From Fedora Project Wiki

< FWN

No edit summary
m (Removing some line breaks that became unintentional wiki formatting)
 
Line 157: Line 157:
====== New Password Rules: ======  
====== New Password Rules: ======  


* Nine or more characters with lower and upper case letters, digits and
* Nine or more characters with lower and upper case letters, digits and punctuation marks.
  punctuation marks.
* Ten or more characters with lower and upper case letters and digits.
* Ten or more characters with lower and upper case letters and digits.
* Twelve or more characters with lower case letters and digits
* Twelve or more characters with lower case letters and digits
Line 168: Line 167:
* NEVER store your ssh private key on a shared or public system.  
* NEVER store your ssh private key on a shared or public system.  
* ALWAYS use a strong passphrase on your ssh key.  
* ALWAYS use a strong passphrase on your ssh key.  
* If you must store passwords, use an application specifically for this
* If you must store passwords, use an application specifically for this purpose like revelation, gnome-keyring, seahorse, or keepassx.  
  purpose like revelation, gnome-keyring, seahorse, or keepassx.  
* Regularly apply your operating system's security related updates.  
* Regularly apply your operating system's security related updates.  
* Only use ssh agent forwarding when needed ( .ssh/config:
* Only use ssh agent forwarding when needed ( .ssh/config: "ForwardAgent no")  
  "ForwardAgent no")  
* DO verify ssh host keys via dnssec protected dns. ( .ssh/config: "VerifyHostKeyDNS yes")
* DO verify ssh host keys via dnssec protected dns. ( .ssh/config:
  "VerifyHostKeyDNS yes")
* DO consider a seperate ssh key for Fedora Infrastructure.
* DO consider a seperate ssh key for Fedora Infrastructure.
* Work with and use security features like SELinux and iptables.  
* Work with and use security features like SELinux and iptables.  
* Review the Community Standard Infrastructure security document (link
* Review the Community Standard Infrastructure security document (link below)
  below)


====== Q&A: ======
====== Q&A: ======

Latest revision as of 20:28, 27 October 2011

Fedora Weekly News Issue 287

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 287[1] for the four weeks ending October 26, 2011. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

We kick off this issue with lots of announcements from, the Fedora Project, including notice of upcoming elections, pre-registration and subsidy requests are open for the next North America FUDCon, the announcement that Fedora 17 will indeed be a Beefy Miracle, the release of Fedora 16 beta, and much more. In Fedora In the News this week, we bring you six articles from Fedora coverage in the trade press, around Fedora 16 and 17. In Ambassador news, news on a recent Fedora Ambassador Day (FAD) in China, an event report from the Northeast GNU/LinuxFest, details on upcoming FAmSCo elections, and more. Our issue finishes off with security-related updates released over the past four weeks for Fedora 14, 15 and 16. Enjoy!

An audio version of some issues of FWN - FAWN - are available. You can listen to existing issues[2] on the Internet Archive. If anyone is interested in helping spread the load of FAWN production, please contact us!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[3]. We welcome reader feedback: news@lists.fedoraproject.org

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

Announcements

Fedora Announcements are the place where you can find the major coverage from the Fedora Project including general announcements[1], development announcements[2] and Fedora Events[3].

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Upcoming elections for FAmSCo, FESCo, and the Fedora Board

Fedora Project Leader, Jared K. Smith announced[1]:

"One of the things I like most about Fedora is the orderly way in which people are able to move in and out of leadership positions within our community. Each development cycle, we have a set of elections for the steering committees and for the Fedora Board. The next election cycle is nearly upon us, so I'd like to take this opportunity to share the details of the upcoming elections with you.

As quick reminder, the nomination period for this election cycle will open on 25 October 2011, and will close promptly on 5 November 2011 at 23:59:59 UTC. The full elections schedule, along with more details about the elections, can be found at

I strongly encourage you to consider running for an open position in one of the elections. This is one way to serve your fellow community members and help move Fedora forward at the same time. Additionally, I'm looking for a few volunteers to help with the coordination of the candidate questionnaires and town hall meetings. If you're willing to help, please let me know.

