September 2008 - announce - Fedora Mailing-Lists

by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 143 ============================ Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 143 for the week ending September 7, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue143 This week Announcements trumpets the arrival of a new version of Bodhi, the freeze of Rawhide and some essential reading on the new package keys. In Developments we shock you with "Non-X System Consoles to be Removed". Virtualization alerts you to "Virt-manager 0.6.0 Released" and dives into how developers are "Laying the Groundwork for Xen Domain 0 Support". The ever entertaining Artwork beat examines "How to Select a Winning Theme" and SecurityAdvisories provides a handy list for your perusal. 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 8 and 9 Updates Jesse Keating wrote more[0] about the status of updates on Fedora 8 and Fedora 9. "We're in the final stages of testing a few corner cases, and preparing the official builds of fedora-release, PackageKit, gnome-packagekit, and unique (needed as a new dep for gnome-packagekit). All existing updates in the old update locations will be purged, and just these updates will be put in their place, signed with our old key. Once you've updated to these packages, the next update attempt will point you to our new locations with our new keys and you should be able to process any further pending updates. You'll be prompted to import the new key along the way." Additionally, "these updates are designed to transition users from our old repo locations to new locations that have all our updates re-signed with a new set of keys[1]." I encourage everyone to read both announcements, and also to visit the information page on the Fedora wiki[2]. [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg000... [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg000... [2] https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Enabling_new_signing_key Bodhi 0.5! Luke Macken has been very active in Bodhi development lately[3]. "One of the most noticable changes is that bodhi is much more responsive. Previously, bodhi was a single python process, running on a single server. This single server was also responsible for composing the updates repositories, and rawhide, among lots of other bodhi-related churn. This lead to much pain and suffering for all. The bodhi deployment has since changed. All bodhi requests are now load balanced to a bunch of app servers, each running mod_wsgi with multiple bodhi processes, each with multiple threads. All of the hard work is now done on an isolated releng server. This separate bodhi "masher" is now responsible for composing repositories, updating bugs, generating update notices, sending emails, extended metadata generation, and calculating metrics. I also added support for inter-bodhi communication, which allows our bodhi web frontends to kick off push requests to our bodhi-masher instance." Plenty more new-feature discussion in the full email. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00... Frozen for Fedora 10 Beta Jesse Keating announced[4] that Rawhide is now frozen for Fedora 10 Beta. "Rawhide will compose from the frozen content so that we all are aware of what Beta is going to be comprised of. Extra scruitiny and testing of rawhide over the next week is greatly appreciated." [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00... =Developments= In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley External Repositories and the New Keys As a result of the re-signing all the packages with a new key as a security precaution[1] some problems with packages from third-party repositories were reported[2] by Callum Lerwick. The specific example was an update of the non-Free "xine-lib-extras-nonfree". Seth Vidal suggested[3] a simple fix of yum --skip-broken update. [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142#Getting.Back.on.our.Feet [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01070... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01072... Jef Spaleta experienced[4] no such error and speculated that it was due to some mirrors being temporarily out of sync, which Matthew Woehlke agreed[5] was likely. Kevin Kofler disagreed[6] and diagnosed the problem as a "chicken and egg" one in which it was impossible to get the new repository key which in turn would enable the new, matching xine-lib to be obtained. He suggested that while it was possible to use yum - --skip-broken or yum --exclude for a selective update it would be better for new users to "[...] use the PackageKit GUI, click on "Review updates" and uncheck the xine-lib-extras-nonfree update, then apply." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01073... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01090... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01124... Thorsten Leemhuis thought[7] that this was a general problem for the livna repository in which they can only "push [too] early or [too] late". He had outlined the problem previously (see FWN#138 "Solving the Unsynchronized Release of Package Dependencies"[8]) but his suggested solution of adding a brief time period during which yum keeps checking for missing dependencies had not obtained traction. Thorsten explained again: "[...] the problem happens each time when Livna/RPM Fusion packages with deps on a specific Fedora packages get pushed in sync; that creates a lot of trouble * I'd say once for 24 hours each two weeks." He conceded[9] that yum --skip-broken was "[...] best answer, but that's not enabled by default in Fedora. Livna/RPM Fusion could fix that via its releasepackages, but that's not nice and I want to avoid going that route." On the foot of a suggestion made[10] by Harald Hoyer to add "More Information button in PackageKit dialogs, which explains the situation and that this might only just take some days to resolve[.]" Richard Hughes asked[11] for specific suggestions to improve the current dialogs. He added that "[m]y personal view is that by showing an error dialog, we've lost, and should avoid doing it at all costs." Thorsten responded[12] to Harald that he believed that it was best to "[...] enable skip-broken by default, but show the error to the user if security updates are involved *or* if the problem doesn't vanish within 72 hours after it had been hit on the client for the first time" and that for the latter cases PackageKit could show some more information. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01097... [8] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue138#Solving.the.Unsynchronized.Rel... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01080... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01143... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01149... [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01144... Non-X System Consoles to be Removed ArthurPemberton was concerned[1] about the best way to help debug the many [PulseAudio] issues which he was experiencing on Fedora 9. He asked "[w]hat information should I gather, how, and where should I present it?" This innocent enquiry spawned several sub-threads which avoided answering his question. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00982... In the first Bill Crawford recommended[2] disabling PulseAudio and although Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams listed features unique to it Karel Zak was[3] skeptical that "ordinary" users would need them. Toshio Kuratomi responded[4] that the network transport features were very useful for thinclients. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01053... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01107... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01110... Janina Sajka chimed in[5] to agree with Arthur that while the idea of PulseAudio was appealing and "[...] holds great promise for accessibility [...]" there appeared to be practical problems to sort out. Janina referenced SpeakupModified.org, which provides repositories for a Fedora-derived distribution tailored towards users that rely on audio cues instead of visual ones, and noted that it was currently necessary to disable PulseAudio because "[...] one gets no audio until after a user logs in on the GUI. So, how are those who need screen reader support supposed to use the a11y features of GDM? As it stands, there seems no way to get console audio without that GUI login. Also a nonstarter in the screen reader user community." She asked if anyone had a "working init script for pulseaudio as a system daemon?" None of the many message that followed appeared to have an answer to this question. In part this appeared[6] to be because < Orca can handle the audio rendering of the GDM login screen. Colin provided[7] references that should make it possible to configure GDM to work this way out of the box using GConf settings. It seemed[8] that this was a possible solution. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01179... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01189... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01213... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01240... At this point Colin Walters set off a firestorm of complaints and queries when he announced[9], as an aside, that "[w]e're going to be removing the legacy non-X system consoles by default in the long run." [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01180... Jerry james listed[10] three scenarios in which he felt it would be very useful to have text consoles. The advantages included faster startup than with Xorg and independence from a damaged X session. Colin rebutted[11] most of these with the argument that "login is slow" was a bug which should be fixed and that the other scenarios also were constructed on the basis of bugs which should be fixed (in the applications themselves and in Xorg's ability to handle crashes.) [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01186... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01190... Matthew Woehlke also wondered what would happen if Xorg itself was broken and Colin asked[12] rhetorically "What happens when the linux kernel is broken? What happens when /bin/sh is broken? What happens when NetworkManager is broken?" He added that a compressed recovery image should be included by default in a Fedora install. Matthew's response suggested[13] that although it would be possible to recover it would mean having to find a rescue disk and to reboot. He expressed a preference for "[having] X fail to start and dump me at a normal console from which I can fix the problem *without rebooting*, much less needing to dig up a rescue disk :P" and compared the alternative to the fragility of Windows. The issue then became a little clouded when Colin stated "I believe we already do that today, and am not advocating removing that functionality if possible. Anyways, I've said what I need to, so hopefully people won't be surprised later." Further requests[14][15] for clarification on the previous statement produced no simple response, although later Colin did appear to confirm[16] the impression that he saw this as an essential change for the evolution of Fedora as a Desktop. [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01194... [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01197... [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01199... [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01203... [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01209... make force-tag Gone The removal of make force-tag was objected to[1] by Bastien Nocerra as it forced bumping the Release of packages even for trivial changes. A massive thread resulted with a good deal of agreement expressed with Bastien. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00675... Mike McGrath made[2] the case that if maintainers tested packages before committing them and adduced the necessity of the current workflow in producing an audit trail for licensing as a concrete reason. Jon Ciesla had earlier mentioned using TAG_OPTS=-F make tag as a work around and now asked[3] if "the Makefile can be modified to prevent it, so that others who didn't know [that this invalidates the audit trail] stop doing it?" Doug Ledford responded[4] that this would be unenforceable as it would still allow the CVS command to be run by hand and "[i]f our recent 'incident' showed us anything, it's that things like this need to be enforced on the CVS server if they are going to be enforced at all." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00725... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00736... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00904... Jesse Keating argued[5] that the issue was more GPL compliance than an audit trail and outlined why he would personally prefer to move away from building from CVS tags. Jef Spaleta suggested[6] that Mike McGrath had misspoken: "You are of course free to make 300 small separate specfile changes between each build attempt. There is a desire to move to a point where we can be reasonably sure that a cvs tag corresponds to a specific build. Since we have no way of making only tags corresponding to successfully built packages immutable, all tags must be immutable" and like Mike asked for a way to mark as immutable a subset of CVS tags corresponding to a successful Koji build. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00740... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00786... The thread is recommended reading for package maintainers and the brief summary above misses many important points. Graphics Modesetting Changes A post by Dave Airlie reminded[1] the list that [KernelModesetting][2] was going to be one of the notable features of Fedora 10 for recent Radeon "r300 to r500 (and possibly r600/r700)" and Intel "from i830 to GM45 (though it may end up i915 and up only)" GPUs . Adam Jackson responded[3] to Bill Crawford that r200 class hardware would probably not get modesetting in Fedora 10. Among other things this will have cosmetic advantages such as removing flickers from the startup sequence, reducing Xorg startup times and practical advantages such as oops/panic messages while Xorg is running and improved suspend/resume support. Dave cautioned that only a subset of the GPUs were working for the beta release "[...] r300 to r500 class of hardware, while we await upstream changes to the Intel driver" and noted that to disable modesetting one should append nomodeset to the kernel command line via GRUB. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00991... [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KernelModesetting [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01019... In response to Hans de Goede Dave welcomed[4] bug reports of the "output doesn't light up" type and suggested using an ssh session to reboot to runlevel 3 with nomodeset and then rmmod radeon drm; modprobe drm debug=1; modprobe radeon modeset=1 and attach dmesg and an Xorg log to the bugzilla entry. Following this recipe produced[5] no luck for "Joshua C." as everything froze once he followed the last step. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01004... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01018... Skepticism about inserting the Intel driver code after the beta testing period was expressed[6] by Jeremy Katz on the foot of such late changes lacking both the visibility necessary for testing and the time to fix any bugs revealed. Jeremy was mildly scathing: "Yeah, I've seen intel's 'mature' code before. Excuse me if this is anything but reassuring." Jesse Keating and Christopher Snook seemed[7] to accept Jeremy's point and leaned towards the idea of implementing the KernelModesetting contingency plan[8] of including the modesetting code disabled by default, but allowing users to enable it on the kernel command line. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01036... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01055... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01055... Adam Jackson wondered whether Jeremy was advocating removing all the new code or testing it all and Jeremy suggested[9] the third option of only enabling the radeon code for now and waiting for Fedora 11 to enable the Intel code. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01068... When "Joshua C." asked[10] for a list of working radeon cards and suggested applying the contingency plan because "f10 is just a month away" he was corrected [11] by Paul Frields that it was approximately two months away with a development freeze in six weeks. Dave asked[12] Joshua to "[...] stop scare mongering[,] it's a beta release, if it still doesn't work at devel freeze I'll blacklist all the broken machines" which reaction surprised[13] Joshua a little. [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01077... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01115... [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01117... [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01147... Root Login Disallowed on GDM Surprise was expressed[1] by "Dr. Diesel" when he attempted to log in as root via GDM[2] to a rawhide install. "Dr. Diesel" reported that it was possible to log in via the console in runlevel 3. He asked if he should file a bugzilla entry. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01205... [2] http://www.gnome.org/projects/gdm/ Darrell Pfeifer quoted[3] the changelog as evidence that this restriction was intentional to which "Dr. Diesel" responded that it would be a good idea to change the prompt to "[...] something like 'Root login disabled'[.]". Matthew Woehlke was disturbed and wondered "[...] what exactly are we supposed to do when the user login gets hosed? Reach for a rescue disk? (Seriously, what's with the sudden trend to make fixing problems harder by making recovery modes inaccessible in an apparent bid to hide the "confusing/potentially dangerous" bits of the system from the user?)" The latter part of this apparently being a reference to another recent thread (see this FWN#143 "Non-X System Consoles to be Removed".) [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01206... Benjamin Lewis presented[4] a straightforward, obvious way of fixing such problems: "CTRL+ALT+F1, login as root, fix it, CTRL+ALT+F7 to get back to GDM" and Martin Sourada added "[or] boot to runlevel 3, login as root there and startx..." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01225... The discussion was moved on[5] by Nigel Jones with a suggestion that the default setup should configure sudo to allow the first user configured during firstboot to have "full access w/ password." Steven Moix disagreed[6] as this all seemed like the "Ubuntu 'protect us from ourselves' way" which removed the conscious choice to log in as root. Martin Sourada was also filled[7] with dismay at the idea, but his objection was that PolicyKit was a superior solution to sudo. This preference was confronted[8] by Thorsten Leemhuis with a request to "[...] please tell me how for example read /var/log/messages or other log files from /var/log/ using PolicyKit from a -gnome,kde-terminal with an easy to remember and fast to type command (like 'sudo') [.]" Thorsten also suggested that firstboot could present a checkbox labeled "User is the sysadmin for this system" that when checked would configure sudo and/or PolicyKit or any other desiderata for allowing root privileges for the user. Matthew Miller largely agreed with this and suggested that "uncommenting the wheel group in /etc/sudoers, and having said checkbox add the user to the wheel group" would be the way to do it, but Seth Vidal raised[9] the problem of "[...] the wheel group, on systems which are using some other form of nss than local files, can be mucked with too easily." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01222... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01224... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01228... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01233... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01238... All this was strangely reminiscent of previous discussions, e.g. FWN#103 "Root Login And Display Managers In Rawhide"[10] except that PolicyKit now offers some possible new directions as Martin Sourada outlined[11:] "What I am mostly against is having full access to sudo without password by default by any user. I believe PolicyKit is designed to solve this issue by granting rights (by admin) to user to do this and that and not do other admin tasks [...] the implementation should IMHO be like cat/nano/vi/whatever detects that you are trying to access some file you don't have enough rights to access, then it asks PolicyKit whether to allow it or not and PolicyKit handles the rest (i.e. checks whether your admin already allowed that access for you, if not asks for root password for allowing the access and if succeeded sends back that its OK for you to access the file). Ideally it wouldn't require any additional command (like sudo) [...] When I want to view logs (though I don't very much understand why I cannot read them as normal user) I just log in as root (in console/gnome-terminal only!). Yeah it's not pleasant to write root password every time I want to do some admin task - and that's probably one of the reasons why PolicyKit has been developed - but I think allowing full access to sudo without password for normal user account is a big security hole." [10] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue103#Root.Login.And.Display.Manager... