news February 2009

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Absent for FWN#165
by Oisin Feeley 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

Hi all, I'm afraid I will be absent from any production of FWN#165 (including the Development beat) as I'm quite sick. I'm nearly certain I'll be back in action for #166. Best wishes, -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

5 5

Fedora Weekly News #164
by Pascal Calarco 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Fedora Weekly News Issue 164 Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 164 for the week ending February 22nd, 2009. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue164 This week Announcements showcases Fedora Unity respins of Fedora 10, PlanetFedora selects some great blog entries on how to tag audio streams in PulseAudio and use func, QualityAssurance explains how to participate in test days, Developments covers the "Fedora 11 Mass Rebuild", Translations describes the new "L10n Infrastructure Team", Artwork covers some pretty "Evolving Fedora 11 Artwork" and Virtualization examines attempts to bridge the gap between libvirt and host network interface configuration. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list(a)redhat.com 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/ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents Contributing Writer: Max Spevack --- General --- Your faithful correspondent announced[1] that this year's European FUDCon will be held in Berlin from June 26 - 28, overlapping partially with LinuxTag. Everyone is encouraged to read the full announcement and to register[2] for the event. Ben Williams, whose wife knits incredible scarves with Tux on them, announced[3] that a new set of Fedora 10 respins have been released by the Fedora Unity[4] team, containing all updates through February 10. Technical Jesse Keating reminded[5] the community that "due to a number of features, every package in Fedora 11 needs to be rebuilt." A wiki page[6] has been created that package maintainers should look to for more information. Peter Gordon announced[7] that an update to rb_libtorrent includes a soname bump that impacts other packages. --- Upcoming Events --- February 27 - March 1: FOSSMeet @ NITC[8] in Calicut, India. February 28: Fedora Round Table[9] in Karlsruhe, Germany. March 5-7: Computer Using Educators[10] in Palm Springs, CA. March 9: Florida Linux Show[11] in Jacksonville, FL. March 10-12: FOSE[12] in Washington, DC. March 13-15: Chemnitzer Linux Tage[13] in Chemnitz, Germany. --- FUDCon Berlin 2009 --- FUDCon Berlin[14] will be held from June 26 - 28 in Berlin, Germany. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-February/msg00010.… 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_attendees 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-February/msg00009.… 4. http://fedoraunity.org 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-February/msg00011… 6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Mass_Rebuild 7. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-February/msg00014… 8. http://nitc.fossmeet.in/ 9. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/FRT 10. http://www.cue.org/conference/ 11. http://floridalinuxshow.com/ 12. http://fose.com/ 13. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/CLT 14. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDConBerlin2009 -- 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: Adam Batkin --- General --- Michael DeHaan discussed[1] various Linux system configuration applets and some ideas how to unify/integrate them. On an unrelated note, he also wrote[2] about HTML Slidey[3]: Slide Shows in XHTML. Gary Benson announced[4] that Zero has passed the Java SE 6 TCK, which means that OpenJDK in Fedora 10 for 32 and 64 bit PowerPC-based systems are now pretty much guaranteed to run anything you can throw at them. Daniel Walsh explained[5],[6] some SELinux history, voodoo and how to rebuild bits of the policy RPMs. Jeremy Katz reviewed[7] the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug and how that applies to web usability. Red Hat Magazine[8] spotlighted[9] Func, which "makes it easy to write commands across large numbers of machines remotely and securely". Ankur Sinha wrote[10] an article about the history of Fedora and its four core values. Jef Spaleta wondered[11] how popular Git was, and found some interesting statistics from GitHub. He also discovered that apparently some[12] Canonical developers (the kernel folks) do used Git instead of Bzr. Roland Wolters announced[13] that RPM Fusion[14] ("a merge of several former Fedora 3rd party repositories providing licence/patent problematic packages") has entered the testing state. Ryan Lerch described[15] how to "Create a Lightbulb Icon that follows the tango! guidelines". Jack Aboutboul wrote[16] about what can be done to rejuvinate Fedora Marketing. Lennart Poettering explained[17] how to "tag" audio streams so that Pulse Audio can automatically manage sound policy ("For example, starting in 0.9.15, we will automatically pause your media player while a phone call is going on"). Seth Vidal described[18] how to adapt to the change to SHA256 checksums in yum/createrepo on EL5. 1. http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=862 2. http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=871 3. http://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy/#(1) 4. http://gbenson.net/?p=130 5. http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/26428.html 6. http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/26759.html 7. http://velohacker.com/fedora-notes/recent-reading-web-usability/ 8. http://magazine.redhat.com/ 9. http://magazine.redhat.com/2009/02/17/video-spotlight-on-func/ 10. http://dodoincfedora.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/fedora-article-for-the-lugm-m… 11. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/34910.html 12. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/35246.html 13. http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/rpm-fusion-enters-testing-state/ 14. http://rpmfusion.org/ 15. http://ryanler.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/create-a-lightbulb-icon-that-follow… 16. http://jaboutboul.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-fedora-marketing.html 17. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/tagging-audio.html 18. http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/yum-createrepo-hashlib-rhel5centos5… --- Events --- Francesco Crippa posted[1] some photos from FOSDEM 2009. 1. http://people.byte-code.com/fcrippa/2009/02/16/fosdem-2009/ -- QualityAssurance -- In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1]. Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA --- Test Days --- This week's regular test day[1] was on 20 Second Startup[2]. Harald Hoyer was the developer present, and there was a great turnout of 20 people contributing test results. Further results are still welcome from anyone - a full set of instructions for running tests is available on the Wiki page. As a result of the testing, Harald has made several modifications already that will help to optimize boot times for Fedora 11. Next week's test day[3] will be on the Crash Catcher[4] feature planned for Fedora 11, which aims to make it easy for non-power uses to file useful reports when an application crashes. It will be held on Thursday (2009-02-26) in the #fedora-qa channel on Freenode IRC. Please drop by if you would like to help test this important new feature for Fedora 11 - no special equipment or expertise required! 