Fedora Board

This election cycle will fill two elected seats for the Board (seats E1 and E2). Prior to the election I will also announce the first of two appointed seat in this cycle (seats A1 and A2), with the second appointment announcement to follow after the election. For more information on nominations, and the process refer to:

FESCo

This cycle will also see four candidates elected to open seats in the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee. For information on the nominations and elections:

FAmSCo

This election cycle will also see candidates elected to fill all all seven seats on the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee. For more information, refer to:

Candidate Questionnaire and Town Hall meetings

Additionally, the nomination period also serves as the time for the community to present questions to be posed to candidates. If you wish to ask questions to be answered by candidates, you can add them[2]. Candidates will have the questions posed to them and responses made available to the community before the voting period begins.

As we get closer to the elections, we will try to schedule several Town Hall Meetings in IRC to help you get to know the candidates better, and to ask them additional questions.

As always, I'm thankful to those who have given their time, talents, and abilities to serve the Fedora community.

-- Jared Smith Fedora Project Leader"

Subsidy requests for FUDCon Blacksburg are now OOOOOPEN!

Robyn Bergeron announced[1]

"Greetings, FUDCon friends, near and far:

As you are probably aware, the 2012 North American FUDCon will be held in Blacksburg, Virginia, on the campus of Virginia Tech. If you are planning on attending, it's never too early to pre-register, and to start thinking about your travel plans. FUDCon Blacksburg will take place January 13-15, 2012.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Blacksburg_2012

I'm happy to announce that we are officially accepting subsidy requests for travel to Blacksburg. If you are requesting a subsidy, we just have a few steps that we ask you to follow:

1: Register[2] on the FUDCon: Blacksburg wiki page in the pre-registration area. 2: Put an X in the $$$ column. 3: Create a funding request ticket in the FUDCon trac[3]

General information about being sponsored can be found at:

Requests are processed in a first-come, first-served manner, though generally prioritization is giving to local travel over international travel first. Requests will be reviewed by fellow Fedora community members at FUDCon subsidy request meetings over the next few weeks.

The first subsidy meeting will take place on Wednesday, November 9th. The time and IRC channel will be announced as we approach that day.

As always, participation both in planning as well as subsidy granting is ALWAYS welcome. Please join us on the fudcon-planning mailing list for information about meetings, as well as for general FUDCon updates, and see the "meetings" section of your FUDCon's wiki page for meeting information.

Mailing list:

FUDCon Blacksburg Meetings:

Subject: IMPORTANT: Mandatory password and ssh key change by 2011-11-30

Kevin Fenzi announced[1]:

"All existing users of the Fedora Account System (FAS)[2] are required to change their password and upload a NEW ssh public key before 2011-11-30. Failure to do so may result in your account being marked inactive. Passwords changed and NEW ssh public keys uploaded after 2011-10-10 will meet this requirement.

Backgound and reasoning:

This change event has NOT been triggered by any specific compromise or vulnerability in Fedora Infrastructure. Rather, we believe, due to the large number of high profile sites with security breaches in recent months, that this is a great time for all Fedora contributors and users to review their security settings and move to "best practices" on their machines. Additionally, we are putting in place new rules for passwords to make them harder to guess.

New Password Rules:
  • Nine or more characters with lower and upper case letters, digits and punctuation marks.
  • Ten or more characters with lower and upper case letters and digits.
  • Twelve or more characters with lower case letters and digits
  • Twenty or more characters with all lower case letters.
  • No maximum length.
Some Do's and Don'ts:
  • NEVER store your ssh private key on a shared or public system.
  • ALWAYS use a strong passphrase on your ssh key.
  • If you must store passwords, use an application specifically for this purpose like revelation, gnome-keyring, seahorse, or keepassx.
  • Regularly apply your operating system's security related updates.
  • Only use ssh agent forwarding when needed ( .ssh/config: "ForwardAgent no")
  • DO verify ssh host keys via dnssec protected dns. ( .ssh/config: "VerifyHostKeyDNS yes")
  • DO consider a seperate ssh key for Fedora Infrastructure.
  • Work with and use security features like SELinux and iptables.
  • Review the Community Standard Infrastructure security document (link below)
Q&A:

Q: My password and ssh private key are fine and secure! Can't I just skip this change?

No. We believe the new guidelines above provide an added measure of security compared to the previous requirements. We want all users of our infrastructure to follow the new guidelines to improve one aspect of security across the systems they share. Awareness is also an aspect of good security. By requiring these changes, we also hope to maintain and improve awareness of the process for changing passwords and keys.

Q: Can I just change my password and re-upload my same ssh public key? Or upload a bogus ssh public key and then re-upload my old one?

