announce September 2008

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Fedora Board IRC meeting 1800 UTC 2008-10-07
by Paul W. Frields 01 Oct '08

01 Oct '08

he Board is holding its monthly public meeting on Tuesday, 7 October 2008, at 1800 UTC on IRC Freenode. The public is invited to do the following: * Join #fedora-board-meeting to see the Board's conversation. This channel is read-only for non-Board members. * Join #fedora-board-public to discuss topics and post questions. This channel is read/write for everyone. The moderator will direct questions from the #fedora-board-public channel to the Board members at #fedora-board-meeting. This should limit confusion and ensure our logs are useful to everyone. The Board has set aside one meeting of each month as a public "town hall" style meeting. We are *still* hoping to hold an audio-based meeting at some point in the near future using some of the new resources being developed by the Infrastructure team. More news on this will be forthcoming. We look forward to seeing you at the meeting. -- Paul W. Frields gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://paul.frields.org/ - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

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Updated Beta images for x86_64 Live KDE and x86_64 Live XFCE
by Jesse Keating 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

There was a small problem during image creation that led to the x86_64 Live KDE actually being the content for the x86_64 Live XFCE. I have recreated these images and updated the master mirror and the torrent server. For full disclosure, here are the SHA1SUMs of each: 6f32b75c09838a407371aec211e1951d357baf03 *F10-Beta-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso 04195ea383229bdd356188e86ba8c39985118abb *F10-Beta-x86_64-Live-XFCE.iso Note that while some of the other torrents have SHA1SUM files that may reference the old sha1sums of these, they will not be replaced at this time as that would reset existing down-loaders of other content and cause undue complications. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Cambridge (F-10) Beta release announcement
by Jesse Keating 30 Sep '08

30 Sep '08

Fedora 10 Beta: Cambridge's foundations are laid Just on the heels of the Fedora Project's fifth anniversary, the Beta of Fedora Linux version 10 (code-named Cambridge) is now available: http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease There is also a Beta contest! Test five things in the Beta that are important to you as a user. If you find a bug *and* report it, you get the free attention of a package maintainer on a problem personally important to you! https://bugzilla.redhat.com Do your part to make Fedora 10 that much better. Among the new, fun, and interesting features: * New NetworkManager with connection sharing * Improved printer handling * Remote virtualization and easier virt storage * Sectool, an auditing and security testing framework * RPM 4.6, the first big RPM change in several years ... and more ... * New version of PackageKit for managing software, with more fixes and enhancements (which benefits all distributions) * New version of PulseAudio (which benefits all distributions) * Kernel 2.6.27, including better support for WiFi * Better support for the EFI for Apple Macintosh hardware * Faster graphical start-up by Plymouth, replacing the venerable RHGB * Better support for webcams through the hard work in kernel 2.6.27 (which benefits all distributions) * New icon theme "Echo", to be completed with the theme graphic "Solar" in the Fedora 10 release * Gnome 2.24 * KDE 4.1 * Adding the NetBeans IDE * Eclipse 3.4 * Automatic installation of multimedia codecs * Better HDTV support in X.org * "Sugar" graphical environment (from OLPC) available for use, testing, and development A more complete list and details of each new cited feature is available: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList For release information, including common and known bugs, please see our release notes: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Beta/ReleaseNotes -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Fedora Weekly News #145
by Pascal Calarco 29 Sep '08

