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Bringing you the latest news from the Linux World.
Dedicated to keeping Linux users up-to-date, with concise
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Leading items and editorials![[Ottawa]](ols.jpg)
The Ottawa Linux Symposium is over for another year. LWN's coverage from the event is now
available. Have a look for a discussion at what happened at this important
Linux event, now that the reporters have caught up on their sleep...
Also included is the contents of the conference proceedings CD, which
includes the original submitted paper for each talk.
Our event coverage looks at the details of what happened in Ottawa, but it is also worthwhile to step back and consider OLS from a more distant perspective. OLS is a nearly unique gathering of the people who actually make Linux what it is, and there are things to be learned by seeing who they are and what's on their minds. One of the things that jumped out immediately this year, of course, is that a lot fewer prominent developers made the trip to Ottawa this year. Evidently the combination of travel burnout and economic worries kept a lot of people at home. Many of those people were missed. On the other hand, IBM's presence at OLS was truly surprising. By one IBMer's guess, there were fifty people there from IBM - out of a conference maximum of 500. Despite their numbers, however, the IBM folks did not really stand out - they were simply engineers working on the improvement of free software like everybody else. Many of them are doing the same work they were doing before they became IBM employees. IBM appears to be determined to play a part in the Linux development community, and to do so on the community's terms. Linux is richer for the company's presence. Clusters are growing up. Linux clusters have long been a valuable tool for those seeking high availability or high performance, but only for those who do not mind their "some assembly required" nature. Now we are finally seeing the development of specialized distributions which make clusters easy to build and manage, efforts to create standards for high-availability cluster interfaces, and other necessary tools of the trade. Expect cluster adoption to increase greatly as these tools mature and become widely available. Finally, it is clear that the community needs this sort of development-oriented gathering. There is a place for flashy trade shows, but there is also a need for gatherings with lots of talk time, no suits, no trade floor, good network connectivity, a highly technical program, and plenty of beer. It's not often that the widespread Linux development community is able to get together and really talk about what it is doing. Events like OLS are a vital part of the free software development process; one can only hope that they thrive. Dmitry Sklyarov update. Various things are happening in the story of the arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov. We'll summarize them below, but here, perhaps, is the most relevant part: Dmitry Sklyarov is still in jail (in Oklahoma, last we have heard), and the government still intends to pursue the case. So, in that sense, nothing has really improved. That said, here's what's been happening:
Those interested in up-to-the-minute information can find it at FreeSklyarov.org. You have heard it all before, but it bears repeating: it is time for supporters of free software (and thus, of freedom) to get involved with their political systems. Too many laws are being made with little understanding of the technical issues and too much influence from a small subset of the interests involved. We need to talk some sense into our governments, or we may find ourselves free to write all the code we want - as long as it does nothing interesting. Frank Willison, editor-in-chief at O'Reilly & Associates, passed away as the result of a massive heart attack on July 30. Frank was a key player at O'Reilly and played a big role in the company's coverage of free software topics. In particular, the Perl and Python book lines bear his imprint in a big way. Frank shares, in some way, the credit for the success of those languages, though he would have denied that: ...the Camel book did not legitimize Perl. It may have accelerated Perl's adoption by making information about Perl more readily available. But the truth is that Perl would have succeeded without an O'Reilly book (as would Python and Zope), and that we're very pleased to have been smart enough to recognize Perl's potential before other publishers did. Frank will be missed, both inside and outside of O'Reilly. For more information on Frank, numerous quotes that are well worth reading, and the opportunity to post notes of your own, please see In Memory of Frank Willison on the O'Reilly site. Inside this LWN.net weekly edition:
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
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August 2, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Security page. |
SecurityNews and EditorialsSecond coming of Code Red. CERT posted a warning to administrators regarding the potential resurfacing of the Code Red worm this past week. The worm was expected to awaken on Tuesday, July 31st, 2001 starting at 8PM. The report noted that after an 11 day quiet period the worm would likely begin to spread again from previously infected systems in a mutated form. While Microsoft has taken some heat for the spread of the worm, experts are worried a second outbreak might raise the costs of dealing with the virus even higher, with the first wave having approached $1.2 billion in lost services so far. By early morning on Wednesday the worm had resurfaced, and by late afternoon had affected upwards of 135,000 systems. The growth of infected systems once again appears to be exponential, but mixed reports were made as to whether this second round of infections would eventually be worse than the first outbreak or less severe. Late Tuesday afternoon, Cisco posted an update to their advisory for the Code Red worm which describes the potential impact on their customers from side affects of the worm. When the traffic from the worm reaches a significant level, a Cisco CSS 11000 series Content Service Switch may suffer a memory allocation error that leads to memory corruption and will require a reboot. The defect is documented in DDTS CSCdu76237. While none of this directly impacts Linux users, it indirectly affects everyone on the Internet due to the potential such attacks have to slow or even stop the movement of traffic. Fortunately, at least by press time for LWN.net, round 2 in this battle seems to have gone to the administrators. Linux kernel IP masquerading vulnerability. A report was posted to BugTraq this week on a remotely exploitable IP masquerading vulnerability in the Linux kernel. The problem includes the Linux 2.2 ip_masq_irc module and involves situations where certain browser or MUA helper applications can cause firewalls to act as proxies to open inbound connections when they shouldn't. A patch has been provided by the IP MASQ 2.2 maintainer, JuanJo Ciarlante. RATS 1.1 (beta). A new beta version of the source code auditing tool RATS has been released, adding the ability to scan both Perl and Python code for vulnerabilities. Security ReportsDebian security updates for apache and apache-ssl. There have been reports that the 'apache' http daemon, as included in the Debian 'stable' distribution, is vulnerable to the 'artificially long slash path directory listing vulnerability'. There are fixes available in apache-ssl 1.3.9-13.3 and apache_1.3.9-14. It is recommended that you upgrade your packages immediately. Trustix advisory for PHPLib. Trustix Secure Linux issued an advisory for PHPLib to address problems where an attacker can execute scripts from another server. Long messages ids in elm cause buffer overflows. An advisory was issued by Linux-Mandrake this week for the elm mail client to address an issue with long headers causing buffer overflows. Proprietary products. The following proprietary products were reported to contain vulnerabilities:
UpdatesMultiple Horde IMP vulnerabilities. Check the July 26th Security Summary for details.This week's updates: Squid httpd acceleration ACL vulnerability. Check the July 26th Security Summary for details. Squid 2.3STABLE4 is affected; earlier versions are not. Red Hat 7.0 is reported to be vulnerable, while earlier and later versions are not. Debian is reported not vulnerable. A patch to fix the problem is available.
