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00391.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00427.html ==== Domain Events Support Completed ==== After three[1] rounds, Ben Guthro's domain events patches have been committed. This major API addition led[2] Daniel Veillard to speculate that the next release version number may jump to 0.5.0. Domain events are only emitted from KVM guests. The other hypervisor drivers will require more work to properly emit domain events. The python bindings[3] are forthcoming. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00537.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00594.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00598.html === oVirt Devel List === This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. ==== New Model for Network Interface Configuration ==== Daniel P. Berrange offered[1] that "network configuration UI discussions have all focused around the idea of configuring NICs on machines" and this is the wrong model. Adding, "if we can model a network as a global entity in its own right, we can simplify configuration of host interfaces" to "simply a matter of association, and optionally defining an address." "So this kind of modelling can make our UI for setting up host networking much clearer / simpler, avoiding lots of redundant questions. Also, by having an explicit 'network <-> interface <-> host' assoication, we can trivally determine whether it is possible to migrate between two hosts from a network topology POV - its merely checking one DB relation." This idea was met with acceptance. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00325.html Daniel illustrated[2] the concept with the following entity relationship diagram: 1 n n 1 Network <-----> Interface <----> Node ^ 1 ^ 1 | | V n V n NetAddress Address Mohammed Morsi created[3] a UML diagram[4] of the model as well. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00330.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00348.html [4] http://www.ovirt.org/page/Redesigned_Network_Configuration Interface configuration was recently discussed in this[5] thread as well. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00234.html == OLPC Fedora SIG == In this section, we cover Fedora developments for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop, and also Sugar development for Fedora releases[1]. We also pull relevant stories from the OLPC-Community list[2]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list [2] http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news Contributing writer: Pascal Calarco === Merging OLPC with Rawhide === Peter Robinson announced[1] that he is beginning to merge OLPC package branches into the mainline Fedora 10 rawhide and Fedora 9 joyride streams[1]. Jeremy Katz suggested[2] that probably just being concerned with Fedora 10 is all that is needed, "[g]iven that the idea seems to be to rebase to F10 for the next OLPC release..." "In most cases, they're "something needs to be ported" --eg, some of the Sugar bits for the new NetworkManager dbus api or similar," he added[3] [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-October/msg00068.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-October/msg00069.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-October/msg00071.html === Pre-orders for Fedora 10 XO cards Open October 28th === Karlie Robinson announced[1] that pre-orders for the Fedora 10 OLPC SD cards will start October 28 at On-Disk.com, and she'll update the list when pricing has been finalized. The cards will also eventually be available at Amazon.com. She added that users may be interested in this, "1) for adults who may not find the Sugar environment practical for daily use, the Fedora 10 option allows the machine to behave in a more familiar way. 2) In this sense, the XO is on-par with an Asus Eee PC, except your purchase during the G1G1 promotion directly effects the lives of children. A social purchase rather than a corporate profit purchase." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-October/msg00073.html === Fedora XO Network Test Meeting === The IRC logs[1] from the meeting on 10/24/2008 were posted by James Laska. The team has outlined their test plans[2], and discussed which applications to test next, including command line tools, NetworkManager, USB wired and wireless devices, and checking status of mesh networking in Fedora 10. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-October/msg00077.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/TestPlans/Networking === XO - XFCE Fedora 10 Test Team === James Laska invited[1] interested folk to join a new team to begin testing XFCE for the Fedora 10 build on the XO. "There's been a lot of buzz around using a more lightweight desktop environment on the XO," he wrote. "While GNOME will continue to be the desktop offered with this years G1G1, I certainly don't want to discourage folks from testing alternatives. I do want to emphasize though that GNOME is the primary focus for Fedora on the XO. The work that Josh Bresser's and the Performance Test team is doing is very important in identifying memory/cpu/"disk" hogs on the XO." Interested parties can sign up[2], and more details on the team roles are also available[3] [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-October/msg00080.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/XO_Test_Roll_Call [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/TestPlans/Fedora10_On_XO#Responsibilities === Sugar Review Activity === Sebastian Dziallas announced[4] that the Sugar Jukebox was ready for review. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2008-October/msg00081.html === OLPC-Community Updates === This section covers Fedora/Sugar activity summarized on the OLPC-Community list[1], sent out weekly by [Jim Gettys]. The 10/20/2008 edition is available[2], and relevant items are summarized or reproduced below. [1] http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news [2] http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/2008-October/000151.html The QA team continued performance and capacity testing with a session of 20 laptops connected to a school server, with everyone using chat. A few new tickets were opened as a result of the testing, and "We continue testing with the school server while limiting to 50 - 55 the number of laptops connected to a single access point. We also plan to test other performance-enhancing configurations (including more than one access point connected to the same school server). We also plan to conduct performance testing in the "access point, no school server" setting." The software development group was busy preparing future feature plans for the upcoming XOCamp[3], to be held the week of 11/17/2008 which welcomes presentations. [3] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XOcamp [C. Scott Ananian] continued work on the next version of the Journal (known as Journal2), with new media and screencasts available[4]. [Eben Eliason] also spent time meeting and planning for Journal2, and will "...begin working on revised screenshots and use case scenarios next week so design and implementation can be brought together early in the next release cycle." [4] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal_reloaded [Erik Garrison] spent the week testing various hierarchical file managers which could potentially be used in Sugar and working on UI performance issues. To close the week he published a set of potential modifications to the OLPC software distribution which dramatically improve user interface performance. Chris Ball worked on power management and an interesting new screencast activity on the XO, "allow[ing] a movie to be created using the content of the display along with narration over the microphone; it could be useful for creating shareable tutorials and walk throughs both for learning how to use the XO and for learning in general." The 0th issue of The OLPC Journal[5] was put together by [Michael Stone] and [SJ Klien], covering activity on the OLPC devel list, announcements of the G1G1 laptop 2008 program, the upcoming XOCamp2, XO tips and tricks, and the Journal2 work. [5] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC:Journal An initial implementation of Moodle for the school server was completed by Martin Langhoff. [Morgan Collett] debugged connections to jabber.laptop.org, and tried to make presence service more reliable in the face of network delays seen in this setup. He worked on API documentation for activity authors, and discussed 9.1.0 goals for collaboration. Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote a proposal about API stability policy for Glucose and discussed it in the Sugar irc meeting, and wrote a list of work items to make Sugar window management more standard compliant and better host normal desktop applications. [Tomeu Vizoso] worked on several tasks including adding downloading links and images to the Journal, adding a removable storage icon to Sugar's frame, in preparation of further improvements to handling USB sticks, improved shell loads by 70%, and other work. Simon Schampijer has been landing the use of gconf for the profile in sugar-jhbuild. The profile is now using gconf to store the preferences. The old API in sugar/profile has been kept around to not break activities using it, for example to request the nickname or the color of the user. You can keep on running multiple instances of the emulator by using the 'SUGAR_PROFILE=username sugar-emulator' command. This keeps on working since we use gconf-dbus in sugar-jhbuild and therefore run one gconf daemon per instance. [Sayamindu Dasgupta] worked on revising the Khmer keyboard layout so that it adheres to the national NiDA standard as closely as possible. He also worked on adding fallback language support for translations (eg: an Aymara user would like to see Spanish translations as fallback if Aymara ones are not available instead of the default English). In the Sugar department, Sayamindu continued his work on Read and added support for handling external hyperlinks in the underlying evince python bindings. Guillaume Desmottes implemented the last bits of the new search protocol in Gadget. He released Gadget 0.0.2 which should contain all the requested features. On the Gabble front he finished to implement the new protocol as well and merge the new Gadget API branch. In order to drastically simplify Gadget integration in Sugar, he investigated a new path where buddies in views where advertised as online by Gabble. He implemented it as a proof of concept and was able to very easily request views and making their activities and buddies appear in the mesh view without (almost) any PS change! He also released telepathy-python 0.15.2 which contains new API which are needed to perform Gadget searches. Javier Cardona worked on driver support for the "wakeup on lan" (WOL) functionality that currently is implemented in the wireless firmware. We can now wake up the XO based on the presence of a number of predefined 4-byte patterns in the received wireless frames, making possible scenarios such as waking up on ARP requests for its IP address. Ricardo Carrano spent the week in tests with the XO acting as an access point, working with students at UFF to build a wireless sparse mesh test bed[6] and working with Cozybit on the remaining WPA timing issues. [6] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wireless_Sparse_Testbed -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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Fedora 10 Snapshot 3
by Jesse Keating 24 Oct '08

24 Oct '08

This is the final snapshot before our final devel freeze and subsequent preview release. On the torrent site you'll find install images and live images for testing. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ The i686 Live is just over 700M in size, so you /may/ have trouble burning it if your media is very strict about it's size. Of important note, these images do have a bug in them, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=468360 where some realtek network cards will not initialize properly. This bug has been fixed in today's rawhide, which was too late for the snapshot. If you use the snapshot and fail to have networking, you'll need to update the kernel. Thanks for the testing! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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fedora-wiki list for wiki users and contributors
by Ian Weller 22 Oct '08

