Fedora Weekly News, Issue 140
by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Fedora Weekly News Issue 140
=================================
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 140 for the week ending August 24, 2008.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140
Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and
activities in the Fedora community.
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a
chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news.
Ideas for new beats are always welcome -- let us know how you'd like to
contribute.
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 Infrastructure's ongoing issues
Paul Frields continued to post[0] periodic updates about Fedora
Infrastructure.
"Our team has been hard at work for several days now, restoring services
in the Fedora infrastructure. We started with what we identified as
Fedora's "critical path," those systems required to restore minimum
daily operation. That work to be completely finished by the end of the
day. We then move on to our other value services to complete them as
soon as possible."
[0]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00011....
On August 22nd, a more complete report[1] was published. Rather than
excerpt it here, Fedora Weekly News encourages readers to review the
entire announcement.
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012....
Finally, Dennis Gilmore announced[2] that "effective immediately we have
replaced the CA that is in use for cvs.fedoraproject.org and
koji.fedoraproject.org This effects uploading to lookaside cache and
building packages."
[2]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-August/msg00008...
Email bounces
Seth Vidal explained[3] that "a number of addresses @fedoraproject.org
there were windows when those email addresses would have bounced
reporting that the address did not exist."
He goes on to say that the problem has been corrected, but anyone who
wants the details should read the full message.
[3]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-August/msg00007...
=Planet Fedora=
In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.
http://planet.fedoraproject.org
Contributing Writer: Max Spevack
This week on Planet Fedora...
* Mairin Duffy posted[0] another draft of the Gears/Steampunk
proposed wallpaper, and also [1] reminded everyone that the "deadline
for round 2 of the Fedora 10 artwork process is 1 September 2008."[1]
[0] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60668.html
[1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60797.html
* Rex Dieter wrote several posts[2] about his trip to Akademy, the
KDE uber-conference which was held this year in Brussels.
[2] http://rdieter.livejournal.com/tag/akademy
* Paul Frields announced[3] the Fedora Scholarship[4] program.
"Now it?s finally official: a Fedora Scholarship. A while back, we
started talking about ways to identify and cultivate young contributors
to Fedora. We are starting to see more and more young people taking the
opportunity to be full participants in the open source world. As part of
our mission to develop a culture of contribution in FOSS and not just
consumption, we want to identify and reward those individuals.
One way we can do this is through the incentive of scholarship funds.
This year we started the Fedora Scholarship to lead that effort. The
inaugural winner, Ricky Zhou, is someone that many people may know from
his exceptional work on our websites and infrastructure."
[3] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1136
[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Scholarship
* Karsten Wade has written a two[5] excellent posts[6] about the
need for a Fedora CMS. His posts cover the differences between a CMS and
a wiki, general requirements for any CMS that we choose, as well as a
discussion of the scope of the project. Suggested reading for any
members of the websites or documentation projects.
[5] http://iquaid.org/2008/08/13/why-and-where-fedora-needs-a-cms-solution/
[6] http://iquaid.org/2008/08/19/fedora-cms-focus-and-scope/
=Ambassadors=
In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock
Updated Q3 Budget Draft
Max Spevack posted [1] an updated draft for the upcoming Q3 budget. The
draft attempts to give more discretionary funds to North America,
address concerns for FAD EMEA and leave a small amount in reserve for
additional Q3 expenses that arise. Review the mailing list post for the
detailed view.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00...
North America Polo Shirt Order - Round Two
Pascal Calarco is ready to start a second round of ordering for
Ambassador Polos as announced on the Fedora Ambassador mailing list [1].
There is also additional information in the wiki [2].
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00...
[2]
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/NA#Fedora_Ambassador_Polo_Shir...
Help Wanted: Austria LinuxDay 2008
Fabian Affolter posted [1] a request for help to organize a Fedora booth
at the Austria LinuxDay 2008. The event is November 29, 2008 and
expected attendance is 1000 visitors. If you are in the area and can
attend, contact Fabian Affolter.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00...
=Developments=
In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.
Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley
Mysterious Fedora Compromise
The mysterious unavailability of much of the FedoraProject
infrastructure (see FWN#139 "General Outage of Fedora
Infrastructure"[1]) continued to provoke speculation during the week.
Some light was shed[2] on 22-08-2008 when Paul Frields announced that
there had been an intrusion onto several FedoraProject servers. The
announcement emphasized that although one of the servers was used for
signing rpm packages it was believed, based upon an absence of positive
evidence, that the key and packages had not been tampered with.
Nevertheless prudence and caution were being exercised and the
opportunity was being seized to completely re-install and upgrade all
systems. As a result it was necessary for most contributors to reset
authentication tokens of various types (see this same issue[3].) It also
appeared[4] that a concurrent event had led to the signing of some Red
Hat OpenSSH packages, but that these had been quickly detected and had
not led to the distribution of compromised packages.
[1]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue139#General_Outage_of_Fedora_Infra...
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012...
[3] "Epiphany, Konqueror and Plague Hamper Updating SSL Client-side
Certificates" [4] http://www.redhat.com/security/data/openssh-blacklist.html
Prior to that announcement all that was known was that there were
problems on the build servers which became obvious to a wide audience on
13-08-2008 and that users were advised[5] on 14-08-2008 not to install
updates. The wiki and email lists continued to function during this
period thanks to the efforts of their administrators.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00008...
An update[6] was posted on 18-08-2008 by Paul Frields that listed the
services which had returned to normal and those which were expected to
return to normal soon. Public speculation latched on[7][8] to the
changing of "fedorahosted" SSH keys. Most guesses used this as evidence
that something similar to the recent 2008 Debian OpenSSL
vulnerabilities[9] had occurred. Some confusion prevailed[10] on
@fedora-devel as to whether it was possible to trust the new key
fingerprint on the website. Jim Meyering added[11] a useful post which
explained how to change from using a DSA ssh key to an RSA ssh key.
Overall there was a surprisingly low level of public discussion of the
problem and it was not until 18-08-2008 that some complaints about the
lack of information were expressed[12] on @fedora-list. On 22-08-2008
another bulletin was released[13] by Paul Frields that explained that
the Fedora key had not been obviously compromised but that it was still
being changed on the precautionary principle.
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00011...
[7] http://lwn.net/Articles/294547/
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00790.html
[9] Metasploit has an excellent writeup on the topic here:
http://www.metasploit.com/users/hdm/tools/debian-openssl/
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00841.html
[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00845.html
[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg01953.html
[13]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012...
Although many responses to complaints about the limited information
suggested[14] that the Fedora developers could be trusted to "do the
right thing" in terms of alerting users to immediate threats of
compromise there was still strong disquiet expressed[15] over the lack
of information. This also occurred[16] on @fedora-list. Jef Spaleta
wondered[17] if there might be a better way of getting information out
than relying on everyone to subscribe to @fedora-announce. Alan Cox
suggested[18] that an RSS feed for critical announcements could be
picked up by a system's default package updater and that repositories
could communicate errors to yum. Alan was also unhappy with the absence
of important notices on the very front of the website and as a separate
matter criticized the content of the information issued: "[...] leaving
people in the dark assuming the worst [is] a very bad way to create long
term trust." Bruno Wolf III also suggested[19] that information should
have been conveyed by a more central announcement on fedoraproject.org
and co-ordination with media such as LWN.net.
[14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg01955.html
[15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02034.html
[16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02426.html
[17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02010.html
[18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02012.html
[19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02013.html
Most comments on @fedora-devel made a point of thanking the Fedora
Infrastructure admins, even to the extent of providing internet
beers[20] and Hans de Goede commented[21] that "Even before the
unfortunate events of the last few weeks the infrastructure team has
been doing an amazing job[.]"
[20]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01037.html
[21]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01028.html
Epiphany, Konqueror and Plague Hamper Updating SSL Client-side Certificates
As part of the general overhaul of Fedora Project infrastructure
security occasioned by the recent intrusion[1] Dennis Gilmore advised[2]
that the certificate authority governing access to cvs.fedoraproject.org
and koji.fedoraproject.org had been changed. As a result it was
necessary for those who wished to build packages or upload to the
lookaside cache to manually import a new client-side certificate and to
remove their old certificate.
[1]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue139#General_Outage_of_Fedora_Infra...
