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(→‎Mysterious Fedora Compromise: correct BrunoWolff's name as per email request)
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[3] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1136
[3] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1136


[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Scholarship
[4] [[Scholarship]]


* [[KarstenWade|Karsten Wade]] has written a two[5] excellent posts[6] about the need for a Fedora CMS.  His posts cover the differences between a CMS and a wiki, general requirements for any CMS that we choose, as well as a discussion of the scope of the project.  Suggested reading for any members of the websites or documentation projects.
* [[KarstenWade|Karsten Wade]] has written a two[5] excellent posts[6] about the need for a Fedora CMS.  His posts cover the differences between a CMS and a wiki, general requirements for any CMS that we choose, as well as a discussion of the scope of the project.  Suggested reading for any members of the websites or documentation projects.
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[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00271.html
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00271.html


[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/NA#Fedora_Ambassador_Polo_Shirts_for_North_America
[2] [[Ambassadors/NA#Fedora_Ambassador_Polo_Shirts_for_North_America]]


=== Help Wanted: Austria LinuxDay 2008 ===
=== Help Wanted: Austria LinuxDay 2008 ===
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[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00999.html
[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00999.html


[8] https://bugs.kde.org/show.bug.cgi?id=167668
[8] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167668


[[TimJackson|Tim Jackson]] reported[9] that ''plague-client''[10] was acting up and [[MichaelSchwendt|Michael Schwendt]] quickly provided[11] a patch which removed an assumption about how many bytes would be in the certificate. [[DennisGilmore|Dennis Gilmore]] commented "it's probably due to the new ca cert being 8096 bit and user certs are now all 2048 bit" and [[ChrisWeyl|Chris Weyl]] filed[12] a bugzilla.
[[TimJackson|Tim Jackson]] reported[9] that ''plague-client''[10] was acting up and [[MichaelSchwendt|Michael Schwendt]] quickly provided[11] a patch which removed an assumption about how many bytes would be in the certificate. [[DennisGilmore|Dennis Gilmore]] commented "it's probably due to the new ca cert being 8096 bit and user certs are now all 2048 bit" and [[ChrisWeyl|Chris Weyl]] filed[12] a bugzilla.
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[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00866.html
[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00866.html


Commenting on responses from [[MattMiller|Matt Miller]][14][15] and [[JasonTibbitts|Jason Tibbitts]][16], among others, [[SethVidal|Seth Vidal]]commented[17] that it appeared that "all the .edu people seem to get this". But Horst was skeptical[18] that it was necessary to force sysadmins to make such changes.
Commenting on responses from [[MattMiller|Matt Miller]][14][15] and [[JasonTibbitts|Jason Tibbitts]][16], among others, [[SethVidal|Seth Vidal]] commented[17] that it appeared that "all the .edu people seem to get this". But Horst was skeptical[18] that it was necessary to force sysadmins to make such changes.


[14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00911.html
[14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00911.html
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=== Fedora 8 Security Advisories ===
=== Fedora 8 Security Advisories ===
None
None
[[Category:News]]

Latest revision as of 08:16, 18 September 2016

Fedora Weekly News Issue 140

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 140 for the week ending August 24, 2008.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue140

Fedora Weekly News keeps you updated with the latest issues, events and activities in the Fedora community.

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page. Being a Fedora Weekly News beat writer gives you a chance to work on one of our community's most important sources of news. Ideas for new beats are always welcome -- let us know how you'd like to contribute.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/

Contributing Writer: Max Spevack

Fedora Infrastructure's ongoing issues

Paul Frields continued to post[0] periodic updates about Fedora Infrastructure.

"Our team has been hard at work for several days now, restoring services in the Fedora infrastructure. We started with what we identified as Fedora's "critical path," those systems required to restore minimum daily operation. That work to be completely finished by the end of the day. We then move on to our other value services to complete them as soon as possible."

