Fedora Weekly News 200

Pascal Calarco pcalarco at nd.edu
Mon Nov 2 21:34:19 UTC 2009


Fedora Weekly News Issue 200
           o 1.1 Planet Fedora
                 + 1.1.1 General
           o 1.2 QualityAssurance
                 + 1.2.1 Test Days
                 + 1.2.2 Weekly meetings
                 + 1.2.3 Fedora 12 testing
                 + 1.2.4 Blocker bug review
                 + 1.2.5 Fedora 10 bug review event
           o 1.3 Translation
                 + 1.3.1 Fedora Website Translations
                 + 1.3.2 F12 GA Release Notes Branch Changes & F12 
Deployment Guide Added
                 + 1.3.3 Translation Schedule
                 + 1.3.4 Publican 1.0
                 + 1.3.5 Errors displaying .po files on 
translate.fedoraproject.org
           o 1.4 Artwork
                 + 1.4.1 Final Wallpaper for Fedora 12
                 + 1.4.2 Extra Wallpapers In
                 + 1.4.3 Fedora 12 Countdown Banner
                 + 1.4.4 Looking Forward to a New Cycle
                 + 1.4.5 Inkscape Course and Jealousy
           o 1.5 Security Advisories
                 + 1.5.1 Fedora 11 Security Advisories
                 + 1.5.2 Fedora 10 Security Advisories
           o 1.6 Virtualization
                 + 1.6.1 Fedora Virtualization List
                       # 1.6.1.1 Fedora Virt Status
                       # 1.6.1.2 Help testing the Windows Registry 
feature of libguestfs
                       # 1.6.1.3 KSM Tuning in Fedora 12
                 + 1.6.2 Libvirt List
                       # 1.6.2.1 Node device enumeration with udev
                       # 1.6.2.2 Rewrite of QEMU monitor handling
                       # 1.6.2.3 Libvirt QEMU driver thread safety rules

-  Fedora Weekly News Issue 200 -

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 200[1] for the week ending November 
1, 2009. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

Welcome to FWN issue 200, an impressive milestone! This week's issue 
starts off with news and views from the Fedora community, including 
further work on libguestfs, examination of several new features in 
Fedora 12, and work on a new tool for ICC color management in Gnome. In 
Quality Assurance, details from last week's Test Day on 
internationalization support in Fedora, and great updates on the various 
QA weekly meetings as we get closer to Fedora 12. In Translation news, 
several updates pertinent to Fedora 12 GA release, as well as details on 
Publican 1.0, which the Docs and Transaltion teams use for publishing 
books, articles, papers and multi-volume sets with DocBook XML. In 
Design news, details on the final Fedora 12 wallpapers, decisioning on 
extra wallpapers for the release, and some thoughts on the F12 art 
process looking forward to the next cycle. Security Advisories brings us 
current on the numerous security patches released this past week for 
Fedora 10 and 11. Our issue wraps up with news from the Fedora 
virtualization and libvirt lists, including a recent summary of Fedora 
virt bugs and developments, the state of KSM tuning on Fedora systems 
and a couple items on QEMU related issues with monitor handling and QEMU 
driver thread safety rules. Please enjoy Fedora Weekly News issue 200!

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. We plan to have the next issue of Fedora Weekly 
News in Fedora Insight, next week. We welcome your feedback as we 
migrate FWN to this new content platform!

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue200
    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 ---

Martin Sourada took a look[1] at font antialiasing and what makes fonts 
look ugly. In a further post, Martin answered[2] the more general 
question "Why is my design blurry?"

In the continuing journey of libguestfs Richard W.M. Jones 
added[3],[4],[5] support for working with the Windows registry form a 
Linux guest. Apparently you can also[6] mount guest filesystems on the 
host filesystem using FUSE (the example provided even mounts a Windows 
guest's NTFS filesystem to a Linux host).

Tim Lauridsen demonstrated[7] a new feature of yum in Fedora 12: 
history, "that makes it possible to see what happened in part of a 
transaction and redo/undo past transactions."

Paul W. Frields outlined[8] some of the new features to be found in the 
Fedora 12 beta. and encouraged[9] anyone who finds an issue to report 
it! Don't assume that someone else will have already filed a bug.

Paul also reprinted[10] a posting from the Fedora Advisory Board mailing 
list about the mission of Fedora, its goals and target audience.

Peter Hutterer explained[11] what goes in to the X Windowing system 
release (now that X11R7.5 has been released).

Máirín Duffy displayed[12] the new default wallpaper slated for Fedora 
12. Shiny!

