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* http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/Meetings/2007-11-06
* http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/Meetings/2007-11-06
[[Category:News]]

Latest revision as of 10:58, 14 April 2009

Fedora Weekly News Issue 109

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 109 for the week of November 5th. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue109

In Announcements, we have "Announcing the release of Fedora 8 (Werewolf)", "Fedora Unity releases Fedora 8 CD Sets", "rpm.livna.org repositories for Fedora 8 (Werewolf) now available", "ATrpms for Fedora 8; EOL for Fedora Core 6" and "Unofficial Fedora FAQ Updated for Fedora 8!"

In Planet Fedora, we have "Lesser-Known Fedora Contributors", "Part 1-6, Report: LTSP Hackfest 2007", "motd-File for your machine", "Fedora Electronic Lab 8 - Stable release", "Fedora Unity Spin Report", "Fedora 8 Games Spin - Feedback Requested", "Fedora Media Labels Howto", and "I am a Broken Record"

To join or give us your feedback, please visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join.


Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from Fedora Project.

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

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

Announcing the release of Fedora 8 (Werewolf)

JesseKeating announces in fedora-announce-list[1] ,

"(To the tune of Michael Jackson's "Thriller") It's close to midnight and something cool is coming through the "tubes" It's looking real tight, a distro for the experts and the n00bs With Live CDs* so you can try it out before installing Or DVDs so you can have the packages you choose No way to lose"

"'Cause it's Fedora, Fedora 8 We'd love to have you join us and together we'll be great Using Fedora, Fedora 8 Just click the link and rescue your computer's future today"

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-November/msg00006.html

Fedora Unity releases Fedora 8 CD Sets

JeroenVanMeeuwen announces in fedora-announce-list[1] ,

"The Fedora Unity Project is proud to announce the release of new CD Spins of Fedora 8. These CD ISOs are based on the Fedora 8 DVD.iso. The ISO images are available for i386 and x86_64 architectures via jigdo starting Thursday, November 8th, 2007. We have included CD Image sets for those in the Fedora community that do not have DVD drives or burners available."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-November/msg00008.html

rpm.livna.org repositories for Fedora 8 (Werewolf) now available

ThorstenLeemhuis announces in fedora-announce-list[1] ,

"On behalf of the Livna ( http://rpm.livna.org ) contributers I'd like to announce the availability of the Livna package repository for Fedora 8 (Werewolf). The Livna repository hosts software as RPM packages which cannot be shipped in the official Fedora repository for various reasons and supports the i386, x86_64 and ppc architectures."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-November/msg00004.html

ATrpms for Fedora 8; EOL for Fedora Core 6

AxelThimm announces in fedora-announce-list[1] ,

"ATrpms is officially launching Fedora 8 support for i386, x86_64 and ppc. http://ATrpms.net/dist/f8/"

"FC6 support will be EOL'd once the Fedora Project drops support for it (e.g. on December 7, 2007)."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-November/msg00005.html

Unofficial Fedora FAQ Updated for Fedora 8!

MaxKanatAlexander announces in fedora-announce-list[1] ,

"Hello! Right along with the release of Fedora 8, we're ready with the Fedora 8 version of the Unofficial Fedora FAQ! http://www.fedorafaq.org/"

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2007-November/msg00011.html

Ask Fedora

In this section, we answer general questions from Fedora community. Send your questions to askfedora AT fedoraproject.org and Fedora News Team will bring you answers from the Fedora Developers and Contributors to selected number of questions every week as part of our weekly news report. Please indicate if you do not wish your name and/or email address to be published.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AskFedora

Contributing Writer: RexDieter

KDE 4

"Robert Myers <mystinar AT comcast.net>: When KDE 4 is released next month, will packages for it be added to the Fedora 8 repositories?"

Robert, here's the cliff's notes answer:

KDE4 development platform is already in Fedora 8. For details:

When KDE 4.0 is released, we are strongly considering including KDE4 editions of kdeedu, kdegames as well, but the final decision hasn't been made.

The rest of KDE4 is Fedora 9 territory:

which is currently a bit out of date, but we'll be working on that once Fedora 8 is out the door.

