Fedora Weekly News #164
by Pascal Calarco
Fedora Weekly News Issue 164
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 164 for the week ending February
22nd, 2009.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue164
This week Announcements showcases Fedora Unity respins of Fedora 10,
PlanetFedora selects some great blog entries on how to tag audio streams
in PulseAudio and use func, QualityAssurance explains how to participate
in test days, Developments covers the "Fedora 11 Mass Rebuild",
Translations describes the new "L10n Infrastructure Team", Artwork
covers some pretty "Evolving Fedora 11 Artwork" and Virtualization
examines attempts to bridge the gap between libvirt and host network
interface configuration.
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page[1]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list(a)redhat.com
FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join
-- Announcements --
In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents
Contributing Writer: Max Spevack
--- General ---
Your faithful correspondent announced[1] that this year's European
FUDCon will be held in Berlin from June 26 - 28, overlapping partially
with LinuxTag. Everyone is encouraged to read the full announcement and
to register[2] for the event.
Ben Williams, whose wife knits incredible scarves with Tux on them,
announced[3] that a new set of Fedora 10 respins have been released by
the Fedora Unity[4] team, containing all updates through February 10.
Technical
Jesse Keating reminded[5] the community that "due to a number of
features, every package in Fedora 11 needs to be rebuilt." A wiki
page[6] has been created that package maintainers should look to for
more information.
Peter Gordon announced[7] that an update to rb_libtorrent includes a
soname bump that impacts other packages.
--- Upcoming Events ---
February 27 - March 1: FOSSMeet @ NITC[8] in Calicut, India.
February 28: Fedora Round Table[9] in Karlsruhe, Germany.
March 5-7: Computer Using Educators[10] in Palm Springs, CA.
March 9: Florida Linux Show[11] in Jacksonville, FL.
March 10-12: FOSE[12] in Washington, DC.
March 13-15: Chemnitzer Linux Tage[13] in Chemnitz, Germany.
--- FUDCon Berlin 2009 ---
FUDCon Berlin[14] will be held from June 26 - 28 in Berlin, Germany.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-February/msg0001...
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_attendees
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-February/msg0000...
4. http://fedoraunity.org
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-February/msg000...
6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Mass_Rebuild
7.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-February/msg000...
8. http://nitc.fossmeet.in/
9. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/FRT
10. http://www.cue.org/conference/
11. http://floridalinuxshow.com/
12. http://fose.com/
13. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/CLT
14. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDConBerlin2009
-- 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: Adam Batkin
--- General ---
Michael DeHaan discussed[1] various Linux system configuration applets
and some ideas how to unify/integrate them. On an unrelated note, he
also wrote[2] about HTML Slidey[3]: Slide Shows in XHTML.
Gary Benson announced[4] that Zero has passed the Java SE 6 TCK, which
means that OpenJDK in Fedora 10 for 32 and 64 bit PowerPC-based systems
are now pretty much guaranteed to run anything you can throw at them.
Daniel Walsh explained[5],[6] some SELinux history, voodoo and how to
rebuild bits of the policy RPMs.
Jeremy Katz reviewed[7] the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug and
how that applies to web usability.
Red Hat Magazine[8] spotlighted[9] Func, which "makes it easy to write
commands across large numbers of machines remotely and securely".
Ankur Sinha wrote[10] an article about the history of Fedora and its
four core values.
Jef Spaleta wondered[11] how popular Git was, and found some interesting
statistics from GitHub. He also discovered that apparently some[12]
Canonical developers (the kernel folks) do used Git instead of Bzr.
Roland Wolters announced[13] that RPM Fusion[14] ("a merge of several
former Fedora 3rd party repositories providing licence/patent
problematic packages") has entered the testing state.
Ryan Lerch described[15] how to "Create a Lightbulb Icon that follows
the tango! guidelines".
Jack Aboutboul wrote[16] about what can be done to rejuvinate Fedora
Marketing.
Lennart Poettering explained[17] how to "tag" audio streams so that
Pulse Audio can automatically manage sound policy ("For example,
starting in 0.9.15, we will automatically pause your media player while
a phone call is going on").
Seth Vidal described[18] how to adapt to the change to SHA256 checksums
in yum/createrepo on EL5.
1. http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=862
2. http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=871
3. http://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy/#(1)
4. http://gbenson.net/?p=130
5. http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/26428.html
6. http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/26759.html
7. http://velohacker.com/fedora-notes/recent-reading-web-usability/
8. http://magazine.redhat.com/
9. http://magazine.redhat.com/2009/02/17/video-spotlight-on-func/
10.
http://dodoincfedora.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/fedora-article-for-the-lugm...
11. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/34910.html
12. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/35246.html
13.
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/rpm-fusion-enters-testing-state/
14. http://rpmfusion.org/
15.
http://ryanler.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/create-a-lightbulb-icon-that-foll...
16. http://jaboutboul.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-fedora-marketing.html
17. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/tagging-audio.html
18.
http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/yum-createrepo-hashlib-rhel5cento...
--- Events ---
Francesco Crippa posted[1] some photos from FOSDEM 2009.
1. http://people.byte-code.com/fcrippa/2009/02/16/fosdem-2009/
-- QualityAssurance --
In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1].
Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA
--- Test Days ---
This week's regular test day[1] was on 20 Second Startup[2]. Harald
Hoyer was the developer present, and there was a great turnout of 20
people contributing test results. Further results are still welcome from
anyone - a full set of instructions for running tests is available on
the Wiki page. As a result of the testing, Harald has made several
modifications already that will help to optimize boot times for Fedora 11.
Next week's test day[3] will be on the Crash Catcher[4] feature planned
for Fedora 11, which aims to make it easy for non-power uses to file
useful reports when an application crashes. It will be held on Thursday
(2009-02-26) in the #fedora-qa channel on Freenode IRC. Please drop by
if you would like to help test this important new feature for Fedora 11
- no special equipment or expertise required!
