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Debian Weekly News
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/09/ Debian Weekly News - March 1st, 2005 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 9th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Harald Welte [1]reported a 2.1 M pps (packets per second) UDP packet forwarding rate over four gigabit ethernet ports, which is a new record for Linux. After [2]OASIS, of which Debian is a member, has accepted a patent policy that has bad consequences on implementation of the standards, John Goerzen [3]called for support for an open letter. 1. http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/weblog/2005/02/23#20050223-o... 2. http://www.oasis-open.org/ 3. http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi-general/2005-Febru... Debian Release Update. Andreas Barth [4]sent in a new update for the release progress in which he outlines the timeline for the third release candidate of the [5]debian-installer. The buildd infrastructure is also getting some improvements, and will soon be in shape for the release. A lot of bugs were fixed and several out-dated libraries will be removed from sarge. 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/02/msg... 5. http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ Debian Cluster Components. The Rudjer Boskovic Institute in Croatia has [6]released their Debian Cluster Components, which is a fairly complete toolbox for building Debian based high-performance computing clusters. It consists of a set of Debian packages which simplify the creation and deployment of Debian based clusters. 6. http://dcc.irb.hr/ Report from LinuxWorld. Jaldhar Vyas and others ran a Debian booth at the [7]LinuxWorld Expo in Boston and [8]reported about the event. They believed that the show was quite a success, as they handed out a lot of Debian CDs, and collected a number of donations. More people have now heard of Debian and its derivatives, which were heavily represented in the .org pavilion. They were disappointed, though, that the Free Software community had been separated by a wall from the rest of the expo. 7. http://www.debian.org/events/2005/0215-lwe 8. http://www.braincells.com/debian/2005/02/24#report GNU/Hurd Progress with L4. After Marcus Brinkmann finished the process initialisation code in [9]Hurd/L4, an ambitious effort to port the Hurd to the high-performance [10]L4 microkernel, the first program was [11]executed on top of it. Porting Hurd to L4 has slowed down the development a lot, but the execution of the first user program on Hurd/L4 is a very important first step. 9. http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd-l4.html 10. http://l4ka.org/ 11. http://portal.wikinerds.org/gnu-hurd-l4-first-program Common Release Questions. Drew Daniels has [12]set up a wiki [13]document that is intended to cover most questions that users may have with the upcoming Debian release, especially its availability and temporary problems. It also answers questions about new or critical uploads and the inclusion of packages in sarge. 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/02/msg00113.html 13. http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianReleaseFAQ Close Relationship between Maintainer and Upstream. Andrew Pollock [14]asked Debian developers to maintain a close relationship with the upstream authors of the software they package for Debian. He mentioned some examples where he was more or less taking over packages and discussed bugs with their respective upstream developers who hadn't known about the Debian bug tracking system yet. This should be done when the bug is not a result of the Debian packaging. 14. http://blog.andrew.net.au/2005/02/25#upstream AMD64 Port Status Update. Goswin von Brederlow [15]sent a progress report for the [16]AMD64 port of Debian. Both GNOME and KDE now have their dependencies fulfilled in the sarge tree. With the recent reports of successful debian-installer tests on AMD64, this port has finally caught up with the official release. 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01161.html 16. http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/ Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * DSA 688: [17]squid -- Denial of service. * DSA 689: [18]mod_python -- Information leak. * DSA 690: [19]bsmtpd -- Arbitrary command execution. 17. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-688 18. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-689 19. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-690 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [20]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [21]dwn@debian.org. 20. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 21. mailto:dwn@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-news-REQUEST@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org (Log in to post comments)
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 2:51 UTC (Wed) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link] Is anyone in a position to give an "executive summary" or maybe some intelligent punditry as to when Sarge may be released? Would it be safe to bank on it being in the first half of this year?
Hate to sound ungrateful, but it's virtually criminal how long this is taking. And this delay is even with the concession that they'd wait till next time to rip out all the non-Free non-code.