This week's updates: Previous updates: ResourcesCracking activity at all-time high (Register). According to statistics compiled by the Honeynet Project, cracking activity is at an all-time high. "Between April and December 2000, seven default installations of Red Hat 6.2 servers were attacked within three days of connecting to the Internet. From this the people behind the project concluded that 'the life expectancy of a default installation of Red Hat 6.2 server to be less then 72 hours'. Scary stuff." Hacking Vegas at Black Hat and DEF CON: One Geek's Experience (Linux Journal). Linux Journal covers the Black Hat Briefings and DEF CON. "Darth Elmo had the good fortune to attend both this year. Unlike many Black Hat attendees he went with somewhat more of an underground perspective, or at least a non-corporate one. And unlike many DEF CON attendees, Darth can remember where he was, what he saw and what he drank for most of the time he was there. Here, then, are one geek's observations and opinions on these two fine events." EventsUpcoming Security Events.
For additional security-related events, included training courses (which we don't list above) and events further in the future, check out Security Focus' calendar, one of the primary resources we use for building the above list. To submit an event directly to us, please send a plain-text message to lwn@lwn.net. Section Editor: Michael Hammel |
August 2, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current kernel release is still 2.4.7. The 2.4.8 prepatch is currently at 2.4.8pre3; it includes the usual collection of fixes, along with the single-use patch from Daniel Phillips which was covered last week. There have been complaints that the 2.4.8pre series is much slower on systems with large amounts of memory; the VM hackers are currently hot on the trail of those problems. Users of Adaptec adaptors (i.e. your editor, grumble grumble...) on SMP systems were unpleasantly surprised with 2.4.8pre2, which crashed on boot. The check that caused the crash has been removed, but there appears to be a strange problem that still lurks in there somewhere. Alan Cox's latest patch is 2.4.7ac3. It contains a great many architecture-specific changes; slowly the kernel trees for the various ports are finding their way back toward the mainline. There's also some enhancements for User-Mode Linux and many miscellaneous fixes. A new kernel API for completion events. It is common in kernel code to set some sort of process in motion, then to go to sleep and wait until that process completes. There are several ways of implementing the "wait for completion" part; which is the proper one to use depends on the specific situation. Until 2.4.7 came out, one technique used involved semaphores. The initiating process would declare a semaphore as a local variable (i.e. on the stack), starting out in the locked state; the process would do what was needed to arrange for some work to be done, then wait on the semaphore. The code actually doing the work would simply unlock the semaphore when the task was complete. On the surface, this technique is appealing because it avoids some obvious race conditions. If, for example, the work gets done before the kernel gets around to waiting on the semaphore, it notices that fact and simply doesn't wait. The sleep_on() and wake_up() calls can be much trickier to use correctly in this situation. But, as it turns out, there is a race condition here too, which is a result of how the semaphores themselves work. When a semaphore is to be unlocked, the code (1) sets the semaphore itself to the unlocked state, then (2) calls wake_up() to notify any processes that might have been waiting on the semaphore. If the waiter tests the semaphore between those two steps, it will never actually wait, and may well execute the rest of its code before the wake_up() call happens. That is not normally a problem, but, if the semaphore is sitting on a kernel stack somewhere, it could cease to exist before the wake_up() call, which requires data from the semaphore, runs. In other words, it could be working with a pointer into random memory; the technical term for this is "oops." This particular race is highly unlikely to ever actually happen, but it's still a race. The performance of this approach is also suboptimal, due to the fact that semaphores are optimized for the unlocked case. In this particular situation, the semaphore will almost always be locked. Linus chose not to change the semaphore implementation (it's "painful as hell"); instead, he created a new interface for the handling of completion events. All a process need do to use this facility is to create and initialize a completion structure: struct completion event; init_completion(&event);Then it can set things in motion, and call: wait_for_completion(&event);to sleep until things are done. The task actually doing the work can perform a simple call to complete(&event);and the waiting process wakes up. It's a relatively straightforward solution, even if changing APIs in the middle of a stable kernel series may look a little strange. If nothing else, the whole affair makes it clear, once again, just how hard it is to avoid race conditions in kernel code. The first initramfs patch was posted by Alexander Viro this week. This patch is the implementation of the new 2.5 boot process that was first discussed in the July 12 kernel page. In this scheme, the kernel executable image carries with it a cpio archive containing the contents of the initial root filesystem. That archive is loaded into a ramdisk at boot time, at which time it can be used to continue the system initialization process. The hope is to move much kernel initialization code out of kernel space and into this ramdisk. The result is a smaller kernel and more flexibility in how the bootstrap process is set up. For the moment, the tasks that have been moved to user space include:
