devel-announce August 2011

devel-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org

6 participants
11 discussions

Announcing the release of Fedora 16 Alpha!!
by Dennis Gilmore 23 Aug '11

23 Aug '11

The Fedora 16 "Verne" Alpha release is available! This release offers a preview of some of the best free and open source technology currently under development. Catch a glimpse of the future: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease == What is the Alpha release? == The Alpha release contains all the exciting features of Fedora 16 in a form that anyone can help test. This testing, guided by the Fedora QA team, helps us target and identify bugs. When these bugs are fixed, we make a Beta release available. A Beta release is code-complete, and bears a very strong resemblance to the third and final release. The final release of Fedora 16 is due in early November. We need your help to make Fedora 16 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it -- every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide. Together, we can make Fedora a rock-solid distribution. (Read down to the end of the announcement for more information on how to help.) Features This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Examples include: * System Boot. Fedora 16 introduces GRUB2, the long-awaited next-generation boot-loader for Linux. GRUB2 automatically recognizes other operating systems, supports LVM2 and LUKS partitions, and is more customizable than the previous version. In this release, only x86 systems with a BIOS uses GRUB2 by default. Work is ongoing for making GRUB2 the default for other architectures and systems. * Services Management. Fedora 15 introduced the Systemd services management program. This release features better integration of Systemd via conversion to native systemd services from legacy init scripts in many software components -- for desktop users, this means faster boot times; for system administrators it means more powerful management of services. * Desktop Updates. The two major desktop environments have been updated to the latest releases: KDE Software Compilation 4.7 and GNOME 3.1 development release. * SELinux Enhancements. SELinux policy package now includes a pre-built policy that will only rebuild policy if any customizations have been made. A sample test run shows 4 times speedup on installing the package from 48 Seconds to 12 Seconds and max memory usage from 38M to 6M. In addition to that, SELinux file name transition allows better policy management. For instance, policy writers can take advantage of this and write a policy rule that states, if a SELinux unconfined process creates a file named resolv.conf in a directory labelled etc_t, the file should get labeled appropriately. This results is less chances of mislabeled files. Also, from this release onwards, selinuxfs is mounted at /sys/fs/selinux instead of in /selinux. All the affected components including anaconda, dracut, livecd-tools and policycoreutils have been modified to work with this change. * System Accounts. Fedora now standardizes on login.defs as authority for UID/GID space allocation, and has moved boundary between system and user accounts from 500 to 1000 to match conventions followed by several other Linux distributions. Upgrading from a existing release will not be affected by this change and you can use kickstart to override this change during installation if necessary. * Chrony NTP. Fedora has switched over to using Chrony as the default NTP client. There are several advantages including smaller memory footprint (1.3MB vs 6MB resident size), no unnecessary process wakeups which results in better power savings. better timekeeping on systems not running 24/7 or without permanent internet connection or with low quality/unstable clocks (virtual machines). Once the clock is synchronized, applications are not upset by backward time jumps. system-config-date and GNOME settings daemon has been modified to use Chrony as well. * HAL Removal. HAL, a hardware abstraction layer which has been a deprecated component for several releases, has been completely removed from all Fedora spins and DVD. Software components using HAL have moved over to using udisks and upower as well as libudev for device discovery. This results in faster system bootup and faster startup for applications depending on device discovery. * Cloud Updates. Fedora now includes a number of new and improved features to support cloud computing, including a "cloud ready" version of GlusterFS, including additional auth*/crypto/multi-tenancy; pacemaker-cloud, application service high availability in a cloud environment; Condor Cloud, an IaaS cloud implementation using Condor and the Deltacloud API, and Aeolus. * Virtualization. Once again Fedora raises the bar on virtualization support, including expanded virtual network support, an improved Spice for managing virtual machines, restored Xen support, a new virtual machine lock manager, and improved ability to browse guest file systems. * Developer Improvements. Developers get many goodies with Verne, including updated Ada, Haskell and Perl environments, a new Python plugin for GCC and a number of new and improved APIs. These and many other improvements provide a wide and solid base for future Fedora releases. This release increases the range of possibilities for developers and helps Fedora to maintain its position at the leading edge of free and open source technology. A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/16/FeatureList We also have nightly composes of alternate spins available here: http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/ == Issues and Details == For more information including common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_16_Alpha_release_notes A shorter list of common bugs can be found here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F16_bugs == Contributing == Bug reports are helpful, especially for Alpha. If you encounter any issues please report them and help make this release of Fedora the best ever. Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora project!

