news April 2009

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FWN 173 status
by Pascal Calarco 27 Apr '09

27 Apr '09

Hi folks -- I'm starting to edit FWN 173. I'll put all of the beats so far into a page, and we can give beat writers this morning to get any other writing in for this issue. Thanks for another great issue, everyone! - pascal

3 7

Fedora Weekly News #173
by Oisin Feeley 27 Apr '09

27 Apr '09

Fedora Weekly News Issue 173 Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 173 for the week ending April 26th, 2009. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue173 This week's issue starts with a welcome double dose of FedoraPlanet coverage, providing news and views from around the Fedora community. Our Ambassadors beat shares the LinuxFest Northwest experience. Developments covers the controversy over "PulseAudio: A Hearty and Robust Exchange of Ideas" and in Translation word comes of Fedora 11 Release Notes proofreading readiness. Configuration conflagration of Wacom graphics tablets is revealed in the Art beat. The Fedora Weekly Webcomic divines an unbreakable future. We're brought up to date with SecurityAdvisories for Fedora 9 and 10, and the Virtualization beat completes the issue with updates on virtualization status in Fedora, with specifics on a new libvirt 0.6.3 release, a new libguestfs 1.0.10 release, and KVM migration support in Fedora 11, to name but a few! 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 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala Contents 1.1 Planet Fedora 1.1.1 General 1.2 Ambassadors 1.2.1 Fedora first at LinuxFest Northwest 1.2.2 Got Ambassador News? 1.3 Developments 1.3.1 Fedora 10 Packages in dist-f11 1.3.2 Bugzilla Passwords 1.3.3 PulseAudio: A Hearty and Robust Exchange of Ideas 1.3.4 Re-starting udev 1.3.5 Fedora Bug-tracker Independent from Red Hat ? 1.3.6 FOSS Needs a Central Bugtracker ? 1.4 Translation 1.4.1 Fedora 11 Preview Release Notes Proof-reading 1.4.2 Fedora 11 User Guide f11-tx Branch Available 1.4.3 New Members in FLP 1.5 Artwork 1.5.1 Cleaning the Queue 1.5.2 Graphic Tablets 1.6 Fedora Weekly Webcomic 1.7 Security Advisories 1.7.1 Fedora 10 Security Advisories 1.7.2 Fedora 9 Security Advisories 1.8 Virtualization 1.8.1 Fedora Virtualization List 1.8.1.1 New Release libguestfs 1.0.10 1.8.1.2 Only libvirt Bug Fixes in updates-testing 1.8.1.3 Fedora Virtualization Status Report 1.8.2 Fedora Xen List 1.8.2.1 Dom0 Kernel Not Before 2.6.31 1.8.3 Libvirt List 1.8.3.1 New Release libvirt 0.6.3 1.8.3.2 KVM Migration Support in F11 {{Anchor|PlanetFedora}} == 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 The Planet Fedora beat recently took a short vacation, but is back this week fully refreshed. This issue not only contains posts from the past week, but also a few highlights from the preceding two weeks when there was no coverage. General Eric Christensen announced[1] a new policy for deleting pages on the Fedora Project Wiki. Martin Sourada chronicled[2] a few of the many features that can be expected with the upcoming Fedora 11 (Leonidas): Intel Kernel Mode Setting, faster boot times, better USB camera support, touchpad improvements (and a new tab within the Mouse Preferences applet), PackageKit interface updates, the use of Presto to shrink updates downloads (which could use some additional testing[3], for anyone interested) and more. And with the release of the Synaptics 1.1 driver, Peter Hutterer described[4] some of its new features, including additional details about multi-touch support. Seth Vidal analyzed[5] the Source RPMS that make up various Fedora releases since F7 to find the average number of patches per RPM. Happily, the numbers have been slowly but steadily decreasing. Silas Sewell demonstrated[6] funcshell a new project to build a shell interface around func with all of the features expected of a shell including tab completion, persistent history and integrated help. Josh Boyer mused[7] over "The updates conundrum" and the often larger than expected number of updates in released Fedora versions. "When I see a package update submitted that just takes a package to the latest upstream release, I always question it in my head (and sometimes in the update). I realize that upstream releases often fix bugs that effect users, however the update should say that at a minimum and it generally doesn't. Many times there is an update like this that seems to just be 'because it's the newest!'" Luis Villa questioned[8] whether it might make sense to have a full-time QA person for Xorg with costs shared across some of the many contributor organizations. Marc Ferguson shared[9] an Abbot and Costello "Who's on First" parody in which Abbott attempts to purchase a computer from Costello. Venkatesh Hariharan wrote[10] an article that appeared in Network Computing's India edition, titled "Reaping the benefits of open source". Lubomir Rintel scripted[11] a set of bash functions to automatically label terminal windows (and tabs). Matthew Daniels summarized[12] his experiences at POSSCON2009 (Palmetto Open Source Software Conference) in which a number of interesting and prominent people spoke including Red Hat's CIO, Lee Congdon, among others. Amit Shah re-evaluated[13] the performance of a number of Linux filesystem and option combinations. 1. http://fedora-sparks.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-policy-for-deleting-wiki-page… 2. http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/04/random-leonidas-goodies.html 3. http://rawhidewatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/yum-presto-delta-rpm-support-n… 4. http://who-t.blogspot.com/2009/04/synaptics-11-and-what-your-touchpad-can.h… 5. http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/patches-per-src-rpm-in-fedora/ 6. http://www.silassewell.com/blog/2009/04/22/funcshell-a-shell-interface-to-f… 7. http://jwboyer.livejournal.com/31668.html 8. http://tieguy.org/blog/2009/04/22/a-rumbling-about-x-qa/ 9. http://www.fergytech.com/2009/04/costello-buys-a-computer/ 10. http://osindia.blogspot.com/2009/04/reaping-benefits-of-open-source.html 11. http://v3.sk/~lkundrak/blog/entries/bashrc.html 12. http://danielsmw.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/posscon-summary/ 13. http://www.amitshah.net/2009/04/re-comparing-file-systems.html == Ambassadors == In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero === Fedora first at LinuxFest Northwest === Fedora was on hand for the LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, Washington, USA, on Saturday and Sunday, and Fedora was "first" insofar as it was the first booth for folks come to when they entered the hall at Bellingham Technical College. Saturday was a busy day for Fedora at LinuxFest Northwest. Larry Cafiero gave a presentation before the Fedora Activity Day, which drew about 30 people. The FAD at LFNW revolved around three different projects: The 4th Grade Math Project for OLPC, an F11 bug fest, and general Fedora questions-and-answers. The flexibility of the event was its strength, and its weakness was the timing, so while it was overall a success, there were still a few bugs in the FAD system. Karsten Wade gave his "Participate or Die" talk on Saturday afternoon -- a talk that is destined for a keynote at some fortunate Linux festival (Open Source World missed out by denying it, pity). On Sunday, Jesse Keating gave two presentations today -- sneak-peeking at F11 and Modular Infrastructure Design with Messaging (the official name) -- and sandwiched between them was Clint Savage's Fedora Remix gig. A significant amount of buttons, media and stickers were given out, as well as some T-shirts for the Fedora faithful. === 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. == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === Fedora 10 Packages in dist-f11 === Kalev Lember drew attention[1] to the issue of .fc10 packages ending up in rawhide by error during the freeze. Kalev worried that he had done something wrong to make the rawhide composes pull .fc10 rpms from the Fedora 10 stable-updates repository. Josh Boyer thanked Kalev for identifying the issue and explained that it was an error due to koji tag inheritance. Jesse Keating added[2] that his efforts to ease tag requests had forgotten to take tag inheritance into account but that he would fix this shortly. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01934.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01969.html === Bugzilla Passwords === Another thread about bugzilla (see also this FWN#173 "FOSS Needs a Central Bugtracker" and "Fedora Bugtracker Independent from Red Hat?") concerned[1] itself with the automated requirement to change to a new user password. Felix Miata was upset that he could not use previous passwords: "If you won't let me choose my password, I have no use for you. I have too many systems and web browsers to use and too many places that need passwords for any site to decide I can't use my choice of password [...] I've changed banks over lesser stupidities." Matthias Saou and Ian Weller suggested[2] a dirty work-around. Konstantin Ryabitsev suggested[3] using supergenpass[4]. Basil Mohamed Gohar and Adam Williamson liked[5] the GNOME combination of Password Generator and Revelation. After some questioning of the motivations and need for such password changes Jesse Keating rationalized[6] regular password changes a little sarcastically: "There is a theory that changing passwords on a regular bases lessens the risk of somebody's password being stolen and used nefariously. Depending on the account compromised the damage increases from nuisance to legally damaging[...]" and suggested that a more worthwhile discussion would be "[...] whether or not the pains we hit here are worth the pains we'd encounter by running our own instance of bugzilla." This questioning started[7] the list that there was "[...] a plausible case that doesn't involve Red Hat data - not-yet-public security issues - was subsequently cited. Even if we split Fedora bugzilla from Red Hat bugzilla, it'll still contain sensitive data." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01562.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01600.html 3. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01576.html 4. http://supergenpass.com/ 5. https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01579.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01611.html 7. <https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01593.html/…> to hone-in on the idea that the changes were done mainly to fulfil Red Hat business requirements and Adam Williamson reminded<ref>http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01653.html</li></ol></ref> === PulseAudio: A Hearty and Robust Exchange of Ideas === Executive summary: a long flamewar resulted in at least three things: 1)the original problem over how to individually control volumes on the "Master" and "PCM" channels was solved[1]; 2)a subsidiary problem of a graphical control allowing selection of the input device was rectified by re-packaging the old gnome-alsamixer[2]; 3)tension between the Desktop team, FESCo, the Board and everyone else was increased. Read on only if you must. A long, multi-thread flamewar over the (dis)advantages of the new VolumeControl (more specifically gnome-volume-control) applet in Fedora 11 smoked and crackled. The gnome-volume-control applet provides a highly simplified interface to the PulseAudio[3] sound server, itself a source of contention for some time. The extent of this simplification contrasted to the old volume-control applets which talked directly to ALSA and exposed all the details of a card was emphasized[4][5] in screenshots of the "Alsa-Mixer-O-Doom" posted by Dave Jones and Will Woods. A bugzilla filed[6] by Adam Williamson explains that hiding the mixer channels makes it difficult to handle many scenarios which require the adjustment of specific mixer channels in order to achieve basic sound functionality. Although there has been prolonged sniping at PulseAudio for some time this week's dispute seemed more unpleasant and prolonged than many. Its tangled, sprawling mess eventually drew in FESCo and flung its tendrils into issues of whether FESCo should dictate UI design and the possible reversion[7] of the entire "VolumeControl" feature[8][9], and whether FESCo had[10] jurisdiction over what went into the Desktop spin. The first thread started[11][12] in Callum Lerwick's request for information on how to adjust volume informations on individual channels. He explained that he was hooking a second computer up to the "line-in" to share speakers and needed to adjust the PCM volume. Bastien Nocera thought[13] that Callum's use case was esoteric and would not be accomodated. He suggested using PulseAudio over the network instead. A later report by Joonas Sarajärvi suggested[14] this should be possible. Things went downhill from then on when Callum asked[15] for "[...] an option to get the old damn panel applet back [or] at least a secret gconf key to do what I want?" and characterized the Volume Control applet as "immature". Bastien's response was[16] that the applet had been described for over a year on the wiki and he suggested the GConf was not of use because the volume control worked at the level of PulseAudio and not ALSA. Lennart Poettering also suggested[17] that using alsamixer -c0 on the command-line would provide the level of control desired for those who wanted "pretty exotic feature[s and] weird stuff like [playing audio through line-in]." Many insults were exchanged[18]. Kevin Kofler helpfully responded[19] to Callum Lerwick's complaint that Pidgin alert sounds exploded his speakers with the suggestion that he edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf to flat-volumes = no Following suggestions from Lennart and Kevin Kofler success was finally achieved[20][21] in loading the alsa-sink module so that the PCM volume could be controlled. Elsewhere in this thread Lennart provided several high-level overviews of how sound should be handled on a desktop including obsoleting playing audio CDs via the classic "analog" path[22] A question from Andreas Thiemann asked how it came about that while his sound volume was acceptable with the MS Windows software mixer set to 75% and the physical speaker volume set to 50% he needed to set all of the physical volume, gnome-volume-control and the PCM volume (via an ALSA mixer) to 100% to achieve similar volumes on GNU/Linux. Lennart explained[23] that this was due to insufficient information in the alsa mixer init database and that patches to this database from anyone needing to manually fix their settings would be very useful. Apparently "[...] unning alsamixer -c0 alsa will remember [the fixed settings] and hence [users] never get annoyed by [sound problems] anymore so they don't remember to post [these patches to the database.]" Lennart expanded[24][25] on how to generate such patches to alsa-utils' /lib/alsa/init/hda. Adam Williamson worried[26] that the roots of this specific problem lay elsewhere. The aforementioned database suggested[27][28] to David Woodhouse a need for a way for users to manually tweak their sound settings for the inevitable cases in which the database lacked (or contained inaccurate) information on specific hardware. David also explained[29] that the new VolumeControl applet was not yet ready for prime-time in his opinion. The thread was summarized[30] beautifully by Fernando Lopez-Lezcano as an infinite loop. A second thread was started by Dimi Paun in which he bemoaned[31] some unspecific problems with sound in Fedora 11. This was met with mixed anecdotal statements confirming or denying the general assertion and a request for specific bugzilla entries. A third thread was initiated[32] by Adam Williamson. He proposed "[...] in the spirit of light rather than heat [to] include by default an alternative GUI app which allows direct access to the mixer channels. This won't be an applet or anything else persistent, just an application that you can choose to run if you need that level of access[.]" It should be noted that this proposal addressed a different problem to the one expressed by Callum Lerwick (solved as noted above by poking around at ALSA), instead it addressed some of the other relatively frequent complaints. By this time tempers were very frayed and although there was strong agreement that this temporary, stop-gap measure was a good compromise for Fedora 11 there were plenty of histrionics. Jesse Keating 's suggestion that the alternative GUI application contain "some text [...] that instructs people to file bugs [so] we can capture the use cases that the default mixer is missing and help the developers better target things" was dismissed[33] by Olivier Galibert Olivier asserted that Lennart would not fix such bugs: "You may not have noticed, but when people indicate a case that is seemingly not supported by PA[1], politely and everything, the answer by the main PA developer is either one or both of `don't use PA then' or `your use case is rare and uninteresting and won't be supported'." David Woodhouse reinforced[34] the point and argued that too many bugs were closed by PulseAudio developers as WONTFIX. Adam Williamson returned[35] to his central point which was that "[...] new g-v-c has no way to select the input device. If the default does not happen to be the one you actually want to record from, you're stuck. The rest of the cases discussed have really been either bugs or corner cases and I'm not too concerned about those, the bugs will be fixed and we shouldn't worry about corner cases too much. Input switching is the biggie, and it is not a `legacy use case', it is half of the functionality of any sound adapter. Lennart has acknowledged this as a missing feature that will be added in the F12 timeframe, which is why I've already said that as long as that happens - and most of the `the slider doesn't really control my volume' bugs are fixed - I'd be happy for the alternative mixer not to be installed by default from F12 on." Lennart responded[36] to arguments from Kevin Kofler and David Woodhouse that the new gnome-volume-control was too simplified with an assertion that most current soundcards offloaded signal processing to CPUs with MMX and SSE extension. This, he argued, meant that "the only controls that are really necessary are NOT those which control signal processing but those which control routing." Towards the end of all this FESCo held its weekly meeting and the IRC logs[37] contain a full record of what KevinFenzi's "FESCo Meeting Summary for 2009-04-24" handily summarizes as: "Long and contentious discussion about concerns with the VolumeControl feature. FESCo decided to get gnome-alsamixer packaged and added to the default desktop live/install spins to allow users whos use cases are not covered currently by VolumeControl to have a GUI way to adjust mixer settings. Hopefully this will be dropped/revisited in F12." David Woodhouse described[38] this as a compromise about which he had serious reservations. Christopher Aillon expressed[39] unhappiness with post-freeze changes and cited the unhappy example of Codeina. Jesse Keating refuted[40] the comparison as "[...] a compromise for the sake of F11 was reached, one that doesn't require any changes to existing software, only the addition of one package. Comparing it to the Codina fiasco isn't exactly fair." An insightful discussion about the relationship between the "desktop spin" and the "default spin" was conducted between Paul W. Frields[41], Toshio Kuratomi[42] and others. KevinFenzi and Adam Williamson did not[43] agree with Paul that the functionality provided by gnome-alsamixer was "bit-twiddling" and saw it instead as basic and frequently desired. As of going to press personal abuse of Lennart Poettering continued unabated. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02164.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02041.html 3. http://www.pulseaudio.org/ 4. http://people.redhat.com/alexl/files/why-alsa-sucks.png 5. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/junk/wtf/alsa-mixer-o-doom.jpg 6. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=491372 7. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:FESCo-2009_04_24#tApr_24_12:18:57 8. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VolumeControl 9. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:FESCo-2009_04_24#tApr_24_12:24:37 10. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:FESCo-2009_04_24#tApr_24_12:50:33 11. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01452.html 12. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01729.html 13. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01485.html 14. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02000.html 15. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01522.html 16. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01634.html 17. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01830.html 18. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01862.html 19. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01721.html 20. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02164.html 21. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02174.html 22. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01955.html 23. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01876.html 24. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01895.html 25. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01897.html 26. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01914.html 27. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02134.html 28. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02150.html 29. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02160.html 30. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02001.html 31. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01870.html 32. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02003.html 33. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02014.html 34. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02044.html 35. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02066.html 36. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02137.html 37. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Meeting:FESCo-2009_04_24 38. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02120.html 39. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02047.html 40. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02050.html 41. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02082.html 42. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02108.html 43. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02191.html === Re-starting udev === Following a security flaw in udev[1] for which patches were[2] quickly made available "Dennis J." asked[3]: "What is the proper procedure to update infrastructure components like udev or hal without rebooting the machine? udev for example doesn't have an init script." Dennis pointed out that with virtualization becoming more common reboots of host machines are something which it would be nice to avoid. M.A. Young provided[4] the information that udevd is started from /etc/rc.d/rc.sysint and can be restarted with: /sbin/start_udev 1. http://cert.belnet.be/belnetadvisories/rhsa-20090427-01-important-udev-secu… 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01702.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01698.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01714.html === Fedora Bug-tracker Independent from Red Hat ? === Basil Mohamed Gohar asked[1] for constructive criticism of a proposal which would result in the Fedora Project community hosting its own bugzilla instance. Basil attempted to provide some guidelines for the discussion. Although several participants admitted that it would be nice if bugzilla were faster Will Woods identified[2] resource constraints which rendered the discussion pointless: "This discussion is moot unless you can find someone with the manpower, hardware, bandwidth, and expertise to maintain such a bug tracker - 24/7/365 - for the entire Fedora community. So far we've identified *one* organization willing to do that - Red Hat's Bugzilla team. Unless you've got someone else who can commit to that, there's really nothing else to discuss." A practical disadvantage pointed[3] out by Mike McGrath of implementing Basil's scheme was that currently users of Fedora, Red Hat and CentOS only need to go to a single place to file bugs. Matēj Cepl ranted[4] a little when Basil approved of the "FOSS Needs a Central Bugtracker?" thread (see this same FWN#173). Matej quoted[5] Alan Cox's essay advising how to "Beware `We should', extend a hand to `How do I?'". 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01667.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01668.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01679.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01809.html 5. http://slashdot.org/features/98/10/13/1423253.shtml === FOSS Needs a Central Bugtracker ? === Markg85 started[1] a longish thread in which he proposed to start a single FOSS bugtracker for "[the] top 10 major foss distributions for now i think[.]" David Woodhouse thought[2] that OpenID might be simpler, but wondered what sort of bugs would be filed by people without the attention-span to register for an account with each bug tracker. Colin Walters also suggested[3] on focusing on less universal solutions and proposed "[...] more tractable, incremental problem to take on that would get us closer to what you want, consolidating project hosting would be a good start. For example, I'm very much against developers hosting projects on e.g. some old Trac instance on their personal vserver, for many reasons, among them that if at some later time they get bored or whatever, the server goes down and with it a lot of useful data." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01414.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01624.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01535.html == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === Fedora 11 Preview Release Notes Proof-reading === John J. McDonough announced[1] the availability of the built version of the Fedora 11 Preview Release Notes for proof-reading. These notes would be available until Fedora 11 GA. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00147.html === Fedora 11 User Guide f11-tx Branch Available === The f11-tx branch of the Fedora 11 User Guide is now available at translate.fedoraproject.org for translation submissions[1][2]. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00142.html 2. http://translate.fedoraproject.org/tx/projects/docs-user-guide/f11-tx/ === New Members in FLP === JoseRoberto (Brazilian Portuguese)[1], Pavel Lobach (Russian)[2], Sergey Danilov (Russian)[3], and Martin Zehetmayer (German)[4] joined the Fedora Localization Project this week. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00133.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00137.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00138.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00141.html == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Cleaning the Queue === This week some fresh blood started to help in cleaning the requests queue[1] of the Art team, with Israel Rodríguez Alonso proposing[2] a design[3] for "4foundations Flags", Daniel Martinez Sarta trying[4] a T-shirt[5] and some other newcomers still trying to get heir feet wet. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/DesignService 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-April/msg00244.html 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:4fflags1.png 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-April/msg00250.html 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:T-Shirt_LATAM.svg === Graphic Tablets === Israel Rodríguez Alonso's efforts[1] to configure a Wacom graphic tabled, solved with Martin Sourada advice[2] of using the pre-built binaries "why do you try to install the linuxwacom software (and from prebuilt binaries instead of recompiling them first) when there is linuxwacom package available" drove Paul W. Frields to ask[3] for a recommendation "I want to buy a drawing tablet, preferably something very well supported in Fedora and using USB. I'm assuming Wacom is the way to go, but I'm not sure which model to get, and I'm open minded as long as I know it's solid and works well with Fedora" and Máirín Duffy shared[4] her experience "I've always had luck with the Wacom graphire series. They're quite affordable, [...]. For years now they just work out-of-the-box, and if you want pressure-sensitivity, it's just a little more configuration". 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-April/msg00264.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-April/msg00265.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-April/msg00267.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-April/msg00269.html == Fedora Weekly Webcomic == This week something unbreakable is prophesied.[1] 1. http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2009/04/fedora-weekly-webcomic-unbreakable.html == 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 === * cups-1.3.10-1.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00520… * xpdf-3.02-13.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00560… * moin-1.6.4-1.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00676… * epiphany-2.24.3-5.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00723… * firefox-3.0.9-1.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00724… * epiphany-extensions-2.24.0-7.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00725… * xulrunner-1.9.0.9-1.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00726… * blam-1.8.5-9.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00727… * devhelp-0.22-7.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00728… * gecko-sharp2-0.13-7.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00729… * galeon-2.0.7-9.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00730… * gnome-web-photo-0.3-17.