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-19
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/20SecondStartup
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-26
4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/CrashCatcher
--- Weekly meetings ---
The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-02-18. The full log is
available[2]. Will Woods gave a status report on the progress of the
autoqa[3] project, which is working on creating automated test scripts
to run whenever certain events happen. The group agreed to create an
autoqa component in the fedora-qa trac instance, and create a new
mailing list for autoqa reports to be sent to (this will not be a
discussion list). Adam Williamson, James Laska and Jóhann Guðmundsson
then initiated a discussion about creating a short-term solution for
more organized reporting and collection of test results. Follow up a
mailing list discussion, a system created by the Laptop.org[4] project,
implemented as a Mediawiki plugin, was discussed. The group agreed that
it seemed suited to the purpose, and James will propose it to the
Infrastructure group, to see if they approve of the system, and whether
they would prefer it to be added to the main Wiki or a special-purpose
Wiki instance created just for this use. Finally, the group discussed
the (then) upcoming test day, and agreed preparations were well in hand.
The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[5] was held on 2009-02-17. The full
log is available[6]. A broad initial goal for the Bugzappers project was
agreed: to stabilize the number of bugs in NEW (i.e. un-triaged) status
on the components previously agreed to be the most significant. Brennan
Ashton's metric reporting tool will be used to track this. Brennan
demonstrated the current state of his tool on a small set of test data,
to general approval. The group voted on Adam Williamson's proposal to
have a stock signature appended to comments by members of the Bugzappers
team in Bugzilla, both to identify the Bugzappers and to increase the
visibility of the project. This was approved, and Matej Cepl will
implement it using Greasemonkey, adding it to the Greasemonkey script
already used by most Bugzappers.
The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-02-25 at 1600 UTC in
#fedora-qa, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-02-24 at 1700
UTC in #fedora-bugzappers.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
2. http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/fedora-qa/fedora-qa-20090218.log.html
3. http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=autoqa.git;a=summary
4. http://www.laptop.org
5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2009-Feb-17
--- Wiki re-organization ---
Adam Williamson announced[1] that the first phase of the Wiki
re-organization project was complete, with the new front page and 'how
to join in' page for the QA Wiki space put into place.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00710.html
--- Reporting bugs to Bugzilla ---
Christopher Beland encouraged[1] testers to report bugs to Bugzilla as
well as sending a mail about them to the test-list mailing list, and
told the group that he had added some text to this effect to the QA
group front page on the Wiki. Adam Williamson suggested[2] that the text
might be better placed on the Wiki page about how properly to report
bugs, rather than the QA group front page.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00837.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00844.html
--- Semantic - test reporting plugin for Mediawiki ---
James Laska sent in a report[1] on Semantic, the Laptop.org project's
Mediawiki extension for managing test reports.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00756.html
--- Encouraging Rawhide testing ---
Mark McLoughlin made some suggestions[1] about how to improve the
ongoing quality and consistency of Rawhide, in order to make it possible
for more people to test it. He suggested that a definition should be
made of what should be expected to work in Rawhide all the time - e.g.
basic installation, booting, network and a few core applications - and a
RawhideBlocker tracker bug be created on Bugzilla to track bugs in
Rawhide which breaks any of these functions, with the intention that
those bugs be addressed as a matter of high priority.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00846.html
-- Developments --
In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.
Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley
--- Fedora 11 Mass Rebuild ---
Some complications resulting from the inconsistent application of Fedora
Packaging Guidelines were manifested when the mass rebuild discussed
last week(FWN#163[1]) gained[2] a more concrete shape. Jesse Keating
posted[3] a request that all maintainers would read the wiki page
describing what needs to be done, especially the Maintainer Actions section.
The rebuild should kick-off this Monday (2009-02-23). The wiki page
describes the relatively narrow timeframe in which maintainers can
attempt their own rebuilds and the way in which they can avoid the
auto-rebuild.
Concern was expressed by Tom Lane that the rebuilds were non-ordered.
Jesse responded[4] that ordered builds were "[...] generally only are
necessary when bumping sonames or otherwise bootstrapping items. Given
that neither of those apply for this rebuild, effort spent trying to
order and chain builds would be effort wasted." Ralf Corsepius
challenged[5] this with the observation that pkgconfig BuildRequires are
added automatically. Ralf suggested[6] the problem could be solved by
"[...] checking which packages in current rawhide contain *.pc's but do
not Provide nor Require pkgconfig(foo) and to rebuild them (in manually
presorted order) in advance to the mass rebuild."
Jon Masters appreciated[7] Jesse's work and worried that the rebuild
might leave some statically built binaries using i386 instead of the
promised i586 (see FWN#162[8]). Subsequent rebuilds were suggested as a
means to work around the problem but Jesse preferred to identify
specific problems and stated[9]: "I think the most I'd be willing to do
would be a second build pass across the static packages. IMHO everything
else should be left up to testing discovery and fixing the assumptions
rather than hiding them."
Another approach was suggested by Conrad Meyer based on using
BuildRequires: *-static. When Ralf replied that this would not work
because many packagers who had not used static subpackages Conrad
pointed[10] to the guidelines. Nicolas Mailhot ruefully responded[11]
that his experience with the fonts guidelines suggested that enforcement
was necessary. Later discussion with Jakub Jelínek about the presence of
libc.a in glibc-devel suggested[12] that it will not be simple to apply
this particular guideline to glibc without gcc -static ceasing to behave
as expected.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue163#Mass_Rebuild_Coming_Soon
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Mass_Rebuild
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01281.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01287.html
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01297.html
6.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01303.html
7.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01298.html
8.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue162#Fedora_11_Will_Support_i586_In...
