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LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 3, 2002A crucial U.S. copyright caseOctober 9 is the day the U.S. Supreme Court has set aside to hear arguments in the case known as "Eldred vs. Ashcroft." The subject of the case - a 20 year extension to copyright protection - may seem obscure, but the outcome of this case may well change the shape of copyright law (and intellectual property law in general) in the U.S. for a long time.
The specific details of this case are as follows. Eric Eldred operates the
Eldritch Press, a collection of
books which are in the public domain. Mr. Eldred's plans to add a number
of new works, including poems by Robert Frost, were thwarted by the "Sonny
The U.S. Constitution describes the congressional power to regulate intellectual property in typical, terse fashion:
The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors
and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries;
The key points here are (1) the statement that promoting the progress of science and the arts is the purpose of granting a monopoly right to intellectual property, and (2) the phrase "limited times." The plaintiffs in Eldred vs. Ashcroft (the case is being argued by none other than Lawrence Lessig) are making the claim that the new, longer copyright terms go beyond any reasonable "limited time," and that they no longer promote the creation of new works. After all, the authors whose works benefit from the extra 20 years of protection are dead; even the strongest economic incentives are unlikely to motivate them to produce anything of any interesting quality. The plaintiffs in this case are asking the court to rule that the Congress has exceeded its constitutional authority in making this law, and that the law should thus be void. The Supreme Court is an unpredictable institution; it could do almost anything in response to this case. It is also a slow institution. The case will be argued on the 9th, but the eventual ruling will not be heard until sometime next year. How is all of this relevant to free software? There is an ongoing push in the U.S. to establish absolute control over ideas in many forms. As Mr. Lessig has argued many times, the concept of an intellectual commons, with ideas available to all, is being pushed aside. But that commons is the source of much that intellectual property owners want to protect. Disney took "The Little Mermaid" from the commons, but wants to hold on to its rather less gory version forever. Free software benefits from a deep commons of shared ideas and code. Those who feel threatened by free software would like to fight it by withholding ideas from that commons. Whether the issue is file formats, network protocols, or patented algorithms, the problem is the same: monopolies on ideas reduce the commons from which free software developers can draw. The expansion of intellectual property monopolies in the U.S. has gone unchallenged for years, with results like copyright extension, the DMCA, and future delights like the CBDTPA. Eldred vs. Ashcroft has the potential to put limits on the expansion of intellectual property law and the fencing off of the intellectual commons. It could be the turning point in this battle - but it could turn in either direction. We can only wish the best of luck to the plaintiffs in this fight, and thank them for making the effort. (See also: the Eldred vs. Ashcroft page).
The status of the subscription experimentAs of Wednesday Morning (October 2), there are almost 1200 individual subscribers to LWN. We also have all of three confirmed (small) corporate subscriptions, with discussions happening with others. With luck, we will be able to announce our first large corporate subscription in the near future. Many thanks to all of you who have shown your support for LWN.So where does that leave us? It takes on the order of 1000 subscribers to support one full-time LWN editor with a minimal salary (i.e. less than they can make elsewhere) once taxes, health insurance, connectivity, and, perhaps, an occasional trade show are thrown in. So, in other words, we have made some real progress, but we are still some distance from being able to operate LWN at its current level of staffing (and, thus, content). It is, of course, early to say what the steady state subscription level will be. Corporate subscribers, in particular, move slowly. But, it seems reasonably clear that, unless we get a new surge in interest, LWN will likely go forward as a smaller operation than it is now. The good news is that (1) it looks like LWN will continue, in some form, and (2) we have been surprised before; the situation may yet improve. The best way to make things improve remains corporate subscriptions. We'll ask our readers one more time to encourage their employers and universities to look into our group subscription offerings. These subscriptions make LWN available to large groups of people while doing a lot to help keep LWN on the air. The subscription system itself seems to be working reasonably well - not bad for a big body of completely new code that had its first real stress test when deployed on the site. A few glitches remain, and we are working on it. In particular, there seems to be a cookie problem with Internet Explorer that is proving hard to track down - especially since we have very few Windows systems around here. It is not our desire to exclude IE users - they are responsible for about 20% of our traffic. We will work this one out somehow. Thanks yet again for your support of LWN. We will continue to do our best to produce a site that is worthy of that support.
Security Brief items Here we go againvnunet has posted another one of its Linux security articles with the same sort of theme:
X-Force, the US-based monitoring group of security software firm
Internet Security Systems, has been tracking the number of security
holes in software. Last year the centre found 149 bugs in
Microsoft software compared to 309 for Linux. This year the
situation was worse, with 485 Linux bugs this year compared to
Microsoft's 202.
Nobody would try to argue that Linux is free of security holes - anybody who thinks so need only read the rest of this page to learn otherwise. But the above comparison is absolutely meaningless for a number of reasons:
Articles like this one try to make it appear that Linux has worse security problems than other operating systems. If you look, however, at the amount of actual security pain suffered by Linux administrators, the story is different. Linux security is nowhere near as good as it really should be, but it's not as bad as some people would like to make it out to be.
Red Hat and Dell host open source security summitRed Hat and Dell have announced that an "open source security summit" will be held on October 29 in Washington, DC. "The Security Summit will provide an open forum to discuss and explore how open source technologies, methodologies, tools, and support processes meet the challenges of securing networks and computer systems."
New vulnerabilities Apache 2.0 cross-site scripting vulnerability
Multiple vulnerabilities in bugzilla
Another set of fetchmail buffer overflows
Buffer overflow in gv
Buffer overflows in heimdal
sendmail smrsh bypass vulnerability
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
Updated vulnerabilities Heap corruption vulnerability in at
bind buffer overflow vulnerability in DNS resolver libraries
Potential unauthorized root access vulnerability in dietlibc
Ethereal buffer overflow, infinite loop and memory management vulnerabilities
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
GNU fileutils race condition
Potential remote root exploit in glibc
Buffer overflow in groff
HylaFAX 4.1.3 fixes multiple vulnerabilities
UW imapd remotely exploitable buffer overflow
Cross-site scripting vulnerability in Konqueror for KDE 3.0.3
Kerberos 5 unauthorized root access to KDC host vulnerability
LPRng accepts jobs from any host.
