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LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 17, 2005LiPS serviceOne might think that there are already enough industry bodies working on Linux in telephone applications. But, on November 14, a new group, called the "Linux Phone Standards Forum" (or "LiPS") announced its existence. According to the release:
The LiPS Forum will accelerate the adoption of Linux in fixed,
mobile and converged devices by standardizing Linux-based services
and APIs that most directly influence the development, deployment
and interoperability of applications and user-level services.
In essence, LiPS wants to push toward the creation of a standard low-level phone platform which allows vendors to focus their efforts on the higher-level features which set their offerings apart. The appeal of this idea is not that hard to understand. As an operating system for telephones, Linux is hard to beat: it can be customized to taste, it is efficient, and it lacks per-unit royalty costs. In addition, mobile platforms have become powerful enough to run Linux, and many mobile applications are sufficiently demanding to require a complete operating system like Linux. On the other hand, Linux lacks the features specific to telephony which can be found in a proprietary platform like Symbian. By filling in that layer of telephony-specific features, LiPS hopes to create a competitive platform for future products. LiPS will probably be successful in scheduling meetings, generating white papers, and cranking out press releases. But if LiPS truly wants to turn Linux into a platform it can rely upon in the future, its management may want to consider engaging openly with the development community; "cooperating with OSDL" is not sufficient in this regard. If LiPS sees itself as another proprietary, members-only consortium, it will cut itself off from much that the community can provide. A good start would be to admit some community projects to the group. For example, since they claim to be trying to build platforms for telephony in general - not limited to mobile devices - the LiPS member companies might well benefit from having somebody from the Asterisk and Bayonne projects at the table. Even better would be to work with the community directly. A look at the list of companies which have joined LiPS (ARM, Cellon, Esmertec, France Telecom/Orange, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, MIZI Research, MontaVista Software, Open-Plug and PalmSource) and the other companies which have been active in Linux-based telephones (Motorola, Haier, Nokia, NEC, Panasonic, Samsung, ...) has few intersections with the list of companies participating in Linux kernel development. If the LiPS members truly want to get the most out of Linux, they will be better off working with the development community and contributing back their improvements. The recent announcement by the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum that it had hired a Linux kernel developer is a step in the right direction, but it is only a beginning. Finally, if LiPS truly wants to achieve world domination with Linux-based phones, it should give some thought to the creation of a user-hackable platform. A phone which can be extended to perform functions never envisioned by its creators will be a far more valuable device, and it should find a wider market. Unfortunately, the mobile phone market tends to be dominated by companies which behave like, well, telephone companies, with the result that even routine features (such as Bluetooth) can be locked down, and user-hackable devices are a rarity. When a device is fully locked down, it matters little to the user whether it is running Linux or something else altogether. If LiPS were sufficiently enlightened that it could go against the closed nature of the industry and specify the creation of Linux-based phones which have not had the natural freedom of Linux stripped out of them, it could be the start of something truly interesting.
Sony's rootkit: an updateFor most companies, simply being caught installing rootkit-like software onto the systems of customers who simply thought they were playing a music CD would be bad enough. Certainly, since the Halloween disclosure that some SonyBMG discs install a rootkit (called "XCP") has been a source of grief for that company, and rightly so. It takes a truly expansive interpretation of the notion of "intellectual property rights" to believe that such rights allow the installation of malware on other peoples' computers. As this event - and those which have come after - have shown, however, SonyBMG appears to have learned little from the whole episode.Just how little the company has learned can be heard on this NPR interview with SonyBMG manager Thomas Hesse. When asked about the rootkit, Mr. Hesse responded:
Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why
should they care about it?