Planet Fedora

In this section, we cover a highlight of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from world wide Fedora contributors.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Planet

Contributing Writers: ThomasChung

Lesser-Known Fedora Contributors, Part 1-6

MaxSpevack points out in his blog[1-6] ,

"I must say, I have always been very impressed with our Brazilian Fedora community. They have created their own website, and they have always been very good about getting a lot of value out of the relatively small amount of money that we are able to send their way. In particular, I would like to thank RodrigoPadula and DavidBarzilay."

"Most of Jon's (JonathanRoberts).contributions come as a writer -- he is particularly active in the Fedora News and the Fedora Documentation communities. In the Fedora 8 cycle, he has done a few things that have been tremendously helpful to me directly. The first is his work on the Fedora 8 Release Summary. The release summary is basically the Fedora community's "press release", written by a group of volunteers and meant to be a reasonably brief overview of "what is cool in the new distribution".

"Ricky (RickyZhou) has had a lot to do with the entire look-and feel of the non-wiki section of fedoraproject.org. Right now, I hear, he is debugging the way fedoraproject.org renders when viewed with Internet Explorer 6, which actually tells you pretty much everything you need to know about his desire to see a Job Done Well."

"Allison McGrath (wife of MikeMcGrath) has made a tremendous contribution to the Fedora Project by being kind-hearted and understanding to her husband of less than one week when the Fedora 8 release fell directly in between their wedding and their honeymoon."

"In the Fedora 8 timeframe, Chitlesh (ChitleshGoorah) is the man behind the Fedora Electronics Lab, one of the new custom spins that is being released with Fedora 8. Not only did he have the initial vision for the Fedora Electronics Lab, but he also maintains many of the packages that differentiate that spin from the more generic version of Fedora."

"Gerold (GeroldKassube) has been the organizer for Fedora's presence at LinuxTag in 2006, 2007, and 2008. It is probably the biggest Linux show in Europe. Even more important, from a community point of view, Gerold has organized a series of Fedora Ambassador Days, which have gathered together 10-15 folks from all over Europe, and planned out their Fedora Ambassador strategy for the coming year."

[1] http://spevack.livejournal.com/33893.html

[2] http://spevack.livejournal.com/34215.html

[3] http://spevack.livejournal.com/34370.html

[4] http://spevack.livejournal.com/34700.html

[5] http://spevack.livejournal.com/35162.html

[6] http://spevack.livejournal.com/35470.html


Report: LTSP Hackfest 2007

WarrenTogami points out in his blog[1] ,

"LTSP is Linux Terminal Server Project, a collection of tools and scripts to enable Linux desktops to networks of thin clients. Through K12LTSP, literally thousands of schools and hundreds of thousands of students worldwide have been exposed to Red Hat and Fedora Linux over the past 6+ years. This report is on my trip to the latest LTSP hackfest, where I am working toward integration of LTSP directly into the Fedora Project."

[1] http://wtogami.livejournal.com/20047.html

motd-File for your machine

FabianAffolter points out in his blog[1] ,

"After the establishing of a connection to a machine over ssh there is the possibility to display a message. sshd is looking in the file named /etc/motd for the data. The limitations are that there should not be more than 80 digits a line."

[1] http://fabaff.blogspot.com/2007/11/motd-file-for-your-machine.html

Fedora Electronic Lab 8 - Stable release

ChitleshGoorah points out his blog[1] ,

"Last Thursday, 8th November 2007, the very first Fedora Electronic Lab LiveCD was released officially. This LiveCD is based on Fedora 8 KDE along with almost all electronic design tools."

[1] http://clunixchit.blogspot.com/2007/11/fedora-electronic-lab-8-stable-release.html

Fedora Unity Spin Report

JeroenVanMeeuwen points out in his blog[1] ,

"Our Fedora 8 CD Set jigdo has been downloaded over 350 times, while our latest Re-Spin has been downloaded almost 300 times."

[1] http://kanarip.blogspot.com/2007/11/fedora-unity-spin-report.html

Fedora 8 Games Spin - Feedback Requested

RahulSundaram points out in his blog[1] ,

"One of the custom spins of Fedora that didn't get much attention because of the late addition is the Fedora 8 Games spin. This custom version of Fedora 8 from the games special interest group in Fedora includes tons of free and open source Linux games in a installable Live DVD. Download it and check it out. More information is available at the game spin wiki page. Any feedback is most welcome."

