Fedora Weekly News 194
Pascal Calarco
pcalarco at nd.edu
Mon Sep 21 17:30:39 UTC 2009
* 1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 194
o 1.1 Planet Fedora
+ 1.1.1 General
o 1.2 Marketing
+ 1.2.1 Marketing Meeting Log for 2009-09-15
+ 1.2.2 F12 Talking points
+ 1.2.3 F12 release slogan selection
+ 1.2.4 Fedora Insight update
+ 1.2.5 Marketing Research
o 1.3 QualityAssurance
+ 1.3.1 Test Days
+ 1.3.2 Weekly meetings
+ 1.3.3 Pre-beta install testing
+ 1.3.4 Intel graphics information request
+ 1.3.5 Graphics test week recap
o 1.4 Artwork
+ 1.4.1 Behind the Schedule
+ 1.4.2 DIY Media Sleeve
o 1.5 Virtualization
+ 1.5.1 Fedora Virtualization List
# 1.5.1.1 Virtualization Test Day
+ 1.5.2 Libvirt List
# 1.5.2.1 New Release libvirt 0.7.1
# 1.5.2.2 New Release perl-Sys-Virt 0.2.2
# 1.5.2.3 Guest Sound Over VNC
o 1.6 KDE
+ 1.6.1 Live image dependencies: breaking
libcanberra-gtk2 dependency
+ 1.6.2 KDE 4.3.1 pushed to Stable
+ 1.6.3 Post 4.3.1 fixes
+ 1.6.4 New KDE Applications
- Fedora Weekly News Issue 194 -
Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 194[1] for the week ending September
20, 2009. What follows are some highlights from this issue. This week we
welcome a brand new beat by Ryan Rix on KDE developments in Fedora!
In news from the Fedora Planet, news, views and innovations from Fedora
community members. The Quality Assurance beat this week provides details
from last week's various graphics tests, audio and virtualization Test
Days, along with detailed summaries of the QA weekly meetings,
Bugzappers and other regular activities. In Art/Design news, discussion
around the desire for a "do it yourself" media sleeve, and updates on
the Fedora 12 schedule for the team. In virtualization news, updates on
the recent virtualization Test Day, and details of new versions of
libvirt, perl-Sys-Virt, and coverage of recent discussion about guest
sound over VNC. Our first KDE beat features news of KDE 4.3.1 hitting
Fedora updates and some post-release fixes, news on several new KDE
applications, and coverage of work of the KDE SIG team this past week.
That rounds out this week's issue of Fedora Weekly News, which we hope
you enjoy!
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page[2]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list at redhat.com
The Fedora News team is collaborating with Marketing and Docs to come up
with a new exciting platform for disseminating news and views on Fedora,
called Fedora Insight. If you are interested, please join the list and
let us know how you would like to assist with this effort.
FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue194
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join
-- Planet Fedora --
In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora[1] - an
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.
Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin
1. http://planet.fedoraproject.org
--- General ---
Lennart Poettering wrote[1] a mutex profiler called mutrace. "When
naively profiling multi-threaded applications the time spent waiting for
mutexes is not necessarily visible in the generated output. However lock
contention can have a big impact on the runtime behaviour of
applications...To improve the situation if have now written a mutex
profiler called mutrace."
Way back in May, Daniel Walsh introduced[2] the SELinux sandbox. "As
soon as I released it, I received email asking if it could be used to
sandbox Acroread, and I had to say 'Sorry, it can't do that'."[3]. But
now it can. It can even be used to sandbox Firefox[4].
Josh Boyer shared[5] an amusing anecdote about running wires with his
two-year-old son. Who knew that patch cables could be so much fun?
Mel Chua asked[6] for "I use Fedora" stories from the community. "Write
up your story about using Fedora, the stories of your friends and the
people you’ve introduced Fedora to".
Michael DeHaan quickly built[7] a lab of 85 machines in Chicago for the
Red Hat Summit, using cobbler (did I mention that version 2.0 was just
released?[8]).
Similarly, Jeroen van Meeuwen mentioned[9] that puppetmanaged.org is
available, comprising "a collection of modules for Puppet", the "system
for automating system administration tasks".
Máirín Duffy finished[10] a set of mockups for the Fedora Project's
Spins page.