Richard Hughes built[13] a tool (still in its early stages) to deal with 
ICC Color management under GNOME.

Alex Hudson investigated[14] some ugly corporate lobbying against free 
software.

    1. 
http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/10/mark-difference-ugly-fonts-in-fedora.html
    2. 
http://mso-chronicles.blogspot.com/2009/10/answer-to-why-is-my-design-blurry.html
    3. 
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/libhivex-windows-registry-hive-extractor-library/
    4. 
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/hivexget-get-values-from-a-windows-registry-hive/
    5. 
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/virt-win-reg-get-at-the-windows-registry-in-your-windows-guests/
    6. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/fuse-support-for-libguestfs/
    7. http://fedora.rasmil.dk/blog/?p=167
    8. http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=2837
    9. http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=2846
   10. http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=2848
   11. http://who-t.blogspot.com/2009/10/x11r75-released-but-what-is-it.html
   12. http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/fedora-12s-default-wallpaper/
   13. http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/10/28/gnome-color-manager/
   14. 
http://www.alexhudson.com/blog/2009/10/30/corporate-lobbying-against-free-software/

--  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's Test Day[1] was on internationalization (also known as 
i18n)[2]. We had a good turnout of testers who covered a wide variety of 
languages and input methods. In general many appear to be in good shape, 
but the testing turned up several issues in Bengali, Malayalam and a few 
other languages. This testing will help us to improve the implementation 
of these languages in future. Rui He provided a summary[3] of the event, 
including a list of all bugs filed.

No Test Day is planned for next week. If you would like to propose a 
main track Test Day for the Fedora 13 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:2009-10-29
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/I18N
    3. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-November/msg00038.html
    4. http://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/

---  Weekly meetings ---

The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-10-26. The full log is 
available[2]. James Laska reported that he had renamed most of the 
Debugging pages[3] to follow the previously agreed-upon naming scheme. 
The only remaining page was KernelBugTriage, and he would check with 
kernel maintainers before renaming this one.

James Laska noted that Marcela Maslanova had written automated testing 
scripts for the previous week's Test Day[4], and this had produced a 
very positive experience. He asked the group to think about what future 
Test Days could potentially benefit from testing automation in this way.

Adam Williamson passed along a proposal from Milos Jakubicek that the QA 
and BugZappers group help with filing bugs on the remaining Fedora 12 
packages with FTBFS (fails to build from scratch) issues. Jesse Keating 
pointed out that Matt Domsch has a script which tries to rebuild all of 
Rawhide and automatically files bugs on packages which fail, which he 
typically runs once per cycle. Jesse believed the fact that Milos is 
aware of several packages which fail to build but for which no bug 
report currently exists is a result of the fact that the list Milos is 
working from was generated a month after Matt's latest test run. The 
group agreed that Adam would ask Milos to clarify his proposal and see 
if it was still necessary in light of the existence of Matt's script.

Jóhann Guðmundsson presented his proposal for an automated test of 
non-U.S. locale installation, prompted by the significant bugs[5] [6] in 
the Beta with installations with different locale settings which were 
not caught by pre-release testing. He pointed out that implementing such 
a test would be relatively simple and involve only defining a non-U.S. 
locale in a kickstart file for an installation test run. The group 
agreed that this would be valuable testing and asked Jóhann to write it 
up into a test case that could be added to the installation test matrix 
and also potentially automated as part of future AutoQA development.

Will Woods and Kamil Paral reported on the progress of the AutoQA 
project. Kamil had made a blog post announcing rpmguard to the world[7]. 
He had received feedback from several people, including suggestions from 
Seth Vidal and Alexey Torkhov (whose feedback had prompted a ticket[8]). 
Kamil is now planning to work on integrating rpmguard into AutoQA with 
the help of the newly-implemented Koji watcher, which allows AutoQA to 
pick up - and potentially trigger tests upon - every new build which 
goes through Koji. Will briefly touched upon the future organization 
plan for all the AutoQA code, based around a library for the server-side 
parts such as watchers and another library for actual tests, along with 
separate configuration files for things like the relationships between 
Koji tags, so these configuration details can be separated from the main 
functional code. Will also noted that he had created a Python script for 
generating the current set of critical path packages[9]: simply running 
it generates the list as critpath.txt. He plans to have this integrated 
into the Rawhide compose process so that a daily updated critical path 
package list is always available at a static URL. Finally, Will noted 
that a public mailing list has been created for the AutoQA project, 
autoqa-devel[10]. James Laska noted in passing that the hardware for the 
production AutoQA instance was currently likely to be delivered on 
2009-11-20.