29 Sep '08

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 145 for the week ending September 28, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue145 This week's issue brings plenty of insights into the Fedora 10 theme decisions, as covered by longtime FWN writer, Nicu Buculei. Max Spevak reports on several recent linux events and the Fedora acivity there, as well as relays final Fedora 10 schedule changes and other announcements. Oisin Feeley updates us on Fedora development activity with deactivation of some dormant services and discussion of PackageKit. Jason Taylor highlights the many release notes completed for the upcoming Fedora 10 release. Dale Bewley brings us up to date on activity with four separate discussion lists in Fedora virtualization. Svetoslav Chukov, in the marketing beat, celebrates Fedora's fifth birthday with a wonderful, generous reflection of the project by OpenSUSE's community manager, Joe Brockmeier, and Runa Bhattacharjee covers the freeze activities surrounding translation and internationalization for Fedora 10. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join Contents * 1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 145 o 1.1 Announcements + 1.1.1 Schedule updates for Fedora 10 + 1.1.2 Fedora Test Day - 2008-09-25 - Live Beta Images and FirstAidKit o 1.2 Planet Fedora + 1.2.1 Events + 1.2.2 Tech Tidbits o 1.3 Marketing + 1.3.1 Happy birthday Fedora! + 1.3.2 Lessons learned from five years of Fedora + 1.3.3 The sweet features of Fedora - Smolt + 1.3.4 Plug and Run Fedora on a Toshiba A300D laptop, Part II o 1.4 Developments + 1.4.1 Default Deactivation of Services + 1.4.2 specspo and PackageKit + 1.4.3 Are Other Distros Controlling Fedora through PackageKit ? + 1.4.4 /sbin and /bin Linked to /usr/lib o 1.5 Documentation + 1.5.1 Release Notes Galore + 1.5.2 Documentation Repository Changes o 1.6 Translation + 1.6.1 String freeze breakage alarms + 1.6.2 Fedora Docs moved to git repository + 1.6.3 Translation schedule to be further discussed for clarity of tasks o 1.7 Artwork + 1.7.1 The desktop theme for Fedora 10 was chosen + 1.7.2 The fight for the theme + 1.7.3 The theme soap opera + 1.7.4 Lessons from the flamewar + 1.7.5 Echo icon theme and Fedora 10 o 1.8 Security Advisories + 1.8.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories + 1.8.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories o 1.9 Virtualization + 1.9.1 Enterprise Management Tools List # 1.9.1.1 Maximum Number of Attached CDROMs in Xen # 1.9.1.2 Parallel Port Support in virt-manager # 1.9.1.3 VMWare VMX Output from virt-convert # 1.9.1.4 Disk Image Signature Verification + 1.9.2 Fedora Xen List # 1.9.2.1 Continued Trouble with 32bit Fedora 9 DomU on Fedora 8 Dom0 + 1.9.3 Libvirt List # 1.9.3.1 Libvirt 0.4.6 Released # 1.9.3.2 RFC: Events API # 1.9.3.3 Windows Binaries + 1.9.4 oVirt Devel List # 1.9.4.1 oVirt 0.93-1 Released # 1.9.4.2 Modeling LVM Storage Fedora Weekly News Issue 145 -- 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 -- Schedule updates for Fedora 10 -- Jesse Keating announced[0] the schedule changes for Fedora 10, "resulting in a final release date of Tuesday Nov. 25th." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00013… -- Fedora Test Day - 2008-09-25 - Live Beta Images and FirstAidKit James Laska advertised[1] the next Fedora Test Day, which has been a recurring theme during the Fedora 10 cycle. "Testing efforts will focus on testing Fedora 10 Beta Live images as well as system recovery using FirstAidKit."[2] [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg0001… [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2008-09-25 -- 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 -- Events -- Several Fedora Ambassadors posted about OpenExpo, in Switzerland. Joerg Simon posted[0] some pictures of the event, and Max Spevack and Sandro Mathys both[1] posted[2] their own trip reports. [0] http://kitall.blogspot.com/2008/09/open-expo-winterthur-switzerland-2008.ht… [1] http://spevack.livejournal.com/66777.html [2] http://blog.sandro-mathys.ch/2008/09/27/openexpo-2008-zurich-in-winterthur-… Susmit Shannigrahi wrote[3] about the preparations for AXIS '08. "Fedora will have a 1.5 hour session on 26th for talk and 2 hour slot with a media lab for conducting workshops." [3] http://susmit.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/we-are-leaving-for-axis08/ Finally, Clint Savage posted[4] about Fedora Ambassador Day North America, which will be taking place in parallel with Ohio Linux Fest in October. [4] http://sexysexypenguins.com/2008/09/24/fadna-at-olf2008/ -- Tech Tidbits -- We begin this section with Jonathan Roberts, and his[5] many[6] posts[7] about the Dell Mini and how it functions[8] with Fedora. Credit JonRob for being tough-minded enough to get the machine to work, despite sound and wireless problems. "I've gone ahead and created a wiki page documenting everything you need to do, as well as joined the Fedora Mini SIG. I've already got some packages waiting to be sorted that would be appropriate for the SIG, so I'll attach them to their tracker bug at some point in the near future." [5] http://jonrob.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/dell-mini-inspiron-9/ [6] http://jonrob.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/dell-mini-inspiron-9-q-a/ [7] http://jonrob.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/final-mini-post/ [8] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Dell_Mini_Inspiron Dimitris Glezos posted[9] about translations and release engineering. "There are more than 400 active Fedora translators contibuting in a lot of languages. Anaconda, the Fedora installer, is shipped to more than 60 languages (counting only those with a considerable completion percentage). The Fedora website speaks more than 20 languages. Considering that this is almost exclusively volunteer community work, I’d say our groups of translators are doing an amazing job." [9] http://dimitris.glezos.com/weblog/2008/09/23/release-engineering-and-transl… Lennart Poettering wrote[10] several[11] articles[12] about the Linux audio stack this week. His impetus: "At the Audio MC at the Linux Plumbers Conference one thing became very clear: it is very difficult for programmers to figure out which audio API to use for which purpose and which API not to use when doing audio programming on Linux." [10] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis.html [11] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-linux-audio-stack.html [12] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/guide-to-sound-apis-followup.html -- Marketing -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: Svetoslav Chukov -- Happy birthday Fedora! Five years ago this past week, the Fedora project became a reality, and it is amazing to see how far we have come. Happy birthday, Fedora! -- Lessons learned from five years of Fedora Rahul Sundaram highlighted [1] the OpenSUSE Community Manager, Joe Brockmeier, in his blog posting posting, "Lessons learned from five years of Fedora". Brockmeier reflects on building open source community projects, and the success Fedora has had in this regard. "The most valuable thing I’ve learned watching Fedora is this: Patience. It takes time and steady, incremental growth to build a solid community. If you’d asked me two years into Fedora’s development whether the project would succeed, I’d have been somewhat skeptical, but looking at the project five years down the road, I’m convinced." [1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/?p=111 -- The sweet features of Fedora - Smolt -- The blog "Spread Fedora" offered a short story on Fedora's hardware profiler, Smolt.[1] "It would be very beautiful and comfortable if there were some GNU/Linux distribution that keep track of used hardware of the users or just could provide information how the particular hardware would perform. I know such a distribution - Fedora. " [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Ite… -- Plug and Run Fedora on a Toshiba A300D laptop, Part II The blog "Spread Fedora" also offered part II of their experience installing and configuring Fedora on a Toshiba A300D laptop.[1] Part I[2] was highlighted in last week's FWN. In this week, configuring the USB to ethernet and sound card tweaking. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Ite… [2] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Ite… -- Developments -- In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley -- Default Deactivation of Services -- Christoph Höger initiated[1] this week's mammoth thread with a request to disable four services currently activated by default: sendmail, ip6tables, isdn and setroubleshootd. Christoph invited the list to "go on and punish me" after supplying some brief reasons for the deactivations. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02197.h… Discussion mostly centered on the sendmail problem with suggestions ranging from starting it asynchronously and late, as suggested[2] by Alan Cox, to replacing it with one of the "send-only" MTAs such as ssmtp. Part of the interest over this seemed to be stimulated by the information posted[3] by Colin Walters that the "[...] desktop image no longer installs sendmail by default." This led to a need to distinguish between the desktop LiveCD and regular installs, as was done[4] by Bill Nottingham. Some apparent legal threats posted by Matthew Woehlke led[5] Seth Vidal to point him to the nearest convenient exit. Ralf Ertzinger noted[6] the deeply entrenched nature of sendmail: "Unfortunately, sendmail isn't just a program, it's an API. Calling /usr/lib/sendmail has been the way to get mail out (wherever out is) in UNIX for, well, as long as sendmail exists, which is quite some time." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02410.h… [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02203.h… [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02308.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02384.h… [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02505.h… The problem of lack of local delivery with the proposed replacements was brought up[7] by Patrice Dumas. This was seen as a stumbling block because cron needs it and led Jesse Keating to argue[8]: "[W]e shouldn't be using local delivery for this stuff. Instead we should ask in firstboot where you'd want the mail delivered to." Matt Miller replied[9] with a link to a bugzilla entry in which he had proposed just such a thing in 2004. Other aspects of the problem of disentangling potentially important log data from the mail delivery mechanism were touched[10] upon in other parts of the thread. Deep in the thread Arjan van de Ven pointed[11] to aliases generation as the reason for sendmail being slow to start up. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02246.h… [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02253.h… [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02349.h… [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02411.h… [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02217.h… The complaint about setroubleshootd was addressed[12] by Steve Grubb. He explained that he had intended it to be a plugin to audispd it but had ended up being implemented as a standalone daemon by another author. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02322.h… ip6tables was defended on two fronts. On the first Daniel P. Berrange explained[13] how accessible IPv6 was and how likely it was that all machines on a network could automatically acquiring IPv6 addresses. Typical of the reaction on the other front Gregory Maxwell was startled[14] at the idea of being exposed without firewalling upon plugging into an IPv6 enabled network. He added the statistic that "About 4% of the web browsers hitting English language Wikipedia are IPv6 enabled. IPv6 enabled web clients may even become more numerous than Linux desktops this year, almost certainly by next year, so be careful what you call rare. :)" Stephen John Smoogen also explained[15] that if there were no IPv6 firewall a ping6 -I eth0 ff02::1 would enable an attacker to "walk the hosts with no firewalls." He suggested that completely disabling IPv6 would be preferable but might affect IPsec and related components. [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02286.h… [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02271.h… [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02206.h… No one seemed particularly concerned at the idea of disabling isdn by default as it explicitly requires further configuration to be useful. -- specspo and PackageKit -- A quick query was posted[16] by Richard Hughes asking whether PackageKit should dump its dependency on specspo[17]. The advantage would be a savings of 27Mb installed size and 6.9Mb download size. Tim Lauridsen was against a hard dependency and argued[18] that as specspo was part of the @base group it would be installed by default on a normal desktop and could then be used, whereas on the LiveCD its absence was desired due to the space constraints. [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02026.h… [17] "specspo" is the rpm package which contains all the portable object catalogues which provide translations for Fedora packages. [18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02034.h… An interesting discussion about alternate methods to provide translated package descriptions ensued when Seth Vidal suggested[19] that instead of using specspo "translating pkgs might best be served by translating the metadata in external files." In response to Bill Nottingham's skepticism that this was just moving bloat to a new location Seth explained[20] that it would allow only the data specific to the requested language to be fetched. In a further explanation he provided[21] an overview of the ideal mechanism which would allow translations only for the language in use to be installed. This involved yum downloading translations from a language-segmented repodata and inserting those translations into the local rpmdb. A further reason to find an alternative to specspo was advanced[22] by Stepan Kaspal when he drew attention to its lack of friendliness to third-party repositories: "the specspo solution is not extensible at all; if you add a third part repository, the messages just are not there. And the repository cannot install another catalogue, rpm uses just 'the catalogue'." [19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02058.h… [20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02125.h… [21] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02164.h… [22] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02160.h… Bill Nottingham's objections seemed[23] to involve both the resource intensiveness of doing this during the composition of the repodata and also that "[...] this is all stuff that exists." [23] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02165.h… -- Are Other Distros Controlling Fedora through PackageKit ? -- A thread initiated[24] by Thorsten Leemhuis explored some details on how information on packages is created and stored