A: No. We've installed safeguards to ensure that your new ssh public key is different from your old one. Additionally, some of our contributors may have had accounts on compromised high profile Linux sites recently, and we want to make sure no ssh private keys or passwords used in Fedora Infrastructure were obtained via those incidents.

Q: This is a hassle. How often is this going to happen?

A: The last mass password change in Fedora was more than 3 years ago. Absent a triggering event, these mass changes will be infrequent.

Q: The new password length requirements/rules are too strict. How will I remember passwords that are that long?

A: You can employ a password storage application (see above), or use a method like diceware (see below), or construct a memorable sentence or phrase.

Q: How do I generate a new ssh key? How do I use it for just Fedora hosts?

A: See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cryptography and use a ~/.ssh/config file to match fedoraproject.org hosts for that key.

Q: I never uploaded a ssh key to the Fedora Account System, nor am I in a group that needs one, do I still have to upload a new one?

A: No. If you don't have a ssh public key uploaded or desire to do so, you can just change your password.

More reading:

Outage: value server migration - 2011-10-13 20:30UTC

Kevin Fenzi announced[1]:

" There will be an outage starting at 2011-10-13 20:30 UTC, which will

last approximately 1 hour.
To convert UTC to your local time, take a look at[2]
or run:

date -d '2011-10-13 20:30 UTC'

Reason for outage:
We are migrating smolt and zodbot over to new RHEL6 server instances.
Affected Services:
Unaffected Services:
Ticket Link:
https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/2971
Contact Information:

Please join #fedora-admin in irc.freenode.net or add comments to the ticket for this outage above."

Results of the voting for the Fedora 17 release name

Fedora Project Leader, Jared K. Smith announced[1]:

"The voting has concluded for the Fedora 17 release name, and the results are in! Thank you to the Fedora community members who made name suggestions and participated in the voting.

The Fedora 17 release name is: Beefy Miracle

Voting period: Tuesday 2011-11-04 00:00:00 UTC to Monday 2011-10-10 23:59:59 UTC

Number of valid ballots cast: 292

Using the range voting method, each release name candidate could attain a maximum of (292*8) = 2336 votes.

Results:

Votes :: Name


1182 :: Beefy Miracle
1035 :: Liege
 881 :: Never
 791 :: Gernsback
 641 :: Rocky Ripple
 628 :: Alpharabius
 550 :: Panguipulli
 505 :: Tubeteika

-- Jared Smith Fedora Project Leader"

Announcing the release of Fedora 16 Beta!!

Dennis Gilmore announced[1]:

"Mark your calendars, and get ready to go exploring: The release of Fedora 16, codenamed "Verne," is scheduled for release in early November. Fedora is the leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to bring everyone fresh, innovative features with each release, delighting users worldwide every six months.

We are proud to announce the availability of the Beta release of Fedora 16.

Come see why we love Fedora so much. We are betting you will, too. Download it now:

http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease?anF16b

What is the Beta Release?

The Beta release is the last important milestone of Fedora 16. Only critical bug fixes will be pushed as updates leading to the general release of Fedora 16 in early November. We invite you to join us in making Fedora 16 a solid release by downloading, testing, and providing your valuable feedback.

Of course, this is a beta release, meaning that some problems may still be lurking. A list of the problems we already know about is found at the Common F16 bugs page, seen here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F16_bugs

Features

This release of Fedora includes a variety of features both over and under the hood that show off the power and flexibility of the advancing state of free software. Examples include:

  • System Boot. Fedora 16 introduces GRUB2, the long-awaited

next-generation boot-loader for Linux. GRUB2 automatically recognizes other operating systems, supports LVM2 and LUKS partitions, and is more customizable than the previous version. In this release, only x86 systems with a BIOS uses GRUB2 by default. Work is ongoing for making GRUB2 the default for other architectures and systems.

  • Services Management. Fedora 15 introduced the Systemd services

management program. This release features better integration of Systemd via conversion to native systemd services from legacy init scripts in many software components -- for desktop users, this means faster boot times; for system administrators it means more powerful management of services.

  • Desktop Updates. The two major desktop environments have been

updated to the latest releases: KDE Software Compilation 4.7 and GNOME 3.1 development release.