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-19 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/20SecondStartup 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-26 4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/CrashCatcher --- Weekly meetings --- The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-02-18. The full log is available[2]. Will Woods gave a status report on the progress of the autoqa[3] project, which is working on creating automated test scripts to run whenever certain events happen. The group agreed to create an autoqa component in the fedora-qa trac instance, and create a new mailing list for autoqa reports to be sent to (this will not be a discussion list). Adam Williamson, James Laska and Jóhann Guðmundsson then initiated a discussion about creating a short-term solution for more organized reporting and collection of test results. Follow up a mailing list discussion, a system created by the Laptop.org[4] project, implemented as a Mediawiki plugin, was discussed. The group agreed that it seemed suited to the purpose, and James will propose it to the Infrastructure group, to see if they approve of the system, and whether they would prefer it to be added to the main Wiki or a special-purpose Wiki instance created just for this use. Finally, the group discussed the (then) upcoming test day, and agreed preparations were well in hand. The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[5] was held on 2009-02-17. The full log is available[6]. A broad initial goal for the Bugzappers project was agreed: to stabilize the number of bugs in NEW (i.e. un-triaged) status on the components previously agreed to be the most significant. Brennan Ashton's metric reporting tool will be used to track this. Brennan demonstrated the current state of his tool on a small set of test data, to general approval. The group voted on Adam Williamson's proposal to have a stock signature appended to comments by members of the Bugzappers team in Bugzilla, both to identify the Bugzappers and to increase the visibility of the project. This was approved, and Matej Cepl will implement it using Greasemonkey, adding it to the Greasemonkey script already used by most Bugzappers. The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-02-25 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-qa, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-02-24 at 1700 UTC in #fedora-bugzappers. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings 2. http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/fedora-qa/fedora-qa-20090218.log.html 3. http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=autoqa.git;a=summary 4. http://www.laptop.org 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings 6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2009-Feb-17 --- Wiki re-organization --- Adam Williamson announced[1] that the first phase of the Wiki re-organization project was complete, with the new front page and 'how to join in' page for the QA Wiki space put into place. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00710.html --- Reporting bugs to Bugzilla --- Christopher Beland encouraged[1] testers to report bugs to Bugzilla as well as sending a mail about them to the test-list mailing list, and told the group that he had added some text to this effect to the QA group front page on the Wiki. Adam Williamson suggested[2] that the text might be better placed on the Wiki page about how properly to report bugs, rather than the QA group front page. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00837.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00844.html --- Semantic - test reporting plugin for Mediawiki --- James Laska sent in a report[1] on Semantic, the Laptop.org project's Mediawiki extension for managing test reports. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00756.html --- Encouraging Rawhide testing --- Mark McLoughlin made some suggestions[1] about how to improve the ongoing quality and consistency of Rawhide, in order to make it possible for more people to test it. He suggested that a definition should be made of what should be expected to work in Rawhide all the time - e.g. basic installation, booting, network and a few core applications - and a RawhideBlocker tracker bug be created on Bugzilla to track bugs in Rawhide which breaks any of these functions, with the intention that those bugs be addressed as a matter of high priority. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00846.html -- Developments -- In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley --- Fedora 11 Mass Rebuild --- Some complications resulting from the inconsistent application of Fedora Packaging Guidelines were manifested when the mass rebuild discussed last week(FWN#163[1]) gained[2] a more concrete shape. Jesse Keating posted[3] a request that all maintainers would read the wiki page describing what needs to be done, especially the Maintainer Actions section. The rebuild should kick-off this Monday (2009-02-23). The wiki page describes the relatively narrow timeframe in which maintainers can attempt their own rebuilds and the way in which they can avoid the auto-rebuild. Concern was expressed by Tom Lane that the rebuilds were non-ordered. Jesse responded[4] that ordered builds were "[...] generally only are necessary when bumping sonames or otherwise bootstrapping items. Given that neither of those apply for this rebuild, effort spent trying to order and chain builds would be effort wasted." Ralf Corsepius challenged[5] this with the observation that pkgconfig BuildRequires are added automatically. Ralf suggested[6] the problem could be solved by "[...] checking which packages in current rawhide contain *.pc's but do not Provide nor Require pkgconfig(foo) and to rebuild them (in manually presorted order) in advance to the mass rebuild." Jon Masters appreciated[7] Jesse's work and worried that the rebuild might leave some statically built binaries using i386 instead of the promised i586 (see FWN#162[8]). Subsequent rebuilds were suggested as a means to work around the problem but Jesse preferred to identify specific problems and stated[9]: "I think the most I'd be willing to do would be a second build pass across the static packages. IMHO everything else should be left up to testing discovery and fixing the assumptions rather than hiding them." Another approach was suggested by Conrad Meyer based on using BuildRequires: *-static. When Ralf replied that this would not work because many packagers who had not used static subpackages Conrad pointed[10] to the guidelines. Nicolas Mailhot ruefully responded[11] that his experience with the fonts guidelines suggested that enforcement was necessary. Later discussion with Jakub Jelínek about the presence of libc.a in glibc-devel suggested[12] that it will not be simple to apply this particular guideline to glibc without gcc -static ceasing to behave as expected. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue163#Mass_Rebuild_Coming_Soon 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Mass_Rebuild 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01281.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01287.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01297.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01303.html 7. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01298.html 8. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue162#Fedora_11_Will_Support_i586_Inst… 9. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01300.html 10. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01307.html 11. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01312.html 12. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01322.html --- Virtual Provides for Login Managers --- Following problems reported[1] with booting to runlevel 5 by default with the slim login-manager [Lumens] sugges:ted[2] that "[...] all packages containing a login manager include a special Provides: that we can query on." This would allow anaconda to determine whether a login-manager is installed without the difficulties of curating a list. Patrice Dumas, and others, provided[3] a good deal of feedback which seems to have led to a consensus that Provides: service(graphical-login) will be added to all packages which provide a login manager. An interesting sub-thread developed in which Colin Walters argued[4] that adding display managers (other than gdm and kdm should be strongly discouraged. This was met[5] with a good deal of disagreement from Tom Callaway and Seth Vidal. Colin explained[6] that the ramifications of changing such an integral part of the OS were complex and that while anyone should be free to add such software it should also be "[...] within the rights of the people working on the desktop to close any bugs filed by people using something else WONTFIX." Jesse Keating and Seth Vidal seemed[7] to agree that it should be possible for the Fedora Project do define specs to which login managers should conform. The thread blossomed into several discussions. One focused on the technical challenges occasioned[8] by the interaction of GDM, PAM, gnome-keyring, NetworkManager and ConsoleKit. Another saw[9] Toshio Kuratomi and Colin debating the strategic merits of making it more or less easy for interested parties to add their software to the Fedora Project ecosystem. 1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=485789 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01237.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01399.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01400.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01403.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01404.html 7. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01407.html 8. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01408.html 9. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01434.html --- Reducing the Number of (Dis)Charge Cycles for Laptop Batteries --- A certain amount of excitement resulted when Brad Longo asked[1]: "[...] if Fedora's power management tool has something built in so that when the battery reaches full charge, it will then discharge to lets say around 95% before beginning to charge again." The excitement arose from Brad's premise that "[...] leaving your laptop plugged in and charging with a full battery charge is harmful for the battery." Several responses rejected[2] the premise and pointed out that smart chargers implement trickle-mode charging. Matthew Garrett replied[3] with some specific information about how laptop battery charging happens at a firmware-controlled threshold level. Matthew speculated that Brad wanted "[...] presumably an interface to modify that threshold. This is device specific. The tp_smapi driver (which is not in the kernel for exceedingly dull reasons) allows this to be configured on Thinkpads. I don't believe that we know how to on any other systems." Hans Ulrich Niedermann had[4] an out-of-kernel module for tm_smapi which was configurable via /etc/sysconfig. Matthew Saltzman reported[5] some experiences with Windows setting the charge-threshold to 85% which is supposed to lengthen the battery life. Callum Lerwick referenced[6] a Wikipedia article which claimes that the "[...] optimal storage charge for a Li-Ion is %40. Also, heat causes Li-Ion batteries to degenerate much faster, so if you're really worried about preserving your battery, don't leave it in the laptop while it's running. Yet another argument for less power usage. Less power, less heat, longer battery service life. Fewer toxic batteries going in to the land fill if you like that angle." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01194.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01201.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01202.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01257.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01269.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01304.html --- config.guess Reporting Incorrect Configuration Name? --- Panu Matilainen asked[1] if it was a problem that the config.guess script from autotools no longer reported "redhat" as the manufacturer part of the configuration triplet. Panu referenced the documentation which suggests that "[...] the manufacturer part of the configuration name is the manufacturer of the CPU, not `OS vendor' so the former `redhat' was always incorrect. I don't know the history behind the decision to stomp `redhat' in there to begin with nor why it was then dropped later on. But having gotten used to it, people occasionally think the `unknown' (or `pc' for that matter) is a bug." While Jakub Jelínek thought that providing the "redhat" string provided more information than "pc" or "unknown" Stepan Kaspal argued[2] strongly that reverting to maintaining such a patch was wrong. He suggested that either upstream should be convinced to change the use of "manufacturer" or that the %configure macro in the specfile could be used to explicitly avoid calling config.guess. From here on the thread became too technically detailed to summarize although it is relatively brief as of going to press. Those learned in the lore of autotools and cross-compilation will find much to gladden their hearts. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01338.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01355.html --- Build-time Trapping of Python Syntax Errors --- Tim Waugh initiated[1] verification that Python code can be parsed correctly: "[...] since we are already byte-compiling Python code at build time, it is no extra effort to verify that it can be parsed and fail if not." Reaction was[2] uniformly positive and when Panu Matilainen explained the simple errors which the byte compile would catch and suggested[3] a simple method of determining affected packages Florian Festi took up the challenge. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01563.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01574.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01584.html --- YUM Plans for Transition to Fedora 12 i686 Architecture --- When Paul Howarth asked[1]: "Now that Fedora 11 x86_32 is going to be based on i586 packages rather than i386 packages, does it follow that yum's $basearch will change from i386 to i586 and hence repository directory layouts changing too, or will it stay at i386?" a brief discussion between Seth Vidal and Josh Boyer started[2] with a discussion over whether repositories should be named after specific architectures. Seth Vidal differentiated between $arch and $basearch and explained[3]: "The whole reason I liked used $arch was that it meant when fedora stopped producing a 586 compatible tree, we didn't stop any one else from making a 586 compat tree and having it available like secondary arches are." Jesse Keating explained[4] that "i386" was a misnomer for the x86 offering. Josh Boyer was[5] unsure whether i586 would actually "go away" for Fedora 12. Dennis Gilmore was sure that it would and offered[6]: "Anyone who wants to continue i586 support post F11 i look forward to talking to about setting up i586 as a secondary arch." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01533.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01551.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01557.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01561.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01581.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01587.html -- Translation -- This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee --- L10n Infrastructure Team --- In response to PaulFrields' call[1] for putting in place an L10n Infrastructure team, FLSCo announced a 4 member team to oversee the Fedora Localization Project Infrastructure operations[2]. The team includes DimitrisGlezos, DiegoZacarao, AsgeirFrimannsson and AnkitPatel. 1. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00103.ht… 2. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00120.ht… --- Proposed L10n Infrastructure Plan for Fedora 11 --- Earlier, DimitrisGlezos had announced[1] a proposed roadmap for the L10n Infrastructure for Fedora 11 Translation period. This included using Transifex version 0.5 for generation and display of statistics in place of Damned Lies and Transifex version 0.3 for submissions. A test interface of this setup is currently available at: http://publictest14.fedoraproject.org/tx/languages/ AsgeirFrimannsson suggested[2] an alternative approach to use the new Django supported version of Damned Lies for statistics and to also test its possible utilisation for translation submission. 1. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00089.ht… 2. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00093.ht… --- Sponsor Role for Translation Team Coordinators --- FLSCo member NorikoMizumoto has requested[1] all the coordinators for the existing Translation Teams to inform about their FAS account names so that they could be upgraded to the role of "Sponsor". This would help the new members in their team to be approved faster. 1. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00080.ht… --- New Members in FLP --- Peter Belko (Slovak)[1], Seyyed Mohsen Saeedi (Persian)[2], Jorge Izaac Zavaleta Escalante (Spanish)[3], and Victor Lopez (Spanish)[4] joined the Fedora Translation Project last week, 1. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00106.ht… 2. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00109.ht… 3. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00111.ht… 4. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00112.ht… -- Artwork -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei --- Evolving Fedora 11 Artwork --- Paul Frields expressed[1] concern on @fedora-art about the artwork process and the Fedora 11 schedule: "The F11 Beta freeze arrives on March 10th, and it would be good to have a background ready somewhat before that so there's time to tweak it before the freeze[.]" In reply[2] Máirín Duffy was confident: "I *think* we're going to be okay. I'll know by Monday whether or not we might have an issue." and called for a work session over the week-end "I am going to cram this weekend and try to iterate on what we've got. If anyone's with me, pop in #fedora-art this weekend :)" In the meantime [[Paolo Leoni and Thomas Kole experimented[3][4] with an alternate concept[5] based on world maps, navigation and ships. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00050.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00068.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00053.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00064.html 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:F11-wallpaper-night-deepsky-mockup2.jpg -- 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 ---- New Options for Guest Cloning ---- Cole Robinson posted[1] a patch to enable virt-install to "build a guest around an existing disk image, skipping the OS install step." Cole also posted[2] a patch for virt-clone which allows for cloning from an XML file "rather than require the use of a guest defined on the current connection." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-February/msg00051.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-February/msg00050.html ---- Obtaining Guest IP Address from the Host ---- Thomas Mackell inquired[1] about a way to obtain the IP address of a guest that was easier than logging into it and running ifconfig. Cole Robinson pointed out image:Echo-package-16px.pngvirt-mem[2] which is a collection of utilities for interrogating KVM guests. Tools included are virt-uname, virt-dmesg, virt-ps, and virt-ifconfig. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-February/msg00036.html 2. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-mem/ --- Fedora Virtualization List --- This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list. ---- Fedora Virt Status Update ---- Mark McLoughlin posted two[1] [2] very detailed weekly status reports since the last FWN Virtualization beat. Each one is full of details on the latest bugs and developments in the field. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00077.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00078.html ---- Qemu Packaging and noarch BIOS Firmware ---- The process [1] of building BIOS firmwares to support architecturally diverse guests on architecturally diverse hosts is very involved and repetitive. Glauber Costa learned[2] of changes coming to Koji which could simplify the process by allowing for bundled BIOS images to be built as "noarch" RPMs. These would be readily available to hosts on any architecture in the repository. Save for some "second class citizens"[3] in the repo. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00066.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00068.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00072.html --- Fedora Xen List --- This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ---- dom0 Kernel Experimentation Continues ---- Michael Young continued[1] to help others experiment with the nacent dom0 support in the image:Echo-package-16px.pngkernel and posted another RPM. There are still significant problems precluding its use for anything beyond testing. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-February/msg00031.html --- Libvirt List --- This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ---- Support for Snapshot Volumes ---- Nick Moffitt asked[1] "Is there any interface to libvirtd that allows it to create volumes that are snapshots of existing volumes?" Daniel P. Berrange pointed[2] out this feature was recently added to image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt 0.6.0. "Basically when creating a storage volume, you just need to pass information about the backing storage volume. It'll thus create a volume which is a snapshot of this backing store." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-February/msg00195.html 2. http://libvirt.org/formatstorage.html#StorageVolBacking ---- netcf Network Interface Configuration Library ---- David Lutterkort has been working on the disconnect between image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt and host network interface configuration for some time. (See FWN#159 "Configuring Host Interfaces RFC") [1] "After talking with Dan Williams, who is working in image:Echo-package-16px.pngNetworkManager", it became[2] clear to David that solving this problem "is also useful for NM and would help them with handling system-wide interface configuration." David then began work on netcf[3] Mark McLoughlin complimented[4] the work and updated the shared network interface feature page[5]. The goal of this feature in development is to "Enable guest virtual machines to share a physical network interface (NIC) with other guests and the host operating system. This allows guests to independently appear on the same network as the host machine." 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue159#Configuring_Host_Interfaces_RFC 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-February/msg00228.html 3. http://git.et.redhat.com/?p=netcf.git;a=tree 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-February/msg00229.html 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Shared_Network_Interface -- End FWN #164 -- ---- Pascal Calarco Fedora Ambassador, Indiana USA http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pcalarco