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00962.html
Martin Sourada reported[3] that after following the procedure he still
received a (Error code: ssl_error_unknown_ca_alert). Kai Engert
suggested[4] that Martin might need to import the Fedora Project root CA
certificate after verifying its fingerprint. As Martin had allowed
exceptions for the Fedora websites this was not the problem and it
turned out[5] to be due to a problem with the epiphany web browser
failing to offer an option to remove old certificates.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00978.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00982.html
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00989.html
Problems were also experienced[6] by Jose Matos, but this time with the
konqueror web browser (version 4.1.0). Kevin Koffler replied[7] that in
KDE 4 there was no support for SSL certificate authentication with
konqueror and pasted a link[8] to an upstream bug report filed with the
KDE project on this issue.
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00983.html
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00999.html
[8] https://bugs.kde.org/show.bug.cgi?id=167668
Tim Jackson reported[9] that plague-client[10] was acting up and Michael
Schwendt quickly provided[11] a patch which removed an assumption about
how many bytes would be in the certificate. Dennis Gilmore commented
"it's probably due to the new ca cert being 8096 bit and user certs are
now all 2048 bit" and Chris Weyl filed[12] a bugzilla.
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00993.html
[10] plague is the distributed package build system used by the EPEL
repository
[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00996.html
[12]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01019.html
Later Paul Howarth encountered[13] what seemed to be a problem with his
key or koji but which turned out, as suggested[14] by Jason Tibbitts to
be due to denyhosts blocking him.
[13]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00970.html
[14]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00971.html
System Autodeath
Seth Vidal raised[1] the possibility of including a non-default option
to include an "autodie" feature in future Fedora releases. The idea,
originally expressed[2] in Glen Turner's blog is that each OS release
should ship with an expected expiry date and a means to automatically
remove the default route from that machine once the expiry date arrives.
This would prevent old, unmaintained machines from being quietly exploited.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00853.html
[2] http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/blog/linux/autodeath.1024px
Agreement was expressed[3] by Jon Masters that it would be useful if "a
sysadmin consciously wants to remember to remove a system from
production/upgrade it after a certain time but then loses track of
it[.]" Rahul Sundaram also thought[4] that something should be done but
preferred the idea of modifying PackageKit to notify users when an
upgrade was due and fixing up PreUpgrade to allow users to easily update
without burning media. Jon Ciesla and Colin Walters wrangled over
whether LiveUpgrade or PreUpgrade was the appropriate place to present
such notifications with Colin disliking the LiveUpgrade due to support
logistics. Richard Hughes was pleased to relate[5] that most of Rahul's
desired feature had been implemented only a couple of days previously.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00855.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00856.html
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00932.html
Although Dave Jones was not worried[6] about desktop machines being
abandoned this was contested. Dominik Mierzejewski related[7] anecdotes
of people still running Fedora Core 2 while Stephen Smoogen regaled[8]
the list with tales of hundreds of ancient Windows 3.11 clients on his
network. Seth Vidal shared[9] Dave's insouciance and was more concerned
about servers and "appliance-like machines" but promised to "look at
putting a simple cron job together in a package to do this" while
inviting anyone more motivated to go ahead and implement it.
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00861.html
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00862.html
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00865.html
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00863.html
A slight misunderstanding of Seth's intentions led[10] Horst H. von
Brand to put the case "[...] against forcing people forward, even for
their own good[.]" Horst argued that some systems could not be updated
due to reliance on unmaintained legacy software. After Seth explained
that he was not recommending that the "autodeath" feature be made a
default Horst still expressed[11] a worry that casual installation
followed by forgetfulness could result in the unexpected deactivation of
systems later on. He suggested that instead of removing the default
route "to a nag screen when EOL nears, offer to set up for upgrade, show
(current) pointers to scripts helping check if 3rd party stuff will
still work, ... install /that/ by default, allow to disable/uninstall it
(even while it is nagging)." Seth objected[12] forcefully to describing
the removal of the default route as "kills itself" and this resulted in
a spate of alternate name suggestions.
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00903.html
[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00929.html
[12]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00930.html
James Hubbard saw[13] similarities to "Windows Genuine Advantage where
you can't use your machine anymore if you can't validate your
installation" and suggested instead that users be notified of the EOL
and in a separate part of the thread Jef Spaleta suggested that
"autoannoy", via motd or the login banner, instead of "autodeath" might
educate and help users more than cutting off connectivity.
[13]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00866.html
Commenting on responses from Matt Miller[14][15] and Jason Tibbitts[16],
among others, Seth Vidalcommented[17] that it appeared that "all the
.edu people seem to get this". But Horst was skeptical[18] that it was
necessary to force sysadmins to make such changes.
[14]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00911.html
[15]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00935.html
[16]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00868.html
[17]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00869.html
[18]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00931.html
James Hubbard also made[19] a strong argument that lack of updates was
as much of a security problem as being EOL'ed and thus any such measures
should also be applied to systems lagging in their updates.
[19]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00959.html
GNUstep Filesystem Layout Discussion
A very clearly presented[1] explanation by Michel Salim kick started a
discussion about how the GNUstep application development framework could
finally be included in Fedora. Michel explained that GNUstep's
idiosyncratic filesystem layout had previously made it impossible to
install on an FHS[2] compliant system but that it was now possible. A
choice had to be made for the layout of what GNUstep terms "application
bundles" bearing in mind that "flattened" layouts are platform specific
while "unflattened" can support multilib with little pain. Michel saw
three main choices including a non-FHS-compliant one and noted that
there were potential conflicts between utill-linux-ng and the default
installation of GNUstep tools in /usr/bin/<arch>. He also noted that
Debian had chosen to use an unflattened layout.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01007.html
[2] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#INTRODUCTION
- From this point onwards the discussion became a little difficult to
follow due to the use of GNUstep specific terminology. The simplest
information your correspondent could find was the online version[3] of
the library-combo manpage and is probably essential reading before even
attempting to grasp the outlines of the following.
[3] http://linux.die.net/man/7/library-combo
A suggestion[4] from Axel Thimm was "[...] to place [the GNUstep tools]
directly under %{_bindir} and let rpm deal with the different archs as
it does for all other %{_bindir} mixing of subarchs with colors etc" and
to put the libraries under %{_libdir}. He argued that multilib or
multiarch binaries were not generally supported in Fedora. Axel was also
encouraging about the idea of starting a wiki page to attract as wide a
possible contribution from GNUstep developers including non-Fedora
contributors. Even more importantly Axel contrasted the ability of an
unflattened layout to support different compilers and libraries to that
of a flattened layout which could make OpenGroupware[5] conflict with
other applications due to its use of libFoundation[6.] Kevin Koffler was
unimpressed[7] with "packages which think they are a distro" and posited
the solution that "[...] they need to be fixed to work with the system
libraries instead (or the system libraries fixed to work with the
packages[.]" While Axel agreed he explained[8] that what was being
chosen was an "Objective-C runtime/ foundation library/graphical
interface tuple (flattened)" and that it was necessary to allow a choice
at runtime of the middle component in order to support applications
depending on either libFoundation or gnustep-base[9]. Axel concluded
"[...] IMHO we need to start with gnustep-make's FHS and non-flattened
layout and fix it where it still needs fixing (gnustep-make FHS layout
is very young and one could say that we are shaking out the bugs and
when we are finished hopefully upstream will be glad to accept any patch
we will have made to the FHS mode layout of gnustep-make)."
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01009.html
[5] A groupware server integrating office suites through XML-based
interfaces: http://www.opengroupware.org/en/about/mission.html
[6] Cocoa, libFoundation and gnustep-base all provide implementations
of, and non-standard extensions to, the OpenStep API. Apart from
licensing differences gnustep-base also has better platform coverage
(Windows is not supported by the others) and full unicode support.
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01021.html
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01029.html
[9] http://www.gnustep.org/developers/suite.html
Discussion with Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski and Kevin led Michel to
post[10] that "[...] the consensus so far seems to be for using a
flattened layout. Removing --disable-flattened from gnustep-make
actually causes a much tighter adherence to the FHS, with %{_bindir} and
%{_libdir} not containing any subdirectories." Michel was worried that
this would result in duplicating data files and that "[...] keeping the
unflattened layout might be too much trouble; if we are already
flattening /usr/bin and /usr/lib*, might as well stick with a flattened
layout after all."
