November 2008 - announce - Fedora Mailing-Lists

by Oisin Feeley

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 153 for the week ending November 23rd, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue153 Fedora 10 is released[0] tomorrow and we hope you can find time during the install to read-up on what's going on in our rapidly moving Fedora Project. We include a discussion in Developments of the need for "More and Wider Testing". Translation shares that "Release Announcements in Local Languages" are now possible, Artwork brings an important "Fonts Survey" to your attention and also looks at the "Echo Perspective" icon variants. SecurityAdvisories lists the essential updates. Virtualization gets you up to speed with an overview of all the new features of "Fedora 10 Virtualization". This is just a sampling of this week's essential reading for those who wish to stay abreast of where our distribution is going and why. Enjoy Fedora 10! If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala [0] http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join Fedora Weekly News Issue 153 1.1 Developments 1.1.1 More and Wider Testing 1.1.2 Source File Audit Catches RPM Problems Early 1.1.3 One Issue Tracker to Rule Them All 1.1.4 RFC: Fix Summary Text for Lots of Packages 1.1.5 Smock: Simpler Mock for Chain Building 1.2 Translation 1.2.1 FLSCo Elections 1.2.2 Fedora-website Translation Repository 1.2.3 Fedora 10 Release Notes Branched 1.2.4 Release Announcements in Local Languages 1.2.5 Zero-Day Version of the Fedora 10 Release Notes 1.2.6 Sponsorship to cvsl10n Group 1.3 Artwork 1.3.1 Echo Perspective 1.3.2 CD Faces 1.3.3 Fonts Survey 1.4 Security Advisories 1.4.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories 1.4.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories 1.5 Virtualization 1.5.1 Fedora 10 Virtualization 1.5.1.1 New Features 1.5.1.2 Updates to Virtualization Software 1.5.2 Enterprise Management Tools List 1.5.2.1 Connecting to VNC Console on Remote System Installs 1.5.2.2 Specifying Installation Media URLs 1.5.3 Fedora Xen List 1.5.3.1 Xen No Graphical Console and CentOS 1.5.4 Libvirt List 1.5.4.1 User Mode Linux Support 1.5.4.2 Increased Network Throughput with Large MTU 1.5.4.3 Integration with SolidICE == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === More and Wider Testing === In a thoughtful post Callum Lerwick suggested[1] that Fedora testing coverage could be improved in several inter-related areas. These included making Bugzilla easier to use; adding per-package rollbacks to enable reversion to known good states; blocking yum updates on specific reported bugs; providing a rescue image in /boot with the aforementioned functionality; and lastly, enabling simple installation of specific updates which might fix said reported bugs. Callum asked for respondents to eschew what he called the "Hard problem fallacy" which consisted of minor technical objections and asked them to provide answers modeled on the pattern of "You are an idiot and your ideas are stupid. We're not doing this." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01370.... On the subject of rollbacks Jef Spaleta objected[2] that it was complicated by the triggered scripts in packages. Currently there are no tests for rollback and Jef wondered "...how do you set up a test which attempts to measure whether rollback across a trigger boundary put you back to where you were? How much of a different in state counts as 'break rollback' ?" He then added the problem of Obsoletes: "When an obsolete is introduced in an update... can we rollback and get what we had?" He finished off with the suggestion that Carrier Grade Linux might have some experience to offer as they had attempted rollbacks. Seth Vidal remembered[3] that "[...] the rollback functionality the CGL wanted was removed from rpm recently." Gilboa Davra asked[4] how it would be possible to pin-point what exactly had broken when there was a "150 package update push. Will you rollback all the updates? Only the updates that had _something_ to do with the breakage?" RalfCorsepius also nixed[5] the idea as "[...] package rollbacks will never work in general, because updates may contain non-reversable statefull operations (e.g. reformatting databases)." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01394.... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01396.... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01409.... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01442.... A comprehensive reply was made[6] by Gilboa Davra. In it he argued that automating bug reports lowered the signal-to-noise ratio considerable and objected to modification of yum to refuse updates until reported bugs are fixed: "Say-what?!? Are we building a second Vista here?" Although he liked the idea of a rescue image in /boot he cautioned that space considerations impinged upon the need to keep "[...] a different rescue image for each installed kernel unless you plan to keep the original kernel[.]" As regards selective updates he stated: "You can always enable updates-testing and selectively install what you need." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01409.... A preliminary step was added[7] by Chris Lumens to those listed by Callum: "I'd like to add a step (0) before we make bugs easier to file and really crank up the number of reports we're getting: (0) More people FIXING the bug, not just reporting them. You can have a giant user base of people filing tons of bugs, and you can have a motivated and effective QA/Triaging team whittling them down to the really important and reproducable bugs. But without more people fixing them, the backlog is just going to continue to build." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01421.... When Peter Lemenkov wondered[8] why users were forced to register on Bugzilla Bill Nottingham underscored[9] the need for tools which do not swamp developers with large numbers of bugs. Alan Cox added[10] that the key was "[...] one clear and accurate bug report that happens to contain the right information and the user willing to help." Daniel P. Berrange further explained[11] that "[...] 90% [of bugs] are essentially useless when first reported. It requires several back/forth interactions between myself & the bug reporter to get enough information to diagnose & resolve the problem. If we create a system where we bombard maintainers with bugreports & no scope for user interaction they'll end up directly in /dev/null, and further discourage maintainers from addressing even bugs with enough info." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01408.... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01399.... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01415.... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01422.... The Ubuntu tool apport was discussed[12] as a possible solution several times as was[13] the Debian tool reportbug. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01428.... [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01456.... An emphasis was placed[14] on providing Bugzilla tools for developers and packagers by James Antill: "I won't mind getting 666 dups, or dealing with 10x as many bugs in general, as long as I have a decent local tool that can manage that number of bugs. Atm lots of TABs of open bugs, and giant folders of BZ email are the best tools I've seen." [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01492.... KarelZak jumped[15] straight to the original question and answered that testing participation was low "[...] because this work is not attractive. It's boring work without proper credit in open source community. It's very simple to found list of top-ten kernel developers, but who knows the most active bug reporters or QA around kernel? Nobody. People who are testing a software are real contributors. Our THANKS to them should be more visible!" [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01696.... === Source File Audit Catches RPM Problems Early === Kevin Fenzi posted[1] the results from the latest run of his sources/patches URL checker script. There were 912 possible problems reported, which Kevin noted was "Up from 662 last run. This is a pretty sad increase." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01433.... Happily many of the reported problems appeared[2] to be due to either temporary problems with GoogleCode and SourceForge project hosting or to some minor oddities in the script. Many of the other highlighted problems were confirmed as genuine and fixed by the package owners. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01450.... Ian Weller contrasted[3] a successful run of spectool -g[4], which uses wget internally, with the failure of Kevin's script. Later Kevin also found[5] a similar result when examining another failure. He speculated "[...] it's working fine with a wget... perhaps they are blocking the agent that spectool -g uses? (which I am not sure what it reports)." Ville Skyttä offered[6] that "spectool -g uses plain wget, with configuration file /etc/fedora/wgetrc if it exists, otherwise usual system wget configs" and Thomas Moschny discovered[7] that "spectool uses -N, which seems to cause 404 errors with googlecode[.]" Jaroslav Reznik confirmed[8] this: "Same for me - it's not working for googlecode downloads. Wget with -N param sends HEAD instead GET - these two are same, but HEADs response are only headers - it's used for links validation etc... But looks is it misconfiguration on server side?" and thanked Kevin for the usefulness of his script which had caught a serious problem. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01434.... [4] The spectool utility is part of rpmdevtools. It downloads and extracts sources and patches to build RPMs [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01451.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01454.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01459.... Eric Sandeen asked[9] if it would be a good idea to extend rpmlint to perform these checks: "I'm most likely to fix this stuff if I'm in the middle of making some other change, and an automatic check while I'm working on a package that says `hey your source URL is no longer valid' would probably provoke me to fix it quickly. :)" [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01466.... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01641.... === One Issue Tracker to Rule Them All === Arthur Pemberton examined[1] the challenge issued by Callum Lerwick to improve Bugzilla (see this same FWN#153 "More and Wider Testing".) He asked for a list features which distinguished Bugzilla from competitors. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01430.... The ability of Bugzilla to deal with a massive number of "products, components, users, hits per second [with] clustering databases and similar magic" was advanced[2] by Matej Cepl as the most compelling reason. Nicholas Mailhot added[3] "feature completeness, familiar UI, integrating with upstream issue trackers (which are often bugzilla too)" and Emmanuel Seyman suggested[4]: "And as an encore : it has to contain 109900+ bugs of existing data so that we don't lose any history." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01470.... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01477.... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01483.... A certain amount of impatience with the general idea was expressed[5] by Matej Cepl when he agreed with Andrew Cagney that one essential feature would be a "push upstream" button: "AMEN!!! And I think we should concentrate on this rather than doing stupid bugzilla rewrites. Sorry, for being harsh, but it is so IMNSHO." Emmanuel Seyman warned[6] that it would be necessary to map users, bugs and components across any separate upstream/downstream instances of bugzilla. He later expanded[7] upon this: "Bugzilla has gained the abilty to customize statuses and resolutions, making it even harder to push bugs from one bugzilla to another with prompting for user interaction." LaunchPad[8] was discussed[9] as possibly providing this feature. Casey Dahlin noted[10] that cross-site integration was still not implemented "[...] because there should never ever ever be two independent sets of launchpad data ever, according to their philosophy [.]" [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01611.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01615.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01622.... [8] Canonical's collaborative hosting service https://launchpad.net/ [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01616.... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01539.... Till Maas suggested[11] several interesting improvements including "[...] the possibility of having several people beeing responsible for a Component, which is currently only partly possible. There is the initial CC list, but when a bug is reassigned to a different component, the members of the initial CC list of the old component are not removed from the list." Other desiderata included storing the NEVR of a package in a dedicated field and support for the same bug across several different releases. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01612.... The issue of how bugs can actually be fixed cropped up again in the discussion. Brennan Ashton suggested[12] that triaging bugs was an area in need of volunteers and provided a link[13] to the BugZappers wiki page. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01704.... [13] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers === RFC: Fix Summary Text for Lots of Packages === Richard Hughes wished[1] that the Packaging Guidelines on summaries and descriptions would be followed a little more closely as "[q]uite a lot of packages have summary text that is overly verbose, and this makes the GUI and output from pkcon look rubbish." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01484.... Josh Boyer warned[2] against making reviewers' jobs harder by codifying too much in the package guidelines and suggested: "Just file bugs for packages you think are overly verbose. Offer alternate summaries in the bug, and a URL to your email for rationale." Bill Nottingham was[3] dubious that "[...] this scales across 5000 packages. So it would be good to have at least *something* in the guidelines." When Richard compromised on a "soft guideline such as: Summary should aim to be less than 8 words" David Woodhouse gently poked[4] fun at this summary as being too wordy. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01487.... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01489.... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01493.... Toshio Kuratomi expressed[5] disapproval of soft guidelines due to their potential for sparking many individual disagreements instead of one single point of contention being handled by the Packaging Committee. Richard seemed happy enough with Toshio's suggestion[6] that the packaging guidelines contain a "best practice" description with examples. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01495.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01499.... When Bill Nottingham raised[7] the possibility of "summary collisions" Jef Spaleta threw out[8] an analogy based on searching for medicine in a grocery store in a foreign country. This was intended to stimulate clarification of the function of summaries. Toshio Kuratomi loved[9] it and suggested that summaries were like the "[...] little advertising gimicks seen on and alongside the other things on the bottle. Things like: "New!", "Larger size", [Picture of grapes and smiling child], etc. They're differentiators that "help" you choose one product over another." He provided some concrete examples which seemed to prove his case. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01520.... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01536.... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01569.... Michal Hlavinka worried[10] that yum search <keyword> would be disrupted but Michael Schwendt re-assured[11] him that "'yum search' also searches the package %description. And the description is the place where to be much more verbose than in the summary. The %summary is not made for searching, but for enabling the installer and packaging tools to to display a brief and concise package description or a list thereof. That means, put a few relevant keywords in the summary (newspaper headline-style at most), but avoid long/complete sentences as often as possible. That also makes it easier to fit into one line." [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01500.... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01510.... Later Richard asked[12] for opinions on a sample email which he intended to send out to some maintainers to alert them to their long package summaries. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01640.... Andrea Musuruane, as an RPM Fusion packager, felt[13] that packagers' time would be wasted in following the proposal and that a "Summary is something that the packager should choose on his own. It must be less than 80 characters and _maybe_ it should not contain the package name. Everything else is just marketing. If someone thinks that adding the fact that the application is based on Gnome, it is fine for me. If someone else thinks that mentioning that other application uses DBUS it is fine for me too." Richard clarified[14]: "I'm _not_ saying "change your summary or we'll drop your package" I'm asking them to come into line with 90% of the other packages in the distro. I'm even offering to do the cvs commit myself, if they give me the new summary line." [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01654.... [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01656.... The issue of these changes being made solely to accommodate PackageKit was addressed[15] by James Antill: "The fact that a single tool decided that summaries should be used instead of names, and so summaries should be roughly the same size of names shouldn't make Fedora packages break their summaries for other tools ... all IMO." When Emmanuel Seyman asked[16] exactly how GUI packaging tools made the summary more prominent than the package name Richard Hughes responded[17] that it was actually one, but one that was exposed in many places. Emmanuel's response was blunt: "FWIW, I don't appreciate our maintainers being lied to. The vast majority of them work hard to make their packages and I believe that a minimum of respect should be shown [...] it is a case of changing one application versus changing 500." Ville Skyttä took[18] an overview which left the current user-interface of gnome-PackageKit aside and concentrated on whether there was agreement that rpmlint should be taught to check that the package name should not be repeated in the summary. [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01683.... [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01672.... [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01713.... [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01673.... Further criticism was made[19] by Christopher Wickert of sorting packages by description instead of name in PackageKit and Tom Lane raised[20] the problem of sub-packages needing to reference the name of their parent package. At this stage it seemed that some consensus had been reached on the idea that summaries which repeated the program name were frowned upon and that "verb phrases" should be also be deprecated as suggested[21] by Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams. [19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01721.... [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01733.... [21] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01532.... A brief dispute between Andreas Musuruane and Michael Schwendt yielded a closing statement which seemed[22] to make the case of those that favor the changes in a strong manner. Michael accepted that: "[i]t isn't trivial to come up with good one-line summaries that do more than repeating the program name. It's nothing packagers like to spend time on. Reducing a packager's freedom even further won't be a good thing [...] I think with some people one could argue endlessly about pkg summaries. And during pkg reviews that's wasted time. Still, with very old repositories it has been noticed [and agreed on, mostly] that some types of summaries simply look poor in Anaconda and package management tools. That was the rationale for some of the recommendations." RichardHughes noted[23] that over the last forty-eight hours many maintainers had changed their package summaries as requested. [22] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01753.... [23] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01764.... === Smock: Simpler Mock for Chain Building === A couple of announcements were made by Richard Jones. The first was of a new version of OCaml. The second was[1] of a wrapper script that "[...] runs on top of mock, allowing you to chain-build a series of RPMs from a single command." An example which would "[...] arrange the SRPMs into the correct order according to their BuildRequires, then build each in the four separate mock environments Fedora {9,10} {i386,x86_64}" was provided: smock.pl --arch=i386 --arch=x86_64 \ --distro=fedora-9 --distro=fedora-10 \ *.src.rpm [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01229.... Till Maas suggested[2] that local file access URIs[3], such as file:///, could be used to avoid the need for a webserver and Paul Howarth confirmed[4] that he had been using mock "[...] like this for *years* with loopback-mounted ISO images for a low-cost source for the base repo. It definitely works." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01232.... [3] See RFC1738 section 3.10 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1738 [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01264.... Seth Vidal asked[5] why the wrapper approach had been taken instead of integrating the functionality into mock and Richard agreed[6] that this should happen. An initial problem with build requires of the form "%{name}-devel" failing was quickly fixed[7]. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01238.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01239.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01354.... == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === FLSCo Elections === The mid-term elections for FLSCo are slated to happen sometime during the end of December 2008. Members will be elected to replace three serving members completing their 6 months term. Paul Frields and Dimitris Glezos called[1] on FLP members to nominate themselves or suitable members[2] to be part of the Steering Committee. Paul Frields also commended[8] the improved coordination between the Documentation and Translation teams during this release and applauded the efforts made by FLSCo and other members of FLP that has helped bring about this change. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00139.... [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/SteeringCommittee/Nominations Fedora-website Translation Repository The last week of the Fedora Translation cycle saw translation activity for the Fedora Websites[3]. A minor hiccup was averted when Ricky Zhou alerted[4] the translators about the change in the submission repository for the fedoraproject.org website translations. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00058.... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00126.... === Fedora 10 Release Notes Branched === The "f10" branch was created for the Fedora 10 Release Notes and added into translate.fedoraproject.org by DimitrisGlezos[5]. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00122.... === Release Announcements in Local Languages === Karsten Wade announced[6] that for Fedora 10, the translation/local country teams have the option of writing their own release announcements instead of translating the English version. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00140.... === Zero-Day Version of the Fedora 10 Release Notes === All bugs related to Fedora 10 Release Notes have been closed by PaulFrields[7] and the Zero-Day version of the .pot file is now available[8]. A final RPM version with the updates would be packaged on Monday. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00146.... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00152.... === Sponsorship to cvsl10n Group === The discussion related to sponsoring new members to the cvsl10n group continued this week. DimitrisGlezos suggested[9] elevating the status of all language coordinators to "sponsor". [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00142.... == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Echo Perspective === Martin Sourada, the maintainer of the Echo icon theme, announced[1] on @fedora-art a variant of this theme, called Echo Perspective "I think because we are starting new icon set from the start we can afford more radical changes than before to Echo. Most of them are visible in the icon I've created. But we need more, namely redesign of the directory and trash icons. It would be great if as many people as possible submitted their ideas for these, either here on a wiki I've created for this purpose [2]" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00053.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/EchoIconTheme/Perspective Some days later, Martin continued the experiment[3] by trying a new representation of the folder icon, one of the most seen icons on the desktop "I've just finished first take of the folder design for Echo Perspective. I do not hide that the design has been inspired by Mac OS X Leopard folder as well as current Echo folder. I've more or less retained the original colour, but adjusted it to better fit with our colour palette." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00089.html === CD Faces === Paul Frields relayed[1] to @fedora-art a request from @fedora-marketing for CD faces (labels and sleeves) and Máirín Duffy stepped up[2] and published on the wiki[3] a set of labels and the final version of the sleeves created earlier by team member Jarod Wen. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00073.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00084.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/MediaArt/F10 Since Máirín's design is optimised for "professionally-done screen printed version of the discs" two other designers, Jayme Ayres[4] and Susmit Shannigrahi[5], proposed alternative, much richer versions of the labels (suitable for large scale printing.) [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00078.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00087.html === Fonts Survey === Nicolas Mailhot wrote[1] to @fedora-fonts about a survey[2] "[...] asking our users to participate in the online font surveys out there on Fedora 10 release". He felt this was important as "this way we may limit the number of web sites that only work with Arial or Times New Roman, and make more web designers aware of the fonts actually available on free systems." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-fonts-list/2008-November/msg00039.... [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Linux_fonts_on_the_web__CSS_and_font_surveys == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * grip-3.2.0-24.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * htop-0.8.1-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * geda-gnetlist-20080929-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * roundup-1.4.6-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * cobbler-1.2.9-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * libxml2-2.7.2-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * thunderbird-2.0.0.18-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * geda-gnetlist-20080929-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * roundup-1.4.6-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * libxml2-2.7.2-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * cobbler-1.2.9-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * grip-3.2.0-24.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * htop-0.8.1-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * thunderbird-2.0.0.18-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... == 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 === Fedora 10 Virtualization === This section contains a description of the virtualization features in the brand new Fedora 10 release. ==== New Features ==== Fedora 10 includes a number of virtualization enhancements over previous releases including new software packages and major new features. * Unified Kernel Image The kernel-xen package has been obsoleted by the integration of paravirtualization operations in the upstream kernel. * Virtualization Storage Management Advances in libvirt now provide the ability to list, create, and delete storage volumes on remote hosts. * Remote Installation of Virtual Machines Improvements in Virtualization Storage Management have enabled the creation of guests on remote host systems. For complete details, see the release notes[1] and then jump into the quick start guide[2]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats#Virtualization [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Virtualization_Quick_Start ==== Updates to Virtualization Software ==== Virtualization with Fedora is achieved through the hard work of many projects including kvm, libvirt, virt-manager, xen, and others. Below is a listing of some of the virtualization software found in Fedora, illustrating the updates since the release of Fedora 9. +----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------------+ | Software | F9 Release | F10 Release | ReleaseNotes/Changes | +----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------------+ | kvm | 65-1 | 74-5 | [1] | | libvirt | 0.4.2-1 | 0.4.6-3 | [2] | | python-virtinst| 0.300.3-5 | 0.400.0-4 | [3] | | virt-df | n/a | 2.1.4-2 | [4] | | virt-manager | 0.5.4-3 | 0.6.0-3 | [5] | | virt-mem | n/a | 0.2.9-6 | [6] | | virt-top | 0.4.1.1-1 | 1.0.3-2 | [7] | | virt-viewer | 0.0.3-1 | 0.0.3-3 | [8] | | xen | 3.2.0-10 | 3.3.0-1 | [9] | | xenner | 0.29-2 | 0.46-3 | [10] | | xenwatch | n/a | 0.5.3-1 | [11] | +----------------+--------------+-------------+----------------------+ [1] http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/ChangeLog [2] http://www.libvirt.org/news.html [3] http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/download.html [4] http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/ [5] http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/download.html [6] http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-mem/faq.html [7] http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top/ChangeLog.txt [8] http://virt-manager.et.redhat.com/download.html [9] http://www.xen.org/download/ [10] http://cvs.bytesex.org/xenner.html [11] http://cvs.bytesex.org/xenwatch.html === Enterprise Management Tools List === This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list ==== Connecting to VNC Console on Remote System Installs ==== While executing virt-install on a remote system, Stephan found[1] that the installer created a VNC service listening on 127.0.0.1, and wanted to know how to connect to this service or move it to a public interface on the remote system. Daniel P. Berrange answered[2] that modifying the vnc_listen parameter in /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf will affect the IP used, but this isn't necessary. The virt-viewer application will automatically tunnel[3][4] VNC connection over SSH. virt-viewer --connect qemu+ssh://root@remotehost/system centos1 [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00041.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00042.html [3] http://virt-manager.org/page/RemoteSSH [4] http://libvirt.org/remote.html ==== Specifying Installation Media URLs ==== Enzo Medici became[1] frustrated while trying to provision Xen domUs with virt-manager. "What constitutes a valid install media URL?" "How do you get a valid install media URL for a particular Linux distribution?" Cole Robinson explained[2] "We actually don't have support in the backend for fetching kernels from Ubuntu trees" yet. "This may work at the moment though since it could be detected as a debian tree." Cole then described the installation URLs for some popular distributions. * For Fedora, it has varied a bit for different releases, but basically whatever ends in {ARCH}/os: http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Fedora/x86_... * CentOS is similar, but seems to have ARCH and os reversed: http://mirrors.cmich.edu/centos/5/os/x86_64/ * Debian/Ubuntu trees are everything up to the install-{ARCH} dir: http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/etch/main/installer-i386 [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00044.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00046.html Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. === Xen No Graphical Console and CentOS === While creating a domU on CentOS 5.2, Jason passed --nographics to virt-install and received the error message: No console available for domain. Investigation /var/log/xen uncovered: Could not initialize SDL - exiting. Cole Robinson responded[2] that "This is actually a known bug: xen doesn't abide nographics and tries to init SDL. This will almost always fail if run through [CentOS] 5.2 libvirt. This bug will be fixed in [CentOS] 5.3." The --vnc flag may be used as a workaround this crash in the meantime. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-November/msg00015.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-November/msg00016.html === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== User Mode Linux Support ==== Daniel P. Berrange improved[1] the user mode linux driver[2] (See FWN#148[3]), by improving stability and adding documentation. Network support is not yet available, but the driver is planned for release with libvirt 0.5.0. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00239.html [2] http://libvirt.org/drvuml.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue148#Experimental_User_Mode_Linux_D... ==== Increased Network Throughput with Large MTU ==== Chris Wright created[1] a proof of concept patch "for setting a large MTU size on a tap[2] device. With this we are able to improve net i/o throughput substantially (~40% improvement on TX and ~130% improvement on RX). This is just RFC because it's hardcoded to an MTU of 9000 for any tap device." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00225.html [2] http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/networking/tuntap.txt ==== Integration with SolidICE ==== With a goal of integrating libvirt and SolidICE[1], Shahar Frank posted[2] "an initial version of the operations required for SolidICE and the proposed high level interface." All of the listed operations were storage related. Daniel P. Berrange provided[3] a very detailed and informative response explaining how to to apply the libvirt API to these operations. SolidICE is a product of Qumranet, now Red Hat[4]. SolidICE runs virtual KVM desktops in the datacenter for display by thin clients. [1] http://www.qumranet.com/products-and-solutions [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00256.html [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00262.html [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Other_Virtualization_News -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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Fedora Weekly News 152