[1] http://rahulsundaram.livejournal.com/17475.html

Fedora Media Labels Howto

MairinDuffy points out in her blog[1] ,

"so it seems some folks had some trouble with the labels I posted before - it's not easy to work with the SVGs without some Inkscape knowledge since the way I did them they aren't perfectly sized (there is some padding around them.)"

[1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/49341.html

I am a Broken Record

JefSpaleta pionts out in his blog[1]

"Most people would consider the outage a big problem, but it sort of provided an interesting 'event' in the life of my f8 release animation. See while the outage was happening and the infrastructure team was shuffling around resources, so people didn't notice the disruption for too long, the logs I rely on to track f8 clients were seeing dead air. You can see exactly when the outage occurs in the theora video and exactly when the normal mirrorlist logging functionality is restored."

[1] http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/15512.html

Developments

In this section, we cover the problems/solutions, people/personalities, and ups/downs of the endless discussions on Fedora Developments.

http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

Contributing Writer: OisinFeeley

Codec Buddy Misleading?

An EU-based user (MarkG85) of Fedora 8 wondered[1] why CodecBuddy[2] was prompting him to pay to download codecs which he judged to be legally obtainable without payment within his legal jurisdiction. His suggestion was that GeoIP[3] functionality should be integrated with CodecBuddy in order to customize the prompts so that EU users were not misled into paying. MarkG85 also suggested that Red Hat should provide an EU-located server in order to circumvent the legal problems.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00536.html

[2] See JonathanRoberts' interview with BastienNocera and ThomasVanderStichele for an overview of the functionality provided by CodecBuddy and some of the background to its inclusion in Fedora 8 including Fluendo's granting of a free (beer) mp3 codec.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolocation_software

As the topic of the provision of legally dubious software (especially codecs for popular media types) has been discussed extensively and repeatedly in the past on several Fedora maillists and in more public forums there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm expressed by several people. MichaelWiktowy got straight to the point when he suggested[3a] that a search of @fedora-devel's archives and the use of rpm -Uvh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm would solve any problems.

[3a] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00537.html

The recent advice from Red Hat's legal counsel was alluded to by Mark and JeffSpaleta followed up[4] with an explanation that any distributed material could not contain even links to such software, but that the Fedora Project's web pages could. Jef suggested that it would be ideal if users of third-party repositories were willing to help upstream codeina[5] development implement hooks to additional "vendors" (presumably including non-commercial repositories in locations not affected by bizarre "intellectual property" rules).

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00538.html

[5] Codeina is a synonym for CodecBuddy, see: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/Codeina

A certain amount of questioning about why things have to be done this way led to further suggestions[6] that anyone still interested should search the archives ("contributory infringement" being a useful phrase in this regard). "MarkG85" and others explored some hypothetical situations including wondering[7] why SourceForge is able to host gstreamer-plugins-bad but in the end these all rested on an imperfect understanding of US and EU law. AlanCox answered[8] the latter specific question with the information that US law (presumably Section 230 of the CDA[9] ) provided protection to those merely hosting content. DavidNielsen summed things up well when he asked[10] in exasperation "Do you think we enjoy keeping media support from our users when we have perfectly good implementations available under OSI approved licenses? If there was a legal way to make this work, we would be doing it."

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00540.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00654.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00660.html

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act#Section_230

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00621.html

As an interesting aside RahulSundaram provided[11] a link to a map depicting the geographical concentrations of contributors to Fedora's CVS repositories. Rahul added that from a legal perspective this was irrelevant as Red Hat is based in the USA and takes on the liability for the Fedora Project. KevinKofler and Rahul discussed[12] the possibility of a non-US-based "Fedora Foundation".

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00646.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00649.html

Java Plugin Not Working In Fedora 8

The problem of getting the Java plugin working properly with Firefox cropped up again (see FWN#108 "IcedTea Plugin On x86_64"[1] ) when ValentTurkovic posted[2] that despite having used yum install java-plugin Firefox still did not appear to work on a test site.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue108#head-b6b24cabe831968ccc3a972977d2f02615a29e01

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00559.html

There were several helpful responses, including one from HansdeGoede who repeated[3] the advice offered by BillNottingham in the previous[1] thread to run mozilla-plugin-config -i -f as root in order to set up nspluginwrapper to search the correct paths for plugins. Hans added that this should be document and fixed and MartinStransky reported[4] the happy news that the latest build (at that stage[5] 0.9.91.5) fixed this problem.