at the distribution level and the challenges this presents both to independent repositories and to tools which wish to use this data. One heated aspect of this discussion concerned the manner in which the PackageKit[25] application installer defines and presents groupings of packages. PackageKit is designed to be a distribution-independent tool and it appeared to some in the discussion that its direction was inimical to the best release-engineering practices of the Fedora Project. The central issue appeared to be that PackageKit developers were not spending time helping to refine the comps.xml file which defines how packages are bundled during installation and is used by every other tool. [24] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01813.h… [25] http://packagekit.org/pk-intro.html Thorsten asked a series of questions about the correct use of comps.xml and how it interacted with anaconda, PackageKit and yum. Thorsten was concerned that there appeared to be 1711 packages missing from comps.xml in order that "[...] people can find and select them right during install with anaconda. Do we care?" After some investigation with the latest PackageKit, which Rahul Sundaram pointed out[26] uses comps.xml, Thorsten deduced[27] in discussion with Tim Lauridsen that "[...] adding packages to a group in comps.xml as '<packagereq type="optional">' is only worth the trouble if you want to make the package selectable in anaconda, as that information is not used by pk-application." Tim Lauridsen explained[28] that PackageKit used the comps.xml groups as "meta-packages" but James Antill disagreed[29] that they were similar. [26] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01819.h… [27] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01861.h… [28] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01859.h… [29] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01889.h… Alex Lancaster agreed[30] with Thorsten's concern that many packagers were not using comps.xml and posted a link that showed that both he and Toshio Kuratomi had been thinking about using PackageDB to generate comps.xml for some time[31]. [30] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01893.h… [31] See also http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue136#Application.Installer..22Amber.2… and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue82#Presto.Server.Back.Up...Interesti… In sustained discussion with Kevin Kofler a defense of PackageKit was mounted[32] by Richard Hughes using the argument that it was intended to be a compliment to yum rather than a replacement. Its intent is to occupy a very narrow niche for the specific type of user identified by "profiles" produced by the PackageKit developers. [32] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02015.h… James Antill had done[33] some investigation of the difference between how PackageKit and yum presented groups of packages and was not impressed: "In short it's arbitrarily different, hardcoded and just plain wrong. But hey, you've done "substantial user research" while we're just lowly developers, so feel free to keep ignoring us." [33] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02008.h… The evolution of comps.xml to its current complexity was advanced[34] by Nicolas Mailhot as the result of multiple constraints of engineering, maintenance and legality, he argued that "[i]t's always easy to present one-shot specialized solutions. The difficulty is scaling because separate maintenance of specialized overlapping package collections is not efficient). When you refuse to look at scaling problems you're missing the core of the problem." [34] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02089.h… When it seemed that PackageKit was being designed[35] to take the needs of other distributions into account and that this might have a negative effect on Fedora there was a great deal of disapprobation expressed[36] by Jesse Keating: "If I'd known that upstream was actively looking to destroy our package classifications, rather than actually work with us to clean them up a bit maybe I would have joined the conversation. A heads up might have been in order. I fear that any conversation now will just be too little too late." Matthias Clasen characterized[37] this as Jesse being more interested in confrontation than making things better but Nicolas Mailhot also saw[38] the decisions being made about PackageKit's design as "non-representative" of developers focused on Fedora. Interestingly he tied this in with an observation on "[...] desktop team mislike for the common distro communication channel [.]" A slight rapprochement seemed[39] to be in effect towards the end of the thread as tempers cooled. [35] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01957.h… [36] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01974.h… [37] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01976.h… [38] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02012.h… [39] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02022.h… The issue of binary packages (several of which can be produced from any single source package) was attacked when Toshio Kuratomi listed[40] PackageDB, amber, koji,comps.xml, repoview and Fedora collection as all "[...] doing a subset of the work in this area." He asked for some clarity as to the storage, interface and presentation layers. Kevin Fenzi agreed but added[41] mash as another player and suggested that perhaps all the developers of the respective systems could meet to hash out some agreed plan. Jesse Keating confirmed[42] Kevin's description and elaborated: "it's mash that pulls comps out of cvs and 'makes' it and uses it when generating repodata. Mash is used during rawhide production and during update repo generation. When we make releases, that uses pungi which consumes the comps data that mash generated and merges in data from any other repo pungi is configured to use. Then pungi calls repoview to create data based on that merged comps." [40] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01949.h… [41] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02182.h… [42] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02185.h… -- /sbin and /bin Linked to /usr/lib -- Steve Grubb posted[43] the output from a utility which he had authored to check whether applications in the /bin and /sbin directories link against anything in the /usr directory. In the ensuing discussion Bill Crawford suggested[44] that one of the listed applications, /bin/rpm was useful in its present location because of the "[...](admittedly quite odd situations) where you need to, say, reinstall grub or a kernel because you broke something[.]" He added that a "rescue" initrd would help for machines without optical drives. [43] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02315.h… [44] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg02458.h… -- Documentation -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject Contributing Writer: Jason Taylor -- Release Notes Galore -- With the approaching F10 release[1] the Docs team spent time this week getting release note beats updated and organized. A lot of progress was made updating the beats to include pertinent package information as well as all the new features[2] and it looks like there may be a new format for the release notes as well[3]. There has also been a lot of work on getting the release-note structure to be compatible with publican[4]. Once compatible with publican the release-notes will support additional formats (HTML, PDF, etc.). [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/Schedule [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/10/FeatureList [3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Release_notes_structure_for_F10 [4] https://fedorahosted.org/publican -- Documentation Repository Changes -- The Docs Project has been working to convert from CVS as the main repository for published documents to git[1]. More progress on that front was made this week as the Install-Guide[2] was moved over. The implementation of git and trac[3] allows for better group communication and work flow management with contributors. [1] http://git.or.cz/ [2] https://fedorahosted.org/install-guide/ [3] http://trac.edgewall.org/ -- Translation -- This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee -- String freeze breakage alarms -- Noriko Mizumoto reported[1] about suspected string freeze breakage for a few modules, during the week that modified the translation status figures[2]. These modifications (except for one: comps) turned out to be the result of delayed creation of new template files which caused confusion about the string freeze. The template files are generally scheduled for creation by the respective package maintainers before the start of the string freeze period. Fedora packages are currently string frozen for Fedora 10[3] i.e. no new translated messages can be added without the prior permission of the Fedora Localization Team as per the String Freeze Policy[4]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00053.h… [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00076.h… [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg000… [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/StringFreezePolicy -- Fedora Docs moved to git repository -- The Fedora documentation (including the Installation Guide, Release Notes etc.) were moved to the Fedora git repo[5]. Translation submissions can be continued via the Transifex interface[6]. However, Piotr Drag writes in that the statistics page will not be able to present the status for these documentation modules, as documents compiled with publican are not supported by Damned Lies yet[7]. As per Dimitris Glezos, support for publican documents could be achieved if patches for this functionality can be developed by interested volunteers[6]. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00084.h… [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00099.h… [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00093.h… -- Translation schedule to be further discussed for clarity of tasks -- John Poelstra and Dimitris Glezos are scheduled to meet on Monday 29th September 08[8], to discuss about the details of the Fedora 10 translation schedule to clearly define all the tasks and integrate them in the schedule. The meeting is open for others to join in. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00100.h… -- Artwork -- In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei -- The desktop theme for Fedora 10 was chosen Mairin Duffy announced[1] the vote for the default theme in Fedora 10 on @fedora-art "Nigel Jones set up a vote for us to vote on round 3. You must be a member of the art group in the accounts system to be eligible to vote" and after the voting process ended, Michael Beckwith announced[2] the winner, the Solar theme[3] "We weren't feeling completely InvinXble. However, being the FOSS advocates we are, and with our support of Fedora, we were not afraid of of the unknown frontier. The Gears of time shown bright with a healthy Neon glow, but neither of these had very much effect on the course of destiny. Come join us as we sail into the Solar future for Fedora 10 later this year" and Max Spevack drew the conclusion: "They are all beautifully done pieces of artwork, and I really hope that everyone in the Art Team is proud of what the group has collectively achieved. I say 'congrats' to everyone on the Art Team." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00364.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/F10Themes/Solar [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00455.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00456.html -- The fight for the theme -- As the vote for the Fedora 10 theme was closed to the members of the Art Team, a lot of people tried to vote even if they weren't members of the team, as Mairin Duffy noted[1]: "Since i announced the F10 theme vote, we've received a deluge of art group membership requests, some clearly approveable but many not" and she reminded the requirements to become a member, which are listed on the project's page[2]. David Nielsen tried an appeal on her blog[3] "Maybe the solution is to open the vote, even if we are not inclined to contribute in your area of Fedora we might still have an opinion. Do you want other contributors to make decisions on the projects collective future without including you?" but Mairin remained firm "As an artist, I don't expect to have a vote on many technical decisions. I wonder how someone without both the experience and inclination to provide artwork for Fedora would have the expertise necessary to make an informed decision" and concluded "Everyone has an opinion. Not everyone is willing to put their money where their mouth is. It is a shame." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00371.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork#First_Steps [3] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/62031.html -- The theme soap opera -- While the vote for the Fedora 10 theme was ongoing, Seth Kenlon reminded[1] an old issue with one of the contenders and asked for an update "I am not clear, is this to be the final katana or is it still being swapped out with a newly photographed one? I recall there being an issue with licensing, and thought we would be seeing a different sword...but maybe I missed the thread in which all of this was solved" on which Nicu Buculei expressed[2] his remaining doubts "Honestly, I have some doubts about that: sstorari *claimed* he remade the image using his own (Free) photo as a base and he posted the reference photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sstorari/2826852493/ While it looks pretty much like a katana (just like the photos used previously), the sword in the photo is not at the same angle as the sword in the wallpaper (so the hilt looks different), which make me have some doubts", which raised an angry answer[3] from Samuele Storari, the theme author, who claimed innocence "If u take a look in the source before write something u can see that the problem was solved creatin' the blade from 0." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00369.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00383.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00386.html When the discuss started to look like a classic flamewar, Paul Frields dropped a bomb by showing[4] a movie poster identical with the theme discussed "Samuele, I'm a big fan of Quentin Tarantino, and collected some desktop backgrounds when Kill Bill Vol. 1 was going to be released. One of the backgrounds features a katana sword which looks to me to be identical to the one in your source .XCF file" and outlined the importance of having all of the elements of a design Free in order to have the result Free "When we talk about having an entirely free desktop theme, it means that *all* the elements must be created from free sources." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00394.html As Samuele continued to deny any wrongdoing "the Blade wasn't the same cos the blade was totally recreated. Take a look to the source file and please post something similar", Nicu Buculei created and posted[6] a short video[7] revealing the similarities "What can I say? rotate the image 180 degrees and the resemblance is, uh..., uncanny" [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00397.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00398.html [7] http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/invinxible.ogv During the heated debate, Martin Sourada expressed[8] his doubts regarding the allegations against the two themes proposed by Samuele. "First, I have an impression that Mo and Nicu are somehow biased against Samuele's work. First, some weeks ago, Mo kept asking Samuele about Moon brushes in the Solar theme, when the Moons were already removed from the artwork, next there is the problem in katana. As nicu pointed out, the original design indeed resembles the Kill Bill poster, but even though I saw the .ogv file he provided, I am not 100% convinced Samuele used that katana" and "I believe both Mo and Nicu are just trying to prevent any legal issues that might arose in the future otherwise" but after seeing additional evidence provided by Mairin Duffy[9] and Charlie Brej[10] he changed his position "Mo and Nicu, I'd like to apologize for accusing you from being biased and pointing out outdated issues. It was me who was wrong and I should have checked the sources first. While part of the sword was replaced, the tilt was indeed from the same source image and I was wrong in arguing otherwise." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00436.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00437.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00438.html After the vote ended and after a long and heated debate, Samuele Storari apologised for his misunderstandings about licensing "First of all I want to apologize with all art-team and mailing list member for last two days mails. This is my first work in FOSS environment and I didn't understand all implication and I saw your continue checking on my work as a way to find something wrong" and started to work fixing his two themes proposals and remove a number of tainted graphic elements from them. At the moment of this report, Samuele is closely collaborating with other members of the team on this task and the Solar theme cleaned almost completely. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00463.html -- Lessons from the flamewar -- In parallel with the debate surrounding the license of a couple of theme proposals for Fedora 10, Mairin Duffy opened a debate[1] about the policy to apply when finding license infringements "Here are the options as I see them and/or as have been suggested to me: 1 - disqualify invinXble as a theme, even if invinXble wins, the 2nd-place winner will win 2 - if invinXble (or any theme that has photos we aren't able to source) wins, replace any sourced photographs in it with properly-licensed ones 3 - disqualify any themes that use images we cannot find properly-licensed photo source references for", she noted the pros and contras for each option and expressed her option for one of the first two. David Nielsen raised the case[2] for a written policy "I would favor option 2 with the understanding that a proper policy be written and must be agreed upon when submitting artwork for Fedora in the future. This way we do not lose the two most developed themes this late in the game and we still get to correct the problem. This at least would be similar to what we have done in other parts of the distro when such unfortunate issues have arisen", a policy considered not needed[4] by Nicu Buculei "Well, I propose a simple guideline: 'Don't like. When people ask about the source of your work, be honest and tell the truth.' That would have solved all of our problems *weeks* ago, but I think it is common-sense and we should not have to have this as a written guideline. " [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00425.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00432.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00460.html As a lesson from the happening, Mairin Duffy asked[4] on @fedora-art about unclarities some member of the team may have about licensing: "Did any of you joining the art team have doubts/questions/confusion over copyright law and licensing as it pertains to the usage of externally-sourced images used in artwork? Were you unsure of what licenses were acceptable to use in Fedora artwork? What kinds of questions / uncertainties did you have, if any?" and proposed a few measures, on which David Nielsen completed[5] with a couple of simple guidelines "* Unsure about source licensing terms, don't use it. * Unable to document source licensing terms, don't use it." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00426.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00434.html -- Echo icon theme and Fedora 10 -- Bill Nottingham raised[1] a cross-question to @fedora-art and @fedora-desktop about the status of the Echo icon theme "When we approved Echo as the default icon theme for F10, I was under the assumption that this was already more or less known as a feature to the Desktop group, and they were OK with the coverage provided and the experience given. Is that the case?" on which William Jon McCann expressed[2] his opposition to the new theme "I strongly disagree with the decision to use the Echo icon theme. For one, there is simply not enough time before Fedora 10 to fix the problems that you point out. There is also the fact that the quality of the artwork is noticeably lower than the upstream GNOME and Tango icon themes" and preference for the Tango set "Encourage Fedora artists to become involved with the upstream GNOME and Tango artist communities" while Mairin Duffy pointed[3] the inclusion of Echo as a default in Rawhide as a means to enable wider testing and accelerate development |I also was under the understanding that Echo was set as the default in rawhide to enable the folks working on it a chance to get fuller coverage, and that if it was deemed to not have appropriate coverage, it would be pulled." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00441.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00442.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00443.html Martin Sourada pointed[4] that some of the concern raised in Bill's original questions are also valid for the current situation "With Mist, there are still new gnome styled icons, old gnome styled icons and bluecurve. In some places we reduced the old gnome and bluecurve to minimum, in others not yet. Check the System -> Administration menu as an example" and reminded there is still development time until the final decision about inclusion will be made "Our general idea is that some time around the final freeze it will be decided by art and desktop teams whether we are ready. If not, echo will be pulled back and submitted again for F11. I'd be for voting, enabled for art and desktop fas groups members regarding this issue" and Jaroslav Reznik showed the enthusiasm of the KDE SIG[5] regarding the new set and his openness to work for getting it in a good shape "We (KDE SIG) are trying to use Echo theme as default for KDE but currently there are still some icons missing. We are preparing list of to-be-done icons. So can we fill it as ticket for echo-icon-theme and edit Todo on Wiki?" [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00457.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00471.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 -- * viewvc-1.0.6-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * initscripts-8.76.3-1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * rkhunter-1.3.2-5.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… -- Fedora 8 Security Advisories -- * viewvc-1.0.6-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * phpMyAdmin-2.11.9.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * rkhunter-1.3.2-5.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… -- 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 -- Maximum Number of Attached CDROMs in Xen -- Alexander Todorov asked[1] why only 3 CDROM devices could be attached in virt-manager. Cole Robinson replied[2] "Xen uses a forked qemu for HVM device emulation" and the version on RHEL is limited to 4 IDE devices. The newer qemu found in Fedora 9 allow attaching SCSI disks and CDROMs, and thereby more devices. This ability already in libvirt is not yet exposed in the virt-manager GUI. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00062.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00065.html -- Parallel Port Support in virt-manager -- Bob Tennent asked if virt-manager supports adding a parallel port to a guest OS. Cole Robinson answered[2] this functionality is[3] in libvirt, but not exposed in virt-manager yet. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00048.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00051.html [3] http://libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsConsole -- VMWare VMX Output from virt-convert -- Joey Boggs posted[1] a patch which provides VMWare vmx[2] output from virt-convert. "This will replace the virt-pack command and supplemental Unware.py file and integrate them into virt-convert directly as a module." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00057.html [2] http://sanbarrow.com/vmx.html -- Disk Image Signature Verification -- Joey Boggs posted patches for virtinst[1] and for virt-convert[2] that "will add in disk signature support for ISV's and others folks that wish to verify the disk has not been altered prior to running virt-image. Supports MD5 and SHA1 signatures." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00068.htmlk [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00096.html -- Fedora Xen List -- This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. -- Continued Trouble with 32bit Fedora 9 DomU on Fedora 8 Dom0 -- Fred Brier followed[1] up on a thread[2] from June 2008. It seems that on a 32bit system running Fedora 8 dom0, the shutdown or restart of a Fedora 9 domU results in that guest being inaccessible to libvirt tools until a dom0 reboot or xend restart. There are at least two similar bugs[3],[4] filed for this issue. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00029.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-June/msg00029.html [3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=429403 [4] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=453276 -- Libvirt List -- This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. -- Libvirt 0.4.6 Released -- Daniel Veillard announced[1] the release of libvirt 0.4.6. "There is no major change in this release, just the bug fixes a few improvements and some cleanup". Improvements include: * add storage disk volume delete (Cole Robinson) * KVM dynamic max CPU detection (Guido Günther) * spec file improvement for minimal builds (Ben Guthro) * improved error message in XM configuration module (Richard Jones) * network config in OpenVZ support (Evgeniy Sokolov) * enable stopping a pool in logical storage backend and cleanup deletion of pool (Chris Lalancette) [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00380.html After finding no F8 build newer than 0.4.4 in Bodhi, Dale Bewley asked[2] if the Xen users stuck[3] on Fedora 8 could expect an update[4]. Daniel Veillard responded[5] it was unclear the release would fix anything for Xen users and "It was looking more risky than potentially useful to update there." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00400.html [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#kernel-xen_is_Dead [4] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/libvirt [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00401.html -- RFC: Events API -- David Lively began[1] a discusion on implementation of events in libvirtd. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00321.html -- Windows Binaries -- Richard W.M. Jones pointed[1] out that -- while not an official distribution -- binaries for libvirt-0.dll and virsh.exe are available[2] in the mingw32-libvirt package. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00393.html [2] http://www.annexia.org/tmp/mingw/fedora-9/ -- oVirt Devel List -- This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. -- oVirt 0.93-1 Released -- Perry N. Myers [1] both the oVirt Node and oVirt Server Suite. New features in this release include: * Addition of 'Smart Pools' in the Web user interface for organizing pools on a per user basis. * Additions to the Edit VM screen to allow re-provisioning of a guest as well editing other guest settings. * oVirt Appliance manages VMs directly on the host it is running on. This eliminates the 'fake nodes' used in previous versions. * oVirt API (Ruby Bindings) * Support for configuring more than one NIC per Node. UI support for this will be integrated shortly. * Support for bonding/failover of NICs. UI support for this will be integrated shortly. * SELinux support on oVirt Node * Rewrite of performance graphing visualization Instructions for configuring yum to point to the ovirt.org repository: http://www.ovirt.org/download.html Instructions for using the Appliance and Nodes: http://www.ovirt.org/install-instructions.html [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00491.html -- Modeling LVM Storage -- Chris Lalancette described[1] the outcome of a IRC chat about carving up storage with LVM. The existing StoragePool in the current model contains zero or more StorageVolumes. Chris described adding a StorageVolume of type LVM which contains one or more iSCSI StorageVolumes and presumably fiberchannel in the future. After the model is modified and the backend "taskomatic" code is in place, then while provisioning a guest VM the user will either choose an entire LUN guest, choose an existing logical volume, or create a new volume. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00313.html Scott Seago clarified[2] that "volumes must be of the same 'type' as the pool". An IscsiStoragePool contains IscsiStorageVolumes an LvmStoragePool contains LvmStorageVolumes. "In additon, for LvmStoragePools, we have a new association defined between it and StorageVolumes. an LvmStoragePool has 1 or more "source storage volumes""... "which for the moment must be IscsiStorageVolumes." "When determining which storage volumes are available for guests, we'll have to filter out storage volumes which are connected to LvmStoragePools." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00315.html Steve Ofsthun asked[3] how will oVirt distinguish between logical volumes created on a whole disk assigned to a guest versus volumes used by the host. Daniel P. Berrange suggested[4] this could accomplished by creating a partition on the disk and assigning this to the guest, thereby making the guest LVM one step removed from the host. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00317.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00322.html --- End FWN 145 ---