22 Oct '08

Hi all, A new moderate-traffic mailing list for users and contributors of the Fedora Project Wiki has been set up. Among the discussions will be policy, announcements, and editing tips. The list has been created to bring together the wider wiki community split apart between different sub-projects of Fedora. If you are interested in these sorts of discussions, please subscribe to fedora-wiki(a)lists.fedoraproject.org at https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fedora-wiki We'll be glad to see you! -- Ian Weller <ianweller(a)gmail.com> http://ianweller.org GnuPG fingerprint: E51E 0517 7A92 70A2 4226 B050 87ED 7C97 EFA8 4A36 "Technology is a word that describes something that doesn't work yet." ~ Douglas Adams

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Fedora Weekly News #148
by Oisin Feeley 20 Oct '08

20 Oct '08

Fedora Weekly News Issue 148 1.1 Announcements 1.1.1 The Big ACL Opening 1.1.2 Fedora Test Day 1.1.3 K12Linux Release Candidate 1 Now Available 1.2 Developments 1.2.1 OpenOffice and go-oo 1.2.2 PackageGurus, SpecMentats or UeberPackagers? 1.2.3 A Single Torrent ? 1.2.4 The Old Sendmail Argument 1.2.5 Review-o-matic 1.3 Documentation 1.3.1 Lead Writers 1.4 Translation 1.4.1 Preview Version of Release Notes Available 1.4.2 String Freeze Breaks 1.4.3 Unscheduled Maintenance of translate.fedoraproject.org 1.4.4 PackageKit Translation Request 1.5 Artwork 1.5.1 No Echo for Fedora 10 CD/DVD 1.6 Security Advisories 1.6.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories 1.6.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories 1.7 Virtualization 1.7.1 Enterprise Management Tools List 1.7.1.1 Starting Guests from a Desktop Icon 1.7.1.2 Plugins for Performance Monitoring Applications 1.7.2 Fedora Xen List 1.7.3 Libvirt List 1.7.3.1 Openvz Bridge Support and Related Patches 1.7.3.2 Guest Image Locking 1.7.3.3 Exporting the Label on Block Devices 1.7.3.4 Experimental User Mode Linux Driver 1.7.3.5 Experimental Driver Thread Safety 1.7.4 oVirt Devel List = Fedora Weekly News Issue 148 = Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 148 for the week ending October 19, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue148 The preparations for Fedora 10 and beyond are reflected in this week's issue: "Announcements" alerts us to "Fedora Test Day"; "Documentation" conveys a request for "Lead Writers"; "Developments" examines "Review-o-matic" which may help triage our ever-expanding package repositories; "Translation" explains the "String Freeze Breaks" occasioned by the imminent release of Fedora 10; "Artwork" dives into icon controversy with "No Echo for Fedora 10 CD/DVD"; the latest "SecurityAdvisories" are worth checking out; and finally "Virtualization" shares some tips on "Starting Guests from a Desktop Icon" and the latest "Experimental User Mode Linux Driver". But wait! There's more!: "Announcements" highlights "The Big ACL Opening" as a further opening of the Fedora Project infrastructure to contributors. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. FWN Editorial Team: * Pascal Calarco * Oisin Feeley * Huzaifa Sidhpurwala [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === The Big ACL Opening === Casey Dahlin announced[0] that "we are now on a two-tiered access system for CVS. The final change which we will be making is the mass ACL open." He went on to explain, "what will happen is all packages which are now set to be private, accessible by their maintainers and a few specific individuals only, will be opened up to all überpackager members. Members of überpackager represent a filtered minority of CVS comitters, but membership is easy to come by for anyone that asks." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-October/msg00006.h… === Fedora Test Day === James Laska announced[2] the next Fedora Test Day. "I'd like to invite testers and users to join #fedora-qa this Thursday, October 16, 2008[3]." Testing will focus on security audit, better LIRC support, and Fedora 10 Beta snapshot #1". [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg00008.… [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2008-10-16 === K12Linux Release Candidate 1 Now Available === Peter Scheie announced[4] "that K12Linux Release Candidate 1 is now available for download. K12Linux is LTSP 5 built on Fedora 9, and is slated to become the successor to the highly acclaimed K12LTSP. K12Linux comes as a live image which can be used to create a LiveUSB or LiveDVD with the client chroot already installed & configured." Go check it out! [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg00010.… == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === OpenOffice and go-oo === The controversy swirling around the OpenOffice.org "fork" named "go-oo" popped up[1] along with a request for information about why "[...] Fedora ships a relatively stock (stock + 98 patches) OO.o rather than shipping [...] the extended feature set provided by go-oo such as the opengl slide transitions [?]" Caolán McNamara, the maintainer, explained[2] that he attempted to stick close to upstream "[w]ith a fairly aggressive push of any fedora patches back upstream asap [...]" and based upon the low number of reported bugs he believed "[...] this route provides the stablest and best supported product for fedora users." Caolán added that the OpenGL slide transitions were "still in a bit of a confused state" but would probably appear in Fedora 11. While Caolán eschewed any animosity to the parent ooo-build[3], and emphasized that Fedora had contributed fontconfig glyph replacement functionality to ooo-build and extended their GStreamer patches, he suggested that using ooo-build as an upstream would result in a confusing morass of patches upon patches. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01134.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01140.html [3] A collection of patches presented through a subversion repository which was intended to work around organizational and practical bottlenecks in OpenOffice.org development. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Ooo-build Muayyad AlSadi argued[4] that go-oo should be used because "[...] one can drop java and ship openoffice on a livecd [like Novell, Gentoo, Ubuntu.]" In the exchange that followed Muayyad revealed[5][6] that he had produced a Fedora-derived LiveCD with Openoffice.org on it by the expedients of moving some large Java jar and .class files out of the core rpm package and restricting the language choice to Arabic only. Muayyad suggested that adding the resulting missing pieces could be done by adding them to comps.xml . Caolán argued[7] that providing a non-working OpenOffice.org (the search functionality depends on Lucene[8] and the XSLT wizard depends on SAXON[9] both of which are written in Java) was an unacceptable user experience. It also appeared that the other distributions mentioned by Muayyad had restricted themselves to a small subset of languages which would result in a non-usable OpenOffice.org for many Fedora users. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01163.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01181.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01291.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01287.html [8] A text search-engine library: http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/ [9] An XML stylesheet processor: http://saxon.sourceforge.net/ Caolán suggested[10] that using go-oo as a base would not solve the Java dependency and referred[11] to his own work to reduce Java dependencies as a way in which this goal might be achieved: "Taking `removing java from core dependencies' as the target, then the right approach is the boring slow-fix stuff to e.g. rewrite the help search to not require the java lucene stuff and to tweak the xsltfilter stuff to be a standalone expert-style feature that only appears in the menus when the xsltfilter package is installed and place the saxon requires on that subpackage, and so on for other java functionality." Caolán had previously split out the beanshell scripting engine to a separate package and he recommended that Muayyad: "[...] investigate further as to why exactly removing or replacing java dependencies is the target, when I last thought seriously about the area I felt the right thing to do was stop swimming against the tide and boil out some concrete standalone feature requires for gcj to be able to provide the functionality that was missing at that stage to implement the java-needs of OOo, and our fabulous java hackers simply implemented them. Your questions should be what exactly are the size figures are for requiring the java dependencies and where is that space getting used and why." [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01362.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01460.html === PackageGurus, SpecMentats or UeberPackagers? === On 2008-08-13 it was announced[1] on @fedora-announce that CVS access had been revamped to allow trusted users to modify packages "distro-wide", not merely packages which they own or co-maintain. In order to clarify the changes some new terminology was introduced. Ordinary maintainers (previously members of the "cvsextras" group) are now members of the "packagers" group and those who are trusted to assist with all packages are members of the group named "uberpackager". This change has been coming for some time (see FWN#136[2] for previous discussions) and seems as though it will help cut out some bureaucracy. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00007.h… [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue136#New.libraw1394.Rebuild.Exposes.C… Lennart Poettering objected[3] to the term "uberpackager" as too redolent of "Nazi terminology" and asked "[...] if we have "Überpackagers", maybe it's time to rename normal packagers to "Unterpackagers"? That would fit awfully well into our pursuit for world domination, wouldn't it?" [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01657.html Casey Dahlin took the point but wondered[4] why Lennart had waited until now to object which led[5] Lennart to clarify that he did not follow all Fedora mailing-list discussions and "[...] noticed the adoption of this term for the first time a week or two ago when I had to log into FAS and noticed I had become an Überpackager. And, oh, god, with my blonde hair and blue eyes it felt so deserved... " [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01658.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01661.html Many respondents were sympathetic to the objection. Paul Frields explained[6] that "[u]se of "über-" has indeed made the jump to slang English. I think there's an increasing tendency in new media communities to attempt to subvert or undermine existing connotations of terms, for better or worse. In cases like this, I think we unconsciously or semi-consciously think we're deflating any unpleasantness by using them casually.I'm certain no offense was intended, but your comment is worth serious consideration." The problem of over-sensitivity was raised by several contributors including Andrew Parker who asked[7] "Do we have to have all our words vetted against every language before we can use them?" and provided some examples of common failures to do this. Axel Thimm added[8] further arguments against Lennart's interpretations. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01659.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01785.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01815.html Some extensive bike-shedding[9] followed with suggestions for alternate terminology ranging from Jon Ciesla's "spec-mentat"[10] to Seth Vidal's[11] "WednesdayPackager". Seth exclaimed[12] "[...] our ability to make subtle references that even we eventually don't understand kicks ass. :)" [9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color.of.the.bikeshed [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01662.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01800.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01863.html At one stage it appeared[13] that Toshio Kuratomi would change the name to "ultrapackagers" and Lennart excused[14] himself from further discussion: "Toshio already agreed to changing this term and it is not too much work. So let's just do it and forget about it and not continue this discussion here. I am here for the code, not for discussing Nazism." Axel Thimm[15] and Till Maas disagreed[16] that the prefix "über-" necessarily carried the connotations associated with it by Lennart and several others on the thread. Toshio noted[17] that he would need to make any change either tomorrow or else put it off until after the freeze. In passing he expressed a preference for the term "masterpackager" leading Jesse Keating to joke[18] that he preferred his bike sheds colored chartreuse. [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01675.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01826.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01836.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01897.html [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01902.html [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01904.html === A Single Torrent ? === The ability of many torrent clients to offer the user a choice of specific files within a torrent prompted JesseKeating to ask[1] "[...] does it make sense to collapse the DVD and CD torrents into a single torrent and allow people to use the client to pick which they want? Are there pros/cons to this?