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00583.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00586.html

[5] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=21875

MikeHarris (ex-Red Hat XFree86 maintainer) popped in to report that he was having no Java problems requiring manual intervention on an x86_64 installation of Fedora 8 although he had noticed that many other people had. He surmised[6] that problems were due to upgrading from a previous version (as opposed to a fresh install of the OS) or else the presence of a Sun/IBM/Other Java installation.

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00567.html

Valent replied that this was a fresh Fedora 8 LiveCD and after Hans repeated his advice Valent reported[7] that everything was now fine but wondered why it was not all "automagic". BillNottingham posted[8] that an update would be forthcoming to make it so.

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00585.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00597.html

Deltarpms For Fedora 7 To Fedora 8 Upgrade

The availability of deltarpms (see FWN#97 "Presto-digitation"[1] ) to ease upgrading from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 using yum was advertised[2] by JonathanDieter. JonathanUnderwood hoped that they would be for both x86_64 and i386 architectures, but JonathanDieter had to regretfully say[3] that they x86_64 deltarpms would not be ready for some days (probably by Sunday 11th Nov).

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue97#head-e50aaa8581b2a6606447223a3958ec56aebb7079

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00462.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00468.html

A little later JonathanDieter advised that the Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 deltarpms would take a little more time to prepare, but that he had good news in the form of deltarpms for Fedora 8 updates. He also drew attention to a small change, which was that deltaurl= should no longer be used and instead baseurl=http://lesloueizeh.com/f8/i386/updates should be inserted into etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo. This change is due[5] to a desire to reduce the code complexity and result in Jonathan hosting the repository until the Fedora Project is able to change Koji and Bodhi to build and publish the deltarpms. This work is apparently under way[6] [7] .

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00500.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00545.html

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00547.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00497.html

On Friday Jonathan announced[8] that the deltarpms for upgrades from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 were ready (a little quicker than he promised!). He provided a link to the YumUpgradeFaq and repeated the caution that it was necessary to edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo as described above. He provided a very compelling 84% bandwidth reduction example for a whole repository upgrade.

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00544.html

OpenID Support In Fedora 9?

An interesting discussion ensued when NealBecker posted[1] a link to an article on LWN which discussed the advances made in the 2.0 release of the OpenID implementation of a "Single Sign On" (SSO) system. Neal asked whether it could be integrated into Fedora 9.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00427.html

RichiPlana was interested and thought[2] it could work well with the GNOME Online desktop, but wondered how UIDs could be mapped to OpenIDs. He sought advice on which libraries he should use for PKI, string processing and networking in order to implement a PAM module for Fedora.

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00471.html

A cooler assessment came from SimoSorce who listed[3] the problem of UIDs in networked environments, emphasizing their local, non-network-aware nature. Simo suggested two possible solutions: one, making UIDs 128bit (effectively transforming them into UUIDs); or 2) make UIDs local only by a mapping facility in vfs which can translate each UID across networks. Simo had hard words to say about NIS and LDAP, characterizing their syncing of UIDs as "just *bad* hacks."

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00478.html

Although these problems were recognized by ColinWalters he suggested[4] the third option of using situation-specific logic and not trying to generalize the problem and solve it for all possible cases. AlanCox re-framed[5] the discussion in terms of the usefulness of LDAP or NIS being able to locally answer the "who owns this?" as opposed to the "can I ...?" questions. He suggested that the problems of remote filesystems being attached to local systems had been solved by AFS (which was designed for distributed computing and uses Kerberos to manage authentication) and that NFSv4 had the correct framework.

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00479.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00481.html

Simo was not convinced that ID mapping problems had been solved and wondered[6] what key management (which Alan had mentioned was integrated into the kernel) brought to the table. Further discussion centered[7] [8] around the overlap between the authentication and user identity domains.

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00490.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00504.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00511.html

When Will CVS Be Replaced By A Modern SCM?

A _very_ long thread was initiated[1] by AdamTkac when he asked whether there were plans to replace CVS with a more modern SCM/VCS[0] such as Mercurial/Hg, SVN or Git. JeffreyOllie suggested that a search of the archives would answer most questions as this had been discussed many times before. He pointed out that there is no consensus on which alternative to choose and that Koji and Plague would both need work done on them in order to support whatever is chosen. DanWilliams thought[2] that Plague should be able to support Git and/or Subversion.