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Omega 10 released
by Rahul Sundaram 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

We proudly present to you, dear users with Omega. Omega is a Linux based operating system suitable for desktop and laptop users. It is a Live CD for regular PC (i686 architecture) systems that includes a variety of free and open source software from Fedora and Livna repository. You can try it out on a computer or install it to the hard disk. This is a BETA release with a snapshot of the latest bleeding edge development packages for early testing and feedback. It is roughly similar to the upcoming Fedora 10 Beta release. Highlights ---------- * GNOME 2.23 Desktop Environment * Firefox 3.0 Web Browser * A variety of media players including vlc, mplayer and xine * Extra Gstreamer and xine multimedia codecs Get Omega --------- ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/spins/omega-desktop-livecd-10-beta.iso You can verify this ISO image using SHA1SUM available at ftp://ftp.infradead.org/pub/spins/SHA1SUM Participate ------------ If you have any feedback or wish to help, do let me know. Rahul

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Schedule updates for Fedora 10
by Jesse Keating 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Due to needing some more time for new features to mature a bit before we cut our Beta, we've decided to move the Beta release date back to Tuesday Sept 30th. This move, combined with previous schedule slips has also driven us to extend the rest of the Fedora 10 schedule dates by a week, resulting in a final release date of Tuesday Nov. 25th. For full schedule information, please see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Schedule -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Fedora Weekly News #144
by Oisin Feeley 22 Sep '08