[0] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00011.html

On August 22nd, a more complete report[1] was published. Rather than excerpt it here, Fedora Weekly News encourages readers to review the entire announcement.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012.html

Finally, Dennis Gilmore announced[2] that "effective immediately we have replaced the CA that is in use for cvs.fedoraproject.org and koji.fedoraproject.org This effects uploading to lookaside cache and building packages."

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-August/msg00008.html

Email bounces

Seth Vidal explained[3] that "a number of addresses @fedoraproject.org there were windows when those email addresses would have bounced reporting that the address did not exist."

He goes on to say that the problem has been corrected, but anyone who wants the details should read the full message.

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2008-August/msg00007.html


Planet Fedora

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

http://planet.fedoraproject.org

Contributing Writer: Max Spevack

This week on Planet Fedora...

  • Mairin Duffy posted[0] another draft of the Gears/Steampunk proposed wallpaper, and also [1] reminded everyone that the "deadline for round 2 of the Fedora 10 artwork process is 1 September 2008."[1]

[0] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60668.html

[1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60797.html

  • Rex Dieter wrote several posts[2] about his trip to Akademy, the KDE uber-conference which was held this year in Brussels.

[2] http://rdieter.livejournal.com/tag/akademy

  • Paul Frields announced[3] the Fedora Scholarship[4] program.

"Now it’s finally official: a Fedora Scholarship. A while back, we started talking about ways to identify and cultivate young contributors to Fedora. We are starting to see more and more young people taking the opportunity to be full participants in the open source world. As part of our mission to develop a culture of contribution in FOSS and not just consumption, we want to identify and reward those individuals.

One way we can do this is through the incentive of scholarship funds. This year we started the Fedora Scholarship to lead that effort. The inaugural winner, Ricky Zhou, is someone that many people may know from his exceptional work on our websites and infrastructure."

[3] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1136

[4] Scholarship

  • Karsten Wade has written a two[5] excellent posts[6] about the need for a Fedora CMS. His posts cover the differences between a CMS and a wiki, general requirements for any CMS that we choose, as well as a discussion of the scope of the project. Suggested reading for any members of the websites or documentation projects.

[5] http://iquaid.org/2008/08/13/why-and-where-fedora-needs-a-cms-solution/

[6] http://iquaid.org/2008/08/19/fedora-cms-focus-and-scope/

Ambassadors

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

Contributing Writer: JeffreyTadlock


Updated Q3 Budget Draft

Max Spevack posted [1] an updated draft for the upcoming Q3 budget. The draft attempts to give more discretionary funds to North America, address concerns for FAD EMEA and leave a small amount in reserve for additional Q3 expenses that arise. Review the mailing list post for the detailed view.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00266.html


North America Polo Shirt Order - Round Two

Pascal Calarco is ready to start a second round of ordering for Ambassador Polos as announced on the Fedora Ambassador mailing list [1]. There is also additional information in the wiki [2].

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00271.html

[2] Ambassadors/NA#Fedora_Ambassador_Polo_Shirts_for_North_America

Help Wanted: Austria LinuxDay 2008

Fabian Affolter posted [1] a request for help to organize a Fedora booth at the Austria LinuxDay 2008. The event is November 29, 2008 and expected attendance is 1000 visitors. If you are in the area and can attend, contact Fabian Affolter.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00289.html

Developments

In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.

Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley

Mysterious Fedora Compromise

The mysterious unavailability of much of the FedoraProject infrastructure (see FWN#139 "General Outage of Fedora Infrastructure"[1]) continued to provoke speculation during the week. Some light was shed[2] on 22-08-2008 when Paul Frields announced that there had been an intrusion onto several FedoraProject servers. The announcement emphasized that although one of the servers was used for signing rpm packages it was believed, based upon an absence of positive evidence, that the key and packages had not been tampered with. Nevertheless prudence and caution were being exercised and the opportunity was being seized to completely re-install and upgrade all systems. As a result it was necessary for most contributors to reset authentication tokens of various types (see this same issue[3].) It also appeared[4] that a concurrent event had led to the signing of some Red Hat OpenSSH packages, but that these had been quickly detected and had not led to the distribution of compromised packages.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue139#General_Outage_of_Fedora_Infrastructure

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012.html

[3] "Epiphany, Konqueror and Plague Hamper Updating SSL Client-side Certificates" [4] http://www.redhat.com/security/data/openssh-blacklist.html

Prior to that announcement all that was known was that there were problems on the build servers which became obvious to a wide audience on 13-08-2008 and that users were advised[5] on 14-08-2008 not to install updates. The wiki and email lists continued to function during this period thanks to the efforts of their administrators.