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01024.html
Apparently different conclusions were being reached at this stage and
Axel attempted[11] to expand upon what he had said, explaining that this
would result in having to choose between the Foundation libraries at
buildtime. He presented unflattened layouts as allowing a choice of
"libcombo" at runtime as opposed to flattened which forced a choice at
buildtime. Dominik was[12] apparently comfortable with the idea of
choosing between the two Foundation libraries and cited the precedent of
not mixing lesstif and openmotif. To solve the problem he suggested
"[put binaries in unflattened %{_libdir}/GNUstep/* and symlink to
/usr/bin ." After Axel replied that the problem was the incompatible
API/ABI of the Foundation libraries Michel posted[13] another summary of
the current apparent state of knowledge.
[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01039.html
[12]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01040.html
[13]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01054.html
Varnish 2.0 Test Suite Fails in Rpmbuild
An interesting post from Ingvar Hagelund, the maintainer of the varnish
http accelerator package, asked[1] why a test suite in the package would
behave differently within the rpmbuild created environment than when run
from an interactive shell. Ingvar had eliminated selinux as a
possibility and speculated "[...] the problem seems to be related to
some missing communication between the test scripts and the test server
process."
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00944.html
A response from Mogens Kjaer contained[2] a report that it was to do
with a missing libvarnish.so.0 and wondered "[...] is the build system
using an already installed libvarnish.so.0 if one is available and not
the newly built libvarnish.so.0?" Jason Tibbitts suggested[3] that it
was usual to reference such newly built libraries by manipulating
LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the specfile. After Mogens added LD_LIBRARY_PATH and
rebuilt from scratch he found[4] that all the tests were passed but that
no varnish-libs had been installed and this led him to conclude that
there was indeed a difference to the rpmbuild environment.
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00945.html
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00946.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00948.html
Ingvar ended up[5] filing a bug report upstream with the conclusion that
the soname version should be bumped as the old libraries were
incompatible with varnish-2.0.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00951.html
=Infrastructure=
This section contains the discussion happening on the
fedora-infrastructure-list
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure
Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala
So everyone is aware
Mike McGrath writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1]
This is the first notice when came out to the community that there will
be outages and a lot of the servers are being rebuild. Mike pointed to
the mail on fedora-announce-list [2]
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
[2]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00008....
securing FAS certs
Toshio Kuratomi writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [3]
The Fedora Certificates issued by FAS are currently set to be
autogenerated if you have an account in FAS. This has one drawback. We
have to keep the password for the CA keys that sign the FAS certificates
in a file on the filesystem so that the automatic signing can use them.
Toshio suggested that we use a system which utilizes human interaction
to sign the certs.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
=Artwork=
In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
One Canvas Workflow
MartinSourada talked[1] on the Fedora Art list about the One Canvas
Workflow: "I think we need to be up to date with technology, so I
started downloading the One Canvas Workflow screencast by jimmac. I
haven't tried it yet (but going to do so very soon), but from the people
who already tried it and shared their thoughts about it, it seems like
it would be improvement for the Echo Icon Theme creation workflow".
And quickly after this he presented[2] the first icons created using
this process, an opportunity to introduce icons at a very large size
(256x256px) and with an increased amount of details[3].
Editor's note: One Canvas Workflow is an improved way to create multiple
icon size in one single sheet, advocated by the famous designer and
GNOME hacker Jackub Steiner "jimmac"[4].
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00290.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00292.html
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/pngNdtP7y3qw7...
[4] http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?p=436
Fedora Art Team Monthly Picks
MairinDuffy proposed an initiative: "maybe the Fedora Art Team could do
a monthly art pack (kind of along the likes of the iCE and ACiD art
groups' monthly art packs) that would be a selection of say the top 10
best art works producing using Fedora (inkscape, gimp, etc., it just has
to be software that's available in Fedora used to produce it.)", with
the intention to promote the works created by the member of the team: "I
think this might be a good way of getting more recognition to our
artists as well as to what Fedora can do".
The talk is open for details about the technical implementation.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00298.html
Round 2 theming developments
With the deadline for the second round for theming the upcoming Fedora
10, a number of theme proposals received updates: Gears[1], Solar[2] and
InvinXible[3] and each of them is under evolution in the remaining week.
[1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60668.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00293.html
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00300.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
None
Fedora 8 Security Advisories
None
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFIsouNzHDc8tpb2uURAha9AJ4zU09+HRTb5qWzjNkB/12rF+z3SACgjOLa
d6o4kC3gaPbsa0Ud8wlS3nM=
=FRVA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
15 years, 3 months
Fedora Unity releases Fedora 8 Re-Spin
by Ben Williams
The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new ISO
Re-Spins (DVD Sets) of Fedora 8.
These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8
installation media and include all updates released as of August 14th, 2008.
The ISO images are available for i386, x86_64 and PPC architectures via
Jigdo and Torrent starting Sun August 24th, 2008.
Go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins to get the bits!
DVD Media Only
Due to packaging problems, this is a DVD Only Re-spin
Bugs solved in this Re-Spin
With this particular Re-Spin, fixes for the following bugs are included,
like on our last Fedora 8 Re-Spin releases[1
<https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-December/msg000...>,2
<https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-April/msg00001...>]:
* #372011, "depsolve hang in F7 to F8 upgrade"
We have incorporated the updates image made by Jeremy Katz (comment #11
in the bug), and we have verified that a full Fedora 7 installation
upgrades to Fedora 8 without issues.
* #367731, "anaconda fails on Via VPSD motherboard"
On i586 hardware, the installation media wouldn't boot and thus renders
itself unusable. We have backported the fix for this issue from anaconda
development to the Fedora 8 stock anaconda, as anaconda is not updated
during a release.
* #369611, "yum upgrade with selinux-policy-strict installed fails"
A dependency problem in selinux-policy-strict during upgrades is
resolved in an updated selinux-policy-strict package, which is included
in the Re-Spin
* #404601, "anaconda crashes on 'cdrom' line in kickstart"
Updates to pykickstart incorporated in the rebuilt installer resolve
this issue.
* #420281, Cannot find kickstart file during unattended installation
The kickstart file name searched for after booting from CD or DVD with
option "linux ks" and using a dhcp and nfs server is wrong.
Attention: Changes in this Re-Spin
Also, we would like to let you know that NetworkManager is now installed
by default, and for people doing minimal installations; this service
will need to be disabled before the network starts to work.
Thanks to
We would like to give a special thanks to the following for testing this
Re-Spin:
- zcat Jason Farrell
- vwbusguy- Scott Williams
- Southern_Gentleman Ben Williams
- kanarip Jeroen van Meeuwen
Testing Results
A full test matrix can be found at our Test Matrix
<http://spins.fedoraunity.org/Members/Southern_Gentleman/fedora-8-re-spin-...>
A full list of bugs, packages and changelogs that have been updated in
this Re-Spin can be reviewed on
http://spins.fedoraunity.org/changelogs/20080814/
Previous Re-Spin (20080501) will expire
Due to limited resources, this spin will immediately obsolete 20080501,
which will be deleted from our mirrors in the next few days.
Fedora Unity has taken up the Re-Spin task to provide the community with
the chance to install Fedora with recent updates already included.
These updates might otherwise comprise more than 2.05GiB of downloads
for a full install.
This is a community project, for and by the community. You can
contribute to the community by joining our test process.
Go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins to get the bits!
Assistance Needed
If you are interested in helping with the testing or mirroring efforts,
please contact the Fedora Unity team.
Contact information is available at http://fedoraunity.org/ or the
#fedora-unity channel on the Freenode IRC Network (irc.freenode.net).
To report bugs in the Re-Spins please use http://bugs.fedoraunity.org/
15 years, 3 months
Infrastructure report, 2008-08-22 UTC 1200
by Paul W. Frields
Last week we discovered that some Fedora servers were illegally
accessed. The intrusion into the servers was quickly discovered, and the
servers were taken offline.
Security specialists and administrators have been working since then to
analyze the intrusion and the extent of the compromise as well as
reinstall Fedora systems. We are using the requisite outages as an
opportunity to do other upgrades for the sake of functionality as well
as security. Work is ongoing, so please be patient. Anyone with
pertinent information relating to this event is asked to contact
fedora-legal(a)redhat.com.