by Pascal Calarco

-Fedora Weekly News Issue 152- Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 152 for the week ending November 16th, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue152 This week's exciting issue features extensive coverage of a Server SIG formation in the Developments beat, along with clarifications from the Fedora Engineering leadership on feature freeze policies. In announcements, reminders of this Tuesday's public Fedora Board meeting on #fedora-board-meeting at irc.freenode.net. The Translation beat features various Fedora 10 milestones and an introduction of three new members to the translation team. In Artwork, some history on the genesis of the Fedora infinity bubble is saved, and more feedback on Fedora 10 themes. Virtualization includes updates of dom0 support in the upstream kernel, and a RFC on including greater detail in domain events. Finally, Fedora 9 and 8 updates for the week in Security Advisories. These are but a few highlights in this week's Fedora Weekly News! If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join -- Announcements -- In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack --- Public Fedora Board Meeting on IRC --- Paul Frields reminded[1] the community about the upcoming Fedora Board meeting on IRC. The meeting will be on 2008-11-19 (Tuesday) at 19:00 UTC. "Join #fedora-board-meeting to see the Board's conversation. This channel is read-only for non-Board members. Join #fedora-board-public to discuss topics and post questions. This channel is read/write for everyone. The moderator will direct questions from the #fedora-board-public channel to the Board members at #fedora-board-meeting. This should limit confusion and ensure our logs are useful to everyone." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-November/msg0001... --- Upcoming Bugzilla Activities --- Jon Stanley wrote[2] about some upcoming Bugzilla changes, that will coincide with Fedora 10's release. There are two things of which people should be aware: First, "we will be rebasing all rawhide bugs to F10. This will result in regular bugs reported against rawhide during the Fedora 10 development cycle being changed to version '10' instead of their current assignment, 'rawhide'."; Second, "all bugs for EOL releases (at this point, Fedora 8) will get a comment on or about GA of Fedora 10, explaining that one month of maintenance remains, and to either move the bug to a later version if still applicable, or they will be automatically closed in one month with a resolution of WONTFIX." See the link below[2] for the complete announcement. [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-November/msg000... -- Developments -- In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley --- Features Policy Modified --- The latest FESCo discussions (2008-11-12) clarified[1] the Features[2] process. The changes make explicit the need for testing to be complete one week prior to the final freeze. Failure to meet that condition can result in FESCo deciding to drop the feature or implement a contingency plan or other suitable action. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00847.... [2] Features are "a significant change or enhancement to the version of Fedora currently under development": http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy/Definitions The spur to these discussions was several last-minute changes for Fedora 10 which included dropping the instant-messaging client Empathy as the default, and the late addition of LiveConnect (see FWN#151[3]) and AMQP[4]. Earlier confusion about the Feature process and difficulties with communication had also been expressed (see FWN#147[5]) after the decision to drop the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment as a feature. [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue151#LiveConnect_Feature_Approved_f... [4] The Advanced Messaging Queue Protocol is a vendor-neutral middleware transport for business processes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Message_Queuing_Protocol [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue147#LXDE_Feature_Removal_Disappoin... The other major changes to the process include the emailing of the Feature owner to inform them when their feature is being discussed by FESCo and any decisions made concerning said feature. The extra work involved in tracking down email addresses was anticipated to be an over-burdening of the committee chair, Brian Pepple. To ease this problem it was decided that Feature owners must include current email addresses on their Feature pages. --- Server SIG --- DanHorák announced[1] that a "[...] formal entity to coordinate [...] the server fundamentals that later create a successful enterprise product [...]" had been launched as a SIG. He invited constructive ideas and the wiki page[2] suggests that the SIG has many important initial goals including: a spin for headless servers, CLI equivalents of GUI tools, a lightweight installer and maintenance of the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00645.... [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DanHorak/ServerSIG The extensive discussion which followed mostly consisted of approval for the idea. Dennis Gilmore expressed[3] enthusiasm for the general idea and specifically requested kickstart files for different types of servers and "best practice" whitepapers. An example of one of the issues the SIG might deal with was[4] the observation by Chris Adams that an installation of ntop had resulted in seventy dependencies, including metacity, being pulled down. Peter Robinson attributed[5] this to graphviz and suggested that while such problems were declining in number it would be useful for the ServerSIG to co-ordinate bug filing for these issues. Chris provided[6] a script which allowed test installs into a subdirectory to determine "what gets pulled in." Later James Antill mentioned two useful scripts written by himself and Seth Vidal which show package dependencies and provides as a tree structure. Dominik "rathan" Mierzejewski added[7] a mention of rpmreaper, a utility which eases the removal of unnecessary dependencies. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00652.... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00730.... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00736.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00778.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00932.... After Chris observed that "[w]ith rawhide, it appears impossible to install a kernel without pulling in X libraries (because of plymouth), so I guess the base X libraries can be considered "core" now" the conversation took a more adversarial turn. The accuracy of this statement turned out[8] to depend on whether libpng and pango were considered to be "X libraries" and Chris demonstrated the dependency chain as originating with the plymouth-plugin-solar. Les Mikesell commented[9]: "This is all pretty strange from a server perspective. And plymouth is there to keep the screen from blinking while you boot?" When Jesse Keating replied that Plymouth "handl[ed] the passphrase prompting for encrypted volumes" Les argued[10] that it should be optional for remote, headless boxes. Dominik "rathann" Mierzejewski was shocked[11] when Jesse Keating pointed out that plymouth also provided working /var/log/boot.logs: " Hm, you're right, all my boot.log files are 0 bytes (F-9). So instead of fixing the bug, a new package was introduced? Amazing." Dominik's dissatisfaction continued[12] to be unabated when he was informed that the absence of the kernel commandline parameter "rhgb" would result in plymouthd running but without any graphical plugins. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00787.... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00787.... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00795.... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00814.... [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00859.... The automatic selection of plymouth-plugin-solar as opposed to the alternate "plymouth-text-and-details-only" resulted[13] in a discussion around whether it was possible to make yum behave differently in such ambiguous situations. Enrico Scholz wished to add a "fail, warn and/or prompt when multiple packages satisfy a (virtual) dependency[.]" Seth Vidal reminded[14] him that the constraint of non-interactive defaults meant that this might not work. James Antill posted[15] that he had a patch to yum which "[...] would allow Fedora (or any active repo.) to configure these choices manually. We could then also easily have different defaults for the desktop vs. the server spins." James received some questions from Jesse Keating and Bill Nottingham who asked how per-spin defaults would be stored and how to deal with conflicting information from multiple repositories. His answer suggested[16] that introducing new repositories for the metadata or changing its syntax would be necessary. [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00858.... [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00907.... [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00995.... [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01030.... Dan Horák's desire to remove plymouth entirely was dismissed[17] as non-optional by Bill Nottingham as it will take on an even more important role in storage handling in the future. Bill suggested that the default plugin was optional however. He reassured[18] Dan that as regards headless machines there had been "[...] some testing on PPC boxes via serial/hvc consoles. Please test that it works in your scenarios as well, of course." When Enrico Scholz rejected disk encryption as important for servers Jesse Keating made[19] the case that "In a colo environment I /would/ want some encryption on the disk, and if I have to use a remote kvm to input the passphrase at reboot time, that's OK. Reboots are either planned events, or emergencies, both of which are going to require the attention of the people who have the passphrase." Alan Cox backed[20] this up: "If you are storing personal data on a system in a colo its practically mandatory to have encryption, and if you are storing anything sensitive its a big deal indeed - at least in those parts of the world with real data and privacy law ;)" [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00784.... [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00792.... [19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00798.... [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00823.... The thread continued in fits and starts. Adam Tkac raised[21] the problem of handling static IPs with NetworkManager (see this same FWN#152 "NetworkManager keyfiles for Pre-login Static Routes" for a discussion of as yet undocumented features). Chuck Anderson disputed[22] that the problem existed and provided commandline and GUI solutions: "[...] for system-wide connections which you would presumably want for a server, you edit /etc/sysconfig/networkscripts/ifcfg-* as usual and NM will bring the interface up at boot. From the desktop, you can Edit Connections and create a new static connection and select it instead of the System or Auto connection which is very handy when moving between networks that don't support DHCP." An important addendum was provided[23] by Olivier Galibert "Try a "chkconfig -list network". It should be on for levels 2-5. If it isn't, you haven't enabled the old-style networking [.]" The same point was made by Chuck[24] "Are you using NetworkManager or network service? chkconfig -list NetworkManager; chkconfig -list network If NetworkManager is enabled and network is not, then you need to change ifcfg-eth0: NM_CONTROLLED=yes" and by Bill Nottingham[25] "You need to either set NM_CONTROLLED to something other than 'no', or enable the 'network' service. In either case, NM's static network support is not your problem." [21] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00863.... [22] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00871.... [23] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00892.... [24] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00887.... [25] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00938.... The LSB[26] also came in for a bashing due to infrequently used, old tools (such as ypbind and the insecure r-commands) being installed to achieve compliance. Patrice Dumas clarified[27] that ypbind was necessary in @base to provide NIS functionality. Later discussion separated[28] out LSB-Core and LSB-Desktop which should simplify making a minimal install LSB compliant. Bill Nottingham and Chris Adams performed[29] a dissection of @core with the intent of separating out items such as hdparm , prelink , dhclient , ed and others into @base. [26] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00718.... [27] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00753.... [28] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00759.... [29] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00802.... Jeremy Katz outlined[30][31] a perspective from the Quality Assurance point of view. The burden imposed by preserving the modularity that many of the participants advocated sounds quite high: "[...] trying to preserve that modularity combinatorially adds to the testing matrix and also makes it significantly more difficult to write code since you can no longer depend on functionality. It also makes things slower as you have to conditionally check for things constantly [...] It's more than just /etc/init.d/network that has to be maintained. There's oodles of stuff in install-time configuration that will have to be maintained, tested, and have things fixed when people report them." Seth Vidal acknowledged[32] this but cautioned against dismissing the objections to particular changes as merely "neoluddite". [30] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01023.... [31] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01025.... [32] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01027.... The massive thread included much more discussion and resists easy summary. Those interested should probably plow through the messages. Among the issues raised were finding DBus documentation[33] and contention between class devices to set default routes[34]. A quote from DanHorak which seems to offer the perspective of the ServerSIG concisely is appropriate in closing: "It is really time to look back at the roots of Unix systems. It should be a combination of small pieces with well defined interfaces doing well their tasks. Only the time had changed those pieces from simple command line utilities to more complex ones." [33] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg01071.... [34] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00911.... --- NetworkManager keyfiles for Pre-login Static Routes --- In the course of the ServerSIG discussions (see this same FWN#152 "Server SIG") an interesting question about NetworkManager was asked[1] by Les Mikesell: "If you bring up a mix of static and dynamically assigned interfaces, can you control which gets to assign the default route and DNS servers?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00872.... Dan Williams provided[2] a useful description of how NetworkManager currently decides the default route. In response to Olivier Galibert he added[3] that static routes could be set up using the "[...] connection editor see the "Routes..." button in the IPv4 tab. Routes from ifcfg files aren't yet supported, but could be. Routes from keyfile-based system connections (ie, prelogin) are supported." After this tidbit Chuck Anderson prodded[4] Dan into explaining that keyfiles were a way to support things like "VPN, 3G, WPA" which were difficult or impossible to support with the ifcfg files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. "NM has a system settings 'keyfile' plugin that allows editing system connections from the connection editor, or your favorite text editor if you don't use a GUI at all. Add `,keyfile' to the --plugins argument in the /usr/share/dbus-1/systemservices/org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerSystemSettings.service file, and then 'killall -TERM nm-system-settings'." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00880.... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00897.... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00900.... Jesse Keating wondered when and where the documentation for this was placed and Dan replied[5] "[w]hen I struggle up for air from the tarpit that is the concurrent release of NM 0.7 + F10 + RHEL 5.3? :) " [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00912.... --- Flash 10 in 64-bit Fedora 9 --- Jos Vos asked[1] for comparative data on using nspluginwrapper with Firefox to access Flash content in 64-bit Fedora 9. He was experiencing "[...] error messages about not finding 'soundwrapper' in my $PATH [.]" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00432.... Although Chris Adams reported success Orcan Ogetbil described[2] a "gray rectangle bug" which seemed to be manifested mostly when multiple tabs were open. Brennan Ashton claimed[3] that it was due to a PulseAudio "bug". [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00439.... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00443.... Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams and others reported[4] no problems and Jos posted[5] that there appeared to be a dependency on libcurl.i386 in the Adobe supplied rpm. This was later stated[6] by Paul Howarth to be changed so that either libcurl.so.3 or libcurl.so.4 will be used via a dlopen() and there is no explicit requires:libcurl in the rpm. Gianluca Szforna supplied[7] a link[8] which suggests that libflashsupport should be completely removed as it may cause crashes. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00437.... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00445.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00479.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00484.... [8] http://macromedia.mplug.org/ -- Translation -- This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee --- Fedora 10 Release Notes Translation Over --- The translation task for the Release Notes to be packaged with Fedora 10 came to an end on 13th November 2008. However, translations for the web version can continue until 21st November 2008[1]. Additionally, the Colophon section has been updated to include the names of the new translators[2] and other contributors[3]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00013.html [2] https://fedorahosted.org/release-notes/ticket/34 [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00118.... --- Fedora Website Translations for F10 --- Ricky Zhou announced the start of the translations for the Fedora website, for Fedora 10[4]. The counter is also available for translation[5]. The due date for the Fedora Web translations is November 24th 2008[6] and can be submitted via translate.fedoraproject.org[7]. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00058.... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00070.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00087.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00092.... --- Few System-config tools to be migrated --- Nils Philippsen announced the plans for the migration of a few system-config tools (date, nfs, samba, services, users) from the mercurial to the git repository. Additionally, the documentation and the software would be segregated[8][9]. During the migration, these modules will not be available for updation in translate.fedoraproject.org. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00065.... [9] https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/970 --- New members in FLP --- Three new members joined the Fedora Translation Project last week. Christopher Grebs (German)[10], Muhammad Panji (Indonesian)[11], Rui Gouveia (Portuguese)[12]. [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00106.... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00076.... [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00075.... --- Confusion over Hindi Release Notes --- There was a confusion while building the hindi release notes for Fedora 10, due to the presence of an obsolete file for the same locale[13]. A bug has been filed for this matter by Rejesh Ranjan[14]. [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00102.... [14] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=471028 --- Docs-Homepage module is now obsolete --- The module docs-homepage is now obsolete and does not require further translation[15]. This query was raised by Xavier Conde Rueda and clarified by Paul Frields. A bug has been filed by Noriko Mizumoto for the removal of this module from translate.fedoraproject.org[16]. [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00108.... [16 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=471322 --- FLSco review --- Dimitris Glezos, the current chair of the Fedora Localization Steering Committee (FLSCo) has initiated a discussion to evaluate the Committee's present method of functioning and any changes that can be made to improve it [17]. It is to be noted that the next elections for the Steering Committee would be held in December 2009[18]. [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00115.... [18] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/SteeringCommittee/Elections#Upcomming_... -- Artwork -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei --- Keeping the History Alive --- A few years ago, when the Fedora "Infinity Bubble" logo was created, it was accompanied by an insightful set of slides, describing the process which led to its creation. As the original page hosting the slides closed some months ago this particular piece of history was lost. Lost, that is, until now when Máirín Duffy posted[1] on @fedora-art the results of her recovery work "I took some time to grab what I could from archive.org and reconstruct it here: [2]" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00040.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Logo/History --- Feedback on the Fedora 10 themes --- With the final release for Fedora 10 closing, more and more previews are published on the web and in most of them the artwork is praised. This week Jayme Ayres linked[1] to yet another such praising review "I was giving a look at the blog Rodrigo Menezes [2] and saw on the analysis done by 10 Fedora dual blog JupiterBroadcasting [3] (who particularly did not know), said some puerility on Fedora, but praised highly the work of Artwork and then I'd like to share with you. Congratulations to all!" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00036.html [2] http://rmenezes.com/2008/11/in-depth-fedora-10-preview/ [3] http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/?p=326 -- 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 ---- Using VirtIO Network Driver for Windows KVM Guest ---- Working on Ubuntu, Arutyunyan Ruben provisioned Windows KVM guests using virt-manger, and wanted to use virtio[2] drivers to speed up network access. After successfully using a howto[3] to install this support, it was found to be missing after restarting the guest. Cole Robinson answered[4] that virt-manager does not support setting this option, but it can be accomplished manually by using virsh dumpxml and virsh define. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00033.html [2] http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Virtio [3] http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/tip-how-setup-windows-guest-paravirtual-... [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00034.html ---- Mounting virt-p2v Disk Images ---- Paras Pradhan asked[1] how to mount images created by virt-p2v. Joey Boggs described[2] the process. * Setup a loop device to the imagefile losetup /dev/loopX domain.img * Read the partitions kpartx -av /dev/loopX * Mount each partition as required mount /dev/mapper/loopXpX /MOUNTPOINT After unmounting the partitions, the loopback devices should be removed with kpartx -d and losetup -d.[3] [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00026.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00029.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Virtualization_Quick_Start#Accessing_data_o... --- Fedora Xen List --- This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ---- Status of dom0 Support in Upstream Kernel ---- Pasi Kärkkäinen forwarded[1] a message[2] from Jeremy Fitzhardinge, originally to the @xen-devel list, describing the state of dom0 support in the upstream kernel. ".28 was a bit optimistic; (FWN#137[3]) .29 seems reasonable. The current dom0 kernel patches can boot up to a fully functional dom0 usersmode, and you can start xend to see that domain 0 is running. I *think* in theory you can create a deviceless domain, but I haven't tried it. I'm currently working on blktap support. I really need to put together a proper status update. Now that dom0 usermode is working, its a much better base for other people start contributing." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-November/msg00011.html [2] http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2008-11/msg00205.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#State_of_Xen_in_Upstream_Linux Just two days later Jeremy posted[4] a large set of patches to @xen-devel with the following explaination. "A dom0 Xen domain is basically the same as a normal domU domain, but it has extra privileges to directly access hardware. There are two issues to deal with: * translating to and from the domain's pseudo-physical addresses and real machine addresses (for ioremap and setting up DMA) * routing hardware interrupts into the domain ioremap is relatively easy to deal with. ..." "... Interrupts are a very different affair. The descriptions in each patch describe how it all fits together in detail, but the overview is: 1. Xen owns the local APICs; the dom0 kernel controls the IO APICs 2. Hardware interrupts are delivered on event channels like everything else 3. To set this up, we intercept at pcibios_enable_irq: * given a dev+pin, we use ACPI to get a gsi * hook acpi_register_gsi to call xen_register_gsi, which * allocates an irq (generally not 1:1 with the gsi) * asks Xen for a vector and event channel for the irq * program the IO APIC to deliver the hardware interrupt to the allocated vector The upshot is that the device driver gets an irq, and when the hardware raises an interrupt, it gets delivered on that irq. We maintain our own irq allocation space, since the hardware-bound event channel irqs are intermixed with all the other normal Xen event channel irqs (inter-domain, timers, IPIs, etc). For compatibility the irqs 0-15 are reserved for legacy device interrupts, but the rest of the range is dynamically allocated. Initialization also requires care. The dom0 kernel parses the ACPI tables as usual, in order to discover the local and IO APICs, and all the rest of the ACPI-provided data the kernel requires. However, because the kernel doesn't own the local APICs and can't directly map the IO APICs, we must be sure to avoid actually touching the hardware when running under Xen. TODO: work out how to fit MSI[5] into all this. So, in summary, this series contains: * dom0 console support * dom0 xenbus support * CPU features and IO access for a privleged domain * mtrrs * making ioremap work on machine addresses * swiotlb allocation hooks * interrupts: o introduce PV io_apic operations o add Xen-specific IRQ allocator o switch to using all-Xen event delivery o add pirq Xen interrupt type o table parsing and setup o intercept driver interrupt registration All this code will compile away to nothing when CONFIG_XEN_DOM0 is not enabled. If it is enabled, it will only have an effect if booted as a dom0 kernel; normal native execution and domU execution should be unaffected." [4] http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2008-11/msg00268.html [5] http://lwn.net/Articles/44139/ --- Libvirt List --- This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ---- OpenVZ Bridge Support Committed ---- Daniel P. Berrange updated[1] a previous patch[2] designed to "enable bridge support in the OpenVZ driver. As well as the fixes suggested last time, it includes an initial bit of HTML doc for the OpenVZ driver, covering example XML, and the bridge configuration requirements." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00117.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00326.html ---- Qemu/KVM Live Migration Implemented ---- Chris Lalancette posted[1] the patch to implement Qemu/KVM live migration. After a little upstream cleanup[2], the patch was committed. "Now that upstream Qemu has settled on an interface that is friendly to libvirt (i.e. one that doesn't block the monitor on -incoming), we can implement it here. Note that the bulk of this patch was written by Rich Jones quite a while ago. My hand in it has mostly been to forward port it to current libvirt CVS, tweak it for the new Qemu style, and test it out with a recent KVM (kvm-78, in particular)." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00087.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00092.html ---- Fix Logical Volume Scanning of Encrypted Volumes ---- Cole Robinson fixed[1] a bug[2] that prevented logical volume scanning of an encrypted volume in a storage pool[3]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00138.html [2] http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=470693 [3] http://www.libvirt.org/archstorage.html ---- Greater Details from Domain Events ---- Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] an RFC on adding greater detail to domain events. "...I'd like to have more information about STOPPED & STARTED events in general. eg, there are a number of reasons why an domain may have started: * explicitly booted on the host * restored from a saved image * incoming migration operation and there are a number of reasons why a domain might have stopped: * forcably destroyed by host admin * shutdown by host admin * shutdown by guest admin * host emulator process crashed * killed by mgmt after host emulation hung * migrated to another host * saved to a memory image We have explicit events for the SAVED/RESTORED reasons, but what should we do about the other reasons ?" One option "is to provide a generic 'char * reason' with each event with provides scope on the cause of the lifecycle operation. So you'd get" VIR_DOMAIN_STOPPED ("crashed", "shutdown", "destroyed", "quit", "hung", "migrated", "saved") VIR_DOMAIN_STARTED ("booted", "migrated", "restored") Ben Guthro suggested[2] an alternative option of introducing "an event 'sub-type' enum to be passed alongside of the event-type, passed as a second integer", arguing this would be more consistent with the API and would reduce the size of the wire protocol. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00164.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00171.html Daniel agreed, and supplied[3] a patch which "expands the callback for domain events so that it also gets a event type specific 'detail' field. This is also kept as an int, and we define enumerations for the possible values associated with each type. If a event type has no detail, 0 is passed. The RESTORED and SAVED event types disappear in this patch and just become another piece of 'detail' to the STOPPED and STARTED events. I have also renamed ADDED & REMOVED to DEFINED and UNDEFINED to match terminology we have elsewhere & because the names were confusing me." [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00197.html -- Security Advisories -- In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley --- Fedora 9 Security Advisories --- * gnutls-2.0.4-4.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * blender-2.48a-4.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * libpng10-1.0.41-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * optipng-0.6.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * clamav-0.93.3-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * quassel-0.3.0.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * xulrunner-1.9.0.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * firefox-3.0.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * epiphany-2.22.2-5.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * chmsee-1.0.1-6.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * devhelp-0.19.1-6.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * cairo-dock-1.6.3.1-1.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * epiphany-extensions-2.22.1-5.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * galeon-2.0.7-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * gnome-python2-extras-2.19.1-21.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * gtkmozembedmm-1.4.2.cvs20060817-22.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * gnome-web-photo-0.3-15.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * evolution-rss-0.1.0-4.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * google-gadgets-0.10.1-5.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * Miro-1.2.7-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * kazehakase-0.5.6-1.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * mugshot-1.2.2-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * mozvoikko-0.9.5-4.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * ruby-gnome2-0.17.0-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * totem-2.23.2-8.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * seamonkey-1.1.13-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * yelp-2.22.1-6.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... --- Fedora 8 Security Advisories --- * kvm-60-7.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * gnutls-1.6.3-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * blender-2.48a-4.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * optipng-0.6.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * libpng10-1.0.41-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * clamav-0.92.1-4.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * firefox-2.0.0.18-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * epiphany-2.20.3-8.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * cairo-dock-1.6.3.1-1.fc8.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * epiphany-extensions-2.20.1-11.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * blam-1.8.3-19.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * chmsee-1.0.0-5.31.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * devhelp-0.16.1-11.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * evolution-rss-0.0.8-13.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * galeon-2.0.4-6.fc8.3 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * gnome-web-photo-0.3-14.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * liferea-1.4.15-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * gnome-python2-extras-2.19.1-19.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * kazehakase-0.5.6-1.fc8.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... - End FWN 152 -