As the class-action suits begin to pile up, and as even Microsoft feels the need to create a Sonyware removal tool, maybe Mr. Hesse will eventually realize that people (who are rapidly learning what a rootkit is) do care. SonyBMG has claimed that there is no "phone home" capability in this software. Unfortunately for the company, connections back home are relatively easy to detect. Some investigation quickly showed that SonyBMG's software does indeed make a connection back home when the CD is played. Nowhere has SonyBMG alerted its users to this behavior and the associated privacy problems. For additional amusement, see the EULA which comes with the rootkit software. SonyBMG has made an uninstaller available for those few users which are capable of understanding what a rootkit does and being upset by it. It turns out, however, that this uninstaller is worse than the original rootkit. Running the uninstaller opens a number of holes - which can be exploited via web pages - in the target system. So victims of SonyBMG's rootkit who care about the security of their systems are in a bind; there is currently no straightforward way to get that software off the system without compromising the system even further. Yet another ironic twist is the possibility that Sony's rootkit includes some LGPL-licensed code, but does not comply with the license. If this were true (and there are some doubts on this point, though they seem to be getting smaller), the hypocrisy would be complete. In response to all this, SonyBMG announced that it would "temporarily" stop making CDs with XCP on them. There was no apology, much less an offer to compensate people whose systems have been compromised. Neither was there a recall of the (apparently millions) of malware-infected discs which were still in the retail pipeline. Only on November 15 did SonyBMG finally give in, recall the outstanding XCP-infected CDs, and offer to replace discs in the hands of its customers. Said users are still waiting for the compensation offer, however. It is also worth noting that Sony is still shipping CDs with Sunncomm's MediaMax DRM code on them. MediaMax may not be quite as bad as XCP, but it is still hostile software which, among other things, phones home. In the end, SonyBMG appears to have been slapped down fairly hard for its actions. It would be a mistake to assume that this sort of incident will not happen again, however. The entertainment industry has managed to create such a strawman enemy out of "pirates" that any sort of response appears to be justified. In a world where these folks can dictate the design of radios and televisions, attempt to legalize online attacks against "pirates," and file lawsuits against children, the addition of malware to a music disc seems like a small thing. Until such a time as this industry stops seeing its own customers as enemies, it will fail to show those customers any respect. Linux users should not expect much respect either. Efforts like the broadcast flag already threaten to make the creation of free television and radio receivers impossible. Beyond any doubt, the music industry looks forward to the day when even playing a song on a free system will be disallowed. As Linux users, we are not much impressed by the idea that, in order to play a music track, we must accept the installation of hostile software onto our systems. Unfortunately, we may yet see a day when that is the only choice we have. (See also: the EFF's open letter to SonyBMG and the Sony timeline on BoingBoing).
FOSS.IN 2005One would think that free software would be a natural for a country like India. With free software, a developing nation can take greater control of its infrastructure, avoid paying hard-currency licensing fees, and worry less about "pirates" creating difficulties with foreign companies and governments. When the country also has vast numbers of smart and highly-educated people, as India does, free software seems like an even better fit. There is no doubt that use of free software in India is growing, but the country has not always been strongly represented in the development community.
Things are clearly changing however, and one of the clearest signs of that
change is the upcoming FOSS.IN conference,
starting November 29 in Bangalore. This conference, now in its fifth
year, expects some 3000 attendees, offers over 140 talks, 20 tutorials, and
This conference is certainly taken seriously within India. The Visvesvaraya Technological University (the leading technical university in the state of Karnataka) has sent out a letter to over 100 engineering colleges asking them to urge their students to attend FOSS.IN. As it grows to become one of the largest technical free software events anywhere, FOSS.IN is increasingly going for world-wide respect. That notwithstanding, the conference organizers have also consented to let LWN editor Jonathan Corbet speak at the event. This was an opportunity not to be turned down, and your editor is looking forward to attending and reporting from FOSS.IN (even if he's a little less enthusiastic about the 24-hour travel time each way). Look for the first reports in the December 1 Weekly Edition. (The image shown above was taken from this very nice set of posters put together by Hari Krishnan).
LWN Weekly comes out early next weekA reminder: the (U.S.) Thanksgiving holiday is next week. LWN's editors traditionally publish the Weekly Edition one day early on Thanksgiving week in order to be able to go join their families and eat enough food to last through the end of the year. We'll return to the regular schedule the following week.
Security Some trusted computing security modulesIBM has been pushing the use of the "trusted platform module" chip found in its laptops (and on other systems as well) for some time; see this report from OLS 2005 for a summary of the benefits they see from trusted computing. Now IBM's developers have posted a new set of security modules which make use of the TPM to lock down a system. The three modules are:
The IMA module was not well received when it was last posted. The developers hope that the largest objections have been addressed, and that the set of TPM-related modules as a whole can be considered, eventually, for merging. Before reaching that point, however, these modules have another obstacle to overcome: they rely on the ability to run multiple Linux security modules in a "stacked" mode. Stacked security modules have been a contentious issue for some time, and that capability has never been merged. The developers claim that the new modules will make the case for stacking, but that conversation has yet to take place.