One of the compromised Fedora servers was a system used for signing
Fedora packages. However, based on our efforts, we have high confidence
that the intruder was not able to capture the passphrase used to secure
the Fedora package signing key. Based on our review to date, the
passphrase was not used during the time of the intrusion on the system
and the passphrase is not stored on any of the Fedora servers.
While there is no definitive evidence that the Fedora key has been
compromised, because Fedora packages are distributed via multiple
third-party mirrors and repositories, we have decided to convert to new
Fedora signing keys. This may require affirmative steps from every
Fedora system owner or administrator. We will widely and clearly
communicate any such steps to help users when available.
Among our other analyses, we have also done numerous checks of the
Fedora package collection, and a significant amount of source
verification as well, and have found no discrepancies that would
indicate any loss of package integrity. These efforts have also not
resulted in the discovery of additional security vulnerabilities in
packages provided by Fedora.
Our previous warnings against further package updates were based on an
abundance of caution, out of respect for our users. This is also why we
are proceeding with plans to change the Fedora package signing key. We
have already started planning and implementing other additional
safeguards for the future. At this time we are confident there is little
risk to Fedora users who wish to install or upgrade signed Fedora
packages.
In connection with these events, Red Hat, Inc. detected an intrusion of
certain of its computer systems and has issued a communication to Red
Hat Enterprise Linux users which can be found at
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2008-0855.html. This communication
states in part, "Last week Red Hat detected an intrusion on certain of
its computer systems and took immediate action. While the investigation
into the intrusion is on-going, our initial focus was to review and test
the distribution channel we use with our customers, Red Hat Network
(RHN) and its associated security measures. Based on these efforts, we
remain highly confident that our systems and processes prevented the
intrusion from compromising RHN or the content distributed via RHN and
accordingly believe that customers who keep their systems updated using
Red Hat Network are not at risk. We are issuing this alert primarily for
those who may obtain Red Hat binary packages via channels other than
those of official Red Hat subscribers."
It is important to note that the effects of the intrusion on Fedora and
Red Hat are *not* the same. Accordingly, the Fedora package signing key
is not connected to, and is different from, the one used to sign Red Hat
Enterprise Linux packages. Furthermore, the Fedora package signing key
is also not connected to, and is different from, the one used to sign
community Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) packages.
We will continue to keep the Fedora community notified of any updates.
Thank you again for your patience.
--
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
15 years, 3 months
Infrastructure status, 2008-08-19 UTC 0200
by Paul W. Frields
Our team has been hard at work for several days now, restoring services
in the Fedora infrastructure. We started with what we identified as
Fedora's "critical path," those systems required to restore minimum
daily operation. That work to be completely finished by the end of the
day. We then move on to our other value services to complete them as
soon as possible.
Please give the infrastructure team the time they need to do this
demanding work. They have been doing a spectacular job and deserve the
absolute highest credit.
The systems that are now back online and usable include the following:
* Puppet, Xen and FAS hosts
* app1, app3, and app4
* database and proxy servers
* the majority of the Xen guest machines
* serverbeach5, serverbeach4
* Fedora Hosted**
The systems that should be available very soon:
* asterisk1 and collab1
* cvs1
* builders, x86 and ppc
* Fedora People
We know the community is awaiting more detail on the past week's
activities and their causes. We're preparing a timeline and details and
will make them available in the near future. We appreciate the
community's patience, and will continue to post updates to the
fedora-announce-list as soon as possible.
= = =
** New SSH fingerprint for Fedora Hosted:
e6:b3:68:51:98:2d:4c:dc:63:27:46:65:51:d5:f0:7a
--
Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader
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
15 years, 3 months
Fedora Weekly News, Issue 139
by Pascal Calarco
* 1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 139
o 1.1 Announcements
+ 1.1.1 Board IRC Public Meeting
+ 1.1.2 Fedora Test Day: Encrypted Installs & Plymouth
+ 1.1.3 ACL Changes and New Package Group Policy
+ 1.1.4 Important Infrastructure Announcement
o 1.2 Planet Fedora
+ 1.2.1 Tech Tidbits
+ 1.2.2 Artwork
+ 1.2.3 Features
o 1.3 Developments
+ 1.3.1 FlashPlayer 10 Symlink Provokes Proprietary
Support Argument
+ 1.3.2 Parallel Install of syslog-ng, rsyslog and sysklogd
+ 1.3.3 General Outage of Fedora Infrastructure
+ 1.3.4 Koji from Behind a Firewall
+ 1.3.5 Small Machine SIG
o 1.4 Artwork
+ 1.4.1 Fedora 10 Themes: development and deadlines
o 1.5 Security Advisories
+ 1.5.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories
+ 1.5.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories
= Fedora Weekly News Issue 139 =
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 139 for the week ending August 17, 2008.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue139
Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and
activities in the Fedora community.
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a
chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news.
Ideas for new beats are always welcome -- let us know how you'd like to
contribute.
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
== Board IRC Public Meeting ==
Paul Frields reminded us[1] that the Fedora Board's monthly IRC meeting
was scheduled for August 12.
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00006....
== Fedora Test Day: Encrypted Installs & Plymouth
James Laska informed us[1] that the Fedora QA team is organizing a test
day specifically for working on encrypted installs and plymouth (the
replacement for rhgb).
"There will be a cast of testers and developers on hand between 8am -
5pm EDT (12:00 - 21:00 UTC) to help guide testing, answer questions,
triage and troubleshoot issues."
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-August/msg00005...
== ACL Changes and New Package Group Policy
Casey Dahlin wrote[1] about the new Fedora Account System group policy,
implemented "to encourage greater openness in the community while
containing newer members until they have earned the trust of the
community". The full text includes a discussion of the changes that have
been made.
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00007....
== Important Infrastructure Announcement ==
Paul Frields announced[1]:
"The Fedora Infrastructure team is currently investigating an issue in
the infrastructure systems. That process may result in service outages,
for which we apologize in advance. We're still assessing the end-user
impact of the situation, but as a precaution, we recommend you not
download or update any additional packages on your Fedora systems."
[1]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00008....
= Planet Fedora =
In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.
http://planet.fedoraproject.org
Contributing Writer: Max Spevack
== Tech Tidbits
Kushal Das announced[1] a new version of the liveusb-creator GUI
application. Separate from the livecd-tools and livecd-iso-to-disk
application, liveusb-creator is packaged in its own RPM. Kushal writes,
"liveusb-creator version 2.7 for Linux is released... Now feel free to
create liveusb images for your friends and for the special one."
Nigel Jones discussed[2] a variety of wiki improvements that have been
deployed. This is a three-round improvement process. Nigel said of the
first two rounds "At the request of the documentation team we enabled
searching by default on various namespaces, of course, you most likely
won't notice it at all. Round 2 of wiki improvements start tomorrow,
this is the exciting one. We are trashing the current authentication
method IN THE BIN! No more htaccess prompts... What's going in its
place? The standard Mediawiki login prompt, it'll still be connected to
FAS, it'll just look different."
[1] http://kushaldas.in/?p=284
[2] http://nigelj.livejournal.com/8525.html
== Artwork ==
Mairin Duffy gave us a look[1] at some of the proposed Fedora 10 artwork
in the "gears" theme, which is a collaboration between her and Nicu Buculei.
[1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60026.html
== Features ==
Two interesting posts about the Fedora feature process this week. First,
John Poelstra discussed the Fedora 10 feature status[1], saying:
"Feature freeze for Fedora 10 is this coming Tuesday, August 19, 2008.
The current list for Fedora 10 is growing with more waiting to go
through the acceptance process here. At feature freeze all features must
be significantly completed and testable or they will have to wait for
Fedora 11.
During this release cycle I collaborated with Paul Frields who greatly
improved the documentation explaining the process. We also got help from
the Fedora art folks to make the process diagram better. We also changed
the categories used to classify feature pages in an attempt to bring
greater clarity there."
In a separate post[2], Paul Frields mused on the benefits of changing
the way new Fedora spins are handled from a feature point of view.
[1]
http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/fedora-10-feature-process-and-bey...
[2] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1129
= Developments =
In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.
Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley
== FlashPlayer 10 Symlink Provokes Proprietary Support Argument ==
A formal request to remove the "miniature libcurl.so.3 library" was
made[1] by Josh Boyer. This had been created in order to support the
latest version[2] of Adobe's proprietary Flash Player which had a hard
dependency on libcurl.so.3 while Fedora 8, Fedora 9 and Fedora 10(alpha)
provided only libcurl.so.4. Josh argued that the change, mentioned on
Warren Togami's blog[3] had been made solely to accommodate a
proprietary application.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00476.html
[2] http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/Flashplayer10/
[3] http://wtogami.livejournal.com/27778.html
After NikolayVladimirov argued[4] that it was a minimal, non-invasive
change which might be useful for some "dead opensource projects that use
the old version" Josh replied[5] this support goal would be better met
by providing a "compat-curl" package instead of "just a hack with the
sole intention of making Flash work again". In an aside he mentioned
that he would have no objection to removing libflashsupport and a bunch
of other stuff. Matthew Garrett followed[6] the train of thought to one
possible final destination: "If the ABI is consistent across the SONAME
bump, then it's a hack that supports any pre-existing binaries that
users have. The best way we could serve those users with a compat
package would be to ship another copy of the latest version of curl (so
they get the bugfixes) but with a changed SONAME - at which point we'd
be shipping two identical source packages that produce binary packages
that differ only in library name. In doing so, we'd be increasing the
cost of security updates. What does that actually win us?"
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00484.html
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00484.html
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00498.html
Bastien Nocera thought[7] that such a "compat-curl" package would
duplicate unmaintained code and was pointless "since libcurl didn't
break ABI, and only changed soname". Josh stood firm[8] and retorted
that if the ABI was static then the applications could simply rebuild
against the newer libcurl. Warren Togami characterized[9] Josh's
viewpoint as "extremist" as it proposed "removing a zero maintenance
2496 byte file that would permanently break Flash 10 forever in Fedora"
and that furthermore "[Adobe] are not violating any licenses like
NVidia[.]" Following similar sentiments from "drago01" Josh deferred the
discussion to a FESCo meeting held on Wed 13th August and this duly
decided[10] to leave things as they were with two soname files in the
curl package despite some strenuous objections which emphasized both the
desirability of sub-packaging and also of not catering to the needs of
proprietary applications.
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00486.html
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00488.html
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00496.html
[10] http://bpepple.fedorapeople.org/fesco/FESCo-2008-08-13.html
== Parallel Install of syslog-ng, rsyslog and sysklogd ==
Douglas Warner sought help[1] in packaging syslog-ng so that it could be
installed with either of the other current system loggers: rsyslog and
sysklogd. He explained that all three installed their own "logrotate"
files which targeted the exact same log files for rotation and thus
doubly rotated the logs. So far Douglas' attempt to change his own
syslog-ng package to fix this was stymied on RHEL boxes because updates
of sysklogd (RHEL's preferred system logger) silently remove syslog-ng.
Later in the thread Benny Amorsen provided[2] the insight that running
syslog-ng for handling remote logs and rsyslog for its simple
configuration simultaneously was useful.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00531.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00632.html
The question of how to ship precisely the same logrotate script, from
the viewpoint of RPM, was mentioned[3] by Douglas as one possible
solution. If this could be done then RPM would be agnostic about where
the file came from as long as it were possible to figure out whether the
identity was based on "file size, md5, timestamp, ?". Ville Skyttä
suggested[4] using the %verify directive as detailed in a link to the
"Maximum RPM" book.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00558.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00577.html
A restructuring of the problem by Jason Tibbits led him to recommend[5]
that a separate logrotation-script package be split out of the current
packages and that each of the current packages be made to depend on the
new package. When Douglas nixed the suggestion due to his lack of
control over the sysklogd script Jason seemed[6] to react a little
testily and asked "Could we discuss technical solutions and ignore Red
Hat politics? What I proposed is a standard method of dealing with these
things." After JarodDiamond agreed with this Dmitry Butskoy pointed[7]
out that a different PID filename is used in each script and wondered
was it possible to to create such a common logrotate package for all the
syslog-like packages. A likely solution was proposed[8] by Chris Adams
which used the expedient of symlinking each of the unique PID files from
within the init script.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00561.html
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00563.html
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00584.html
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00604.html
== General Outage of Fedora Infrastructure ==
Many were caught by surprise when there was a widespread outage of
Fedora Project infrastructure during the week. The earliest symptoms
noticed included an inability to access Koji (see e.g. this FWN#139
"Koji from Behind a Firewall") or obtain updates with yum. A general
announcement by Paul Frields followed[1] quickly on Thursday 14th and
stated that an "issue in the infrastructure systems [was being
investigated and might] result in service outages[.]" Somewhat ominously
it concluded "[..] as a precaution, we recommend you not download or
update any additional packages on your Fedora systems." This led some to
speculate[2] that there might be a security problem.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00008...
[2] http://lwn.net/Articles/294188/
Further announcements or explanations were not forthcoming for days,
except for a post to @fedora-infrastructure which suggested[3] that the
problem was causing a lot of hard work. Paul Frields posted another
update[4] on Sat 16th. This succinctly stated that the wiki and FAS
should be back soon but that the application servers would take a bit
longer.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
[4]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00009....
As of Sunday evening it became obvious that a very major amount of work
was being undertaken to recover from the problem. It is worth noting
that the email lists and the wiki were functional most of the time
thanks to the commitment of their administrators.
== Koji from Behind a Firewall ==
A query was made[1] by Victor Lazzarini about how to connect to Koji
using the CLI from behind a firewall. He wondered specifically how to
set up a proxy connection. He added that he was seeing an error when
using a web browser but was[2] unable to provide it due to the general
outage in Fedora infrastructure.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00660.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00664.html
Mike Bonnet answered[3] that Koji did not have direct proxy support but
that it used only ports 80 (http) and 443(https) as these are generally
open. He explained that it would be "a significant amount of effort" to
support proxies directly. Unfortunately Vincent had to report[4] that
his institution forced everything through a proxy due to being "paranoid
about security) and he was stuck with either setting up an open access
machine or working from home.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00665.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00667.html
A possibility for the web browser error was supplied[5] by Andrew Price
as an ssl_error_handshake_failure_alert which he had seen prior to the
general outage.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00675.html
== Small Machine SIG ==
An effort to gauge interest in starting a small form-factor machine SIG
was made[1] by Jeremy Katz. He asked that anyone interested in running
Fedora on the Asus Eeepc, netbooks, UMPCs, MIDs and perhaps the XO would
contribute to a wiki page[2]. The specific goals were both to "just get
the hardware working well with [current] Fedora" and also "possibly a
spin that is explicitly targeted at some of the constraints of the
hardware down the line." Several people responded and added themselves
to the wiki.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00497.html
[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JeremyKatz/Netbooks
Peter Robinson defined the goal as "a small, low power image with
packages without massive dependencies" while Jaroslav Reznik called[3]
for an emphasis on the UI instead of merely on drivers for hardware
support. Kevin Verma agreed[4] that "more usable UIs for small devices,
also apps that are more adaptive to small screens" were important, and
cited Maemo[5] and Moblin[6] as inspirations. Kevin had already[7] done
some packaging work in this area.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00576.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00589.html
[5] Maemo is Nokia's software platform for internet tablets. It is based
on GTK+. See http://maemo.org/ for more information.
[6]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue136#RPM_Inspires_Intel_Moblin2_Shi...
[7] http://kevinverma.fedorapeople.org/packages/
Jeremy Katz responded[8] that given the imminent release of Fedora 10 it
was most likely that better hardware support would be the immediately
achievable goal. While agreeing that Maemo was interesting he preferred
to get Sugar[9] running within the Fedora 11 timeframe. In answer to
JeffSpaleta he clarified[10] that recent work done by Greg DeKoenigsberg
to run "stock" Fedora on the XO was relevant but a different goal from
producing a spin of Fedora, for all small machines, using the Sugar
interface.