Heading toward ext3 1.0. ext3 2.4-0.9.5 was released by Andrew Morton. This version continues the work toward a truly stable ext3 journaling filesystem release, fixing a number of bugs. Much work has also gone into performance improvements on a number of fronts. Among other things, synchronous operations happen more quickly; this should make people running large mail systems happy, since many mail transfer agents make heavy use of synchronous directory operations. Another change in 0.9.5 is the ability to use an external journal. External journals live on a separate device (perhaps a non-volatile RAM device), and, in theory, can speed up the operation of the filesystem. Writes to an external journal should be very quick, and journal operations will not contend with writes to the rest of the disk. The initial performance results with external journals appear to be mixed, however. Those interested in ext3 may also want to see an older patch announcement from Andrew which contains a detailed explanation of the three journaling modes supported. Much slower routing performance in 2.4 has been reported by some users. The common factor in these reports is that the people involved are still using the 2.2 ipchains interface to set up their firewalling. The ipchains module in 2.4 carries full connection tracking along with it; most people setting up ipchains rules probably do not need that feature. The solution is to switch to iptables. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
August 2, 2001 For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Distributions page.
Lists of Distributions |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. News and EditorialsShould distributors consider merging? Robin Miller argues this point in a NewsForge article called I dream of Susie Mandrake, where he calls for a merger between SuSE and MandrakeSoft. The discussion is motivated by a desire to get the best from both distributions while creating a larger, stronger company with a better chance of survival.From our reading, enthusiasm for this idea is low in both the SuSE and Mandrake camps. This particular idea may not get too far, but the question in general is interesting: where is the expected consolidation in the Linux distribution market? Even before the times got hard, the prevailing wisdom was that there were too many commercial distributors, and that only a small subset of them would survive. In the long term, how could the market support half a dozen or more major distributions? The fact remains, however, that all of the major distributors are still out there distributing. None have folded, none have merged (though Caldera did do an acquisition), and none have been acquired. Even if times are tough at many of them, they are all still hanging in there. Distributors, it seems, are not your standard dotcom disaster story. It's probably still true that this situation can not last. It's a hard market, and it is hard to believe that all of these distributors can set themselves up as services companies. So we will probably see one or more of these scenarios:
As has often been said in these pages, the diversity of distributions is one of Linux's great strengths. While some see the competition between the distributors as wasteful, the truth is that Linux benefits from the contributions of each of them. The non-proprietary contributions, anyway. The Linux community would not benefit from a reduction in the number of major distributions; if it must happen, however, a merger that preserved the best from two distributors might be the best way.
New DistributionsDevil-Linux This week we stumbled across Devil-Linux, a specialized distribution intended for the creation of firewall and router systems. It![[Devil Linux]](devil-linux.png)
has its origin in the Linux From
Scratch meta-distribution, but quite a few changes have been made. In
particular, it can run entirely from CDROM, with all of the needed
configuration files being kept on a floppy diskette. As a result, it is
hard for a cracker to compromise the integrity of the system, even if they
manage to break in.
Devil-Linux is currently at version v0.42, released on July 29. This release includes features like FreeS/WAN, djbdns, and STunnel; future enhancements include intrusion detection, and much more in the way of client and server software.
Distribution NewsConectiva Linux 7.0 released. The Portuguese version of Conectiva Linux 7.0 is now available for purchase or download. There is an announcement available in Portuguese; a Babelfish translation is also available.This release includes a lot of the usual features: 2.4 kernel, XFree86 4.0.3, KDE 2.12, etc. Also included is Conectiva's port of the Debian APT tool to RPM, and a new graphical interface that sits on top of the whole thing and provides a friendly interface to package management. The distribution comes in both standard and professional editions. Debian Weekly News. The Debian Weekly News for July 31 is out. Topics covered include the woody freeze (a release is expected by Christmas), the MIPS port, the size of the Debian archive, and more. What's up with Mandrake donations? The question was asked after links to the donation page disappeared for a bit. Worry not, MandrakeSoft is still happy to take your money. Interestingly, they posted some statistics on the donations they have been getting. It seems they have been running about $5,000 per month for the last three months; not enough to run the company on, certainly, but significant nonetheless. Those who have earmarked their donations for a specific project have voted strongly for KDE and configuration tools. At the other end, 0.2% of contributors stated that they wanted to support the Sparc port... Minor Distribution updatesRedmond Linux build 36 has been announced. This release includes a number of new utilities; it also makes the ext3 journaling filesystem the default. See the announcement for details.Trinux 0.80rc2 is out. There has been, as far as we can tell, no actual announcement of this release, though it can be downloaded from the Trinux web page. Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
August 2, 2001
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's On the Desktop page.