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01237... Missing Screen Locking Spurs Inquiry Into User-state Maintenance When John Ellson enquired[1] why "[...] my userid, and only my userid, has no Lock Screen menu item or applet?" a brief thread revealed the many places in which user state is kept. The answer, for the impatient, turned out[2] to be that John had experimented with Pessulus[3], which allows administrators to enforce mandatory GConf settings on users. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01027... [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01108... [3] http://live.gnome.org/Pessulus John's first pass at the problem was to wipe out some dot files rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity and this failed to restore the default. Chris Snook suggested[4] that he consider /tmp</cod> as another location where "per-user state is kept" but John had investigated[5] both <code>/tmp and /var/tmp. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01031... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01034... Jesse Keating wondered[6] if "[...] it's not a ConsoleKit interaction making the session think your user isn't at the console?" John replied that he had gone to the extraordinary lengths of "moving aside my home directory, deleting my userid, removing everything in /tmp and /var/tmp, rebooting creating a new userid with the same name (but different user and group numbers), and it still has no Lock Screen!!!" Jef Spaleta made[7] the disclaimer that he did not "[...] understand PolicyKit/ConsoleKit well enough to help you track it down in the filesystem with 100% confidence[...]" but suggested searching in /var/lib/PolicyKit and /var/lib/PolicyKit-public for per-user authorization rules. This was reported[8] as fruitless by John, as was running polkit-auth. John wondered where the output of polkit-auth came from as "Removing /var/lib/PolicyKit/user-ellson.auths doesn't change the output." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01040... [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01050... [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01059... MatthiasClasen cut straight to the chase and suggested[9] a good, old-fashioned backtrace "Why don't we stop all this blind guessing, and attach a debugger to the panel instead ? It would be so much easier..." Although John wondered[10] why gnome-panel sprang to Matthias' mind as a culprit a later suggestion[11] to "[...] break in panel_lock_screen_action_available [...]" gave him a clue as to the problem. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01064... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01074... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg01076... Pessulus has been around since Fedora 7 at least and the process above was a bit of a wild goose chase, but what is interesting is how difficult it is to solve such a problem due to the many places in which such information is stored. =Infrastructure= This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala More puppet training! Mike McGrath writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1] Mike proposed that he is going to hold a couple of trainings for Puppet on fedora-infrastructure. And asked if any one had questions etc to be included in the training. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September... Removal of old projects from fedorahosted. susmit shannigrahi writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [2] Susmit reminded the list that, Fedora has a policy to remove _any_ hosted projects that are not altered or updated for last six months. And provided a list of projects, which falls into this category and they will soon be removed. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September... Beta Freeze Mike McGrath writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [3] Mike reminded everyone that the beta freeze is going to live and it will end on 2008-09-24. This is the first pre-release freeze type the infrastructure team has had [4] [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September... [4] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/SOP/Release#Change_Freeze =Artwork= In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei How to Select a "Winning" Theme MairinDuffy opened[1] a debate on @fedora-art about the best way to select the final theme in a release: "We have not yet had a case where more than one theme met this basic requirement. In case we do have multiple themes that meet this requirement, we need a fair method to choose which theme is selected as the default" and going further, she proposed a solution and asked for opinions: "My suggestion is that we have a vote within the set of active Fedora art team contributors. The problem is how do we determine who is allowed in this vote - who is active? " [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00095.html SamueleStorari opted[2] for a wide vote in the community "I think the vote will be totally open to the whole community." arguing that "the graphic it's made for all, think about art, think about expression, it comes from the inside need of someone to express to other, to comunicate.", an opinion endorsed by MariaLeandro[3] and IanWeller who proposed[4] an alternate and complex system "Or, perhaps even better, take a two-part voting approach; 50% of the vote allocated to current Art Team members (recent contributions, 6 months, yada yada) and 50% for the community." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00099.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00105.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00114.html On the other hand, NicuBuculei opposed[5] the community vote invoking the notion of competence "the trouble is that the large community knows little about usability and good design", an opinion similar to that expressed[6] by MatthiasClasen "Taste is not something that can be decided with simple majority. Voting for the default theme would pretty much devolve into 'which is the coolest looking background when glancing at a bunch of screenshots', which is not at all what a good default theme is about. This forum is the place for qualified and interested people to work on the art that makes up the default theme. It should also be the place where the default theme gets put together." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00101.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00116.html Another argument against a community-wide vote was raised[7] by MairinDuffy "we don't really have time to plan for a Fedora-wide vote, and since there's not much time to wait on people to vote and to get the word out, we won't have a good representation of our base in the vote results." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00106.html - From his position as a Fedora Board member, JeffSpaleta came to the conclusion "I consider the multiple rounds of discussion over the themes as a prolonged 'community' decision. The final artwork decision is a culminating event in a process. Are people encouraged to participate in the earlier stages of that process as part of the art team? if they choose not to participate in the previous rounds do they have the context to make informed decisions at the final stage? Have they earned the right to be a part of the final decision? I'm not sure they do." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00111.html As a solution to get the themes as soon as possible into the hands of the users and receive early feedback MairinDuffy issued a last-minute call[9] for packaging the current proposals into Fedora 10 Beta "if we could get a package put together with the wallpapers that are in the running so far it could make the Beta." The call answered quickly by MartinSourada [10], who created the packages.The packages were reviewed and are already available in Rawhide. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00123.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00137.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 * amarok-1.4.10-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * libtiff-3.8.2-11.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * awstats-6.8-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * openoffice.org-2.4.1-17.6.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * Django-0.96.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * gnome-packagekit-0.2.5-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * fedora-release-9-5.transition - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * PackageKit-0.2.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * bitlbee-1.2.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * bluez-libs-3.35-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * bluez-utils-3.35-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * rpy-1.0.3-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * R-2.7.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * samba-3.2.3-0.20.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * wordpress-2.6.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * xastir-1.9.2-9.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * libxml2-2.6.32-3.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * xine-lib-1.1.15-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * adminutil-1.1.7-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * drupal-6.4-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * fedora-ds-base-1.1.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * wordpress-2.6.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * bitlbee-1.2.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * poppler-0.8.1-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * httrack-3.42.93-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * fedora-release-9-5.transition - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * tomcat6-6.0.18-1.1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * wireshark-1.0.3-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * libHX-1.23-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * gnome-packagekit-0.2.5-2.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * pam_mount-0.47-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * PackageKit-0.2.5-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * ipa-1.1.0-7.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... Fedora 8 Security Advisories * fedora-release-8-6.transition - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * Django-0.96.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * amarok-1.4.10-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * libtiff-3.8.2-11.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * libxml2-2.6.32-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * xine-lib-1.1.15-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * xastir-1.9.2-8.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * adminutil-1.1.7-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * rpy-1.0.3-3.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * R-2.7.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * yelp-2.20.0-12.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * drupal-5.10-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * bitlbee-1.2.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * awstats-6.8-2.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * openoffice.org-2.3.0-6.16.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * wordpress-2.6.1-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * bitlbee-1.2.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * wordpress-2.6.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * fedora-ds-base-1.1.2-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * httrack-3.42.93-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * wireshark-1.0.3-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * libHX-1.23-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * pam_mount-0.47-1.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * ipa-1.1.0-4.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... =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 0.6.0 Released Cole Robinson announced[1] the release of virt-manager[2] 0.6.0. Features include: * Remote storage management and provisioning * Remote VM installation * Use Avahi to list libvirtd instances * Virtio and USB options when adding a disk device and many more. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00026.html [2] http://www.virt-manager.org Virtinst 0.400.0 Released Cole Robinson announced[1] the release of virtinst 0.400.0. Features include: * New tool 'virt-convert' * New tool 'virt-pack' * Support for remote VM installation * Use virtio disk/net drivers if chosen os entry supports it and many more. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00027.html Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. Laying the Groundwork for Xen Domain 0 Support There are further developments in the state of Xen in upstream Linux (see FWN#137[3]). Pasi Kärkkäinen forwarded[1] a patch announcement[2] from xen-devel list. This set of seven patches begin to lay the groundwork for Xen domain 0 support. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00001.html [2] http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2008-09/threads.html#0... [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue137#State_of_Xen_in_Upstream_Linux Daniel P. Berrange said[4] these patches will make their way into rawhide when they are merged into the LKML[5] dev tree line used by rawhide at that time. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-September/msg00003.html [5] http://lkml.org Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. Libvirt 0.4.5 Released Daniel Veillard announced[1] the release of libvirt 0.4.5. In addition to a long changelog, the "main features are the improvement of OpenVZ and LXC, the uniform XML handling (and hence format) th[r]ough all drivers, improvements in devices handling for QEmu/KVM and storage pool source discovery." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00186.html Segfault if no Qemu Emulator Passed Cole Robinson patched[1] a bug that resulted in a segfault if a Qemu domain is defined without an emulator value. Daniel Berrange expressed[2] displeasure at letting this bug slip through and proposed a "brown paper bag" release. Daniel Veillard advised[3] against rushing the fix, and offered to push the patch to Fedora's build while other distributions could pick up the fix in a week or two when libvirt 0.4.6 would presumably be released. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00199.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00202.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00206.html Daniel Berrange pointed out code test coverage reports[4] on the build server, and highlighted the need to create a functional test rig for the mass of code that is simply not possible to unit test due to interactions with host OS state / functionality. [4] http://builder.virt-manager.org/module-libvirt--devel.html Ability to Nice KVM Processes Henri Cook expressed[1] a desire to nice KVM processes, and proposed a means to pass arbitrary command string parameters to the process startup. As mentioned[2] in FWN #141, Daniel Berrange pointed out[3] the goal of libvirt is consistent API representation across hypervisors. Fortunately there is a 'schedular parameters' API in libvirt. All that's needed is for someone to implement the schedular parameters driver API for KVM. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00209.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141#Exposing_Unique_Hypervisor_Fea... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00210.html RFC Thoughts on Open Source Hypervisor Management Nathan Charles described[1] his ideal clustered VM provisioning system. Features would include * cluster administration is done from the command line * cluster administration can be performed from any node * a new node can join a cluster on a local subnet with one command * local storage resources are presented to the cluster so there is no need to have predefined NAS/SAN/iSCSI * cluster will load balance vm instances from node to node * a node shouldn't need more than one nic but adding additional nic's provides failover and load balancing Nathan acknowledged oVirt's virtues, but stated it requires a lot of substantial changes and significant modification to work with an existing provisioning infrastructure. Nathan requested comments on his thoughts. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00195.html The only reply[2] so far came from Stefan de Konink, who pointed to some code[3] which seems[4] to be a "handler for libvirt using avahiclient". [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00196.html [3] http://repo.or.cz/w/handlervirt.git [4] http://kinkrsoftware.nl/projecten.html#virt oVirt Devel List This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. oVirt Source Repository Refactored Perry N. Myers announced[1] the completion of the restructuring of the oVirt source mentioned in FWN #142[2]. This reorganization resulted in commits of numerous spec files and other changes making an RPM-based install more feasible. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00145.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142#Renaming_oVirt_RPMs oVirt Migration Status Atsushi SAKAI asked[1] if the following assumptions were true. KVM supports migration, while Qemu does not. Ovirt release supports migration, developer version does not. Chris Lalancette clarified[2] "there is live migration code in upstream kvm userspace, but not in upstream qemu" and fully emulated guests can be live migrated as long as the KVM binary is used to do it (which ovirt does). [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00107.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00108.html Atsushi inquired of the fake managed nodes, and Chris Lalancette explained[3] the fake managed nodes are abstractions to allow experimenting oVirt with limited hardware. Perry N. Myers added[4] there is work underway to remove the 'fake node' concept. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00110.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00111.html Network Interface Bonding and Failover Work Continues Darryl L. Pierce continued[1] work on NIC bonding and failover (see FWN #142[2]) laying out the process a node will use to configure interfaces on bootup and the selection of bonding type which must be selected on the server. Types include * Load Balancing * Failover * Broadcast * Link Aggregation [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00243.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142#Network_Interface_Bonding_and... Daniel P. Berrange inquired[3] if those four options was a limit of the bonding driver or a design choice, since more complex bonding configurations are plausible. Darryl L. Pierce affirmed[4] it is a design choice to keep things simple initially. Chris Lalancette pointed[5] out there are many combinations of bridges, bonds, and VLANs, and "we have to figure out which combinations are completely insane, which are valid and make sense, and then make sure we can handle those." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00244.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00245.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00246.html Related discussion occurred in another[6] thread on how to configure multiple bondings for a host in the UI. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00262.html Other Virtualization News This section contains virtualization news which may not have been directly discussed on the above mailing lists. Red Hat Acquires Makers of KVM, Qumranet Inc. On September 4, 2008 Red Hat acquired[1][2] Qumranet, Inc., the inventor and key maintainer of KVM. Qumranet also develops Solid ICE[3] which runs a user's desktop in a KVM virtual machine in the data center with users connecting via thin client or other options. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIzjJtzHDc8tpb2uURAt7cAJ4wbxy9uFmQ8YBiE4+4mhWr3ZVewgCdFbzR EQCCTko6S8KVR4HASblGW+g= =toBe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Fedora 8 and 9 updates re-enabled