Brief items Discontinued SUSE Linux Distribution: 9.0SUSE has a reminder that no security updates will be available for SUSE Linux 9.0 after December 15, 2005. "As a consequence, the SUSE Linux 9.0 distribution directory on our ftp server ftp.suse.com has been moved from /pub/suse/i386/9.0/ to the /pub/suse/discontinued/ directory tree structure to free space on our mirror sites. The 9.0 directory in the update tree /pub/suse/i386/update/9.0 will follow, as soon as all updates have been published."
New vulnerabilities acidlab: SQL injection
emacs: lisp execution vulnerability
flash-plugin: buffer overflow
ftpd: remote buffer overflow
gdk-pixbuf: multiple vulnerabilities
lynx: arbitrary command execution
phpsysinfo: programming errors
RAR: format string and buffer overflow
scorched3d: multiple vulnerabilities
Updated vulnerabilities a2ps: input validation error
abiword: buffer overflow
apache information disclosure if modssl=yes
awstats: command injection vulnerability
bzip2: race condition and infinite loop
chmlib: several vulnerabilities
clamav: multiple vulnerabilities
common-lisp-controller: design error
cpio: directory traversal
cyrus-imapd: buffer overflows
dia: missing input sanitizing
elm: buffer overflow
emacs21: format string vulnerability in "movemail"
enigmail: information disclosure
enscript: arbitrary code execution
ethereal: multiple vulnerabilities
evolution: format string issues
fetchmailconf: insecure file creation
firefox: multiple vulnerabilities
Foomatic: Arbitrary command execution in foomatic-rip
gaim: buffer overflow
gdb: multiple vulnerabilities
gtk-pixbuf, gtk2: denial of service
gedit: format string vulnerability
gettext: Insecure temporary file handling
glibc: tempfile vulnerability in catchsegv script
gpsdrive: format string vulnerability
grip: buffer overflow
groff: insecure temporary directory
gzip: arbitrary command execution
horde3: design error
htdig: cross site scripting
imap: buffer overflow in c-client
kdebase: local root vulnerability
kdelibs: kate backup file permission leak
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
krb5: double-free flaw
libconvert-uulib-perl: arbitrary code execution
libdbi-perl: insecure temporary file
libgadu: memory alignment bug
libgd2: buffer overflows in PNG handling
libgda2: format string vulnerabilities
libnet-ssleay-perl: weakened cryptographic operations
libpam-ldap: authentication bypass
libTIFF: buffer overflow
libungif: memory corruption
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
libxml2: multiple buffer overflows
libXpm: new buffer overflows
lm-sensors: insecure temp files
Mantis: multiple vulnerabilities
mod_python: remote access vulnerability
mysql: buffer overflow
mysql: low-impact security fix
ncpfs: multiple vulnerabilities
nfs-utils: arbitrary code execution
ntp: uses wrong gid
openssh: GSSAPI credential disclosure
openssl: protocol rollback
openvpn: format string vulnerability
pcre3: arbitrary code execution
perl: setuid vulnerabilities
perl: symlink vulnerability
php: multiple vulnerabilities
phpMyAdmin: local file inclusion and XSS
phpsysinfo: cross-site-scripting
postgresql: database initialization errors
Pound: buffer overflow
pstotext: remote execution of arbitrary code
pwdutils: privilege escalation
Py2Play: remote execution of arbitrary Python code
rp-pppoe, pppoe: missing privilege dropping
smb4k: temporary file vulnerability
spamassassin: denial of service
squid: authentication handling
sudo: missing input sanitizing
sudo: race condition
sylpheed: buffer overflow
sysreport: insecure temporary file
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: multiple DoS issues
texinfo: temporary file vulnerability
thttpd: insecure temp file
ucd-snmp: denial of service
uim: privilege escalation
unzip: race condition
up-imapproxy: format string vulnerabilities
util-linux: unintentional grant of privileges by umount
uw-imap: buffer overflow
vixie-cron: crontab allows any user to read another users crontabs
w3c-libwww: possible stack overflow
XChat 2.0.x SOCKS5 Vulnerability
xine-lib: buffer overflows
xine-ui - insecure temporary file creation
xloadimage: buffer overflows
xorg-x11: heap overflow
xpdf: buffer overflow
xpdf: denial of service
zlib: buffer overflow
Resources Plash 1.14 releasedPlash 1.14 is out. Plash is:
...is a secure, restricted execution environment for running Linux
programs with the minimum necessary privileges. It is similar to
using chroot jails, but is more lightweight and flexible. You can use
Plash to grant a process read-only or read-write access to specific
files and directories, which can be mapped at any point in its private
filesystem namespace.