22 Sep '08

= Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 = Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 for the week ending September 20, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue144 In this action packed issue Announcements reminds you of important Fedora 10 freeze dates and the latest on the post security scare clean-up. PlanetFedora muses on some "Legal" issues. Our new Marketing beat-writer Svetoslav Chukov unveils the "Beauty found in Fedora". Developments reveals "Fedora not Free Enough for GNU". News of imminent deadlines in Translations is brought to you by another new writer Runa Bhattacharjee. Infrastructure alerts you to "More Puppet Training!". Artwork offers "Freedom for a Game" and SecurityAdvisories brings you the weeks latest in one handy spot. Virtualization shares information on "Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI". Contents: o 1.1 Announcements + 1.1.1 Fedora 10 feature owners--rescue your unfinished feature pages! + 1.1.2 Updates to Fedora Packaging Guidelines + 1.1.3 Fedora 10 and translations: String freeze and repackaging + 1.1.4 Fedora intrustion update o 1.2 Planet Fedora + 1.2.1 Tech Tidbits + 1.2.2 Legal + 1.2.3 Events & Ambassadors o 1.3 Marketing + 1.3.1 Video History of Fedora + 1.3.2 FUDCon Brno 2008 + 1.3.3 The Beauty Found in Fedora. + 1.3.4 Plug and Run Fedora on a TOSHIBA A300D laptop + 1.3.5 First look at Fedora o 1.4 Developments + 1.4.1 Removal of non-X Consoles (continued) + 1.4.2 OpenVPN and resolv.conf + 1.4.3 Fedora 10 Feature Owner Request + 1.4.4 system-autodeath Becomes Reality + 1.4.5 Fedora Not "Free" Enough for GNU? o 1.5 Translation + 1.5.1 2008-10-14 Declared Fedora 10 Package Translation Deadline + 1.5.2 Renewed Call for Volunteers for the L10n Infrastructure o 1.6 Infrastructure + 1.6.1 Planning a future L10N infrastructure (including Fedora) + 1.6.2 Puppet training + 1.6.3 Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting + 1.6.4 Infrastructure update notice + 1.6.5 app2 disk space o 1.7 Artwork + 1.7.1 Near to the Echo + 1.7.2 Freedom for a Game + 1.7.3 Infrastructure Change for Fedora Art o 1.8 Security Advisories + 1.8.1 Fedora 9 Security Advisories + 1.8.2 Fedora 8 Security Advisories o 1.9 Virtualization + 1.9.1 Enterprise Management Tools List # 1.9.1.1 Virt-manager and Virtinst Closely Related # 1.9.1.2 Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI + 1.9.2 Fedora Xen List # 1.9.2.1 DomU Network Interface Problem Leads to Discussion of HVM Requirements + 1.9.3 Libvirt List # 1.9.3.1 Minimal Client-only Libvirt Build # 1.9.3.2 Access to CPU Flags # 1.9.3.3 OpenVZ Support + 1.9.4 oVirt Devel List == 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 10 feature owners--rescue your unfinished feature pages! John Poelstra reminded[0] everyone that the feature freeze for Fedora 10 is coming soon, and that feature owners need to get their pages updated to ensure that the features that belong in F10 get in, and that the features that need to be deferred to F11 are deferred. "Please complete this as soon as possible so that we can prepare an accurate beta release announcement. FESCo will also be reviewing the complete feature list at its next meeting on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, and determining which incomplete features should remain." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg0001… Updates to Fedora Packaging Guidelines Tom Callaway announced[1] the most recent set of revisions to the Packaging Guidelines, including including Haskell, Lisp, and several other areas. For the full announcement, read the link below. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg0001… Fedora 10 and translations: String freeze and repackaging Dimitris Glezos reminded[2] us "that shipped packages for which Fedora is upstream for are string frozen since the Beta freeze of September 11: no translatable strings can be added or modified for Fedora 10." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg0001… Fedora intrustion update Paul Frields issued[3] his latest updated regarding the Fedora security breach that has been news during the past few weeks. "Work on the Fedora infrastructure has returned to normal at this point. Updates are once again available for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, our current releases, using the new package signing key we've implemented." For the full announcement, follow the link. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009… == 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 === Warren Togami announced[1] the creation of a new list for NSPluginWrapper. "NSPluginwrapper Development discussion with the goal of isolating issues and collaboratively working on solutions should go on this list. There was some interest from other Linux distributions and even Adobe to cooperate on the future of nspluginwrapper development[2]." [1] http://wtogami.livejournal.com/28380.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/nspluginwrapper-devel-list Jesus Rodriguez announced[3] the release of Spacewalk 0.2[4], the open-source upstream for Red Hat Satellite. There is a list of features, enhancements, bug fixes, and credits on Jesus' blog. [3] http://zeusville.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/spacewalk-02/ [4] http://spacewalk.redhat.com/ Greg DeKoenigsberg helped[5] the OLPC folks recruit volunteers to be part of their growing infrastructure team. "OLPC builds a lot of packages. They are looking to set up and maintain an infrastructure that will allow them to meet their own unique packaging needs. They need a volunteer with a strong understanding of the Fedora packaging process -- one who either understands koji now, or can learn to understand it in fairly short order." [5] http://gregdek.livejournal.com/35595.html My favorite Planet post this week came[6] from Fedora Board member Matt Domsch, and it is worth people's time to read the entire post, to gain a lot of insight into how Fedora's mass rebuilds work, and what triggers them. "One challenge to self-hosting a project the size of Fedora (now with about 6200 source packages) is dealing with the interdependencies between packages. When a major component, such as the compiler or an often-used library, upgrades to a new version, you should rebuild all packages that depend upon that major component, to ensure they continue to work. Often, simply re-compiling or re-linking each package using the updated compiler or library is all that is needed. In some cases though, applications which once built, no longer do - bitrot has set in." [6] http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/09/19/use-the-source-luke.aspx Legal Tom Callaway wrote[1] a lengthy post about the Mozilla EULA controversy, which reared its head again this week in the context of Ubuntu and Mozilla. However, Fedora dealt with this problem several months ago, at the end of the Fedora 9 release cycle. Spot's entire post is worth reading, as is the commentary that follows it. Here is one excerpt: "[The] goal was always to ensure that we could walk away with license terms from Mozilla that: 1. Permitted Fedora to continue using the Firefox trademarks 2. Clearly upheld the MPL as the valid software license terms for the Firefox binaries and source (not just for Fedora, but for everyone) 3. Meet the criteria for Free Software 4. Are presented to the user in a non-obtrusive, non-clickthrough agreement way" [1] http://spot.livejournal.com/299409.html Anthony Green wrote[2] a post that referenced SGI's alteration[3] of its Free B license, which has long been a thorn in the side of various distros. [2] http://spindazzle.org/greenblog/index.php?/archives/121-Thank-you,-SGI..html [3] http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2008/september/open… === Events & Ambassadors === The North American Fedora Ambassador Day is coming up at Ohio Linux Fest in October, and there were a few posts about it on Planet this week. Brian Powell gave[1] an update on the organization, saying: "There have been quite a few discussions and meetings recently in regards to FAD planning. There has been a lot of good progress and great ideas coming out of these. With time getting close, we are looking at finalizing the Agenda and Schedule for FADNA shortly. If you are a North American Ambassador I would ask that you take a moment to look at what we have come up with so far and a 'tentative' schedule of events located at the FADNA2008 wiki page. If you have anything to add feel free to do so." [1] http://blog.rhatters.org/2008/09/17/fadna-2008-update/ Additionally, Karsten Wade wrote[2] a post about strategies for handling remote meetings, and making a physical gathering of a small number of people into a larger meeting that remotees can attend and still get value out of, whether that attendance is via IRC, telephone, or something collaborative like gobby. "Think about your sessions and how it can help to interact with the rest of us. I recommend a minimum of: live video feed, live audio feed, and IRC, Gobby, and wiki editing projected on the wall. We can also keep a VoIP conference room open, but my instinct is to limit the flow on the incoming voices by subject matter. Beyond that recommendation, a live IRC and wiki-based abd/or Gobby note taking with many laptops in the in-person session is the bare bones, with regular usage of talk.fedoraproject.org." [2] http://iquaid.org/2008/09/16/formula-for-making-distance-work/ David Nalley wrote up[3] a trip report for Linux Demo Day in Charleston, SC. "About 60 people showed up. Charlestons LUG is relatively new, and this was their first event. They seemed very pleased. I handed about 30 LiveCDs out and talked with a number of Fedora. In addition I spoke to 2-3 people who were intrigued with contributing to Fedora in one way or another. Ill be following up with these individuals." This is a great example of an event -- low cost, but high touch! [3] http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=96 == Marketing == In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing Contributing Writer: Svetoslav Chukov === Video History of Fedora === The history of Fedora as recounted by GregDeKonigsberg is now available[1] in video format [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/16/video-the-history-of-fedora/ === FUDCon Brno 2008 === Max Spevack reported[1] the result of FUDCon Brno 2008. [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/09/fudcon-brno-2008/ === The Beauty Found in Fedora === A very interesting point of view[1] of a Fedora user. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Ite… Plug and Run Fedora on a TOSHIBA A300D laptop This post recounted[1] some adventures with Fedora and a very tricky laptop. It is always good to know about such success stories. Some laptops do not even start GNU/Linux at all! But this one seemed to work pretty well with Fedora. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Ite… === First look at Fedora === The video article "First look at Fedora" showed[1] what one can see for first time use. Very useful for novice users. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=55&Ite… == Developments == In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley === Removal of non-X Consoles (continued) === The furore over the future removal of text-mode consoles (see FWN#144 "Non-X System Consoles to be Removed"[1]) continued throughout the week. The original thread saw some support for the idea expressed[2] by Nicolas Mailhot on the basis that "[...] non-X-console input is a mess [...] font support has fossilized, and support for modern high resolution screens is severely lacking [...]" Nicholas was especially concerned[3] with the maintenance burden imposed by the text-mode console "[...] as someone who is an upstream maintainer for my language of some of the bits the console use[s]." [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Non-X.System.Consoles.to.be.Rem… [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01341.h… [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01347.h… Upon being pressed by Dominik Mierzejewski for evidence of a lack of proper maintenance Nicolas listed[4] a series of problems including the stagnation of the console layout database and the console font set. Dmitry Butskoy begged[5] to separate the concepts of "console" and "serial tty" and also for the retention of the text-mode console. Dominik promised to try to find a colleague to shoulder the maintenance burden but Nicolas had already given up[6] in disgust. In response elsewhere to Seth Vidal's argument that the text console did no harm and should be left alone Nicholas expanded[7] on the maintenance costs of "all sorts of packaging rules designed to avoid hitting console limitations and problems" and bugs filed because of the confusion caused by two text stacks. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01373.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01381.h… [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01388.h… [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01396.h… Les Mikesell got to the heart of the problem when he asked[8] "I think I'm confused by the term 'non X consoles'. Is that something different than the native text mode you see before X starts?" He also recommended using FreeNX/NX instead of using the console. Nicolas responded[9] that there were "[...]two different things. A VT to which you can attach an X session, a serial port, a remote SSH, mingetty... and the software stack used to display locally the VT text and collect user input." Nicolas saw the "low-level VT bit" as fundamentally sound but the "current console software stack" as "rotten." Les sought[10] further clarification of this distinction between "[...] the low level part that works in character mode and expects some hardware to supply and render the fonts [...]" and "[...] software other than X that renders custom fonts[.]" [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01353.h… [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01354.h… [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01422.h… Denis Leroy wondered[11] if there was "[...] an X-based mingetty replacement actually exists ? Something that's proven to be sufficiently fail-safe (will work even with half-broken X configurations and such?)" and although Nicolas did not know of one he speculated[12] "[...] as soon as much of the hardware pocking is moved from xorg to the kernel and X can be run as a normal user "X-based mingetty replacement" will be just running a x term fullscreen in an autoconfigured X instance. Of course one could theoretically write a much lighter solution using only freetype (cairo, pango?) and an xkb-config parser." Denis's concern seemed to be that often a Ctrl+Alt+F1 to mingetty was the only way to kill hanging desktop applications. Colin Walters suggested[13] making "[...] Ctrl-Alt-Backspace just break server grabs instead of killing the server (and of course fix the bugs in the apps that hang while holding a server grab)." [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01401.h… [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01407.h… [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01366.h… There were multiple expressions of disapprobation often coupled with use cases. Some of these led Chris Snook to exclaim[14] "Unless I've missed something huge, virtual terminals aren't going away. What may or may not be going away is the x86 video BIOS text mode, to be replaced with a kernel framebuffer, which precludes the use of console fonts, which very few people ever mess with. The console itself will remain. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong." [[DaveAirlie|Dave Airlie] confirmed[15] this understanding and added "[...] vga text mode will not be enabled by default, you will need to pass nomodeset if you want to use vga text mode. Welcome to the 1990s." Alan Cox made[16] the correction that framebuffer console support fonts but that framebuffers did not work on all machines, screen reader technology and remote management cards. [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01417.h… [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01445.h… [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01484.h… === OpenVPN and resolv.conf === Ahmed Kamal asked[1] for help in scratching an itch and started a concise, meaty thread. His particular problem was that he wanted to overwrite /etc/resolv.conf with new DNS servers obtained over a vpn tunnel, this is apparently done automatically in "Windows". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01304.h… The suggestion to use NetworkManager was made by Paul Wouters and Dan Williams agreed[2] and added the explanation that it "[...] mediate[d] between services [including PPP, PPtP, DHCP, openvpn, and vpnc] that need to update your DNS information." The alternative is that each service needs to handle /etc/resolv.conf itself. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01313.h… The idea of a default caching daemon was floated[3] by Simo Sorce. As he envisioned it, the services/tools, such as OpenVPN, would "[...] tell the caching daemon which IP ranges and which domains their provided forwarders should be consulted for. All dynamic so that as soon as one daemon goes away, the caching DNS will notice and revert queries to the default DNS.} Nils Philippsen agreed[4] heartily and added that "[i]deally, it should be something which isn't restricted to class A/B/C like reverse DNS (seems to be), but which would route DNS requests based on arbitrary domain name or IP-range criteria to the desired name servers" and Paul Howarth provided[5] the further reason that changes to /etc/resolv.conf are often not picked up by processes. This latter point spawned a discussion on the demerits of the glibc stub resolver (which is too simplistic) and the consequent use of the deprecated gethostbyname in individual applications. Dan Williams recommended using lwresd (a stripped-down, caching-only nameserver available to clients which use the BIND 9 lightweight resolver library) or for more complex setups a local caching nameserver. Although Simo Sorce disagreed[6] with Dan that many applications were simply using gethostbyname he agreed that "[a] caching nameserver that can be instructed what to do when conditions change is what we really need." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01349.h… [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01485.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01490.h… [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01632.h… Ahmed asked[7] whether dnsmasq or other daemons were able to "[direct] name resolution to specific servers according to IP ranges and/or domain names, with the option of adding/removing servers on the fly?" and Richard W.M. Jones[8] confirmed that this was indeed possible. Adam Tkac suggested[9] that this could be done with view statements in BIND and the gauntlet of how to do this for CIDR and domain names was thrown down[10] by Nils. A detailed sub-thread followed which indicated what while possible it was not pretty. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01498.h… [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01500.h… [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01508.h… [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01523.h… Adam Tkac shared[11] the information that his TODO list includes the addition of NetworkManager support to BIND and Simo Sorce explained [12] that nscd was not a solution for a local caching nameserver "[...] as not all type of queries can be fulfilled by the glibc interface. For example SRV/TXT records ... Also nscd is not smart enough to understand network condition and adapt it's behavior." Simo agreed that it would be nice if "[...] bind could consult different DNSs based 1) on the DNS name to be queried, and B) the reverse IP to be queried" so that on slow links only the necessary queries would be directed through the VPN. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01509.h… [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01510.h… === Fedora 10 Feature Owner Request === John Poelstra requested[1] all those owning a Feature[2] to take some actions on their feature page so that the beta release notes and announcements are accurate. He provided a list of twenty one feature pages which "have not been updated since the Feature Freeze on 2008-09-11 and/or are not 100% complete." Kevin Kofler was among those who had been watching the progress of OpenChange (see FWN#133 "Help Wanted: Samba4, Heimdahl, OpenChange"[3]) and noted[4] that due to the decision[5] of Andrew Bartlett to orphan the feature it needed a new owner if Fedora 11 was to offer OpenChange. Another of the listed pages was that for the Echo icon theme and Luya Tshimbalanga asked if he should add a release note to the effect that echo was now the default. Rahul Sundaram confirmed that this would be helpful. The Eclipse-3.4 (Ganymede) page was updated[6] by [JeffJohnston|Jeff Johnston]]. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01471.h… [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy/Definitions [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue133#Help.Wanted:.Samba4.2C.Heimdahl.… [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01482.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00522.h… [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01548.h… === system-autodeath Becomes Reality === Seth Vidal announced[1] that he had implemented his previously discussed (FWN#140 "System Autodeath"[2]) idea to automatically remove networking capabilities from machines which lacked system updates. The intent is to prevent non-maintained machines from being exploited. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01716.h… [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140#System.Autodeath Seth implemented the concept as a daily cronjob which tests a configured "death date" against the current time. For the week leading up to the "death date" log messages warn that on the specific date the default route will be deleted. He requested feedback and improvements. Matt Miller was content but suggested[3] beefing up the manpage with details of the consequences of removing the default route. Seth noted that he was happy to accept patches. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01779.h… A fraught note was introduced when Stephen Warren declared[4] that if this were a default then, in combination with the proposed textconsole removal (see this FWN#144 "Removal of non-X Consoles (continued)") and the modesetting changes[5], he was thinking about switching distros. Rahul Sundaram responded[6] that modesetting was going to be a feature of all distros soon and the conversation veered[7] into explaining that the replacement for RHGB, named "Plymouth" had a sane text-mode fallback for unsupported chipsets. As much of Stephen's angst was due to a perceived abandonment of those using non-Free drivers Rahul pointed out that the nouveau drivers might work. Richard Hughes listed[8] 2-D and xrandr as supported with kernel modesetting coming soon due to Maarten Maathuis's work. He warned: "Don't even try 3D yet. It does work, but only if the moon is waxing, and your pet cat is called Oliver." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01782.h… [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143#Graphics.Modesetting.Changes [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01783.h… [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01789.h… [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01802.h… Back on the main topic of the thread Seth stated[9] that system-autodeath was not intended to be part of the default install: "This is just a nicety for sysadmins or local-respin maintainers who would like to put a dropdead date on their releases." In response to Stephen's recollection Seth also stated[10] this point clearly. A general disagreement with the idea of exposing such a feature was expressed[11] by James Hubbard on the basis that the user should be forced to change a config file to prevent against accidental installation errors. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01784.h… [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01788.h… [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01850.h… === Fedora Not "Free" Enough for GNU? === A long-running thread which was started[1] on 07-09-2008 by Michel Salim continues to attracted some heated discussion over the fact that Fedora is not recognized as a 100% Free software distribution by GNU although a derivative named "BLAG" (see also FWN#139[2]) is recognized as FLOSS. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00428.h… [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue139#Small.Machine.SIG The central stumbling block seemed[3] to be best stated by Gregory Maxwell as "[...] Fedora doesn't yet strip the binary firmware provided by the Linux kernel (and still provides some re-distributable binary firmware in other packages, the microcode package and alsa-firmware I think)." Gregory described the situation as unfortunate due to both the lack "[...] of acknowledgement it deserves, and the FSF is indirectly promoting Ubuntu, a distribution which is, as far as I can tell, a primary driving factor in new users using and depending on proprietary software." This latter being a reference to the recognition of gNewSense as FLOSS. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00435.h… There had been previous very heated threads on this subject (during one of FWN's holidays) centered around the efforts of Alexandre Oliva to produce a "kernel-libre" and the interaction of this project with other efforts and approaches within the kernel community. David Woodhouse added[4] the excellent news that "We are almost at the point where we can do a spin which remedies [the difficulties of stripping out the non-Free firmware]." He explained that soon a completely separate package instead of a sub-package of the normal kernel build will allow others to produce alternative packages of firmwares for which source code is available. Tom Callaway was worried[5] that there was still firmware entangled in the kernel source code and noted the need for an audit. Rahul Sundaram supplied[6] a link to a Debian inventory of firmwares. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01603.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01605.h… [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01606.h… Other interesting points in the discussion touched on the rationales which have been often advanced for refusing to supply source to firmwares. These involve regulatory compliance (often for radio devices). Alan Cox was suspicious of such arguments based[7] on the history of examples such as ISDN code which "[...] was approved. You could change it but then it became unapproved and not permitted in some countries." He described this as a racket run by the phone companies which imploded once the need to ensure robustness became important (due to terrorist threats.) Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams listed[8] some of the other rationales. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01745.h… [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01737.h… == Translation == This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee === 2008-10-14 Declared Fedora 10 Package Translation Deadline === The last date for submission of translations for Fedora 10 packages was announced[1] as 2008-10-14 (Tuesday). This announcement was made after an unanimous decision by the Fedora L10n Steering Committee (FLSCo) members. The last date for the translation of Documents remains as 2008-10-21 (Tuesday). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00050.h… A request for rebuilding of packages post the translation freeze date, was also made[2] to the @fedora-devel-announcement list. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg000… "Maintainers of the above packages need to put a reminder to issue a new build *later* than this date and before the Development Freeze of 21/10. The closer to the development freeze the rebuild takes place, the better for our translators. If you have not received any translations since the last build, a rebuild is not necessary." === Renewed Call for Volunteers for the L10n Infrastructure === Another call was made[3] at the FLSCo meeting held[ on 16th September 2008[4] seeking volunteers for the Fedora L10n infrastructure. The earlier call was made[5] in April 2008. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00047.h… [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00051.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-April/msg00020.html Meanwhile, Asgeir Frimannsson announced[6] a proposed plan for a new L10n infrastructure which is currently being discussed[7] in various relevant mailing lists. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… [7] http://groups.google.com/group/transifex-devel/browse_thread/thread/f9b1e06… == Infrastructure == This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala === Planning a future L10N infrastructure (including Fedora) === Asgeir Frimannsson wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [1] about his views on the current localisation infrastructure. He summarises the current infrastructure which is used by the localisation team, which includes the version control system and other online tools. He also discusses transifex. He also discusses the requirements for a system where the translation lifecycle would be managed within 'Translation Repositories' [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… === Puppet Training === Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [2] that he is going to hold a puppet training next wednesday. He also posted an ogg and the slide deck [3] to which his live training will be identical. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… [3] http://mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/puppet/ === Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting === John Poelstra wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [4] about the Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting. He has also posted the list of participants and the meeting logs. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… === Infrastructure update notice === Paul W. Frields wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [5] about the announcement which went out on the fedora-announce-list [6]. Paul confirmed that all of our services were back online now. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009… === app2 Disk Space === Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list[7] about the recent disk alerts on app2. It seems that the host was not built with enough disk space similar to app1. It does raise a point about storage for transifex though. Basically each host running transifex or damned lies, keeps a local copy of every scm as part of its usage. For performance reasons that should not change but its something we'll want to figure out long term. So after the freeze the host is going to be rebuilt. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei === Near to the Echo === Pursuing the declared goal of having the new Echo icon theme ready to be used as a default in Fedora 10, Martin Sourada and Luya Tshimbalanga continued[1] the development and posted updates[2], while gathering feed-back and improvement proposals on @fedora-art. Martin even created[3] an animated demo "also prepared animated gif (slideshow) so you can see all the icons in one batch" and blogged about it. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00202.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00248.html [3] http://mso.fedorapeople.org/echo/Actions/mail-all.gif [4] http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/09/batch-of-new-mail-echo-icon.html === Freedom for a Game === Nicu Buculei relayed[1] to @fedora-art a request from the Hans deGoede, of Games SIG fame: the Project: Starfighter game[2], which used to be included in Fedora, was discovered to have some non-free graphic files and needed free replacements for them. Erick Henrique offered[3] his help "I go to unpack the archive starfighter.pak and to study a form of I redesign everything in a new style" and Hans promised[4] to code a needed utility "About recreating the .pak file I need to write a little utility for that, hopefully I'll have time for that this weekend." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00231.html [2] http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/starfighter.php [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00246.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00291.html === Infrastructure Change for Fedora Art === After an IRC consultation with Mairin Duffy, Martin Sourada proposed[1] using fedorahosted.org services for the Art team "it might be worth setting up a fedorahosted.org instance for the Fedora Art Team. Primary purpose would be to host our release graphics, but it could serve other purposes as well (e.g. using ticket system for design service come to my mind)[.]" This initiative was received with open arms by Luya Tshimbalanga and with some skepticism[3] by Ian Weller "I'm personally all for the idea, but I knew there were some caveats that we should definitely look into before we even think about proceeding. I'd also like to see Mo's input, of course." and Nicu Buculei stated[4] "I am strongly against something which would raise the barrier to entry, so a NO-NO would be to require git to upload sketches (proposals) for the upcoming release." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00242.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00247.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00263.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00267.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 === * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-smart-9-13.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-apt-9-3.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… === Fedora 8 Security Advisories === * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc8.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-apt-8-2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-smart-8-12.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… == 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 and Virtinst Closely Related ==== After upgrading virt-manager to 0.6.0, Maikel Dollé received[1] the error ImportError: cannot import name Storage. Cole Robinson explained[2] virt-manager is tied closely with virtinst and installing virtinst 0.400.0 would likely fix the problem. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00038.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00039.html ==== Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI ==== Shigeki Sakamoto followed[1] up on a previous[2] request for comments on a patch, submitted by same, which works to allow the migration of domains from within the virt-manager GUI. Daniel P. Berrange suggested[3] using a submenu rather than a pop-up window, and commented on the sanity checks[4] in libvirt. Live Migration Sanity Checks were recently discussed on @libvir list (see FWN #141 Live Migration Sanity Checks[5]). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00045.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00016.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00046.html [4] http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/TodoPreMigrationChecks [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141#Live_Migration_Sanity_Checks === Fedora Xen List === This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. ==== DomU Network Interface Problem Leads to Discussion of HVM Requirements ==== Guillaume[1] asked[1] about a paravirtualized domU which did not show any network interfaces. There was a suggestion made that this could be due to a lack of HVM support in the host hardware, which isn't the case. Paul Wouters cleared[2] up such confusion by describing the main virtualization techniques used in Fedora. Quoting: * Xen hypervisor for para_virt guests does not need HVM. Problem here is that Fedora 8 is the last release to support this setup on x86_64, though work is in progress to add this support to Fedora 9/10. Para_virt guests are booted via kernel= and rootfs images, or via pygrub, which is just a wrapper for grabbing kernel from bootable disk images. * Qemu is a software emulator for various architectures including PC hardware. It requires no HVM instructions, but it can use them if they exist via the kernel "kvm" code. This is how Fedora9 does its VM's via the libvirt and virt-install. This does NOT [sic] use or require a xen hypervisor. * Xenner is a software emulation for the Xen hypervisor. It requires HVM because it uses the kernel "kvm" code. The idea behind Xenner is that you can run VM's based on kernel-xen kernels (eg migration from Fedora8) Paul went on to mention other[5] virtualization technologies such as VirtualBox/Vmx, lguest, uml, virtuoso, and openvz. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00018.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00021.html In another post[3] Paul suggested that Guillaume's domU may have an initrd which lacks xenblk and xennet, and pointed[4] to a debate in the FC6 era concerning the xenblk kernel module. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00022.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2007-April/msg00054.html [5] http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison === Libvirt List === This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. ==== Minimal Client-only Libvirt Build ==== Ben Guthro patched[1] the libvirt spec file to allow for a minimal client-only build. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00264.html ==== Access to CPU Flags ==== Ben Guthro needed[1] to access CPU flags to determine if VMX features were available, and suggested src/nodeinfo.c would be the place to parse this. This however raised a concern that adding to the nodeinfo struct breaks the API. Additionally, since this is an x86 specific change, Ben wondered if it would be acceptable. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00271.html Daniel P. Berrange stated[1] "any struct or API in include/libvirt/libvirt.h is immutable to preserve ABI", and the API shouldn't be specifically x86. Daniel did offer that the most likely place for exposing CPU flags would be in the capabilities[3] XML format. Where PAE, VMX, and SVM flags are already exposed. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00273.html [3] http://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html#virConnectGetCapabilities Ben noted[4] that Xen will report those flags, but oVirt running KVM does not, and said "It seems to me that it might be useful for some sort of "node" info driver, where we might be able to share code for hypervisor independent info about the physical machine it is running on." Daniel pointed[5] to src/nodeinfo.c as "a place for this useful reusable node info code". [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00292.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00316.html ==== OpenVZ Support ==== Anton Protopopov pointed[1] to a previous thread[2] on xml format for OpenVZ driver, and asked if libvirt supported the xml format for OpenVZ[3] driver. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00320.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-July/msg00312.html [3] http://wiki.openvz.org Evgeniy Sokolov replied[4] that OpenVZ uses the XML format common for all libvirt drivers. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00331.html === oVirt Devel List === This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. Check back next week. -- Oisin Feeley http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley