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01735.html Jon Ciesla wondered if the perceived "lowest common denominator client" bittorrent-curses offered this ability. bittorrent-curses was dismissed[2] as being dead and closed by Jesse Keating which led[3] to a slightly hyperbolic demand by Behdad Esfahbod for an equivalent to facilitate "mindless" downloading. In a later exchange with John Reiser it was clarified[4] that the "old dead" bittorrent4.4.0-7 only downloaded all files in a torrent. Dennis Leroy and Conrad Meyer provided[5] reassurance that both rtorrent and transmission provided ncurses-based interfaces that offer marking specific files for download. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01745.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01753.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01752.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01808.html Jesse explained[6] that one advantage of what he was suggesting was "[w]e can reduce the number of links offered to users on download pages, simplify the instructions, and have a better end user experience." His workflow avoided resorting to the command line. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01760.html Richi Plana responded[7] that lumping all the isos into a single torrent was not a good idea as "[m]ost people really only download one iso [...]" and Jesse hastened[8] to clarify "I meant collapsing them per arch, so you'd have one torrent file for Fedora 10 x86.64, one for Fedora 10 i386, ppc, source etc.. and probably different torrent files for the i686 Live and x86.64 Live offerings. I wouldn't imagine one giant torrent file that has every iso of the release on it." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01751.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01761.html Some definite preferences were expressed[9] by Chris Snook on how to Do The Right Thing By Default: "there needs to be a standalone torrent that has just the DVD ISO (and maybe the netinst ISO) for all those newcomers who don't know any better, so we don't scare them off with a 9 GB torrent." Chris raised the problems of prioritization and smaller sets of disjoint peers for more specific torrents, especially for the case[10] of one CD iso per torrent. The ability to prioritize specific files might allow work to be started sooner by, for instance, downloading a LiveCD first. Callum Lerwick suggested [11] using Azureus for this purpose. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01764.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01772.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01806.html A separate problem posed[12] by Seth Vidal was the absence of good trackers and seeders: "[I]n terms of clients - there are a lot of choices. In terms of trackers and good server-like-seeders there are NOT a lot of choices. [T]he original bittorrent client pre-proprietary is the best we have right now." Callum Lerwick again noted[13] Azureus' abilities: "I'd suggest just biting the bullet, fire up a vncserver instance, and run Azureus. It is incredibly flexible at managing many torrents at once, it can run a tracker as well, and the GUI allows you a level of insight into the status of a torrent that you just won't get from a text client." [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01759.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01807.html === The Old Sendmail Argument === An old discussion (see FWN#145[1]) was given new legs when instructor Lutz Lange asked[2] why sendmail "[...] is still the default MTA in Fedora [?]" Patrice Dumas answered[3] with an excellent summary of the discussions preceding Fedora 10: "To sum up some people considered that local delivery was a must for the default MTA, and that a send-only MTA wasn't good enough, e.g., for cronie. My personnal opinion is that there should not be any MTA in the @base or @code group, and that a MTA should be chosed if it is pulled in as a dependency, so it could be sendmail or anything else. Whether local delivery is a must for cronie or other packages that today require /usr/sbin/sendmail is another story that caould be discussed a bit more, though in the end it seems to me that this should be up to the maintainer." [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue145#Default.Deactivation.of.Services [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01693.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01694.html Les Mikesell rose[4] to the defense of sendmail as a highly-audited and extensible standard with which most administrators are familiar. All these points were disputed by various and sundry and Dominik Mierzejewski added[5] the interesting information that postfix has partial milter support thus allowing it to be extended easily. David Woodhouse took issue[6] with the idea that milter support was important: "Some of the better alternatives don't even _try_ to run milters, because they are fully-featured enough in their own right, without needing to rely on external software" and appeared[7] to put to rest the idea that it was difficult for these alternatives to run tests on messages prior to accepting them in an SMTP conversation. Les finished[8] off with an argument invoking the inertia of a wide base of currently working sendmail systems: "[Postfix is] worse at backwards compatibility. Fedora seems to assume that their users don't already have something working, so maybe that's not a concern to anyone here. If it shipped with a decked-out, well tested setup already integrated with MimeDefang/clamd/spamassassin it might be enough of an improvement to switch." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01697.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01730.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01895.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01917.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01750.html Some abstruse jokes were cracked[9] when Denis Leroy observed[10] that "[t]he sendmail configuration file is arguably one of the most complex and obfuscated configuration format ever designed in the history of computer science. :-)" and Alan Cox suggested[11] comparing it to IBM's JCL or TECO. But Les Mikesell believed[12] that "[...] these days all of the m4 templates anyone might ever need have already been written, so everyone just uncomments or tweaks a few lines in sendmail.mc for options and the default already does the right thing for most people. Or, for complex scenarios you can drop in MimeDefang as a milter and do most of the control steps with perl snippets." [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01708.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01702.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01707.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01710.html The decision to ship the Desktop spin[13] with no MTA was mentioned[14] by Colin Walters with the observation that mail from logwatch would be sent to /dev/null as "[...] most logs from a desktop machine are just pure noise." In response to Matthew Woehlke's desire for a means to view some log information Rahul Sundaram suggested15 working on gnome-system-log. ArjanvandeVen threw[16] some cold water over the discussion with the observation that "[a]nybody trying to argue for the politics of Exim/Postfix/Sendmail as default choice is ignoring the reality..." as users simply requiring send-only MTAs can use sSMTP (or something similar) while those requiring a full-blown MTA have strong individual preferences. Karel Zak and Colin Walters returned[17] to the vision of Fedora as a "desktop distribution" with Colin arguing "I understand there's the "workstation" use case where you're say doing web development and you want to install Apache or Tomcat or something locally and run logwatch on it. We obviously will support that. But it doesn't make sense for the default desktop OS to be sending you email about all the junk going on under the hood." [13] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Desktop [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01787.html [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01791.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01915.html [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01920.html === Review-o-matic === Kushal Das announced[1] that he was starting work on a project to help automate the repetitive parts of the review process, as originally suggested[2] by Chris Weyl on @fedora-packaging. This seems timely in light of recent discussions which indicated (see FWN#111[3] and FWN#147[4)] that as the number of Fedora packages grows (PackageDB indicates[5] that Fedora has grown to offer approximately 6,842 packages) the review queue has on occasion become congested. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01625.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-packaging/2008-October/msg00023.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue111#Review.Queue.Cont. [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue147#LXDE.Feature.Removal.Disappointm… .How.to.Avoid [5] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/collections/ Kushal listed the basic tasks as: rpmlint; build in mock; md5sum matches between srpm and upstream. The tool would, upon submission of a new review request, download the SRPM and SPEC, run the aforementioned tasks and then post the results on bugzilla. "Pierre-Yves" was among those that requested[6] the ability to make the build directly on koji. Richard W. M. Jones explained[7] that this would allow checking that the package also built on PPC/PPC64 architectures. Paul Frields and Brian Kearney liked[8] the idea of doing koji scratch-builds and Pierre-Yves and Debarshi Ray concurred[9] as long as it was possible to keep the builds from being removed until the review was completed. Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams thought[10] that it ought to be easy enough to do some automatic annotations conditional on the success of the build. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01634.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01649.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01639.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01641.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01643.html Approval of the general idea was expressed[11] by Richard W. M. Jones : "[...] every package guideline which (a) isn't already done by rpmlint, and (b) can feasibly be checked automatically, should be checked." He added that it would be useful to extend rpmbuild to be able to run test tools such as rpmlint or "review-o-matic" on its generated packages. Ville Skyttä later confirmed[12] that Richard would need to get a patch in to rpm itself in order to get "[...] rpmbuild to run rpmlint automatically on the packages that rpmbuild makes [.]" [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01649.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01816.html DebarshiRay linked[13] to a script named "fedora-qa" which seemed to overlap some of the functionality of rpmlint and added that Rakesh Pandit and Debarshi Ray were[14] working on using it to "[...] do spec file sanity checking [...]" He stated his own progress as "I have a very initial stage of code up and running which is taking bugzilla numbers manually (due to limited speed of network). Currently only doing koji builds and if successful then rpmlint on resultant rpms. It is also commenting back to the bugzilla entries." [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01644.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01825.html It turned[15] out that Chris Weyl had also gone to work on a base implementation and he asked if there was room for collaboration. [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01718.html == Documentation == In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject Contributing Writer: Jason Taylor === Lead Writers === The Documentation Project is looking[1] for lead writers for some of the published documentation, such as the release notes. Lead writers are responsible for making sure the information in the documentation is updated for the current release, some editing tasks and publication duties. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-October/msg00123.html == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === Preview Version of Release Notes Available === The .pot file of the F10 Release Notes was[1] finally made available. The preview version was delayed[2] due to a shortage of beat writers, rewriting and a bug in xml2po that prevented the creation of the .pot file for translators. The file is available from the Fedora git repository and translations can be submitted via https://translate.fedoraproject.org. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00138.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00132.html === String Freeze Breaks === Anaconda and firstboot modules broke[3] in the String Freeze. The new strings in the naconda module were[4] a result of the earlier non-creation of the .pot file. A request for a string freeze break for the comps module was rejected[5] by FTP. DimitrisGlezos suggested[6] that a separate string freeze policy/schedule for comps can be discussed upon for the future releases. Fedora packages are[7] currently string frozen for Fedora 10: no new translated messages can be added without the prior permission of the Fedora Localization Team as per the String Freeze Policy[8]. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00103.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00113.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00107.