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00731… * gnome-python2-extras-2.19.1-29.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00732… * mozvoikko-0.9.5-9.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00733… * Miro-2.0.3-3.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00734… * google-gadgets-0.10.5-5.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00735… * kazehakase-0.5.6-4.fc10.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00736… * perl-Gtk2-MozEmbed-0.08-5.fc10.2 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00737… * mugshot-1.2.2-8.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00738… * pcmanx-gtk2-0.3.8-8.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00739… * ruby-gnome2-0.18.1-5.fc10.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00740… * yelp-2.24.0-8.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00741… * glib2-2.18.4-2.fc10 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00744… === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * cups-1.3.10-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00510… * xpdf-3.02-13.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00538… * moin-1.6.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00615… * firefox-3.0.9-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00682… * xulrunner-1.9.0.9-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00683… * chmsee-1.0.1-11.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00684… * epiphany-2.22.2-10.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00685… * epiphany-extensions-2.22.1-10.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00686… * blam-1.8.5-8.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00687… * devhelp-0.19.1-11.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00688… * gnome-python2-extras-2.19.1-26.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00689… * google-gadgets-0.10.5-5.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00690… * galeon-2.0.7-9.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00691… * gnome-web-photo-0.3-20.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00692… * evolution-rss-0.1.0-10.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00693… * mugshot-1.2.2-8.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00694… * Miro-2.0.3-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00695… * ruby-gnome2-0.17.0-8.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00696… * gtkmozembedmm-1.4.2.cvs20060817-28.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00697… * mozvoikko-0.9.5-9.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00698… * kazehakase-0.5.6-4.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00699… * totem-2.23.2-14.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00700… * yelp-2.22.1-11.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00701… == Virtualization == In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, and @libvirt-list of Fedora virtualization technologies. Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley === Fedora Virtualization List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list. ==== New Release libguestfs 1.0.10 ==== Richard Jones announced[1] release 1.0.10 of libguestfs[2]. Born only a couple of weeks ago(FWN#171[3]), libguestfs has progressed very far very fast. The package is currently being reviewed[4] for inclusion the Fedora repo. "libguestfs is a library for accessing and modifying guest disk images. Amongst the things this is good for: making batch configuration changes to guests, getting disk used/free statistics (see also: virt-df), migrating between virtualization systems (see also: virt-p2v), performing partial backups, performing partial guest clones, cloning guests and changing registry/UUID/hostname info, and much else besides." Features in 1.0.10 include: * bindings for: C, C++, Perl, Python, OCaml, Ruby, Java and shell scripting * KVM support * QEMU binary is completely configurable at compile & runtime * ext4 support * support for uploading and downloading arbitrary-sized files * support for uploading and downloading tar and tar.gz content * support for querying size of block devices, setting r/o * support for reading ext2/3 superblocks * stat, lstat, statvfs commands * commands to mount filesystems read-only * run arbitrary commands from the guest * file(1) command * readline in guestfish with history and tab completion * guestfish 'edit' command * big documentation improvements, including more on the internals * pkgconfig file Richard posted some example uses[5] of the libguestfs command line tool called guestfish. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-April/msg00220.html 2. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/ 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue171#Guest_Configuration_with_augeas_… 4. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=495564 5. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/recipes.html ==== Only libvirt Bug Fixes in updates-testing ==== Daniel Berrange described "introducing major new features into the stable release stream" as a problem[1] and switch to "a pretty strong bugfix only policy..." Mark McLoughlin announced[2] that this has now happened: * libvirt 0.6.1 has been unpushed from F9 and F10 updates-testing * The latest version available in F9 and F10 updates is 0.5.1 * We do not expect to push new versions to F9 and F10, only bug fix updates for 0.5.1 The rapid speed of Fedora releases every 6 months can not keep up with the lightning fast libvirt releases happening every month[3]. To gain access to the new features and technologies offered by these new releases, Mark offers "We are still planning on setting up a 'preview' repository where the latest versions of virt packages from rawhide will be available to Fedora stable release users". In the meantime Daniel Veillard posts[4] a src rpm with each release[5] and "I also build binaries rpms for the flavour of the day I run on my workstation which is why you will find signed binaries too for F9 x86_64". 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue171#Virtualization_Technology_Previe… 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-April/msg00136.html 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue169#More_Formal_libvirt_Release_Sche… 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-April/msg00283.html 5. ftp://libvirt.org/libvirt/ ==== Fedora Virtualization Status Report ==== Mark McLoughlin provided[1] another excellent round up of the latest bugs and developments with virtualization in Fedora. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-April/msg00170.html === Fedora Xen List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ==== Dom0 Kernel Not Before 2.6.31 ==== The upstream Xen dom0 work done by Jeremy Fitzhardinge was recently cleaned up and reorganized[1] into two branches: * Known-working - xen-tip/master * Bleeding edge - xen-tip/next Michael Young built[2]a new experimental dom0 kernel version 2.6.30-0.1.2.21.rc3 "based on the Fedora devel kernel branch and [the] xen-tip/next branch from the pvops kernel repository." An RPM of this kernel may be found in Michael's yum repo[3]. Michael also drew attention to the fact that "very few xen patches made it into 2.6.30, just bugfixes and tidy ups, so we are waiting at least until 2.6.31[4] for mainline dom0 support." 1. http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-04/msg00955.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-April/msg00012.html 3. http://fedorapeople.org/~myoung/dom0/ 4. http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2009-04/msg00961.html === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== New Release libvirt 0.6.3 ==== Daniel Veillard announced[1] a new libvirt release, version 0.6.3. "The main points are the VirtualBox driver and a number of bug fixes." Read the post for details of other changes. New features: * VirtualBox driver support (Pritesh Kothari) * virt-xml-validate new command (Daniel Berrange) Improvements: * add SCSI storage rescan (David Allan) * rootless LXC containers support improvements (Serge Hallyn) * getHostname support for LXC (Dan Smith) * cleanup and logging output of some domain functions (Guido Gunther) * drop pool lock when allocating volumes (Cole Robinson) * LXC handle kernel without CLONE_NEWUSER support (Serge Hallyn) * cpu pinning on defined Xen domains (Takahashi Tomohiro) * dynamic bridge names support (Soren Hansen) * LXC use of private /dev/pts when available (Daniel Berrange) * virNodeDeviceCreateXML and virNodeDeviceDestroy entry points (Dave Allan) Daniel Veillard followed the announcement with a roadmap [2] suggesting "a new release around May 25, which would mean entering code feature freeze around May 18". Version 0.6.2 was released April 3rd (FWN#170[3]). 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-April/msg00504.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-April/msg00508.html 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue170#New_Release_libvirt_0.6.2 ==== KVM Migration Support in F11 ==== Abhishek Jha [1] "needed to know if libvirt supports migration via the QEMU/KVM driver. ( virDomainMigrate)". Daniel Berrange answered[2] "Yes it is supported in KVM >= 79, or QEMU >= 0.10.0 and libvirt 0.6.0 IIRC." With the latest version of libvirt available for Fedora 10 being 0.5.1, this means migration of KVM guests will not be supported in Fedora until F11 comes out next month.[3] "ALso note that successful migration depends on the hardware config of your guest. In theory any config should work, but in practice there have been bugs in the device state save/restore process of various types of device. So test your particular VM config successfully migrates before relying on it in production." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-April/msg00501.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-April/msg00509.html 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/Schedule -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