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Please rebuild your package with latest translation
by Noriko Mizumoto 22 Aug '11

22 Aug '11

Dear Fedora package maintainers To have Fedora 16 high standard in non-English versions, Fedora Localization will have our review packages process using the image composed specifically for this purpose. This image will be composed between 25-26 August. Then many different languages' translators can actually install the image, review your package translation quality and modify it or file a bug if any before translation deadline. Therefore, could you please take your latest translation from Transifex and rebuild your package with it by then for composing? Many thanks noriko Fedora Localization

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Fedora 16 Alpha is hereby declared GOLD!
by Robyn Bergeron 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

At the F16 Alpha Go/No-Go Meeting that just occurred, the Fedora 16 Alpha release was declared GOLD. F16 Alpha will be released Tuesday, August 23, 2011. Thanks to all of those who helped out to make this happen, as always -- we wouldn't be here without everyone's assistance and hard work. For those interested in the details... Minutes: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-08-17/f16_alpha_gono-g… Logs: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-08-17/f16_alpha_gono-g… Documentation folks: Please note that there is a known bug that is being requested to be documented in the Alpha release notes; details are in the logs/minutes. Thank you!! Cheers, -Robyn Full minutes follow below: =================================================== #fedora-meeting: F16 Alpha Go/No-Go Meeting (redux) =================================================== Meeting started by adamw at 21:05:45 UTC. The full logs are available at http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-08-17/f16_alpha_gono-g… Meeting summary --------------- * roll call (adamw, 21:06:18) * present nirik tflink, thedonvaughn, pjones, athmane, gr72, nb, cebbert, viking_ice, boblfoot (adamw, 21:07:33) * preamble (adamw, 21:07:49) * the Purpose of the Go/No-Go is to gather yay/nay's from Release Engineering, QA, and devel on whether or not what we have put together is ready for release and meets the release criteria. (adamw, 21:08:18) * LINK: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_15_Alpha_Release_Criteria (rbergeron, 21:10:36) * LINK: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_16_Alpha_Release_Criteria (rbergeron, 21:11:13) * LINK: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Current_Release_Blockers (rbergeron, 21:11:32) * LINK: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_16_Alpha_RC5_Install (adamw, 21:11:49) * LINK: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_16_Alpha_RC5_Base (adamw, 21:11:58) * There are no remaining proposed blockers, and no unresolved approved blockers. (rbergeron, 21:11:58) * LINK: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_16_Alpha_RC5_Desktop (adamw, 21:12:11) * AGREED: : document 731529 as a known bug, to be fixed by beta as it is a blocker, in alpha release notes (rbergeron, 21:18:41) * AGREED: document 731529 as a known bug, to be fixed by beta as it is a blocker, in alpha release notes (rbergeron, 21:19:05) * ACTION: rbergeron to copy docs for release notes purposes on meeting minutes (rbergeron, 21:19:30) * QA is a 'go' - no remaining unresolved blockers, test matrices look good. (rbergeron, 21:20:20) * release engineering (rbergeron, 21:20:24) * release engineering is a 'go', no issues are known, nirik is channeling dgilmore. :) (rbergeron, 21:22:52) * Devel (rbergeron, 21:22:58) * Nirik is in for fesco/devel - he is a go. (rbergeron, 21:23:26) * It's a go! (rbergeron, 21:23:34) * Release will be tuesday, 2011-08-23. (rbergeron, 21:23:55) * ACTION: rbergeron to send out meeting notes to appropriate lists. (rbergeron, 21:24:05) * RC5 is our guy. All parties needed for this meeting agree that we are GO. (rbergeron, 21:24:27) * Any other business? (rbergeron, 21:25:33) * dgilmore has verified that releng is a go. (rbergeron, 21:30:31) Meeting ended at 21:30:52 UTC. Action Items ------------ * rbergeron to copy docs for release notes purposes on meeting minutes * rbergeron to send out meeting notes to appropriate lists. Action Items, by person ----------------------- * rbergeron * rbergeron to copy docs for release notes purposes on meeting minutes * rbergeron to send out meeting notes to appropriate lists. * **UNASSIGNED** * (none) People Present (lines said) --------------------------- * rbergeron (57) * adamw (49) * nirik (16) * gr72 (11) * thedonvaughn (9) * jsmith (7) * nb (5) * zodbot (5) * Viking_Alpha (5) * pjones (4) * robatino (3) * tflink (2) * cebbert (2) * dgilmore (2) * BobLfoot (1) * jforbes_kvmforum (1) * clumens (1) * athmane (1) Generated by `MeetBot`_ 0.1.4 .. _`MeetBot`: http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot