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FWN #164 status
by Oisin Feeley 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Hi all, I've done some cursory editing of the following beats and moved them all into the Issue164 page. I'm afraid I'm pressed for time again today so I hope someone else can take it from here. Announcements Planet QualityAssurance Developments Translations Artwork Virtualization Thank you everyone for this week's contributions. Best, -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

2 1

qa beat was done for a while
by Adam Williamson 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

The QA beat was actually done Friday, but I didn't mark it as such yesterday - sorry, it was my birthday, sort of slipped my mind :( -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org http://www.happyassassin.net

2 1

No Ambassador report this week
by Larry Cafiero 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Hi, all -- Due to SCaLE (from which I returned home around 1 this morning and promptly fell asleep), I just realized that I missed deadline for the Ambassadors report for this week's FWN. I'll file a full report about SCaLE next week. Larry Cafiero

2 1

Planet Fedora beat complete
by Adam Batkin 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

Sorry it's late. -Adam Batkin

1 0

announcements beat complete
by Max Spevack 23 Feb '09

23 Feb '09

put a fork in it, 'cause it's done.

1 0

Marketing Section
by Kam Salisbury 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

All done... -- Kam Salisbury http://kamsalisbury.com GPG key: FAF1751E

2 1

Fedora Weekly News #163
by Pascal Calarco 16 Feb '09

16 Feb '09

Fedora Weekly News Issue 163 Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 163 for the week ending February 15th, 2009. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue163 This week's issue provides some detail on the upcoming Fedora Activity Day (FAD) at Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE), many posts from the Fedora Planet blogosphere, and selected wonderful event reports from FOSDEM. We welcome a brand new Quality Assurance beat this issue, with coverage of the latest test day focusing on iSCSI for Fedora 11, summary of the latest QA weekly meeting, and discussion of the process for critical-release bugs. In Development news, discussion of FLOSS multimedia codec support in Fedora, preview looks at F11 release notes, and the availability of CrossReport, a tool to evaluate the ease with which applications can be ported to Windows using the MinGW libraries. From the Translation team, updates and details on the infrastructure roadmap for translation, and migration of Damned Lies to the new Django-based interface. Infrastructure reports availability of WordPress multi-user for Fedora sub-projects, and planning for cgit as a replacement for gitweb on hosted2. Artwork has updates on the continuing evolution of Fedora 11 artwork. The Security Week beat examines recent discussion on Slashdot regarding 'how to argue the security of open source software,' and this issue wraps up with a summary of the security advisories for Fedora 9 and 10 over this past week. Enjoy! If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list(a)redhat.com 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/ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents Contributing Writer: Max Spevack --- Slow News Week --- It was a quiet week on the announcements front, with nothing more than a few outage notifications being sent to the primary Fedora announcements mailing lists. Your correspondent promises to make an announcement this week, so that this space may be used to its full potential in next week's issue. --- Upcoming Events --- 2009-02-20: Fedora Activity Day @ SCaLE[1] 2009-02-20 - 2009-02-22: Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE)[2] Also, people are encouraged to register for Fedora or JBoss.org related speaking slots at LinuxTag 2009.[3] 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_at_SCaLE_7x 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SCaLE_7x_Event 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_Berlin_and_LinuxTag_2009_talks -- 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: Adam Batkin --- Activism Alert --- Oron Peled wrote[1] about a proposed new IETF standard for "Transport Layer Security (TLS) Authorization Extensions" which may be patent-encumbered before it is even approved. Paul W. Frields appealed[2] for prior art against a patent that covers a user interface that has multiple workspaces (filed 1987-03-25). --- General --- Dave Jones announced[3] some changes to the Fedora kernel packaging "to drop the regular 686 kernels. As of Fedora 11, the only 32-bit kernels built are '586' and '686-PAE' (and their -debug variants)." Lennart Poettering described[4] some of the new changes in the latest PulseAudio 0.9.15 release, including Flat Volumes, On-the-fly Reconfiguration of Devices (aka "S/PDIF Support"), Native support for 24bit samples and support for Airport Express. David Nalley wrote[5] about the Fedora Ambassadors giving away free XO laptops! To qualify, either "Package and maintain a sugar-* package for 2 releases or more" or "Build a Sugar activity that helps meet the 'holy list of 4th grade maths[6]'". Andrew Overholt announced[7] the release of the Linux Tools project for Eclipse. The release has lots of features from profiling and tracing with SystemTap to autoconf and RPM spec file editor (with autocomplete) support. Jef Spaleta expressed[8] mild excitement at Canonical's "Renewed focus on suspend resume". In a later post, he wrote[9] about comparing Linux (and even OSX) user experiences with respect to functionality regressions after an update. Seth Vidal mused[10] on the fact that a poster on Planet Gnome[11] had said that "Fedora is held to a higher standard" than certain other distributions. Harish Pillay reacted[12] to an IDC report claiming "Proprietary software products are much better documented than open source because of the volunteer nature of open source software development". 1. http://life-with-linux.blogspot.com/2009/02/internet-draft-transport-layer-… 2. http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1490 3. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/2009/02/09/fedora-kernel-packaging/ 4. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/oh-nine-fifteen.html 5. http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=196 6. http://sugarlabs.org/go/User:Gdk/4th_Grade_Maths 7. http://overholt.ca/wp/?p=117 8. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/34551.html 9. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/34592.html 10. http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/fedora-is-held-to-a-higher-standard/ 11. http://planet.gnome.org/ 12. http://harishpillay.livejournal.com/139904.html --- How-To --- Devan Goodwin explained[1] how to perform bandwidth-limited secure encrypted backups using duplicity and Amazon's S3 Storage Service. Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail described[2] how to enable "Disk snapshot backup in Linux". Lennart Poettering requested[3] that D-Bus interfaces be properly versioned, and described some best-practices including the hows and whys. 1. http://crispyinthedark.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/amazon-s3-duplicity-backups/ 2. http://blog.kagesenshi.org/2009/02/disk-snapshot-backup-in-linux.html 3. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/versioning-dbus.html --- Events --- Once again: So many people have written about attending FOSDEM that it would take an entire issue of FWN post all of the links. Instead an arbitrarily selection will be randomly chosen. http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/2009/02/11/some-fosdem-pictures/ http://kitall.blogspot.com/2009/02/fosdem-day2.html http://spevack.livejournal.com/74638.html http://gregdek.livejournal.com/45847.html http://digitaurora.blogspot.com/2009/02/fosdem-2009-day-one.html http://clunixchit.blogspot.com/2009/02/report-fel-fosdem-2009.html And on a slightly different note, Arindam Ghosh wrote[1] about (and posted photos of) Mikti'09[2]. 1. http://arindamghosh.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/mukti09-event-report/ 2. http://mukti09.in/ -- Ambassadors -- In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero --- FAD SCaLE coming up 2009-02-20 --- The Fedora Activity Day[1] at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE)[2] will be from 9am - 6pm on 2009-02-20 at the Westin Airport Los Angeles, in Los Angeles, California. There will be breaks and such, but the FAD will be treated much like a sprint. We're here to get something accomplished -- specifically font packaging and documentation -- so come on by and help us out for an hour or all day. We'd love to have you there! Also, if you can make SCaLE from the Southern California area, stop by the Fedora booth. SCaLE takes place on this weekend at the Westin Airport Los Angeles. For more information, visit the Southern California Linux Expo site[3]. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_at_SCaLE_7x 2. http://scale7x.socallinuxexpo.org/ 3. http://scale7x.socallinuxexpo.org --- Got Ambassador News? --- Any Ambassador news tips from around the Fedora community can be submitted to me by e-mailing lcafiero-AT-fedoraproject-DOT-org and I'd be glad to put it in this weekly report. -- QualityAssurance -- In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1]. Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA --- Test Days --- This week's regular test day[1] was on iSCSI[2]. Martin Sivak and Hans de Goede represented the developers, and testing was lead by Marian Ganisin with assistance from Chris Williams, Mike Anderson, Michael Christie and James Laska. Test cases worked on during the test day can be seen on the page. Please record any additional test ideas or considerations at Exploratory Testing iSCSI. Consult the quick start guide[3] for creating a software-based iscsi target for use with testing. Next week's test day[4] will be on the 20 Second Startup[5] feature planned for Fedora 11. It will be held on 2009-02-19 in the #fedora-qa channel on Freenode IRC. Please drop by if you would like to help test and improve boot speed for Fedora 11. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-12 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Features/iSCSI 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Scsi-target-utils_Quickstart_Guide 4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-19 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/20SecondStartup --- Weekly meetings --- The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-02-11. The full log is available[2]. Will Woods gave a status report on the progress of the autoqa[3] project, which is working on creating automated test scripts to run whenever certain events happen. He also reported on progress with the Nitrate[4] project, which is for collecting test cases and test plans and compiling results from running them. Jóhann Guðmundsson asked if it will be possible to pull existing test cases from the current Wiki-based system into Nitrate when it is released, and Will Woods said this is likely to be possible. The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[5] was held on February 10th. The group agreed that the current list of most-important components should be updated, and Edward Kirk will do this. Edward Kirk, Brennan Ashton and Adam Williamson (links) agreed that simple goals should be set for the group, but did not reach final agreement on what these should be. Adam Williamson suggested that Bug Days be revived and made weekly, and this idea was supported by Edward Kirk and Brennan Ashton. The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-02-18 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-qa, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-02-17 at 1700 UTC in #fedora-bugzappers. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings 2. http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/fedora-qa/fedora-qa-20090211.log.html 3. http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=autoqa.git;a=summary 4. http://fedorahosted.org/nitrate 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings --- Wiki re-organization --- Work continued on the ongoing project to rewrite and re-organize the main pages in the QA team's Wiki space[1]. Adam Williamson, Jóhann Guðmundsson, Christopher Beland and Leam Hall all contributed ideas, suggestions and drafts.[2][3] 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00126.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00371.html --- Release-critical bug process --- Adam Williamson initiated a discussion[1] regarding the process for handling release-critical bugs. Matej Cepl, James Laska, Jesse Keating, and John Poelstra contributed opinions. In the end it was agreed that the basic shape of the current process is a good one but the groups involved - BugZappers, release engineering, and developers - should communicate and collaborate more in deciding on release-critical bugs. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00276.html --- Xorg/Mesa/DRI testing --- François Cami, together with others, proposed a project[1] to conduct organized testing of X.org and DRI functionality with a range of common hardware for Fedora 11. He highlighted four important areas he felt were needed for this: an opt-in system to record what hardware is owned by what testers (possibly utilizing Smolt), a system for producing test plans, a system for recording the results of tests, and regularly scheduled test sessions. Jóhann Guðmundsson supported the idea[2] and suggested that, while some of the features would require help from the infrastructure group, the QA group could at least immediately start writing test cases. James Laska pointed out that extensive information is needed to diagnose and fix X issues remotely. François will work with the X maintainers to define exactly what information needs to be provided. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00554.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00559.html -- Developments -- In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley --- FLOSS Multimedia Codec Support --- Inspired by previous discussions on whether Fedora should distribute FLOSS content[1] Martin Sourada tried[2] to start a discussion about the poor support of FLOSS multimedia. Martin noted: "Out of the combinations of two FLOSS containers (matroska and ogg) and two FLOSS video codecs (dirac and theora) I know only one (ogg + theora) actually works in xine-lib (used by KDE4) which is pathetic." He asked for help in documenting the situation on a wiki page[3]. When Bastien Nocera suggested that the most important thing was to file bugs Martin responded[4] that this was what he was doing after first performing tests. An information packed sub-thread started[5] by Gregory Maxwell expanded the scope of the tests and started a discussion with Dominik Mierzejewski about the problem of ffmpeg providing sub-optimal implementations of unencumbered codecs. It seems that for reasons of efficiency ffmpeg re-invents the wheel from scratch instead of using and improving upstream implementations. Kevin Kofler also rose[6] to the implied challenge that GStreamer was preferable to xine-lib. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue161#Electronic_Design_Automation_Con… 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00794.html 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mso/Open_Multimedia 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00826.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00800.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00806.html --- Multiple Packages from One Source ? --- A question about how to handle the situation where a single source could be compiled with alternate databases was posted[1] by Steven Moix. The motion video motion detector software can be compiled to use either MySQL or Postgres. Steven explained that the problem was that "[...]you can't divide it into sub-packages, at the end it generates one big binary file [...]" and wondered should he just choose the database he preferred or propose two packages. Manuel Wolfshant expressed[2] what appeared to be the common wisdome: "personally I would compile twice, once enabling mysql and another time pgsql, and create 2 packages. each package would install a "motion-dbname" binary, and a symlink would allow access via the well known name "motion". Using alternatives would allow a switch between the two." Although it was admitted that David Woodhouse's suggestion[3] to make the program use loadable plugins was the ideal Tom Lane thought[4] that was "[...] a bit above and beyond what a packager should do. If he's also an upstream developer, then he should undertake that addition with his developer hat on; but it's *well* beyond the size of patch that a Fedora package should be carrying." The ability to specify alternate requires (similar to those used in the .deb package format[5]) was discussed[6] by Richard W.M. Jones and Tom Lane and dismissed as impractical in this case anyway due to variations in SQL. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00918.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00920.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00923.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01091.html 5. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01097.html --- Take a Peek at the Fedora 11 Release Notes --- Fresh from his work on the RHEL-5.3 Release Notes Ryan Lerch apprised[1] the list of the latest changes to the Fedora 11 Release Notes. Ryan sought early feedback and changes to documentation beats in order to give the community an early preview of the release notes. Initial feedback from Thorsten Leemhuis and Kevin Kofler and others indicated that the use of fixed-width instead of liquid layout was disliked by some people and loved[2] by others. Ryan also provided[3] an rpm of this Release Notes mockup. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00910.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00942.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00911.html --- Heads Up: Noarch Subpackages Landing Soon --- Florian Festi warned[1] that the ability to produce noarch subpackages will soon be available in Fedora. This brings the benefit of being able to share these packages among different architectures thus reducing disk space and mirror bandwidth. Although rpm-4.6 supports noarch fully there are still some fixes to make to koji before the Fedora buildsystem can cope with noarch subpackages. Florian suggested that those who wanted to could experiment in mock with rpmdiff to compare the results across different architectures. He assured readers that there were no plans to force packagers to use this feature and invited anyone interested in developing the use of noarch in future release to a discussion. Florian later warned[2] that one potential negative outcome of using such sub-packages would be a proliferation of packages and consequent bloating of metadata which might affect yum. VilleSkyttä suggested[3] that it would be wise to make sure that use of BuildRequire: rpm-build >= 4.6.0 was enforced in order to ensure that earlier versions of rpmbuild did not produce noarch versions of the main package and other potential subpackages. Florian's response recognized[4] the problem but deprecated the use of BuildRequires to such an extent. One possible alternative which he proposed was to "[have Panu Matilainen backport a check that will make noarch packages (both regular and noarch) fail to build if they contain binaries [and ensure that this] additional check will be in place before koji will be updated[.]" This latter proposal stimulated a good deal of interest from Ralf Corsepius and Richard W.M. Jones as they were both concerned with cross-architecture issue. The definition of a "binary" seemed to be one unclear point. In a later thread Florian updated[5] a list of packages which could be easily turned into noarch subpackages. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01012.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01020.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01023.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01046.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01105.html --- Mass Rebuild Coming Soon --- Jesse Keating drew attention to "[...] a perfect storm brewing for Fedora 11" due to the need to rebuild with GCC-4.4 (see FWN#161[1], the use of i586 as the default supported architecture (see FWN#162[2] and the support of stronger hashes (last paragraph of FWN#107[3]). Apparently the time-constraints led to a desire to start the rebuild as soon as possible without giving maintainers an explicit window in which to do their own builds. Jesse preferred to give maintainers an ability to opt-out and sought suggestions on how this could be achieved. Jesse suggested that interested parties should either reply to the thread and/or participate in the 2009-02-16 IRC meeting in #fedora-meeting at 1800UTC. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue161#GCC:_Default_ISA_Flags_and_Glibc 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/LatestIssue#Fedora_11_Will_Support_i586_I… 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue107#Crypto_Consolidation --- New Tool Measures Ease of Cross-compiling to Windows --- Richard W.M. Jones announced[1] the availability of CrossReport, a tool to evaluate the ease with which applications can be ported to Windows using the MinGW libraries. After some issue with platform dependency were reported by Michael Cronenworth were sorted[2] out it seemed[3] the tool is ready for use. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01055.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01074.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01076.html -- Translation -- This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee --- Additions to talk.fedoraproject.org --- Rafael Gomes has volunteered to update content on talk.fedoraproject.org[1] and would be creating the .pot file to make it available for translators. Additionally, Lucas Do Amaral has volunteered to add content regarding ekiga configuration[2] that would ensure error free display of the translated content, as had been earlier reported by Richard van der Luit [3]. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00026.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00040.