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00109.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg000… [7] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/StringFreezePolicy === Unscheduled Maintenance of translate.fedoraproject.org === Asgeir Frimannsson announced[8] an unscheduled outage for https://translate.fedoraproject.org. It mostly affected the display of translation statistics and file download. Translation submission remained unaffected. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00125.html === PackageKit Translation Request === Richard Hughes requested[9] translations of the PackageKit module for Fedora 10. Ville PekkaVainio also suggested[10] translating the gnome-packagekit module for additional value. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01239.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00070.html == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === No Echo for Fedora 10 CD/DVD === Martin Sourada asked[1] in both @fedora-art and @fedora-desktop about a decision about the use of the Echo icon theme, which "[...] is the default icon theme in F10 since Beta (for testing purposes and exposition to wider audience)" in the upcoming Fedora 10. "What I'd like to ask you now is the preferred way to decide upon it. Should we hold a irc meeting, do a mail vote, set up a vote in the fedora voting system,other way?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00108.html In a harsh reply, David Zeuthen, from the Red Hat Desktop Team, attacked[2] the icon set: "the fact that the Fedora leadership allows this art charade to go on and on and on for eons is complete and utter FAIL" and expressed his strong opposition to a vote: "can we please get away from this voting business? It's a disease. Consider what happened if we started voting on what patches should go in tarballs? Or what the dialogs in your desktop looked like? Or what options to use by default. Or what IO scheduler to use in the kernel. IMNSHO, voting is making Fedora turn into something mediocre that I, for one, really don't want to work on, much less rant about. Heck, I'd be running Debian if I wanted something like this[.]" David also expressed his opposition to having a personalized default icon theme in Fedora at all: "It's definitely not about stupid zero-sum games with misunderstood 'value adds' that may have questionable value in the first place." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00072.h… Martin pointed out[3] that Echo is basically an upstream project "Technically the development of Echo Icon Theme is an Upstream job, though done by fedora artists and aiming to be default on Fedora and I'd say we are now as open with our development as gnome's default or kde's default icon themes are" and explained his original question as not a simple call to vote "voting is the last option when there is no better way on deciding things". He also tried to not vilify voting "there's nothing wrong with voting system, if used with care. Fedora Art isn't about competition but about collaboration. We'd like Fedora to have distinctive look from other distros and we seem to have enough people to do so, for some people it indeed feels like competition and motivates them to work harder - and that's a good thing - however when you accept is as a competition, you're disappointed when you are not the winner - and it's easier to accept 'defeat' when it's decided by community that by one (wo)man." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00073.h… Jesse Keating returned to the question about the purpose of an original icon set "why is looking different, at the icon level, a good thing? Does it not just confuse the greater community?". Martin pointed[5] that the situation is not more confusing that the current situation "Well, gnome and kde already look different on that level. Does that confuse greater community?" and he continued arguing for a personalized theme "Does it bring anything to Fedora user? Different, more lively, more 3D-like art. Perhaps wider coverage of Fedora specific stuff (but that does not need to be limited to Echo). Is that a good thing? Seriously, who is to decide that? Definitely not me. I believe Art and Desktop Teams (and various other desktop SIGs when Echo gets selected for other DE's than gnome) together have the right to do so." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00078.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00082.h… Bill Nottingham calmed the spirits[6] "[...] there's no need to toss around 'grow up' and 'stupid'; we're all adults (or close enough) here, and that's unlikely to bring people around to your point of view" and asked two crucial questions "So, why are we, as a project, interested in working on a large set of never-to-be-upstreamed changes when there is an existing upstream?" and "Why is Nodoka 'ok', and Echo not, in people's opinion?" [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00097.h… Will Woods offered[7] two quick replies "First, Nodoka doesn't drastically change UI elements from their upstream defaults, or from other OSes" and "Echo, on the other hand, significantly changes the look of basic UI elements". He also added a good deal of criticism for the Echo icon set, using input from "his user-interface-designer wife to help work on Echo", pointing to a significant number of flaws, which, for the most part, were acknowledged[8] by Martin "in icon theme it's a tremendous work and a one that will never ends." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00100.h… [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-October/msg00102.h… Máirín Duffy also gave[9] her feedback for the Echo icon theme status "I have put together the following visual critique of Echo from rawhide. Let me preface it by saying it is obvious that Echo has come a long way; it is most noticeable in the applications menus and in some of the desktop-size icons (I really really love the improvements in the computer icon, it looks much cleaner now) but it is still very lacking in quality in areas that affect most applications on the desktop - file / edit menus, toolbars, and the panel. Creating an entire icon theme is no small task." For a better representation, she created a page with a visual outline of a large number of problems[10]. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00133.html [10] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Duffy/EchoCritiqueF10 After the long argument, Martin Sourada stepped back[11] from the proposal "I'd very much like to hear Luya's opinion, but I don't feel like supporting Echo for F10 as default much longer..." His co-maintainer, Luya Tshimbalanga assumed the blame for proposing the theme as a feature, even if it was not ready enough "Blame me for pushing Echo through FESCO. After following suggestion for submitting it to FESCO, I was a bit surprised that icon set was accepted. Were it rejected, we will not have to deal with current issue. In one part we'd withdraw Echo while taking a hit from outside for once again not include it; in other part we keep, taking a hit for having some incomplete set. That is dilemma which basically means choosing a poison." [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00135.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00157.html == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * drupal-6.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… * neon-0.28.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… * cups-1.3.9-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * drupal-5.11-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg004… * bluez-utils-3.35-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… * bluez-libs-3.35-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… * rubygem-activeresource-2.1.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg004… * rubygem-actionmailer-2.1.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg004… * rubygem-actionpack-2.1.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg004… * rubygem-activerecord-2.1.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg004… * rubygem-rails-2.1.1-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg004… * cups-1.3.9-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… * rubygems-1.2.0-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… * rubygem-activesupport-2.1.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg003… == Virtualization == In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley === Enterprise Management Tools List === This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list ==== Starting Guests from a Desktop Icon ==== Orion Poplawski said[1] "I'd like to provide an icon that would startup the virtual machine and connect to it." Cole Robinson posted[2] a couple of ways to accomplish this. * With virt-manager and support for CDROM and USB devices UUID=`virsh --connect qemu:///system domuuid vm-name` virsh --connect qemu:///system start $UUID virt-manager --connect qemu:///system \ --show-domain-console=$UUID * With virt-viewer which won't support CDROM and USB access UUID=`virsh --connect qemu:///system domuuid vm-name` virsh --connect qemu:///system start $UUID virt-viewer --connect qemu:///system $UUID Each solution requires adequate user permissions to work. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00100.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00103.html ==== Plugins for Performance Monitoring Applications ==== Guido Günther announced[1] the creation of libvirt plugins[2] for net and block I/O monitoring in Munin[3]. Daniel Veillard posted[4] a patch to add this and similar plugins for collectd[5] and Nagios[6] to the libvirt applications page[7]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00118.html [2] http://munin.projects.linpro.no/ [3] http://honk.sigxcpu.org/projects/libvirt/monitor/ [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00121.html [5] http://collectd.org/plugins/libvirt.shtml [6] http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/nagios-virt/ [7] http://libvirt.org/apps.html" === Fedora Xen List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. There was no list traffic this week. === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== Openvz Bridge Support and Related Patches ==== Daniel Berrange posted[1] a patch series "derived from Anton Protopopov / Evgeniy Sokolov bridge device patches. It first does some generic refactoring of MAC address handler in all drivers, then adds code to extract OpenVZ[2] version number, then does network config, and finally does filesystem config." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00323.html [2] http://wiki.openvz.org/ ==== Guest Image Locking ==== Itamar Heim asked[1] "how libvirt envisions image locking. i.e., how do we make sure multiple nodes are not trying to access the same storage volume[?]" Daniel Berrange said[2] in the domain XML format "the semantics are that every <disk> section added to a guest config is read-write, with an exclusive lock. To allow multiple guests to use the same disk, is intended that you add either <readonly/> or <sharable/> element within the <disk>." Adding, "we only implement this for the Xen driver, handing off the actual logic to XenD to perform. That we don't implement this in the QEMU driver is a clear shortcoming that needs addressing. " The problem on a single host is relatively simple, but more complex among multiple host nodes. Guido Günther has been toying[3] "with the idea of using DLM[4] for libvirt". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00334.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00336.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00342.html [4] http://sources.redhat.com/cluster/dlm/ ==== Exporting the Label on Block Devices ==== Chris Lalancette described[1] his patch "To support LVM partitioning in oVirt, one of the things we need is the ability to tell what kind of label is currently on a block device. Here, a 'label' is used in the same sense that it is used in parted; namely, it defines which kind of partition table is on the disk, whether it be DOS, LVM2, SUN, BSD, etc." Note that is is not the same as the partition type. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00341.html ==== Experimental User Mode Linux Driver ==== Daniel P. Berrange applied[1] a patch that "implements a driver supporting User Mode Linux[2] guests. User mode linux is a kind of paravirtualized kernel which runs on a plain Linux host. It requires no elevated privileges at all, except for some of the network integration. It is a pretty straightforward thing to invoke, so I figured it would be easy to write a driver to support it. I was right :-)" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00355.html [2] http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ ==== Experimental Driver Thread Safety ==== Daniel P. Berrange continued[1] work toward making libvirt thread-safe. The "series of 5 patches implement basic thread safety for the QEMU, LXC and Network drivers. It does not address the OpenVZ or Test driver yet. The Xen driver is totally stateless so does not require changes - though I do need to verify there's no 'static' variables that are used in an unsafe yet in Xen drivers." Daniel's earlier work was referenced[2] in FWN #146. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00417.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue146#libvirtd_Multi-threaded_Support_… ==== oVirt Devel List ==== This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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Fedora 10 Snapshot 2
by Jesse Keating 17 Oct '08