by Jesse Keating

In a few hours, updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 will start hitting mirrors. These updates are designed to transition users from our old repo locations to new locations that have all our updates re-signed with a new set of keys. Most users will simply need to apply the offered updates, and later apply any further updates, and verify/import the new GPG key. The process to getting new updates is two stage. Stage 1) Users configured to get updates from existing repos will see a small set of updates available in the next few hours/days. These updates include fedora-release, PackageKit, gnome-packagekit, and unique (for Fedora 8, only fedora-release is offered). These updates should be applied as soon as possible. Stage 2) Once the above updates have been applied, your update tools (yum, PackageKit, pirut) will see a new repository and a larger set of updates available. This is your new standard flow of updates, that will continue to see new updates as the lifetime of Fedora 8 and 9 progress. There will be further milestones in the future that involve redirection of release package repos to match that of updates, and removing of old gpg key from rpm trust. For more details and an FAQ, please see https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Enabling_new_signing_key -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Fedora 8 and 9 updates status

by Jesse Keating

As you well know, we have been working hard to get updates for 8 and 9 flowing again, complete with new package signing keys. Discussion has been somewhat quiet on this front as we've all had our heads down and have been working hard toward a solution, one that involves little to no manual effort on behalf of our users. Today we've reached a major milestone in this progress. We have done a successful compose of all the existing and as of yesterday pending updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, all signed with our new keys. These updates will soon hit mirrors in a new set of directory locations. What we don't have quite yet is the updated fedora-release package in the old updates location that will get you the new keys and the new repo locations. The last mile testing of this update requires that new updates be live on the mirrors. Due to the size of the resigned updates, it may take a good while for our sync process. This may delay getting the new fedora-release out until tomorrow, but we'll be working hard on it. While we're working on this update, we'll also be drafting a FAQ page to explain to users what it is that we're doing, and hopefully answer some of the questions that will come up. This document will be living though, and as you encounter questions yourself, or questions via one of our many avenues of support (email, IRC, forums, LUGS, etc..) please help us in growing that document. Announcements regarding the location of said document and how to help with content will be coming shortly. We deeply appreciate the enormous magnitude of patience you the greater community has shown us the Fedora project as we work though these serious issues. It is a great testament to how wonderful it is to work in and with the Fedora community. -- Jesse Keating Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature! identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating

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Fedora Week News, Issue 142

by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 142 ============================= Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 142 for the week ending September 7, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue142 This week in Announcements we alert you to the "Fedora 10 Beta Freeze Coming Soon" and the new "FESCo Issue Tracking". In PlanetFedora "Tech Tidbits" contains some juicy morsels on evaluating package sizes and Haskell. In Developments we examine the process of "Getting Back On Our Feet" after the intrusions. SecurityAnnouncements finally has some content. Artwork covers "Working on a Sound Theme" and the acceptance of the "Echo Icon Theme as a Fedora 10 Feature" Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and activities in the Fedora community. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[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 Echo Monthly News, Issue 1 Martin Sourada announced[0] the availability of the premiere issue of "Echo Monthly News[1]." Said Martin, "Since it's our first release it is not perfect and therefore we will appreciate any feedback, suggestions for improvement, etc. at the fedora-art-list and #fedora-art at irc.freenode.net." [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg000... [1] https://fedorahosted.org/echo-icon-theme/wiki/MonthlyNews/Issue1 Fedora 10 Beta Freeze Coming Soon Jesse Keating discussed[2] the Fedora 10 Beta schedule. "The new freeze date is Sept. 9, which is in 7 days. This is a friendly reminder that the freeze is coming up, and coming up quickly. I realize that rawhide has been less than great lately, and we're working quite hard to fix the issues." [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-September/msg00... Fedora 8 and 9 Updates Status Jesse Keating wrote[3] about the status of updates on Fedora 8 and Fedora 9. "We have done a successful compose of all the existing and as of yesterday pending updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, all signed with our new keys. These updates will soon hit mirrors in a new set of directory locations. What we don't have quite yet is the updated fedora-release package in the old updates location that will get you the new keys and the new repo locations. The last mile testing of this update requires that new updates be live on the mirrors." For the full announcement, follow the link below. [3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg000... FESCo Issue Tracking Kevin Fenzi announced[4] the new FESCo issue-tracking tool. "In the past, interested parties could bring matters to the attention of FESCo in several ways: Mailing the chair, following up to the schedule posting on the devel list asking for a new topic to be added, or attending meetings on irc and bringing up the topic at the end of the meeting in the Open Discussion phase. While these methods work well for issues that simply need a bit of discussion and a decision, longer term issues that should be tracked and discussed further sometimes are forgotten." [4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-September/msg000... =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 Cambridge John Poelstra wrote[0] about the revised Fedora 10 schedule, which as been moved to account for the infrastructure problems that we faced a few weeks ago. "Last week the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) ratified the updated schedule proposed by the Release Engineering team. This resulted in feature freeze for Fedora moving to 2008-09-09 and GA to 2008-11-18. This three week change to the schedule was to accommodate the recent infrastructure outages." [0] http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/fedora-10-schedule-update/ Another Fedora Test Day is in the books, and James Laska wrote[1] about it on his blog. "There was a really strong developer turn out for this Test Day. In addition to David Huff, the appliance-tools developer, some of the oVirt team showed up to help walk through oVirt's use of appliance-tools. This was tremendously helpful to see how appliance-tools can be used by other projects. Thanks to Alan Pevec, Bryan Kearney and Darryl Pierce from the oVirt team for joining the event. Having such a tight feedback loop with the developers during Test Days has been very helpful, I hope we can continue with that format." [1] http://jlaska.livejournal.com/1444.html =Artwork= Nicu Buculei posted[2] the latest iterations of some of the potential Fedora 10 artwork themes. "The second round in the process of creating a visual theme for Fedora 10 ended yesterday, those are the proposals meeting the requirement and which will pass into the third (last) round (listed in chronological order)." Your beat writer is particularly fond of the Gears/Steampunk theme as well as the Solar theme, but thinks that all four are fantastic pieces of art, and should be carried over into Fedora 11's proposals. [2] http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/2008/09/fedora-10-themes-round-2.html Tech Tidbits Yaakov Nemoy reported[3] on the state of Haskell in Fedora. "After nearly 9 months, I am finally at the point I wanted to be regarding Haskell. Last January i wanted to submit packages for my favourite window manager to Fedora. I got blocked because of a lack of packaging guidelines and familiarity with Haskell or the Glasgow Haskell Compiler." [3] http://loupgaroublond.blogspot.com/2008/09/finally-done-with-haskell-thin... Continuing his habit of posting yum-related tutorials, James Antill posted[4] a quick explanation of packages sizes in yum and rpm. "It's pretty common to think that a specific thing always has a specific size, and people tend to think of an "rpm package" as a single object thus. the it's common to ask what is "the size of an rpm". However if you have a 1MB text file, and gzip compresses it to 50KB which you then upload to a HTTP server you now have at least 3 different sizes: text size; compressed size and upload size (includes HTTP headers etc.) and asking for the size. So it is with rpm packages, and their many sizes." [4] http://illiterat.livejournal.com/6439.html FUDCon Brno FUDCon Brno is happening as Fedora Weekly News freezes, but there are a bunch of photos online[5] and Max Spevack has been providing frequent updates[6] about the event on his blog. [5] http://flickr.com/groups/fudconbrno/pool/ [6] http://spevack.livejournal.com =Developments= In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley Getting Back on our Feet On 05-09-2008 Jesse Keating posted[1] the good news that "[...] we have done a successful compose of all the existing[,] and as of yesterday[,] pending updates for Fedora 8 and Fedora 9, all signed with our new keys." He cautioned that the size of this backlog of updates meant that it would take some time to get them out to mirrors. The updates will be in new directory locations and there will be an "[...] updated fedora-release package in the old updates location that will get you the new keys and the new repo locations." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00329... Jesse was keen to point out that there would be a FAQ to which we can all contribute and that its location will be announced shortly. Sean Darcy, after thanking Jesse for all the work he had put in, asked[2] how he could get the new key for updates right now without having to wait for the fedora-release package to be placed in the old repository location. A variety of answers followed and the canonical one appeared[3] to be that given by Todd Zullinger in which he suggested obtaining fedora-release from CVS and then checking that the fingerprints matched those published[4] on the FedoraProject website. Some minor confusion followed[5] as the example presented on the web page uses the old key signed by "fedora(a)redhat.com" but the new key is signed by "fedora(a)fedoraproject.org". Similarly the use of "PUBKEY" as a placeholder variable on the web page caused some difficulties which Todd cleared[6] up again. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00392... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00396... [4] https://fedoraproject.org/keys [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00406... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00417... Jeffrey Ollie made[7] the good point that using a GPG WoT would make it easier for Fedorans to have confidence that they had obtained the correct key and hoped that those at the Brno FUDCon could "arrange an impromptu keysigning[.]" [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00411... Early in the week on 02-09-2008 Stefan Grosse asked[8] politely when the resigned Fedora 9 updates would be available. Bruno Wolff III suggested[9] "If you are worried about something in particular, you can look at bodhi to see pending updates and updates-testing and get rpms from koji if there is something you want right now." A brief discussion between Till Maas, Jesse Keating and Bruno Wolff explored whether it was possible to download from Koji using SSL if one did not have a FAS account. Bruno testified[10] "I needed certs (two from fedora and mine) to get the bodhi client to work. I used this to grab a list of stable updates last week [...] I didn't bother with ssl when grabbing them from koji." Till was[11] using wget to grab the packages from Koji and found it necessary to use certificates. Jesse showed[12] that it was possible to do a koji download-build to get packages anonymously. [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00083... [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00086... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00089... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00092... [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00096... In a separate thread Jesse Keating announced[13] that the revised Fedora 10 freeze date would be 09-09-2008 and as part of a friendly reminder that it was coming up quickly observed "I realize that rawhide has been less than great lately, and we're working quite hard to fix the issues. The installer images from the 30th may be of use in getting rawhide installed and then updating to what is in the public repos. See http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/mash/rawhide20080830/development/ (please only grab the installer images from there, not the entire tree)." Matt Miller reported[14] a successful net install from the Fedora 10 alpha images using the rawhide repository. [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00091... [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00107... Removing Packages with Long-standing FTBFS Failures Matt Domsch posted[1] a list of ninety packages which "Fail To Build - From Source" (FTBFS)[2]. Matt noted that some of these packages have failed since 02-2008 and that "[...] packages with unresolved FTBFS bugs immediately following the Alpha release will be removed from the distribution" in line with a proposal passed by FESCo. He asked that concerned parties help to resolve the problems and noted that several of them had easy fixes. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00319... [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FTBFS Response was fairly quick and positive from both those listed as maintainers and concerned parties that needed the packages in Fedora 10. One interesting ramification of the removal of such packages was mentioned[3] by Daniel Berrange who asserted "[t]his list is far from complete - if you want to remove these 90, the dependency chain ripple, will entail the removal of tonnes of other packages which depend on these." He asked Matt to generate a report which "[...] shows the ripple effect for each proposed package. If something is just a leaf-node, it isn't very important to worry about, but if something triggers removal of 50 dependant packages that's pretty damn important to fix. This info would be useful in prioritizing which builds need fixing most urgently." SethVidal modified[4] a script written by James Antill so that it did exactly that and Matt posted[5] a link to the script and an example run. Till Maas suggested[6] that it would be useful make sure that a src.rpm responsible for several dependent packages is only counted once. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00320... [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00363... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00361... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00371... The practical consequence of neglecting such dependencies was highlighted[7] by Matthias Clasen when he commented that "djvulibre-devel is a BuildRequires for evince. If you remove djvulibre, evince will become unbuildable." Jesse Keating responded that Daniel, or his team should fix the package as "[i]f we have to do a chained rebuild for various reasons, evince would fail due to this package not building first." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00323... The inclusion of monodevelop in the list had the side effect of spurring the Mono maintainers including Michel Salim, David Nielsen and Paul Johnson to decide[8] to attempt a co-ordinated push of "Mono-2.0". [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00385... MinGW on Fedora The availability of a MinGW development repository was announced[1] by Richard Jones. "MinGW" provides a GNU toolchain on Windows allowing the development of Free native Windows binaries. Richard credited Daniel Berrange with a good deal of the work. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00296... In response to Farkas Levente's question, as to when it would be available in Fedora, Daniel replied[2] that due to the need for "infrastructure" to create a separate repository and dedicated build root it was impossible to predict. Jef Spaleta seemed[3] to be trying to move the process forward and published a draft which explained that "[t]he initial impetus for this effort has been ovirt developers who desire to more easily use Fedora installations as development environments for the work they are doing to build open source cross-platform virtualization tools." The possible impact on FedoraProject resources appears to have led to the compromise of creating a separate repository which could be strictly confined in size. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00298... [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00364... Richard Jones encouraged[4] Farkas to try out MinGW without waiting for official inclusion in Fedora "[...] if you want to download and play with it, and send patches :-) It's currently buildable on Rawhide, and possibly on earlier versions of Fedora too." Farkas then revealed that he currently used an older MinGW on RHEL5 and Richard responded[5] that although there were no srpms at this moment it should be possible to use the specfiles and patches (both in the mercurial repository[6]) to rebuild everything. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00300... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00330... [6] http://hg.et.redhat.com/misc/fedora-mingw--devel/ Dependency Loops Considered Harmful? [[MiroslavLichvar|Miroslav Lichvar] raised[1] the issue of a considerable number of packages (354 by his count) which are components of dependency loops in the rawhide repository. Miroslav provided[2] a list. In such loops two or more RPM packages require each other as dependencies in their spec files with the result that it can become confusing for users trying to remove selected packages manually with yum or rpm. Miroslav wondered whether such loops were acceptable and specifically "why games data depend on binaries?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00149... [2] http://fedorapeople.org/~mlichvar/tmp/rawhide.i386.loops A substantial conversation resulted which exposed the different needs of packagers and users, some possible limitations due to the design of rpm and varied philosophies concerning the correct way to specify dependencies. One of the central examples chosen were the game packages which tend to be split into a "binary" or "engine" package and a companion "data" package for graphics, sound and levels. The central concerns expressed were that occasionally an install followed by a remove will leave "orphaned" packages behind. Also in contention was the specific case of developers experiencing the problem of maintaining a stable environment when there is no easy way of tracking changes to system libraries. The package manager aptitude was mentioned favorably due to its ability to distinguish between packages installed automatically to satisfy dependencies and those which are installed manually. On the one hand Chris Snook and Michael Schwendt advocated[3] that instead of using Requires: foo >= X in their spec files packagers should choose Conflicts: foo < X . The possible downside to this would be installing game data yet having no game engine/binary installed. This was seen as a non-serious problem. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00211... On the other hand Jon Ciesla argued[4] that the advantage of having games data depend on their binaries from a packagers perspective is that it ensures that attempting to upgrade the binary Version without also upgrading the data will fail. The case of allowing minor fixes without forcing users to download a big bundle of data can be handled by bumping the Release of the package. More concisely he answered[5] that the reason for the dependencies was that "[...] so when you remove the game, you remove the data." Michael responded[6] that Jon's example could be handled by using a Requires: foo-data = X without exposing the increased risk of needing to "bump'n'rebuld" the data package each time the engine package incremented its Version while still working with the same data. He characterized such dependencies as "superfluous [...] try[ing] to enhance 'yum remove'." [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00150... [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00151... [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00161... This was not accepted as accurate by Jon and he described the current situation as "require on name and version" for game data which allows Release to be changed without affecting the match on Name and Version "If new data is required, it will change the version. If not, we only increment the binary rpm's release, so the data rpm matches on version and needs no rebuild." Michael responded[7] by laying out two cases, the first of which illustrated the problem of having to update the data package solely to keep in step with updates to the version so that yum remove would function properly. His alternate case used non-versioned dependencies in the data package and strict dependencies in the engine package. Hans de Goede seemed a bit irritated and asked Michael to "Please take an actual look at game spec files before making up all kinds of BS, it's really easy" and argued that for games there was a one-to-one mapping between the engine and the data. He added that just because other cases resulted in dependencies being sucked in by an install and left behind on a remove there was no reason to change the way things were done for games. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00167... Stephen Gallagher suggested that the "groups" exposed through yum should be used to bundle together the multiple packages for an application instead of using looped dependencies to which Callum Lerwick replied[8] that it was actually time to "implement the per-package 'explicitly installed/pulled in as a dep' flag that has been discussed several times in the past, and is already implemented (thus proven) in the 'aptitude' apt front end." He followed this with an amusing piece of hyperbole about "the looming dark future of closed DRM-laden content delivery services[.]" [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00193... Toshio Kuratomi raised[9] the problem faced by developers using system libraries that could come and go due to packages being updated or removed. Callum's suggestion was[10] that developers should be "RPM packag[ing] your app. Apps on your system that are not tracked by RPM are a ticking time bomb of dependency breakage whether or not the 'leaf culling' is performed manually or is assisted by a 'pulled in as dep' flag. A package or distribution update could very well break your app too." Needless to say Toshio had[11] several objections to this including the impact on developer workflow imposed by packaging up everything and the inadvisability of forcing developers to become expert administrators. He suggested that "If we implement this, it needs to be at a low enough level that anyone installing packages on the system will be storing the information. That could mean rpm (since rpm is responsible for taking the package and turning it into files on the filesystem) or that could mean yum since yum is the one that actually knows whether a package is being installed due to depsolving or user request. Doing this at a higher level means that information gets lost (for instance, if you do this in PackageKit, there won't be any information about what anaconda chose to install due to checkboxes being clicked and which things were installed due to dependencies). With that said, there needs to be a way for a developer to tell yum not to prune away leaf packages if they want." A very detailed and amusing discussion with (among others) Matthew Woehlke followed in which Matthew argued[12] for a script which essentially produced a parallel iuserj rpm database so that quick and dirty rpms could be produced locally for developers. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00195... [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00209... [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00214... [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00278... Jef Spaleta wondered[13] what actual examples revealed about the amount of harddrive space being consumed by dependencies and remarked "I hope the packagekit people are watching this discussion. The game data subpackaging issue should be right up their ally in terms of end-user ease of use issues." He discounted the polluting of the packagelist but MichaelSchwendt pointed out[14] that as the packagelist increases then "[because of] the frequent updates common in Fedora land, you need to download and update more[.]" [13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00162... [14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00170... The idea of keeping game data outside of any package management was mentioned[15] by James Antill as an "obvious fix" and he discounted the probability of PackageKit being able to do anything about the issue if yum or rpm could not. Jef responded[16] that "[a]t some point someone is going to have to wade into rpm itself for ease of use of removals to get better" and pointed out that he was "[...] making sure that the people with the right motivation and the right skills find the right way to handle it. That's not going to happen just by telling the current maintainers who are abusing the available requires syntax that they are abusing the syntax and slapping their wrists." Richard Hughes showed[17] that the PackageKit developers were indeed listening to the conversation and mentioned that he had considered "[...] running through a large "get-depends" output into the basename filter, so that the user only sees the 'applications' by default, rather than a huge list[.]" [15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00184... [16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00185... [17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00212... There is a lot more to this conversation than reported here, but the main thrust is that the limitations of rpm have resulted in package maintainers wrangling spec files to do what they want which in some cases has undesirable effects. Fedora Security Tools Spin A suggestion was made[1] by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala to produce a Security Tools spin similar to the "Knoppix Security Tools Distribution"[2] . [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00108... [2] http://knoppix-std.org/index.html Todd Zullinger responded[3] that there was already a spin similar to this being curated by Luke Macken. The SecuritySpin[4] mentioned by Luke seemed to be roughly what Huzaifa was searching for, except that he thought it should have "more tools and [be] more bare bones". [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00110... [4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SecuritySpin Adrian Pilchowiec mentioned[5] a free fork of nessus named OpenVAS[6] as a desirable part of the spin. Luke drew[7] attention to the need for more people to help out with packaging missing tools. Subsequently the wishlist of the project recorded that Huzaifa was packaging up OpenVAS and labrea. [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00275... [6] http://www.openvas.org/ [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00183... =Infrastructure= This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala New Key Repo Locations v2 Warren Togami writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1] Warren sent out a mail enlisting the new repo locations. Also the repo names have been changed so debuginfo and source are always at the end. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September... archives on secondary1 Matt Domsch writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [2] Matt asked if archives.fp.o is on secondary1.fp.o There are 2 separate rsyncd.conf files in puppet, one for archives,one for secondary. Given they land at the same place on the same machine, only the one for secondary is actually in effect. If they're going to be on the same machine, we need to merge them. On this Mike replied with an affirmative saying that they need to be merged. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-September... =Artwork= In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei Art Schedule for Fedora 10 JohnPoelstra showed[1] on @fedora-art a tentative schedule[2]for the Artwork activities and asked for help with it: "1) Which tasks no longer apply and should be removed 2) New tasks which should be added 3) Existing tasks that are wrong" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00388.html [2] http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-10/f-10-art-tasks.html He received corrections about dates from MairinDuffy[3] and tasks from NicuBuculei[4] [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00390.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00001.html Working on a Sound Theme ChrisNorman uploaded[1] a first preview of a new desktop sound theme created for Fedora and he received[2] some feedback about length and content from NicuBuculei: "I am not sure about speaking the English word 'attention' - some people not speaking English may not be that happy. And maybe, just maybe, a few sounds, like 'window-close.wav' are a bit too long". [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00012.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00013.html Echo Icon Theme as a Fedora 10 Feature LuyaTshimbalanga reported[1] about FESCO acceptance of the new Echo icon set as a default in Fedora 10: "Fesco has accepted echo-icon-theme as default icon theme for Fedora 10.[1] Which means we need to push harder to include as many icons as possible using guideline and echo-artist tool now available on rawhide and is waiting for people to get them on both Fedora 8 and 9" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00028.html MatthiasClasen outlined[2] the importance of having Echo as a default in the upcoming beta release "I think we need to act quickly to make Echo the default for the beta, to test the waters before F10" and soon after that he operated the change[3]. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00044.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00056.html MartinSourada noted that the feature depends on the icon coverage "Just a note that Fesco (and many art team members as well) has some concerns about coverage. Simply said if we don't achieve the Mist/gnome icon themes coverage, we'll be rolled back to Mist and wait for another release" and offered to mentor new contributors. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00031.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-September/msg00069.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 As we recover from the disruptions to the infrastructure Security Advisories are starting to reappear. As of 07-09-2008 the following four advisories are however just the results of testing a push after all packages have been signed with the new GPG keys. Please see the Announcements and Developments sections of FWN for more information. =Fedora 9 Security Advisories= * samba-3.2.3-0.20.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * wordpress-2.6.1-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... * bitlbee-1.2.2-1.fc9 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... Fedora 8 Security Advisories * xastir-1.9.2-8.fc8 - https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2008-September/ms... =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 Use Avahi to Discover Local Servers in Virt-manager Cole Robinson committed[1] a patch[2] to add support for avahi polling in the virt-manager 'Open Connection' dialog. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00000.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-August/msg00123.html Virtio Support in Libvirt and Virt-manager Emre Erenoglu asked[1] if virtio[2] would be supported in virt-manager. Daniel P. Berrange said[3] libvirt supports it as of 0.4.4 and virt-manager will soon automatically enable virtio for disks known to include it. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00010.html [2] http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Virtio [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00011.html The design paradigm[4] for virt-manager is to allow selection of OS Type and Variant which informs the features to be enabled, rather than exposing individual features toggles. Cole Robinson agreed[5] exposing the option to enable virtio disks for an unknow virtio-enabled distribution might not be a bad idea. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00013.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00015.html New Virt-manager and Virtinst Releases Pending Cole Robinson announced[1] that with the pending Fedora 10 beta freeze on Tuesday, September 9th new releases of virt-manager + virtinst are imminent. Daniel P. Berrange concurred[2] that libvirt would roll out a new release around that time as well. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00002.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00005.html Virt-install Patch for Disk Size and Sparse Cole Robinson patched[1] virt-install's new --disk option to specify size of new storage, and whether it be create it as a sparse file. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2008-September/msg00004.html Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. Nothing to report this week. Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. Libvirt vs XenAPI Atif Bajwa asked[1] about the advantages of using libvirt over XenAPI and what platforms libvirt supports. Atsushi Sakai pointed to a list[2] of which libvirt calls work on which drivers / hypervisors. Daniel P. Berrange replied[3] that libvirt is available for every major Linux distro, and listed several benefits such as: * avoids locking applications to a particular hypervisor * provides a guaranteed stable API that can be used both locally and remotely * remote security options include SSL + x509 certificates, SSH tunnel, Kerberos GSSAPI single sign on, and username + password * works with every version of Xen 3.0.x or later while XenAPI is only usable in Xen 3.1.0 and later Richard W.M. Jones mentioned[4] that although there are no binaries yet, libvirt client code can be compiled on windows. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00002.html [2] http://libvirt.org/hvsupport.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00008.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00016.html Latest MinGW Patches Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] patches to allow building on F10 of libvirt-0.dll and virsh.exe which run successfully under Wine, provided only 'test' and 'remote' drivers are turned on. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00065.html Does Libvirtd Need to Always be Running Yushu Yao asked[1] a basic question which may be helpful to point out. Does libvirtd need to always be running? Richard W.M. Jones answered[2] "yes and no". The local Xen hypervisor can be managed by direct hypervisor calls and/or a connection to xend. Warnings that libvirtd isn't running may be ignored. Libvirtd must be running to support the following, however. * remote access * non-root access * if you use the network or storage features * managing QEMU and KVM instances [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00085.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-September/msg00103.html oVirt Devel List This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. Renaming oVirt RPMs Alan Pevec proposed[1] renaming the oVirt packages which turned into a discussion with Daniel P. Berrange about how to organize the git repos and how to continue support build-all after such a change. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00029.html WUI Management of Underlying Hardware Chris Lalancette posted[1] a series of patches to allow the Web User Interface to manage the underlying hardware it is running on. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00081.html Network Interface Bonding and Failover Darryl L. Pierce began[1] a discussion on implementing support for ethernet bonding multiple interfaces for load balancing and failover. Special consideration for different hardware scenarios such as blade servers lead Konrad Rzeszutek to ask how these extra parameters would be passed in to the bonding setup. Darryl explained[2] that on boot the node identifies itself to the oVirt server, and downloads a configuration file to be processed by augtool[3]. The managed node then restarts the network service to apply the network configuration that it just retrieved. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00064.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/ovirt-devel/2008-September/msg00075.html [3] http://augeas.net/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIxPNQzHDc8tpb2uURAtzRAKCTj5iymYizSAMtmu66r7pJ4mgRdwCbBs5T omV746s+xUeo9Z9izdu6twg= =dkej -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Fedora Board IRC meeting 1800 UTC 2008-09-09