Cross-site scripting vulnerability in mhonarc
PHP Remote Compromise/DOS Vulnerability
Mozilla XMLHttpRequest file disclosure vulnerability
String format bug in pam_ldap logging
Safemode vulnerability in PHP
Remotely exploitable vulnerability in pine
Buffer overflow vulnerabilities in PostgreSQL
Buffer overflow vulnerabilities in purity
PXE server denial of service vulnerability
Local arbitrary code execution vulnerability in Python
Sharutils potential privilege escalation using uudecode
Multiple vulnerabilities fixed in Squid-2.4.STABLE7
Malformed NFS packet buffer overflow vulnerability in tcpdump
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability
Tomcat 4.x JSP source code exposure vulnerability
Local root vulnerability in chfn
webalizer: reverse DNS buffer overflow vulnerability
Webmin/Usermin vulnerabilities
Multiple vulnerabilities in wordtrans
Problems with libgtop_daemon
Wwwoffle remote privilege escalation vulnerability
Local privilege escalation vulnerability in XFree86
Denial of service vulnerability in xinetd
Multiple vulnerabilities in Zope 2.5.1
Resources Linux Security Week - September 30th 2002Linux Security Week for September 30 from LinuxSecurity.com is available.
Slapper Worm brought to heel (Register)The Register covers two recent varients of the Slapper worm, Slapper.B (Cinik) and Slapper.C (Unlock). "Two fresh variants of the Slapper worm, which spreads through Linux machines by exploiting a well-known flaw in OpenSSL libraries, have been sighted this week."
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current development kernel is 2.5.40, released by Linus on October 1. Among the usual fixes and updates, it includes high memory support for User-mode Linux, the CPU frequency (power management) patches, more disk management thrashups from Al Viro, the in-kernel NUMA topology API, the removal of the task queue subsystem, an ISDN update, and an ARM update. Here's the long-format changelog with the details.Linus announced 2.5.39 on September 27. The biggest change, perhaps, was the inclusion of the deadline I/O scheduler (covered in last week's LWN Kernel Page); this kernel also contained a bunch of XFS fixes, an SCTP update, a bunch of memory management work by Andrew Morton, Ingo Molnar's in-kernel symbolic oops dumper, some driver model work, and numerous other fixes and updates. The the long-format changelog is available. Linus's pre-2.5.41 BitKeeper tree contains a big ALSA update (the source of some grumbling from Linus), Ingo Molnar's "workqueue" implementation (see below), and a relatively small number (as of this writing) of other fixes and updates. Dave Jones jumped back into the prepatch business with 2.5.39-dj1, which contained a number of fixes from his tree. Dave evidently still has a substantial pile of fixes to push on to Linus, but has been busy. After a long absence, Alan Cox has also started putting out development kernel prepatches again. 2.5.40-ac1 includes support for the Voyager architecture, a merge of the uClinux distribution, and a number of fixes. The latest 2.5 status summary from Guillaume Boissiere is dated October 2. The current stable kernel is 2.4.19. Marcelo released 2.4.20-pre8 seconds after last week's Kernel Page was posted; it included an IBM hotplug driver update, a couple of security fixes, an x86-64 update, and a number of other fixes. The current prepatch from Alan Cox is 2.4.20-pre8-ac3. Alan's recent releases have contained quite a few fixes, but no major new work.
Kernel development news The feature freeze is comingAs part of the 2.5.40 announcement, Linus reminded the world that the feature freeze is coming soon:
And a small reminder that we're now officially in the last month of
features, and since I'm going to be away basically the last week of
October, so I actually personally consider Oct 20th to be the
drop-date, unless you've got a really good and scary costume.. So
don't try to leave it to the last day.
Linus also let it be known that he's "perfectly happy with the kernel" and feels no need to deal with last-minute code submissions. In fact, the list of outstanding features is getting smaller. A couple of big changes that are pending, and which could be disruptive, are:
Beyond that, quite a few other developments are pending, and they won't all get in. Some outstanding items include the completion of the Linux Security Module and asynchronous I/O merges, ext3 indexed directory support, Rusty Russell's new module loader, a new kernel configuration and build system, a whole pile of memory management work, etc. What also remains to be seen is how serious Linus is about the feature freeze. Past kernel freezes have tended to be slushy at best. Some substantial work will have to be integrated after the freeze; it will be interesting to see what gets in as "stabilization" or "feature completion." Then, there is the much-publicized debate over whether the next stable series should be 2.6 or 3.0. Linus started by saying that there was nothing all that revolutionary in this kernel, and that it should be called 2.6. Numerous other developers disagreed, however, and Linus appears to have relented. It seems likely that the next major stable kernel will be called Linux 3.0.