9.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01300.html
10.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01307.html
11.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01312.html
12.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01322.html
--- Virtual Provides for Login Managers ---
Following problems reported[1] with booting to runlevel 5 by default
with the slim login-manager [Lumens] sugges:ted[2] that "[...] all
packages containing a login manager include a special Provides: that we
can query on." This would allow anaconda to determine whether a
login-manager is installed without the difficulties of curating a list.
Patrice Dumas, and others, provided[3] a good deal of feedback which
seems to have led to a consensus that Provides: service(graphical-login)
will be added to all packages which provide a login manager.
An interesting sub-thread developed in which Colin Walters argued[4]
that adding display managers (other than gdm and kdm should be strongly
discouraged. This was met[5] with a good deal of disagreement from Tom
Callaway and Seth Vidal.
Colin explained[6] that the ramifications of changing such an integral
part of the OS were complex and that while anyone should be free to add
such software it should also be "[...] within the rights of the people
working on the desktop to close any bugs filed by people using something
else WONTFIX." Jesse Keating and Seth Vidal seemed[7] to agree that it
should be possible for the Fedora Project do define specs to which login
managers should conform.
The thread blossomed into several discussions. One focused on the
technical challenges occasioned[8] by the interaction of GDM, PAM,
gnome-keyring, NetworkManager and ConsoleKit. Another saw[9] Toshio
Kuratomi and Colin debating the strategic merits of making it more or
less easy for interested parties to add their software to the Fedora
Project ecosystem.
1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=485789
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01237.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01399.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01400.html
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01403.html
6.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01404.html
7.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01407.html
8.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01408.html
9.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01434.html
--- Reducing the Number of (Dis)Charge Cycles for Laptop Batteries ---
A certain amount of excitement resulted when Brad Longo asked[1]: "[...]
if Fedora's power management tool has something built in so that when
the battery reaches full charge, it will then discharge to lets say
around 95% before beginning to charge again." The excitement arose from
Brad's premise that "[...] leaving your laptop plugged in and charging
with a full battery charge is harmful for the battery."
Several responses rejected[2] the premise and pointed out that smart
chargers implement trickle-mode charging. Matthew Garrett replied[3]
with some specific information about how laptop battery charging happens
at a firmware-controlled threshold level. Matthew speculated that Brad
wanted "[...] presumably an interface to modify that threshold. This is
device specific. The tp_smapi driver (which is not in the kernel for
exceedingly dull reasons) allows this to be configured on Thinkpads. I
don't believe that we know how to on any other systems." Hans Ulrich
Niedermann had[4] an out-of-kernel module for tm_smapi which was
configurable via /etc/sysconfig.
Matthew Saltzman reported[5] some experiences with Windows setting the
charge-threshold to 85% which is supposed to lengthen the battery life.
Callum Lerwick referenced[6] a Wikipedia article which claimes that the
"[...] optimal storage charge for a Li-Ion is %40. Also, heat causes
Li-Ion batteries to degenerate much faster, so if you're really worried
about preserving your battery, don't leave it in the laptop while it's
running. Yet another argument for less power usage. Less power, less
heat, longer battery service life. Fewer toxic batteries going in to the
land fill if you like that angle."
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01194.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01201.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01202.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01257.html
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01269.html
6.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01304.html
--- config.guess Reporting Incorrect Configuration Name? ---
Panu Matilainen asked[1] if it was a problem that the config.guess
script from autotools no longer reported "redhat" as the manufacturer
part of the configuration triplet. Panu referenced the documentation
which suggests that "[...] the manufacturer part of the configuration
name is the manufacturer of the CPU, not `OS vendor' so the former
`redhat' was always incorrect. I don't know the history behind the
decision to stomp `redhat' in there to begin with nor why it was then
dropped later on. But having gotten used to it, people occasionally
think the `unknown' (or `pc' for that matter) is a bug."
While Jakub Jelínek thought that providing the "redhat" string provided
more information than "pc" or "unknown" Stepan Kaspal argued[2] strongly
that reverting to maintaining such a patch was wrong. He suggested that
either upstream should be convinced to change the use of "manufacturer"
or that the %configure macro in the specfile could be used to explicitly
avoid calling config.guess. From here on the thread became too
technically detailed to summarize although it is relatively brief as of
going to press. Those learned in the lore of autotools and
cross-compilation will find much to gladden their hearts.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01338.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01355.html
--- Build-time Trapping of Python Syntax Errors ---
Tim Waugh initiated[1] verification that Python code can be parsed
correctly: "[...] since we are already byte-compiling Python code at
build time, it is no extra effort to verify that it can be parsed and
fail if not."
Reaction was[2] uniformly positive and when Panu Matilainen explained
the simple errors which the byte compile would catch and suggested[3] a
simple method of determining affected packages Florian Festi took up the
challenge.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01563.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01574.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01584.html
--- YUM Plans for Transition to Fedora 12 i686 Architecture ---
When Paul Howarth asked[1]: "Now that Fedora 11 x86_32 is going to be
based on i586 packages rather than i386 packages, does it follow that
yum's $basearch will change from i386 to i586 and hence repository
directory layouts changing too, or will it stay at i386?" a brief
discussion between Seth Vidal and Josh Boyer started[2] with a
discussion over whether repositories should be named after specific
architectures.
Seth Vidal differentiated between $arch and $basearch and explained[3]:
"The whole reason I liked used $arch was that it meant when fedora
stopped producing a 586 compatible tree, we didn't stop any one else
from making a 586 compat tree and having it available like secondary
arches are." Jesse Keating explained[4] that "i386" was a misnomer for
the x86 offering. Josh Boyer was[5] unsure whether i586 would actually
"go away" for Fedora 12. Dennis Gilmore was sure that it would and
offered[6]: "Anyone who wants to continue i586 support post F11 i look
forward to talking to about setting up i586 as a secondary arch."