  • SELinux Enhancements. SELinux policy package now includes a

pre-built policy that will only rebuild policy if any customizations have been made. A sample test run shows 4 times speedup on installing the package from 48 Seconds to 12 Seconds and max memory usage from 38M to 6M. In addition to that, SELinux file name transition allows better policy management. For instance, policy writers can take advantage of this and write a policy rule that states, if a SELinux unconfined process creates a file named resolv.conf in a directory labelled etc_t, the file should get labeled appropriately. This results is less chances of mislabeled files. Also, from this release onwards, selinuxfs is mounted at /sys/fs/selinux instead of in /selinux. All the affected components including anaconda, dracut, livecd-tools and policycoreutils have been modified to work with this change.

  • System Accounts. Fedora now standardizes on login.defs as

authority for UID/GID space allocation, and has moved boundary between system and user accounts from 500 to 1000 to match conventions followed by several other Linux distributions. Upgrading from a existing release will not be affected by this change and you can use kickstart to override this change during installation if necessary.

  • HAL Removal. HAL, a hardware abstraction layer which has been a

deprecated component for several releases, has been completely removed from all Fedora spins and DVD. Software components using HAL have moved over to using udisks and upower as well as libudev for device discovery. This results in faster system bootup and faster startup for applications depending on device discovery.

  • Cloud Updates. Fedora now includes a number of new and improved

features to support cloud computing, including HekaFS, a "cloud ready" version of GlusterFS, including additional auth*/crypto/multi-tenancy; pacemaker-cloud, application service high availability in a cloud environment; and IaaS implementations such as Aeolus and OpenStack.

  • Virtualization. Once again Fedora raises the bar on

virtualization support, including expanded virtual network support, an improved Spice for managing virtual machines, restored Xen support, a new virtual machine lock manager, and improved ability to browse guest file systems.

  • Developer Improvements. Developers get many goodies with Verne,

including updated Ada, Haskell and Perl environments, a new Python plugin for GCC and a number of new and improved APIs.

And that's only the beginning. A more complete list and details of all the new features in Fedora 16 is available here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/16/FeatureList

We have nightly composes of alternate spins available here:

http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/

Contributing to Fedora

For more information on common and known bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, please refer to the release notes:

There are many ways to contribute beyond bug reporting. You can help translate software and content, test and give feedback on software updates, write and edit documentation, help with all sorts of promotional activities, and package free software for use by millions of Fedora users worldwide. To get started, visit http://join.fedoraproject.org today!"

Fedora Development News

The Development Announcement[1] list is intended to be a LOW TRAFFIC announce-only list for Fedora development.

Acceptable Types of Announcements

  • Policy or process changes that affect developers.
  • Infrastructure changes that affect developers.
  • Tools changes that affect developers.
  • Schedule changes
  • Freeze reminders

Unacceptable Types of Announcements

  • Periodic automated reports (violates the INFREQUENT rule)
  • Discussion
  • Anything else not mentioned above
Remaining F16 blockers and F16 planning (2011-10-26)

Adam Williamson announced[1]:

"Hey, folks. This mail brought to you by my ever-increasing empty liquor bottle collection and ever-receding hairline.

We unfortunately still have open blockers today, which means we will likely do a TC3 compose tonight instead of RC1. The remaining unaddressed blockers are:

1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=668282 "PackageKit yum backend uses incorrect encoding for dynamic category names, makes them show up with '?' characters in KPackageKit"

Nils reported that he would complete work on this today, but has not checked in today at all. This leaves us somewhat stuck, as only Richard Hughes and Nils are really qualified to work on this. Richard is away this week.

2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=731245 "KDE fails to start inside a VM , large amount of memory [@ miCopyRegion]"

Soren fixed the initial issue, but KDE on qxl still doesn't really work correctly. Details and logs are in the latest comments on the bug, and I'm currently uploading a live image for convenient reproduction. Again, contributions are welcome here.

3. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=736893 "New Install of Fedora 16 TC1 on iBFT iSCSI NIC fails on first reboot"

Again, we're still rather looking for information from the reporter here. Tim may be able to acquire an iBFT NIC for testing today.

4. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=748747 "Totem doesn't display video when using software 3D rendering"

Did not hear from ajax in relation to this bug today. Again, we really need development input on this one.

5. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=747377 "heap corruption via multi-threaded "git grep""

This is the bug in glibc 12.999 and 13 which can at least potentially cause just about any app to crash. We're in the middle of addressing it; a fixed glibc is out for testing and we are now mass-rebuilding all packages which hit stable since glibc 12.999 made it to the buildroot. This, obviously, isn't speeding up the whole release process any.