[0] SCM and VCS are used interchangeably in this discussion, standing for Software Configuration Management and Version Control System respectively. DVCS stands for Distributed VCS. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00453.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00388.html

JoshBoyer asked[3] for any specific workflows which could be only be obtained with a new VCS. One suggestion from TomasJanousek was[4] that it was difficult to obtain a patchset from an arbitrary old history of the specfile, but LesMikesell suggested running viewvc (which used to be cvsweb) on the repository and VilleSkyttä provided an URL which allowed the viewing of all branches through the browser interface, all of which made ChristopherAillon happy[5] .

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00384.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00395.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00485.html

Adam provided some specific problems with his workflow[6] including the problem of easily moving a source tree under development and more. He admitted that they were solvable with CVS but he felt there were probably better ways of doing this with other systems. JesseKeating pressed for specifics and when Adam suggested that local repositories, branches and commits were desirable an interesting question was asked[7] by AndrewBartlett. Andrew pointed out that while distributed VCSs were attractive to the SAMBA Team their use of a centralized build farm (similar to Koji) only worked with the centralized model enforced by CVS. Jesse replied[8] to Adam that while he loved the idea of distributed SCMs he thought that the workflow which Adam described would result in an increased burden on most maintainers.

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00422.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00433.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00437.html

The problem of server outages (earlier mentioned by Adam) was expanded on when LubomirKundrak advocated[9] retaining the current system and pointed out that other services/servers had outages. MatejCepl's response[10] pointing out that with a distributed VCS the users can just commit locally and keep working led to skepticism from RalfCorsepius followed by an explanation[11] from SimoSorce. JoshBoyer and CaseyDahlin pointed[12] to the problem of distributing the buildsystem as the limiting factor on the usefulness of a distributed VCS.

[9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00454.html

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00475.html

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00495.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00543.html

FlorianLaRoche answered[13] the original query with the information that the Git backend to Koji needed testing and that this was important for the SecondaryArchitecture plans (see FWN#90 "Fedora Secondary Architectures Proposal"[14] and FWN#92 "Secondary Arch Proposal Cont."[15] ).

[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00420.html

[14] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue90#head-271f52b8e5603cd40d00d7c44ec8632cae42b1aa

[15] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue92#head-c3434293278dd5591422aebad936fcf2231403eb

Strong disagreement was expressed[16] by KarelZak with JoshBoyer's statements that CVS was fine because most work was on editing specfiles. Karel argued that specfiles were not central to his Fedora work and that the problem was that source code was not maintained in Fedora's CVS which meant that a ream of advantages were being lost. TomasMraz agreed[17] but noted that the packages CVS tree was fine for its purpose and that a set of scripts could provide a bridge between it and a DVCS with the features which Karel wanted. When MatejCepl provided a link to such a tool, Karel stated "We don't talk about a bridge between CVS and DVCS. We need a way how convert src.rpm to real source code tree that is managed by DVCS" which left Matej (and your author) confused[18] .

[16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00528.html

[17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00550.html

[18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00589.html

The thread flared up again when JonathanShapiro (from the CoyotOS group) provided[19] evidence that a centralized workflow could benefit from using a DVCS. Jesse wondered how many of the advantages realized within the CoyotOS project would be procedures commonly used in Fedora, to which ToshioKuratomi replied affirmatively[20] using his experience with Python "eggs". NilsPhilippsen also provided a list of things which could be done more easily with DVCS to which Jesse again asked[21] how frequently these operations would be carried out. Jesse stated that it was necessary to balance the extra complexity of imposing a DVCS on each maintainer against the advantages gained by its use.

[19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00453.html

[20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00474.html

Smolt And Software Information

Recent IRC discussions (in #smolt) were reported[1] by YaakovNemoy to concern the collection of information about partitioning, drive sizes and filesystem types. Yaakov had two questions: first, was it useful to collect such information; second, were there privacy concerns? Yaakov was very open and encouraging of criticism during the thread.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00604.html

An exchange with "nodata" concerning the lack of access controls on the UUID script resulted[2] in the filing of a bugzilla entry. "Nodata" made the point that although current voluntary participants might be happy to give their UUID to a developer for the current limited amount of information linked to it, they would be less willing to do so as more details were tied to the single UUID.