1 0

virtualization complete
by Dale Bewley 27 Apr '09

27 Apr '09

Virt beat is done.

2 1

qa beat absent
by Adam Williamson 27 Apr '09

27 Apr '09

Hi, guys. I'm afraid I won't manage to get a QA beat in this week :( just a bit tired from the work week and conference on top of it and it'd be a pain to write on this laptop. i'll catch up next week. and Oisin, i'm really sorry about the mixer flamefest! -- Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> Red Hat

2 1

Ambassadors is done
by Larry Cafiero 26 Apr '09

26 Apr '09

So I lied. Since I don't know if I'll be able to post on the road tonight and tomorrow morning, I'm posting the Ambassadors report now (even though LinuxFest Northwest isn't finished yet).. Ambassadors is in. Larry Cafiero

3 2

No Marketing again this week
by Kam Salisbury 26 Apr '09

26 Apr '09

Sorry, nothing really notable not already covered in the other areas. -- Kam Salisbury http://kamsalisbury.com GPG key: FAF1751E

1 0

Ambassadors will be late
by Larry Cafiero 26 Apr '09

26 Apr '09

Ambassadors will be late, since we are reporting from LinuxFest Northwest. Larry Cafiero

1 0

announcements beat
by Max Spevack 24 Apr '09

24 Apr '09

Can someone cover the announcements beat for me this week? My travel schedule is such that I can't do it. Thanks, Max

1 0

no virt beat this week
by Dale Bewley 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

I'm going on a 3 day bike trip tomorrow and have no idea when I'll get home Sunday. So, it's very likely I won't have time to do a virtualization beat this week.