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Fedora Week News, Issue 144
by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala 22 Sep '08

22 Sep '08

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 ============================ Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 144 for the week ending September 20, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue144 Selected Contents: In this issue we cover the upcoming plans for North America Fedora Ambassador Day, update the happenings across the Fedora Planet, report on numerous work towards Fedora 10 in artwork, internationalization and reports on FUDCon 2008 in Brno, Czech Republic and Linux Demo Day in Charleston, SC USA. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join == Announcements == In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack == Fedora 10 feature owners--rescue your unfinished feature pages! John Poelstra reminded[0] everyone that the feature freeze for Fedora 10 is coming soon, and that feature owners need to get their pages updated to ensure that the features that belong in F10 get in, and that the features that need to be deferred to F11 are deferred. "Please complete this as soon as possible so that we can prepare an accurate beta release announcement. FESCo will also be reviewing the complete feature list at its next meeting on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, and determining which incomplete features should remain." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg0001… == Updates to Fedora Packaging Guidelines Tom Callaway announced[1] the most recent set of revisions to the Packaging Guidelines, including including Haskell, Lisp, and several other areas. For the full announcement, read the link below. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg0001… == Fedora 10 and translations: String freeze and repackaging Dimitris Glezos reminded[2] us "that shipped packages for which Fedora is upstream for are string frozen since the Beta freeze of September 11: no translatable strings can be added or modified for Fedora 10." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg0001… == Fedora intrustion update Paul Frields issued[3] his latest updated regarding the Fedora security breach that has been news during the past few weeks. "Work on the Fedora infrastructure has returned to normal at this point. Updates are once again available for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, our current releases, using the new package signing key we've implemented." For the full announcement, follow the link. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009… == 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 Warren Togami announced the creation of a new list for NSPluginWrapper. "NSPluginwrapper Development discussion with the goal of isolating issues and collaboratively working on solutions should go on this list. There was some interest from other Linux distributions and even Adobe to cooperate on the future of nspluginwrapper development." http://wtogami.livejournal.com/28380.html https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/nspluginwrapper-devel-list Jesus Rodriguez announced the release of Spacewalk 0.2, the open-source upstream for Red Hat Satellite. There is a list of features, enhancements, bug fixes, and credits on Jesus' blog. http://zeusville.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/spacewalk-02/ http://spacewalk.redhat.com/ Greg DeKoenigsberg is helping the OLPC folks recruit volunteers to be part of their growing infrastructure team. "OLPC builds a lot of packages. They are looking to set up and maintain an infrastructure that will allow them to meet their own unique packaging needs. They need a volunteer with a strong understanding of the Fedora packaging process -- one who either understands koji now, or can learn to understand it in fairly short order." http://gregdek.livejournal.com/35595.html My favorite Planet post this week comes from Fedora Board member Matt Domsch, and it is worth people's time to read the entire post, to gain a lot of insight into how Fedora's mass rebuilds work, and what triggers them. "One challenge to self-hosting a project the size of Fedora (now with about 6200 source packages) is dealing with the interdependencies between packages. When a major component, such as the compiler or an often-used library, upgrades to a new version, you should rebuild all packages that depend upon that major component, to ensure they continue to work. Often, simply re-compiling or re-linking each package using the updated compiler or library is all that is needed. In some cases though, applications which once built, no longer do - bitrot has set in." http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/09/19/use-the-source-luke.aspx == Legal Tom Callaway wrote a lengthy post about the Mozilla EULA controversy, which reared its head again this week in the context of Ubuntu and Mozilla. However, Fedora dealt with this problem several months ago, at the end of the Fedora 9 release cycle. Spot's entire post is worth reading, as is the commentary that follows it. Here is one excerpt: "[The] goal was always to ensure that we could walk away with license terms from Mozilla that: 1. Permitted Fedora to continue using the Firefox trademarks 2. Clearly upheld the MPL as the valid software license terms for the Firefox binaries and source (not just for Fedora, but for everyone) 3. Meet the criteria for Free Software 4. Are presented to the user in a non-obtrusive, non-clickthrough agreement way" http://spot.livejournal.com/299409.html Anthony Green wrote a post that referenced SGI altering its Free B license, which has long been a thorn in the side of various distros. http://spindazzle.org/greenblog/index.php?/archives/121-Thank-you,-SGI..html http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2008/september/open… == Events & Ambassadors == The North American Fedora Ambassador Day is coming up at Ohio Linux Fest in October, and there were a few posts about it on Planet this week. Brian Powell gave an update on the organization, saying: "There have been quite a few discussions and meetings recently in regards to FAD planning. There has been a lot of good progress and great ideas coming out of these. With time getting close, we are looking at finalizing the Agenda and Schedule for FADNA shortly. If you are a North American Ambassador I would ask that you take a moment to look at what we have come up with so far and a 'tentative' schedule of events located at the FADNA2008 wiki page. If you have anything to add feel free to do so." http://blog.rhatters.org/2008/09/17/fadna-2008-update/ Additionally, Karsten Wade wrote a post about strategies for handling remote meetings, and making a physical gathering of a small number of people into a larger meeting that remotees can attend and still get value out of, whether that attendance is via IRC, telephone, or something collaborative like gobby. "Think about your sessions and how it can help to interact with the rest of us. I recommend a minimum of: live video feed, live audio feed, and IRC, Gobby, and wiki editing projected on the wall. We can also keep a VoIP conference room open, but my instinct is to limit the flow on the incoming voices by subject matter. Beyond that recommendation, a live IRC and wiki-based abd/or Gobby note taking with many laptops in the in-person session is the bare bones, with regular usage of talk.fedoraproject.org." http://iquaid.org/2008/09/16/formula-for-making-distance-work/ David Nalley wrote up a trip report for Linux Demo Day in Charleston, SC. "About 60 people showed up. Charleston’s LUG is relatively new, and this was their first event. They seemed very pleased. I handed about 30 LiveCDs out and talked with a number of Fedora. In addition I spoke to 2-3 people who were intrigued with contributing to Fedora in one way or another. I’ll be following up with these individuals." This is a great example of an event -- low cost, but high touch! http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=96 == Marketing == In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing The history of Fedora is now available in video format. [1] [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/16/video-the-history-of-fedora/ == FUDCon Brno 2008 Max Spevack reported[1] the result of FUDCon Brno 2008. [1] http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/09/09/fudcon-brno-2008/ == The beauty found in Fedora. Very interesting point of view of a Fedora user[1] [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Ite… == Plug and Run Fedora on a TOSHIBA A300D laptop Adventures with Fedora and very tricky laptop [1] It is always good to know for such success stories. Some laptops do not even start GNU/Linux at all! But that one seems to work pretty well with Fedora. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Ite… == First look at Fedora The video article "First look at Fedora" shows what one can sees for the first time [1] Very useful for novice users. [1] http://spreadfedora.org/sf/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=55&Ite… == Translation == This section, we cover the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee == 14th October 2008 declared as the Package Translation deadline for Fedora 10 The last date of submission of translations for Fedora 10 packages has been announced as 14th October 2008 (Tuesday).[1] This announcement was made after an unanimous decision by the Fedora L10n Steering Committee (FLSCo) members. The last date for the translation of Documents remains as 21st October 2008 (Tuesday). A request for rebuilding of packages post the translation freeze date, was also made to the Fedora-Devel-Announcement List.[2] "Maintainers of the above packages need to put a reminder to issue a new build *later* than this date and before the Development Freeze of 21/10. The closer to the development freeze the rebuild takes place, the better for our translators. If you have not received any translations since the last build, a rebuild is not necessary." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00050.h… [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg000… == Renewed call for volunteers for the L10n Infrastructure Another call was made at the FLSCo meeting held on 16th September 2008[3] seeking volunteers for the Fedora L10n infrastructure.[4] The earlier call was made in April 2008.[5] Meanwhile, Asgeir Frimannsson announced a proposed plan for a new L10n infrastructure which is currently being discussed in various relevant mailing lists.[6][7] [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00047.h… [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-September/msg00051.h… [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2008-April/msg00020.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… [7] http://groups.google.com/group/transifex-devel/browse_thread/thread/f9b1e06… == Infrastructure == This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala == Planning a future L10N infrastructure (including Fedora) Asgeir Frimannsson wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [1] about his views on the current localisation infrastructure. He summarises the current infrastructure which is used by the localisation team, which includes the version control system and other online tools. He also discusses transifex. He also discusses the requirements for a system where the translation lifecycle would be managed within 'Translation Repositories' [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… == Puppet training Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [2] that he is going to hold a puppet training next wednesday. He also posted an ogg and the slide deck [3] to which his live training will be identical. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… [3] http://mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/puppet/ == Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting John Poelstra wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [4] about the Fedora 10 Beta Release Planning Meeting. He has also posted the list of participants and the meeting logs. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… == Infrastructure update notice Paul W. Frields wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list [5] about the announcement which went out on the fedora-announce-list [6]. Paul confirmed that all of our services were back online now. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… [6] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg00009… == app2 disk space Mike McGrath wrote on the @fedora-infrastructure-list[7] about the recent disk alerts on app2. It seems that the host was not built with enough disk space similar to app1. It does raise a point about storage for transifex though. Basically each host running transifex or damned lies, keeps a local copy of every scm as part of its usage. For performance reasons that should not change but its something we'll want to figure out long term. So after the freeze the host is going to be rebuilt. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September/m… == Artwork == In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei == Near to the Echo Pursuing the declared goal of having the new Echo icon theme ready to be used as a default in Fedora 10, Martin Sourada and Luya Tshimbalanga continued the development and posting updates[1], [2], gathering feed-back and improvement proposals on @fedora-art. Martin even created an animated demo "also prepared animated gif (slideshow) [3] so you can see all the icons in one batch" and blogged about it. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00202.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00248.html [3] http://mso.fedorapeople.org/echo/Actions/mail-all.gif [4] http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/09/batch-of-new-mail-echo-icon.html == Freedom for a game Nicu Buculei relayed[1] to @fedora-art a request from the Hans deGoede, of Games SIG fame: the Project: Starfighter game[2], which used to be included in Fedora, was discovered of having some non-free graphic files and need free replacements to be re-included. Erick Henrique offered[3] his help "I go to unpack the archive starfighter.pak and to study a form of I redesign everything in a new style" and Hans promised[4] to code a needed utility "About recreating the .pak file I need to write a little utility for that, hopefully I'll have time for that this weekend." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00231.html [2] http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/starfighter.php [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00246.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00291.html == Infrastructure change for Fedora Art After an IRC consultation with Mairin Duffy, Martin Sourada proposed[1] using fedorahosted.org services for the Art team "it might be worth setting up a fedorahosted.org instance for the Fedora Art Team. Primary purpose would be to host our release graphics, but it could serve other purposes as well (e.g. using ticket system for design service come to my mind)", an initiative received with open arms by Luya Tshimbalanga and with some skepticism[3] by Ian Weller "I'm personally all for the idea, but I knew there were some caveats that we should definitely look into before we even think about proceeding. I'd also like to see Mo's input, of course." and Nicu Buculei[4] "I am strongly against something which would raise the barrier to entry, so a NO-NO would be to require git to upload sketches (proposals) for the upcoming release." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00242.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00247.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00263.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00267.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 * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-smart-9-13.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-apt-9-3.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc9.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… == Fedora 8 Security Advisories * ssmtp-2.61-11.6.fc8.1 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-apt-8-2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * fedora-package-config-smart-8-12.0.2.transitional - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… * tomcat5-5.5.27-0jpp.2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/msg0… ==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 and Virtinst Closely Related After upgrading virt-manager to 0.6.0, Maikel Dollé received[1] the error ImportError: cannot import name Storage. Cole Robinson explained[2] virt-manager is tied closely with virtinst and installing virtinst 0.400.0 would likely fix the problem. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00038.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00039.html == Migration Support in Virt-manager GUI Shigeki Sakamoto followed[1] up on a previous[2] request for comments on a patch, submitted by same, which works to allow the migration of domains from within the virt-manager GUI. Daniel P. Berrange suggested[3] using a submenu rather than a pop-up window, and commented on the sanity checks[4] in libvirt. Live Migration Sanity Checks were recently discussed on @libvir list (see FWN #141 Live Migration Sanity Checks[5]). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00045.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00016.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00046.html [4] http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/TodoPreMigrationChecks [5] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141#Live_Migration_Sanity_Checks == Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. == DomU Network Interface Problem Leads to Discussion of HVM Requirements Guillaume[1] asked[1] about a paravirtualized domU which did not show any network interfaces. There was a suggestion made that this could be due to a lack of HVM support in the host hardware, which isn't the case. Paul Wouters cleared[2] up such confusion by describing the main virtualization techniques used in Fedora. Quoting: * Xen hypervisor for para_virt guests does not need HVM. Problem here is that Fedora 8 is the last release to support this setup on x86_64, though work is in progress to add this support to Fedora 9/10. Para_virt guests are booted via kernel= and rootfs images, or via pygrub, which is just a wrapper for grabbing kernel from bootable disk images. * Qemu is a software emulator for various architectures including PC hardware. It requires no HVM instructions, but it can use them if they exist via the kernel "kvm" code. This is how Fedora9 does its VM's via the libvirt and virt-install. This does NOT [sic] use or require a xen hypervisor. * Xenner is a software emulation for the Xen hypervisor. It requires HVM because it uses the kernel "kvm" code. The idea behind Xenner is that you can run VM's based on kernel-xen kernels (eg migration from Fedora8) Paul went on to mention other[5] virtualization technologies such as VirtualBox/Vmx, lguest, uml, virtuoso, and openvz. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00018.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00021.html In another post[3] Paul suggested that Guillaume's domU may have an initrd which lacks xenblk and xennet, and pointed[4] to a debate in the FC6 era concerning the xenblk kernel module. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00022.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2007-April/msg00054.html [5] http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/TechComparison == Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. == Minimal Client-only Libvirt Build Ben Guthro patched[1] the libvirt spec file to allow for a minimal client-only build. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00264.html == Access to CPU Flags Ben Guthro needed[1] to access CPU flags to determine if VMX features were available, and suggested src/nodeinfo.c would be the place to parse this. This however raised a concern that adding to the nodeinfo struct breaks the API. Additionally, since this is an x86 specific change, Ben wondered if it would be acceptable. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00271.html Daniel P. Berrange stated[1] "any struct or API in include/libvirt/libvirt.h is immutable to preserve ABI", and the API shouldn't be specifically x86. Daniel did offer that the most likely place for exposing CPU flags would be in the capabilities[3] XML format. Where PAE, VMX, and SVM flags are already exposed. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00273.html [3] http://libvirt.org/html/libvirt-libvirt.html#virConnectGetCapabilities Ben noted[4] that Xen will report those flags, but oVirt running KVM does not, and said "It seems to me that it might be useful for some sort of "node" info driver, where we might be able to share code for hypervisor independent info about the physical machine it is running on." Daniel pointed[5] to src/nodeinfo.c as "a place for this useful reusable node info code". [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00292.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00316.html == OpenVZ Support Anton Protopopov pointed[1] to a previous thread[2] on xml format for OpenVZ driver, and asked if libvirt supported the xml format for OpenVZ[3] driver. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00320.html [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-July/msg00312.html [3] http://wiki.openvz.org Evgeniy Sokolov replied[4] that OpenVZ uses the XML format common for all libvirt drivers. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00331.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFI12KpzHDc8tpb2uURAkfBAKCRE3RY1Gaebh3KspQEkqafSlLHLwCeNaUc hKkU6fOXL6zJNeKuY1cKjXM= =6E3y -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Orange Sombrero 9 Released - based on Fedora
by Jeroen van Meeuwen 21 Sep '08

21 Sep '08

One more Software Freedom Day well spent ;-) I'm proud to announce a new minor player in the world of insignificant clones of major, important Free and Open Source Linux Distributions, *bling* Orange Sombrero - /based on Fedora/ *bling* Orange Sombrero starts with releasing version number 9 - the same version number as the upstream distribution, Fedora, to avoid confusion. Has anything been changed? Yeah, a patch to anaconda[1,2] that didn't make it in in time for the Fedora 10 Beta freeze has been applied to compose this release -which is sort of the entire use case behind the patch anyway. Also, a different branch of Revisor has been used that uses the patch to anaconda[3]. Since I've got limited bandwidth and disk space, this is a 1 CD distribution. If I had bandwidth and disk space, I might have thrown in a mid-release Everything Spin but I couldn't. Also, given that this is a 1 CD distribution, I've added an install class to anaconda so that it selects the correct groups of packages. Who needs "Office & Productivity" if there's only @core and @base, right? "Base System" FTW! It was fun, it took me 4 koji scratch builds of anaconda and another number of composes to get it "right". Note that despite these changes the installed system will behave just the same as Fedora. In fact, if you look really hard, there's the occasional "Fedora" in there, still -maybe that's because I used fedora-release, which I should be able to do without trademark violations, even though /etc/fedora-release still says "Fedora" ;-) Why bother? Trademark guidelines right now say a derivative distribution cannot use "based on Fedora" -which is bad, and Orange Sombrero is now raising some red flags about it. Work is well on it's way to improve that situation[4] though, for which I thank everyone involved. I hope soon, very soon, derivative's of Fedora pop up everywhere, like mushrooms in autumn. Where is it? http://orangesombrero.org (torrents) On behalf of the entire Orange Sombrero Community (e.g. ~1 person), Kind regards, Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip [1] http://tinyurl.com/49eq5n [2] http://tinyurl.com/47v38s [3] http://tinyurl.com/4le262 [4] http://tinyurl.com/6d3ykf

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Fedora intrusion update, 2008-09-19 UTC 0230
by Paul W. Frields 19 Sep '08

19 Sep '08

Work on the Fedora infrastructure has returned to normal at this point. Updates are once again available for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, our current releases, using the new package signing key we've implemented. To read more about the new package signing key, refer to: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/New_signing_key https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Enabling_new_signing_key In addition, Rawhide has returned to service, as well as our other services such as Fedora Hosted. As always, our team of system administrators makes incremental improvements constantly. Sometimes these improvements involve temporary outages, and such outages may occur in the future as part of normal operations. At this time, however, we believe Fedora's recovery efforts are complete. To reiterate our previous statement, we have not found any security vulnerabilities in any Fedora software as a result of our efforts. The security investigation into the intrusion is still in progress. When that investigation is completed, the Fedora Project's intention is to publish a more detailed report on the matter. We will issue further updates as more information becomes available. -- Paul W. Frields gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://paul.frields.org/ - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

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