The end of task queuesKernel code often needs to set aside a task to be performed "a little later." The classic example is that of an interrupt handler, which must perform its task quickly, without blocking. Typically interrupt handlers simply acknowledge the interrupt, then arrange for the real work to be done outside of interrupt context. That work, which can include starting new I/O operations, delivering data to user space, or cleanup actions, gets done when the kernel gets around to it - and, usually, when it's safe to sleep.In the good old days, the "bottom half" mechanism was used to set aside tasks in this manner. Linux bottom halves were quite inflexible, being identified by globally-unique, compile-time numbers. There could be no more than 32 of them - the number that could be tracked in a single-word bitmask. And bottom halves were not safe places for extended processing or tasks that needed to sleep. More recent kernels moved much of the bottom half work to "task queues." A task queue is a simple linked list of functions to call (and data to pass to them). Certain predefined task queues were run at well-defined times; one was executed whenever the scheduler was called, and another was run out of the timer interrupt handler. Task queues cleaned things up significantly, but they were not particularly transparent and, fundamentally, they were still bottom halves. Their removal has been on numerous peoples' "todo" lists for some time. One replacement for task queues is the "tasklet" interface, which was introduced in the 2.3 development series. Tasklets provide a high-performance interface for quick tasks that do not sleep; they are thus suitable for certain sorts of operations, but they do not replace task queues in all situations. More recently, an attempt was made to address other deferred processing needs by wrapping a new interface (schedule_task()) around (what was) the scheduler task queue, and creating a special kernel thread (keventd) to run that queue. keventd provided a well-defined process context for tasks that need it (in particular, those which can sleep). But keventd still suffered the limitations of task queues, plus one other: all tasks were executed by a single thread. One very slow task could thus hold up everything else in the queue, creating unpredictable latencies. A couple of patches recently posted by Ingo Molnar address these problems and clean up deferred processing substantially. The first patch removes the task queue interface and converts its remaining users over to schedule_task(); this patch was included in 2.5.40. The more interesting work is contained in the workqueue patch (since updated), which has not yet (as of this writing) been merged by Linus. This patch replaces the task queue mechanism (and schedule_task() entirely with a mechanism which is simpler to use and which yields better-defined results. With the workqueue patch, task queues are replaced with the new "workqueue" concept. The basic idea is the same: a workqueue is a linked list of structures containing functions to call and data to pass to them. But the internals of workqueues are better hidden so that users need not worry about what is really going on. Workqueues are executed in process context, so tasks executed from those queues may sleep. Each workqueue, however, has its own worker threads (one per CPU), so one subsystem's workqueue entries will not block others from running. There is a default workqueue (analogous to the old schedule_task() functionality) for relatively simple tasks that do not justify their own queue. For those who are interested, we have written up a separate article with reasonably complete documentation of the workqueue interface. There has been a bit of discussion over the details of this interface. It has been through one set of modifications already, and will likely evolve more in the near future. The basic idea, however, appears to have been well received; some version of this patch will probably go in before too long.
Some security hooks get the hookThe Linux Security Module code works by allowing security-related code to hook into almost every access decision the kernel makes. Security modules can only tighten restrictions by vetoing access that would have otherwise been around. A number of security regimes - most notably the NSA's SELinux - have been built on the LSM structure. The LSM patch has been partially merged into the kernel; many of the LSM hooks are not yet there, however.Recently some developers have been questioning some of the specific hooks. In response, LSM maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman has posted a patch removing a few LSM hooks: those for creating, initializing, and deleting modules. Nobody seems to have an issue with the ability to control those operations - it's just that no code is currently using those hooks. That is, in fact, Greg's stated policy with LSM: any hooks that are not actually being used by an available, open source security module will be removed.
I am not happy with the idea that there would be hooks in the
kernel that are not being used. That's not the Linux way. If the
code isn't being used, it's removed.
The idea, of course, is that there is no point in trying to maintain code that is not in use. By the time somebody actually tries to make use of it, chances are it will be broken anyway. And, it is said, it is easy to reintroduce a hook should the need develop. Of course, given the LSM design, it's not that easy to put in a new hook. LSM requires security modules to provide an explicit implementation for every available hook, with the result that security modules accumulate a lot of stub "no-op" hooks. Adding a hook will break every security module out there until they implement a stub for that hook. Given that, security module authors who see a use for some of the more obscure hooks might want to document that use before too long.
Catching code which sleeps on the jobThe kernel is full of code which is not allowed to sleep. Anything which is handling an interrupt or otherwise running out of process context, for example, should not try to go to sleep. This particular case is easy to catch in the scheduler, but others are not. For example, any code which is holding a spinlock can not sleep either. Sleeping in this situation can lead to deadlocks (some other process spinning on the lock can prevent the holder from running again and releasing the lock), mutual exclusion failures (on uniprocessor systems where spinlocks are optimized out), or, at a minimum, excessive lock hold time and lock contention.The problem is that it can be easy to sleep in the wrong places. Sleeps are often not done directly; instead, a piece of atomic code calls a function which calls some other function which sleeps. The "sleep tendency" of functions is not always documented, and, in any case, kernel hackers, being human, can make mistakes. Even if it seems, at times, that they don't sleep. Until recently, these mistakes have been hard to catch. There was no "I'm running in an atomic section" flag, and thus no way for the kernel to know that it is sleeping in a bad place - until something went badly wrong. The preemptible kernel patch changed all that, however. Any place where the code can not sleep is also certainly a bad place for that code to be preempted. So the functions which mark atomic sections (such as spinlock operations) now set a "don't preempt me" flag. But once you have that flag, why not use it to detect sleeps in the wrong place? Andrew Morton posted a patch which does exactly that, and Linus merged it on the spot. The patch was titled "increase traffic on linux-kernel," and it has done exactly that. There are, it turns out, quite a few places where sleeping functions are called within code that is supposed to be atomic. These mistakes are being fixed almost as quickly as they are found. A small patch has done a lot to eliminate a whole class of kernel programming errors.