Thanks everyone! -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora http://www.happyassassin.net"

New bodhi bugfix release in production

Luke Macken announced[1]:

"======bodhi v0.8.3======

Yesterday I pushed out a new bugfix release of bodhi into production. The bodhi-client is currently on it's way to updates-testing for all releases.

I raced to get this out before the infrastructure freeze today, and since then there have already been many more bugfixes in git, so expect another release shortly after F16 is released.

Please file bugs here[2]

Client fixes
  • bodhi -L dies with out-of-range exception after branching f16[3][4]
  • bodhi -r dist-f14 -b 676195 don't respect -r option[5]
Server fixes
  • Default to update ID-based URLs[6]
  • fedora-easy-karma submits too many comments to bodhi when bodhi has a server problem (edit)[7]
  • Bodhi no longer adds comments to Security Response bugs[8]
Buildroot override fixes
  • Buildroot overrides require commit access to devel branch rather than branch override applies to[9]
  • Cannot request build root override[10]
  • buildroot overrides stay after expiration date[11]
Masher fixes
  • Updates-testing report emails should use package names not update number[12]
  • Current updateinfo data is broken (epoch="None")[13]
  • Fedora Update System suggests to reboot when not asked to do so[14]

Package fixes


  • bodhi-server should require python-fedora-turbogears[15]
last stable push for f16 GA

Dennis Gilmore announced[1]:

"Hi all,

on Monday October 24 we will be doing the last push to stable, after that the only things that will get pushed to stable before GA will be things that have been accepted as release blockers.

Thanks

Release Engineering"

F16 Final Change Deadline is Monday, Oct. 24

Robyn Bergeron announced[1]:

"Greetings,

This is your friendly reminder that the Final Change Deadline for F16 is Monday, October 24, 2011.

"After the change deadlines for the Final release no more updates are made to the branched development repository (e.g. /pub/fedora/linux/development/16).

The only exceptions are accepted blocker and "nice to have" bugs:

All updates after this time are considered zero day updates of the release, and are pushed to the updates repository which is available on the public availability date. For example, the repository for Fedora 16 is /pub/fedora/linux/updates/16."

The next step in the process is to create a final release candidate (RC) to pass on to QA for testing as soon as possible. The RC is scheduled to be created on Tuesday, October 25. Outstanding blocker bugs can delay the creation of the RC, possibly resulting in a one-week slip of the schedule.

Current outstanding blocker bugs can be seen here[2]

Thanks, Robyn"

Fedora Events

The purpose of event is to build a global Fedora events calendar, and to identify responsible Ambassadors for each event. The event page is laid out by quarter and by region. Please maintain the layout, as it is crucial for budget planning. Events can be added to this page whether or not they have an Ambassador owner. Events without an owner are not eligible for funding, but being listed allows any Ambassador to take ownership of the event and make it eligible for funding. In plain words, Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

Upcoming Events (September - December 2011)

  • North America (NA)[1]
  • Central & South America (LATAM): [2]
  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)[3]
  • India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)[4]

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events[1]

Additional information

  • Reimbursements -- reimbursement guidelines.
  • Budget -- budget for the current quarter (as distributed by FAMSCo).
  • Sponsorship -- how decisions are made to subsidize travel by community members.
  • Organization -- event organization, budget information, and regional responsibility.
  • Event reports -- guidelines and suggestions.
  • LinuxEvents -- a collection of calendars of Linux events.

Fedora In the News

In this section, we cover news from the trade press and elsewhere that is re-posted to the Fedora Marketing list[1].

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Fedora 17 Will Be a Beefy Miracle

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] a note from internetnews.com on Fedora 17's winning release name:

"Fedora 17 will come up against Ubuntu 12.04 codenamed the Precise Pangolin. So for the first time ever, Fedora will have a funkier name than Ubuntu.

Let's hope (for Fedora's sake) that the release is beefier too, so they can relish a well name release!"

The full post is available[2].

Fedora 17 Recognized as Beefy Miracle

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] coverage in Network World on the upcoming release name as well:

"The past couple of weeks have been exciting over in the Fedora camp. Fedora 16 beta barely burst onto the scene when along came the codename announcement for the next release, Fedora 17, a.k.a Beefy Miracle"

"Beefy Miracle supporters put on a much more enthusiastic, energetic campaign than other codename candidates. There's the Beefy Miracle website, with its history page detailing the origins of the codename. And much like Obama supporters proudly wore the future president's face on t-shirts, Beefy Miracle voters showed their support with “The Mustard Indicates Progress” tees."

