pdftk retired?
by Michael J Gruber
I just git a "broken dependencies" notice for a package that I maintain.
The reason is that "pdftk" got retired just the other day.
I may have missed a corresponding post on fedora-devel, but I think a
heads up notice to maintainers of depending packages may be in order
before you retire a package, as a general idea.
You see, unretiring a package is so much more work than changing
maintainership.
As for pdftk: I see 2 failed builds for version 1.45 and none for the
current version 2.02 (which probably breaks the api anyways). What are
the plans? Retire pdftk completely? Start fresh with pdftk2?
pdflabs, the maker of pdftk, provide binary as well as source rpms for
pdftk 2.02, by the way. I might even look into packaging it but don't
want to duplicate any existing efforts.
Michael
3 months
apitrace, bundled libbacktrace
by Sandro Mani
Hi,
apitrace 5.0 bundles libbacktrace, which looks like is living within the
gcc sources. libbacktrace is not build as a shared library from the gcc
sources, and not packaged.
Is it feasible to build libbacktrace as a shared library and ship it in
a corresponding package? Or should I rather go for a bundling exception
request?
Thanks,
Sandro
3 years, 11 months
Bad default error policy causes printing issues and BIG usability issues
by Valent Turkovic
Hi,
currently default error policy for printers in Fedora is "Stop printer" on
any error which is a really bad default. I have run across this issue LOTS
of times with regular Fedora desktop users who don't get why has their
printer stopped working, there is no UI queue to warn users, there is no
easy way to "Start printer" with one click after it has been stopped. It is
just a big mess.
Even worse, previous versions of Gnome control panel (if I remember
correctly) had option to change default error policy, now that option is
removed and you can get to it only by installing system-config-printers
tool, something regular users have no idea about even exists, and it is not
installed by default.
There are too many examples which are simple user errors but result in
priner going offline (stopped) and this is really bad, because after any
small error users can't print any more.
For example: user trying to print while he/she is not at home so his/hers
printer is not available, user trying to print but has forgot to connect
usb priner cable, user trying to print but haven't turned it on, user
printing to wifi printer but while connected to different wifi network...
Any of these actions is simple uses error but results in permanently
disabling of priner (Stops printer) and users can't print even when they
resolve issue that was stopping them from accessing the printer.
Now Fedora is what is stopping them from printing.
Who is responsible for user experience of Fedora desktop? To whom should I
point this issue to?
6 years, 3 months
F21 Self Contained Change: Replace Bacula with Bareos
by Jaroslav Reznik
= Proposed Self Contained Change: Replace Bacula with Bareos =
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Bareos
Change Owner(s): Simone Caronni <negativo17 at gmail.com>
The powerful Bacula network backup solution has switched from being Open
Source friendly to being almost closed source. Originally the project was
conceived totally as Open Source, but since the creation of Bacula Systems and
its proprietary Bacula Enterprise Edition product, the Open Source (now called
"Community Edition") has received less and less updates and is mostly
abandoned.
== Detailed description ==
The most important points that are left "abandoned" are the following:
* Installation scripts and updates to makefiles are not updated anymore.
* New plugins and functionalities are not added anymore, except those in the
"core" daemons.
* Gaphical (and buggy) console has not received any update in almost two
years.
* Patches and bugs opened in the bug tracker are mostly left abandoned. Even
trivial fixes are not imported in the source.
* Windows binaries are no longer provided, nor the source for the clients has
been updated. Even if compiled with difficulties, there is no support for recent
Windows versions.
A former Bacula developer, frustrated by the situation created the fork Bareos
a long time ago from Bacula 5.2.x (the current Fedora and RHEL 7 version).
This version has now received '''a lot of bugfixes''' compared to the original
Bacula source. This makes compilation and installation a lot easier than it
was with Bacula.
On top of this, a '''lot of new features''' have been added; some unique to
Bareos but many available only in the closed source Bacula Enterprise.
Here is the list of new features compared to the current Bacula 5.2.13:
* http://www.bareos.org/en/whats_new.html
Some highlights include NDMP support for enterprise class storage (NetApp,
etc.), support for enterprise class tape libraries and Windows support
(including Windows Server 2012) with Bareos generated binaries.
For further details on why a Bacula fork was created please look at the
following links:
* http://www.bareos.org/en/faq/items/why_fork.html
Bareos can also be '''fully compatible with Bacula''' by setting a specific
configuration directive in the Daemon configuration files; thus providing the
option for RHEL 6/7 users to interoperate with Fedora systems.
* http://www.bareos.org/en/faq/items/bareos_bacula_compatibility.html
== Scope ==
To accomplish the goal, the following Bacula packages need to be replaced with
Bareos equivalents:
bacula
bacula-docs
Currently, the same Fedora packages can be rebuilt as they are, to work also
on CentOS/RHEL 5 and 6, upgrading the EPEL or official Bacula packages in the
distributions. This is to have a consistent backup infrastructure across all
the Fedora/CentOS/RHEL ecosystem.
To ease installation, a repository for installing those packages on a
CentOS/RHEL system do exist:
http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/slaanesh/bacula/README.txt
The idea is the same for Bareos: import into Fedora 21 packages that can be
rebuilt for all supported Fedora/RHEL/CentOS releases and provide a repository
that can upgrade any Bacula release currently installed in the system with the
new one. In detail; the upgrade scenarios supported when going from Bacula to
Bareos would be:
From Bacula 2.4:
* RHEL/CentOS 5 with EPEL repository
From Bacula 5.0:
* RHEL/CentOS 6
From Bacula 5.2.13:
* Fedora 18+
* RHEL/CentOS 5
* RHEL/CentOS 6
As written before, the change is impacting only Fedora 21, the list of
upgrades supported are only for users who want a consistent backup solution
across the enterprise.