17 Oct '08

This week brings us Fedora 10 Snapshot 2. This time not only will we have Live images, we'll also have DVD and split CD install images. Due to the amount of data to sync around, we're going to stagger the torrent releases, making them available as they finish syncing to the torrent server. Please keep watching http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ for new torrents to start showing up in the next few hours. Based on feedback from Snapshot 1 we're also adding a few more seeders to help get the bits out. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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The Big ACL Opening
by Casey Dahlin 15 Oct '08

15 Oct '08

So, as most of you have probably heard, we are now on a two-tiered access system for CVS. The final change which we will be making is the mass ACL open. What will happen is all packages which are now set to be private, accessible by their maintainers and a few specific individuals only, will be opened up to all überpackager members. Members of überpackager represent a filtered minority of CVS comitters, but membership is easy to come by for anyone that asks. Now the important part: IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS CHANGE MADE TO YOUR PACKAGE you must opt out by logging into pkgdb, going to your package's page, and unchecking the "Open package during mass ACL open?" checkbox. Please don't do this. If you're anxious about the idea, please discuss it here, as it really is better for the community for us to behave more openly. The opening is in 2 weeks. We'll poke again in the intervening time. --CJD

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Fedora Weekly News #147
by Oisin Feeley 13 Oct '08

13 Oct '08

= Fedora Weekly News #147 - The Canadian Thanksgiving Issue = 1.1 Announcements + 1.1.1 New Fedora 9 Re-spins + 1.1.2 Fedora Test Day + 1.1.3 Uberpackager Replaces Packager 1.2 Planet Fedora + 1.2.1 Events + 1.2.2 Tech Tidbits 1.3 Marketing + 1.3.1 Fedora's Community Attracts Experienced Users + 1.3.2 Five Second Boot of a Modified Version of Fedora 1.4 Developments + 1.4.1 Unsigned Rawhide Packages an Attack Vector ? + 1.4.2 Procedure for Re-naming a Package + 1.4.3 Review of trash-cli Raises Generic Naming Issues + 1.4.4 PackageKit-gstreamer-plugins Obsoletes Codeina + 1.4.5 LXDE Feature Removal Disappointment - How to Avoid 1.5 Documentation + 1.5.1 Fedora 10 Release Notes + 1.5.2 Fedora Wiki Mailing List 1.6 Translation + 1.6.1 Documentation Repository Updates + 1.6.2 Release Notes .pot File Delayed + 1.6.3 Virt-* Modules Cannot Be Submitted Via Transifex 1.7 Infrastructure + 1.7.1 Some Architectural Changes 1.8 Artwork + 1.8.1 Fedora 10 CD/DVD Sleeves 1.9 Security Advisories + 1.9.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories + 1.9.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories 1.10 Virtualization + 1.10.1 Enterprise Management Tools List # 1.10.1.1 Importing Appliance Raw Disk Images + 1.10.2 Fedora Xen List # 1.10.2.1 Support for F10 domU on RHEL5.2 dom0 + 1.10.3 Libvirt List # 1.10.3.1 KVM Domain Migration Not Yet Supported # 1.10.3.2 Disable QEMU Drive Cacheing # 1.10.3.3 NSIS Windows Installer in Nightly Builds # 1.10.3.4 Domain Events API Progress + 1.10.4 oVirt Devel List # 1.10.4.1 oVirt Qpid API Fedora Weekly News Issue 147 Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 146 for the week ending October 12, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue147 In this Canadian Thanksgiving[0] issue of FWN, Max Spevack announces the Fedora Unity's latest offerings of Fedora 9 re-spins, provides detail on James Lasker's Fedora Test Day. and covers the goings on in the Fedora community blogosphere, with coverage of three contributions about the Red Hat Government Users and Developers Conference, and various tech tidbits around Fedora through the week. Svetoslav Chukov covers two stories in our marketing beat, including Intel linux developer work on building a modified Fedora install on an Asus EEE that boots in an amazing five seconds. Oisin Feeley again provides amazing coverage of Fedora development, including discussions of unsigned Rawhide packages as an attack vector, procedures for renaming Fedora packages, a discussion of the trash-cli package and its implications for generic naming issues, and much more. Jason Taylor brings us up to date with the documentation project, covering Fedora 10 release notes, and discussion of a possible fedora-wiki mailing list. Runa Bhattacharjee covers happenings in the translation team for us, discussing release note and documentation translation topics, and translations to the virt-* modules. Huzaifa Sidhpurwala covers the Infrastructure beat again for us, with a story on the infrastructure team's consolidation over the past few months and news of a new bapp class of servers that is under deployment. Nicu Buculei covers all of the great work going on in the Fedora Art team, and details the discussion of Fedora 10 CD/DVD sleeves this week. David Nalley details for us the Fedora 8 and 9 security advisories for the week, and Dale Bewley gets us current with the many happenings on the four virtualization lists he covers -- the Enterprise Management Tools, Fedora Xen, library virtualization and oVirt development lists, including stories on importing appliance raw disk images, support for F10 domU on RHEL5.2 dom0, support for KVM migration, amongst others. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. FWN Editorial Team: * Pascal Calarco * Oisin Feeley * Huzaifa Sidhpurwala [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Thanksgiving [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === New Fedora 9 Re-spins === Ben Williams announced[1] the availability of a new Fedora 9 re-spin. "The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new ISO Re-Spins of Fedora 9. These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8 installation media and include all updates released as of October 4th, 2008." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-October/msg00003.h… === Fedora Test Day === James Laska announced[2] the next Fedora Test Day. "I'd like to invite testers and users to join #fedora-qa this Thursday, October 9, 2008. Testing efforts will focus[3] on gathering Fedora 10 Beta feedback and exercising GlitchFreeAudio (aka pulseaudio)." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg00003.… [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2008-10-09 === Uberpackager Replaces Packager === Toshio Kuratomi explained[4] the changes to packager groups and ACLs. "The transition from a single packager group to an entry level packager group that can only commit to packages that the person owns and a separate uberpackager group that can commit to everything has been made." Additionally, "people in uberpackager should be able to commit to any package which is open to the uberpackager group. As part of the update, all packages which were previously opened to packager/cvsextras are now opened to uberpackager." [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg00004.… == Planet Fedora == In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide. http://planet.fedoraproject.org Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === Events === Several Fedora folks posted about the Red Hat Government Users and Developers Conference. Paul Frields posted[0] a few thoughts, as did[1] Eric Christensen and Dan Walsh[2]. [0] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1212 [1] http://fedora-sparks.blogspot.com/2008/10/red-hat-govt-users-and-developers… [2] http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/24935.html === Tech Tidbits === James Laska wrote[3] about the Anaconda and NetworkManager Fedora Test Day. "Our focus this round was exercising Anaconda NetworkManager integration in Fedora 10 Beta. In preparation for the day, David Cantrell pulled together several fixes for issues discovered since the beta was released." [3] http://jlaska.livejournal.com/2257.html Jeremy Katz posted[4] about updates to the initiative to get Fedora running on the XO. "So, you just got your XO to do some testing of Fedora on OLPC. You update the software that was on there, get a developer key, wait a day, and then get all ready to boot your Fedora image off of the SD card .... And it boots. But it's slow. Very very slow. Some slowness is to be expected... this isn't a fast machine. But it should probably be a little bit speedier than it is. So want to try out a few experiments to try to help pin down the cause of the slowness? Then read on, pick a case and leave comments about your results." [4] http://katzj.livejournal.com/440444.html Karsten Wade wrote[5] about the Fedora 10 release notes. "If you dont assign someone from your sub-project or SIG to cover that content, that area will be empty for the Fedora 10 Preview and possibly final releases. Yep, its our job to remind you, edit, convert, get translated, package, and deliver. But only you can fill in the content that is missing. One thing we will do for you is hunt through your feature page and pull in any release notes content that you put there. But you have to put it there first, we cannot divine it." Read the full post for a list of topics within Fedora that are falling behind in the release notes process, and help out if you would like to. [5] http://iquaid.org/2008/10/06/your-release-notes-are-looking-thin/ == Marketing == In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: Svetoslav Chukov === Fedora's Community Attracts Experienced Users === A tale[1] of one user's experience migrating from SUSE 9 to Fedora. "I realized that Fedora is not simply a GNU/Linux distribution with great amount of software but something more than that. I would classify Fedora as combination of strong community, GNU/Linux distribution and great spirit. So, that was the best distro I would switch on. Because of the good support from the community I migrated so easily and avoiding problems." [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Ite… === Five Second Boot of a Modified Version of Fedora === As reported[1] in LWN.net, at the Linux Plumbers Developer Conference, two Linux developers at Intel demonstrated two different modified linux distributions booting in about five seconds on an 'Asus EeePC', one of which was a modified Fedora install. The article includes details on where the time savings were achieved throughout the boot process. [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/299483/ == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === Unsigned Rawhide Packages an Attack Vector? === Rahul Sundaram noticed[1] that when using PackageKit to obtain updates from the rawhide repository a warning for each package was displayed as they are all unsigned. He asked "[it] is just plain annoying. Can't we do something nice about that?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00959.html The planets may have wobbled in their orbits when Ralf Corsepius responded[2] "IMO the 'only correct approach' would be to only have signed packages in rawhide" and Rahul agreed[3] completely "[m]any of us including me run rawhide for a large time of the Fedora development cycle, a security exploit in one of our machines via a bad rawhide mirror can result in malicious packages being pushed to stable repositories or other even worse issues. We should take this attack vector seriously." He asked if the reason was due to the time delay. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00960.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00964.html Josh Boyer confirmed[4] that time delay was the central problem and added "[...] the fact that we have a very limited number of people that know the signing key." Till Maas pointed[5] to the need for more developers to help Jesse Keating implement the Sigul[6] signing server that "[...] stores the signing keys within smartcards or something similar." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00980.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00976.html [6] https://fedorahosted.org/sigul Richard Hughes suggested[7] that although PackageKit should simply abort any transaction involving an unsigned package it might be possible to add a configuration setting UnsignedPackages=abort|warn|allow to PackageKit.conf and asked for opinions on whether it was possible for "[u]pstream [to] set this to abort, and patch the package in rawhide to "allow" -- having F10 set to warn or abort[?]" In response to Denis Leroy's suggestion that such properties belonged to the repository rather than the package manager Richard agreed[8] that the policy would be implemented only if the repository declared itself as unsigned. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01004.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg01010.html === Procedure for Re-naming a Package === Two issues were raised[1] by Patrice Dumas in a post which initially asked for information on the formal procedure to rename a package and later explored the apparent lack of an active LaTeX and TeX community within the Fedora Project. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00210.html Patrice listed all the possible places on the wiki which should contain the information but failed to do so. Debarshi Ray remembered[2] a similar request on @fedora-packaging to which Tom Callaway had suggested: "[...] just open a ticket with Fedora Release Engineering (http://fedorahosted.org/rel-eng) and request the renaming of the package." A slightly different procedure was advanced[3] by Jesse Keating: "Renaming a package is just bringing in the new package, getting it reviewed, particularly for correct Provides/Obsoletes, and then requesting that the old named package be removed." Thorsten Leemhuis concurred[4] with this but pointed out that decisions made by FESCo had not been documented properly on the wiki. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-packaging/2008-October/msg00004.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00220.