by Paul W. Frields

The Board is holding its monthly public meeting on Tuesday, 9 September 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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FESCo Issue tracking

by Kevin Fenzi

Greetings. In the past, interested parties could bring matters to the attention of FESCo in several ways: Mailing the chair, following up to the schedule posting on the devel list asking for a new topic to be added, or attending meetings on irc and bringing up the topic at the end of the meeting in the Open Discussion phase. While these methods work well for issues that simply need a bit of discussion and a decision, longer term issues that should be tracked and discussed further sometimes are forgotten. To help solve this issue, and to make it easier for folks to bring an issue before FESCo, I have asked Fedora Infrastructure to setup a trac instance for FESCo to track tasks and handle new issues. New issues for FESCo can now be filed at: https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ Please feel free to file issues there. Note that FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) handles the process of accepting new features, the acceptance of new packaging sponsors, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and SIG Oversight, the packaging process, handling and enforcement of maintainer issues and other technical matters related to the distribution and its construction Thanks. kevin

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Echo Monthly News, Issue 1

by Martin Sourada

The echo-icon-theme development team just officially released its first Echo Monthly News Issue [1]. In this release we cover these sections: 1. New Icons 2. "Huge" icons - 256x256 3. One Canvas Work-Flow 4. Automating the secondary jobs 1. Add a new icon set to Git 2. Setting up Git repository 3. Updating Git repository 4. Creating New Icon from Template 5. RPM package and other issues 5. Echo for Fedora 10? 6. Future plans 7. Request for feedback Since it's our first release it is not perfect and therefore we will appreciate any feedback, suggestions for improvement, etc. at the fedora-art-list and #fedora-art at irc.freenode.net :) References: [1] https://fedorahosted.org/echo-icon-theme/wiki/MonthlyNews/Issue1