1. http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/mutrace.html
2. http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/28545.html
3. http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/31146.html
4. http://danwalsh.livejournal.com/31247.html
5. http://jwboyer.livejournal.com/36271.html
6.
http://blog.melchua.com/2009/09/16/marketing-write-an-i-use-fedora-story/
7.
http://michaeldehaan.net/2009/09/17/travelling-linux-lab-controller-in-a-box/
8. http://michaeldehaan.net/2009/09/17/cobbler-2-0-released/
9. http://www.kanarip.com/node/859
10. http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/spins-fpo-mockups/
-- Marketing --
In this section, we cover the Fedora Marketing Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing
Contributing Writer: Chaitanya Mehandru
--- Marketing Meeting Log for 2009-09-15 ---
Meeting logs [1] and notes [2] for the 2009-09-15 Fedora Marketing
Meeting were made available. All Marketing meetings and notes are open
to the public. [3]
--- F12 Talking points ---
Some big news!! The F12 talking points have been released, and are ready
for use (and improvement!)[4]. Many thanks to Steven Moix, Paul Frields,
and Jon Roberts for their hard work.
--- F12 release slogan selection ---
Different ideas and themes were introduced making it a hot topic.
Finally ‘Unite’ was supported well and is the proposed slogan waiting
acceptance in the final call[5].
--- Fedora Insight update ---
We are almost done with Deployment and have the status for some of the
known outstanding things like packaging[6][7]. By September 21,
everything gets packaged and staged for loadtesting and we will then be
able to move from staging to production by September 28.
Dale Bewley is looking into a workflow to see how FWN could use "fun
things you can do with Fedora" and has been experimenting with Zikula to
prepare a mini FWN[8].
Mel suggested that it might be a good opportunity for Ambassadors to
help create Marketing collateral that would be useful for other
Ambassadors: Prepare short stories for "I use Fedora" rotations on the
webpage and Fedora Insight. [9].
It's something that would be great for Ambassadors to do before the F12
launch (before the Beta launch, if possible) - write up *your* story
about using Fedora, the stories of your friends and the people you've
introduced Fedora to - and also potentially something fun to do *at* an
F12 launch event; interview new users, make a podcast with them, film
them describing something cool they've just discovered about their new
operating system, help them write an article for FI.
--- Marketing Research ---
Robyn Bergeron proposed the participation of FUDCon attendees being
useful in marketing research. Sub-groups like FI, Design, Desktop SIG,
Ambassadors and FUDCon attendees can be very helpful resources for
answering/retrieving valuable market research questions/information.
Robyn wil also figure out the marketing research timeline between now
and FUDCon. Mel Chua to look into getting limesurvey into infra and ask
RHT Marketing folks about publicly available datasets for marketing research
1.
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-09-15/fedora-meeting.2009-09-15-20.00.log.html
2.
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-09-15/fedora-meeting.2009-09-15-20.00.html
3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing_meetings
4. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talking_points
5. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F12_release_slogan
6. https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/36
7. https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/25
8.
http://publictest6.fedoraproject.org/zikula/index.php/News/2009/9/17/Fedora-Weekly-News-101/
9. https://fedorahosted.org/marketing-team/ticket/12
-- 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 ---
Last week saw two main track Test Days. The first was on audio,
including PulseAudio[1]. The second was on virtualization[2]. The audio
Test Day saw good turnout and encouraging results, with basic audio
functionality failing for only two out of 21 testers. The virtualization
event saw a group of experienced testers carry out much detailed testing
on a wide range of features. Thanks to all who turned out to both events.
Next week's Test Day will be on Xfce[3]. This popular alternative
desktop environment has an enthusiastic Fedora maintenance team and has
produced polished live CD releases for the last few Fedora releases, so
if you're an Xfce fan, please come along to the Test Day and help make
sure it's in good working shape for the Fedora 12 release!
No Fit and Finish track Test Day is planned for next week.
If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 12
cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or file a ticket in
QA Trac[4].
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-16_Audio
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-17_Virtualization
3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-24_XFCE
4. http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/
--- Weekly meetings ---
The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-09-14. The full log is
available[2]. Adam Williamson mentioned that the new test-announce
mailing list[3] was up and running and already being used for
announcements, and thanked David Pravec for the idea and the implementation.
Kamil Paral gave an update on his investigation into the possible use of
zsync to reduce the size of live image transfers. He had written a blog
post[4] on the potential benefits. They seemed significant and
worthwhile, but Kevin Fenzi had pointed out a problem: zsync is not
packaged in Fedora, so cannot be installed on the server, and acceptance
of zsync as a Fedora package is currently blocked by its use of an
internal copy of the zlib library[5]. Various attempts have been made to
have the zlib changes involved, which are also included in rsync, split
out into a separate package or merged into upstream zlib, but this has
not yet been successfully accomplished. After some discussion, Adam
Williamson promised to send a follow-up email to all interested parties
to try to restart this process.
Will Woods reported on the progress of the AutoQA project. Failure
reports sent to the mailing lists now include traceback information,
where available. The installation tests now monitor both the serial
console and the installer log files. Will is working on a TurboGears
application to cover exporting the necessary information from the autoqa
system to support the proposed israwhidebroken.com Rawhide status page.
His current code is available in a git repository[6]. He expects to be
able to implement the page within a few weeks, and also to make a public
instance of the autotest/autoqa systems available.