James Laska reviewed upcoming events. He noted that preparation for the 
then-upcoming i18n Test Day[11] was well advanced, and asked for group 
members to help out with testing if they could. He trailed the 
then-upcoming second Fedora 12 blocker bug review day, which would take 
place on 2009-10-30, and Adam Williamson asked people to help by 
re-testing blocker bugs prior to the event and coming to the event to 
help walk the list.

The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[12] was held on 2009-10-27. The full 
log is available[13]. Edward Kirk asked if there was a firm date yet set 
for the semantics switchover (marking triaged bugs as NEW with the 
Triaged keyword rather than ASSIGNED). Adam Williamson looked at the 
schedule and noted it should be around 2009-11-12 if no further schedule 
changes occurred.

No-one had heard from Brennan Ashton regarding his promised summary of 
the status of the triage metrics project.

Edward Kirk wondered if the bug workflow page and diagram[14] would 
require updating when the semantics change occurred. Adam Williamson 
believed it would, but the necessary changes would be quite minor. 
Edward and Adam agreed to keep the necessary changes in mind for the 
meeting prior to the semantics change.

Edward Kirk promised to make sure the email warning developers that the 
regular housekeeping changes in Bugzilla at release time would be coming 
soon.

The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-11-02 at 1600 UTC in 
#fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-11-03 at 
1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting. Note that the meeting times in UTC do not 
change even though many countries are going through daylight savings 
time changes around this time of year, with the result that the meetings 
will be one hour earlier for many people in practice.

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
    2. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-10-26/fedora-meeting.2009-10-26-16.08.log.html
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Debugging
    4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-10-22
    5. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=528317
    6. http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=530452
    7. 
http://kparal.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/rpmguard-print-important-differences-between-rpms
    8. http://fedorahosted.org/autoqa/ticket/75
    9. http://wwoods.fedorapeople.org/files/critical-path/critpath.py
   10. http://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/autoqa-devel
   11. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-10-29
   12. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
   13. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2009-10-27/fedora-meeting.2009-10-27-15.09.log.html
   14. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/BugStatusWorkFlow

---  Fedora 12 testing ---

Much of the week's mailing list activity centred on testing the Fedora 
12 Beta and post-beta updates, with much valuable testing being 
performed by many volunteers. Adam Williamson asked[1] for group members 
to provide feedback on the latest accepted kernel build, which had 
incorporated several changes from the kernel shipped in the Beta 
release. Many testers replied with helpful confirmation that the new 
kernel worked well. Liam Li announced[2] the pre-RC install testing 
cycle and associated test matrix[3], asking group members to try and 
cover as much of the install test case set as possible before the 
release candidate phase began on 2009-11-04; he later provided a 
report[4] on this testing. Adam requested testing[5] of an ext4 data 
corruption issue[6] which had surfaced in upstream kernel 2.6.32 testing 
to try and ensure that it was not affecting the 2.6.31 kernel included 
in Fedora 12.

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00650.html
    2. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00721.html
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Results:Fedora_12_Pre-RC_Install
    4. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00816.html
    5. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00805.html
    6. http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14354

---  Blocker bug review ---

The second Fedora 12 blocker bug review meeting took place on Friday 
2009-11-30, and Adam Williamson posted a summary[1]. He noted that all 
remaining 43 blocker bugs had been reviewed, linked to the meeting 
summary[2] which outlined the status for each bug, and thanked the many 
members of the QA, release engineering and development groups who had 
contributed to the meeting.

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00845.html
    2. 
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-bugzappers/2009-10-30/fedora-bugzappers.2009-10-30-15.01.html

---  Fedora 10 bug review event ---

Edward Kirk announced[1] a BugZappers event on 2009-10-30 at which the 
group would gather to try and review remaining Fedora 10 bugs and see 
which could be either closed or promoted to Fedora 11 or 12, prior to 
the automated closing of these bugs as old when Fedora 12 is released.

    1. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-October/msg00791.html

--  Translation --

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) 
Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

---  Fedora Website Translations ---

The Fedora Website content has been announced to be in string-freeze 
from 30th October 09, by Ricky Zhou.[1] As during earlier releases, 
translations for new languages would be required to be sent to 
webmaster at fedoraproject.org for inclusion. Languages which have earlier 
been translated can be updated directly. The translations submitted for 
the 'master' branch would be displayed on fedoraproject.org on the day 
of the release of Fedora 12, while translations submitted to the 
'f12-beta' branch would be displayed on fedoraproject.org from now until 
release day.