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01533.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01551.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01557.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01561.html
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01581.html
6.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01587.html
-- Translation --
This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n)
Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N
Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee
--- L10n Infrastructure Team ---
In response to PaulFrields' call[1] for putting in place an L10n
Infrastructure team, FLSCo announced a 4 member team to oversee the
Fedora Localization Project Infrastructure operations[2]. The team
includes DimitrisGlezos, DiegoZacarao, AsgeirFrimannsson and AnkitPatel.
1.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00103....
2.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00120....
--- Proposed L10n Infrastructure Plan for Fedora 11 ---
Earlier, DimitrisGlezos had announced[1] a proposed roadmap for the L10n
Infrastructure for Fedora 11 Translation period. This included using
Transifex version 0.5 for generation and display of statistics in place
of Damned Lies and Transifex version 0.3 for submissions. A test
interface of this setup is currently available at:
http://publictest14.fedoraproject.org/tx/languages/
AsgeirFrimannsson suggested[2] an alternative approach to use the new
Django supported version of Damned Lies for statistics and to also test
its possible utilisation for translation submission.
1.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00089....
2.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00093....
--- Sponsor Role for Translation Team Coordinators ---
FLSCo member NorikoMizumoto has requested[1] all the coordinators for
the existing Translation Teams to inform about their FAS account names
so that they could be upgraded to the role of "Sponsor". This would help
the new members in their team to be approved faster.
1.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00080....
--- New Members in FLP ---
Peter Belko (Slovak)[1], Seyyed Mohsen Saeedi (Persian)[2], Jorge Izaac
Zavaleta Escalante (Spanish)[3], and Victor Lopez (Spanish)[4] joined
the Fedora Translation Project last week,
1.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00106....
2.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00109....
3.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00111....
4.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00112....
-- Artwork --
In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
--- Evolving Fedora 11 Artwork ---
Paul Frields expressed[1] concern on @fedora-art about the artwork
process and the Fedora 11 schedule: "The F11 Beta freeze arrives on
March 10th, and it would be good to have a background ready somewhat
before that so there's time to tweak it before the freeze[.]" In
reply[2] Máirín Duffy was confident: "I *think* we're going to be okay.
I'll know by Monday whether or not we might have an issue." and called
for a work session over the week-end "I am going to cram this weekend
and try to iterate on what we've got. If anyone's with me, pop in
#fedora-art this weekend :)"
In the meantime [[Paolo Leoni and Thomas Kole experimented[3][4] with an
alternate concept[5] based on world maps, navigation and ships.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00050.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00068.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00053.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00064.html
5.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:F11-wallpaper-night-deepsky-mockup2.jpg
-- 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
---- New Options for Guest Cloning ----
Cole Robinson posted[1] a patch to enable virt-install to "build a guest
around an existing disk image, skipping the OS install step." Cole also
posted[2] a patch for virt-clone which allows for cloning from an XML
file "rather than require the use of a guest defined on the current
connection."
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-February/msg00051.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-February/msg00050.html
---- Obtaining Guest IP Address from the Host ----
Thomas Mackell inquired[1] about a way to obtain the IP address of a
guest that was easier than logging into it and running ifconfig. Cole
Robinson pointed out image:Echo-package-16px.pngvirt-mem[2] which is a
collection of utilities for interrogating KVM guests. Tools included are
virt-uname, virt-dmesg, virt-ps, and virt-ifconfig.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-February/msg00036.html
2. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-mem/
--- Fedora Virtualization List ---
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list.
---- Fedora Virt Status Update ----
Mark McLoughlin posted two[1] [2] very detailed weekly status reports
since the last FWN Virtualization beat. Each one is full of details on
the latest bugs and developments in the field.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00077.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00078.html
---- Qemu Packaging and noarch BIOS Firmware ----
The process [1] of building BIOS firmwares to support architecturally
diverse guests on architecturally diverse hosts is very involved and
repetitive. Glauber Costa learned[2] of changes coming to Koji which
could simplify the process by allowing for bundled BIOS images to be
built as "noarch" RPMs. These would be readily available to hosts on any
architecture in the repository. Save for some "second class citizens"[3]
in the repo.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00066.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00068.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-February/msg00072.html
--- Fedora Xen List ---
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-xen list.
---- dom0 Kernel Experimentation Continues ----
Michael Young continued[1] to help others experiment with the nacent
dom0 support in the image:Echo-package-16px.pngkernel and posted another
RPM. There are still significant problems precluding its use for
anything beyond testing.
1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2009-February/msg00031.html
--- Libvirt List ---
This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.
---- Support for Snapshot Volumes ----
Nick Moffitt asked[1] "Is there any interface to libvirtd that allows it
to create volumes that are snapshots of existing volumes?" Daniel P.
Berrange pointed[2] out this feature was recently added to
image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt 0.6.0. "Basically when creating a
storage volume, you just need to pass information about the backing
storage volume. It'll thus create a volume which is a snapshot of this
backing store."
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-February/msg00195.html
2. http://libvirt.org/formatstorage.html#StorageVolBacking
---- netcf Network Interface Configuration Library ----
David Lutterkort has been working on the disconnect between
image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt and host network interface
configuration for some time. (See FWN#159 "Configuring Host Interfaces
RFC") [1] "After talking with Dan Williams, who is working in
image:Echo-package-16px.pngNetworkManager", it became[2] clear to David
that solving this problem "is also useful for NM and would help them
with handling system-wide interface configuration." David then began
work on netcf[3]
Mark McLoughlin complimented[4] the work and updated the shared network
interface feature page[5]. The goal of this feature in development is to
"Enable guest virtual machines to share a physical network interface
(NIC) with other guests and the host operating system. This allows
guests to independently appear on the same network as the host machine."