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00224.html The procedure appeared cumbersome to Patrice although Jesse argued[5] that a new review was useful in order to help diminish "[...] the vast number of improper Provides/Obsoletes I've ran across [.]" Patrice stuck to the idea that time spent "re-reviewing" the package would be better spent elsewhere. Specifically he worried[6] that not enough reviewers knowledgeable about TeX and LaTeX were active and able to keep pace with the "[...] rapid pace of changes linked with switching to texlive 2007 and now 2008 [.]" In response to interest from Matej Cepl he posted[7] a list of pending reviews. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00234.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00278.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00450.html === Review of trash-cli Raises Generic Naming Issues === The maintainer of the putative trash-cli package, Jean-François Martin (lokthare), asked[1] whether any package reviewers were interested in examining trash-cli . The package implements the FreeDesktop.org trash specification via the command line. The package had been partially reviewed previously by Patrice Dumas who seemed generally supportive and interested but had expressed[2] unhappiness with the generic nature of one of the command names, trash, provided by the package . The other command names are: list-trash; empty-trash;restore-trash. Patrice had suggested to Jean-Francois that other reviewers might react more favorably but that it would be better to persuade upstream to change the names of the commands. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00216.html [2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show.bug.cgi?id=448122 This objection was re-iterated[3] by Michael Schwendt with the addition of the explanation that such names increased the chances of a namespace collision between current and future packages. Reference was made to existing generic naming of samba commands by Juha Tuomala and player[4] by Yanko Kaneti. Tim Niemuller argued that for the latter case the review had covered the naming problem and decided that adhering to upstream convention in the absence of present conflicts was the best policy as it allowed users to easily reproduce commands found elsewhere on the internet. A longish exchange followed in which Patrice argued[5] that upstreams should consider such issues more carefully and suggested[6] that individual distributions could follow Debian's example and override upstream naming choices when necessary. Tim put[7] the case for respecting upstream choices as long as there were no obvious current conflicts. His suggestion to use /etc/alternatives to resolve the problem was challenged[8] by Toshio Kuratomi as an inappropriate use. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00223.html [4] Player is part of a robot and sensor research system: http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/ [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00287.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00324.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00359.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00320.html Re-naming was considered[9] by Jean-Francois early on in the discussion and Rahul Sundaram recommended[10] alerting one of the FreeDesktop.org email lists to the change. Behdad Esfahbod suggested renaming all the commands to follow the pattern trash-* and was engaged[11] by the primary developer Andrea Francia in a discussion about why this might be preferable. Matt Miller wondered if it was a real problem and Andrea provided[12] a list of all the possible "trash" programs to show that none of them conflicted. Jesse Keating commented[13] that this was because "[...] all of them were smart enough to avoid falling into the generic trap." The bugzilla entry indicated[14] that upstream was going to rename the commands and the trash-cli commands will be available with the next release. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00218.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00219.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00251.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00327.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00330.html [14] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show.bug.cgi?id=448122 PackageKit-gstreamer-plugins Obsoletes Codeina Richard Hughes wondered[1] what he was doing wrong with the specfile for the PackageKit-gstreamer-plugins package. This package allows individual applications to call PackageKit to install[2] missing codecs. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00281.html [2] http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2008/10/02/codec-install-in-fedora-10/ The bugzilla error filed[3] against the package reported that it conflicted with the codeina package[4], which was the previous method to install plugins for GStreamer aware applications. Richard wondered if a simple Obsoletes: codeina Provides: codeina would do the trick, but Paul Howarth cautioned[5] "[u]nversioned obsoletes are bad and should be avoided like the plague." Matej Cepl suggested[6] using the RPM name and version macros: Obsoletes: codeina < 0.10.1-10 Provides: codeina = %{version}-%{release} [3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show.bug.cgi?id=465723 [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/Codeina [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00284.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00443.html Ville Skyttä wondered "[i]s the Provides: above appropriate in the first place, or should only the Obsoletes: be there? The only thing PackageKit-gstreamerplugin and codeina appear to have in common is /usr/libexec/gst-install-pluginshelper." Jesse Keating disputed[7] this but Villä explained[8] that "Dropping the Provides would mean that if something had a depdendency on codeina, that dep would be broken, and that pk-gstreamer-plugin couldn't be installed with "yum install codeina". I don't think it'd have any effect on whether pk-gstreamerplugin would/wouldn't be applied as an upgrade over installed codeina e.g. by yum (assuming the Obsoletes is left there)." He proved[9] his point with a practical example and this combined with James Antill's observation[10] seemed[11] convincing. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00468.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00471.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00480.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00481.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00483.html === LXDE Feature Removal Disappointment - How to Avoid === Some possible problems with the package review process were raised when Christoph Wickert expressed[1] disappointment over the removal of his Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE)[2] Feature from Fedora 10 without any apparent notification coming his way. The discussion was positive and restrained although Christoph was obviously upset. Christoph admitted that his feature was late but pleaded that he had followed the Feature Wrangler's advice and argued that the FESCo deliberations incorrectly assumed that most of his packages were unready. He requested an explanation of the concerns about breaking the string freeze as this was the other main reason for omitting LXDE from Fedora 10. Bill Nottingham explained that "Groups in comps (and their descriptions) are translatable strings; adding or changing them breaks the string freeze [...]" and added that "[t]he feature is supposed to be testable by the feature freeze, which is the same time as the string freeze." Christoph argued[3] that in that case he should have been informed earlier. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00408.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Features/LXDE#LXDE [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00422.html Suggestions made[4][5] by Kevin Kofler to hack around the translation problem were rebutted[6] by Bill Nottingham as not following the string freeze policy and he also listed the uncompleted parts of the feature and wondered "[...] exactly what else is there to do when even the basic scope and test plan of the feature isn't ready?" Christoph responded[7] fully and explained that his outrage was because of a lack of communication from anyone and incorrect assumptions made during the FESCo deliberations. He thanked Bill for his feedback. Christoph contended that the necessary packages had in fact passed review contrary to an assumption that none of them had done so. The existence of this assumption was disputed[8] by Brian Pepple. Christoph explained that in addition he had waited fruitlessly for FESCo to give him permission to make changes to comps. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00446.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00457 [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00461.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00484.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00521.html Toshio Kuratomi tried[9] to calm the discussion by avoiding assigning fault to any party. He suggested trading reviews with other people, explained that any maintainer can make changes to comps without waiting for FESCo and suggested some improvements to the communication process. Apparently MediaWiki handles watches differently to MoinMoin and this might explain some missed information. But Toshio disavowed some of the stronger assertions made by Christoph as "unfair" and reminded him "[t]he Feature Page shows that the feature is not done. Checking bugzilla shows that the page is up-to-date in regards to the package review status. Beta is a deadline for features and that has come and gone. So the Feature is plainly not completed whether you were contacted or not; whether the people who commented knew all the particulars or only some." Finally Toshio interpreted the lack of FESCo commentary to "[...] a bunch of polite people not jumping in to say 'Me too' [.]" This part of the discussion did not seem to go much further, but Nicolas Mailhot added[10] the interesting observation that "Comps is both central and under-regulated. You'll have a hard time finding who is supposed to approve comps policy, and the files themselves are wide open. However out of respect both for the people working on comps translations, and for the people working of comps consumers, I personally wouldn't make any deep restructuring such as new group creation after test1 (to give people time to react)." [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00493.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00514.html Richard W. M. Jones supported[11] the idea that FESCo members were making decisions without reading the documentation or being interested in the topics and cited MinGW as another example. He suggested that FESCo members should volunteer to produces packages for MinGW. Josh Boyer dismissed[12] the accusations firmly and stated his own interest in MinGW and participation in the debate. The particular example of MinGW seemed ancillary to the central question and ended[13] in irascible disagreement when Richard re-iterated his request and accused FESCo members of lacking sufficient knowledge. The history of MinGW development has included[14] substantial disagreements due to the desire to[15] create a separate repository for it in opposition to Richard's wishes. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00494.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00508.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00511.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00519.html [15] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142#MinGW.on.Fedora Josh pointed to the finite amount of time FESCo board members have at their disposal: "If FESCo has to go and be an intimate part of a Feature in order for it to get approved or discussed, then that is what I would consider to be a very large failure. Reality dictates that the 9 people in FESCo do not have infinite time to do explicit things with every single Feature that gets presented. FESCo is a steering committee. We rely on you, the developers, to do your part for Features." Josh noted that other Fedora 10-approved Features had been dropped simply because of their owners failing to follow the process: "They were dropped later for nothing more than lack of following the Feature process. Not out of spite, or lack of interest, or some evil desire to promote only things that some Cabal cares about." Separately Josh explained[16] that although the advertising advantage of declaring LXDE a Fedora 10 Feature had been missed it did not mean Christoph's work was wasted. [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00510.html While sympathetic to Christoph and extremely interested in LXDE Kevin Fenzi was[17] largely in agreement with Bill Nottingham and Josh Boyer that "[LXDE] was not testable by Beta, so it shouldn't be advertised as a feature this time. I'm sorry that that is due to communication problems. ;( I find it very unfortunate." He suggested that although there had been a string freeze it would be possible to make LXDE a Feature for Fedora 11. Christoph appeared[18] unhappy still but keen to move forward with these suggestions. [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00495.html [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00513.html David Woodhouse expressed[19] regret at the lack of communication, sought further details to avoid such failures in the future and suggested "[o]ne thing we can do in future to make that situation better is Cc the feature owners when the meeting agenda is sent to fedora-devel-list." As a related matter he urged "[l]et's get the final two packages reviewed -- and that's another area where we could do with some improvement, because failing to approve packages really _is_ verging on the 'deletionism' you spoke of. But that's a separate discussion." He later proposed[20] "[...] that each FESCo member should try to work on at least one package review per week. Each week at the FESCo meeting, we'll ask members which reviews they've worked on in the past week [...] ad anyone