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On The DesktopHP and the visual effects industry. The visual effects industry is moving to Linux in big ways these days. Visual effects, which is more commonly referred to simply as VFX, has two distinct sides: the renderfarm side and the desktop, or Digital Content Creation (DCC) side. While most readers are well aware of the role Linux plays on the renderfarm side (such as with the movie Titanic), few people are aware of how strongly the DCC side is being infiltrated by Linux. Most of the major studios have already started to migrate to Linux. Originally studios relied heavily on SGI systems which had very powerful graphics hardware. When SGI began to fall on hard times, studios felt they needed alternative solutions. Most turned initially to Microsoft but found the going rough. Applications written for SGI's Irix platform were not easily ported to WindowsNT and graphics libraries and support were not nearly on par with the more evolved SGI systems. Then, in the summer of 1999 things began to change. One of the driving events that year was the announcement of SideFX's port of Houdini to Linux. Houdini is the desktop application artists have used to create visual effects for such feature films as The Grinch, The Matrix, X-Men and Godzilla. SideFX ported its application to Linux without the availability of hardware acceleration - XFree86 didn't release support for hardware acceleration until March 2000. Once SideFX made its software available, VFX studios could then begin to request hardware vendors to supply systems which could run Houdini. One company that answered the call was HP. "In early 2000 we started getting strong requests from the DCC marketplace for a Linux desktop solution," said Karen Ghavem, Linux Program Manager for the Technical Computing Division of HP in Colorado that worked on HP's VFX support. "The main technology lacking on the Linux desktop at the time was the ability to run accelerated, OpenGL 3D graphics. To do that you need to run under X." At the time the XFree86 team was just developing DRI/DRM and their delivery date was expected to be after the time frame HP needed to provide their solutions to their early adopters, which HP refers to as Lighthouse customers. "There were two options for us: one was to beef up DRI/DRM to make it robust enough," but that would have taken too long. HP decided to use its own, mature HP/UX solution that they could port over to Linux in order to deliver product to the DCC customers. Ghavam noted, "We started shipping those systems about 9 months ago," with early access customers getting systems up to 6 months prior to that. HP ported their own X server over to Linux along with their own hardware accelerated OpenGL. This gave them better performance than what users were getting with XFree86 when used with some of the graphics cards available at the time, while allowing them to utilize their existing expertise with Linux. And while HP could deliver early to the DCC marketplace with their own proprietary offerings on top of Linux, they knew that market was looking for open source. "We recognized that the open source community and the 3rd party graphics drivers would evolve and become stable enough under the XFree86 environment." "The reason customers are moving from those other Unix solutions to Linux is because of choice and commodity. They want to not be locked into a single vendor solution," Ghavam pointed out. In July HP released the X2000 and X4000 systems which are based on Red Hat 7.1 and accelerated XFree86 servers for the FireGL cards. "We have an OEM agreement with Red Hat and proactively certify our systems with Red Hat releases at the time of the OS release." HP's role here is to work with graphic card vendors like FireGL to push the requests from DCC customers to make Linux and XFree86 work well with HP systems. "There are even some areas where 2D performance can be improved," says Ghavam. Some of these improvements will come as more customer demands drive the work. "But from what we're hearing from our customers, and even in our internal R&D, XFree86 is pretty stable and a good desktop now. People are pretty happy with it." Many of HP's new Linux DCC customers come from Unix backgrounds, though not necessarily HP/UX, while many of their existing customers are happy in their current HP/UX solutions. That means they'll be maintaining both their HP/UX environment along with the newer Linux solutions. It also means that HP has begun looking at taking some of the technologies in their current X environment and making them available to the open source world. Ghavam couldn't elaborate on most of those but she did mention one in particular: SLS - single logical screen. This technology allows multiple monitors ("screens" in X parlance) to appear as one large screen, with individual windows spanning multiple monitors and the cursor moving across screens. In the XFree86 world the equivalent option would be Xinerama. "But the current Xinerama release doesn't support accelerated 3D applications to run in a window. SLS does." When they were putting together those early Linux systems, HP decided to provide SLS for their DCC early adopters. Ghavam described the setup: "Artists like to use two screens for their work, one for animation work and another for video playback but with the ability move windows and the cursor freely between the two monitors. Even though some hardware, such as the FireGL cards, now provide multiple monitor support in hardware (removing the need for software to handle this), many cards still don't." And in keeping with their eye toward the future, HP is considering contributing SLS to XFree86. Such contributions are driven by the requirements of their customers. "There has not been an immediate need for it, but in the future we think this will move into the XFree86 space," says the HP program manager. While HP may appear to have skipped the open source route while putting together desktop workstations for the fast growing, Linux-based DCC market, they in affect chose to provide a solid solution with a hybrid environment while waiting for (and helping to move forward) the open source alternatives. It's a reasonable solution for commercial organizations who simply can't wait for open source to catch up to existing offerings, but who also don't want to ignore the benefits of open source, and the demands of their target industries, over the longer term. Relocatable Java installs? Well, sort of. This story might never end, but after last week's note from IBM that the Java RE they provide is in RPM format and therefore relocatable, one reader wrote in to let us know our test system, Red Hat Linux 7.1, might not let us do so. Actually, relocation is broken in the rpm shipped with RHL7.1 (bugzilla bug #25876). The