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00594.html
[9] The unique interface developed for the resource-constrained XO
produced by the OLPC project
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00609.html
The main developer of BLAG[11], Jeff Moe, posted[12] links to images
that supported "all hardware on the EeePC 701/900 using *only* free
software. This includes wifi with the ath5k driver. It is based on
-libre and -rt plus various other patches." Jeremy Katz re-phrased[13]
his goal as "[to] be able to run on the systems with stock Fedora" in
order to avoid the distribution problem of special spins. Jeff
encouraged[14] this possibility with the information that apart from
wireless the stock Fedora 9 kernel supported everything on the EeePC
701/900 and that although there was support for the Atheros ar2425
wireless chip support in the 2.6.27 kernel there were still specific
patches lacking for EeePCs. He added that the EeePC 901/1000 used a
different wireless chip (from Ralink who have been active in releasing
information necessary for Free drivers in the past) and included a link
to Ralink's code for an apparently complete RT2860 ABGN driver. Warren
Togami confirmed[15] that there were vague rumors that the chipset would
be supported upstream.
[11] A single-CD derivative of Fedora 9 which is strictly Free Software.
See https://wiki.blagblagblag.org/FAQ
[12]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00511.html
[13] www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00533.html
[14]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00537.html
[15]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00550.html
After Rex Dieter asked why the BLAG folks were not upstreaming their
changes to Fedora it was explained[16] by Jeff that he filed bug reports
and mailed .spec files upstream but that they were perhaps in conflict
with the packaging guidelines. He also alluded to the fact that much of
his work centered around the "kernel-libre" which had caused flamewars
in the recent past. In conclusion he noted that he had been able to
perform many simultaneous tasks "while playing a song with *zero*
stutters or dropouts on a teeny little computer. That rules." but that
it required the use of the low-latency audio server JACK[17], that is
non-standard on Fedora.
[16]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00554.html
[17] http://jackaudio.org/
Surprisingly no mention was made during the discussion of the "Eeedora"
distribution which had been written about[18] in Red Hat Magazine
towards the start of this year.
[18] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/02/14/fedora-eee-pc-eeedora/
= Artwork =
In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
== Fedora 10 Themes: development and deadlines ==
On the Fedora Art list NicuBuculei started[1] the work on the second
round for creating the Fedora 10 desktop theme: "since the first round
ended, we had very little theme activity, so maybe is time to heat the
things a bit" and he posted an "work in progress" graphic[2].
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00206.html
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:Gears-r2.png
This was quickly followed by MairinDuffy, who, liking the concept,
developed it further[3] with various designs, which were
enthusiastically received by the rest of the team. She also wrote on her
blog[4], showing the progress to the larger community.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00208.html
[4] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60026.html
In related theming news, MairinDuffy as the leader of the Art Team
announced[5] a deadline for the Round 2, as an incentive for the rest of
the team and also to fit the release schedule "Let's set the deadline
for round 2 to 1 September 2008. Sound like a good idea? Consider this
an official kick in the pants to get more artwork flowing".
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00229.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 ==
* condor-7.0.4-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
== Fedora 8 Security Advisories ==
none
15 years, 3 months
Infrastructure status, 2008-08-16 UTC 1530
by Paul W. Frields
The Fedora Infrastructure team continues to work on the issues we
discovered earlier this week. Right now, we're getting the account
system restored to service, along with some of the application servers.
We're also taking advantage of the outages to upgrade a few systems at
the same time.
Some services such as the Account System and the wiki should return to
normal over the weekend, but we expect outages to continue for some
other systems. Please be patient as we continue to work the problem.
--
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
15 years, 3 months
Important infrastructure announcement
by Paul W. Frields
The Fedora Infrastructure team is currently investigating an issue in
the infrastructure systems. That process may result in service outages,
for which we apologize in advance. We're still assessing the end-user
impact of the situation, but as a precaution, we recommend you not
download or update any additional packages on your Fedora systems.
We'll share updates as we develop more information. Those updates will
be published here on the public fedora-announce-list:
https://redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-announce-list
Thanks for your patience as we continue working on this.
--
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
15 years, 3 months
ACL Changes and new package group policy
by Casey Dahlin
The infrastructure team has been working on a new group policy to
encourage greater openness in the community while containing newer
members until they have earned the trust of the community. As such, the
following changes are being implemented:
1) Effective already: The "cvsextras" group is now known as "packager."
A bit more descriptive to start.
2) Effective in the next few days, members of "packager" formerly
"cvsextras" will only have access to packages they own or comaintain
directly.
3) Users who need to modify packages distro-wide can be added to the
"uberpackager" group. Anyone who maintains 8 or more packages or is a
sponsor in the "packager" group is in this group already. IF YOU NEED
THIS ACCESS, IT SHOULD COST NO EFFORT TO GET. All members of the group
are sponsors for the group as well, and sponsoring another individual is
intended to be a low-to-no effort process. If they haven't broken the
entire distro recently, and you haven't seen them talking about "porting
Fedora to internet" on devel-list, you should sponsor them as soon as
they ask.
4) After the above changes have taken effect, all packages which
currently have locked down Acls will be opened to the entire
"uberpackager" group. If you are a maintainer and object to this, please
reconsider. If upon reconsideration you still strongly object, there is
a checkbox labeled "Open package during mass ACL open?" on your
package's pkgdb page which will allow you to opt out of this change.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--CJD
15 years, 3 months
Fedora Weekly News #138
by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Fedora Weekly News Issue 138
============================
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 138 for the week ending August 11, 2008.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue138
Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and
activities in the Fedora community.
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a
chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news.
Ideas for new beats are always welcome -- let us know how you'd like to
contribute.
We are still looking for a beat writer to summarize the Fedora Events
and Meetings that happened during each week.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join
== Developments ==
In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.
Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley
=Solving the Unsynchronized Release of Package Dependencies=
A problem often experienced by users of "add-on" packages[1] is that
dependency resolution will fail during a simple yum update when the
official Fedora repositories release an update to the base packages on
which these add-ons depend. ThorstenLeemhuis explained[2] that as add-on
packages have a strict dependency on the base packages for which they
were built and updates are not available at exactly the same time on all
mirrors there is no ideal point in time for the add-on to be released.
Thorsten's RFC was careful to point out that the problem did not only
affect kmods, but also plugins for audacious, xine and k3b and that the
resulting dependency resolution failures occurred both when the add-on
was visible to yum before the base package and vice versa. The two
possible solutions envisioned by Thorsten included either yum being
modified "to be taught to do a second look at the right place to find
what's needed" or the third-party repositories to include the updated
base packages along with the updated add-on. Thorsten feared that this
latter option of "shipping non-free kernel modules and the GPLed kernels
in one repo might [make] some people yell license violation."
[1] Such packages are hosted by "third-party" repositories, which are
run independently of the Fedora Project. The packages, while highly
useful for many Fedora users, are deemed to be legally non-distributable
due to the laws of the U.S.A.
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00041.html
A report of daily failures of this type occurring for Rawhide without
any complicating third-party repository was posted[3] by John Ellson. He
gave two examples from his current machine. The first was a missing
dependency error:
$ yum update phonon*
Error: Missing Dependency: phonon = 4.2.0-1.fc10 is needed by package
phonon-backend-gstreamer-4.2.0-1.fc10.x86.64 (installed)
and the second was a file conflict error:
$ yum update digikam*
Transaction Check Error: file
/usr/share/icons/oxygen/128x128/apps/digikam.png from install of
digikam-0.10.0-0.1.beta2.fc10.x86.64 conflicts with file from package
oxygen-icon-theme-4.1.0-1.fc10.noarch
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00044.html
John wished that yum would skip updating all rpms which produce
conflicts with currently installed rpms whether or not they are
third-party or otherwise, especially as neither of these issues had been
flagged in the appropriately dated "Rawhide report". A good deal of the
remainder of thread was devoted to replying to this post instead of to
Thorsten's RFC. The first response came[4] from MichaelSchwendt and made
the point that the first error was probably due to an incorrect
"Obsoletes" tag in the !code?phonon-backend-gst!/code? that is supposed
to replace phonon-backend-gstreamer. The script which checks for broken
dependencies in Rawhide cannot detect this as the
phonon-backend-gstreamer is not visible to it. Michael addressed the
second error with the point that conflicts are entirely different from
dependency issues and are not checked. RexDieter, as package maintainer,
quickly fixed both of the problems and in doing so demonstrated that
users filing bug reports can be an effective part of the current
process. Thorsten also emphasized[5] that the two errors posted by
JohnEllson were entirely different from each other and that the conflict
was a bug best dealt with by user reports. He further argued that it was
impossible for the Rawhide dependency checker script to examine the
contents of users' hard disks. All that the script can do is examine the
current contents of Rawhide and as the phonon-backend-gstreamer was long
gone it could not test a theoretical update from it. Michael Schwendt
later added[6] that although his own "repoclosure" script developed for
the old "Extras" repository had been able to take account of "obsolete
binary [packages] from the previous compose [...] because in Extras
we've had up to two pkg releases in the repo[sitory ...] the Rawhide
report is like a fresh install of only the latest [package] releases,
and one can only hope that there are enough testers who find and report
the additional update/upgrade problems." Michael claimed[7] that as the
FedoraProject policy on file conflicts was "half-hearted" he was
uninterested in shouldering the burden of running the script himself. He
also noted that Florian La Roche had a script for determining conflicts
between files and symlinks.