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Fedora Board IRC meeting 1800 UTC 2008-11-18

by Paul W. Frields

The Board is holding its monthly public meeting on Tuesday, 18 November 2008, at 1800 UTC on IRC Freenode. The public is invited to do the following: * Join #fedora-board-meeting to see the Board's conversation. This channel is read-only for non-Board members. * Join #fedora-board-public to discuss topics and post questions. This channel is read/write for everyone. The moderator will direct questions from the #fedora-board-public channel to the Board members at #fedora-board-meeting. This should limit confusion and ensure our logs are useful to everyone. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. -- Paul W. Frields gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://paul.frields.org/ - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

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Fedora Weekly News #151

by Oisin Feeley

Fedora Weekly News Issue 151 1.1 Announcements 1.1.1 Fedora 11 Feature Process 1.1.2 Fedora 10 Preview Release 1.1.3 Elections are coming 1.2 Developments 1.2.1 Security Exceptions to the Mass ACL Opening 1.2.2 Who Moved My Bug ? 1.2.3 HOWTO: Get an SELinux Policy Change 1.2.4 Comps Czar Appointed to Encourage Modifications 1.2.5 LiveConnect Feature Approved for Fedora 10 1.3 Artwork 1.3.1 Echo Monthly News 1.3.2 Maria's Awesome GIMP Videos 1.3.3 Praise for the Solar Theme 1.3.4 The Desktop Beyond Fedora 10 1.4 Virtualization 1.4.1 Enterprise Management Tools List 1.4.1.1 Mapping virt-image XML to Cobbler 1.4.2 Fedora Xen List 1.4.2.1 libvirt Updates Unlikely for Fedora 8 1.4.3 Libvirt List 1.4.3.1 Host Device Enumeration API Complete 1.4.3.2 Allow Arbitrary Paths to virStorageVolLookupByPath 1.4.3.3 Fully Modular Drivers and Optional dlopen Support 1.4.3.4 OpenNebula Libvirt Implementation 1.4.3.5 Solaris Containers Support 1.4.4 oVirt Devel List 1.4.4.1 Contributing to oVirt 1.4.4.2 oVirt Console Conundrum 1.5 Translation 1.5.1 FLP Meeting held on 4th November 2008 1.5.2 FLSCo Elections to be held in December 2008 1.5.3 cvsl0n Approval Process 1.5.4 Request for frequent updates of the Status page 1.5.5 F10 Docs and Translation Schedule update 1.5.6 F10 Docs Translation Update 1.6 Security Advisories 1.6.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories 1.6.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories Fedora Weekly News Issue 151 Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 151 for the week ending November 9th, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue151 This week's action-packed Virtualization section investigates how the "OpenNebula Libvirt Implementation" could allow access to EC2 using libvirt APIs; Announcements announces "Elections Are Coming"; Developments peeks at the addition of LiveConnect to IcedTea; Artwork relays well-earned "Praise for the Solar Theme". Translation covers l10n work being done and SecurityAdvisories lists essential updates. As always there is much more worth reading in this issue. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack === Fedora 11 Feature Process === John Poelstra is collecting[1] feedback about the Fedora 10 feature process, which will be reviewed and discussed before the Fedora 11 process begins. "I would like to collect your constructive criticism and ideas for making the process better." A wiki page[2] has been created for this purpose. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-November/msg000... [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F11PolicyReview Fedora 10 Preview Release Jesse Keating announced[3] that the Preview Release of F10 (Cambridge) is available. "The Fedora Project is proud to announce the availability[4] of the Fedora 10 Preview Release. The Fedora 10 Preview Release is our last pre-release offering before we let everyone taste the goods for real." [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-November/msg0000... [4] https://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease === Elections are coming === Matt Domsch announced[4] that nominations are open for the next round of Fedora elections[5]. All the information you need for nominations and voting is in the links below. "The following groups have elections in December 2008: * Fedora Project Board * Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo) * Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) * Fedora Localization Steering Committee (FLSCo/Translators)" [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-November/msg0000... [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === Security Exceptions to the Mass ACL Opening === MichaelDeHaan initiated[1] discussion on why he had chosen not to open access (previously covered in FWN#148[2], FWN#136[3]) on some of his systems management software packages. His main reasoning was that obtaining provenpackager[4] status was too easy and could lead to at least two undesirable security outcomes: "(A) provenpackager decides to correct what he thinks is an rpmlint error and thus unintentionally breaks the security of the packaged application, (B) credentials of provenpackager are compromised allowing $evil to replace the contents of a said package. In either case, the change could either be making a new release of an application (which contains an exploit and/or unwitting bug), or updating the specfile in a way that breaks file permissions in a way that may not be immediately obvious (whether intentional or not)." The packages omitted by Michael were koan, cobbler, func and certmaster all of which could, if compromised, "[...] allow reprogramming of an entire datacenter in very easy steps." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00382.... [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue148#The_Big_ACL_Opening [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue136#New_libraw1394_Rebuild_Exposes... [4] After a flamewar (see FWN#148 "PackageGurus, SpecMentats or UeberPackagers?") the group name for packagers with access to any package in CVS is provenpackager: https://fedorahosted.org/packagedb/browser/fedora-packagedb-stable/Change... Toshio Kuratomi shared[5] Michael's concerns but pointed out that it would be possible to introduce compromised code into his packages' dependencies: "I'd like to mention, though, that func depends on the following packages with open acls: pyOpenSSL, python, python-simplejson So in terms of protecting against $EVIL, restricting provenpackager isn't very effective." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00384.... Daniel Berrange thought[6] it would be more effective to have more co-maintainers: "The ideal should be for every package in the distro to have at least 1 extra comaintainer, or preferrably 3 or 4. People with a little domain knowledge for the package who can handle both the low-hanging fruit the main maintainer misses, with less risk of making mistakes due to lack of package specific knowledge." Toshio countered[7] with a detailed reply which investigated the problems of non-responsiveness and trust which would be encountered by such a change. Michael Schwendt added[8] his experiences of the practical problems involving non-responsive maintainers and the difficulty of informing people without overloading them. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00387.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00392.... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00405.... Jesse Keating returned[9] to the main topic and remarked that he agreed with Michael DeHaan's logic with regard to these specific packages but that membership of "provenpackagers" was now obtainable by requesting membership via the account system and approval of said request by a provenpackager. The requirement to have at least five packages was merely for initial seeding. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00385.... Tim Lauridsen wondered[10] when co-maintainers would be enabled to submit updates to packages through bodhi and subsequent discussion with Michael Schwendt suggested that it should be possible. Kevin Kofler had similar concerns and Michael shared[11] the last public information on the topic which was that anyone with commit access to the devel branch can submit updates. [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00407.... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00411.... === Who Moved My Bug ? === Debarshi Ray's question sounded[1] alluringly like a parody of a self-help book but expressed genuine concern over why the status of bugs assigned to him were being changed. Till Maas reassured[2] Debarshi that the status ASSIGNED means "that the bug has been triaged, i.e. it is assigned to the rigth component and all necessary information is provided. A member of the Fedora Triage Team probably did the changes to your bugs [,]" he included a useful link[3] to the BugZappers wikipage. Bryn Reeves explained[4] how to see every change made to a bug. John Poelstra also suggested[5] using the "history" link and explained that the use of the "FutureFeature" keyword was to insure that bugs would continue to be given the version "rawhide" even after the GA release of Fedora 10. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00273.... [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00274.... [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/BugStatusWorkFlow [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00279.... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00290.... It appeared[6] that this was a different process to that used to handle package review submissions and this had difference had caused some confusion. Confusion also reigned[7] about when this use of the ASSIGNED keyword had become standard and Dominik Mierzejewski argued[8] that it had not been approved by FESCo, but Brian Pepple posted the FESCo logs and Jesse Keating suggested[9] following the discussions on @fedora-devel. Dominik declined to rely on following such a high-volume list and Steve Grubb agreed[10]. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00325.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00285.... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00285.... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00310.... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00420.... Kevin Kofler added[11] some useful information for those working in teams: "[...] when you're actively working on fixing something (so you don't duplicate work in the team), you can use the ON_DEV status for that purpose." [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00283.... === HOWTO: Get an SELinux Policy Change === Jerry James requested[1] information on how to get the correct security context in place for the GCL binaries which he was packaging. He needed to know both whether it was acceptable to use a chcon -t java_exec_t within the Makefile and how to have this reflected explicitly in Fedora policy. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00259.... Hans de Goede suggested[2] filing a bug against selinux-policy as Dan Walsh was "[...] usually very fast and correct in fixing issues like this one." Dan posted that Jerry could get the final destination of the file with a chcon `matchpathcon -n /usr/bin/gcl` LOCALPATH/gcl. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00261.... Jochen Schmitt suggested[3] that Jerry create a SELinux module to fix the issue and then actually did it himself and shared[4] it with the list, which impressed Jerry. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00289.... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00294.... The problem evolved[5] to be a little deeper than modifying the Makefile as Jerry explained[6]: "I need a non-default security context for binaries that are both built and executed in the %build script, when the policy module has not yet been installed. It appears to me that there are only two ways to accomplish this: keep abusing java_exec_t like I have been, or get a GCL policy incorporated into selinux-policy* prior to building GCL. Am I wrong?" After Paul Howarth pointed out that selinux-policy needed to provide a context type for /usr/bin/gcl Dan modified[7] his previous matchpathcon suggestion and advised that this would be provided in selinux-policy-3.5.13-19.fc10. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00307.... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00350.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00367.... === Comps Czar Appointed to Encourage Modifications === An important decision made[1] by FESCo in its 2008-10-29 deliberations was to try and encourage further modification of comps.xml[2] by defining some clearer procedures. These included the appointment of Bill Nottingham as a "Grand Arbitrator of Comps" to decide which packages should be included in comps. The main concern expressed during the deliberation was that packagers tended not to modify comps and that awareness of its purpose had not been clearly communicated. It was hoped that extending the wiki page[3] and making one person formally responsible would help. Currently there are filters in place and only those with uberpackager status can commit changes. Jesse Keating (f13) wanted to "[...] rather correct bad behavior than prevent good behavior [.]" [1] http://bpepple.fedorapeople.org/fesco/FESCo-2008-10-29.html [2] Comps is an XML file which is used by anaconda (the installer) to present groups of available packages for selection by the administrator during the installation of a new operating system. See: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/CompsXml [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/CompsXml One worry was to ensure that not everything is added to comps as this would produce an unreadable, large list. This latter problem was foregrounded when Christopher Stone advocated[4] that "[a]ll packages should go in comps. I don't know why notting is against this?!!? Why should my php-pear-* packages be excluded from comps for example? Just because some newb might not want to install them does not mean a php web developer would not use comps to install them." Matt Miller explained[5] that the current scheme was inflexible: "If comps ends up with a thousand programs under Games and Entertainment, another thousand under Graphical Internet, etc., it's even more useless than having nothing in comps at all. What would be the point? On the other hand, having a thousand small comps groups is also no good." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00098.... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00120.... Seth Vidal and Toshio Kuratomi seemed[6] interested in the idea of allowing Flickr-like tagging of package as a replacement for the problem of assigning them to groups. Denis Leroy also suggested[7] such a system: "Comps evolved over time into something that doesn't make a whole bunch of sense to me. Is the main use of comps still for installation groups within yum and anaconda ? A lot of packages are not installation "targets" but simply libraries that should only be installed by being pulled in from dependency resolution. Now if we're trying to "categorize" all packages nonetheless, it'd be better to have a tagbased system from packagedb, where packages can be "tagged" a-la-gmail, and also belong into multiple tag groups as some things really belong into multiple categories..." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00134.... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00107.... Nicolas Mailhot listed[8][9] the advantages of the current format of comps as: human-editable, version-controllable, diff-able, grep-able, platform-agnostic and scalable. Toshio leaned[10] towards having tag information stored in packagedb which could generate static "[...] separate files for the installer and general use (so that the installer isn't sprinkled with thousands of libraries but one could still use yum to search for "all packages that have a 'python' 'library' to do 'ssl'")." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00108.... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00158.... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00122.... In another post Nicolas raised[11] another series of pertinent questions which included thinking about other repositories and alternate views of any data which might shoehorned into a particular model. Bill Nottingham wondered[12] where Nicolas was going with all this and re-capped the current purpose of comps as both an input to a graphical package selector and an input to tree composition tools. The discussion with Bill revealed that Nicolas advocated[13] "[...] just add everything in comps and run basic scripts that check every package we ship appears there (say in a dev-null group for libs or such stuff). You can easily cull the dev-null group at comps.xml.in -> comps.xml stage if needed" in order to ease the QA burden. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00125.... [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00165.... [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00226.... Jeremy Katz wondered[14] who was the audience and task for Seth Vidal's "tree hierarchy plus tags" interface and distinguished between users looking for an application and administrators installing a system. Seth suggested[15] that using kickstart to install a minimal base and then the desired packages was the appropriate solution for the latter problem. He later explained[16] that having a tag-based presentation of the packages online would make it easier to determine which packages were available. Les Mikesell wished to reproduce specific machine configurations easily which led[17] Seth to suggest using yum-groups-manager to create a comps.xml file and then createrepo -g that_comps.xml somedir which produces "[...] a repository that ONLY has comps.xml in it that is then instantly usable by any site which can get to the baseurl where it lives." [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00147.... [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00148.... [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00150.... [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00152.... === LiveConnect Feature Approved for Fedora 10 === FESCo's 2008-10-29 discussions[1] contained a decision to include the LiveConnect[2] feature in Fedora 10. LiveConnect is a way for web browsers to allow JavaScript and Java classes to call each other's methods. The project to develop a completely FLOSS implementation was initiated[3] by Tom Fitzsimmons and brought to completion by Deepak Bhole. Tom's work[4] on a rewrite of gcjwebplugin as an XPCOM plugin has been named IcedTeaPlugin and is the default in IcedTea6. [1] http://bpepple.fedorapeople.org/fesco/FESCo-2008-10-29.