I am *really* wishing I had Gentoo on my web server instead of Debian stable. *sigh*
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 3:11 UTC (Wed) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link] Its well known that Debian's stable releases aren't bleeding edge. The slower release cycles are one reason I run stable on my servers. With carefully watched stable releases I feel a little more confident about security.Another consideration is that Debian supports many arches. I personally run/have previously run Debian on SPARC32, MIPS, PPC32, and x86. Taking a little extra time to get things right is a big consideration of mine before deploying a common distro. I have run Gentoo and like it, but I will also point out that you can run the testing or unstable versions of Debian for more current packages.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 5:03 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Debian's stable release (woody) isn't installable on many computers that you can buy in a store today, and lacks at least some hardware support on most, though it works fine on most three-year-old hardware. The sarge release is badly needed, and if it can be done without an overly long freeze, it could be reasonably current when released.Sarge has Gnome 2.8 (good), KDE 3.3.2 (which was released in December 2004!), and up-to-date versions of most apps. There's a 2.6.8-based kernel, but Debian is right to be cautious about 2.6 kernels (the kernel developers no longer ship production-quality kernels; don't use a Linus kernel unless you have a firewall!). Debian's major lag is that it has XFree86 4.3 rather than Xorg, which could shorten its life as new cards supported by Xorg but not XFree86 4.3 come out. Still, if it could be shipped in the next six months it would be reasonably current. The danger to Debian is that its developers are starting to show signs of getting fed up and jumping to Ubuntu.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 8:48 UTC (Wed) by joib (guest, #8541) [Link] The danger to Debian is that its developers are starting to show signs of getting fed up and jumping to Ubuntu.I think a little competition is a good thing. Hopefully the 'threat' from Ubuntu will make Debian actually do something to hasten the release schedule (see e.g. the debian wiki for various proposals). The current scheme where each release takes 6 months longer than the previous is unacceptable. Personally, having been a debian user since 1997, I'm planning to move to Ubuntu. In case Canonical folds or Debian gets its act together, I can always move back to Debian.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 11:36 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] >I think a little competition is a good thing. Hopefully the 'threat' from Ubuntu will make Debian actually do something to hasten the release schedule (see e.g. the debian wiki for various proposals). The current scheme where each release takes 6 months longer than the previous is unacceptable.
For a volunteer effort like Debian, competition does not make sense. Market
The relation between Debian and Ubuntu are such that it is the best interest of a number of Debian developers to see Ubuntu succeed even at the expense of pure Debian market-share. Given that, there are really no incentive for them to see Debian competing in a way that could make Ubuntu irrelevant.
Yay Ubuntu! Posted Mar 2, 2005 13:57 UTC (Wed) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link] Competition certainly does have a big impact in free software. I still rememeber how the egcsproject gave gcc a much needed kick in the pants, which is why we aren't still using gcc 2.7.2.3. <wink>
I think Ubuntu is doing the same for Debian.
My wife installed Debian on her new workstation a couple of days ago. There were some
After it rebooted it had good-looking graphics, working sound, working 802.11g network (using
Maybe the next release of Debian should be a fork of Ubuntu. <wink>
P.S. I also installed Ubuntu Warty on my own Athlon64 workstation. It wasn't quite as painless
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 13:50 UTC (Wed) by dingding (guest, #28161) [Link] The danger to Debian is that its developers are starting to show signs of getting fed up and jumping to Ubuntu. Kind of hard to get a release out when the so called release manager jumps ship and the people who replace him have a paid job which includes "getting Ubuntu out in time" in its description, uh? Ubuntu is hurting Debian more than anything. Just pay close attention to the security updates here on LWN and ask yourself WTF is going on when you see advisories for Ubuntu but none for Debian most of the time.
Security advisories Posted Mar 2, 2005 15:45 UTC (Wed) by pjdc (subscriber, #6906) [Link] I received 30 advisories via debian-security-announce in February. Visiting the ubuntu-security-announce archive for February, I discover 22 Ubuntu advisories issued in the same time period.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 3, 2005 11:08 UTC (Thu) by kreutzm (guest, #4700) [Link] Simply because Woody is not vulnerable. Sometimes the problems are only present in newer versions of the code, or the package was not part of woody, ... Please check Woodys non vulnerability list before drawing your conclusions.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 5:48 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] Debian always rips out non-free code. If you redistribute Debian you want to know there are no legal issues with it.
That said, the GFDL removal has been postponed to the version after Sarge, and so has the total removal of the "nonfree" repository.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 6:12 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] Removal of the non-free archive from Debian's servers is never scheduled to happen. Debian developers voted to keep it.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 7:04 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] removing RFC's on the basis that they can only be distributed freely, but can't be modified is an extreme postition for any other group.