The new CPU frequency codeA new CPU frequency subsystem, written by Dominik Brodowski and others, was integrated by Linus into the 2.5.40 release. This code provide user-space control over the clock frequency of the CPU(s) in the system - at least, for processors which provide that capability.One might wonder why it would be desirable to run a processor at anything below its rated speed. The reasons, of course, are power consumption and thermal control. A faster CPU requires more power to run. If you're using your laptop on an airplane, and you're not trying to crack any encryption keys or set kernel build time records before you land, you might just want to slow down the processor a little to avoid draining your battery. Meanwhile, the processor may decide to slow down on its own if it's getting too warm. In fact, some modern processors can take a fairly smart approach to frequency control. If the processor notices that it is spending a lot of time idle, it can slow itself down. If it's constantly busy, it can turn up the speed a bit. If a particular processor supports setting its frequency in a "dumb" mode only, it might be nice for the operating system to provide the automatic adjustment in software. For this reason, a simple "set the frequency" interface was deemed to be insufficient. The CPU frequency code merged into 2.5.40 reflects the new understanding of the problem: it allows the user to set a range of acceptable frequencies and the desired policy. If the user selects "performance" as the policy, the processor will be instructed to run at the upper end of its range; if it slows down, it does so gradually. With the "powersave" policy, speeds will be kept lower even in the face of sustained work to do. Overall, the new interface gives the user a great deal of control over how the system operates. Of course, this interface is just a cryptic /proc file (see Documentation/cpufreq in the 2.5.40 tree for details); look for the KDE and GNOME applications to show up in the near future. For now, the code that has been merged into the kernel supports only the i386 architecture. Code for a number of other processors exists and will show up in the proper, architecture-specific trees.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Filesystems and block I/O
Janitorial
Kernel building
Memory management
Networking
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Benchmarks and bugs
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials A request for informationAs you have no doubt already read on this week's Front Page, subscriptions are going well, but not well enough (yet) to support the current LWN staff. As a result it will no longer be possible to ferret out the distribution information that has been presented in this page in the past. Some feedback has indicated that tracking a pile of minor distributions has little value in any case.So, in the future we would like to focus on quality rather than quantity, and we would like to get reports from people, telling us about their distribution and its progress. Without that we will have little to report each week. This week's page reflects this policy. Almost every item in this page was sent to us, either as a plain text announcement, or a URL accompanied by a brief description of why the link might be of interest to LWN readers. Please help the Distributions page survive during this transitional time, by sending us the information that you want others to see about your distribution. Thank you.
Distribution News Debian Weekly News - October 1st, 2002Welcome to this year's 38th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community, which includes items by Ludovic Rousseau and Andrew Pollock this time. After over four years of computation effort and millions of cpu-hours of work, distributed.net has brute forced the key to RSA Security's 64 bit encryption challenge, winning a US$ 10,000 prize.
Mandrake Linux Community NewsletterIssue #61 of the Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter is out. "This Week's Summary: Mandrake in the News; 9.0 Commercial Apps Now Available to MandrakeClub Members; Business Case of the Week; This Week's Survey; Security-related Software Updates; Headlines from MandrakeForum."
Red Hat releases Red Hat Linux 8.0Red Hat, Inc. has released Red Hat Linux 8.0, a highly versatile operating system designed for personal and small business computing.
Slackware LinuxThere have been several minor changes to the Slackware development tree. See the change log for full details.
Minor distribution updates Aurora SPARC Linux Project releases Build 0.4 (Titanium)The Aurora SPARC Linux Project is proud to announce Build 0.4 (Titanium) to the world. This release is for sparc32 & sparc64, and it closes a lot of the ugly bugs still present in 0.32, in addition to having a 2.4.19 based kernel.
Lunar Linux releases 1.0 - Dirty BirdLunar Linux 1.0 has been released after months of hard work. With a completely revised source package managent system, Lunar Linux is targetted initially for the system administrator, and also includes popular desktops like gnome2, kde3 and xfce, and office applications such as mozilla-1.1 and openoffice-1.0.1. Besides gcc-3.2/glibc-2.2.5 and a 2.4.19 kernel with XFS support, lunar comes with daemons like apache-2.0.42, postfix-1.1.11, exim-3.36 and sendmail-8.12.6 as well as bind-9.2.1.
Spectra Linux 1.2 Bundles McObject's eXtremeDBMcObject and Probatus Technologies have announced a bundling partnership that pairs an in-memory database system (IMDS) with a comprehensive, professional-grade Linux development and operating environment.
Real-Time Linux Distribution Made Available By Concurrent (TechWeb)TechWeb covers the latest released of Red Hawk Linux. Based on Red Hat Linux, Red Hawk replaces the kernel with a real-time version. Here's a press release from Concurrant, the company that bundles Red Hawk Linux with it's hardware.
Distribution reviews MandrakeSoft shines Linux desktop (ZDNet)ZDNet reviews Mandrake Linux version 9.0. "Some of the most significant tweaks to Mandrake Linux 9.0 are improvements to the desktop experience. MandrakeSoft has customized all of the various graphical user environments to have a consistent look and feel, a concept it calls "more homogeneity, less futility". This means, for example, that no matter what environment users are in, they have a similar set of menus for finding and running applications."
Mandrake Linux 9.0 in ReviewHere are a couple more reviews of Mandrake Linux 9.0. German site LinuxGear has this review (in German). Also a Linux Orbit user has published his first impressions.
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development JACK Meterbridge 0.0.4Version 0.0.4 of JACK Meterbridge has been released. A meter bridge is hardware assembly that typically involves a row of audio meters that "bridge" across the top of an audio mixing console.JACK Meterbridge allows a number of software audio level meters to be displayed on screen. The meters plug into the JACK audio connection kit, a software package that manages multiple connections to audio devices. Jack Meterbridge currently has a selection of three meter styles, two of them resemble classic mechanical meters, either peak-reading or classic VU style, and one that is a vertical bar-graph style. Jack Meterbridge is a good example of a virtual hardware device that can be plugged in to JACK. No doubt, many other such devices such as oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, and tuners could be programmed to work with Jack. Hopefully, JACK will prove to be a good platform for developing a wide variety of new virtual audio devices.
System Applications Database Software MySQL 4.0.4-beta releasedVersion 4.0.4-beta of the MySQL database has been released. This is a bugfix release.
Printing Kyocera releases PPD files as free software (LinuxPrinting)LinuxPrinting.org mentions that Kyocera has released the PPD (Postscript Printer Description) files for its PostScript printer line. "Kyocera released the PPD files for all their PostScript models under a MIT license, which means that they are free software now and so thay can be included distributions of GNU/Linux, put on web sites as linuxprinting.org, they can also be freely modified, for example to fix bugs or translate them."