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Liveconnect [3] http://people.redhat.com/fitzsim/fosdem-2008/fosdem-2008-liveconnect.pdf [4] http://fitzsim.org/blog/?p=23 The practical implications for end users are that many popular sites[5][6] are now usable without the problems associated with the installation of Sun Microsystems' non-FLOSS Java plugin. [5] http://www.jigzone.com/ [6] http://games.yahoo.com/ There was[7] some agonizing over the problem that LiveConnect was being approved as a Feature post freeze date while other exciting projects had been dropped because they were not complete at that time. Brian Pepple worried: "Those folks we booted since they weren't complete would be justified in being pissed about us." Although this seemed to be a non-controversial opinion Deepak's work was also felt to be very important and fully tested. In addition Deepak submitted that "[...] no new packages introduced for this feature. Just an update to an existing package, that now installs a different Java plugin." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00097.... == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Echo Monthly News === Martin Sourada announced[1] on @fedora-art a new issue of the Echo Monthly News[2], a publication covering the development for the Echo icon set. This month it featured: new icons, new templates, Echo's withdrawal from Fedora 10 as a default theme, an icon check script and thoughts about the Echo's future [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00001.html [2] https://fedorahosted.org/echo-icon-theme/wiki/MonthlyNews/Issue3 === Maria's Awesome GIMP Videos === Mairin Duffy shared[1] with the rest of the Art Team her enthusiasm about the GIMP video tutorials[2] created by Maria Leandro, another member of the team "Hey, María shared these with us in #fedora-art today and I wanted to post them to the list so everyone could see". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00016.html [2] http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tatadbb&view=videos === Praise for the Solar Theme === Nicu Buculei forwarded[1] to @fedora-art an article in praise of the default wallpaper theme in Fedora 10: "Here is what Ryan Paul from Ars Technica says about the Fedora 10 theme in a short article about the Preview Release: 'I was particularly impressed with the high quality of the new desktop wallpaper image, which comes from the Solar artwork theme. The whole user experience felt amazingly polished'", experience shared by Jayme Ayres "I showed Solar Theme and some works that the Artwork team has produced during Latinoware and ALL people were impressed with the high quality of the subject, this is a pride for the Artwork some people ask me 'Were we find that to download!? This is amazing!'" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00022.html [2] http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/11/06/fedora-10-preview-re... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-November/msg00025.html The Desktop Beyond Fedora 10 Matthias Clasen posted[1] on @fedora-desktop a list of ideas[2] regarding the future of the Fedora desktop "Currently this is just a pretty unsorted mixture of wild ideas, implementation details and concrete plans, and a lot of them are missing details, user stories and use cases. Don't misunderstand it as 'the plan for the F11 desktop.'" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-desktop-list/2008-November/msg0000... [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/Whiteboards == 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 ==== Mapping virt-image XML to Cobbler ==== Bryan Kearney pointed[1] out his posting[2] to @cobbler list describing efforts to reconcile the XML formats used by virt-image and Cobbler[3]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-November/msg00013.html [2] https://fedorahosted.org/pipermail/cobbler/2008-November/001346.html [3] https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/ === Fedora Xen List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ==== libvirt Updates Unlikely for Fedora 8 ==== Daniel Veillard began[1] by pointing out that libvirt 0.4.6 has been available[2] for some time, the libvirt in Fedora 8 is ancient, and that Fedora 8 is nearing retirement. Daniel then asked for opinions about pushing out an update so late in the Fedora 8 life cycle. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00014.html [2] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F8/FEDORA-2008-8447 There was tepid support for an update. Daniel P. Berrange was convinced it would cause regressions and was firmly against[3] an update. He also suggested users build the new releases if they desire them. Daniel V. mentioned new releases could be built and left in updates-testing[4]. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00017.html [4] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F8/testing Maxim Doucet noted[5] there will be no Xen dom0 support in any current Fedora release when F8 is retired, and asked if these test builds would be maintained after F8 reaches end of life. Daniel P. Berrange said[6] F8 will be removed from the update system when it reaches end of life, and said "If you want a long term usable Xen host then for now CentOS or RHEL are the best options." [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00019.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-October/msg00020.html === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== Host Device Enumeration API Complete ==== David Lively completed[1] the host device enumeration API which enables querying of physical node hardware features. Also see coverage in FWN #146[2]. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00617.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue146#Host_Device_Enumeration_API ==== Allow Arbitrary Paths to virStorageVolLookupByPath ==== Chris Lalancette reconciled[1] device names used to track devices within a storage pool with the names returned by virStorageVolLookupByPath. "Basically, it tries to convert whatever path it is given (say /dev/sdc) into the form currently used by the Pool (say /dev/disk/by-id). It then goes and looks up the form in the pool, and returns the storageVolume object as appropriate." This change augments scanning for LVM devices in oVirt. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00762.html ==== Fully Modular Drivers and Optional dlopen Support ==== Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] a set of 10 patches which "clean up our internal modularization to remove unneccessary dependancies between source files, and make everything follow a consistent pattern of XXXX.h declaring stuff in XXXX.c. Later in the series is plays some games with the linker scripts, and finally makes all hypervisor drivers fully modular, and optionally dlopen'able." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-October/msg00718.html ==== OpenNebula Libvirt Implementation ==== Ruben S. Montero announced[1] a new implementation[2] of libvirt by way of the OpenNebula[3] project. "The implementation of libvirt on top of a distributed VM manager, like OpenNebula, provides an abstraction of a whole cluster of resources (each one with its hypervisor). In this way, you can use any libvirt tool (e.g. virsh, virt-manager) and XML domain descriptions at a distributed level. " "For example, you may create a new domain with 'virsh create', then OpenNebula will look for a suitable resource, transfer the VM images and boot your VM using any of the supported hypervisors." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00004.html [2] http://trac.opennebula.org/wiki/LibvirtOpenNebula [3] http://www.opennebula.org Having only just learned of OpenNebula, Daniel Veillard asked[4] "isn't OpenNebula in some way also an abstraction layer for the hypervisors, so in a sense a libvirt driver for OpenNebula is a bit 'redundant'?" Daniel also wondered if OpenNebula intended to submit patches to libvirt. [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00016.html Ruben confirmed[5] intent to submit patches to libvirt and went on to further describe OpenNebula. "The libvirt API is just another interface to the OpenNebula system" which "provides an abstraction layer for A SET of distributed resources (like Platform VM Orchestrator or VMWare DRS). In this way, OpenNebula leverages the functionality provided by the underlying VM hypervisors to provide a centralized management (allocation and re/allocation of VMs, balance of workload....) of a pool physical resources." "For example, oVirt uses libvirt to interact with the physical nodes. With OpenNebula+libvirt, one of the nodes managed with oVirt could be a whole cluster." [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00020.html This explaination led Daniel Veillard to the conclusion[6] that this is "the reverse appraoch from oVirt, where we use libvirt to build the distributed management. One interesting point is that your driver would allow to access EC2 using libvirt APIS..." And, referring to the oVirt example, added "This is a bit against the Node principle of libvirt, and could result in some fun in the hardware discovery mode, but in general the approach might work. Still we are looking at bits on the node to provide capabilities of the hypervisor, which may break in your case, and migration is defined as an operation between a domain in a given node and a connection to another node, so the migration within the OpenNebula cluster won't be expressable in a simple way with the normal libvirt API." [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00025.html Daniel P. Berrange was intrigued[7] by this problem. "We might like to extend the node capabilities XML to provide information about the cluster as a whole - we currently have <guest> element describing what guest virt types are supported by a HV connection, and a <host> element describing a little about the host running the HV. It might make sense to say that the <host> info is optional and in its place provide some kind of 'cluster' / 'host group' information." [7] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00029.html ==== Solaris Containers Support ==== Jovial asked[1] about support for Solaris Zones AKA Containers. Daniel P. Berrange denied[2] knowledge of Solaris Zone support in libvirt, and went on to describe the state of support for other Solaris virtulization technologies[3]. Sun forked an older libvirt release, and added LDoms support. "Hopefully they'll find the time to re-submit the driver for inclusion in main libvirt codebase again in the future." "There has been work in official [libvirt] releases to support Xen dom0 on Open Solaris, but I think there are still some outstanding patches in the Open Solaris repositories that aren't in our offcial releases." There is also no support for Sun xVM[4] at this time. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00005.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00007.html [3] http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/virtualization.jsp [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_xVM As to an LDoms patch submission, Ryan Scott from Sun replied[5] "it's a case of too much to do and not enough time. The LDoms port is currently on hold." Ryan also added, the Open Solaris Xen dom0 work is "temporarily stuck on 0.4.0 for the time being, which makes forwarding-porting patches difficult. I hope to update our internal gate to 0.4.6 within a month, which will allow me to send out some patches." and finally "I would like to port libvirt to Zones, but it looks unlikely that I'll have the time to do so." [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-November/msg00026.html === oVirt Devel List === This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. ==== Contributing to oVirt ==== Will Zhou asked[1] how to contribute to the oVirt project. Alan Pevec pointed[2] out the oVirt contribution page[3] and Richard Jone's page[4] on contributing to open source projects, and described the process as "basically, follow http://ovirt.org/build-instructions.html and checkout 'next' branch from git repositories and send patches to the ovirt-devel list. Create your local git branch and rebase it to 'next' before sending patches with git-send-email. For Git Crash Courses see http://git.or.cz/" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00358.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-October/msg00359.html [3] http://ovirt.org/contribute.html [4] http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/how-to-supply-code-to-open-source-projects/ ==== oVirt Console Conundrum ==== Richard W.M. Jones referred[1] to a previous discussion[2] on adding guest console access to the Web User Interface while including Windows support. Richard enumerated the options explored thus far: * A Gtk-based VNC browser plugin. "Unfortunately we couldn't make this stable enough for real production use." * Launching an external program such as virt-viewer from a browser plugin. "This works, but it's a security issue, and we can't use a Gtk dialog to get around the warning issue because of (1)." * Running virt-viewer or vinagre as separate, standalone programs. "This works, but requires the user to type in some very long and complicated command line by hand, and there are unresolved authentication problems." Richard then listed a new fourth option: * Write a custom C/Gtk/Gtk-VNC Windows program which contacts the oVirt WUI to do authentication, get available consoles, and launch a Gtk-VNC widget with the appropriate tunnelling (openssh.exe based?). [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-November/msg00040.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-August/msg00004.html Daniel P. Berrange liked[3] option four: "This is actually quite a good idea - a oVirt thin client desktop [...] Basically this is kind of a cross of virt-viewer + vinagre, but talking to oVirt instead of libvirt. Or you could write a libvirt driver that talks to oVirt - cf the OpenNebula guys." [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-November/msg00042.html == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === FLP Meeting held on 4th November 2008 === The fortnightly meeting of the Fedora Translation Project was held on 4th November 2008 at 1900 UTC[1]. The important points of discussion were centered around the Fedora Release Notes and Installation Guide Translation for F10, approval of members into the cvsl10n group, FLSCo elections etc[2]. KarstenWade also suggested about introducing a level of completeness for the Fedora Release Notes that would allow individual teams some amount of flexibility while translating them. DimitrisGlezos announced that the cvsl10n group has grown to 450 members last week. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Meetings#Next_Meeting:_Tuesday.2C_4_no... [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00016.html FLSCo Elections to be held in December 2008 The Fedora Translation Project is gearing up for the next Fedora Localization Steering Committee (FLSCo) elections[3] to be held in December 2008. In these elections three new members would be elected to replace the bottom three seats from the last elections[4]. These seats are currently held by MarekMahut (Slovak Team), FabianAffolter (German Team) and Piotr Drag (Polish Team). [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/SteeringCommittee/Elections [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-April/msg00208.html === cvsl0n Approval Process === The current process of approving new members into the cvsl10n group is currently being discussed for enhancement[5]. Due to some recent problems related to submission of translations by unknown translators[6] and other problems related to translation submission, the request for a review of this process was raised again in the FLP meeting last week. [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00017.html [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00030.html === Request for frequent updates of the Status page === A new ticket[7] was filed by RunaBhattacharjee requesting to increase the frequency of updates of the Translation Status page[8] as translators rely heavily on these status pages while coordinating the translation work requirements. [7] https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/963 [8] http://translate.fedoraproject.org === F10 Docs and Translation Schedule update === As part of the ongoing schedule finalization process for the Fedora Docs and Translation Project, JohnPoelstra has built a special report combining the Docs and Translation tasks into one schedule[9][10]. Further discussions are expected to continue as part of preparation for the F11 schedule. [9] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00048.html [10] http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-10/f-10-docs-and-trans-tasks... === F10 Docs Translation Update === The Release Notes package (release-notes, readme, readme-burning-isos, about-fedora, readme-live-image) translation deadline for F10 GA is unchanged at 13th November 2008[11]. In case of non-completion of the translations until that date, translations can be done until 21st November 2008 for the web version of the F10 Release Notes[12]. The 20 November 2008 is the deadline for translations of the Installation Guide[11]. [11] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00013.html [12] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-November/msg00044.html == Security Advisories == In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley === Fedora 9 Security Advisories === * net-snmp-5.4.1-19.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * enscript-1.6.4-10.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * uw-imap-2007d-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * php-Smarty-2.6.20-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * ipsec-tools-0.7.1-5.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * wordpress-2.6.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * rgmanager-2.03.09-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * gfs2-utils-2.03.09-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * cman-2.03.09-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * drupal-cck-6.x.2.0-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * moodle-1.9.3-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * enscript-1.6.4-9.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * net-snmp-5.4.1-8.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * ktorrent-2.2.7-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * uw-imap-2007d-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * php-Smarty-2.6.20-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * wordpress-2.6.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * ipsec-tools-0.7.1-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... * moodle-1.8.7-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-November/msg... -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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Fedora Classroom