I like Debian for many things, but unfortunantly it also has more then it's fair share of extremests
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 8:29 UTC (Wed) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link] There's actually an easy, and reasonable way around this one.
The license ought to say "if you wish to call this document RFC blahblah, you must not change it one bit. Modifications are permitted if you rename the document and do not make any claims that it is RFC blah blah", or something along those lines. That would make everyone happy.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 22:36 UTC (Wed) by socket (guest, #43) [Link] I respectfully disagree. There's no excuse for making modifications to RFCs, outside of being a part of the IETF processes. RFCs come about as standards for how protocols work in order to make software that implements the RFC interoperable. To change the RFC is to break interoperability. I have a mental image of a debian developer answering a bug report by saying, "Well, that's not what MY version of the RFC for this protocol says. Pbthptbpth."
Which is more important: the freeness of documentation included with a package, or the standard the package presumes to implement?
Sarge release? Posted Mar 3, 2005 0:52 UTC (Thu) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link] There's an easier and even more resonable way around this one:
Find the idiot who thinks RFCs require modification by end-readers and believes their inclusion without a license permitting this is against the philosophy of Debian, and slap them around with a clue-by-four.
This is the reason Debian releases rate somewhere between sloth and molasses. Some idiots involved with the project go on these little legalese rampages, and other idiots propose more legalese methods, then everyone has a group fight over it that goes for months, or years, and finally there's a big group hug and everyone agrees we can have a new release.
All those little legalese arguments are plain stupidity. There is absolutely no reason to alter the contents of an RFC beyond formatting. And since they're usually formatted nicely even that's an extreme unlikelyhood. Evicting RFC documents because of some idiot complaining they can't do something that doesn't make any sense whatsoever is beyond pathetic & unreasonable.
"I can't fry eggs with dpkg, we must remove it from Debian because it infringes on my rights to freedom!"
Grow up.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 3, 2005 2:46 UTC (Thu) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] > This is the reason Debian releases rate somewhere between sloth and molasses.
No, the reason Debian releases are slow is because it supports a dozen architectures and tens of thousands of packages, and because those packages are actually tested and integrated rather than simply slopped together on an FTP site.
Do the slow releases suck? Yes. Is Debian going to release faster by including *more* software? I'll let anyone with experience in project management figure that one out...
> Find the idiot ... and slap them around with a clue-by-four.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 4, 2005 19:55 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] "There is absolutely no reason to alter the contents of an RFC beyond formatting."
I think you are being small-minded here.
How can you honestly suggest the only reason to modify or reuse a document
Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:
You could create an annotated version with sections of referenced RFCs and
You could take portions of the RFC as comments inside of software which
You could provide corrections or create a draft for an improved version of
You could create a version with graphics (and also replace ASCII-art with
You could translate it into other languages.
You can create entirely new documents reusing portions of the RFC.
"And since they're usually formatted nicely even that's an extreme unlikelyhood."
Again, you don't seem to be very imaginative when it comes to using RFCs.
Formatting is probably one of the most areas which the most diversity of
"Evicting RFC documents because of some idiot complaining they can't do
I don't think that's what happened so your conclusion that it is "pathetic
I cretainly understand why the IETF wants to keep randomly modified
If there is no need to do anything with the RFCs but read them then why
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 11:07 UTC (Wed) by skx (subscriber, #14652) [Link] The last release update was posted on the 22nd of February and you can read it here. The timeline finishes towards the tail end of March. Although obviously things might change... Steve-- Debian System Administration
Sarge release? Posted Mar 2, 2005 15:11 UTC (Wed) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link] I saw that, but it is the timeline for the installer, and rc3 at that. Is the installer project tied closely to the official release? Will the final come shortly after rc3?
I could be reasonably satisfied with a Sarge release in the next 3-4 months. If not, I will seriously consider putting in a request to change my web server to Gentoo, which, fortunately, my virtual server provider supports.
Sarge release? Posted Mar 4, 2005 19:13 UTC (Fri) by haraldt (guest, #961) [Link] Debian installer is made for installing Sarge (currently "testing") and later, but it's an independent subproject.
So go ahead and download debian-installer from http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ Ubuntu runs a (perhaps slightly modified) debian-installer, so there's no need for being jealous. Harald
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