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Fedora 16 Alpha Go/No-Go Meeting #2, Wednesday, August 17 @ 17:00 EDT
by Robyn Bergeron 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

Sorry for belated notice, though I've talked to almost everyone involved about the timing - have been travelling. Join us on irc.freenode.net #fedora-meeting for this important meeting. Wednesday, August 17, 2011 @22:00 UTC (17:00 EDT/14:00 PDT) "Before each public release Development, QA and Release Engineering meet to determine if the release criteria are met for a particular release. This meeting is called the: Go/No-Go Meeting." "Verifying that the Release criteria are met is the responsibility of the QA Team." For more details about this meeting see: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Go_No_Go_Meeting In the meantime, keep an eye on the Fedora 16 Alpha Blocker list: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Current_Release_Blockers -Robyn

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evolution-data-server's libcamel soname version bump in Fedora 16/rawhide for 3.1.90 next week
by Milan Crha 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

Hi, just after 3.1.5 release of evolution-data-server was added an API change in libcamel, thus the next week, when 3.1.90 will be released and I'll do an update in Fedora 16/rawhide, anything depending on libcamel will require a rebuild. Again, I'll take care of everything I will be able to, and I'll also add it to the same update as evolution-data-server. After my yesterday turn, there are still packages I cannot do anything with, also because other dependency issues with them (like almanah depending on libcrypt), but I will do my best to make this (most likely final) soname version bump not that painful for others. Bye, Milan

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evolution-data-server soname version bump for rawhide/Fedora 16 next week
by Milan Crha 11 Aug '11

11 Aug '11

Hi, I just want to let you know that evolution-data-server 3.1.5 release, which is about to happen the next week, on August 15th, +/-, changes soname versions for almost everything it provides, namely libedataserver, libecal, libedatacal, libebook, libedatabook. Anything depending on it would be rebuild on both branches against newer eds, when its update will be done. I will rebuild all to which I have commit rights by the end of the week, after the release. Bye, Milan

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Fedora 16 Alpha to slip by one week.
by Robyn Bergeron 11 Aug '11