The full post is available[2].

Users decide Fedora 17 will be 'Beefy Miracle'

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]

"The users of the Linux distribution Fedora have voted on the name for the 17th build of the code base. The top choice? Beefy Miracle."

"Meanwhile, interest in the latest Fedora 16 beta is proving strong, and the Fedora team have added new features designed to make the system faster to boot and more suited to cloud and virtualization tasks. Jared Smith, project leader for The Fedora Project, told The Register that work was still going on to improve the code."

The full post is available[2].

Fedora 16: Linux home for lost Ubuntu GNOMEs

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1]:

"Fedora has always been a reasonably popular Linux distro, but now it is acting as a kind of flagship for the GNOME 3 desktop, since Ubuntu has gone its own way. Fedora releases are likely undergoing much closer scrutiny from the Linux community."

"For those who've already made peace with GNOME 3, Fedora 16 is looking like one of the best ways to run the new shell environment. Not only is the default theme nicely integrated, GNOME 3 feels extremely stable on Fedora 16, even as a beta build."

The full post is available[2].

Fedora 16 Beta on Slashdot

Karin Bakis forwarded[1] a thread on Slashdot discussing Fedora 16 and GNOME 3.2:

"Fedora 16 beta and OpenSuse 12.1 beta have been released. For most users the major change in each distro is Gnome 3.2. Fedora also adopts the new Linux 3 kernel and the GRUB2 bootloader."

The full post is available[2].

Testers Wanted to Kick Tires on Fedora 16 Beta Release

Karin Bakis forwarded[1] a post in Network World on the Fedora 16 beta launch:

"The Fedora project rolled out the beta version of Fedora 16 today and invites testers to take it for a spin. Current known bugs are listed in the Fedora wiki, and beta testers are encouraged to provide feedback to help fine tune the operating system before Fedora 16 rolls out in November.

In an email announcement, release engineer Dennis Gilmore says that Fedora 16 users can expect the GRUB2 bootloader, which automatically recognizes other operating systems and supports LVM2 and LUKS partitions. Gilmore says that only x86 systems with a BIOS uses GRUB2 by default but work continues to make GRUB2 the default for other architectures and systems, too. Systemd services management was added in Fedora 15, and Gilmore says better integration of Systemd via conversion to native systemd services from legacy init scripts in many software components means faster boot times for desktop users.

On the desktop, Fedora 16 users will see KDE Software Compilation 4.7 and GNOME 3.1 development release. HAL (hardware abstraction layer) has been completely removed, which means faster system bootup. And SELinux includes a new pre-built policy that will only rebuild policy if any customizations have been made. “A sample test run shows 4 times speedup on installing the package from 48 Seconds to 12 Seconds and max memory usage from 38M to 6M,” Gilmore explains.

A “cloud-ready” version of GlusterFS, HekaFS (formerly called CloudFS), has been added. Fedora 16 also features expanded virtual network support, new virtual machine lock manager, and improved ability to browse guest file systems, according to Gilmore. For developers, Fedora 16 offers updated Ada, Haskell, and Perl environments, a new Python plugin for GCC, and new and improved APIs."

The full post is available[2].

Ambassadors

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Ambassadors Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Richard A Vijay For days of the week starting from 17 October 2011 to 24 October 2011 (19hrs GMT+1) [2]

Beat this week

Headlines from mailing lists

  • FAD China Posted by Tiansworld
  • Robyn Bergeron from Red Hat Posted on Fedora at Northeast GNU/Linux fest
  • APAC Special FAC Meeting Notes by Buddhika
  • Mail Explaining Fedora Process for Fedora Release Event Planning by Christoph
  • FAmSCo elections coming your way by Christoph Wickert
  • Nuno Rodrigues posted on event organisation wiki
  • EMEA Ambassadors Meetin on 2011-10-19 minutes by Christoph
  • Max Sharing views on FAmSCo Elections
  • Useful app for collaboration (chandlerproject) for Fedora by Zoltan Hoppar


Welcome New Ambassadors

On behalf of all our Fedora Community and Ambassadors, We are pleased to Welcome our newly sponsored Ambassador group members:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mkazuhiro from Brazil mentored by Daniel Bruno

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Faranda from Chile mentored by Daniel Bruno

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Antoniosalles from Chile mentored by Daniel Bruno

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Mailga from Italy mentored by Joerg Simon


We Congratulate them on their success with mentoring program and wish them all success in their endeavour to help Fedora. Congrats and Wishes to all New members from Fedora Team.