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00008.html

An update[6] was posted on 18-08-2008 by Paul Frields that listed the services which had returned to normal and those which were expected to return to normal soon. Public speculation latched on[7][8] to the changing of "fedorahosted" SSH keys. Most guesses used this as evidence that something similar to the recent 2008 Debian OpenSSL vulnerabilities[9] had occurred. Some confusion prevailed[10] on @fedora-devel as to whether it was possible to trust the new key fingerprint on the website. Jim Meyering added[11] a useful post which explained how to change from using a DSA ssh key to an RSA ssh key. Overall there was a surprisingly low level of public discussion of the problem and it was not until 18-08-2008 that some complaints about the lack of information were expressed[12] on @fedora-list. On 22-08-2008 another bulletin was released[13] by Paul Frields that explained that the Fedora key had not been obviously compromised but that it was still being changed on the precautionary principle.

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00011.html

[7] http://lwn.net/Articles/294547/

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00790.html

[9] Metasploit has an excellent writeup on the topic here: http://www.metasploit.com/users/hdm/tools/debian-openssl/

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00841.html

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00845.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg01953.html

[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00012.html

Although many responses to complaints about the limited information suggested[14] that the Fedora developers could be trusted to "do the right thing" in terms of alerting users to immediate threats of compromise there was still strong disquiet expressed[15] over the lack of information. This also occurred[16] on @fedora-list. Jef Spaleta wondered[17] if there might be a better way of getting information out than relying on everyone to subscribe to @fedora-announce. Alan Cox suggested[18] that an RSS feed for critical announcements could be picked up by a system's default package updater and that repositories could communicate errors to yum. Alan was also unhappy with the absence of important notices on the very front of the website and as a separate matter criticized the content of the information issued: "[...] leaving people in the dark assuming the worst [is] a very bad way to create long term trust." Bruno Wolff III also suggested[19] that information should have been conveyed by a more central announcement on fedoraproject.org and co-ordination with media such as LWN.net.

[14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg01955.html

[15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02034.html

[16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02426.html

[17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02010.html

[18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02012.html

[19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-August/msg02013.html

Most comments on @fedora-devel made a point of thanking the Fedora Infrastructure admins, even to the extent of providing internet beers[20] and Hans de Goede commented[21] that "Even before the unfortunate events of the last few weeks the infrastructure team has been doing an amazing job[.]"

[20] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01037.html

[21] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01028.html

Epiphany, Konqueror and Plague Hamper Updating SSL Client-side Certificates

As part of the general overhaul of Fedora Project infrastructure security occasioned by the recent intrusion[1] Dennis Gilmore advised[2] that the certificate authority governing access to cvs.fedoraproject.org and koji.fedoraproject.org had been changed. As a result it was necessary for those who wished to build packages or upload to the lookaside cache to manually import a new client-side certificate and to remove their old certificate.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue139#General_Outage_of_Fedora_Infrastructure

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00962.html

Martin Sourada reported[3] that after following the procedure he still received a (Error code: ssl_error_unknown_ca_alert). Kai Engert suggested[4] that Martin might need to import the Fedora Project root CA certificate after verifying its fingerprint. As Martin had allowed exceptions for the Fedora websites this was not the problem and it turned out[5] to be due to a problem with the epiphany web browser failing to offer an option to remove old certificates.