else who considers themselves an active member of the Fedora development community should also try to do the same." The size of the review queue was cited by John Poelstra as 1,212 which surprised[21] Hans de Goede into suggesting review swapping as a solution: "[...] what we should be promoting much more is exchange reviews. Just post a mail to fedora-devel-list, saying I've got these and these packages which need review, and I'll gladly review any other package in return." Patrice Dumas analyzed[22] the situation slightly differently and noted that many of the review requests were blocked upon waiting for upstream changes. He thought that "[...] the ratio of review requests that nobody had a look at over the number of fedora contributors" would be a statistic which might indicate if there were a problem with a lack of reviewers. [19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00553.html [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00673.html [21] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00829.html [22] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00836.html Matters seemed to end amicably enough when Brian Pepple corrected[23] Christoph's assumption that FESCo meeting summaries were not being posted to @fedora-devel and this was accepted[24] with apologies by Christoph. [23] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00529.html [24] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00649.html The positive note continued to be sounded when Chuck Anderson asked[25] for some practical advice on how he could help out with reviews and Christoph sought[26] information on how to find suitable outstanding reviews. [25] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00854.html [26] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg00850.html == Documentation == In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject Contributing Writer: Jason Taylor === Fedora 10 Release Notes === This week marked the freeze time for the release notes for the Preview Release of Fedora 10. There was a lot of work done by the team in getting the notes updated, edited, converted to xml and ready for the translation team. It was a little late[1] due to lots of content and tooling changes but with the added time taken less updates will be needed for the final release. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-October/msg00103.html Fedora Wiki Mailing List There was conversation this week about the possibility of making a fedora-wiki mailing list[1]. Some of the reasons for making a wiki-centric list are that groups unrelated to documentation could ask questions but not have the documentation related information that the @fedora-docs-list generates to sort through and a forum for wiki questions that aren't related to documentation but Fedora Project usage of the wiki. After a series of replies supporting the creation of a wiki list, it looks like it will be implemented in the near future. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2008-October/msg00069.html == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === Documentation Repository Updates === PaulFrields (stickster) announced[1] the updated repository information for Fedora Documentation. Submissions to the "master" branch for the documents is currently enabled[2] via https://translate.fedoraproject.org. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00049.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00052.html === Release Notes .pot File Delayed === KarstenWade (quaid) announced[3] a day's delay in the Fedora 10 Release Notes .pot file, due to content changes and rewriting. The currently projected date and time for its availability is 0700 UTC 12 October '08. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00062.html === Virt-* Modules Cannot Be Submitted Via Transifex === Translations for all the virt-* modules cannot be submitted[4] via https://translate.fedoraproject.org. The backend repository of these modules are currently hosted on hg.et.redhat.com, which is inaccessible[5] from Transifex. With the Fedora 10 translation deadline approaching fast, this issue is still unresolved. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00033.html [5] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=435412 == Infrastructure == This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: Huzaifa Sidhpurwala === Some Architectural Changes === Mike McGrath wrote[1] on the @fedora-infrastructure-list that we have finally completed some consolidation we have been working on for the past couple of months. We have also added a new class of server (bappX servers). The bapp servers (there's only one right now) will be our job control servers. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-October/msg… == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Fedora 10 CD/DVD Sleeves === Jarod Wen started to work on a set of CD and DVD sleeves for Fedora 10 "The style of the design follows the previous version used in Fedora 9. Most of the sources used in these design are from the source of Solar theme of Fedora 10" publishing a first draft[1] to @fedora-art. As first reactions, Ian Weller stressed[2] the importance of using the MgOpen Modata font "[...] as that's the font that Fedora uses for pretty much everything in their designs" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00049.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00050.html A concern about the number of colors was raised by Rahul Sundaram[3] "IIRC, the number of different colors shoots up the printing cost of the material drastically" and Paul Frields[4] "Make sure that the printing of the design is going to be a reasonable cost for the Ambassadors bulk-ordering the discs. If there are any sort of color restrictions, we should get those figured out up-front" but was cleared[5] by MairinDuffy "Actually you don't have to worry about this for the sleeves. It is only the disc designs themselves that are color-limited because of the screen printing process used to print them." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00051.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00057.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00059.html Another concern was raised by Mairin about the use of potentially tainted older version of the Solar theme "That is the old one, so you shouldn't use it. Please don't use any images from round 2, only round 3", a problem quickly corrected by Jarod in a second7] and third[8] drafts. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00065.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00066.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00071.html Also Paul proposed[4] the addition of an informative text "For Live CD, include a small bit of information about how to use the media: `This disc contains a complete bootable Fedora environment. To use it, make sure your computer supports booting from its CD or DVD drive. Then insert the disc, turn the computer's power on, and follow the prompts. If you enjoy this Fedora environment, you can copy it to your computer using the desktop 'Install to Hard Disk' icon. For further assistance, visit help.fedoraproject.org'". The proposal was followed[9] by a comparison between SUSE and Fedora sleeves from John Poelstra: "Here is an interesting comparison I noticed at OSCON this year after stopping by the SuSE booth [...] I realize there are differing philosophies as to how much or little content should be on the cover and what it should say :)" Nicu also offered[10] his opinion regarding this comparison "Maybe *I* am not the target audience[1], but I do not like the SUSE cover, its too busy, with so much text that is simply makes me to not read it. Only the 'Novell' word grab my attention, but not too much. It's boring and a 'corporate' look. I like how from the first look I can understand that the other disc is a DVD and is Fedora. " [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00073.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00077.html == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * mediawiki-1.13.2-41.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg001… * ruby-1.8.6.287-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg002… * condor-7.0.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg002… * postfix-2.5.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg002… * dbus-1.2.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg002… === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * mediawiki-1.13.2-40.99.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg002… * postfix-2.5.5-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg002… * ruby-1.8.6.287-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg002… == Virtualization == In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley === Enterprise Management Tools List === This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list ==== Importing Appliance Raw Disk Images ==== Bryan Kearney cross-posted[1] an RFC to the @thincrust-devel[2] list. The goal being the ability to importing "appliance" disk images. Cole Robinson said[3], "the whole problem of taking an existing disk image and turning into something useful is not handled well by any of the virt-* tools", and wondered where best to add it. Daniel P. Berrange said[4], "the live cd installer class in virtinst can basically do 90% of the neccessary stuff already". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00086.html [2] http://www.thincrust.net/ [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00088.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-October/msg00093.html === Fedora Xen List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ==== Support for F10 domU on RHEL5.2 dom0 ==== Jon Stanley noticed[1] that a RHEL 5.2 dom0 was unable to install a current Fedora 10 Rawhide domU. Mark McLoughlin explained[2] that the "older virt-install doesn't know to look in the 'images-xen' stanza in the '.treeinfo' file to determine which images to use". Patches are being backported to RHEL 5.3 for this[3]. A further issue[4] is a lack of bzimage support in the libxc of RHEL. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00002.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00003.html [3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/460585 [4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/457199 Michael Young asked[5] about a timeline for these patches and expressed concern that there could be "a period of time where there won't be any supported Redhat or Fedora platform to run Xen guests, and of course the lack of current support in RHEL is reducing the testing that Fedora 10 xen is getting." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00006.html === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== KVM Domain Migration Not Yet Supported ==== Kenneth Nagin noticed[1] a problem migrating a KVM guest. Daniel P. Berrange said[2] that's because it's not yet supported. "Currently KVM's private fork of QEMU has some migration support, but this is not written in a suitable way for " libvirt "to use - it blocks the QEMU monitor on startup. Upstream QEMU is getting better migration support and once that's done we can support it in libvirt." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00147.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00148.html ==== Disable QEMU Drive Cacheing ==== Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] a patch with the following explaination. QEMU defaults to allowing the host OS to cache all disk I/O. This has a couple of problems * It is a waste of memory because the guest already caches I/O ops * It is unsafe on host OS crash - all unflushed guest I/O will be lost, and there's no ordering guarantees, so metadata updates could be flushed to disk, while the journal updates were not. Say goodbye to your filesystem. * It makes benchmarking more or less impossible / worthless because what the benchmark things are disk writes just sit around in memory so guest disk performance appears to exceed host diskperformance. This patch disables caching on all QEMU guests. NB, Xen has long done this for both PV & HVM guests - QEMU only gained this ability when -drive was introduced, and sadly kept the default to unsafe cache=on settings. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00180.html ==== NSIS Windows Installer in Nightly Builds ==== Richard W.M. Jones added[1] NSIS[2] support to generate a Windows installer in the nightly build. Richard also recently blogged[3] on the subject on MinGW and NSIS. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00191.html [2] http://nsis.sourceforge.net/ [3] http://camltastic.blogspot.com/2008/10/mingw-compile-software-for-windows.h… In reply to another thread[4] Daniel P. Berrange explained support is targeted for "client-mode only. ie, allow use of libvirt clients to connect to remote Linux hosts running libvirtd", and that there is no emminent Hyper-V or VMWare support. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00304.html ==== Domain Events API Progress ==== Ben Guthro posted[1] patches to implement domain state transition events which were previously discussed[2]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00245.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00321.html === oVirt Devel List === This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. ==== oVirt Qpid API ==== Ian Main continues to work[1] on a qpid API for oVirt which leverages the device enumeration[2] and qpid support[3] in libvirt. Ian extended the oVirt API to include network configuration information. Ian also posted[4] a demo script. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00101.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue146#Host_Device_Enumeration_API [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue146#QPID_Modeling_Framework_and_lib… [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00150.html -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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Fedora 10 Snapshot 1 Released
by Jesse Keating 10 Oct '08