This release includes a new "file powerbox" capability which can allow a user to grant access to specific files to an application on the fly.
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current stable 2.6 kernel is 2.6.14.2, released on November 10. 2.6.14.2 contains about a dozen fixes, including one for the zero-length datagram bug. It does not contain a fix for the file lease denial of service bug yet, however.The current 2.6 prepatch is 2.6.15-rc1, announced by Linus on November 11. Says Linus:
It's hard to go through in any great detail, because even the
shortlog is actually almost five thousand lines and about 200kB in
size, and would thus run afoul of the mailing list limits so I
can't include it here. The same is true of the diffstat, only even
more so. The unidiff is about a million lines in size, just the
diffstat is 300+kB.
The changes are really pretty much all over the place, with over four thousand commits merged in the two weeks since 2.6.14... The changes in 2.6.15 have been listed in detail here last week and the week before. Significant changes merged since last week's article, but before 2.6.15-rc1, include a new, simpler, type-safe netlink API, a new netfilter connection tracking implementation (which understands IPv6 and will eventually replace the current code), the removal of some SCSI subsystem typedefs (Scsi_Device, Scsi_Pointer, and Scsi_Host_Template), the removal of the owner field from struct pci_driver, and a new "platform driver" interface. For those who are just tuning in: some of the more significant changes in 2.6.15 will include device model changes, basic hotplug memory support, a reworked NTFS implementation with improved write behavior, a big CIFS update, a number of block improvements (and a reorganization of the block layer into its own top-level directory), the Open-iSCSI initiator, InfiniBand SCSI RDMA, RapidIO support, a number of scheduler tweaks, the shared subtrees patch, four-level page tables for the ia-64 architecture, and much more. See the short log for a long list of changes, or the long-format changelog for the details. 2.6.15-rc1 marks the closing of the window for new features, so Linus's git repository contains mostly fixes. It does, however, also include a generic cmpxchg implementation for i386, new Omnikey Cardman 4000 and 4040 drivers, and a new DMA32 zone for the x86-64 architecture. The current -mm tree is 2.6.14-mm2. Recent changes to -mm include some relayfs enhancements, some scheduler tweaks, and various fixes. The current 2.4 kernel is 2.4.32, released by Marcelo on November 16. 2.4 is in deep maintenance mode, so there's not a whole lot of new features in 2.4.32.
Kernel development news HOWTO do Linux kernel developmentGreg Kroah-Hartman has gotten tired of answering the same questions about Linux kernel development. So he has put together a HOWTO document to get people started. The goals are ambitious: "This is the be-all, end-all document on this topic. It contains instructions on how to become a Linux kernel developer and how to learn to work with the Linux kernel development community." Now people just have to read it...
4K stacks - againThe question of whether the i386 architecture should move to using 4K kernel stacks by default has been raised a few times; LWN last covered the 4K stack issue in September. Adrian Bunk has started the discussion anew with this proposal that the -mm tree go to 4K stacks (only) now, with an eye toward changing the mainline for 2.6.16.Most of the technical issues have not changed since September, so those arguments will not be repeated here. It is worth noting that layered block devices and filesystems have mostly been fixed. In past kernels, highly stacked devices (think of a combination of RAID, encryption, and network filesystems) could end up with very long call chains in the kernel, and, as a result, overflow the kernel stack. Most of these calls have since been serialized, so block-layer stacking should not be a problem. The issue that remains is NDISwrapper, the glue layer which allows Windows NDIS drivers to be loaded into a Linux kernel. Windows runs with a much larger kernel stack size, so NDIS driver writers have no reason to be as careful about stack usage. And, of course, these drivers cannot be fixed to work properly with Linux. Some have argued that breaking NDISwrapper is not a possibility, since many users rely upon it to make their wireless network adapters work. But patience with this line of thought is running thin, as can be seen in this outburst from Dave Jones:
If we continue down this path, we'll have no native wireless
drivers for Linux. The answer is not to complain to linux-kernel
for breaking ndiswrapper, but complain to the vendors for not
releasing specifications for native drivers to be written.