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00978.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00982.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00989.html

Problems were also experienced[6] by Jose Matos, but this time with the konqueror web browser (version 4.1.0). Kevin Koffler replied[7] that in KDE 4 there was no support for SSL certificate authentication with konqueror and pasted a link[8] to an upstream bug report filed with the KDE project on this issue.

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00983.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00999.html

[8] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167668

Tim Jackson reported[9] that plague-client[10] was acting up and Michael Schwendt quickly provided[11] a patch which removed an assumption about how many bytes would be in the certificate. Dennis Gilmore commented "it's probably due to the new ca cert being 8096 bit and user certs are now all 2048 bit" and Chris Weyl filed[12] a bugzilla.

[9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00993.html

[10] plague is the distributed package build system used by the EPEL repository

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00996.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01019.html

Later Paul Howarth encountered[13] what seemed to be a problem with his key or koji but which turned out, as suggested[14] by Jason Tibbitts to be due to denyhosts blocking him.

[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00970.html

[14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00971.html

System Autodeath

Seth Vidal raised[1] the possibility of including a non-default option to include an "autodie" feature in future Fedora releases. The idea, originally expressed[2] in Glen Turner's blog is that each OS release should ship with an expected expiry date and a means to automatically remove the default route from that machine once the expiry date arrives. This would prevent old, unmaintained machines from being quietly exploited.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00853.html

[2] http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/blog/linux/autodeath.1024px

Agreement was expressed[3] by Jon Masters that it would be useful if "a sysadmin consciously wants to remember to remove a system from production/upgrade it after a certain time but then loses track of it[.]" Rahul Sundaram also thought[4] that something should be done but preferred the idea of modifying PackageKit to notify users when an upgrade was due and fixing up PreUpgrade to allow users to easily update without burning media. Jon Ciesla and Colin Walters wrangled over whether LiveUpgrade or PreUpgrade was the appropriate place to present such notifications with Colin disliking the LiveUpgrade due to support logistics. Richard Hughes was pleased to relate[5] that most of Rahul's desired feature had been implemented only a couple of days previously.

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00855.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00856.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00932.html

Although Dave Jones was not worried[6] about desktop machines being abandoned this was contested. Dominik Mierzejewski related[7] anecdotes of people still running Fedora Core 2 while Stephen Smoogen regaled[8] the list with tales of hundreds of ancient Windows 3.11 clients on his network. Seth Vidal shared[9] Dave's insouciance and was more concerned about servers and "appliance-like machines" but promised to "look at putting a simple cron job together in a package to do this" while inviting anyone more motivated to go ahead and implement it.

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00861.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00862.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00865.html

[9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00863.html

A slight misunderstanding of Seth's intentions led[10] Horst H. von Brand to put the case "[...] against forcing people forward, even for their own good[.]" Horst argued that some systems could not be updated due to reliance on unmaintained legacy software. After Seth explained that he was not recommending that the "autodeath" feature be made a default Horst still expressed[11] a worry that casual installation followed by forgetfulness could result in the unexpected deactivation of systems later on. He suggested that instead of removing the default route "to a nag screen when EOL nears, offer to set up for upgrade, show (current) pointers to scripts helping check if 3rd party stuff will still work, ... install /that/ by default, allow to disable/uninstall it (even while it is nagging)." Seth objected[12] forcefully to describing the removal of the default route as "kills itself" and this resulted in a spate of alternate name suggestions.

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00903.html

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00929.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00930.html

James Hubbard saw[13] similarities to "Windows Genuine Advantage where you can't use your machine anymore if you can't validate your installation" and suggested instead that users be notified of the EOL and in a separate part of the thread Jef Spaleta suggested that "autoannoy", via motd or the login banner, instead of "autodeath" might educate and help users more than cutting off connectivity.

[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00866.html

Commenting on responses from Matt Miller[14][15] and Jason Tibbitts[16], among others, Seth Vidal commented[17] that it appeared that "all the .edu people seem to get this". But Horst was skeptical[18] that it was necessary to force sysadmins to make such changes.