Summary of traffic on Ambassadors mailing list

  • FAmSCo'a agenda Posted by Christoph

[1]

  • FAD China Posted by Tiansworld

[2]

  • Meeting Reminder Posted for French Fedora Event

[3]

  • New Ambassadors Welcome by Joerg Simon posted on Mon Oct 17 20:10:29 UTC 2011

[4]

  • Robyn Bergeron from Red Hat Posted on Fedora at Northeast GNU/Linux fest

[5]

  • Greg's reply to Robyn about Fedora table at the event

[6]

  • APAC Special FAC Meeting Notes by Buddhika posted on Oct 22 05:13:31 UTC 2011

[7]

  • Mail Explaining Fedora Process for Fedora Release Event Planning by Christoph

[8]

  • Option to File Expenses at FAmSCo TRAC by Christoph in response to Am Mittwoch posted on Wed Oct 19 21:29:12 UTC 2011

[9]

  • FAmSCo elections coming your way by Christoph Wickert posted on Wed Oct 19 22:39:30 UTC 2011

[10]

  • Enquiry on Election Timeline by Buddhika Kurera

[11]

  • Abdel, Oracle certified Associate Java SE 5,6 taking up Christoph's Process to set up event

[12]


  • Itamar Reis Peixoto's enquiry on USB shipment to Brazil

[13]

  • Nuno Rodrigues posted on event organisation wiki on Ponta Delgada Party

[14]


  • Tuan planning to set up event at APAC Vietnam

[15]

  • Feliepe Posted on Event organisation in Santiago

[16]


  • EMEA Ambassadors Meetin on 2011-10-19 minutes by Christoph

[17]

  • FAmSCo elections coming your way Posted by Christoph on Wed Oct 19 22:36:29 UTC 2011

[18]


  • Max Sharing views on FAmSCo Elections

[19]

  • Buddhika Sharing views on FAmSCo Elections

[20]

  • Tuan Sharing views on FAmSCo Elections

[21]

  • Need more release events for Fedora 16 by Engels Antonio, he is organising parties in Manila posted on Thu Oct 20 19:15:08 UTC 2011

[22]

  • Useful app for collaboration (chandlerproject) for Fedora by Zoltan Hoppar posted on Sun Oct 23 23:26:33 UTC 2011

[23]


  • French Fedora Meeting Reminder posted on Mon Oct 24 06:30:01 UTC 2011

[24]


  • Discussion Thread for regular and timely publishing of Fedora Weekly News by Pascal posted on Mon Oct 24 20:05:51 UTC 2011

[25]


  • Volunteering to Help for regular and timely publishing of Fedora Weekly News by Arif

[26]

FAmSCo Meeting

  • FAmSCo elections coming your way Posted by Christoph on Wed Oct 19 22:36:29 UTC 2011

[27]


Events reported on Ambassadors mailing list

  • Robyn Bergeron from Red Hat Posted on Fedora at Northeast GNU/Linux fest

[28]


  • RNuno Rodrigues posted on event organisation wiki on Ponta Delgada Party

[29]


  • Tuan planning to set up event at APAC Vietnam

[30]

  • Feliepe Posted on Event organisation in Santiago

[31]

  • FAD China Posted by Tiansworld

[32]

Campus Ambassadors mailing list-Summary of traffic

No news.

  1. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018313.html
  2. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018288.html
  3. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018291.html
  4. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018292.html
  5. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018293.html
  6. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018294.html
  7. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018322.html
  8. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018300.html
  9. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018306.html
  10. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018312.html
  11. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018314.html
  12. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018307.html
  13. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018309.html
  14. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018310.html
  15. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018316.html
  16. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018317.html
  17. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018308.html
  18. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018311.html
  19. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018319.html
  20. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018320.html
  21. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018321.html
  22. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018318.html
  23. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018324.html
  24. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018325.html
  25. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018326.html
  26. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018327.html
  27. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018311.html
  28. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018293.html
  29. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018310.html
  30. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018316.html
  31. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018317.html
  32. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2011-October/018288.html

Security Advisories

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce for the four weeks ending October 26, 2011.

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Fedora 16 Security Advisories

Fedora 15 Security Advisories

Fedora 14 Security Advisories