The good news is that the wireless situation is not as bad as one might think. There is documentation for Broadcom chips available now, and a Broadcom driver is in the works. There is also an Atheros driver which is "nearly done." Once these drivers are complete and joined with the Intel drivers already in the mainline, Linux will have much better support for wireless devices, and far fewer systems will have any reason to use NDISwrapper. There are a number of reasons for going with the 4K stack mode, including better performance and higher reliability. Some distributions (e.g. Fedora Core and RHEL) have been shipping 4K kernels for a while now. So, while nobody has committed to moving the mainline (or -mm) toward 4K-only yet, chances are improving that it will happen sometime in the not-too-distant future.
VM followup: page migration and fragmentation avoidancePage migration is the act of moving a process's pages from one part of the system to another. Often, the motivation is moving pages between NUMA nodes in the hope of improving performance. When this page last looked at the page migration patch set, it worked by forcing target pages out to the swap device. When the owning process later faults them in, these pages will end up on the desired node. This technique works, but it is not optimal: it would be nicer to avoid having to write the pages to disk and read them back in.Christoph Lameter has now followed up with the direct migration patch set, which does away with the side-trip to the swap device. A look at the patch shows why things were not done this way in the first place; direct page migration involves rather more than simply copying the data over. The first step, after choosing a target page, is to lock that page so that nobody else will mess with it. There might currently be I/O active which involves that page, so the kernel must wait for any such I/O to complete. Only then can the real migration work begin. The kernel must establish a swap cache entry for the page, even though it intends to avoid writing the page to swap. This entry will cause the right thing to happen if a process faults on the page while it is being moved. Then all references to the page (page table entries) are unmapped. With luck, all references will go away; if references remain for any reason, the page cannot be moved. Actually moving the page involves copying a subset of the page status bits over, copying the page data itself, then copying the rest of the status bits. The old page is cleared out and freed. If any writeback has been queued up for the new page, it is set in motion. Then it's just a matter of cleaning up, and the page has been successfully moved. If the kernel runs out of free pages on the target node, it will fall back to the swap-based mechanism. So that stage of this patch's evolution remains useful. With this code in place, the kernel has the support it needs to try to keep a process's pages in local memory. The migration code might also prove useful for hotplug memory uses, where all pages must be vacated from a given region. Indeed, some of this code was originally written for hotplug applications. But, at this point, the migration is done on a best-effort basis. For NUMA systems, failure to move a page results in worse performance, but nothing particularly severe. For hotplug memory, instead, this sort of failure will block a memory remove operation altogether. Moving all pages in a region with 100% certainty remains a difficult problem without a complete solution at this time. One of the pieces of such a solution might be active memory defragmentation which, among other things, works to keep non-movable memory allocations out of memory regions which might be removed. When we looked at active defragmentation last week, that patch set looked like it was in trouble. The overhead of the defragmentation code seemed to be too high, and a number of developers (Linus included) felt that this sort of functionality should be implemented using the kernel's zone system, rather then with a new layer in the memory allocator. Defragmentation hacker Mel Gorman doesn't give up that easily, however. He has posted a new, "light" version of the defragmentation patch which, he hopes, will be better received. As he describes it:
This is a much simplified anti-defragmentation approach that simply
tries to keep kernel allocations in groups of 2^(MAX_ORDER-1) and
easily reclaimed allocations in groups of 2^(MAX_ORDER-1). It uses
no balancing, tunables special reserves and it introduces no new
branches in the main path. For small memory systems, it can be
disabled via a config option. In total, it adds 275 new lines of
code with minimum changes made to the main path.
In this version of the patch, a new GFP flag (__GFP_EASYRCLM) is added; its presence indicates an allocation which the kernel can easily get back should the need arise. It is used for user-space pages (which can usually be forced out to backing store) and in a few other situations, such as for some kernel buffers. The buddy allocator already keeps track of memory in large chunks; the new code simply steers reclaimable allocations toward some chunks, while keeping the non-reclaimable allocations in others. In this way, it is hoped, there will be no situations where one non-movable page blocks the freeing of the large, contiguous region in which it is located. The patch works by creating a "usemap" array tracking which kind of allocation is being done from each large chunk of memory. Mel also had to split the per-CPU free lists which are used to perform fast single-page allocations; now there are two such lists, one for each allocation type. From there, it is just a matter of taking allocations from the proper pile, depending on the __GFP_EASYRCLM flag. This version certainly reduces the footprint and overhead of the defragmentation patches. It is still not the zone-based approach that others were pushing for, however. So it remains to be seen whether "active defragmentation lite" is, in the end, better received than its predecessors.