rpm in rawhide is fixed in that regard, but it is broken in other ways (most probably because it is under active development), so ymmv. The bug report was against RHL 7.0 while the closure puts it against 7.1, however. (Thanks to Ronald Cole) Desktop EnvironmentsKernel Cousin KDE #18. This week's Kernel Cousin KDE carries an analysis of the extended discussion on the future of KDE after 2.2. "The other main point of concern was the current state of KDE2 and the number of outstanding bug reports. Peter Kelley verbalized this objection saying, 'I think having a 2.3 version will be very important from the point of getting a stable and relatively bug-free version of khtml. Right now there are over 700 open bug reports for khtml and kjs combined...'" Eventually, Waldo Bastian posted a schedule which puts a KDE 3.0, which includes the migration to Qt3, out in the early part of 2002. Minutes of the GF Board Meeting (July 24, 2001). The GNOME Foundation Board meeting notes reveal that the current plans for GNOME 2.0 include an imminent API freeze, and that the board wants to do more to let those with special needs know what GNOME has to help them out. GNUstep weekly update. There was only one minor bug fix this week according to the GNUstep weekly update but that doesn't distract from the release of a new version of the Java language interface (JIGS). FVWM2 2.4.0. We missed it somehow, but a final, stable version of FVWM2, release 2.4.0, has finally been announced. RPM's are available from the sourceforge themes site for this window manager. Office ApplicationsKOffice Suite 1.1 Release Candidate 1. The first release candidate for KOffice 1.1 has been made available by the KOffice project team. Final release is targeted for mid-August. KSpread 1.1 Beta 3 reviewed. In this second part of a full KOffice review, this review covers the KDE spreadsheet, KSpread. Evolution 1.0 Beta 1 announcement redux. Last week we mistakenly noted the release of Ximian's Evolution 1.0 Beta 1 in the Development page under the subtopic of "Browsers". Well, we knew better. Evolution is an Outlook-styled application providing calendaring, email and an address book. The Beta 1 preview releases begin the countdown to the 1.0 release this fall. AbiWord 0.9.0. A new release of the AbiWord word processor has been announced. The new release includes better import/export support for RTF, XHTML, MSWord and ApplixWords, spell checking improvements, automatic numbered headings, and a plugin architecture. The new release is also noted in the AbiWord Weekly News. Desktop ApplicationsReview: theKompany's Universal Documentation Tool - DocBrowser. The DocBrowser, a KDE tool for reading man pages and info files, was reviewed this past week on GUI-Lords. " The Info pages are brought to new life and new appreciation for me with DocBrowser. Smooth treed navigation, all hyper linked. Very nice, I actually enjoy these info pages now. As for my favorite, 'man'... it was doomed. Now granted I didn't have DocBrowser's documentation, but I just could not get my systems man pages to work. " GIMP 1.2.2 released. A new version of the GIMP 1.2.x distribution has been announced. Unfortunately, the original announcement came before a problem with building from source was noted and a second, identically named distribution was made. That means there may be two versions of this 1.2.2 release out there, only one of which may build. Be sure to grab the right one. OpenOffice anniversary report and build 633. The OpenOffice site has posted a report on the anniversary of the release of StarOffice as an open source project. "To put it bluntly, OpenOffice.org is not here to produce a finished product. Sun Microsystems is doing that with StarOffice 6, which will have been built using code derived from OpenOffice.org. Rather, OpenOffice.org's far more ambitious goal is to create a sustainable process of code making and community building." Interestingly enough, as this note was being added to the Desktop page word arrived of the latest build release from the OpenOffice group: build 633 is available for download. New desktop layout package: Scribus. A new desktop layout program was brought to our attention this week: Scribus. This package is still in early development but does fall under the GPL and comes with a Qt/C++ based interface. (Thanks to Florian Cramer for pointing us to this package) And in other news...Chinese language Qt/KDE programming text. A new text on programming Qt/KDE2 is available in traditional chinese. ISBN: 9572085689 author: Chuang, MingChe publisher: SoftChina Pages: 432 Vituascape releases Flash SDK as open source. Noted on the GIMP-User mailing list: Virtuascape, a media design agency, has released a Flash SDK as open source (using the BSD2 license), with the company suggesting it might make a nice addition to the current GIMP 2.0 work currently underway. Section Editor: Michael J. Hammel |
August 2, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsNews and EditorialsPython Division Concerns Guido Van Rossum has posted an updated revision of Python PEP #238 that concerns the division operator. Python is a dynamically typed language where a single variable can assume the properties of a float, integer, complex, or other type. This leads to ambiguities in dealing with the division operator.The current division (/) operator has an ambiguous meaning for numerical arguments: it returns the floor of the mathematical result of division if the arguments are ints or longs, but it returns a reasonable approximation of the division result if the arguments are floats or complex. This makes expressions expecting float or complex results error-prone when integers are not expected but possible as inputs.
Guido is dealing with the problem by splitting division into three different cases, true division, floor division, and classic division. True division is intended for the normal mathematical operation involving floating point numbers. Floor division is used when dealing with integers, and classic division is the combination of both true and floor division. Classic division is the method that current versions of Python implement. The PEP proposes the split of division into two operators, the / operator for true division, and the // operator for floor division. This change will no doubt cause some compatibility problems when compiling old code under the new compiler. Guido states: It is the opinion of the authors that this is a real design bug in Python, and that it should be fixed sooner rather than later. Assuming Python usage will continue to grow, the cost of leaving this bug in the language will eventually outweigh the cost of fixing old code -- there is an upper bound to the amount of code to be fixed, but the amount of code that might be affected by the bug in the future is unbounded.