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Fedora Weekly News 141

by Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 141 ============================== Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 141 for the week ending August 30, 2008. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue141 Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and activities in the Fedora community. If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news. Ideas for new beats are always welcome -- let us know how you'd like to contribute. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join = Announcements = In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/ http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/ Contributing Writer: Max Spevack Fedora Unity releases Fedora 8 Re-Spin Ben Williams announced[0] that the Fedora Unity team has released a new re-spin of Fedora 8. "These Re-Spin ISOs are based on the officially released Fedora 8 installation media and include all updates released as of August 14th, 2008. The ISO images are available for i386, x86_64 and PPC architectures via Jigdo and Torrent starting Sunday August 24th, 2008. Go to http://spins.fedoraunity.org/spins to get the bits!" [0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00014.... = 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 Education The Fedora Education Spin is progressing[0], having been "approved by all necessary bodies - Spin SIG, Board, Rel-Eng", reported Sebastian Dziallas. The spin has its own feature page. "Hopefully, we'll be able to have a preview of the spin ready in the next weeks", added Sebastian. [0] http://sdziallas.joyeurs.com/blog/2008/08/status-report-on-fedora-educat.... Greg DeKoenigsberg reminded potential OLPC contributors[1] to surf over to the contributors' program on the OLPC wiki in order to request their own XO for development. Soon, Greg "will be sitting in on the weekly call that decides how these laptops are disbursed". [1] http://gregdek.livejournal.com/34240.html Tech Tidbits Michael DeHaan, holder of the coveted "best blogger on Planet Fedora" title, as determined each week by your correspondent, has penned a treatise[8] concerning the future of systems management software. "Cobbler and Func are very fun, I think they are quite useful, but I'm wondering what are next on the horizon for server management tech, not in terms of a evolutionary improvement but how things can be legitimately improved by fundamental, indeed 'paradigm-shifty' means." Click the link below to read the entire post. [8] http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=702 James Antill has written[9] a tutorial on the Python yum API, which is incredibly useful if you have ever wanted to do stuff with yum, but don't know where to start and are afraid to ask Seth. [9] http://illiterat.livejournal.com/6254.html Events David Nalley shared some details about the upcoming Fedora Ambassadors Day for North America[2]. The event will coincide with Ohio Linux Fest in October. David said, "If you are a Fedora Ambassador, or want to be one, you should try and attend." [2] http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=81 [[ChristophWickert|Christoph Wickert] attended FrOSCon 2008, along with several other other Ambassadors, and shared his event report[3]. "Just like on Linuxtag the Fedora booth was located close to the entrance, so we had quite a lot of visitors. Unfortunately the booth was a little small and we had lot of stuff to show: Two OLPCs, an eeepc, two ALIX Machines and a couple of Laptops. Everything was running Fedora, the Laptops were running Gnome and Xfce, mine also LXDE." Check out the link below for pictures, and the full report. [3] http://www.christoph-wickert.de/blog/2008/08/26/back-from-froscon/ Max Spevack reminded[4] everyone about the upcoming FUDCon Brno. "We currently have 110 people registered for the event," and the list of sessions and hackfests is on the Fedora wiki. Hans de Goede will be attending FUDCon Brno. He wrote an update[5] about webcam support in Fedora, which will be worked on at FUDCon, and also blogged[6] about the session he will give on how to become a Fedora package maintainer. [4] http://spevack.livejournal.com/62369.html [5] http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/5576.html [6] http://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/5304.html Fedora List Fedora Board member Chris Tyler wrote[7] about the plans for changing the scope and ownership of fedora-list. Chris says, it is "one of the first lists that most Fedora users join, and therefore quite important to the community. However, it's a high-volume list (and is sometimes perceived to have a high noise level), so many veterans of the Fedora community aren't subscribed... Paul Frields and I have taken on the ownership of the list, and we'd welcome one or two experienced members of the community to join us." [7] http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/134-The-Scope-and-Owner... = Developments = In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized. Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley Approaches to a Minimal Fedora Luya Tshimbalanga alerted[1] the list to a post on FedoraForum.org in which a user "stevea" had produced a 67MB "minimalFedora" system. Jeff Spaleta worried[2] that the bare-bones system was unable to receive updates and that this was something which "we as a project might not officially want to endorse." One way out of that suggested by Jef was that interested parties could produce a derived distribution which pushed out entire updated images. Recent changes in the trademark guidelines make such a move easier. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01304.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01305.html A parallel to the minimal OS appliance image used in the oVirt project was discerned[3] by Daniel Berrange. Daniel reported their 'oVirt managed node' as being less than 64MB and built entirely from the Fedora 9 repositories. Later Daniel posted[4] that the similarities ended with the desire for a small image. The oVirt goal was to use only Fedora as upstream whereas stevea's approach had been to substitute coreutils with busybox. Daniel acknowledged "[...] finding the bits which aren't needed is fun in itself & somewhat of a moving target. So wherever possible we've been filing BZ to get some RPMs split up into finer grained sub-RPMs" and included a link to his project's kickstart %post stanza. Richard Jones suggested[5] that KDE's filelight was useful for finding bloated files and Vasile Gaburici added[6] that there was a GNOME equivalent called baobab. Vasile also included[7] a script which he uses to "keep track of bloatware". [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01307.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01319.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01373.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01374.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01376.html A follow-up post from Daniel concluded[8] that the only bits of upstream Fedora actually used in stevea's approach were the kernel and busybox as even glibc and initscripts had been ditched. Daniel wondered "So not really much trace of Fedora left at all. Not sure why you'd go to the trouble of doing the initial anaconda install at that point - might as well just 'rpm *no-deps' install kernel + busybox RPMs into a chroot & add the custom init script." [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01320.html Doubt on the advantages of stripping down Fedora to make it run on embedded targets was cast[9] by Patrice Kadionik when he argued that using the Fedora kernel with all its patches and modules was too bloated. Instead he preferred to use the vanilla kernel with busybox with the result that "[...] you have a Linux kernel (about 1MB) with its root [filesystem] (about 1-2 MB) adapted completely to the target platform." Alan Cox replied[10] that the ability to receive updates and benefit from the maintained and tested code was desirable if there were enough extra space. [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01353.html [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01357.html W. Michael Petullo added a link[11] to his "FedoraNano" project which has the goal of reducing redundancies, identifying probable cases for sub-packaging and documenting a method to install a small Fedora onto solid state drives. [11] http://www.flyn.org/fedoranano/fedoranano.html Using PackageKit Without NetworkManager-Controlled Interfaces A question from Martin Langhoff asked[1]: "[i]s there anything preventing PK from connecting to the network over non-[NetworkManager]-controlled network interfaces?" This question appeared to be predicated on the assumption that PackageKit had a dependency on NetworkManager. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01209.html Jeremy Katz clarified[2] that PackageKit depended on NetworkManager-glib and not on NetworkManager. He added that this was because PackageKit attempted to determine the status of the network connection prior to checking for updates. Dan Williams confirmed[3] that this was the case and expanded on the explanation: "If talking to NM fails, the app should either (a) assume a connection, or (b) could be more intelligent by asking SIOCGIFCONF/netlink for interfaces, and if at least one interface is IFF_UP | IFF_RUNNING and has an IP address, then try." Using NetworkManager in this way allows PackageKit to be restricted to sensible choices about the type of networks over which it is acceptable to receive updates. [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01210.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01213.html A further point raised by Martin was that there were a surprising number of dependencies and Dan pointed[4] to bugzilla entry#351101[5] while noting that "[PackageKit] should only depend on NetworkManager-glib, which itself should not pull in NetworkManager in the future." That bug specifically affects multilib systems, that is x86-64 systems with i386 packages on them, and prevents the simple removal of the older version of NetworkManager-glib and replacement with a re-factored one. This will be fixed for Fedora 10 using the installer anaconda. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01214.html [5] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show.bug.cgi?id=351101 In a separate thread Martin asked[6] what debugging facilities were available for network scripts beyond using bash -x. He detailed his "hack du jour" by which /etc/udev/rules.d/60-net.rules invokes net.hotplug.debugger which in turn uses bash -x net.hotplug with STDIN and STDOUT redirected to a logfile. It appeared from the lack of further suggestions that this is a good strategy. He also provided[7] a note which explained that he was upgrading the "School Server" spin to Fedora 9 from Fedora 7. [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01263.html [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01207.html Git-1.6.0 Commands to be Moved Out of PATH A response by Todd Zullinger to a "cvsextras" commit[1] of changes to git questioned[2] whether setting gitexecdir=%{_bindir} was a justified deviation from upstream intent. According to Todd "[..] we've effectively negated upstream's intent to present less binaries in the users path". Currently there are 137 git-commands in the /usr/bin directory. Todd suggested that it was better that individual users added the output of $(git *exec-path) to their PATH environment variable. As a precaution against breaking scripts upon update to git-1.6.0 Todd suggested that this addition to PATH should be made by the package. [1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-commits/2008-August/msg05593... [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01330.html The package maintainer responsible for the change, James Bowes replied[3] that he had recently attempted to do as Todd suggested and that had resulted in complaints. He was worried that although Todd's change made sense there had been no due diligence conducted to see what would break if the git-* commands were moved in such a way. Josh Boyer replied[4] that the original complaint had been about "yank[ing] out commands [...] from a stable release [Fedora 9]". Todd Zullinger discounted such complaints and dreamt[5] that "[...] a warning could be hand delivered by a beautiful naked person of whatever gender the user prefers and many would still scream when the change finally landed. :)" He suggested that in order to achieve predictability and consistency across distributions it was best to follow upstream and use the update to 1.6.0 as a flag day. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01361.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01363.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01389.html In response to queries as to whether there was a need to update Fedora 9 also Josh Boyer replied[6] that a security bug was fixed by git-1.6.0 but that he thought that this might have also been fixed by "a later release of 1.5.6.x." [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01390.html Resurrecting Multi-Key Signatures in RPM Spurred on by the disquiet caused by the recent signing of Red Hat packages (but not as far as is known any Fedora packages)[1] it was suggested[2] by Bojan Smojver that multiple GPG signatures of RPM packages would be a good idea. Distributing the signing could include using alternate buildsystems "[...] with no public access [...] to verify package checks before signing[.]" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012... [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01136.html Andrew Bartlett thought that the checksum part would be a problem because a build often includes hosts, build times and other specifics and Chris Adams added[3] that even individual files within a package had such information embedded. Bojan decided to find out how many packages were so constrained and Seth Vidal suggested[4] a useful rpm command rpm - -qp *dump pkg.rpm to list all available information about each package. [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01140.