The end of isa_readb() and friendsThe kernel has long had a series of functions which read and write memory locations in the legacy ISA memory range. These functions, with names like isa_readb(), require no special preparation to use, and they only work in the ISA hole. They also have been obsolete and deprecated for quite some time.Recently, there has been an effort to finally get rid of isa_readb() and friends. To that end, Al Viro has posted a set of "isaectomy" patches which fix up the remaining callers (they are made to use ioremap() and the not quite as obsolete readb() family of functions) so that the old stuff can be deleted. One would think that this work would be uncontroversial, but Linus, it turns out, is unconvinced:
Hmm.. I actually believe that the isa_read() functions are more
portable and easier to use than ioremap().
The reason? A platform will always know where any legacy ISA bus resides, while the "ioremap()" thing will depend on platform PCI code to have set the right offsets (and thus the resource addresses) for whatever bus the PCI device is on. The fact is, however, that very little in-tree code still uses these functions. They are a deprecated interface to a very old and obsolete hardware standard, and they have few defenders. So anybody maintaining out-of-tree which still uses these functions might want to take warning: they probably will not stay around for much longer.
A software suspend decision pointThe relative calm which has settled around the software suspend subsystem may be about to come to an end. This part of the kernel, which has never worked to everybody's satisfaction, remains subject to different ideas of how the problem should be solved.Pavel Machek's user-space software suspend patch was covered here in September. Pavel has now posted a new version of the patch with a request that it be merged for 2.6.16. The user-space approach is, clearly, the way Pavel thinks that software suspend should go. Beyond getting some code out of the kernel, this approach makes a number of add-on features, such as graphical displays, image compression, image encryption, network-based suspend, etc., easier to implement. If you want to hang a big pile of features onto the suspend mechanism, you eventually have to get into user space. One of the first responses came from Dave Jones, who said:
Just for info: If this goes in, Red Hat/Fedora kernels will fork
swsusp development, as this method just will not work there.
The main issue is the fact that the user-space approach uses /dev/kmem to repopulate memory at resume time. Red Hat and Fedora kernels do not allow memory to be overwritten in this way; there are no other applications which need that capability, with the exception of rootkits. Allowing user space to overwrite arbitrary physical pages is, to Dave, not worth it, no matter how many software suspend features it enables. Says Dave: "I'll take 'rootkit doesnt work' over 'bells and whistles'." Nigel Cunningham, the author of the Suspend2 patches, also has some thoughts on the matter. He has been busily cleaning up the suspend2 patches with an eye toward making them more palatable for merging into the mainline. It turns out that Nigel has a set of 225 patches which he will soon make available. Since few people have seen the new patch set, it's not clear what sort of reception it will get. It can be said, though, that 225 patches is a large pile of code. Anybody trying to get a patch set of that size merged needs to have some fairly convincing arguments in hand. At some point, Nigel's code mountain will become available, and some sort of decision will have to be made. Software suspend could be transformed into suspend2, or moved partially to user space. Or it could be left more-or-less as it is now. These are three very distinct choices - especially as nobody wants to see a repeat of the situation where the mainline kernel supported more than one software suspend implementation. With luck, when the dust settles, Linux will have a more featureful and reliable software suspend implementation than it does now. But expect some interesting discussion between now and then.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials PC-BSD: FreeBSD For DummiesWith all the current attempts to make Linux as user-friendly and easy-to-use as possible, some might wonder why there has been so little effort to do the same with one of the BSDs. After all, FreeBSD has proven itself to be a fast, reliable and extremely stable workhorse, powering many of the world's most popular web servers and search engines. Although support for more exotic hardware in the BSD kernel usually lags behind that in Linux, many commonly used devices work well with any recent FreeBSD release. This, in addition to the availability of thousands of open source software packages (the recently released FreeBSD 6.0 includes over 12,000 ports), should make FreeBSD an ideal operating system for general computing, development work and perhaps even common office tasks.Unfortunately, FreeBSD is not an easy operating system to set up as a desktop or workstation. It is perhaps even harder than setting up Slackware in the Linux world, as FreeBSD too requires a fair amount of dirty work and expert knowledge to mold it into a usable shape. With the curses-based sysconfig being just about the most user-friendly utility there is in FreeBSD, and where everything, even font