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-October/msg00145.html

---  F12 GA Release Notes Branch Changes & F12 Deployment Guide Added ---

The Fedora 12 Release Notes documentation has been updated for the 
upcoming GA release and has been moved from the 'f12-tx' branch to the 
'f12GA-tx' branch[1].

Also, the Fedora 12 Deployment Guide has now been added to 
translate.fedoraproject.org to accept translation submissions[2].

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-October/msg00139.html
    2. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-October/msg00140.html

---  Translation Schedule ---

The currently scheduled tasks for the Fedora Translation teams are: 
translation of all the Fedora Guides (starts on 21 October 09 and ends 
on 5th November 09) and translation of the Fedora Website (starts on 28 
October 09 and ends on 10th November 09)[1].

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-October/msg00138.html

---  Publican 1.0 ---

Ruediger Landmann announced[1] the imminent arrival of Publican v1.0 
which is comparatively faster than the earlier Publican v.0 and also 
fixes some of the current issues. The new version also allows documents 
to be migrated from the old version to the new version. Some elements in 
the .po files are handled differently in the two versions and as a 
result .po files translated for Publican v0 would require to be treated 
specially to work with v1.0. This would not be applied for documents 
that have been string frozen for the current release.

However, Miloš Komarčević from the Serbian translation team has 
highlighted a discrepancy in the nomenclature of the language code for 
Serbian written in Latin script[2].

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00003.html
    2. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00005.html


---  Errors displaying .po files on translate.fedoraproject.org ---

As reported by Tian Shixiong[1], Göran Uddeborg[2] and Daniel 
Cabrera[3], links to the .po files are currently being redirected to a 
page displaying the 404 error. Dimitris Glezos has also added that the 
statistics have not been updated for the past 2 days[4]. Currently, Mike 
McGrath from the Fedora Infrastructure team has been working to fix this 
issue[5].

    1. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-October/msg00150.html
    2. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-October/msg00152.html
    3. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-October/msg00153.html
    4. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00004.html
    5. 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-November/msg00007.html

--  Artwork --

In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team[1].

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

    1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

---  Final Wallpaper for Fedora 12 ---

After a final sprint of wallpaper polishing, Máirín Duffy declared[1] 
the Fedora 12 wallpaper 'done': "At 82+ (there were more before this) 
iterations, I'm spent. The wallpapers need to get in today" and the 
packages were pushed into Rawhide. She also wrote a couple of insightful 
blog posts: one about the evolution of the wallpaper during this release 
cycle[2] and another presenting the final results[3].

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001281.html
    2. http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/f12-wallpaper-sprinting/
    3. http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/fedora-12s-default-wallpaper/

---  Extra Wallpapers In ---

Martin Sourada called[1] for a final decision before packaging a pack of 
extra wallpapers and after a round of "votes" from Máirín Duffy[2][3], 
Michael Beckwith[4] and Jayme Ayres[5] the images were packaged and pushed.

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001243.html
    2. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001244.html
    3. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001246.html
    4. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001249.html
    5. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001275.html

---  Fedora 12 Countdown Banner ---

Nicu Buculei pointed[1] few days are left until the release so the 
countdown banner must start running "When we consider the design 'done', 
it should be taken to the websites list so we can run it officially 
(that means any time now [yesterday?], we are less 30 days from 
release)", Paul W. Frields agreed "Let's get a countdown banner 
finalized and out the door as soon as possible, so people can start 
using it on their websites", so Alexander Smirnov took it to the 
websites list[2], along with a number of translations "I've uploaded 
English, Italian, German, Icelandic, Hungarian, Portuguese (Brazilian) 
and Russian version this banner (translate based on previous ( Fedora 11 
countdown banner) to my fedorapeople.org space" and the countdown is 
already up and running, ready to be propagated on blogs and websites all 
around the world[3]

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001269.html
    2. 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2009-October/msg00098.html
    3. http://fedoraproject.org/en/counter

---  Looking Forward to a New Cycle ---

With the process done, Martin Sourada opened an analysis[1] about the 
process "I think the F12 schedule worked rather well, we slipped a few 
times a few days or a week and skipped most of the wallpaper refreshes 
-- I think it's unnecessary to have that many wallpaper refreshes.", 
looking for ways to improve the next cycle "I believe these six points 
need to be in bold face in our schedule as they are somehow important 
milestones." Nicu Buculei complained[2] about disruptive delayed 
feedback "For the last few releases we have a recurrent motif: some key 
decision makers stay silent for most of the development cycle and very 
late in the process complain and require a complete (or at least major) 
redesign. This is a serious bug in our process", a sentiment shared[3] 
by Máirín Duffy "It's really frustrating that folks wait until the very 
very last minute to voice their opinion", while Jaroslav Reznik asked[4] 
for more feedback *from* the team "So we need more feedback - probably 
through more refreshes for alpha, more communication out of design team."