[14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00911.html

[15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00935.html

[16] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00868.html

[17] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00869.html

[18] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00931.html

James Hubbard also made[19] a strong argument that lack of updates was as much of a security problem as being EOL'ed and thus any such measures should also be applied to systems lagging in their updates.

[19] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00959.html

GNUstep Filesystem Layout Discussion

A very clearly presented[1] explanation by Michel Salim kick started a discussion about how the GNUstep application development framework could finally be included in Fedora. Michel explained that GNUstep's idiosyncratic filesystem layout had previously made it impossible to install on an FHS[2] compliant system but that it was now possible. A choice had to be made for the layout of what GNUstep terms "application bundles" bearing in mind that "flattened" layouts are platform specific while "unflattened" can support multilib with little pain. Michel saw three main choices including a non-FHS-compliant one and noted that there were potential conflicts between utill-linux-ng and the default installation of GNUstep tools in /usr/bin/<arch>. He also noted that Debian had chosen to use an unflattened layout.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01007.html

[2] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#INTRODUCTION

From this point onwards the discussion became a little difficult to follow due to the use of GNUstep specific terminology. The simplest information your correspondent could find was the online version[3] of the library-combo manpage and is probably essential reading before even attempting to grasp the outlines of the following.

[3] http://linux.die.net/man/7/library-combo

A suggestion[4] from Axel Thimm was "[...] to place [the GNUstep tools] directly under %{_bindir} and let rpm deal with the different archs as it does for all other %{_bindir} mixing of subarchs with colors etc" and to put the libraries under %{_libdir}. He argued that multilib or multiarch binaries were not generally supported in Fedora. Axel was also encouraging about the idea of starting a wiki page to attract as wide a possible contribution from GNUstep developers including non-Fedora contributors. Even more importantly Axel contrasted the ability of an unflattened layout to support different compilers and libraries to that of a flattened layout which could make OpenGroupware[5] conflict with other applications due to its use of libFoundation[6.] Kevin Koffler was unimpressed[7] with "packages which think they are a distro" and posited the solution that "[...] they need to be fixed to work with the system libraries instead (or the system libraries fixed to work with the packages[.]" While Axel agreed he explained[8] that what was being chosen was an "Objective-C runtime/ foundation library/graphical interface tuple (flattened)" and that it was necessary to allow a choice at runtime of the middle component in order to support applications depending on either libFoundation or gnustep-base[9]. Axel concluded "[...] IMHO we need to start with gnustep-make's FHS and non-flattened layout and fix it where it still needs fixing (gnustep-make FHS layout is very young and one could say that we are shaking out the bugs and when we are finished hopefully upstream will be glad to accept any patch we will have made to the FHS mode layout of gnustep-make)."

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01009.html

[5] A groupware server integrating office suites through XML-based interfaces: http://www.opengroupware.org/en/about/mission.html

[6] Cocoa, libFoundation and gnustep-base all provide implementations of, and non-standard extensions to, the OpenStep API. Apart from licensing differences gnustep-base also has better platform coverage (Windows is not supported by the others) and full unicode support.

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01021.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01029.html

[9] http://www.gnustep.org/developers/suite.html

Discussion with Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski and Kevin led Michel to post[10] that "[...] the consensus so far seems to be for using a flattened layout. Removing --disable-flattened from gnustep-make actually causes a much tighter adherence to the FHS, with %{_bindir} and %{_libdir} not containing any subdirectories." Michel was worried that this would result in duplicating data files and that "[...] keeping the unflattened layout might be too much trouble; if we are already flattening /usr/bin and /usr/lib*, might as well stick with a flattened layout after all."

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01024.html

Apparently different conclusions were being reached at this stage and Axel attempted[11] to expand upon what he had said, explaining that this would result in having to choose between the Foundation libraries at buildtime. He presented unflattened layouts as allowing a choice of "libcombo" at runtime as opposed to flattened which forced a choice at buildtime. Dominik was[12] apparently comfortable with the idea of choosing between the two Foundation libraries and cited the precedent of not mixing lesstif and openmotif. To solve the problem he suggested "[put binaries in unflattened %{_libdir}/GNUstep/* and symlink to /usr/bin ." After Axel replied that the problem was the incompatible API/ABI of the Foundation libraries Michel posted[13] another summary of the current apparent state of knowledge.