1.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue159#Configuring_Host_Interfaces_RFC
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-February/msg00228.html
3. http://git.et.redhat.com/?p=netcf.git;a=tree
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-February/msg00229.html
5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Shared_Network_Interface
-- End FWN #164 --
----
Pascal Calarco
Fedora Ambassador, Indiana USA
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pcalarco
15 years, 2 months
FWN #164 status
by Oisin Feeley
Hi all,
I've done some cursory editing of the following beats and moved them all
into the Issue164 page. I'm afraid I'm pressed for time again today so I
hope someone else can take it from here.
Announcements
Planet
QualityAssurance
Developments
Translations
Artwork
Virtualization
Thank you everyone for this week's contributions.
Best,
--
Oisin Feeley
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OisinFeeley
15 years, 2 months
qa beat was done for a while
by Adam Williamson
The QA beat was actually done Friday, but I didn't mark it as such
yesterday - sorry, it was my birthday, sort of slipped my mind :(
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net
15 years, 2 months
No Ambassador report this week
by Larry Cafiero
Hi, all --
Due to SCaLE (from which I returned home around 1 this morning and promptly
fell asleep), I just realized that I missed deadline for the Ambassadors
report for this week's FWN.
I'll file a full report about SCaLE next week.
Larry Cafiero
15 years, 2 months
Fedora Weekly News #163
by Pascal Calarco
Fedora Weekly News Issue 163
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 163 for the week ending February
15th, 2009.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue163
This week's issue provides some detail on the upcoming Fedora Activity
Day (FAD) at Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE), many posts from the
Fedora Planet blogosphere, and selected wonderful event reports from
FOSDEM. We welcome a brand new Quality Assurance beat this issue, with
coverage of the latest test day focusing on iSCSI for Fedora 11, summary
of the latest QA weekly meeting, and discussion of the process for
critical-release bugs. In Development news, discussion of FLOSS
multimedia codec support in Fedora, preview looks at F11 release notes,
and the availability of CrossReport, a tool to evaluate the ease with
which applications can be ported to Windows using the MinGW libraries.
From the Translation team, updates and details on the infrastructure
roadmap for translation, and migration of Damned Lies to the new
Django-based interface. Infrastructure reports availability of WordPress
multi-user for Fedora sub-projects, and planning for cgit as a
replacement for gitweb on hosted2. Artwork has updates on the continuing
evolution of Fedora 11 artwork. The Security Week beat examines recent
discussion on Slashdot regarding 'how to argue the security of open
source software,' and this issue wraps up with a summary of the security
advisories for Fedora 9 and 10 over this past week. Enjoy!
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page[1]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list(a)redhat.com
FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala
[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join
-- Announcements --
In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents
Contributing Writer: Max Spevack
--- Slow News Week ---
It was a quiet week on the announcements front, with nothing more than a
few outage notifications being sent to the primary Fedora announcements
mailing lists.
Your correspondent promises to make an announcement this week, so that
this space may be used to its full potential in next week's issue.
--- Upcoming Events ---
2009-02-20: Fedora Activity Day @ SCaLE[1]
2009-02-20 - 2009-02-22: Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE)[2]
Also, people are encouraged to register for Fedora or JBoss.org related
speaking slots at LinuxTag 2009.[3]
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_at_SCaLE_7x
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SCaLE_7x_Event
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_Berlin_and_LinuxTag_2009_talks
-- 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: Adam Batkin
--- Activism Alert ---
Oron Peled wrote[1] about a proposed new IETF standard for "Transport
Layer Security (TLS) Authorization Extensions" which may be
patent-encumbered before it is even approved.
Paul W. Frields appealed[2] for prior art against a patent that covers a
user interface that has multiple workspaces (filed 1987-03-25).
--- General ---
Dave Jones announced[3] some changes to the Fedora kernel packaging "to
drop the regular 686 kernels. As of Fedora 11, the only 32-bit kernels
built are '586' and '686-PAE' (and their -debug variants)."
Lennart Poettering described[4] some of the new changes in the latest
PulseAudio 0.9.15 release, including Flat Volumes, On-the-fly
Reconfiguration of Devices (aka "S/PDIF Support"), Native support for
24bit samples and support for Airport Express.
David Nalley wrote[5] about the Fedora Ambassadors giving away free XO
laptops! To qualify, either "Package and maintain a sugar-* package for
2 releases or more" or "Build a Sugar activity that helps meet the 'holy
list of 4th grade maths[6]'".
Andrew Overholt announced[7] the release of the Linux Tools project for
Eclipse. The release has lots of features from profiling and tracing
with SystemTap to autoconf and RPM spec file editor (with autocomplete)
support.
Jef Spaleta expressed[8] mild excitement at Canonical's "Renewed focus
on suspend resume". In a later post, he wrote[9] about comparing Linux
(and even OSX) user experiences with respect to functionality
regressions after an update.
Seth Vidal mused[10] on the fact that a poster on Planet Gnome[11] had
said that "Fedora is held to a higher standard" than certain other
distributions.
Harish Pillay reacted[12] to an IDC report claiming "Proprietary
software products are much better documented than open source because of
the volunteer nature of open source software development".
1.
http://life-with-linux.blogspot.com/2009/02/internet-draft-transport-laye...
2. http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1490
3. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/2009/02/09/fedora-kernel-packaging/
4. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/oh-nine-fifteen.html
5. http://www.nalley.sc/david/?p=196
6. http://sugarlabs.org/go/User:Gdk/4th_Grade_Maths
7. http://overholt.ca/wp/?p=117
8. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/34551.html
9. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/34592.html
10.
http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/fedora-is-held-to-a-higher-standard/
11. http://planet.gnome.org/
12. http://harishpillay.livejournal.com/139904.html
--- How-To ---
Devan Goodwin explained[1] how to perform bandwidth-limited secure
encrypted backups using duplicity and Amazon's S3 Storage Service.
Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail described[2] how to enable "Disk snapshot
backup in Linux".
Lennart Poettering requested[3] that D-Bus interfaces be properly
versioned, and described some best-practices including the hows and whys.