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00613.html

Bogus Permissions

Some odd permissions (the Inventor* rpms had the execute bit set) in the "8/Everything/i386/os/Packages" directory were noticed[1] by RalfCorsepius. JesseKeating replied that the error was known and that it was being ignored until things calmed down as there was no obvious harm being done.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00670.html

Ralf acknowledged[2] that there was no direct harm but that it wasn't pretty and also pointed[3] out that low-bandwidth users might be upset that they would need to download the packages again later.

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00672.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00676.html

Rpmbuild: Unset CFLAGS?

DebarshiRay (rishi) posted[1] that he had found while building proxyknife that it was necessary to make some adjustments to the values of CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS in order to have rpmbuild complete building the package. Koji builds worked perfectly without any changes. Rishi wondered if it was a good idea to unset the two variables by default.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00610.html

After some help from JoachimFrieben (who suggested using CPPFLAGS instead) Rishi suggested[2] that it should be possible for a specfile to set custom values for CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and FFLAGS. LeszekMatok declared[3] himself a fan of environment variables in order to save hours of specfile editing and MikeHarris added[4] a helpful suggestion.

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00615.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00624.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00631.html

Fedora 9 Brainstorming

JesseKeating announced[1] that Fedora 9 development was going to go ahead in the Rawhide repository on Friday 9th Nov and provided instructions for those who wanted to get off at the Fedora 8 stop. A useful link to the wiki describing the release engineering strategy was provided.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00487.html

The instructions to ensure that the development yum repository should be disabled for anyone that does _not_ wish to experience the first attempted compose of Fedora 9 were reiterated by DaveJones who said "People get bitten by this every release. And no doubt, people will this release too, because not all useres will read your announcement." Dave suggested[2] that an update to fedora-release just before the compose might ease this problem. Jesse and Rahul both pointed out that this would still result in a problem for anyone that had edited their repository files by hand as these would be used in preference to any .rpmnew version supplied.

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00489.html

Services Should Not Start By Default

The sharp-eyed OrionPoplawski noticed[1] that the latest Moodle specfile seemed to set the CMS to start by default. JonCiesla explained[2] that he had thought that the chkconfig line would result in the service starting on boot and not on install and asked what the correct thing was to do. BillNottingham confirmed[3] that Jon's interpretation was correct, but clarified that the service should not start on boot either.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00608.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00616.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-November/msg00639.html

Advisory Board

In this section, we cover discussion in Fedora Advisory Board.

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board

Contributing Writer: MichaelLarabel

Fedora Legal Updates

TomCallaway has written a message on the fedora-advisory-board list with updates on several legal matters[1] . Red Hat Legal has determined that libgpod/gtkpod support does not violate the DMCA thus Fedora can implement support for the newer generation iPods. It was also determining that linking to third-party Fedora RPM repositories is okay as long as there are no technology patents in question and no party has asserted their rights, which does include MP3 support.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2007-November/msg00050.html

Improving The Fedora Development Process

For future Fedora releases, MaxSpevack has recommended three changes be made to improve the development process[1] . These three points are picking a release name sooner in the development cycle, complete the web content at a specific deadline in the schedule, and more detailed feature QA/smoke-testing.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2007-November/msg00072.html

Documentation

In this section, we cover the Fedora Documentation Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

Contributing Writer: JohnBabich

Wiki Collaboration

KarstenWade explained to new contributors to Fedora docs on the wiki that they may have experienced him or other editors making corrections to their contributions. This is normal and should be viewed as a great way to learn while doing. No one should feel that he or she is being singled out.

He concluded, "You all are doing great work; there is so much activity on some days the wiki edits just blur by. It makes my heart sing. :)"[1] .

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-November/msg00032.html

What Writing Tools Do You Use?