Web Site Development Mod_python 3.0 beta 2 available.The second beta version of Mod_python version 3.0 is available for Apache 2.
Zope Members NewsThe most recent headlines on the Zope Members News include: Basic CMF Product Released, ZopeTestCase 0.5.3 Released, MailBoxer 2.0 released, Torped announces Easy Publisher 1.8, Localizer 0.9.1 released, and Silva 0.8.4 released.
ZOPE 2.6.0 Beta 1 ReleasedZope version 2.6.0 Beta 1 has been released. new features include gzip content compression, signal handling, log rotation, a new default view setting ability, an improved daemon mode, better text indexing and object cache control, automatic browser ID string embedding in URLs, improvments to the BTree and Catalog code, lots of bug fixes, and more.
mnoGoSearch-php-extension-1.66 availableVersion 1.66 of mnoGoSearch-php-extension, the PHP extension to the mnoGoSearch web site search engine is available.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Maaate 0.3.0 availableVersion 0.3.0 of Maaate, the Australian audio analysis toolkit, is available. Click below for the full announcement. The companion Bewdy visualization tool is also available.
WaveSurfer 1.4.5 releasedVersion 1.4.5 of the WaveSurfer sound visualization and manipulation tool has been released. The changes include new sound mixing functionality, several new time display formats, bug fixes, and minor improvements.
Desktop Environments FootNotesTopics on the GNOME desktop FootNotes site include: GNOME Summary - 2002-09-22 - 2002-09-28, art.gnome.org released, GTK+ 2.1.0 Released, Gst-Player 0.4.1 released, Film Gimp 0.4 released, Dropline GNOME 1.1.1, and more.
Interoperability Samba-3.0alpha20 Released for testingVersion 3.0alpha20 of Samba has been released for testing. The WHATSNEW document contains a long list of changes.
Wine Weekly NewsIssue #137 of the Wine Weekly News is out. Topics include A Wine status update, MS write support, a proposal for a developer CVS tree, updating developer info, CreateProcessA() and environment settings, and programming with Wine and COM.
Office Applications AbiWord Weekly NewsIssue #111 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out. "This has certainly been a mixed week! With the new release of 1.0.3, a new meta-bug has been put in place. One example of things most recently caught, 4046 , where something went horribly wrong, and now spelling is all just fizzley if you're using the dialogue (right clicking individual words still works). The good news, however, is that Mark has already promised that 1.0.4 will come out much sooner compared to 1.0.3; preferably within a month."
Kernel Cousin GNUeIssue #48 of Kernel Cousin GNUe covers the latest Gnu Enterprise development news.
Web Browsers Phoenix 0.2 browser releasedFollowing last week's release of version 0.1, version 0.2 of the lightweight Phoenix browser has been released. New features include web forms auto-complete, the return of the sidebar, extension management, toolbar customization, a new search bar, prefs support, speed enhancements, mousewheel font resizing, and bug fixes.
Miscellaneous GnuPG 1.2 releasedA new version of the GNU Privacy Guard (gpg) has been released. Here is the list of changes. GnuPG 1.2.0 can be downloaded from one of the *GnuPG mirror sites*.
Languages and Tools Caml The Caml HumpThis week, the new software on The Caml Hump includes MLGraph, Combinator Engine, and toolpage.
FORTRAN G95 progressProgress continues on the G95 FORTRAN compiler project. "Plan: Finish the type resolution phase. There are a few things that g95 cannot currently handle, but most of the simpler things are implemented. Conforming fortran 77 programs should be parsed and resolved without difficulty. I have uploaded a Linux x86 binary in order that non-hackers can try g95 on their favorite bits of code and can make sure that that parser doesn't choke too bad."
Java Restoring the transparent network, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)Todd E. Sundsted shows how to get around network obstacles using Java. "In this follow-up article to "Restoring the transparent network", Todd Sundsted focuses on techniques that Java applications can use to restore the appearance of network transparency in the face of many common types of network obstructions. This article provides a framework that Java applications can use to hide network obstructions from the higher-level parts of the application."
EJB Inheritance (O'Reilly)Emmanuel Proulx writes about EJB inheritance on O'Reilly's ONJava site. The article is divided into part 1 and part 2. "Entity beans are objects that represent data coming from a persistent store, such as a database. The key word here is objects. Entity beans encapsulate the data and business logic. But what about the two other principles, inheritance and polymorphism?"
Lisp SBCL 0.7.8 releasedVersion 0.7.8 of SBCL (Steel Bank Common Lisp) has been released. "This version features a Beta-quality port to the MIPS architecture under Linux, cleaned up compiler handling of TYPE-ERRORs, improved argument type checking, optimization changes, the new extension SB-DEBUG:BACKTRACE-AS-LIST and a number of bug fixes."
Perl This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)The September 23-29, 2002 edition of This week on Perl 6 is out. Topics include: Topics include Of Variables, Values and Vtables, IMCC 0.0.9.2, Fun with intlists, Functions in Scheme, Perl6 on HP-UX 11.00, The status of Leopold Toetsch's patches, Of PMCs Buffers and memory management, Add Stone Age Exception Handling, and Meanwhile, in Perl 6.
This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The 23-29 September 2002 edition of the Perl-5 Porters Digest is out. "This was a nice week, with lots of discussion, on various interesting topics. Read on for strange bugs, strange fixes, strange error messages, and as always, the ongoing efforts made to improve Perl 5."
Genetic algorithms with Perl (IBM developerWorks)Teodor Zlatanov writes about genetic algorithms with Perl on IBM's developerWorks. " One of the more intriguing types of algorithm is the genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms mimic Darwinian natural selection, where "fitness" selects individuals for survival, breeding, and, hence, adaptive mutation. I covered the background on this in a previous column, and I also showed two Perl implementations, one that bred bytes and another that bred words. In this article, I cover more advanced material on genetic algorithms in Perl."