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00045.html
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00046.html
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00097.html
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00048.html
During this discussion JohnEllson was unimpressed[8] with the
theoretical reasons as to why he was seeing these problems and requested
that even if it were not possible to do such checks on the server
"[j]ust have yum on the client recover gracefully from these and skip
over them."
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00047.html
Similarly David Timms wondered[9] if the original problem stated in the
RFC could be solved by using the yum option --skip-broken if it were
made to select only those packages which were: available,
non-conflicting, non-dependency-breaking and actually
downloadable.Thorsten restated[10] his belief that this was effectively
hiding the problem instead of fixing it and would result in users being
unaware that important updates were blocked solely due to a manually
installed problem RPM. Instead he suggested setting a window of time
during which updates with broken dependencies would be ignored and then
finally reported as errors. Seth Vidal corrected[11] the impression that
"skip broken" was a plugin to yum (it is now a core option) and while
agreeing that "a tool to detect all these issues is worth discussing,
not sure how we catch all possible conflicts, though" seemed to confuse
Thorsten's window of time with checking the actual package creation
filestamp. JesseKeating also appeared[12] to fall prey to this confusion
and like Seth pointed out the problem of queued packages sitting in
repositories before being released. To clear this confusion up Thorsten
posted[13] a more detailed explanation which emphasized that the times
being examined were relative to the client-side's first encountering of
the problem and made no reference to the build-date or publication date
of the package itself. The advantage of Thorsten's seventy-two hour
window scheme is that it gives packagers a grace period in which to
correct the problem and at the end of that the same situation prevails
as now, namely that the update will fail and users will notice and
report the errors.
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00049.html
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00099.html
[11]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00150.html
[12]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00153.html
[13]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00154.html
=Firefox Mouse Woes=
MarkG reported[1] that Firefox did not respond to the scroll wheel on
GNU/Linux in the same way in which it did on Microsoft Windows. He had
intended to file a bugzilla report, but due to the outage (see this same
FWN#138 "Bugzilla Overhauled") was merely posting to @fedora-devel. The
basic point made in what MarkG chose to frame as an RFC was that he
expected the middle mouse button when clicked to allow him to scroll the
page but that "[w]hen you press it on linux in firefox you get ...
nothing[.]" He suggested that a simple change of
thefirefox-fedora-default-prefs.js to pref("general.autoScroll", true);
by the Fedora maintainer would achieve this goal and noted that
currently it is possible for a user to achieve the same end by
navigating to the URI about: config and filtering general.autoScroll and
changing its boolean to "true". MarkG also noted in support of his
argument that "Ubuntu" had made such a change.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00053.html
A correction was made[2] by IgnacioVazquezAbrams--Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
to the effect that clicking the middle mouse button brought one to the
"URL stored in the clipboard." He also pointed out that the environment
in which the middle-click was made was important and that Firefox was
doing the correct thing by following the Windows' environment preference
of autoscrolling and the *nix environment preference of pasting from the
clipboard. At this point the thread should probably have stopped but
instead descended into a morass of personal preferences and insults.
Nevertheless there were a couple of points worth noting.
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00054.html
NaheemZaffar--Naheem Zaffar thought[3] that while pasting was well and
good it was not so nice to have the pasted URL automatically replacing
the current page. Rui Miguel Silva Seabra provided[4] a fix for this with
about:config -> browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleClick.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00108.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00109.html
A type of closure to the thread was obtained when Todd Zullinger
posted[5] that a likely result of making such changes would merely be to
"get the opposite RFC from anyone who is used to the *nix behavior and
wonders why Firefox is scrolling instead of pasting the clipboard
contents as we'd expect. :)" and he speculated that "Ubuntu" had
diverged from upstream.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00058.html
=Bugzilla Overhauled=
As commented in several threads this week (e.g. this FWN#138 "Firefox
Mouse Woes") Bugzilla was down for maintenance. This was due to upgrades
of the OS on the servers and a move from the venerable bugzilla-2.18 to
bugzilla-3.2. The original announcement[1] was posted on several lists
and detailed the planned outage and the changes to bugzilla which
included user-interface enhancements, AJAX optimizations for searching
and displaying bugs and an XMLRPC API.
[1]
http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-announce-list@redhat.com/msg01372.html
The announcement and the reminder[2] that this would all happen on 2nd
August requested that those using the API pointed their scripts to the
test server https://partner-bugzilla.redhat.com to ensure that the new
system was indeed backwards compatible.
[2]
http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-devel-announce@redhat.com/msg00194.html
A brief thread on @fedora-devel was started[3] when Gilboa Davara
noticed that attempting to file a bug resulted in the JavaScript hanging
and Firefox offering to retry or stop the script. This experience was
confirmed by several other posters who noted that hitting "Continue" and
waiting seemed to work. PaulFrields--Paul Frields speculated[4] that it
was the population of the component list which was slow.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00175.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00178.html
=Feature Proposal: Provers=
An interesting proposal to include a bunch of tools for automated
theorem proving was mooted[1] by David A. Wheeler. The bundle of tools,
listed in David's post, would ease the task of increasing the
reliability of software in some specific cases and are often used (see
paper by David[2]) to perform assurance for safety and security on other
programs. David argued that these tools, which are variously Formal
Methods Tools, Key Provers and Solvers should be considered as a
"Feature" for Fedora 10 as they needed some integration and had not
previously been packaged for Fedora. Some of the methods enabled by
these tools are being used by the OpenSuSE distribution to speed up
dependency solving of RPM packages.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00263.html
[2] http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/high-assurance-Floss.html
Jarod Wilson was uncertain[3] that the case for calling "just a
collection of new packages" a Feature had been made. After further
support from Patrice Dumas, Casey Dahlin and Paul Frields an explanation
was posted[4] by Toshio Kuratomi that the determination is made in part
by the presentation of why and how some packages are useful to a
hypothetical end user: "just saying Fedora has a collection of provers
isn't a Feature. But saying, in Fedora 10 we've made an effort to
include foo, bar, baz important provers for Target Audience so they can
find all the tools they need to do X Type of Work. Similarly, `We've
done work so that foo and bar can import and export the same file
format', or other work to show how we're making the user experience
better would make a stronger case for a feature." Similarly Jarod
provided[5] links to the Fedora Project wiki to support his case that
not enough had been done to explain why the programs were a cohesive
collection dedicated to a particular end use case although he admitted
"I suppose perhaps this falls under "noteworthy enough to call out in
the release notes", depending on who you ask. I'm still not sold yet."
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00265.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00298.html
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00301.html
RahulSundaram wanted[6] a classification of packaging difficulty added
as he had examined several on the package wishlist and found them "a
large amount of pain to package." Vasile Gaburici suggested calling the
packages "Theorem Proving Tools" in order to broaden the category a bit.
He also suggested[7] including gap and twelf. Suggestions to include
other packages were forthcoming from Miles Savin for Agda2 and Richard
Jones for CIL, a C-parser and static-analysis tool. Richard included a
link[8] to a nice analysis of libvirt performed with CIL. Andrew
Overholt noted[9] that sat4j was already packaged in Fedora.
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00264.html
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00267.html
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00288.html
[9]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00293.html
=rpmgrok Announced=
Red Hat's David Malcolm announced[1] rpmgrok, a web-based tool to allow
users to track program information across an entire distribution, yet
without having a complete install tree. The tracked information includes
all symbols in binaries, RPM manifests, shared objects, meta-information
about rpms and more. He pointed interested parties to his test prototype[2].