by Rahul Sundaram

Hi There was a number of IRC sessions on various topics related to Free software and Fedora. The IRC logs have now been published. Feel free to use them if you did not find the time to participation in real time. This is planned to continue for the next month as well. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Classroom * SELinux Basics * Firewall Basics * An introduction to Bugzilla * Beginner's guide to getting involved * Package Taxonomy and Techniques * Creating a Fedora Remix * Configuration Management using Puppet Rahul

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Nominations now open for December Fedora Elections

by Matt Domsch

With one round of elections in the US out of the way, it's now time to turn our attention to more pressing matters - Fedora Election Season has begun. The following groups have elections in December 2008: * Fedora Project Board * Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo) * Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) * Fedora Localization Steering Committee (FLSCo/Translators) Schedule * Nominations are open from 28 October through 3 December, 2008. * IRC Town Hall-style discussions with candidates for the various positions will be arranged for 4 December through 6 December. * The elections will take place 7 December through 20 December, 2008. Nominiations You may self-nominate. If you wish to nominate someone else, please consult with that person ahead of time. Wiki nomination pages [1] carry additional details about the nominee which the nominee is expected to write. Simply update the respective wiki page with your nomination information. In addition, I'm hoping the Fedora 11 schedule may permit us to vote on possible names for the Fedora 11 release. More details to follow on this. Please thoughtfully consider how you can best contribute to Fedora by serving on one of these important committees. The world is watching! [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections Thanks, Matt Fedora Board Member, election coordinator, pundit -- Matt Domsch Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux

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Cambridge (F-10) Preview Release announcement

by Jesse Keating

We've been cooking, and now it's time for a final taste test! The Fedora Project is proud to announce the availability of the Fedora 10 Preview Release. The Fedora 10 Preview Release is our last pre-release offering before we let everyone taste the goods for real. https://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease Doesn't it smell yummy? We know you can't resist, and we don't want you to. We want everyone in the Fedora community to take an early sample and tell us what you find. The recipe is pretty good, but now is the time to make it perfect. Ingredients include: * Faster boot using Plymouth * Wireless connection sharing * Better printing * Enhanced software update and maintenance, from RPM 4.6 to PackageKit * Virtualization storage * SecTool, security audit and intrusion detection system * Glitch free audio using timer-based scheduling And, since this is Fedora, we don't have anything to hide. Take a peek at what is in the not-so-secret sauce by looking at our Release Notes in the Fedora Project wiki. We use 100% pure free and open source software here, none of that high-fructose proprietary stuff. http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes Most of you should get a very tasty treat, but some of you might experience a little bitterness. Don't fret - all is not lost - there is still time to improve the recipe before we share it with the world. Head over to the Fedora Bugzilla (http://bugzilla.redhat.com) and let us know what offended your palate. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_file_a_bug_report File bugs here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&version=rawhide If you'd like to interact with the chefs more directly, join the live staff in the kitchen by coming to #fedora-qa on irc.freenode.net, or leave a message on the corkboard by the back door: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list Ready to get your free preview sample? Go ahead and swipe one straight from the oven - we don't mind. Put on your favorite heat resistant BitTorrent mitt and grab one of the following goodies. Take as many as you like. Thanks for tasting! https://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease P.S. Please remember that as we run a public mirror system, the mirrors for Fedora 10 Preview will not all be ready at this time, and may become overloaded as the day goes on. If you receive permission denied messages, please continue trying until you get through. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Fedora Weekly News #150

by Pascal Calarco

-Fedora Weekly News Issue 150- Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 150 for the week ending November 2nd, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue150 In this week's issue, featured content includes announcements on a new Fedora Sugar Spin, and development freeze for Fedora 10. The Translation beat this week features an interview with Fedora Translation project member Diego Zacarao (Rasther). In Developments, details on resume from suspend problems with Intel i945s, details on "[a] gigantic multi-thread flamewar consum[ing] many list participants" over moving X from VT7 to VT1 and POSIX file capabilities for Fedora 11. The Artwork beat features discussion of new wallpaper extras, and final fixes for the Fedora 10 Solar backgrounds. The Security Advisory beat rounds out this issue and updates us with fixes released in the last week for Fedora 8 and 9. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join --Announcements-- In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack ---Blocker Bug Review Meeting--- John Poelstra announced[1] that a "meeting is being held to review the current blocker bugs[2] in anticipation of the Final Development Freeze this Tuesday, October 28th." [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg0001... [2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=438943&hide_resolved=1 ---Translation packagers: Rebuild before devel freeze--- Dimitris Glezos wrote[3] to remind "maintainers of Fedora-translatable packages to issue a build before the Development Freeze of tomorrow, 28/10, in order to have all translations submitted until the translation deadline of 21/10 included in Fedora 10 (otherwise our translator's hard work will go to the gutter)." [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg0001... ---Fedora Sugar Spin--- Sebastian Dziallas announced[4] the "availability of our Fedora Sugar Spin, which incorporates the Sugar Desktop Environment on a Fedora Live CD." To get the spin, and to contribute to its further development, read the full announcement below. [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-October/msg00012... ---Frozen for Fedora 10--- Jesse Keating reminded[5] everyone that we are now frozen for Fedora 10. "At this point, builds for F10 are not automatically brought into Rawhide, and won't be in the Fedora 10 release. To request a freeze override, please use the Final Freeze Policy[6]." [5] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-October/msg0001... [6] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/FinalFreezePolicy --Translation-- This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee ---FTP Meeting to be held on 4th November 2008--- FLSCo member Noriko Mizumoto announced the next meeting of the Fedora Translation Project to be held on the 4th of November 2008[1]. The time for the meeting is yet to be determined, with 1900 UTC and 2000 UTC being the two probable candidates. The meeting and agenda is open for all[2]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00215.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/Meetings ---Package Rebuild requested by FTP--- Dimitris Glezos has requested the maintainers of the Fedora packages that were translated for Fedora 10 to rebuild them[3]. This would ensure that the translations submitted by the Fedora Translation Project members are included for all these packages. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00209.html TQSG repository set to be moved Fabian Affolter has initiated discussions to move the the Translation Quick Start Guide (TQSG) to fedorahosted[4]. The move has been endorsed by Paul Frields on behalf of the Fedora Documentation team, subject to confirmation by FLSCo about the move and the ownership of the document[5]. The final decision, particularly about the VCS to be used, is pending at the moment. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00203.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-October/msg00222.html Dimitris Glezos nominated for the Fedora Board FLSCo Leader Dimitris Glezos has been nominated[6] by Max Spevack as one of the candidates for the upcoming Fedora Board elections to be held in December 2008. These elections would be held to elect two new members for the Fedora Board. [6] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Elections/Nominations#Dimitris_Glezos... ---Diego Zacarao interviewed--- Fedora Translation project member Diego Zacarao (Rasther) was recently interviewed about his contributions to Transifex and Fedora Translation Project [7].(The Original version in Brazilian Portuguese[8].) [7] http://tinyurl.com/6kndvw [8] http://vladimirmelo.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/entrevista-com-diego-zacarao... --Developments-- In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley ---Resume from Suspend Problems with Intel i945--- Peter Robinson solicited[1] experiences with problems on netbooks in resuming from suspend from those using the latest Intel-2.5.0drivers. His problem suddenly manifested itself on a previously working EeePC 901: "It had worked previously and resumes OK but I get a black screen with a cursor and around that a square of garbled bits." Peter wondered what had changed recently in order to make suspend-resume stop working. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02975.html Apparently similar failures were reported[2] by Jonathon Roberts for a Dell Mini[3] ,Tim Lauridsen on a ThinkPad T60[4] and Christoph Hoger[5] on a ThinkPad R61. Tim's problem seemed to be related to compiz. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02977.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02977.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03005.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03033.html Jeremy Katz suggested[6] using the suspend quirks[7] , especially vbepost. Matthew Garret believed[8] this to be unnecessary as "i945 is perfectly capable of handling resume on its own in-kernel. The problem is more likely to be an excess of quirks interfering with that (or, alternatively, someone's broken the kernel)." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02981.html [7] http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/quirk-suspend-index.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02992.html Jesse Barnes (of the Intel Open Source Technology Center[9]) asked whether suspend worked from the console using: echo mem > /sys/power/state as this would indicate that there had been a regression in 2.5.0 as opposed to a kernel bug. Matthew Garrett thought that Jesse's suggestion would not test the same suspend pathway and that it would be better to do a: dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.Hal \ /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer \ org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement.Suspend int32:0 Matthew begged[10] "Please (please, please) don't attempt to add resume quirks for anything with Intel video hardware now. It's only hiding kernel bugs." [9] http://software.intel.com/sites/oss/ [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00082.... ---Moving X from VT7 to VT1--- A gigantic multi-thread flamewar consumed many list participants after Will Woods made sure[1] that everyone knew that in Rawhide "X HAS MOVED FROM VT7 TO VT1. GDM specifically starts X on tty1, and upstart does not start a getty on tty1 in runlevel 5." The reason behind this change was that the boot process no longer uses the old RHGB but instead a flicker-free and faster replacement named Plymouth (see Fedora Magazine[2] for a full explanation). Fuel for the fire was provided by the surprise experienced by many posters who solely followed @fedora-devel for their information. A perception that changes made for the purposes of improving the desktop experience were occurring at the expense of the traditional server experience also seemed to irritate many. This was despite the fact that, as Dan Nicholson explained[3]: "Users who do not want a graphical boot set rc 3 as their default runlevel, and everything is the same as it always was with getty on tty1-6. If you then run startx, it will start on tty7. In rc 5, X is started on tty1 and getty is not. That's all there is to it." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02422.html [2] http://fedoramagazine.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/interview-fedora-10s-bette... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02469.html In answer to a question from Till Maas it was confirmed[4] by Felix Miata that if one "[...] rebooted into runlevel 3, logged in on tty1, did telinit 5, got kdm on vt7, switched to tty1, [then there was] a normal shell prompt following typical X startup messages, and kdm still on vt7 [.]" [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02478.html Dan Nicholson also corrected[5] assumptions that the changes were made to improve boot speed with the information that it was to prevent the ugly flicker of VT switching during boot and asked "Why is it significant what tty any program runs on? Isn't the assumption that getty will be on tty1 just as faulty as the assumption X will be on tty7?" Shmuel Siegel gave[6] an answer which was repeated many times in the threads: "Because you are changing a user interface. What is going to happen when the user switches to tty1 and nothing happens? The basic logic of putting X on tty7 is to get it out of the way. Humans will use the lowest numbered ttys first. Besides breaking existing documentation, including advice on various forums, is not a good idea." Bill Nottingham added[7] to Dan's rationale: "1) Reducing the amount of flicker and useless mode switching on startup is definitely a good thing 2) From a logical standpoint, the first tty should be for the most important user interaction. If you're booting in text mode, that's a getty. If you're booting with a GUI login... that's the GUI." Callum Lerwick and Brian Wheeler exchanged[8] details of the "vast improvement[s]" including removal of up to twelve seconds which resulted from the lack of monitor resync delays. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02458.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02464.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02543.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02518.html Gerd Hoffman made[9] an interesting suggestion about how Plymouth could do a VT switch immediately after KMS[10] had entered graphics mode but before printing anything to screen. In the course of this he clarified that "The flicker / resync delay comes from the *mode switch*, not the *vt switch*. And, no, a vt switch does *not* imply a mode switch. The reason you'll have flicker today when switching from/to X11 is that X11 does a mode switch when you switch from/to the terminal X11 is running on." BillNottingham was skeptical but Gerd insisted [11] that his approach would work. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02623.html [10] Kernel Mode Setting: http://kerneltrap.org/node/8242 [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02820.html After Till Maas suggested "[...] the kernel should be patched to start booting graphically using tty7 and not tty1." Bill Nottingham passed[12] on the idea as it would involve: "Having the kernel parse its own commandline for a runlevel (a concept that has nothing to do with the kernel, and doesn't even exist under some init systems) and then choosing to rearrange the tty init sequence based on that?" and in further discussion with Matthew Woehlke reiterated[13] "You're having the kernel operate on Fedora specific commandline options to start on a completely different tty, one that could be configured by anyone locally to do something else entirely. (Unless you do it in userspace, which means you jump away and then jump back for text mode, which...)" Casey Dahlin modified[14] the idea to "[...] either offer a getty on tty7 (not too hard) or we could instead add a small API to the kernel that would allow remapping which F key went to which tty, so you could have ctrl+alt+f1 bring up tty7. That way we could remap things so the user got the correct behavior. We wouldn't have to actually /do/ this, but if the API were there, we can tell the people who care to go figure it out." [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02544.html [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02594.html [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02553.html Will Woods explained[15] how to revert the change, but this was contested[16] by Dan Nicholson on the basis that the latest gdm does not support FirstVT. Dan provided an untested patch and explained that "[s]ince plymouth writes the /var/spool/gdm file on boot and then gdm removes it, any subsequent starts will put X on the first available VT, which is tty7 in the common configuration. With my patch, prefdm writes the file every time it's executed. I don't know if that's the correct behavior for all cases where prefdm would be run. I'm looking at upstream gdm right now, and FirstVT isn't respected. Looking at the rawhide patches, I don't see anything that would enable that functionality again." [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02506.html [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02516.html Later Dax Kelson reopened[17] the thread with a list of objections which pointed out the negative impact upon documentation and user habit of the change. He garnered a good deal of support from many other respected contributors. [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02601.html At the end of the thread Bill Nottingham asked[18] the interesting question of why the change appeared to come as such a surprise given that it had been telegraphed in advance by a formal feature proposal[19] and had been implemented in rawhide: "Are people not running rawhide and the test releases? Are they not looking at features as they are proposed and being involved in the process? Are they just sitting around waiting to be outraged?" Dax rejoined[20] that it was not obvious from the documentation that there would be a side-effect which disturbed an expected convention. [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02830.html [19] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/BetterStartup [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02853.html ---Fedora 11: POSIX File Capabilities--- Panu Matilainen announced[1] that he had added file capability support to rpm. With kernel support for storing capabilities on filesystem since 2.6.24 and the most recent libcap he asked if now was the time to "[...] start considering moving away from SUID bits to capabilities, in Fedora 11 maybe?" SethVidal wondered how this would affect networked file systems and David Quigley answered[2] that "[...] capabilities are stored in xattrs they will run into the same problems that SELinux does. Labeled NFS is working to address this by providing a per file attribute through NFSv4 for extra security information." Another show-stopper was the erasure of file-based capabilities by prelink. It appeared[3] that there was a certain amount of desire to examine whether prelink might cause more trouble than it was worth on faster hardware. Prelink's problems also included incorrectly stripping OCaml binaries and preventing rpm -V from working correctly. Colin Walters noted[4] that the desktop team had "been moving the OS away from exec-based domain transitions to message passing (e.g. PolicyKit) for a variety of reasons. I think it might be worth considering introducing a rule actually in Fedora for "no new SUID/fcap binaries"[.]" Steve Grubb was worried[5] that this direction resulted in the introduction of another MAC system and that auditing from userspace was untrustworthy. Concern was also raised[6] by Michael Stone on the affects on solid-state memory consumption. Steve Grubb sought details on how rpm would work with kernels lacking file capabilities and wanted[7] to "start removing some of the setuid bits." He suggested[8] to Chris Adams that tar and star should be capable of storing these new extended attributes and that aide would be useful in tracking changes to them. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02637.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02849.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02923.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02729.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02809.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02818.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02777.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg02823.html ---Purging Unnecessary .la Files--- An apparent contravention of the packaging guidelines was noticed[1] by Debarshi Ray in the dia package. It contained %{_libdir}/%{name}/*.la files[2]. Colin Walters was[3][4] enthusiastic about the idea of "not encourag[ing] the libtool agenda to redefine how shared libraries work on our platform." Jerry James found[5] that he had quite a number of them on his x86_64 machine. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03031.html [2] .la are libtool archive files: http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/html.node/index.html#Top [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03032.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03039.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03038.html Dan Nicholson argued[6] that it would be best to convince libtool upstream to support some way to choose whether or not the library archives were installed at build time, but Colin was unrelenting and argued[7]: "Or alternatively convince the automake people that it shouldn't be in the business of software lifecycle management (make uninstall) any more than people should be coding/overriding build systems (make;make install) inside RPM spec files. This seems possible; probably worth trying to at least have an environment variable AUTOMAKE.OPTIONS = i-dont-need-uninstall." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03048.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-October/msg03051.html David Woodhouse also wanted[8] to see the back of libtool "[...]you can just throw it away and forget it ever existed? I just write proper Makefiles, and if I ever _want_ to spend a couple of minutes watch some bizarre script trying to work out what type of FORTRAN compiler I have on my system, I can write myself a little bash script for that too[...]" but Richard W. M. Jones disagreed[9] sharply as he found it useful for building shared libraries on a wide variety of platforms. In response to Colin Walters' suggestion to build a hook in RPM to nuke .la files he stated[10] that they were essential for the MinGW packages. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00019.... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00024.... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00023.... Toshio Kuratomi and Michael Schwendt discussed[11] how newer versions of libltld can work without missing libtool archives and that it was desirable to remove them because a "[...] private copy of a system library would be a violation of the Packaging Guidelines for security reasons [.]" [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00064.... Richard W. M. Jones decided[12] to do some testing to determine whether MinGW needed "[...] the *.la files for MinGW packages" or "[...] the .la files in MinGW packages[.]" [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-November/msg00085.... --Artwork-- In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei ---Wallpaper Extras--- Ian Weller asked[1] on #fedora-art about a better way to handle and package the collection of extra wallpapers gathered from various Fedora contributors: "The current gallery system for the Wallpaper Extras isn't working. It doesn't do us good for keeping track of attributions, especially if we start taking lots of outside contributions from Flickr or the like (which I plan on doing soon)[.]" Ian also proposed that: "[t]he entire wallpaper extras framework for submission and tracking will be on the wiki, through MediaWiki's category system. The main category will be Category:Wallpaper extras[2], which will contain only other categories and unsorted wallpapers. Subcategories to that will be along the lines of Category:Abstract wallpaper extras, which can also contain other subcategories if we want to categorize further. Categories have a built-in gallery setup. The image page itself will contain a template (which we'll need to write) that will contain information such as the creator, the URL it was taken from (if applicable), and who added it to the wiki, and what license was originally under." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00299.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/Wallpaper_Extras Jóhann B. Guðmundsson opted[3] for a contest, possibly held in cooperation with Fedora Magazine[4] "I personally think we should hold a wallpaper contest photo artwork etc with a specific subject/theme in conduction with fedoramagazine each month or so then top 3 picture ( or top in each category ) would be picked added to the wiki and package". Nicu Buculei argued for RSS feeds instead of votes "My tendency is to decouple packaging and contests. Have the images in a proper gallery and the users can use RSS feeds and see 'best rated', 'most viewed', 'last uploaded' images with no effort. And they really need the packaging? They have the photos open in their browser and Firefox has an 'Set As Desktop Background' command (it appears broken if Firefox/GNOME, but that is just a bug which needs a patch). And from this large pile of images, a packager may make a manual selection with the 'most usable' images (or more packagers can to their own selections and packages)." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00300.html [4] http://fedoramagazine.wordpress.com/ [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00324.html Jonathan Roberts, the editor of 'Fedora Magazine', got into the discussion and opined[6] against a reinvention of the wheel: "Why reinvent the wheel - why not just take advantage of Gnome look? Or set up a Flickr pool - I think one already exists possibly?" and for a manual image selection for the magazine "With respect to the magazine, I'd be more than happy if someone from the art team would be interested in doing a monthly post that would share work that members of the art team were involved with - whether it was Fedora related or just created using tools exclusively in Fedora" [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00327.html ---Fedora 4 F's buttons--- Following last week's "Four F's" posters made by Máirín Duffy (see our coverage in FWN#149[0]) Clint Savage posted[1] on @fedora-art a set of buttons made in the same style, which were received[2] with open arms "SWEET! I really like the pattern in the background of the logo2 file. Logo3 is really strong, well done!" [0] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue149#Four_Fs_Poster_Designs [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00304.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00305.html From there the discussion went[2] into printing preparation details. Clint was asked "Do you know how to scribus-ify these into print-ready, color-safe PDF artwork?" This was no problem for Clint: "I have done that before many times. I'll look into doing that on sunday. I assume you are referring to the fact that I need to make the images CMYK and making them pdfs so printers won't complain. I'm capable of doing that :)" Scribus's limitations were raised[4]: "However Scribus SVG support is rather flaky and most of the time (except for really simple 'kosher' SVG files) you will get an error stating that some features of the file were not supported. Also it tends to get the size 'wrong', not the actual size of the drawing, but rather it kind of adds an additional 'holding box' to the drawing. My personal recommendation when handling graphics with Scribus would be to export to EPS and then import that into Scribus, or export to bitmap[.]" [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00308.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00310.html The need to use a recent version of the application was also expressed[5]: "You're probably using mrdocs' svn build for Fedora then right? (My head would have gone thru the monitor glass long ago if I was stuck with 1.3.4) If not, you should give it a try, it makes life so much easier!" [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00314.html Final Fixes for the Solar Backgrounds Charlie Brej spotted[1] an imperfection in the default Fedora 10 wallpaper "In the 3200x1200 dual screen images there is a column at X=1151 which has a slight transparency. It is in fact very difficult to see it in gimp but it does become visible on desktop backgrounds with a contrasting solid colour behind" and also proposed[2] a patch to decrease the overall size of the backgrounds package "Current solar background's consume 33Mb. This a bit on the heavy side, especially on the Live CD which is over its image limit. Currently there are 4 different images (morning, noon, evening, night) sent out in 4 different sizes (4:3, 16:10, 5:4 and 8:3 for dual screen). What we could do is to send out just one 3200:1200 image and patch up gnome-desktop background handling to support cropping to the right aspect." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00317.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00319.html Martin Sourada announced[3] a split of the backgrounds in 3 packages, to distribute the file size optimally "I've just built an updated Solar Backgrounds Package with many fixes provided by Mo, and more resolutions/ratios [1]. As per request from both gnome and kde folks the package has been split into solar-backgrounds (for Desktop Live Spin) solar-backgrounds-common (for KDE) and solar-backgrounds-extras (containing everything not included in the previous two)" and at the last minute Kevin Kofler noticed[4] and fixed[5] a bug "the 1280x1024 image is only 1280x1014". [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00364.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00373.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00379.html ---Fedora 10 Countdown--- Following an earlier request[1] from the website team's Ricky Zhou for a count down graphic for the Fedora 10 release, Paolo Leoni submitted[2] to fedora-art for review a couple of proposals and after a couple of rounds of feedback forwarded the proposals to the @fedora-websites, with an additional round of improvements[3] incorporating feedback[4] from Máirín Duffy "I think 'CAMBRIDGE' is a little hard to read because of a combination of the thin font and the low contrast with the background. I also think the text doesn't have enough breathing space from the right and bottom edges of the banner." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00233.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00328.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-October/msg0014... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-October/msg0014... ---An OLPC Illustration--- Karlie Robinson, from the OLPC team, used[1] the Design Services queue[2] to request an OLPC illustration: "I need an image or series of images illustrating how to insert a SD card into the OLPC XO. This will be used for instructions on how to load F10 onto the XO" The request was taken[3] by Mike Langlie "I can render the process of positioning the XO and inserting an SD card in several steps as technical illustrations. Dan Williams demonstrated for me and it looks like a drawing may also be needed for removing the SD card." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00339.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/DocIllustrationService#Request_list [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00355.html Karlie followed[4] with a set of photos of the device for visual reference and Mike created a wonderful diagram[5]. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00357.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00365.html ---A Bit of Flame War--- With the huge flame war about X and ttys going strong on the main development list, @fedora-art couldn't remain behind, and pursued its own dispute, started with the topic quality of the quality of its works (we reported about it in our previous issue) and continued with the relation between the Red Hat Desktop Team and the Fedora Art Team. Max Spevack stepped in[1], outlined the Fedora objectives, one of the points in debate: "1) The premiere community development platform in the OSS world. 2) An open R&D lab for new technologies that Red Hat is interested in from a RHEL server point of view (witness virtualization's path through Fedora over the years) 3) An open R&D lab for new ideas and technologies that Red Hat's desktop team is interested in", raised a set the question to clarify the team's relations and concluded "I submit to you all that this isn't a problem that the Fedora Marketing team can solve. This Artwork v Desktop squabble is a problem about the fundamental way in which Fedora prioritizes the needs of its different constituencies. Red Hat has asked that Fedora be many things, as I said earlier. One of the things Red Hat asks is that Fedora be the best community development platform in the OSS world, and we strive for that every day. However, Red Hat has also asked that Fedora be the incubator for the Red Hat Desktop Team. If those two requests are so incompatible with each other that only one of those goals can be achieved, that is a RED HAT problem and not a FEDORA problem, and we should take that conversation to our managers internally." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00352.html The position was reinforced[2] by Paul Frields "For what it's worth, I've talked about this with the Desktop team's leader in Red Hat, Jonathan Blandford, on a couple occasions since I came on board. There are indeed multiple masters to serve, and it's vital that Fedora also preserve the ability for the people who work on technologies like virtualization or SELinux to use Fedora for R&D" who proposed the use of the next FUDCON to discuss and clarify the situation "As am I -- there's a good opportunity to do this at FUDCon in January, but certainly I don't want to just let things stew until then. That happens to be a perfect time to communicate this vision to a sizable portion of the community that will be gathered for that event." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-October/msg00356.html --Security Advisories-- In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce Contributing Writer: David Nalley ---Fedora 9 Security Advisories--- * libgadu-1.8.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * ed-1.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * openoffice.org-2.4.2-18.1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * phpMyAdmin-3.0.1.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * dovecot-1.0.15-14.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * libtirpc-0.1.7-20.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * drupal-6.6-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... ---Fedora 8 Security Advisories--- * dovecot-1.0.15-14.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * ed-1.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * libgadu-1.8.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * openoffice.org-2.3.0-6.17.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... * phpMyAdmin-3.0.1.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-October/msg0... -- End FWN 150 --