An AxKit Image Gallery (O'Reilly)Barrie Slaymaker explains how to use AxKit to make an image gallery. "AxKit is not limited to working with pure XML data. Starting with this article, we'll work with and around non-XML data by developing an image browser that works with two types of non-XML data: a directory listing built from operating system calls (file names and statistics) and image files. Furthermore, it will be built from small modules that you can adapt to your needs or use elsewhere, like the thumbnail generator or the HTML table wrapper."
PHP PHP Weekly SummaryWeek 105 of the PHP Weekly Summary is out: "Two years already! The 4.3.0 Release Cycle due to begin, 64 bit compatible PHP, and more."
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!This week the Python-URL looks at Puffin; Permutations, Combinations on SourceForge; Python's XML and XML-RPC capabilities; Blog with Python; and much more.
The Daily Python-URLThis week's Daily Python-URL topics include epydoc, Probability And Statistics Utils for Python, Kaa, Automation with Puffin, CAMFR 1.0, PyANT 0.26, and more.
Ruby The Ruby GardenTopics on this week's Ruby Garden include method ancestors for class Method, Things That Newcomers to Ruby Should Know, and more.
The Ruby Weekly NewsTopics on this week's Ruby Weekly News include REXML 2.4.2 and 2.5.2, Ruby/CorporateTime 0.1.0, a Russian Ruby mailing list, dbdbd 0.2, SuperHash, Net::GeoIP 0.01, XMLscan 0.1.0 RC1, ZenWeb 1.14.0, ZenTest 1.0.1, Blogtari 0.0.2, "and" and "or" vs. && and ||, Ruby - common pitfalls?, and a Ruby announcement list.
Scheme Scheme Weekly NewsThe September 30, 2002 edition of the Scheme Weekly News is out, with the latest Scheme language development news.
XML Case-insensitive enumerations (IBM developerWorks)Doug Tidwell shows how to perform case-sensitive enumeration with XML on IBM's developerWorks. "IBM's own XML ace Doug Tidwell offers one curious reader an automated solution for defining a case-insensitive enumeration that's straightforward, standards-compliant, and requires little work on the developer's part. Several code samples are included."
Introducing HLink (O'Reilly)Kendall Grant Clark explains HLink on O'Reilly's XML.com. "On its face HLink is a very simple specification, even if, as Joe English and Tim Bray have noted, it amounts to a kind of rehabilitation of SGML's (infamously complex, as I recall) architectural forms extensions. The point of HLink is to provide a way of saying one or more of the following things: that (1) some elements or attributes within an XHTML markup language (or, better: within a namespace) are or can be treated as a hypertextual link; that (2) the functional semantics -- how the link behaves under various conditions -- are such and such; (3) that an attribute of some element which is a link has such and such an effect on its semantics."
Introducing PyXML (O'Reilly)Uche Ogbuji writes about PyXML 0.8.1 on O'Reilly's XML.com site. "One of the things I'm going to do in these columns is provide brief information on significant new happenings relevant to Python-XML development, including significant software releases. PyXML 0.8.1 has been released. Major changes include updated DOM support and the disabling of the bundled XSLT library from the default install."
Miscellaneous omniORB 4.0.0 and omniORBpy 2.0 releasedNew versions of the omniORB and omniORBpy CORBA ORBs have been released.
MLton version 20020923 released.Version 20020923 of MLton has been released. "MLton is a whole-program optimizing compiler for the Standard ML programming language. MLton runs on X86 machines with Linux, FreeBSD, or Cygwin/Windows." The new version features major runtime system improvements, support for FreeBSD, and bug fixes.
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in Business Business News OSI approves two new licensesThe Board of Directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved two licenses. These licenses, written by Larry Rosen, attorney for OSI, are intended to be encapsulations of the best of their class of open source licenses.
Red Hat Linux 8.0 releasedHere is Red Hat's press release announcing the availability of Red Hat Linux 8.0. There's lots of new stuff in this release, of course, including the controversial "Bluecurve" desktop, OpenOffice, Apache 2.0, and more.
IBM, Red Hat and Tarantella Team Up In Italy to Offer Integrated Infrastructure SolutionA large Italian tour operator is the first business to deploy this solution, which integrates the IBM X-Series server with Red Hat's Linux operating system and Tarantella Enterprise 3 software.
CMP Media Adds Enterprise-Oriented Open Source Web Site To TechWeb NetworkCMP Media's TechWeb Network launched The Open Enterprise, a news-and-analysis Web site devoted entirely to open-source and standards-based software in a corporate setting. "The Open Enterprise's inaugural feature is "The Promise of the Open Enterprise." The piece focuses on what it means to use open-source and standards-based software in enterprise IT systems, how they change IT practices and policies, how enterprise business technologists acquire open-source software, and issues of deployment, architecture, cost-benefits and risks."
Press Releases Open Source Announcements
Distributions and Bundled Products
Software for Linux
Products and Services Using Linux
Hardware with Linux support
Linux at Work
Java Products
Books and Documentation
Training and Certification
Trade Shows and Conferences
Partnerships
Investments and Acquisitions
Personnel and New Offices
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Linux in the news Recommended Reading "World's largest display" lights Paris skies (and runs Linux) (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices.com covers Project Blinkenlights' transformation of Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into what is claimed to be the world's largest computer screen. "Arcade is the second (and largest) building-sized computer screen created and installed by Project Blinkenlights. The first, unveiled last year in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Chaos Computer Club, was located at the famous Haus des Lehrers office building in Berlin. One change since the earlier version is the ability to control the brightness of each pixel, which results in a grayscale display that allows for sophisticated, large-scale animations glowing into the Paris night life."