2 2

Fedora Weekly News #172
by Oisin Feeley 20 Apr '09

20 Apr '09

Fedora Weekly News Issue 172 Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 172 for the week ending April 19th, 2009. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue172 This week Announcements rubs its hands with glee over the "Fedora 11" freeze. Similarly Artwork enthuses about "Fedora 11 Landing" with great Leonidas themes including a surprise for wide-screen setups. Developments gushes about "Presto and DeltaRPM Status" and SecurityWeek asks the interesting question "Who in the Linux World Would be Responsible for a Worm?". SecurityAdvisories faithfully lists updates that might just help avoid that worm. With a red face we draw your attention with an Erratum to last week's missing QualityAssurance beat. This week's QualityAssurance beat "Test Days" advertizes the upcoming minimal installation testing and reports in "Weekly meetings" that PulseAudio issues with snd-intel-hda and snd-intel8x0 are resolved. Translation reports on the availability of a bulky "Fedora 11 Installation Guide Ready for Translation". The FedoraWeeklyWebcomic joins us again and Ambassadors shares a neat list of LinuxFestNorthWest talks by Fedora folk. 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 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala Contents 1.1 Erratum: Missing QualityAssurance Beat in FWN#171 1.2 Announcements 1.2.1 Fedora 11 1.2.2 FUDCon Berlin 2009 1.2.3 Upcoming Events 1.3 QualityAssurance 1.3.1 Test Days 1.3.2 Weekly meetings 1.4 Developments 1.4.1 Frozen for Fedora 11. Some Packages Still Not Built dist-f11 1.4.2 Xorg Hacking Solves DontZap 1.4.3 Minesweeper Certified Solitaire Professionals Satisfied with DVD 1.4.4 Presto and DeltaRPM Status 1.4.5 Browser Plugins May Strip SELinux Protections 1.4.6 Getting Rid of /usr for Fedora 12 ? 1.5 Translation 1.5.1 Fedora 11 Installation Guide Ready for Translation 1.5.2 New Members in FLP 1.6 Artwork 1.6.1 Fedora 11 Landing 1.7 Fedora Weekly Webcomic 1.8 Security Week 1.8.1 Malicious Activity Grows in 2008 1.8.2 Who in the Linux World Would be Responsible for a Worm ? 1.9 Security Advisories 1.9.1 Fedora 10 Security Advisories 1.9.2 Fedora 9 Security Advisories 1.10 Ambassadors 1.10.1 LinuxFest Northwest Starts Saturday 1.10.2 Got Ambassador News? == Erratum: Missing QualityAssurance Beat in FWN#171 == Last week (FWN#171) your painstaking QualityAssurance correspondent, Adam Williamson, wrote a very readable account of the activity around the UEFI BIOS replacement, Graphics-card Metrics and a lot more. Somehow we omitted to include this in the plaintext issue. With apologies to Adam and to our readers we suggest you take a look at our archived web version[1]. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue171#QualityAssurance == 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/Events Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === Fedora 11 === We're getting very close to the Fedora 11 release, and excitement is building. Jesse Keating[1] announced[2] that we are now frozen for Fedora 11. "We've reached the final freeze, as well as mass branched. From this point on, builds from F-11/ will go to dist-f11-updates-candidate and builds from devel/ will go to dist-f12. dist-f11 itself is locked." John Poelstra[3] gave a final reminder[4] to feature owners whose features are not at 100%. "Feature freeze has past and the following feature pages still need updates. Some have not been updated for several months. All need to be at 100% completion and their content set to reflect that." 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JesseKeating 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-April/msg00006.ht… 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JohnPoelstra 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-April/msg00007.ht… === FUDCon Berlin 2009 === Max Spevack[1] reminded[2] the community about FUDCon Berlin 2009[3], including registration[4], lodging[5], and the speaking schedule[6]. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MaxSpevack 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-April/msg00006.html 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009 4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_attendees 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_lodging 6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_Berlin_and_LinuxTag_2009_talks === Upcoming Events === April 17-19: Summer Geek Camp 2[1] in Antipolo City, Phillipines. April 18: BarCamp Rochester[2] in Rochester, New York, USA. April 19-22: Red Hat EMEA Partner Summit[3] in Malta. April 24-25: FLISOL, all over the LATAM region. April 25: Trenton Computer Festival[4] in Trenton, New Jersey, USA. April 25-26: Linux Fest Northwest[5] in Bellingham, Wasthington, USA. April 27: FOSS Lightning Talks[6] in Stockholm, Sweden. May 2: Introduction to FOSS, Fedora workshop in Pradesh, India. May 4-8: VI Foro Mundial de Conocimiento Libre[7] in Mérida, Venezuela. 1. http://fedora.bluepoint.com.ph/index.php?entry=20090204000843 2. http://barcamprochester.org/ 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_EMEA_Partner_Summit_2009 4. http://tcf-nj.org/ 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxFest_Northwest_%28LFNW%29_2009 6. http://natverk.dfs.se/node/13922 7. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/FMCL/VI-FMCL == 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 saw two Test Days. The first[1] was a follow-up on the Fedora 11 rewrite of Anaconda's storage device code[2]. The second[3] was on the Presto plugin for yum, which enables the use of deltarpms for updates. The Anaconda test day verified that many issues from the earlier test day had been resolved and turned up several new bugs, many of which have been fixed already. The Presto test day was surprisingly uneventful: there was good participation but few bugs were discovered, the system worked well and reliably for almost every test. Next week's Test Day[4] will be on the minimal platform feature[5], support for very small minimal installations. This is another test day which will require installation, so if you are interested in taking part, please make sure to have a spare system or partition on which you can install a Rawhide system. Of course, this week it only needs to be small! 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:AnacondaStorageRewrite_2009-04-14 2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/AnacondaStorageRewrite 3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:Presto_2009-04-16 4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-04-21 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MinimalPlatform === Weekly meetings === The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-04-15. The full log is available[2]. The group briefly discussed James Laska's plan to improve the customization possibilities for Test Day live CDs. James promised to send a mail to the list regarding his ideas here. Adam Williamson reported that he had successfully had a post on the Rawhide nss / x86-64 issue added to the rawhidewatch blog[3], run by Warren Togami. Adam Williamson reported on his progress in evaluating whether important bugs reported in the X driver Test Days are fully repesented on the Fedora 11 release blocker bugs list. The nouveau maintainer, Ben Skeggs, has already reviewed all nouveau bugs. Review of intel and radeon bugs in in process together with the regular triagers for these components, Matej Cepl and Francois Cami. Will Woods provided an update on his progress in checking on PulseAudio's readiness for a Fedora 11 release. He noted that some significant problems remained in two ALSA drivers - snd-intel-hda and snd-intel8x0 - which cause problems in PulseAudio. These drivers are used by a very large amount of current sound hardware. However, patches to fix several problematic cases have been added to the Rawhide kernel recently, and the remaining problems can be worked around if fixes are not integrated prior to release time, so it should be possible to release Fedora 11 with a fairly reliable PulseAudio. The group discussed whether it would make sense to schedule a Test Day for Intel audio chipsets, but concluded it was too close to release time and the Test Day schedule was already too busy to make it practical. The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[4] was held on 2009-04-14. The full log is available[5]. The meeting opened with a call for the Bugzappers group to be proactive in adding serious bugs to the Fedora 11 Blocker and Target bug lists. Several group members expressed the concern that they would not be able accurately to identify which bugs should be added to the list, so Adam Williamson and James Laska promised to discuss the issue at the next QA meeting and see if there was a way to provide firmer policies and guidance in future. The group agreed to delegate the creation