11 Aug '11

Today at the Go/No-Go meeting it was decided to slip the Alpha by one week[1]. Minutes follow below. There are numerous unresolved blocker bugs at this time[2], requiring the creation of an RC4 once these blockers are resolved. As a result, ALL MAJOR MILESTONES, and their dependent tasks, will be pushed out by one week. We will proceed with having the F16 Alpha readiness meeting tomorrow, 2011-08-11, as previously announced on the Logistics mailing list. We will have another F16 Alpha Blocker Bug meeting this Friday. The adjustments to the F16 schedule will be done (very late) tonight, and published to the Schedule wiki page[3]. Thanks for your patience. We will be meeting again next Wednesday for another Go/No-Go meeting. -Robyn [1] Logs: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-08-10/f16_alpha_gono-g… Minutes: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-08-10/f16_alpha_gono-g… [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Current_Release_Blockers [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/16/Schedule =========================================== #fedora-meeting: F16 Alpha Go/No-Go Meeting =========================================== Meeting started by rbergeron at 21:00:26 UTC. The full logs are available at http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2011-08-10/f16_alpha_gono-g… Meeting summary --------------- * present: spot, codeblock, dgilmore, pjones, athmane, cebbert, jsmith-mobile, adamw (rbergeron, 21:03:42) * Go/No-Go Meeting (rbergeron, 21:04:07) * the Purpose of the Go/No-Go is to gather yay/nay's from Release Engineering, QA, and devel on whether or not what we have put together is ready for release and meets the release criteria. (rbergeron, 21:05:28) * LINK: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Go_No_Go_Meeting (adamw, 21:06:17) * LINK: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Current_Release_Blockers <-- that one I know by heart, though. (rbergeron, 21:06:42) * Proposed Blockers (rbergeron, 21:09:50) * LINK: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=729563 (rbergeron, 21:10:04) * clumens has an updates image (linked in BZ) for people to try out. (rbergeron, 21:12:33) * AGREED: : #729563, NTH Alpha, consider adding criterion for selinux must be enabled by default later. (rbergeron, 21:14:39) * http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=729500 (rbergeron, 21:15:04) * Error while installing updates on Fedora 16 Alpha RC3 (rbergeron, 21:15:20) * AGREED: revisit #729563 at Blocker meeting friday, try to get more testers. PLEASE TEST THIS ONE AND TRY TO DUPLICATE, FOLKS! (rbergeron, 21:17:34) * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=729528 (rbergeron, 21:17:53) * #729528 - Unable to configure events in reporter to forward in anaconda for F-16-Alpha-RC3 (rbergeron, 21:18:09) * AGREED: #729528 Alpha Blocker, per criterion of installer must be able to report failures to BZ, wiht appropriate info included. (rbergeron, 21:22:19) * http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=729537 (rbergeron, 21:22:53) * 729537 - Anaconda cannot report crashes in text mode in F16 Alpha RC3 due to missing report-cli (rbergeron, 21:23:14) * AGREED: 729537 Alpha Blocker, per criterion of installer must be able to report failures to BZ, with appropriate info included. (rbergeron, 21:25:32) * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=728707 (rbergeron, 21:25:48) * 728707 - on package upgrade RPM is removing empty directories accidentally (rbergeron, 21:26:02) * AGREED: 728707 is a blocker under 'must be able to install updates' criterion - this constitutes not installing updates properly (adamw, 21:33:36) * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=729600 (adamw, 21:37:37) * LINK: http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/15/html/Installation_Guide/Makin… (jlk, 21:47:30) * AGREED: 729600 not blocker or nth, installing from a dd'ed DVD iso is expected to require extra configuration. documentation should be improved to outline the steps required (adamw, 21:56:27) * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=728863 (adamw, 21:57:30) * go/no-go vote (adamw, 22:00:30) * AGREED: Fedora 16 Alpha is no-go at this time (adamw, 22:01:32) * ACTION: rbergeron will take care of updating the schedules (adamw, 22:02:04) * open floor (adamw, 22:03:40) Meeting ended at 22:05:08 UTC. Action Items ------------ * rbergeron will take care of updating the schedules Action Items, by person ----------------------- * rbergeron * rbergeron will take care of updating the schedules * **UNASSIGNED** * (none) People Present (lines said) --------------------------- * adamw (167) * rbergeron (73) * pjones (66) * jlk (49) * dgilmore (36) * Viking_Alpha (35) * tflink (32) * clumens (22) * nirik (20) * zodbot (6) * spot (4) * cebbert (3) * athmane (2) * CodeBlock (2) * jsmith-mobile (1) * tk009 (1) * cwickert (1) * jsmith (1) Generated by `MeetBot`_ 0.1.4 .. _`MeetBot`: http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot

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New hardened build support (coming) in F16
by Adam Jackson 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