Guido is going to deal with the division issues in the following manner:
Hopefully, these changes will be sufficient to solve the division problems and people will be willing to do a little work now to have a better Python language in the future . The State of the Onion 5 (Perl.com). Perl.com's Simon Cozens covers Larry Wall's State of the Onion talk at the recent Perl conference. "The bell tolled, and so Larry had to move onto talk four - control structures. To loud applause, he announced that Perl 6 would include a switch statement; to some bemusement, however, he let on that it would be called 'given' - case statements would be called 'when'. Another notable renaming: 'local' will become 'temp'." AudioAudacity 0.96 released. Version 0.96 of the Audacity cross-platform audio editor has been released. New to this version are mute and solo buttons, MP3 exporting, amplify, fft filter, phaser, and waawaa effects. With the exception of the MP3 code, Audacity has been released under the GPL license. ClustersLinux High Availability Working Group at OLS. The recent Ottawa Linux Symposium featured a working group that intends to build a standard platform for developing high availability and high performance clustering software. People who are working on Linux based cluster systems should consider getting involved in this effort. See the LWN report from OLS for more details. DatabasesSAPdb, another free database. SAPdb is one of the lesser publicized open-source SQL databases that runs on Linux. The history of SAPdb goes back to the early 1980s when it was developed as a commercial product. The database has changed names several times since then. SAPdb was released under a GPL license in October of 2000. ElectronicsNew software from the gEDA project. New versions of several gEDA electronic design tools have been announced on the gEDA site. New releases include gEDA/gaf cygwin, Icarus verilog, and SAVANT. Embedded SystemsEmbedded Linux Newsletter for July 26, 2001. This week's Embedded Linux Newsletter from LinuxDevices covers an interview with Lineo's COO, an animated BusyBox tutorial and Isamu, the humanoid robot. Mail SoftwareMailman 2.0.6 released. Version 2.0.6 of Mailman, the GNU MailingList Manager has been released. This release fixes a security problem involving empty passwords, several other minor bugs have also been fixed. System AdministrationOpenSSH key management (IBM developerWorks). In this first of a series of articles on IBM's developerWorks, Daniel Robbins explains the workings of RSA and DSA authentication. "SSH, specifically OpenSSH (a completely free implementation of SSH), is an incredible tool. Like telnet or rsh, the ssh client can be used to log in to a remote machine. All that's required is for this remote machine to be running sshd, the ssh server process. However, unlike telnet, the ssh protocol is very secure. It uses special algorithms to encrypt the data stream, ensure data stream integrity and even perform authentication in a safe and secure way." Linux hardware stability guide, Part 2: Drivers, IRQs, and PCI latency (IBM developerWorks). In an IBM developerWorks article, Daniel Robbins shows how to diagnose hardware problems under Linux using the NVIDIA TNT-based AGP card. "Yes, I was having some kind of stability problem. But I didn't know exactly what was causing the problem. Did I have flaky hardware, or was the card misconfigured? Or maybe it was a problem with the driver -- did it not like my VIA KT133-based Athlon motherboard? Whatever the problem, I wanted to resolve it quickly." Web-site DevelopmentNew Versions of Zope and Python (O'Reilly). Stephen Figgins talks about new versions of Zope and Python in an O'Reilly article. "What I have found better about Zope 2.4 has little to do with Zope itself. The documentation is better." The latest Zope News. The latest Zope News contains articles about Formulator 1.0.1, a binary installer for Zope on MacOSX, new database and session helpers, and more. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
August 2, 2001
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Programming LanguagesC++Proposed method for improving C++ startups. A note posted to the KDE Development list has proposed a method for preprocessing C++ object files before linking in order to improve performance during program startup. "Waldo Bastian's document demonstrates that the current g++ implementation generates lots of expensive run-time relocations. This translates into the slow startup of large C++ applications (KDE, StarOffice, etc.). The [proposed] program "objprelink.c" is designed to reduce the problem. Expect startup times 30-50% faster. " Red Hat's Jakub Jelinek also posted another C++ prelinking solution that is worth looking at. (Thanks to Anthony Green) OSE 7.0b8 C++ class library available. A new release of the OSE C++ class library has been released. This release also includes mature Python wrappers. " At its core, OSE is a C++ class library for general purpose programming, but also includes support for building event driven systems and distributed applications using a request/reply and publish/subscribe style service agent framework. The ability to interact with an application is facilitated using a HTTP servlet framework and RPC over HTTP interfaces." CamlObjective CAML version 3.02 released. Version 3.02 of Objective CAML has been released. RPM and tar.gz versions are available for download. JavaThe Java 2 user interface (IBM developerWorks). Matt Chapman takes a look at the Java 2 UI in an IBM developerWorks article. Check it out for a good review of the graphical capabilities of Java. The Embedded Java+Linux Quick Reference Guide (LinuxDevices). LinuxDevices brings another quick reference guide to the table with the Embedded Java+Linux Quick Reference Guide. "Blame it on Moore's Law, but it's now practical to embed moderately high performance computing and connectivity in just about everything that runs on electricity -- whether tethered or mobile. This trend is fueled by powerful and highly integrated system-on-chip processors, coupled with large capacity system and storage memories (both disk and