Adam Williamson led a Test Day roundup. Sebastian Dziallas reported on
the Sugar on a Stick Test Day[7]. He was very happy with the
participation and feedback received, and felt that the experimental use
of the Semantic plugin for result reporting had been successful. He
promised to follow up with Adam and James Laska on the use of Semantic.
Adam reported on the Graphics Test Week which had happened the previous
week, saying that turnout had been good and he was working on a round
up. He also trailed the then-upcoming audio and virtualization Test
Days. Mark McLoughlin reported that preparations for the virtualization
Test Day were advanced, but asked people to check over the Wiki page and
suggest any improvements.
John Poelstra reminded the group of the then-upcoming blocker bug review
meeting for Fedora 12 Beta on Friday 2009-09-18.
The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[8] was held on 2009-09-15. The full
log is available[9]. Brennan Ashton reported he was close to having the
new version of the triage metrics system available, and hoped to have it
available in a few days' time. He had looked for a co-maintainer for the
project, but not found one yet.
Edward Kirk made some proposals to improve the Triage Day project. He
suggested moving it to the weekend and making it bi-monthly. Niels Haase
said he was interested in driving the changes and leading the events, as
Edward would not be able to do this regularly. Niels suggested requiring
new members attend a Triage Day before their membership was approved,
but Edward felt this would not be a good idea. Ben Williams suggested
creating a Fedora classroom for triaging, and the other group members
felt this was a promising idea. Adam Williamson suggested Edward and
Niels develop their thoughts and bring them forward on the mailing list
or at the next week's meeting.
Niels Haase asked a question about the Test Day live CD images,
wondering if the default configuration could make it easier to access
the system via ssh, to make it easier to access logs in the case of
failures which make the system unusable directly. Adam Williamson
explained that there were considerable security problems in doing this.
Niels suggested making it optional via the use of a kernel parameter.
Adam said that would involve development work, and suggested posting the
suggestion to the development mailing list.
The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-09-21 at 1600 UTC in
#fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-09-22 at
1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings/20090914
3. http://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/test-announce
4.
http://kparal.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/zsync-transfer-large-files-efficiently/
5. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=490140
6. git://git.fedorapeople.org/~wwoods/israwhidebroken.git
7. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-03_SoaS
8. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
9.
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-09-15/fedora-meeting.2009-09-15-15.08.log.html
--- Pre-beta install testing ---
Liam Li announced[1] a pre-beta installation testing session, to assess
the state of the installation process shortly before the process of
building the Fedora 12 Beta begins. He explained that a test matrix was
available on the Wiki[2], and asked for group members' help in filling
out the tests.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00298.html
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_12_PreBeta_Install
--- Intel graphics information request ---
Adam Jackson asked[1] users of Intel graphics adapters to send him some
information to help with reliable display detection. He asked for a dump
of the system video BIOS, together with information on the connectors
available on the hardware in question. All Intel graphics adapter owners
are encouraged to read Adam's request and send him the information from
their systems - it is very easy and takes only a minute.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00378.html
--- Graphics test week recap ---
Adam Williamson reported[1] on the Graphics Test Week, providing a
summary of all the bugs reported across the three Test Days, and
thanking the developers and testers who showed up to help with testing.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-September/msg00388.html
-- Artwork --
In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team[1].
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
--- Behind the Schedule ---
After John Poelstra reminded[1]to the Design Team about the planned
schedule, Máirín Duffy pointed[2] the team is late. While Michael
Beckwith tried an alternate 3D route[3], Nicu Buculei argued [4] for
using the curent working image "We are late in the process and missed
enough deadlines, so we can't afford delaying more" and advanced[5] a
first splash mock-up based on it.
1.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/001029.html
2.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/001030.html
3.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/001036.html
4.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/001038.html
5.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/001053.html
--- DIY Media Sleeve ---
Grant Bowman asked[1] for a "do-it yourself" media sleeve "I would like
to work with a designer to develop a one page, color, printable 8.5x11
page that can be printed, folded and used to identify and protect a
downloaded and burned CD or DVD copy of Fedora." twohotis proposed[2] a
design to which Nicu Buculei objected about the lack of source, "Please
also include the source files, so other people in the team can work with
them, build on them, make derivatives", bad version of the Fedora logo
"request a vector version of our logo, do not use such a small
resolution bitmap" and unusable fonts "do not use proprietary fonts
(Segoe), other people will want to work on your files and won't be able
to due to the lack of fonts".
1.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/001041.html
2.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-September/001062.html
--- Virtualization ---
In this section, we cover discussion of Fedora virtualization
technologies on the @fedora-virt and @libvirt-list lists.
Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley
--- Fedora Virtualization List ---
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list.