tl;dr version: If you have a security-sensitive package, and wish to enable some gcc-level hardening features with a modest performance impact, you will soon be able to enable them (nearly) automagically by rebuilding with this line in your spec file: %define _hardened_build 1 Now for the details. * 1: what are we trying to do? There are three somewhat-overlapping build features in play here. The first one is called "relro", which instructs the linker to emit some relocations in a special segment that can be marked read-only after relocation processing is finished but before you call into main(). Or in English: more things that you've asked to be const, will actually be const. This on its own is quite cheap, and so it has been enabled globally as of redhat-rpm-config-9.1.0-13.fc16. By default, not all symbols are resolved that early in program execution. In particular, functions are resolved lazily the first time they're called. This makes startup faster, and since not all functions are actually called in typical program execution, usually makes total execution time faster. However, if all symbols were resolved early, the relro feature could do a better job, and virtually all relocations could be made read-only. The '-z now' flag to the linker makes this happen, and an app so linked is said to be "Full RELRO" instead of "Partial RELRO". Finally, applications may be built as position-independent executables, by passing -fPIC or -fPIE at build time and -pie at link time. This allows the runtime linker to randomize the placement of the executable at runtime, which makes it more difficult for an attacker to guess the address of writeable memory. * 2: how do we go about doing it? The non-PIE parts of this are trivial, just pass the appropriate flags to the linker and you're done. PIE is more difficult, both at build time and at link time. Although both -fPIC and -fPIE produce position-independent code at the assembly level, -fPIE will (at least on amd64) produce relocation types that are only valid in an executable. This means you can't just say -fPIE in CFLAGS: your libraries will fail to link. (PIC objects in a PIE executable are fine; PIE objects in a PIC library are not. When in doubt, -fPIC.) Likewise, at link time, the -pie and -shared options are mutually exclusive. ld.gold will simply refuse to execute if you specify both. ld.bfd will (afaict) let whichever one comes last win, and if that happens to be -pie when you're building a shared library it will fail to link because it won't be able to find a _start symbol. All of this is only an issue because most build systems don't let you say different CFLAGS or LDFLAGS for shared libraries and executables. Sigh. So instead, we'll teach gcc to figure it out. To do this we'll use the -specs flag to pass some rewrite rules to the compiler driver. At compile time, if we don't see -fPIC or -fPIE on the command line, we'll add -fPIC. At link time, if we don't see -shared, we'll add -pie. This way we build relocatable objects that are always suitable for either type of final link object, and we'll only attempt to build a PIE if we know we're not building a shared library. Victory! * 3: what does this mean for you? The link-time bit of the last paragraph required a bit of gcc magic to get right (previously specs rules could only add strings to the command line of the program to invoke; they could not rewrite gcc's notion of which flags had been passed in the first place). Thanks to a patch from Jakub Jelinek, this is now fixed in gcc-4.6.1-7.fc16, and will be in gcc 4.7 and later. As a result, %defined _hardened_build 1 will not work until that gcc update has gone through. Once that's done (and redhat-rpm-config-9.1.0-15.fc16 has been gone through updates), if you're using a %configure-style spec file, defining the magic macro is all you have to do. The rpm macros will notice the macro, and put the right magic into CFLAGS and LDFLAGS, and everything is great and wonderful. If you're _not_ using %configure, then you have to do whatever is conventional for your build system to get CFLAGS and LDFLAGS inherited properly. For CFLAGS, this will be $RPM_OPT_FLAGS or %{optflags} as before. As of rpm-4.9.1-3.fc16, you will be able to say $RPM_LD_FLAGS for the corresponding LDFLAGS values. Until then, there is no such shell variable, but you can get the same effect from %{?__global_ldflags}. Yes, that's ugly, sorry. If you are the owner of one of the packages listed here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Kevin/DRAFT_When_to_use_PIE_compiler_fl… Then I have locally built (though not extensively tested) your package with the appropriate specfile modifications, and the results do indeed appear to be fully hardened. If you would like to handle the rebuilds yourself, please let me know. Otherwise I will submit them myself once the relevant updates have gone through. If you've made it to the end, congratulations. Please let me know if there are any issues, or any questions I can answer. In particular if the performance impact of these flags is excessive for you, there are some ways it can be mitigated that are out of scope for this particular email. - ajax

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Fedora 16 Alpha Go/No-Go Meeting, Wednesday, August 10 @ 17:00 EDT
by Robyn Bergeron 08 Aug '11

08 Aug '11

Join us on irc.freenode.net #fedora-meeting for this important meeting. Wednesday, August 10, 2011 @22:00 UTC (17:00 EDT/14:00 PDT) "Before each public release Development, QA and Release Engineering meet to determine if the release criteria are met for a particular release. This meeting is called the: Go/No-Go Meeting." "Verifying that the Release criteria are met is the responsibility of the QA Team." For more details about this meeting see: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Go_No_Go_Meeting In the meantime, keep an eye on the Fedora 16 Alpha Blocker list: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Current_Release_Blockers -Robyn

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FUDCon EMEA travel subsidies are open
by Christoph Wickert 05 Aug '11

05 Aug '11

(I just sent the following mail to the ambassadors list and then figured out, that we may want to have developers at Milan, so I think it's a good idea to send this to this list, too) Hi there, if you are planing to attend FUDCon Milan 2011 and need travel subsidies, the ticket system is now open. If you need sponsoring, please 1. register at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Milan_2011#Pre-registration 2. put an X in the $$$ column 3. make a funding request in the the FUDCon ticket tracker at https://fedorahosted.org/fudcon-planning/wiki/FundingRequest 4. General instructions about sponsoring can be found at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sponsoring_event_attendees Funding requests without a ticket will not be considered. We have a limited budget and will work hard to fund as many people as possible. We'll use these answers to help figure out budgeting for the event. We are making arrangements for attendees from other geographic regions to encourage specific initiatives such as future FUDCon events, but preference may otherwise be given to people in EMEA. The next subsidy meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 16th at 15:00 UTC in #fudcon-planning. Please show up in case the event organizers have questions about your request. Regards, Christoph

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devel-announce August 2011