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00029.html --- Further discussion on the Infrastructure Roadmap --- In continuation to the earlier discussion, Dimitris Glezos mentions that the important issue currently is the inconsistent uptime of the system due to the lack of administration resources [1]. He also mentions that adding Publican support to the Transifex instance would be possible with support from the Fedora Publican group. Additionally, he mentions that Transifex v0.5 to be released in March, would have support for Statistics based display as a start to the future goal of supporting all the features of Damned Lies. It is to be noted that FLP uses Damned Lies and Transifex for its Translation infrastructure. Domingo Becker added a wishlist[2] for the current system, that includes reservation of files for translation, timeout and notification system to the co-ordinator. In a separate thread, Francesco Tombolini voiced his opinion about the lack of the file locking feature and the downtime in the statistics page [3]. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00033.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00059.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00078.html --- Migration of Damned Lies --- Asgeir Frimannsson had announced[1] the imminent migration of the old Damned Lies instance to the new Django-based Damned Lies instance. Damned Lies is used by http://translate.fedoraproject.org for generating the translation statistics. --- New Members in FLP Daniel Yousefi (Persian) [2], Ahmad Razzaghi (Persian) [3], Daniele Catanesi (Italian) [4], Mads Bille Lundby (Danish) [5], and Zoltan Sumegi (Hungarian) [6] joined the Fedora Localization Project last week. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00057.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00051.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00076.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00043.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00014.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00011.html -- Infrastructure -- This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: Huzaifa Sidhpurwala --- Calendaring system --- Discussion on this topic continues from last week. Adam Williamson said [1] that there are a couple of calendaring plugins which will allow for "days" will be allocated. Clint Savage mentioned that the point is that it should support caldev or something better[2] 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/msg… 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/msg… --- wordpress-mu install --- Mike McGrath asked who wanted to finalize our wordpress-mu install[1] Mike further said that it has got built and there is a ticket for it[2] 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/msg… 2. http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/342 --- cgit to replace gitweb? --- Seth Vidal said[1]that he has setup cgit as a replacement for gitweb on hosted2 and it is available at hosted2.fedoraproject.org/cgit/ He said that he would like to replace gitweb as a web based git repo browser but that would mean that the urls from gitweb will not work any more. He said that he would like to get some feedback on this. Bill Nottingham suggested[2] that we may be able to able to do a rewrite rule. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/msg… 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/msg… --- Artwork In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei --- Evolving Fedora 11 Artwork --- The development of the Fedora 11 artwork evolved on @fedora-art. Máirín Duffy posted[1] a new wallpaper mockup[2]: "It's more really an attempt at a nice backdrop, and maybe we can layer some of the trees and buildings we were talking about on top[.]" Charles Brej investigated[3] boot animations: "On the plymouth front, I am likely to be a bit busier at work this release than the F10 one, so I would really appreciate some of ideas as to what people would like during the system boot. The possibilities are pretty much limitless but it would be a good thing to conserve the CPU and keep the number and size of images included in the initrd to a minimum". 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00024.html 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:Artwork_F11_greek-concept_mockup2_mo.png 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00025.html -- Security Week -- In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora. Contributing Writer: Josh Bressers --- Is Open Source Software Secure? --- This week there was a story posted to Slashdot titled How To Argue That Open Source Software Is Secure?[1]. Quoting the post: ... saying that they were warned that they are dangerously insecure because they run open source operating systems or software, because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease.' This issue seems to keep coming up from time to time. This argument is of course silly and one of those "Prove it ... you can't? So it's true!" There is no way to prove that a piece of closed source software is more or less secure than a given piece of Open Source Software. If you can't see the source, you can't be certain that the vendor did or didn't fix issues. You need to unconditionally trust your vendor. If the source code is wide open for anyone to see, it keeps the vendor honest. You can't sweep issues under a transparent rug. You can try, and maybe hide a few piles of dust, but the really scary piles of dirt will stick out like sore thumbs. The issue at hand isn't is application A more secure than application B, but do you trust vendor A more than vendor B? 1. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/11/007216 -- Security Advisories -- In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley --- Fedora 10 Security Advisories --- * xine-lib-1.1.16.2-1.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * squid-3.0.STABLE13-1.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * squidGuard-1.2.1-2.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * python-fedora-0.3.9-1.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * asterisk-1.6.0.5-2.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg004… * moodle-1.9.4-1.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg006… * fail2ban-0.8.3-18.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg007… --- Fedora 9 Security Advisories --- * squidGuard-1.2.1-2.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * python-fedora-0.3.9-1.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * squid-3.0.STABLE13-1.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * lighttpd-1.4.20-6.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * xine-lib-1.1.16.2-1.fc9.1 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg003… * moodle-1.9.4-1.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg004… * asterisk-1.6.0.5-2.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg006… * dahdi-tools-2.0.0-1.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg006… * libresample-0.1.3-9.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg006… * dnsmasq-2.45-1.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg006… * fail2ban-0.8.3-18.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg007… ---- end FWN #163 ----

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QA section written - please check
by Adam Williamson 16 Feb '09

16 Feb '09

Hi, guys. I've just completed the QA section for FWN. As it's my first shot, can people please check it over and make sure I didn't screw up? :) Thanks! https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Beats/QualityAssurance -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org http://www.happyassassin.net

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