anti-aliasing and sound module loading, requires extensive hacking in obscure configuration files, there is little wonder that FreeBSD, or indeed any other *BSD, has not taken over the desktops of ordinary users. But this is about to change. Some six months ago a project called PC-BSD was born with a clear vision: to turn FreeBSD into a user-friendly and intuitive operating system that anybody can install and use without having to first obtain a computer science degree. Naturally, with so many new distributions launching all the time these days, it is easy to be skeptical about any new project with such lofty claims. Luckily, the response to the initial announcement was nothing short of overwhelming and the developers soon found themselves besieged by hundreds of enthusiastic users as well as experienced developers, translators and documentation writers who quickly set up channels for contributing to the project. Then, last week, they released a feature-complete release candidate which will shortly become the project's first official product - PC-BSD 1.0. What exactly constitutes the "user-friendliness" of PC-BSD? Firstly, there is the installer. Based on the original FreeBSD live CD by FreeSBIE, the installation CD starts with auto-detecting and auto-configuring the system's video card before presenting the user with an installation interface somewhat resembling Red Hat's Anaconda. After selecting the keyboard layout, hard disk partition and a place to install the boot loader (with sensible defaults), the installer copies all applications from the CD to the hard disk. When done, the user is asked to set the root password and create a user account. That's it. Barring some unforeseen circumstances, a reboot will bring up KDE 3.4.3 with a scenic desktop wallpaper. FreeBSD has never looked so good! Admittedly, the installation CD contains a rather minimal graphical system that is unlikely to satisfy most users. A quick solution to the problem is to visit pbiDIR, the official repository for .pbi packages or, in other words, a categorized collection of binary applications designed to work with PC-BSD. While not quite "click-n-run", the installation of .pbi files is fairly straightforward: after saving a .pbi package on the hard disk, a double-click will launch a package installation dialog (root password is required). This will guide the user through the process of installing the package and to make a couple of simple decisions, such as whether or not to place the application's icons in the KDE menu and/or on the desktop. All installed programs can be removed later from a graphical utility called "PC-BSD Package Manager". Although the number of .pbi software packages in the repository is fairly limited, the developers do provide instructions for creating these packages, so anybody can build and submit their preferred applications. Since PC-BSD is essentially a dressed-up FreeBSD, the options of compiling applications from ports or installing binary ones with pkg_add are also available. In fact, the developers have created a graphical interface for downloading and installing the entire FreeBSD ports tree, although those who will want to take advantage of it will still need to reach for the command line. Likewise, downloading the FreeBSD kernel and userland sources is also just a mouse click away. Complementing the PC-BSD "System" utility is an option to switch to an SMP kernel, to enable or disable SSH, NFS, Samba and CUPS services, and to generate a diagnostic sheet - all from the comfort of a graphical user interface. Several Qt-based graphical tools for setting up monitor, network, users, printing, etc. are also available, while a custom "Online Update" utility will upgrade the installed system to a new version without the need to re-install. I spent a couple of days examining the RC1 of PC-BSD 1.0 on a spare Pentium 4 computer with a Matrox graphics card, Sound Blaster Live! sound card and a Realtek 8139too network card. All of the hardware was detected and set up correctly during installation (except for the screen resolution which needed a quick adjustment). I also installed and removed a number of .pbi packages and even compiled a few ports from source - all without the slightest hitch. The system felt fast and responsive and the boot and shutdown times were noticeably shorter than those of most Linux distributions. The project has a well-designed web site with good basic installation documentation and highly active user forums frequented by many obvious beginners to BSD. Perhaps the only real drawback of PC-BSD, from the point of view of a novice user, is the relatively low number of easily-installable .pbi packages, but this can only improve with time. PC-BSD is currently the best attempt at developing a desktop FreeBSD operating system with "a human face", and certainly the easiest way to get a FreeBSD desktop up and running without any toiling on the command line. Despite the project's young age, it has already achieved most of the early goals of producing a usable desktop FreeBSD for non-technical users where system installation and essential configuration can be effected with a mouse. More unexpectedly, there seems to be plenty of momentum and excitement about the project. It will be interesting to see whether PC-BSD will be able to popularize FreeBSD as an operating system that can be used by ordinary people, not just seasoned UNIX hackers.