---- Virtualization Test Day ----
The latest Fedora Test Day focused on Virtualization improvements in
Fedora 12[1]. Even though the test day was on Sept. 17th, you can still
help make F12 the best release possible and learn about the newest
features in the process. Visit the test day page, download the live
image, and post your experiences on the wiki.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-17_Virtualization
--- Libvirt List ---
This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.
---- New Release libvirt 0.7.1 ----
Daniel Veillard announced[1] a new image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt
release, version 0.7.1.
"There is a fair amount of new features and improvement, not surprizing
considering 0.7.0[2] was 1.5 months ago. And of course many bug fixes
and cleanups:"
New features:
* Add an internal <secret> XML handling API (Miloslav Trmač)
* VBox 3.0.6 API change support (Pritesh Kothari)
* also allow use of XZ for Qemu image compression (Jim Meyering)
* Multipath storage support module (Dave Allan)
* VBox add Storage Volume support (Pritesh Kothari)
* Support configuration of huge pages in guests (Daniel P. Berrange)
* Add support for encrypted (qcow) volume creation. (Miloslav Trmač)
* Secret manipulation public API (Miloslav Trmač)
* support lzop save compression for qemu (Charles Duffy)
* Support new PolicyKit 1.0 API (Daniel P. Berrange)
* Compressed save image format for Qemu. (Chris Lalancette)
* QEmu add host PCI device hotplug support (Mark McLoughlin)
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-September/msg00481.html
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue189#New_Release_libvirt_0.7.0
---- New Release perl-Sys-Virt 0.2.2 ----
Daniel Berrange announced[1] an update of the Perl binding for libvirt,
image:Echo-package-16px.pngperl-Sys-Virt[2].
New features:
* Add all new APIs upto libvirt 0.7.0 APIs (listing defined network
interfaces)
* Add missing APIs for looking up storage volumes based on path and key
* Fix lookup of network interfaces based on MAC address
* Add missing APIs for defining network interfaces and starting
defined interfaces
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-September/msg00464.html
2. http://search.cpan.org/dist/Sys-Virt/
---- Guest Sound Over VNC ----
Dave Allan noticed[1] "when a KVM guest created with virt-manager is
running on F10, sound on the physical host stops working. When all VMs
are shutdown, sound starts working again. Removing the <sound> tag from
the VM XML allows sound to work while the VM is booted." and suggested
disabling sound in guests by default.
Daniel Berrange explained[2] "It is complicated :-) In Fedora >= 11 we
currently disable all use of sound cards, but this upsets people who
want sound ;-P I'm working on a new version of the patch which sets up
audio-over-VNC[3], while for SDL allows the host audio backend to be
used & configured. I still need to finish my GTK-VNC patches to do the
client end of audio over VNC, then it'll all play correctly with desktop
audio services via gstreamer/pulseaudio."
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-September/msg00494.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-September/msg00499.html
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VirtVNCResourceTunnel
-- KDE --
This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora KDE Special
Interests Group[1].
Contributing Writer: Ryan Rix
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE
--- Live image dependencies: breaking libcanberra-gtk2 dependency ---
This week the KDE SIG team worked to remove a dependency in
libcanberra-gtk2 that pulled in GDM and various GNOME utilities. The
dependency was introduced this week and was not included on any KDE live
images, but by fixing this by having both GDM and libcanberra-gtk2 own
/usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/,[1] KDE Live Images are kept about
about 30MiB smaller.
1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=522998
--- KDE 4.3.1 pushed to Stable ---
KDE 4.3.1 is now available in Fedora Updates. A full list of 4.3.1
changes can be found upstream[1]
1. http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog4_3_0to4_3_1.php
--- Post 4.3.1 fixes ---
A number of bug fixes[1][2][3] will be pushed as separate updates some
time after KDE 4.3.1. These bugs address issues in a fix in Kopete's
Bonjour plugin, a crash in Kmail's LDAP autocompletion and a fix in Krfb
and have are awaiting testing.
1. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206024
2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=523131
3.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/fedora-kde/2009-September/004028.html
--- New KDE Applications ---
This week a few new applications have been put into review and testing
stages.
* Eike Hein and the Konversation team have been working to put out
a new, unofficial build of Konversation, working to make it feature
complete as compared to the KDE 3 version. Rex Dieter has built an SVN
build containing markerline support and various bug fixes and it is in
kde-redhat/unstable[1] Eike says that Konversation 1.2 Beta1 should be
available very soon.
* Skrooge, a personal finance manager[2] has been added to Fedora
Rawhide and Updates-testing by Thomas Janssen.
1.
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/extragear/network/konversation/ChangeLog?view=markup,
2. http://extragear.kde.org/apps/skrooge/
- end FWN 194 -
Pascal Calarco, Fedora Ambassador, Indiana, USA
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pcalarco
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