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001288.html
    2. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001289.html
    3. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001293.html
    4. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001291.html

---  Inkscape Course and Jealousy ---

Máirín Duffy told[1] the Design Team about an Inkscape course she will 
teach "My Red Hat office, the Boston office, is going to be doing a 
program with a local middle school / jr. high (students are 11-14 I 
think) and I'm going to be teaching a 9 session (45 minutes a piece) 
course in Inkscape to the students" while asking the other members for 
ideas and experience sharing "I know many of you, I am sure, have given 
Inkscape tutorials to other folks, and I am wondering if any of you 
would have time to give me advice or even help me develop the lesson 
plan." Nicu Buculei[2], María Leandro[3], Patrick Connelly[4] and Henrik 
Heigl[5] gave their input, while showing their jealousy for the 
opportunity to work on such a project: "But overall I'm jealous and wish 
I could be doing it!"

    1. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001303.html
    2. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001304.html
    3. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001305.html
    4. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001306.html
    5. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-October/001311.html

--  Security Advisories --

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

---  Fedora 11 Security Advisories ---

     * sahana-0.6.2.2-6.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00623.html
     * systemtap-1.0-2.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00627.html
     * slim-1.3.1-8.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00645.html
     * jasper-1.900.1-13.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00651.html
     * kernel-2.6.30.9-90.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00656.html
     * wordpress-2.8.5-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00689.html
     * BackupPC-3.1.0-7.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00694.html
     * poppler-0.10.7-3.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00784.html
     * python-markdown2-1.0.1.15-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00796.html
     * chmsee-1.0.1-12.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00829.html
     * blam-1.8.5-15.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00830.html
     * epiphany-extensions-2.26.1-7.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00831.html
     * epiphany-2.26.3-5.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00832.html
     * galeon-2.0.7-17.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00833.html
     * firefox-3.5.4-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00834.html
     * evolution-rss-0.1.4-5.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00835.html
     * gnome-web-photo-0.7-7.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00836.html
     * hulahop-0.4.9-9.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00837.html
     * gnome-python2-extras-2.25.3-8.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00838.html
     * google-gadgets-0.11.1-2.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00839.html
     * kazehakase-0.5.8-2.fc11.1 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00840.html
     * Miro-2.5.2-5.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00841.html
     * pcmanx-gtk2-0.3.8-9.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00842.html
     * mozvoikko-0.9.7-0.8.rc1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00843.html
     * monodevelop-2.0-6.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00844.html
     * ruby-gnome2-0.19.3-3.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00845.html
     * yelp-2.26.0-8.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00846.html
     * seahorse-plugins-2.26.2-7.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00847.html
     * perl-Gtk2-MozEmbed-0.08-6.fc11.6 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00848.html
     * xulrunner-1.9.1.4-1.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00849.html
     * eclipse-3.4.2-17.fc11 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00850.html 


---  Fedora 10 Security Advisories ---

     * jasper-1.900.1-13.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00638.html
     * python-markdown2-1.0.1.15-1.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00643.html
     * wordpress-2.8.5-1.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00692.html
     * BackupPC-3.1.0-6.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00729.html
     * sahana-0.6.2.2-6.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00749.html
     * poppler-0.8.7-7.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00750.html
     * slim-1.3.1-9.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00785.html
     * systemtap-1.0-2.fc10 - 
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2009-October/msg00793.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.

----  Fedora Virt Status ----

Mark McLoughlin posted[1] another excellent round up of virt related 
bugs and developments. Mark reports "Thankfully, the virt blocker list 
is now clear, but if you're looking to help with making Fedora 12 even 
better, there's no better place to start than the F12 target tracker bug[2]:

There's over 100 bugs there that need your help!"

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-October/msg00138.html
    2. 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=F12VirtTarget&hide_resolved=1

----  Help testing the Windows Registry feature of libguestfs ----

Richard Jones asked[1] for some help testing a new feature of 
image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibguestfs

"If you have any Windows guests, then you can help Fedora to support 
Windows guests better by spending a few minutes testing the Windows 
Registry feature we just added to libguestfs 1.0.75."