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00221.html
[2] http://publictest7.fedoraproject.org/rpmgrok
All this information is obtained by analyzing the actually built rpms
and storing the results in a database. David requested that anyone
interested in coding, sysadmin and UI design get involved and provided a
link to the git repository and the information that it was built upon
TurboGears and SQLAlchemy.
Enthusiasm for the "Errors and warnings from rpmlint" was expressed[3]
by Axel Thimm because he could imagine that someone that's say an expert
on "invalid-desktopfile" issues could now dig into this much easier.
Very nice!", but upon further feedback[4] from Mamoru Tasaka and Ville
Skyttä it appeared that some work needed to be done to ensure that
rpmlint was being used correctly. In any case this looks like a very
promising and useful tool.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00228.html
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00242.html
==Infrastructure==
This section contains the discussion happening on the
fedora-infrastructure-list
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure
Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala
=static F10 Alpha relnotes page=
Karsten Wade writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1]
Karsten proposed that we turn [2] static. People should also be able to
edit that page. Perhaps as part of making it static we can tell people
to post changes to the talk page, then we'll do irregular updates of the
static content?
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Alpha/ReleaseNotes
=Photo gallery=
Nicu Buculei writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [3]
The Art team decided to start collecting photos which can be used as
desktop wallpapers, make a best-of-breed selection and create one or
more packages. The easiest way is to add all of them to the wiki.
However Nicu proposed that we use a better solution, either a gallery
plug-in for trac or a stand alone gallery or something like that.
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
=FAS authentication for Red Hat bugzilla=
Rahul Sundaram writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [4]
Rahul asked if configuring FAS Auth for Red Hat bugzilla was possible.
At which Mike replies saying that it was not our call, and Red Hat will
need to decide that.
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
=RFC: script to run sqlalchemy migrations on the db=
Toshio Kuratomi writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [5]
FAS started using the python-migrate package to update its db. This is a
good thing for third-parties that want to install their own FAS server
as it lets us ship the database changes in a way that is easy for those
users to apply to their own production databases.
However, it doesn't work very well in our particular environment because
we're a bit more strict about our permissions than the migrate authors
envision. In order to perform migrations, you need to have a user that
can modify the schema for the db. This is either the owner of the db or
the superuser. In our setup, we create the db with the superuser and
then run our web apps with another user. This prevents the normal web
app from modifying the db schema. Toshio proposed a couple of solutions
to this.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
==Artwork==
In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
=Web banner for FUDCon Brno=
[PaulFrields] asked[1] on the Fedora Art list for a web banner "Red Hat
Europe has agreed to put up a banner for Fedora, advertising the
upcoming FUDCon Brno", request which is followed by two proposals, one
[2] by NicuBuculei and another [3] from VaraPrasadPepakayala. One design
is choosen and its quicly featured on the Red Hat Europe website[4].
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00084.html
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00114.html
[3]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00151.html
[4] http://www.europe.redhat.com/
=Photographic wallpapers=
An interesting question and offer[1] from BobPeterson about using photos
as background images: "I like the 'blue' themes that Fedora has
traditionally chosen, but I was wondering if Fedora could have a photo
for its main background screen. As an amateur photographer, I have
several 'scenery' photos I've taken that may be suitable, and I'm
willing to donate".
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00103.html
As the general opinion converged over the idea that probably abstract
images work better as a default but a collection of additional
photographic wallpapers is useful, MartinSourada stepped-up[2] and
created a preliminary gallery inside the wiki[3], which was quickly
populated with a few images[4] by [[NicuBuculei] "to break the ice,
start the ball rolling, provide an incentive and show how to use the
gallery tag".
[2]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00118.html
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/Wallpaper_Extras
[4]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00138.html
The discussion covered licensing aspects[5], good practices about
preparing wallpaper images[6] and also spawned a follow-up on the
infrastructure list[7] about the best way of implementing the gallery,
with a Gallery2 instance, proposed by JeffreyOllie looking as the most
promising option.
[5]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00159.html
[6]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00165.html
[7]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
[8]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms...
=First Nodoka 0.8 screenshots=
MartinSourada posted[1] a status update of the development for the
Nodoka theme, including a number of screenshots illustrating its current
state.
[1]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00144.html
[2] https://fedorahosted.org/nodoka/wiki/Screenshots#a0.7.80.0git9a0f383
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==
* thunderbird-2.0.0.16-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
* libxslt-1.1.24-2.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
* pdns-2.9.21.1-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
* httpd-2.2.9-1.fc9 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
Fedora 8 Security Advisories
* poppler-0.6.2-2.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
* httpd-2.2.9-1.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
* libxslt-1.1.24-2.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
* pdns-2.9.21.1-1.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
* thunderbird-2.0.0.16-1.fc8 -
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-August/msg00...
==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
Virt-manager Support for Storage Pool API
Cole Robinson posted[1] three patches (not to mention screen shots)
which add support for the storage pool API to the virt-manager GUI.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-August/msg00066.html
=Virt-mem Tools 0.2.8 Released=
Richard W.M. Jones announced[1] the release of virt-mem 0.2.8. Virt-mem
provides a set of dom0 or host tools which leverage libvirt to
facilitate the inspection of domU or guest kernel information. Commands
include 'virt-uname', 'virt-ps', and 'virt-dmesg' for example.
This latest version has been reworked to have direct access to basically
any kernel structure. This will allow a more rapid fullfillment of
outstanding feature requests such as memory usage information, network
interface listings, etc.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-August/msg00033.html
Fedora Xen List
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.
=Installing Fedora 9 Guest on Centos 5 Fails=
Kenneth Tanzer had trouble[1] installing a Fedora 9 paravirtualized
guest on a CentOs 5 host. Eventually the install hung on installing
openoffice.org-writer2latex. David Hláčik reported[2] a kernel panic
during the same scenario. He stated it was due to the Fedora 9
kernel-xen having newer features which the CentOs dom0 did not support.
However, Mark McLoughlin said[3] RHEL5/CentOS Xen is expected to be able
to run pv_ops kernels, and a bug should be filed if this isn't the case.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00011.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00013.html
[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00018.html
=Libvirt List=
This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.
sVirt project to Integrate SELinux and Linux-based Virtualization
James Morris announced[1] the formation of the sVirt project with the
goal to be able to apply distinct security labels to individual VM
instances and their resources, so that they can be isolated from each
other via MAC policy.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00255.html
Libvirt and Persistent Iptables Rules
Daniel Berrange responded[1] to a networking problem by pointing out
that libvirt will automatically setup the correct iptables rules to
allow outbound NAT based connectivity for guest VMs and that restarting
the iptables service will erase these rules.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-July/msg00508.html
David Lutterkort hoped[2] this was a temporary situation due to the
confusion it can cause. Mark McLoughlin confirmed[3] there is a RFE (bug
227011) to enable libvirt to persistently register iptables rules, but
was depressed that a resulting fix would be Fedora specific.
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00098.html
[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00193.html
=Network XML Configuration Options=
To support a complex virtual network with 3 DMZs, Didier Ayllon asked[1]
if it is possible to specify options such as default gateway, static
routes, DNS options in the network config.
Daniel Berrange pointed[2] out libvirt networking "is designed
specifically to only provide 3 types of networking, an isolated network,
a NAT based network, and a routed network" and the format is documented
on libvirt.org.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00062.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00078.html
oVirt Devel List
This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list.
=Lighter-weight "Developer" Setup=
Chris Lalancette proposed[1] some steps toward lowering the barrier to
entry for oVirt users with limited hardware resources and growing the
community. The proposal would remove the "fake managed nodes" concept
and allow oVirt to manage the hardware on the host machine and enable
installation of guests along side the oVirt appliance, and eventually
remove the appliance completely and facilitate installing from a set of
RPMs.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-August/msg00080.html
=Beginnings of an oVirt API=
David Lutterkort posted[1] an RFC for implementing an oVirt API and 5
patches to begin the discussion. The patches covered handling hosts,
storage pools, and hardware pools. The fifth patch provided sample[2]
code for using the API. The exercise revealed some changes that could be
made to the server code to to accomodate such an API.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-August/msg00045.html
[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-August/msg00050.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFIoA9FzHDc8tpb2uURAn7LAJ9zJK8ARnWYLasyeaxJlO+L2T0EpACdHzJS
X91bgm0rNNWSCZJeDqP32bE=
=mNa6
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
15 years, 3 months