1.
http://crispyinthedark.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/amazon-s3-duplicity-backups/
2. http://blog.kagesenshi.org/2009/02/disk-snapshot-backup-in-linux.html
3. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/versioning-dbus.html
--- Events ---
Once again: So many people have written about attending FOSDEM that it
would take an entire issue of FWN post all of the links. Instead an
arbitrarily selection will be randomly chosen.
http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/2009/02/11/some-fosdem-pictures/
http://kitall.blogspot.com/2009/02/fosdem-day2.html
http://spevack.livejournal.com/74638.html
http://gregdek.livejournal.com/45847.html
http://digitaurora.blogspot.com/2009/02/fosdem-2009-day-one.html
http://clunixchit.blogspot.com/2009/02/report-fel-fosdem-2009.html
And on a slightly different note, Arindam Ghosh wrote[1] about (and
posted photos of) Mikti'09[2].
1. http://arindamghosh.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/mukti09-event-report/
2. http://mukti09.in/
-- Ambassadors --
In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero
--- FAD SCaLE coming up 2009-02-20 ---
The Fedora Activity Day[1] at the Southern California Linux Expo
(SCaLE)[2] will be from 9am - 6pm on 2009-02-20 at the Westin Airport
Los Angeles, in Los Angeles, California.
There will be breaks and such, but the FAD will be treated much like a
sprint. We're here to get something accomplished -- specifically font
packaging and documentation -- so come on by and help us out for an hour
or all day. We'd love to have you there!
Also, if you can make SCaLE from the Southern California area, stop by
the Fedora booth.
SCaLE takes place on this weekend at the Westin Airport Los Angeles. For
more information, visit the Southern California Linux Expo site[3].
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_at_SCaLE_7x
2. http://scale7x.socallinuxexpo.org/
3. http://scale7x.socallinuxexpo.org
--- Got Ambassador News? ---
Any Ambassador news tips from around the Fedora community can be
submitted to me by e-mailing lcafiero-AT-fedoraproject-DOT-org and I'd
be glad to put it in this weekly report.
-- QualityAssurance --
In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1].
Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA
--- Test Days ---
This week's regular test day[1] was on iSCSI[2]. Martin Sivak and Hans
de Goede represented the developers, and testing was lead by Marian
Ganisin with assistance from Chris Williams, Mike Anderson, Michael
Christie and James Laska. Test cases worked on during the test day can
be seen on the page. Please record any additional test ideas or
considerations at Exploratory Testing iSCSI. Consult the quick start
guide[3] for creating a software-based iscsi target for use with testing.
Next week's test day[4] will be on the 20 Second Startup[5] feature
planned for Fedora 11. It will be held on 2009-02-19 in the #fedora-qa
channel on Freenode IRC. Please drop by if you would like to help test
and improve boot speed for Fedora 11.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-12
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Features/iSCSI
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Scsi-target-utils_Quickstart_Guide
4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-02-19
5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/20SecondStartup
--- Weekly meetings ---
The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-02-11. The full log is
available[2]. Will Woods gave a status report on the progress of the
autoqa[3] project, which is working on creating automated test scripts
to run whenever certain events happen. He also reported on progress with
the Nitrate[4] project, which is for collecting test cases and test
plans and compiling results from running them. Jóhann Guðmundsson asked
if it will be possible to pull existing test cases from the current
Wiki-based system into Nitrate when it is released, and Will Woods said
this is likely to be possible.
The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[5] was held on February 10th. The
group agreed that the current list of most-important components should
be updated, and Edward Kirk will do this. Edward Kirk, Brennan Ashton
and Adam Williamson (links) agreed that simple goals should be set for
the group, but did not reach final agreement on what these should be.
Adam Williamson suggested that Bug Days be revived and made weekly, and
this idea was supported by Edward Kirk and Brennan Ashton.
The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-02-18 at 1600 UTC in
#fedora-qa, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-02-17 at 1700
UTC in #fedora-bugzappers.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
2. http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/fedora-qa/fedora-qa-20090211.log.html
3. http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=autoqa.git;a=summary
4. http://fedorahosted.org/nitrate
5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
--- Wiki re-organization ---
Work continued on the ongoing project to rewrite and re-organize the
main pages in the QA team's Wiki space[1]. Adam Williamson, Jóhann
Guðmundsson, Christopher Beland and Leam Hall all contributed ideas,
suggestions and drafts.[2][3]
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00126.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00371.html
--- Release-critical bug process ---
Adam Williamson initiated a discussion[1] regarding the process for
handling release-critical bugs. Matej Cepl, James Laska, Jesse Keating,
and John Poelstra contributed opinions. In the end it was agreed that
the basic shape of the current process is a good one but the groups
involved - BugZappers, release engineering, and developers - should
communicate and collaborate more in deciding on release-critical bugs.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00276.html
--- Xorg/Mesa/DRI testing ---
François Cami, together with others, proposed a project[1] to conduct
organized testing of X.org and DRI functionality with a range of common
hardware for Fedora 11. He highlighted four important areas he felt were
needed for this: an opt-in system to record what hardware is owned by
what testers (possibly utilizing Smolt), a system for producing test
plans, a system for recording the results of tests, and regularly
scheduled test sessions. Jóhann Guðmundsson supported the idea[2] and
suggested that, while some of the features would require help from the
infrastructure group, the QA group could at least immediately start
writing test cases. James Laska pointed out that extensive information
is needed to diagnose and fix X issues remotely. François will work with
the X maintainers to define exactly what information needs to be provided.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00554.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-February/msg00559.html
-- Developments --
In this section the people, personalities and debates on the
@fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.
Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley
--- FLOSS Multimedia Codec Support ---
Inspired by previous discussions on whether Fedora should distribute
FLOSS content[1] Martin Sourada tried[2] to start a discussion about the
poor support of FLOSS multimedia. Martin noted: "Out of the combinations
of two FLOSS containers (matroska and ogg) and two FLOSS video codecs
(dirac and theora) I know only one (ogg + theora) actually works in
xine-lib (used by KDE4) which is pathetic." He asked for help in
documenting the situation on a wiki page[3].
When Bastien Nocera suggested that the most important thing was to file
bugs Martin responded[4] that this was what he was doing after first
performing tests.
An information packed sub-thread started[5] by Gregory Maxwell expanded
the scope of the tests and started a discussion with Dominik
Mierzejewski about the problem of ffmpeg providing sub-optimal
implementations of unencumbered codecs. It seems that for reasons of
efficiency ffmpeg re-invents the wheel from scratch instead of using and
improving upstream implementations. Kevin Kofler also rose[6] to the
implied challenge that GStreamer was preferable to xine-lib.
1.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue161#Electronic_Design_Automation_C...
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00794.html
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mso/Open_Multimedia
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00826.html
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00800.html
6.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00806.html
--- Multiple Packages from One Source ? ---
A question about how to handle the situation where a single source could
be compiled with alternate databases was posted[1] by Steven Moix. The
motion video motion detector software can be compiled to use either
MySQL or Postgres. Steven explained that the problem was that "[...]you
can't divide it into sub-packages, at the end it generates one big
binary file [...]" and wondered should he just choose the database he
preferred or propose two packages.
Manuel Wolfshant expressed[2] what appeared to be the common wisdome:
"personally I would compile twice, once enabling mysql and another time
pgsql, and create 2 packages. each package would install a
"motion-dbname" binary, and a symlink would allow access via the well
known name "motion". Using alternatives would allow a switch between the
two."
Although it was admitted that David Woodhouse's suggestion[3] to make
the program use loadable plugins was the ideal Tom Lane thought[4] that
was "[...] a bit above and beyond what a packager should do. If he's
also an upstream developer, then he should undertake that addition with
his developer hat on; but it's *well* beyond the size of patch that a
Fedora package should be carrying."
The ability to specify alternate requires (similar to those used in the
.deb package format[5]) was discussed[6] by Richard W.M. Jones and Tom
Lane and dismissed as impractical in this case anyway due to variations
in SQL.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00918.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00920.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00923.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01091.html
5. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html
6.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01097.html
--- Take a Peek at the Fedora 11 Release Notes ---
Fresh from his work on the RHEL-5.3 Release Notes Ryan Lerch apprised[1]
the list of the latest changes to the Fedora 11 Release Notes. Ryan
sought early feedback and changes to documentation beats in order to
give the community an early preview of the release notes.
Initial feedback from Thorsten Leemhuis and Kevin Kofler and others
indicated that the use of fixed-width instead of liquid layout was
disliked by some people and loved[2] by others.
Ryan also provided[3] an rpm of this Release Notes mockup.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00910.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00942.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg00911.html
--- Heads Up: Noarch Subpackages Landing Soon ---
Florian Festi warned[1] that the ability to produce noarch subpackages
will soon be available in Fedora. This brings the benefit of being able
to share these packages among different architectures thus reducing disk
space and mirror bandwidth.
Although rpm-4.6 supports noarch fully there are still some fixes to
make to koji before the Fedora buildsystem can cope with noarch
subpackages. Florian suggested that those who wanted to could experiment
in mock with rpmdiff to compare the results across different
architectures. He assured readers that there were no plans to force
packagers to use this feature and invited anyone interested in
developing the use of noarch in future release to a discussion.
Florian later warned[2] that one potential negative outcome of using
such sub-packages would be a proliferation of packages and consequent
bloating of metadata which might affect yum.
VilleSkyttä suggested[3] that it would be wise to make sure that use of
BuildRequire: rpm-build >= 4.6.0 was enforced in order to ensure that
earlier versions of rpmbuild did not produce noarch versions of the main
package and other potential subpackages. Florian's response
recognized[4] the problem but deprecated the use of BuildRequires to
such an extent. One possible alternative which he proposed was to "[have
Panu Matilainen backport a check that will make noarch packages (both
regular and noarch) fail to build if they contain binaries [and ensure
that this] additional check will be in place before koji will be
updated[.]" This latter proposal stimulated a good deal of interest from
Ralf Corsepius and Richard W.M. Jones as they were both concerned with
cross-architecture issue. The definition of a "binary" seemed to be one
unclear point.
In a later thread Florian updated[5] a list of packages which could be
easily turned into noarch subpackages.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01012.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01020.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01023.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01046.html
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01105.html
--- Mass Rebuild Coming Soon ---
Jesse Keating drew attention to "[...] a perfect storm brewing for
Fedora 11" due to the need to rebuild with GCC-4.4 (see FWN#161[1], the
use of i586 as the default supported architecture (see FWN#162[2] and
the support of stronger hashes (last paragraph of FWN#107[3]).
Apparently the time-constraints led to a desire to start the rebuild as
soon as possible without giving maintainers an explicit window in which
to do their own builds. Jesse preferred to give maintainers an ability
to opt-out and sought suggestions on how this could be achieved.
Jesse suggested that interested parties should either reply to the
thread and/or participate in the 2009-02-16 IRC meeting in
#fedora-meeting at 1800UTC.
1.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue161#GCC:_Default_ISA_Flags_and_Glibc
2.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/LatestIssue#Fedora_11_Will_Support_i586...
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue107#Crypto_Consolidation
--- New Tool Measures Ease of Cross-compiling to Windows ---
Richard W.M. Jones announced[1] the availability of CrossReport, a tool
to evaluate the ease with which applications can be ported to Windows
using the MinGW libraries.