and organization of a Wiki area covering SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) to John Poelstra. The discussion about how long to wait before closing NEEDINFO bugs was resolved by a proposal from John Poelstra: whether to close after 30 or 60 days will be left to the discretion of individual triagers, while if there is in future any co-ordinated team working to resolve stale NEEDINFO issues not handled by the initial triager, they will use the 60 day method. The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-04-22 at 1600 UTC in #fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-04-21 at 1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings 2. http://www.happyassassin.net/extras/fedora-qa-20090415.log 3. http://rawhidewatch.wordpress.com/ 4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2009-Apr-14 == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === Frozen for Fedora 11. Some Packages Still Not Built dist-f11 === Jesse Keating announced[1] that henceforth all F-11/ builds would go to dist-f11-updates-candidate and builds from devel/ would go to dist-f12. He asked for concerned parties to check that builds were being properly tagged. In response to Mike Chambers' question Jesse confirmed[2] that the nightly rawhide composes would consist of Fedora 11 content until the GOLD packages were on their way out to the mirrors at which point the nightly rawhide composes would contain Fedora 12 content. On a related note Bill Nottingham asked[3] maintainers of a list of packages not yet rebuilt in dist-f11 (with the attendant compiler and strong RPM hashes) to fix them if possible. Jesse Keating provided[4] a slightly more aggressive list as an addendum. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00892.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00954.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01160.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01189.html === Xorg Hacking Solves DontZap === Peter Hutterer made some valuable contributions to resolving the furore over the disabling of the zapping of the Xorg server via the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination[1]. Tom Callaway drew attention[2] to a blog entry of Peter's which mentioned upstream patches by Julien Cristau (of Debian) to xkeyboard-config and Peter's own patch[3] to Xserver which together make it possible to disallow zapping by default and also to turn zapping on with a 'setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp' . The net result is that it is possible to get zapping to work but the XKB[4] configuration needs to be set up properly and the DontZap option left disabled (as per the new default). In discussion with Kevin Kofler Peter clarified[5] the situation in which the new settings would take effect. Kevin responded[6] that it appeared that for KDE users zapping with Ctrl-Alt-BkSp would remain as before. Later Peter answered[7] some questions from Suren Karapetyan about the ability to kill broken X grabs with details about how zapping works. The above summary of an elegant technical solution ignores the long, and at times vitriolic, complaints about this change. A common trope occurring in some recent threads seems to be that changes are made by Red Hat employees who are implementing changes without community consultation and all work to a common game plan. Seth Vidal challenged[8] the latter assumption:"In a survey of 10 RH employees you will find between 10 and 40 different opinions. sometimes more if you don't ask some of them to confine their comments to a limited amount of time." In any event it's worth noting that the resolution (which filters the "Terminate_Server" action in a manner consistent[9] with the handling of other actions in xkb rulesets) was contributed upstream by a Red Hat employee. As a point of information Kevin Fenzi also made it clear that the change had not been instigated by FESCo. The new options presented by Peter were in addition to those already suggested[10] in the beta Release Notes. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue171#Zap_DontZap 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00700.html 3. http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-devel/2009-April/000626.html 4. http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/html/index.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00861.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00863.html 7. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00838.html 8. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01059.html 9. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01173.html 10. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Beta_release_notes#X_server === Minesweeper Certified Solitaire Professionals Satisfied with DVD === Jesse Keating requested[1] help in selecting which packages should be dropped from the DVD image. He suggested some java development packages and games. Feedback suggested that retaining the games was[2] preferred and dropping the development libraries made sense as the latest versions would be needed[3] and could be obtained from the repositories anyway. Jesse later posted[4] this was sufficient to achieve the desired image size. A side-issue discussed[5] was the unwieldiness of jigdo as a download method. Callum Lerwick suggested[6] that jigdo would benefit from a userspace ISO implementation. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00943.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00947.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00981.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01037.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01019.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01246.html === Presto and DeltaRPM Status === The ability to download binary diffs of RPM packages has been offered[1] for some time now on Fedora through the Presto[2] project and presto-enabled repositories. Interest is high enough in Presto's bandwidth-saving abilities that no fewer than three separate threads were started to ensure that it would function properly for Fedora 11. Warren Togami asked[3] if Presto would be enabled by default for Fedora 11. Last month (2009-03-21) Jonathan Dieter reported[4] that the use of SHA-256 in rpm had broken deltarpm but that a patched version was available in rawhide. See FWN#166[5] for earlier coverage of the challenges and changes resulting from the introduction of stronger hashes[6]. Jonathan also reported that the changes necessary in infrastructure to build deltarpms had been done. These changes were made fairly rapidly thanks to work done[7] Michael Schroeder, the upstream deltarpm developer. One issue that concerned[8] Axel Thimm was the security with which checksums of deltarpms were being made. Till Maas and Jonathan Dieter provided[9] reassurance that all deltarpms are generated from original rpms which needed to pass all verifications which yum and rpm enforce. Martin Sourada was excited[10] not just about Presto but also about the slick new PackageKit in Fedora 11. Martin was concerned about the issue of PackageKit and Presto apparently not working well together. A bugzilla entry revealed[11] that PackageKit developer [[User:|Richard Hughes]] quickly created a patch which Martin reported as working. On 2009-04-16 Bill Nottingham added to the "Rawhide Report" that "[...] rawhide is composed with deltarpms against the prior rawhide. Due to a bug, this is only currently working on i386; it should be fixed for other arches tomorrow. Please test and report any issues." A Fedora Test Day centering around Presto was also announced[12] by [[User:|James Laska]]. The usual excellent wikipage[13] suggests that Presto can deliver significant bandwidth savings. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue97#Presto-digitation 2. http://fedorahosted.org/presto/ 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00701.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-March/msg01910.html 5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue166 6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/StrongerHashes 7. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-March/msg00528.html 8. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01236.html 9. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01240.html 10. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01262.html 11. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=496445 12. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg00939.html 13. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:Presto_2009-04-16 === Browser Plugins May Strip SELinux Protections === Daniel Walsh asked[1] why mozplugger[2] was being installed by default. He cautioned that mozplugger broke nsplugin and thus SELinux functionality. An answer posted[3] by Bill Nottingham pointed out the java plugin as the dependent. Dan worried that while "[a] confined nsplugin is a nice feature for confining plugins downloaded from the network. But if you run openoffice and evince from within nsplugin they get confined, causing the apps to not work properly." In response to Simo Sorce Dan explained that any attempt to write transition rules to enable said applications to work properly would create an easy avenue of attack. Simo wondered[4] if it would be possible to either write a security wrapper to restrict the command line, or to get application developers to honor SELinux labels in some way. Warren Togami shared[5] that removing mozplugger was "[...] something I always do. It seems to cause more problems than it solves [...]" and James Morris expanded[6] upon this with instructions "[...] on both removing mozplugger and restoring the security protections of SELinux. Simply removing the package isn't enough[.]" James questioned "[...] how a package which breaks a security feature not only made it into the repo, but how it became enabled by default[?]" A similar issue was raised[7] by Bruno Wolff III about the re-enabling of disabled Firefox plugins. Comments by Martin Stransky suggest this is a feature of mozilla-plugin-config. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01107.html 2. Mozplugger describes itself as "[a] general purpose Mozilla plugin module that allows the user to embed and launch their favorite application to handle the various different types of media found on the Internet." http://mozplugger.mozdev.org/ 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01111.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01115.html 5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01117.html 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01226.html 7. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=491543 === Getting Rid of /usr for Fedora 12 ? === Lennart Poettering cheerfully invited[1] any inclined parties to a flamefest over the elimination of the /usr directory. Lennart suggested that recent history indicated that more files were being moved from /usr to / and that confusion between the two was a source of error from some packages. Enthusiasm for both the flamewar and the proposal was low. A forceful and well-argued objection was made[2][3] by Konstantin Ryabitsev on the basis that he liked to keep /boot and /usr on their own partitions and use a LUKS-encrypted LVM for everything else. Konstantin emphasized this was especially well-suited to portable machines which need to conserve power and are more likely to need encryption. Ralf Corsepius invoked[4] the FHS[5] on /usr and the need to contain[6] non-essential packages unavailable at certain boot stages therein. Chris Adams added[7] that symlinking /usr to / had been shown to break rpm. Lennart explained[8] how /etc could be made read-only and adduced[9] OpenSUSE, Debian and Gentoo as further evidence that a read-only root could be attained. Callum Lerwick pined[10] for the days of floppy disks. Toshio Kuratomi completely declined to play and asked: "I'm hereby giving notice that I don't have time to read obvious flamefests anymore. Once this thread concludes, please summarize whatever the pros and cons are and send it to the packaging committee to discuss and vote on." 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01063.html 2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01064.html 3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01076.html 4. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01077.html 5. http://www.pathname.com/fhs/ 6. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01105.html 7. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01101.html 8. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01198.html 9. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01208.html 10. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg01300.html == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === Fedora 11 Installation Guide Ready for Translation === Ruediger Landmann announced the availability[1] of the Fedora 11 Installation Guide for translation. Due to import of relevant content from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide into this Guide, the content has substantially increased. The final translation due date is 14th of May 2009 with an extension of 1 week for additional corrections. The .po files would be refreshed on April 28th 2009, to correct errors identified until that date. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00116.html === New Members in FLP === Ali Fakoor[1] has joined the Persian translation team last week. 1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-April/msg00108.html == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Fedora 11 Landing === As a culmination of last week effort, the new and improved Fedora 11 artwork[1] was packaged and landed in Rawhide, as Martin Sourada announced[2] on his blog. 1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F11/RC 2. http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-leonidas-backgrounds.html === Fedora Weekly Webcomic === This week's installment of Nicu Buculei's comic[1] 1. http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2009/04/fedora-weekly-webcomic-level-up.html == Security Week == In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora. Contributing Writer: JoshBressers === Malicious Activity Grows in 2008 === 2008 Saw a surge in malicious code activity [1]This is a disturbing trend, and for the underground, this is easy money. The threat will continue to grow until either the money dries up (unlikely) or the difficulty of exploiting this is greater than the potential gain. Right now it looks like the trend will continue for several years. 1. http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=7311 === Who in the Linux World Would be Responsible for a Worm ? === Last week OSNews asked a rather interesting, but easily answered question: OSNews Asks: Who'd Be Responsible for a Linux Conficker? [1]The world of Open Source security is mostly a process that happens behind the scenes, but is quite effective. There is a wiki called OSS-Security [2] that provides a number of links to various groups. In the event of something like a worm, the vast majority of the effort would end up happening on the Vendor Security (vendor-sec[3]) mailing list. This is a group of trusted Open Source distributors that communicate in private in an effort to keep the end users of Open Source software secure. To date this group has been working out quite well, and the members are very used to solving security flaws in a cooperative manner. In the event of a widespread Linux worm, there would be many tired people, and quite a lot of vendor-sec emails. 1. http://www.osnews.com/story/21312/OSNews_Asks_Who_d_Be_Responsible_for_a_Li… 2. http://oss-security.openwall.org/wiki/ 3. http://oss-security.openwall.org/wiki/mailing-lists/vendor-sec == 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 === * ntop-3.3.8-3.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00388.… * pam-1.0.4-4.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00398.… * phpMyAdmin-3.1.3.2-1.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00452.… * udev-127-5.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00463.… * argyllcms-1.0.3-5.fc10 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00498.… === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * pam-1.0.4-4.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00420.… * phpMyAdmin-3.1.3.2-1.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00442.… * udev-124-4.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00462.… * argyllcms-1.0.3-5.fc9 - http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-April/msg00473.… == Ambassadors == In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero === LinuxFest Northwest Starts Saturday === Fedora Project will be attending and presenting at LinuxFest Northwest this weekend in Bellingham, Wash., U.S.A. With five presentations and a booth, Fedora is proud to be a sponsor of LinuxFest Northwest this year. Below is a list of presentations at LFNW by Fedora folks, all of which will be in room Haskell 203 on the Bellingham Technical College campus. * Participate or Die by Karsten Wade at 1 p.m. Sunday * What's under the hat? A sneak peek at Fedora 11! by Jesse Keating at 11 a.m. Sunday * Modular Infrastructure design with Messaging by Jesse Keating at 2 p.m. Sunday * Fedora Remix by Clint Savage at 11 a.m. Sunday. * Fedora 101 by Larry Cafiero at 10 a.m. Saturday, preceding the Fedora Activity Day, which will be from approximately 10:30 (or when Larry decides to quit yammering away) to 4:30 p.m. The complete presentation schedule for LinuxFest Northwest can be found here. === 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. -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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