Professor posts digital device hit list (News.com)News.com reports on professor Ed Felten's list of products that may be affected by Senator Fritz Hollings' CBDTPA bill. "So far, Fritz's Hit List features a catalog of unlikely devices Felten said would be regulated under the law. They include common objects such as baby monitors and automobile navigation systems as well as seemingly innocuous toys such as the Shop With Me Barbie toy cash register, the Sony Aibo robot dog and Big Mouth Billy Bass."
California Community Colocation Project Takes Off (Linux Journal)Linux Journal writes about the California Community Colocation Project. "The California Community Colocation Project, or CCCP, was launched in February 2002 as the world's first formal non-profit to focus exclusively on the needs of the not-for-profit colocation community. The CCCP is a project of the Online Policy Group of San Francisco."
Trade Shows and Conferences Lulu: Technology Under a Big Top (Wired)Wired reports from the Lulu Tech Circus. "The OpenSaurus project's exhibit was also packed throughout the weekend. The OpenSaurus folks used Linux software and salvaged hardware to build bots that smashed up other old computers and assorted hardware."
Companies LINUX Blade Servers May Cut In On UNIX At AOL (TechWeb)Will AOL be powered by Linux? According to this TechWeb article evaluations are under way. "AOL Services has installed 56 IBM BladeCenter servers -- 14 "server-on-a-board" systems per chassis -- running Red Hat Linux 7.3 to route a portion of the Web traffic that's now handled by its Unix-based back-end routing servers. If they deliver the advantages in cost, scalability, and performance that Norman Koo expects, AOL will replace all 800 Unix systems with blade servers during the next five years. "Blades do more work, take up less space, and use less power," says Koo, executive director of corporate technology at AOL Time Warner."
HP Joins Eclipse, Supports Open-Source Tools Project (TechWeb)TechWeb covers HP's entry into the Eclipse open-source consortium. "The Eclipse project is aiming to create an open-source "framework" that lets third-party vendors "plug in" specialty development tools. The idea is to let developers work within a single framework -- including things like user interface and shared services like source-code management or debugging -- for all their development."
Clustered Linux shines on commercial TPC-C test (Register)The Register reports on Hewlett Packard's clusters, which run Oracle's 9I Real Application Clusters (RACs) clustering software. "To prove that Linux is an option in the data center using clusters, HP tested an eight-node cluster of ProLiant DL580 servers, which use the Profusion chipset co-developed by Compaq and Intel and which can scale to eight Pentium III Xeon processors in a single system. The DL580s that HP tested used the 900MHz versions of the Pentium III Xeon processors, each equipped with 2MB of L2 cache memory. Each node had 4GB of main memory, yielding a cluster with 64 processors and 128GB of main memory."
MandrakeSoft releases latest Linux (News.com)News.com takes a quick look at the latest release from MandrakeSoft. "The new version includes a "supermount" feature that lets programmers skip traditional commands to access removable media such as CD-ROMs. It also has integrated intrusion-detection tools and utilities, encrypted communications support, encrypted file systems and secured authentication features."
Purple boxes--or purple haze? (ZDNet)ZDNet comments on Sun's latest Linux offering. "Sun's plan is to offer x86-based Linux machines built using off-the-shelf parts (put together in somebody else's garage, not Sun's) which will be sold in lots of 100. The generic hardware is complemented by a mostly generic array of Linux desktop software. The catch--besides having to buy these boxes in bunches of 100--is that you have to buy a server to go with them. So, essentially, Sun is ready to sell you 100 low-cost razors if you buy one of their blades."
Business Linux gets a break (Economist)The Economist writes about Linux gains in the retailer market. "If IBM likes it, then it must be all right. That, at least, is what supporters of Linux, an operating system for computers, are hoping. Unlike Microsoft Windows, Linux holds no secrets for programmers. Its source codes can be read like an open book, which makes them easy to adapt to individual needs and cheaper to buy. After years in the doldrums as Microsoft forged ahead in market after market, Linux is making a comeback—and in an unexpected market. Thanks to its stability as an operating system and the fact that it can be made secure, Linux is fast catching on among retailers." Thanks to Thomas Blankenhorn.
Is Linux taking over the enterprise? (ZDNet)ZDNet Australia looks at the increasing use of Linux in the business world. "In recent years, Linux has proven itself a credible alternative server operating system, and application support has also improved greatly. These days, the question is not whether you can use Linux, but where you can best use it. Is there more to Linux than Apache and file and print serving?"
NOIE to host Linux hoedown (iTnews)iTnews reports on plans by the Australian government to investigate Linux. "Growing demand from government CIO's for critical Linux information has prompted Australia's peak IT advisory body to step in with plans to conduct a government sector Linux seminar by the end of the year. The National Office of the Information Economy (NOIE) will invite departmental CIO's and chief technology officers to attend an in-depth enterprise Linux briefing." Thanks to Con Zymaris.
IBM Scores Two More Linux Wins (eWeek)IBM's most recent Linux customers are covered by eWeek. "[Regal Cinemas] is also testing a new, in-theater, Linux-based kiosk that will enable movie patrons to purchase tickets or retrieve tickets purchased from an online service."
Interviews Interview: Itanium evangelist (IBM developerWorks)IBM's developerWorks features an interview of David Mosberger on the future of Linux on IA-64. "David Mosberger has been a 64-bit Linux guy since day one. While pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Arizona in the early '90s, Mosberger led the Linux port to the Alpha processor and soon found that his Linux hobby was taking up as much time as his graduate work. He joined an Internet research group within Hewlett Packard in 1997, and a few years later the Swiss-born Mosberger jumped at the chance to contribute to the Itanium port (see Resources for a links to Mosberger's personal page and the IA-64 Linux project), where he is now lead kernel architect. Since 1988, he has written the first IA-64 back end for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), wrote much of the IA-64 toolchain support, and implemented much of the IA-64-specific parts of the Linux kernel."
Guardian Digital succeeding with Open Source security products (NewsForge)NewsForge talks with Guardian Digital's Dave Wreski. "We are earning a living. A lot is due to the Open Source model -- the services we're able to provide are in conjunction with the software we've developed in association with the work of thousands of programmers across the world."