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01039.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01040.html

[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg01054.html

Varnish 2.0 Test Suite Fails in Rpmbuild

An interesting post from Ingvar Hagelund, the maintainer of the varnish http accelerator package, asked[1] why a test suite in the package would behave differently within the rpmbuild created environment than when run from an interactive shell. Ingvar had eliminated selinux as a possibility and speculated "[...] the problem seems to be related to some missing communication between the test scripts and the test server process."

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00944.html

A response from Mogens Kjaer contained[2] a report that it was to do with a missing libvarnish.so.0 and wondered "[...] is the build system using an already installed libvarnish.so.0 if one is available and not the newly built libvarnish.so.0?" Jason Tibbitts suggested[3] that it was usual to reference such newly built libraries by manipulating LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the specfile. After Mogens added LD_LIBRARY_PATH and rebuilt from scratch he found[4] that all the tests were passed but that no varnish-libs had been installed and this led him to conclude that there was indeed a difference to the rpmbuild environment.

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00945.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00946.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00948.html

Ingvar ended up[5] filing a bug report upstream with the conclusion that the soname version should be bumped as the old libraries were incompatible with varnish-2.0.

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00951.html


Infrastructure

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure

Contributing Writer: HuzaifaSidhpurwala

So everyone is aware

Mike McGrath writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [1]

This is the first notice when came out to the community that there will be outages and a lot of the servers are being rebuild. Mike pointed to the mail on fedora-announce-list [2]

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/msg00108.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-August/msg00008.html

securing FAS certs

Toshio Kuratomi writes for fedora-infrastructure-list [3]


The Fedora Certificates issued by FAS are currently set to be autogenerated if you have an account in FAS. This has one drawback. We have to keep the password for the CA keys that sign the FAS certificates in a file on the filesystem so that the automatic signing can use them. Toshio suggested that we use a system which utilizes human interaction to sign the certs.

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2008-August/msg00122.html

Artwork

In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

One Canvas Workflow

MartinSourada talked[1] on the Fedora Art list about the One Canvas Workflow: "I think we need to be up to date with technology, so I started downloading the One Canvas Workflow screencast by jimmac. I haven't tried it yet (but going to do so very soon), but from the people who already tried it and shared their thoughts about it, it seems like it would be improvement for the Echo Icon Theme creation workflow".

And quickly after this he presented[2] the first icons created using this process, an opportunity to introduce icons at a very large size (256x256px) and with an increased amount of details[3].

Editor's note: One Canvas Workflow is an improved way to create multiple icon size in one single sheet, advocated by the famous designer and GNOME hacker Jackub Steiner "jimmac"[4].


[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00290.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00292.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/pngNdtP7y3qw7.png

[4] http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?p=436


Fedora Art Team Monthly Picks

MairinDuffy proposed an initiative: "maybe the Fedora Art Team could do a monthly art pack (kind of along the likes of the iCE and ACiD art groups' monthly art packs) that would be a selection of say the top 10 best art works producing using Fedora (inkscape, gimp, etc., it just has to be software that's available in Fedora used to produce it.)", with the intention to promote the works created by the member of the team: "I think this might be a good way of getting more recognition to our artists as well as to what Fedora can do".

The talk is open for details about the technical implementation.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00298.html


Round 2 theming developments

With the deadline for the second round for theming the upcoming Fedora 10, a number of theme proposals received updates: Gears[1], Solar[2] and InvinXible[3] and each of them is under evolution in the remaining week.

[1] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/60668.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00293.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2008-August/msg00300.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: David Nalley

Fedora 9 Security Advisories

None

Fedora 8 Security Advisories

None