To help, all you need is:

     * A Windows NT/200x/XP/Vista/7/... guest
     * Fedora 12 or Fedora Rawhide host
     * libguestfs-tools >= 1.0.75 (from updates or koji[2])
     * a few minutes of your time

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-October/msg00128.html
    2. http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8391

----  KSM Tuning in Fedora 12 ----

Mark McLoughlin described[1] the default state of KSM[2] on Fedora 
systems. "For Fedora 13, it'll be off by default in the kernel and the 
recommended way of switching it on is with 'chkconfig ksm on'" "For 
Fedora 12, it's on by default in the kernel, 'chkconfig ksm on' just 
changes max pages and the only way of disabling it is by manually 
writing zero to /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/run."

At release of Fedora 12 the kernel will default to a maximum of 2000 
merged memory pages. A future F12 kernel update to 2.6.32 will likely 
disable KSM by default. To take advantage of KSM in Fedora 12, the ksm 
service must be enabled:

sudo chkconfig ksm on

Mark McLoughlin also noted[3] The maximum number of pages which may be 
merged defaults to half of the system memory, and may also be manually 
defined in /etc/sysconfig/ksm. "Here's the logic we have in the init 
script[4]:"

   # unless KSM_MAX_KERNEL_PAGES is set, let ksm munch up to half of 
total memory.
   default_max_kernel_pages () {
       local total pagesize
       total=`awk '/^MemTotal:/ {print $2}' /proc/meminfo`
       pagesize=`getconf PAGESIZE`
       echo $[total * 1024 / pagesize / 2]
   }

Justin Forbes points out[5] "The limit to half of total memory is 
because ksm pages are unswappable at this time. To be fixed in a future 
kernel."

A second service, ksmtuned, may also be enabled. Ksmtuned regulates how 
aggressively the system will attempt to merge pages. Parameters such as 
how many pages to scan before sleeping and how long to sleep may be 
configured in /etc/ksmtuned.conf.

Memory pages must be flagged as mergable before KSM will scan them 
looking for duplicates. At present only Qemu pages will be marked as 
such. As described in the kernel docs[6], the effect of KSM system 
memory may be examined in /sys/kernel/mm/ksm. "A high ratio of 
pages_sharing to pages_shared indicates good sharing, but a high ratio 
of pages_unshared to pages_sharing indicates wasted effort."

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-October/msg00119.html
    2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KSM
    3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-October/msg00112.html
    4. http://gitorious.org/ksm-control-scripts/ksm-control-scripts
    5. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-October/msg00115.html
    6. http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt

---  Libvirt List ---

This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.

----  Node device enumeration with udev ----

Dave Allan posted[1] "a fully functional version of the node device 
udev[2] based backend, incorporating all the feedback from earlier 
revisions." "...I have also included a patch removing the DevKit backend."

Also see FWN#146 "Host Device Enumeration API"[3] for some coverage of 
the host device enumeration API.

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-October/msg00731.html
    2. http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html
    3. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue146#Host_Device_Enumeration_API

----  Rewrite of QEMU monitor handling ----

Daniel Berrange posted[1] a "patch series [which] rewrites the QEMU 
monitor handling almost completely.

The key theme here is to move from a totally synchronous way of 
interacting with the monitor, to a totally asynchronous way. This allows 
" image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt " to handle receipt & dispatch of 
asychronous events from QEMU. For example a notification of a disk-full 
error, or VM state change. In the process of doing this re-factoring I 
have also dropped in basic support/infrastructure for the JSON based 
monitor."

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-October/msg00644.html

----  Libvirt QEMU driver thread safety rules ----

In a characteristically long and detailed post Daniel Berrange laid[1] 
down the law on thread safety rules for the Qemu driver[2].

"This document describes how thread safety is ensured throughout the 
QEMU driver. The criteria for this model are:

     * Objects must never be exclusively locked for any pro-longed time
     * Code which sleeps must be able to time out after suitable period
     * Must be safe against dispatch asynchronous events from monitor"

Also see FWN#155 "Thread Safety for libvirtd Daemon and Drivers"[3]

    1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-October/msg00815.html
    2. http://www.libvirt.org/drvqemu.html
    3. 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue155#Thread_Safety_for_libvirtd_Daemon_and_Drivers

- end FWN #200 -

---
Pascal Calarco, Fedora Ambassador, Indiana, USA
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pcalarco




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