silicon), and empowered by wired and wireless communications interfaces (Ethernet, IrDA, 802.11, BlueTooth)." Tunneling through the corporate network (IBM developerWorks). Malcolm Davis writes about using Java applets over HTTP with an emphasis on the passing of information through corporate firewalls. "The corporate firewall is a double-edged sword. It helps prevent unauthorized access to the corporate Web services, but can disable access for legitimate clients. Due to the number of safety measures taken by system administrators, HTTP has become the universal entry mechanism to the corporate network." Open source Java going strong (ZDNet). Michael C. Daconta writes about open source Java projects in ZDNet's Java Opinion column. The article covers many current open-source Java efforts and discusses the idea of GPLing the Java virtual machine. LispOpenMCL 0.5 released. Version 0.5 of OpenMCL has been released. This release adds improved ANSI compliance, Gray streams, exception handling for floating point operations, and more. PerlArtistic License Revisited (use Perl). This analysis of the Artistic License, which covers the Perl programming language, says that the license is too restrictive. "In almost all instances of the OAL, especially with Perl, it is used inside of what is called a 'dual-licensing model', specifically with the GPL. This is done because they do not need to choose between the OAL or the GPL until they need to litigate a position. This has never been tested in court, so it is not known how defendable of a tactic this is. " YAS, Perl Monks, Perl Mongers to Merge. Three well known Perl groups are merging to form a non-profit foundation in support of Perl. "Not only does this have the blessing of the Perl elders (Larry has agreed to be on the board) but there is corporate interest from the community which recognizes the importance of Perl and free software. " Shared Source vs. Open Source (use Perl). The first report from the Mundie v. Open Source debate at the O'Reilly conference comes from use Perl. "To Tiemann's aid came Clay Shirky, Brian Behlendorf, and Mitchell Baker. To Mundie's side jumped Ronald Johnston and David Stutz. The groups circled each other for awhile, throwing out jabs. Baker finally threw a folding chair at Mundie when she remarked, 'Control of all our data flow by one entity is not healthy.'" Perl 6 architecture overview now online. Dan Sugalski's Perl 6 internals talk from the recent Perl conference is available online in both PowerPoint and OpenOffice format. PHPPHP Weekly Summary for July 30, 2001. The July 30, 2001 issue of the PHP Weekly Summary has been published. Topics include the installation of the Chora web based cvs tool, an If Else bug, some handy security tips, and more. PHP Conference Coverage (php.net). The php.net site is featuring coverage of the recent PHP Conference. The talks that were covered include:
PythonParrot -- should life imitate satire?. Eric S. Raymond has posted a note to the Python-Dev mailing list discussing the possibilities of having Perl6 and Python compile down to the same byte code, prompting, as expected, a thorough discussion from such notable individuals as Andrew Kuchling and Nathan Torkington. Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for July 30, 2001. Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! this week covers topics such as the argument for dynamic typing, a quick start tutorial for CORBA, and Pippy, the Python port to PalmOS. Python for the PalmOS (IBM developerWorks). Installing Pippy, the Python subset for the PalmOS, is the subject of this article from IBM's developerWorks. "How you upload these two files to your handheld varies depending on the desktop OS that you are running. However, users who have installed any additional applications to their PalmOS handheld will be familiar with the procedure. Under Windows and MacOS environments, you will usually use the "Palm Desktop" and its "Install" button. Under Linux or other UNIX-like platforms or OS/2, you will probably use the pilot-link utilities -- specifically the pilot-xfer program." Object-Oriented Language: Python (Cetus Team). The Cetus Team has assembled a list of useful Python language links that looks like a worth addition to any Python programmer's bookmarks file. Python Is Middleware. Tim Daneliuk discusses the use of Python as middleware in additon to many other language considerations in an online paper. "This is the real reason to stay on top of Python. The vagaries of the "Mine is bigger than yours" battles between McNealy, Gates, and Ellison will be with us until they aren't. Python lives outside this Billionaire Battlezone because none of the warring factions own the technology and it plays nicely with them all. It is precisely because both Perl and Python have avoided choosing sides in these silly ego competitions that they have and will survive." Jython 2.1 alpha 3 released. Jython 2.1 alpha 3 was released on July 29, 2001. The summary of changes includes settable console encodings. Several bugs have also been fixed. RubyProgramming in the Ruby language (IBM developerWorks). Joshua D. Drake introduces the Ruby language in the first of a four part article on IBM's developerWorks. "Joshua begins his exploration into Ruby with a discussion of variables, quotes, arrays, objects, and methods. Subsequent articles in this Ruby series will deal with more advanced topics, including developing graphical applications and using Ruby with databases." The latest from the Ruby Garden. The Ruby Garden features a few new articles this week. Topics covered include signal querying, lots of new method additions, and more. Tcl/TkDr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! (July 30). This week's Tcl-URL! includes discussion on the Snack Sound Toolkit and Wavesurfer, news of the 8th annual Tcl conference, and a tutorial on using WSDL4TCL. XMLxmldiff 0.1.1 released. The first beta release of xmldiff has been announced. Xmldiff is a tool that shows the difference between two XML trees in a manner that is similar to the diff command line utility. MiscellaneousRunTime: Block memory copy, Part 2. Dr. Edward G. Bradford discusses programming techniques for high-performance computing on IBM's developerWorks site. Memory to memory copies of various data elements are compared between Windows 2000 and Linux. You should probably start with the first article in the series to get the whole picture. Borland introduces open source Kylix IDE for Linux. Borland has released an IDE called Kylix that is aimed at open source development. Kylix itself appears to be proprietary software, but it is licensed in a manner that makes it useful for use on open source projects. (Thanks to Paco Zàrate) Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