MurrayMcAllister asked "what tools everyone is using for writing, including editors, research tools, diagram tools, graphic tools, and so on." [1] he currently uses Kate, but is starting to use jEdit. MarcWiriadisastra is using OpenOffice.org for wiki docs, Dan Smith is also using Kedit and OpenOffice.org, along with AbiWord. Dan also confesses to putting things down on paper. RuturajVartak wrote that he uses SCIM for Hindi translations, gedit and gtranslator. PaulFrields is a big Emacs fan, but pines for OpenOffice.org with better XSLT/styling. He notes the potential of SVG. JohnBabich also wishes OpenOffice.org Writer supported DocBook XML better and is excited about the possibility of supporting text translations inside SVG diagrams.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-November/msg00022.html

Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (FDSCo) Meeting

The log[1] of the FDSCo meeting held on 4 November was posted to the mailing list. There is also an html version[2] available on the Fedora Project wiki.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-November/msg00014.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/SteeringCommittee/Meetings/Minutes/IRCLog20071104

The FDSCo meeting for 11 November 2007 was cancelled.

Administration Guide Work

There's been some excellent progress lately on the Admninistration Guide.

VladimirKosovac wrote that he just started a Samba write-up for the Servers section in the Wiki. He understood that TOCs and multiple pages should be avoided to ease wiki--> DocBook conversion. Is that correct? [1]

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-November/msg00011.html

The KDE-SIG needs (your) help

JohnBabich seconded the call for help issued by the KDE-SIG, especially the part asking for documentation writers: "The documentation (esp. the DesktopUserGuide) is GNOME-centered. Help us to provide an equivalent for KDE." [1]

[] 1 http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-November/msg00013.html

POT/PO Update for Release Notes

PaulFrields did his usual excellent job in getting the Release Notes in shape for final publication in time for the release of Fedora 8. Ever the humble person, he acknowledged the hard work done by everyone:

"Thanks to everyone who worked so hard on getting these ready -- it looks like we'll have at least 11 languages ready on release date! You guys never fail to astound me with how much work you can accomplish in such a relatively short time. Congratulations to all the teams for their efforts!" [1]

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2007-November/msg00015.html

Artwork

In this section, we cover Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: TimothyRoberts

Nodoka Window Decorations for KDE

LaithJuwaidah has released a KDE version of the new Fedora theme Nodoka.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-November/msg00014.html

Arts in Brazil

JaymeAyres has contributed artwork for Fedora Project in Brasil.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-November/msg00033.html

CD Box Draft

GiacomoSucci has posted a first draft of of the CD Box. He is asking for the community's opinions and comments.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-November/msg00056.html

Hardcoded Icons

JakubRusinek has requested that the community help fix gnome system-* packages, which currently hardcodes icon paths.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-November/msg00018.html

Fedora 8 Features in PDF

MichaelBeckwith has requested assistance with compiling a PDF intended to display the new features of Fedora 8. He is in need of content, ideas, and graphics.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2007-November/msg00035.html

Security Week

In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora.

Contributing Writer: JoshBressers

Fedora 8 released

Last week saw the release of Fedora 8. This is important for countless reasons, one of them being a new firewall configuration tool. This is important since it should hopefully keep more people using the firewall. In previous Fedora releases it was often easiest to just turn off the firewall when something didn't work. This is obviously an unwise move as it can leave your machine open to various other issues. One of the most difficult things for security to achieve is keeping users safe while staying out of the way.

pcre

Some rather foul pcre flaws were made public last week. In reality these flaws aren't a big deal for most users, but it was found that pcre is used by Konqueror. It seems that the Konqueror web browser uses the pcre library for its JavaScript regular expression support. Web browsers are easily one of the most dangerous applications on a computer, as they process an incredible amount of arbitrary third party content.

Advisories and Updates

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

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

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

Fedora 8 Security Advisories

Fedora 7 Security Advisories

Fedora Core 6 Security Advisories

Events and Meetings

In this section, we cover event reports and meeting summaries from various projects.

Contributing Writer: ThomasChung

Fedora Board Meeting Minutes 2007-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora Ambassadors Meeting 2007-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora Documentation Steering Committee (Log) 2007-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Meeting 2007-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Report Week 44

Fedora Infrastructure Meeting (Log) 2007-11-08

Fedora Localization Meeting 2007-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora Marketing Meeting 2007-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora Packaging Committee Meeting 2007-MM-DD

  • No Report

Fedora Quality Assurance Meeting 2007-11-07

Fedora Release Engineering Meeting 2007-11-05

Fedora SIG KDE Meeting 2007-11-06

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