After some issue with platform dependency were reported by Michael
Cronenworth were sorted[2] out it seemed[3] the tool is ready for use.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01055.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01074.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-February/msg01076.html
-- Translation --
This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n)
Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N
Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee
--- Additions to talk.fedoraproject.org ---
Rafael Gomes has volunteered to update content on
talk.fedoraproject.org[1] and would be creating the .pot file to make it
available for translators. Additionally, Lucas Do Amaral has volunteered
to add content regarding ekiga configuration[2] that would ensure error
free display of the translated content, as had been earlier reported by
Richard van der Luit [3].
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00026.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00040.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00029.html
--- Further discussion on the Infrastructure Roadmap ---
In continuation to the earlier discussion, Dimitris Glezos mentions that
the important issue currently is the inconsistent uptime of the system
due to the lack of administration resources [1]. He also mentions that
adding Publican support to the Transifex instance would be possible with
support from the Fedora Publican group. Additionally, he mentions that
Transifex v0.5 to be released in March, would have support for
Statistics based display as a start to the future goal of supporting all
the features of Damned Lies. It is to be noted that FLP uses Damned Lies
and Transifex for its Translation infrastructure.
Domingo Becker added a wishlist[2] for the current system, that includes
reservation of files for translation, timeout and notification system to
the co-ordinator. In a separate thread, Francesco Tombolini voiced his
opinion about the lack of the file locking feature and the downtime in
the statistics page [3].
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00033.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00059.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00078.html
--- Migration of Damned Lies ---
Asgeir Frimannsson had announced[1] the imminent migration of the old
Damned Lies instance to the new Django-based Damned Lies instance.
Damned Lies is used by http://translate.fedoraproject.org for generating
the translation statistics.
--- New Members in FLP
Daniel Yousefi (Persian) [2], Ahmad Razzaghi (Persian) [3], Daniele
Catanesi (Italian) [4], Mads Bille Lundby (Danish) [5], and Zoltan
Sumegi (Hungarian) [6] joined the Fedora Localization Project last week.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00057.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00051.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00076.html
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00043.html
5.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00014.html
6.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-February/msg00011.html
-- Infrastructure --
This section contains the discussion happening on the
fedora-infrastructure-list
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure
Contributing Writer: Huzaifa Sidhpurwala
--- Calendaring system ---
Discussion on this topic continues from last week. Adam Williamson said
[1] that there are a couple of calendaring plugins which will allow for
"days" will be allocated.
Clint Savage mentioned that the point is that it should support caldev
or something better[2]
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/m...
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/m...
--- wordpress-mu install ---
Mike McGrath asked who wanted to finalize our wordpress-mu install[1]
Mike further said that it has got built and there is a ticket for it[2]
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/m...
2. http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/342
--- cgit to replace gitweb? ---
Seth Vidal said[1]that he has setup cgit as a replacement for gitweb on
hosted2 and it is available at hosted2.fedoraproject.org/cgit/ He said
that he would like to replace gitweb as a web based git repo browser but
that would mean that the urls from gitweb will not work any more. He
said that he would like to get some feedback on this.
Bill Nottingham suggested[2] that we may be able to able to do a rewrite
rule.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/m...
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-February/m...
--- Artwork
In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
--- Evolving Fedora 11 Artwork ---
The development of the Fedora 11 artwork evolved on @fedora-art. Máirín
Duffy posted[1] a new wallpaper mockup[2]: "It's more really an attempt
at a nice backdrop, and maybe we can layer some of the trees and
buildings we were talking about on top[.]"
Charles Brej investigated[3] boot animations: "On the plymouth front, I
am likely to be a bit busier at work this release than the F10 one, so I
would really appreciate some of ideas as to what people would like
during the system boot. The possibilities are pretty much limitless but
it would be a good thing to conserve the CPU and keep the number and
size of images included in the initrd to a minimum".
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00024.html
2.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Image:Artwork_F11_greek-concept_mockup2_mo.png
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-February/msg00025.html
-- Security Week --
In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora.
Contributing Writer: Josh Bressers
--- Is Open Source Software Secure? ---
This week there was a story posted to Slashdot titled How To Argue That
Open Source Software Is Secure?[1]. Quoting the post:
... saying that they were warned that they are dangerously insecure
because they run open source
operating systems or software, because 'anyone can read the code and
hack you with ease.'
This issue seems to keep coming up from time to time. This argument is
of course silly and one of those "Prove it ... you can't? So it's true!"
There is no way to prove that a piece of closed source software is more
or less secure than a given piece of Open Source Software. If you can't
see the source, you can't be certain that the vendor did or didn't fix
issues. You need to unconditionally trust your vendor. If the source
code is wide open for anyone to see, it keeps the vendor honest. You
can't sweep issues under a transparent rug. You can try, and maybe hide
a few piles of dust, but the really scary piles of dirt will stick out
like sore thumbs.
The issue at hand isn't is application A more secure than application B,
but do you trust vendor A more than vendor B?
1. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/11/007216
-- Security Advisories --
In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce
Contributing Writer: David Nalley
--- Fedora 10 Security Advisories ---
* xine-lib-1.1.16.2-1.fc10 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* squid-3.0.STABLE13-1.fc10 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* squidGuard-1.2.1-2.fc10 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* python-fedora-0.3.9-1.fc10 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* asterisk-1.6.0.5-2.fc10 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* moodle-1.9.4-1.fc10 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* fail2ban-0.8.3-18.fc10 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
--- Fedora 9 Security Advisories ---
* squidGuard-1.2.1-2.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* python-fedora-0.3.9-1.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* squid-3.0.STABLE13-1.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* lighttpd-1.4.20-6.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* xine-lib-1.1.16.2-1.fc9.1 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* moodle-1.9.4-1.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* asterisk-1.6.0.5-2.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* dahdi-tools-2.0.0-1.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* libresample-0.1.3-9.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* dnsmasq-2.45-1.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
* fail2ban-0.8.3-18.fc9 -
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-February/msg0...
---- end FWN #163 ----
15 years, 2 months