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01146.html Seth was dubious about the general idea and upon being pressed doubted the security gain and noted the cost incurred on users trying to verify that a package was signed correctly. Bojan expanded[5] upon the idea that for a "[...] multi-key, multi-build system, an attacker would need to get his hands on a lot of private key passwords, break multiple independent build systems [...] It is similar to what a reporter does to confirm a story. One source, not so reliable. Two sources, more reliable. Many sources, most likely reliable." Stephen Smoogen described[6] this a logical fallacy and argued that due to the number of packages all signing would need to be automated and thus probably each of the multiple sources would "[...] get their information from the same top level source." [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01198.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01205.html A useful post by Nils Philippsen laid out[7] four practical objections. Prime among these was that there were additional pieces of data, besides those mentioned above, embedded in a specific build even though the source package may have the same tag. The possibility of making the build system vulnerable to a DoS attack was also mentioned. A sub-thread on German banking practices and the value of multiple credentials developed[8] as did one[9] on the problems of determinism in producing identical binaries. [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01156.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01275.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01329.html Tom Lane was also among those that expressed[10] a general skepticism that the increased burden of such a scheme was realistic: "Most of us [packagers] are overworked already. We aren't going to jump through any hoops for third-party signatories." Bojan argued[11] that if the system were automated then it probably would be vulnerable but suggested that it would be better if a community effort to absorb the extra non-automatic work would be a solution in line with "open source" practices. Reluctantly he concluded "[n]ever mind, it was just an idea. Probably not even a good one. Back to the drawing board... ;-)" [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01141.html [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01215.html Intrusion Recovery Slow and Steady A politely phrased request[1] was made on 25-08-2008 by Mike Chambers for information about when normal service would resume in the Fedora Project after the disruptions[1a]. Enigmatically Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski observed[2] that there had been "some speculation on fedora-advisory-board that might explain the information blackout, so please don't jump to conclusions until you really know what happened" This led Chris Adams to observe that the list archives appeared to be offline and to restate the request for information "[...] in the absence of information, rumors and speculation fill the gap (which is not good)." [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01102.html [1a] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140#Mysterious_Fedora_Compromise [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01122.html Several days later (on 28-08-2008) a similar request was made[3] by Alan Dunn. He wondered whether bodhi was pushing updates out again, and Josh Boyer responded[4] that planning and implementation of "how to revoke the current gpg key used to sign RPMs" were in progress. Jesse Keating cautioned[5] that the migration to a new key would be slow "I'm currently re-signing all of the 8 and 9 content with these new keys so that we can make them available along with the new updates with the new key for these product lines. This is going to take some time due to the nature of how our signing works." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01308.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01309.html [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01310.html A proposal mooted[6] on @rel-eng by Warren Togami and others provided some insight into at least the part of the plans that involve the problem of how to distribute a new package signing key. [6] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/rel-eng/2008-August/001627.html "nodata" asked[7] whether the new plans included a means to push out critical security updates even while there was a general outage. The thinking behind this seems to be that an attacker could decide to knock out Fedora infrastructure in order to gain some time to exploit a known vulnerability even if a simple fix existed. Jesse Keating replied[8] confidently that in such a scenario the Fedora Project would do "whatever it takes [...] to get a critical update onto a public webserver should the need arise" and cautioned against wasting time trying to plan for every possible scenario. Toshio Kuratomi added[9] that although it might be possible to speed up recovery "[...] unfortunately if the infrastructure problem is bad enough, there's no way we can push package X out until the problem is at least partially resolved." [7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01313.html [8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01314.html [9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01316.html On 27-08-2008 Paul Johnson noted that it was possible to "compose and build" and asked "when will updates via yum become available for rawhide?" Jeremy Katz responded[10] that "[a]t the moment, the compose is falling over for new reasons unrelated to the infrastructure changes. Hopefully we'll see a rawhide make its way out to the masses real soon now." [10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01249.html Later Mike Chambers and Ola Thoresen reported[11] that updating from Fedora 9 to Rawhide seemed to be working. Several Rawhide Reports also appeared[12]. [11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01350.html [12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01339.html = Infrastructure = This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala Some noteworty praise Paul W. Frields writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1] Paul forwarded a mail [2] send by Tim Burke, who is the Director of Linux Development inside Red Hat, praising the efforts of fedorans who rose to the occasion to bring things back on track after the recent incidents in Fedora infrastructure. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms... [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01023.html Maintaining a partial cvs workarea Axel Thimm writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [3] Axel described how he was keeping a partial check-out of packages, ie the ones which he was maintaining. Now he would like to be able to cvs up and have all updates flow in, but if he does do so cvs will want to get all other thousand packages in. He is currently using a for loop with pushd/popd, but this process is extremely slow. Axel asked if there was a better way of doing this? [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms... rawhide, /mnt/koji and /pub/fedora Jesse Keating writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [4] Jesse created a user "masher" to have the ability to write to /mnt/koji/mash/ but not any of the other koji space. This is useful to prevent too much damage from a horribly wrong rawhide compose. To make things easier in the rawhide compose configs, they decided to run the cron/scripts as the masher user. This is also good because it means things run unprivileged. However he ran into a snag. They have another user, 'ftpsync' that has write access to /pub/fedora/. Previously the rawhide script was ran as root, and thus it was no problem to su ftpsync for the rsync calls. The masher user does not possess the capability of doing this. [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms... New Key Repo Locations Warren Togami writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [5] Warren proposed the latest draft of New Key repo locations. Jesse Keating points out that the deep levels are necessary because mirrors exclude releases by directory name like "9/" [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/ms... = Artwork = In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei The Echo icon theme and Fedora 10 NicuBuculei asked[1] on @fedora-art about the plans to use the new Echo icon set as a default on Fedora 10: "considering the feature freeze, the Beta release and as Echo is not a feature proposed for F10, is correct the assumption that we won't have Echo as a default for F10, staying with Mist [at least] one more release cycle?" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00328.html In reply LuyaTshimbalanga pointed[2] out that it is still possible, due to a slip in the release cycle: "Shall we try to make it as Fedora 10 feature. Thanks to, in some extend, the incident, feature freeze has been moved on September 9th." [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00329.html MartinSourada shared[3] his experience "It seems like artwork things are preferred to be decided by the Art Team rather than Fesco. I have a feeling it might be same for Echo." and proposed that this decision should be made together by the Art and Desktop teams "In this case I personally think Echo should be put on evaluation by Art Team and Desktop Team. If both agree it's ready for default we can roll it in ;-)" while NicuBuculei stressed[4] the importance of having Art features listed "from a marketing POV, if we list it as a "feature" it will be picked by more news source and help building the excitement around the new release." [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00337.html [4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00343.html Automating the One Canvas workflow In the last FWN[1] issue we covered 'One Canvas workflow', an innovative way to create icons, this week it continued to be a topic on @fedora-art and MartinSourada introduced[2][3] a script that makes the work easier. "[It] greatly simplifies life for Echo artist, since all they need is to make the Source SVG, run the script on it, select which branches they'd like to push it to and write commit message(s) - i.e. it automates most of the process". He also wrote a blog post[4] about this and created a screencast[5] illustrating the process. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140 [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00327.html [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00368.html [4] http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2008/08/echo-nodoka-one-canvas-ruby-an... [5] http://mso.fedorapeople.org/screencasts/echo-add-icon-screencast.ogg = 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 As there have been disruptions to the infrastructure of the Fedora Project this week there are no Security Advisories to report. Please see the Announcements and Development sections for more information. Fedora 9 Security Advisories None Fedora 8 Security Advisories None = 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 Fedora Xen List This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list. virt-what Script Detects Running in a Virtual Machine Richard W.M. Jones announced[1] version 1.0 of | virt-what which is a simple shell script that detects if you are running inside a virtual machine, and prints some "facts" about that virtual machine. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00039.html Xen 3.3.0 Released Pasi Kärkkäinen forwarded[1] from xen-devel an announcement of Xen 3.3.0. Pasi also followed up[2] on a thread from July where Daniel P. Berrange said about Fedora 10, "Even though we don't have any Dom0 I'll update it to 3.3.0 for the xen RPM and hypervisor. This will at least let people build their own legacy Xen kernel from upstream's 2.6.18 xen kernel" [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00038.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00029.html Testing LiveCD Distros as DomU Guests jean-Noël Chardron posted[1] a howto for testing live cd images by booting them in a DomU with virt-install. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-August/msg00024.html Libvirt List This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list. Daniel P. Berrange posted[1] a todo list for libvirt which was the product of a brainstorming session at Red Hat. Daniel offered this list as a good starting point for those wishing to assist in the development of libvirt. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00718.html Live Migration Sanity Checks Chris Lalancette described[1] a feature that oVirt would like to see. The feature would be a set of sanity checks a caller could make to determine if live migration of a given virtual machine would be likely to succeed. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00757.html sVirt: XML Representation of Security Labels James Morris continued[1] work on the sVirt project by investigating how and when to label the resources accessed by domains and proposed an XML representation of these labels. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00740.html LXC: Making the Private Root Filesystem More Secure After committing the private root filesystem code for LXC Daniel P. Berrange noted[1] that cgroups supports device ACLs which could defend against 'mknod' escapes into the host OS devices. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00734.html Exposing Unique Hypervisor Features Nguyen Anh Quynh asked[1] how libvirt can expose the unique features of a given hypervisor such as the monitor interface of Qemu. Daniel P. Berrange responded[2] by stating the policy for adding new APIs to libvirt is that the conceptual representation has to be applicable to multiple hypervisors and unique concepts may be exposed if they can be represented in a way which would also make sense for other hypervisors in the future. This goal is also stated in the libvirt architecture document. [1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00693.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2008-August/msg00701.html oVirt Devel List This section contains the discussion happening on the ovirt-devel list. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Red Hat - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIu8O/zHDc8tpb2uURArkzAKCZJprWqqb9prB84eXpqiSqvbrDDACgh50M 3H2qF1AMyoMPdcf1comVOwU= =wk+7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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announce September 2008