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RPM Fusion is now Available

by Xavier Lamien

The RPM Fusion team is proud to announce the public availability of our repositories that provide software which the Fedora project cannot provide as easy-to-install RPM packages. == What applications can be found in the RPM Fusion repositories == The RPM Fusion project provides a variety of different applications: === Sound and Video / Multimedia applications === We have all that is needed to play all kinds of media files, such as MP3 or unencrypted DVDs and ship additional multimedia applications such as MPlayer, VLC and Xine. === Kernel Drivers === We offer the ATI and Nvidia closed-source drivers in a Fedora-compatible RPM package for users whose video cards are not yet fully supported with the stock open source drivers. === Games === We offer couple of games such as: * Bub's Brothers * Secret Maryo Chronicles * UFO: Alien Invasion * Wörms of Prey, xrick * GLtron * and lot others ! === Emulators === We offer emulators for most retro platform: * VICE for Commodore 64 and other vintage Commodore 8 bit computers * E-UAE for Amiga * Nestopia and FCEUltra for NES * ZSNES and Snes9x for Super NES * and many many others! == More Information == RPM Fusion provides packages for all Fedora releases that are supported by Fedora project, which includes the development branch "rawhide". We have two separate repository lines: * "free" for Open Source Software (as defined by the Fedora Licensing Guidelines) which the Fedora project cannot ship * "nonfree" for redistributable software that is not Open Source Software (as defined by the Fedora Licensing Guidelines); this includes software with publicly available source-code that has "no commercial use"-like restrictions Please read our wiki page about how to enable these repositories: http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration RPM Fusion is a project started by the Dribble, Freshrpms and Livna teams. It aims to bring together many packagers from various 3rd party repositories and build a single add-on repository for Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We hope to attract new Fedora packagers and hope that other 3rd party repositories will join us. Are you interested? Do you want to help? Don't hesitate and subscribe to our mailing lists at http://lists.rpmfusion.org or meet us in the #rpmfusion channel on freenode. ==== Do you find problems? ==== Fill bugs at https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/ === A note for Livna users === All users that installed Livna properly (e.g. by installing the livna-release package) will get RPM Fusion free and nonfree repositories enabled automatically. All packages in Livna that are superseded by packages from RPM Fusion will soon be removed from the Livna repositories. == Final notes == Thanks for you interest in RPM Fusion. -- The RPM Fusion Team (http://rpmfusion.org)

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Announcing Fedora IRC Classroom Sessions

by Kevin Fenzi

Greetings. I'm happy to announce that next weekend we will be opening up the #fedora-classroom irc channel (on irc.freenode.net) for some classroom sessions. These sessions are intended to be short (30min to an hour) sessions on the IRC network where you can learn about a specific Fedora related topic. Please see: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/IRC/Classroom to look at what topics will offered next week, what times they will be offered, suggest topics or sign up to teach a session yourself! Hope to see lots of folks there. kevin

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announce November 2008