=== External activities ===
Proposal owners: I'm the current Bacula mantainer in Fedora and will complete
the transition in time for the release.
Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Release engineering: the release engineering team should make sure the new
Bareos packages are in place instead of the current Bacula packages for the
new release.
Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
_______________________________________________
devel-announce mailing list
devel-announce(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel-announce
6 years, 8 months
F22 System Wide Change: Change xorg input stack to use libinput
by Jaroslav Reznik
= Proposed System Wide Change: Change xorg input stack to use libinput =
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/LibinputForXorg
Change owner(s): Hans de Goede <hdegoede(a)redhat.com>
Replace the current (low-level) input xorg drivers with libinput using the
xorg-x11-drv-libinput wrapper.
== Detailed Description ==
Currently xorg uses different input drivers depending on the device type. This
makes it impossible to do things like middle button scrolling on the
trackpoint on laptops where the trackpoint buttons are software-emulated
buttons on the touchpad. Besides this the xf86-input-synaptics driver was
never really designed for multi-touch touchpads and this causes various
issues.
For Wayland we've been working on a new improved input stack, which is to be
shared by all compositors and lives inside libinput. We plan to replace the
current (low-level) input xorg drivers with libinput using the xorg-x11-drv-
libinput wrapper.
== Scope ==
Besides xorg changes, this will also require changes to the control panel
applets for mouse / touchpad configuration in the various desktop environments,
as those all are hardcoded to use the xorg-x11-drv-synaptics specific
interfaces.
* Proposal owners:
Package libinput and xorg-drv-input-libinput (done), make sure that xorg-drv-
input-libinput has the necessary config interfaces for control panel
mouse/touchpad config applets (wip). Write patches for gnome-control-center
mouse/touchpad capplet. Coordinate with other desktop environments.
* Other developers:
GNOME: merge the gnome-control-center patches. KDE: limits itself to standard
X11 mouse config interfaces, no changes needed. Other Desktop Environments:
adjust control-panel code to deal with xorg-x11-drv-libinput, merge these
changes.
* Release engineering: N/A
* Policies and guidelines: N/A
_______________________________________________
devel-announce mailing list
devel-announce(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel-announce
6 years, 9 months
Configurable version of suexec in Debian but not Fedora?!
by Neal Gompa
So a friend of mine has been wrangling with suexec trying to configure it
for his needs, and he has become quite furious over the fact that suexec
isn't configurable.
Then he finds out that Debian actually has a version of suexec[1] that lets
you use a conf file to configure suexec. My question is, why the heck isn't
this in Fedora? How is it that Debian can offer both versions[1][2], but
Fedora cannot?
I'm honestly surprised that Fedora doesn't offer this little piece of
flexibility. I would think that this would be in Fedora and RHEL, because
of how useful this would be. So what's going on here?
[1]: https://packages.debian.org/sid/apache2-suexec-custom
[2]: https://packages.debian.org/sid/apache2-suexec-pristine
--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
6 years, 9 months
RFC: xserver update strategy in F21+
by Adam Jackson
Since the modular X repackaging in FC5, we have limited X server updates
such that the ABI does not change. F20 shipped with xserver 1.14.4, for
example, so we might update it to 1.14.7 but not to 1.15.0. With the
reduced driver set in F21 it's now much more reasonable to push updates
to older releases as well.
With that in mind, I ask for feedback on how we'd actually like that to
work. The kernel rebase policy seems like a pretty reasonable model:
F21 would stay on 1.16.x until there's an upstream 1.17.1 release, and
(if F20 were to be affected by this policy) F20 would wait until 1.17.1
had been tested in F21.
One thing we might have to play by ear is the interaction with binary
drivers. The nvidia legacy driver, for instance, does not always have
builds available for arbitrarily new servers, which means updating the X
server might change you to an nvidia driver that no longer supports your
hardware. Depending on how severe that cutoff is, it might be cause to
pin a particular Fedora release at a given server version. I don't
think this is presently a problem, but it could be in the future.
This would also want some coordination with the various desktop
environments; the version of KDE in F21 might have latent bugs only
exposed by switching to F22's X, for example. I have a reasonable idea
of how to test Gnome for that kind of thing, but for the others I'd need
some pointers.
So what do we think? Good idea? Bad idea? Other things to watch for?
- ajax
6 years, 9 months
Cinnamon Spin
by Dan Book
Hello,
I have put together a basic Cinnamon Live spin, and was wondering if this
is something people would like to see become official. It's not ready for
submission quite yet, there is a bit of a hack to change the default
gtk-theme to Zukitwo, as the Adwaita gtk-theme messes up title-bar and
desktop icon colors (something that should probably be fixed upstream, this
happens for any Cinnamon install by default in F21). I'm not a Fedora
packager nor do I have a whole lot of time to put into this, but I am
willing to update and maintain the spin as necessary.
I have the kickstart files in this github repo:
https://github.com/Grinnz/spin-kickstart-cinnamon
And resulting images, which I have briefly tested and installed in a VM:
https://grinnz.com/public/spins-cinnamon/
I added a skeleton wiki page as well:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cinnamon_Spin
-Dan Book
6 years, 10 months