Resources Embedded Linux NewsletterThe September 26, 2002 edition of the LinuxDevices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out, with the latest Embedded Linux news.
Introduction to netfilter/iptables (IBM developerWorks)Mugdha Vairagade explains how to set up IP filtering with Linux 2.4. "The netfilter/iptables is the IP packet filtering system that is integrated with the latest 2.4.x versions of the Linux kernel. This system facilitates greater control over IP packet filtering and firewall configuration on Linux systems, be they systems connected to the Internet or a LAN, servers, or proxy servers interfacing between a LAN and the Internet. Mugdha Vairagade provides an introduction to the netfilter/iptables system, how it works, its advantages, installing and configuring, and how to use it to configure firewalls on Linux systems to filter IP packets."
Spectral Analysis with Linux Systems and the Merlin DSP Project (Linux Journal)Gordon Miller discusses sound cards and the xspect power spectrum analyzer in this Linux Journal article. "Linux, however, has proven to be stable and well appointed with program and documentation development packages. In particular, the OSS sound driver for the Linux kernel (2.4.6 on my system) works well with SB16 type sound cards."
Visualizing Data in Real-Time (Linux Journal)In this Linux Journal article, Bruce Johnson explains how real-time data monitors differ from traditional debugging tools. "Historically, real-time data monitors were associated with proprietary, real-time operating systems (RTOSes) and sometimes required the use of special-purpose compilers. Today, however, real-time data monitors are available for applications running under Linux and compiled with standard GNU compilers. Consequently, many developers are beginning to recognize the benefits of real-time data monitors not only in traditional real-time applications but also in a wide variety of embedded and general-purpose applications."
Installing a Sony CRX195A1 CDRW Drive in Red Hat 7.3 (Linux Journal)Linux Journal discusses CDRW drives in Linux. "I told the tech that I knew the drive wasn't supported in Linux, but would it work? Immediately, I was told no. I thanked him and tried again with a different technician, three times to be exact, and each time I was told by a different person that the drive wouldn't work. I figured I was being told it wouldn't work because they didn't know the real answer and couldn't be bothered to check. Armed with an educated guess and a sense of adventure, I purchased the drive."
Reviews Red Hat's new Linux seeks to unify (News.com)News.com covers the release of Red Hat 8.0 and the Bluecurve desktop. "Red Hat's Bluecurve airbrushes out some differences between KDE and Gnome, altering icons and menu selections KDE or Gnome users would otherwise see and making them look the same."
Apache: More than a Web server (ZDNet)ZDNet reviews some of the software that works with the Apache web server. "When most people hear the phrase "Apache," they think of the Apache Web server, also commonly referred to as "Apache HTTPD." However, the Apache Software Foundation has a number of projects that are just as interesting as its flagship Web server."
Miscellaneous VxWorks to Embedded Linux: a Success Story (Linux Journal)Linux Journal has an article that looks at one school's switch from the proprietary VxWorks embedded operating system to Linux. "The recent introduction of Linux into the embedded sector has been one of the most exciting changes in the last few years. Based on the open-source model, it offers new possibilities to embedded engineers traditionally used to commercial operating systems. At our university, EUSS, we train students to develop embedded products. Until last year, our lectures and lab sessions were based on a commercial real-time operating system. Now we use Linux, and this fact has opened our minds and given us possibilities for a future evolution."
New Gigs for Linux Wonder Boys (Wired)Here's a Wired article looking at where various people from the Linux Bubble Days have ended up. "Another Red Hat founder who's recently landed a 'real job' is former CTO Marc Ewing, who is now founder and publisher of a glossy $12.50-per-issue climbing magazine called Alpinist, set to launch in November."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Resources The Case for Linux in UniversitiesDan Kegel has written up a lengthy document on why universities should be teaching Linux to their students. It's a very good start, but he's seeking feedback on ways to make it more complete and convincing.
LPI News-LetterThe Linux Professional Institute's LPI News-Letter for September, 2002 is available.
Linux Gazette #83 availableLinux Gazette Issue #83 (October, 2002) is now available. It includes articles on replicating Linux systems, "Qubism," DVD authoring, and many other topics.
September 2002 Netcraft Web Server SurveyThe September 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey has been released. "When counting by ip address, the supposed volatility of the past few months disappears, with Apache showing a three percentage point increase from 51% to 54% since the start of 2001, and Microsoft unchanged at 35%."
Upcoming Events Software et Internet Expo + Linux DaysA Linux and software event will be held in Luxemburg from October 1-3, 2002. Click below for the full announcement (In French).
High-Tech Circus Comes to Raleigh, N.C., AreaThe Raleigh, N.C. News and Observer covers Robert Young's Lulu Technology Circus. "There will also be experts from all over the country who bring their expertise about everything from personal digital assistants to building a supercomputer using clusters of Linux PCs. Circus attendees can play advance copies of interactive video games from local companies, build a robot out of Legos, help edit a movie, listen to electronic music, learn how to burn a CD and, for those with disc-jockey talent, win the latest professional digital CD-player from Pioneer."
The Open Group ConferenceThe Open Group Conference in Cannes, France will feature speeches by Jon "Maddog" Hall, Bruce Perens, and Larry Rosen among others. The conference will be held on October 14. Thanks to Andrew Josey.
Linux.conf.au 2003 registrations openRegistration for Linux.conf.au (Perth, January 22 to 25) is now open.
MySQL Compact Seminars in D.A.CHFour additional MySQL Compact Seminars have been scheduled for late october in Germany.
Events: October 3 - November 29, 2002
Web sites Gimp User Group forum returnsThe Gimp User Group has announced the return of its online forum system.
Software announcements This week's software announcementsHere are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
Miscellaneous Jon "maddog" Hall joins SGILong time Linux proponent Jon "Maddog" Hall is now working for SGI, click below for the announcement.
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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