10 Oct '08

As part of our development schedule, we are releasing a snapshot of Rawhide in Live form. We are releasing these via bittorrent only as it is a much lighter weight method to get bits out the door than to go through our mirroring system. If you cannot use bittorrent we apologize for the inconvenience. http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/ has a section marked F10-Snap1 with Live torrents. There are no install images at this time due to ongoing bugs with the installer. Please us bugzilla to report any problems you find (after making sure that somebody else hasn't already reported the issues). The Beta release notes ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Beta/ReleaseNotes ) still mostly apply. Thanks for all the testing! -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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New Fedora 9 Re-spins
by Ben Williams 06 Oct '08

06 Oct '08

The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new ISO Re-Spins of Fedora 9. These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8 installation media and include all updates released as of October 4th, 2008. The ISO images are available for i386, x86_64 architectures via Jigdo and Torrent starting Tuesday October 7th, 2008. Go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins to get the bits! DVD Media Only Due to known problems in comps, this is a DVD Only Re-spin. The CD version would have required all 6 to 7 discs to install. Full Installation Problems if Language Support Groups Selected Selecting some language groups will cause file conflict errors, such as reported and explained in #465715 <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465715> Thanks to We would like to give a special thanks to the following for testing this Re-Spin: - Harley-D Dana Hoffman Jr - zcat Jason Farrell - vwbusguy- Scott Williams - Southern_Gentleman Ben Williams - kanarip Jeroen van Meeuwen - baard1973 Stefan Hartsuiker - troubi_51 Corentin Perard Testing Results A full test matrix can be found at our Test Matrix <http://spins.fedoraunity.org/Members/Southern_Gentleman/fedora-9-20081004-r…> A full list of bugs, packages and changelogs that have been updated in this Re-Spin can be reviewed on http://spins.fedoraunity.org/changelogs/20081004/ Previous Re-Spin (20080718) will expire Due to limited resources, this spin will immediately obsolete 20080718, which will be deleted from our mirrors in the next few days. Fedora Unity has taken up the Re-Spin task to provide the community with the chance to install Fedora with recent updates already included. These updates might otherwise comprise more than 2.05GiB of downloads for a full install. This is a community project, for and by the community. You can contribute to the community by joining our test process. Go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins to get the bits! Assistance Needed If you are interested in helping with the testing or mirroring efforts, please contact the Fedora Unity team. Contact information is available at http://fedoraunity.org/ <http://fedoraunity.org/Members/> or the #fedora-unity channel on the Freenode IRC Network (irc.freenode.net). To report bugs in the Re-Spins please use http://bugs.fedoraunity.org/ -- Ben Williams Window-Linux Specialist Mathematics Department-Virginia Tech 561E McBryde Hall 540 231-2739

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