Language Links Caml Caml Hump Tiny COBOL Erlang g95 Fortran Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC) Gnu Compiler for the Java Language (GCJ) Guile Haskell IBM Java Zone Jython Free the X3J Thirteen (Lisp) Use Perl O'Reilly's perl.com Dr. Dobbs' Perl PHP PHP Weekly Summary Daily Python-URL Python.org Python.faqts Python Eggs Ruby Ruby Garden MIT Scheme Schemers Squeak Smalltalk Why Smalltalk Tcl Developer Xchange Tcl-tk.net O'Reilly's XML.com Regular Expressions |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and BusinessMandrakeSoft announces successful IPO. MandrakeSoft has gone public on the Paris Euronext's "Marche Libre" exchange. A total of 688,480 shares -- priced at 6.2 Euros each (about $5.46US) -- were sold. This resulted in capital of 4.3 million euros for the company. Additional information can be found at the MandrakeSoft Investors pages. We would also like to welcome MandrakeSoft to the LWN Linux Stocks Page. Gaming on Linux takes a VAST leap forward. A new company called Rebel Arts has announced its existence. It is working on the Rebel Arts' Versatile Accelerated Server Technology (VAST(TM)) System, which will first be deployed in the online game industry. Strategic partners AMD and Linux NetworX are providing Rebel Arts with support, including the AMD-760(TM) MP dual processor chipset and Linux NetworX's Evolocity(TM) cluster server system. The end result will be large-scale multi-player gaming with the VAST technology designed to handle in excess of 100,000 simultaneous users generating more than two million transactions per second. Tux Games Open Source Donation Center. Speaking of games: Tux Games has opened their Open Source Donation Center. This donation center is inviting any game-related open source project to register, and Tux Games will provide credit card acceptance services for anyone that wishes to donate money to the project. Penguin Computing and Scyld to offer cluster product. Penguin Computing and Scyld Computing have announced that Penguin will be selling cluster systems with Scyld's specialized distribution (described in our Ottawa Linux Symposium coverage) preinstalled. Caldera and LinuxKorea to Provide Linux Solutions for Korean Enterprise Business Market. Caldera International Inc. announced it has signed a strategic alliance MOU with LinuxKorea Co. Ltd., Korea's largest Linux system integrator, to cooperatively develop the enterprise Linux market in Korea. Linux based ISP Provisioning Software Company Up For Sale. ISPDB Limited, the Cambridge (UK) based ISP solutions firm, has announced that the Company is to be dissolved, and the Copyright to all its software is now up for sale. Learning Perl, Third Edition released. O'Reilly has announced the release of Learning Perl, Third Edition. VMware Announces New Pricing for VMware Express. VMWare has dropped the price of VMWare Express, the version of VMWare suitable for Linux users, from $79 to $49.95. Evans Study Finds Increase in Embedded Linux Projects. The Evans Data " Embedded Systems Developer Survey" shows a dramatic change in the software content of the microprocessor-controlled devices in the workplace and in our homes. Based on a survey of more than 500 embedded systems developers, the comprehensive report projects a three-fold increase in Linux-based projects in the next year. July Netcraft web server survey. The Netcraft web server survey for July is out. Apache shows a distinct drop this week, to just under 59% of the total; evidently, the change is due to a couple of very large hosting providers switching to Microsoft. The real news, perhaps, is that the number of Solaris machines on the net is in decline. LPI News - July 2001. The Linux Professional Institute News for July includes: the Level 2 release, a new president and a new board member, and more. Linux Stock Index for July 26 to August 01, 2001.
The high for the week was 28.99
Press Releases:Open source products
Red Hat 7.1 installed
Proprietary Products for Linux
Products and Services Using Linux
Products With Linux Versions
Java Products
Books & Training
Partnerships
Investments and Acquisitions
Personnel & New Offices
Financial Results
Linux At Work
Other
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
August 2, 2001
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions On the Desktop Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Linux History Letters See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the newsRecommended ReadingThe verdict: Is Adobe a software thug? (Upside). Upside put Adobe "on trial" with the charge of "being a software thug" with regard to its role in Sklyarov arrest. The verdict is now in: guilty. "Members of our jury overwhelmingly felt that Adobe acted thuggishly and ran roughshod over free speech, finding the company guilty by a margin wider than 80 percent on both counts. Jurors were passionate in their indictment of the company, calling its actions antithetical to basic liberal ideals and human rights, commercially stupid and generally un-American." Rep: Give Fair Use a Fair Shake (Wired). Wired reports that at least one congressman thinks Sklyarov should be freed. "'I think the current case adds impetus to the growing effort to fashion an amendment to the DMCA that would restore the classic balance (of fair use rights),' Boucher said." Microsoft, Red Hat argue open source (C|Net) |
![[GNU-Darwin]](gnu-darwin.png)
The GNU-Darwin Distribution also found its way into our attention
this week. It is, of course, not a Linux distribution;