New Releases Xandros Launches German Desktop Operating SystemXandros has released a German version of its desktop operating system at the Frankfurt LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. "New features in the German package include NoMachine thin client support and OpenOffice.org 2.0 for creating standards-based documents and spreadsheets."
Distribution News How Delegation Works, in 10 Easy StepsDebian Project Leader Branden Robinson looks at delegation of responsibilities. "The Constitution of the Debian Project specifies a decision making process known as "delegation", which the Debian Project Leader can use to spread decision-making authority throughout the Project. Historically, this power has been underused (including by myself), particularly in areas of infrastructural administration. This turns out not to be due to past (or present) Project Leaders' lack of motivation or desire to do so."
Debian Installer etch beta 1 releasedThe Debian installer is getting an update for the etch release. The first beta is out, with lots of improvements. Click below for a list of new features.
Debian library renaming due to changed libstdc++ configurationAnother round of package renamings of some libraries written in C++ is needed. Click below to find out more.
New (experimental) Debtags package search pageEnrico Zini has announced (click below) a a new kind of package search. "It's an experimental new way of searching Debian packages: you start with a normal text search, and then you work with categories."
Ubuntu DapperThis announcement covers changes in Dapper's menu system.Dapper has a new 2.6.15-2.2 (2.6.15-rc1 based) kernel available for AMD64 and x86. The PowerPC kernel was not available at the time of the writing, but it should be available soon.
fedora-netdev kernel repositoryJohn W. Linville has announced the availability of a new Fedora-based kernel repository. The kernels available there are based upon the standard Fedora kernels, with the addition of current upstream networking patches which are more recent than the Fedora kernel's upstream base. Click below for the announcement or find out more here.
Debian miniconf@LCA2006: call for presentationsThe LCA Debian miniconf is set for January 23-24, 2006 in Dunedin, New Zealand. As usual, the Debian miniconf precedes the annual Geek migration to the warmer climes of the southern hemisphere known as linux.conf.au.
Mandriva Linux : Worldwide install-partyMandriva Linux is planning on an international install party on Saturday, November 19, 2005. "Following the release of Mandriva Linux 2006, Mandriva is mobilizing its network of Linux User Groups (LUGs). Free community installation sessions will take place around the world. Major participating locations include the United States, Brazil, Canada, China, Moroco, and the island of Reunion. More than 60 cities are involved, including a dozen in China and 15 and Brazil."
New Distributions Bent LinuxBent Linux is a compact Linux distribution, inspired by Linux From Scratch. It uses Busybox, uClibc, and static linking to keep the size down. "It's particularly suited to building dedicated servers, initrds for custom installers and rescue disks, and systems with a nice crisp mid-1980s mouthfeel to satisfy the mid-life crises of crusty curmudgeons." (Thanks to Wladimir Mutel, who is running Bent on an AM386 test box with 8 MB of RAM.)
G-ZyXG-ZyX is a Fedora based distribution with a collection of open source software that runs from a single CD/DVD. Optional configurationless installation (smart caching) to available hard disk or flash based storage is supported. G-ZyX is the flagship manifestation of the ViROS distribution generation platform. ViROS leverages popular open and free RPM based *nix distributions to generate custom purpose live-CDs. G-ZyX's predecessor cousin TVOS is suited for home theater applications, while G-ZyX is suited for general purpose computing and development. An alpha release of G-ZyX is currently available.
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsThe November 15 Debian Weekly News is out. This week's topics include the big-endian ARM port, the first beta of the Etch installer, the debate over Debconf licensing, and more.
Fedora Weekly NewsThe Fedora Weekly News, issue #22, looks at the Linux Worm Lupii, the new Fedora Logo, a logo lesson, Fedora International community websites, FOSS India 2005 Fedora slides, and several other topics.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of November 14, 2005 is out. This week's edition notes the switch to stage3 as the default installation method, an interview with Douglas Robertson about his video jukeboxes on Gentoo, Gentoo at the LWE and DevCon in the Frankfurt/Main area, and more.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 126The DistroWatch Weekly for November 14, 2005 is out. "The controversy over Nexenta's use of GPL software in its OpenSolaris-based distribution and the never-ending GNOME vs KDE flame wars dominated the headlines last week. We will briefly look at the above stories before examining other interesting events and releases of the week. We also feature an exclusive interview with Barry Kauler, the founder and lead developer of the increasingly popular Puppy Linux. And to prove that a new distribution is born just about every day, we have added seven new ones to the waiting list last week - including a controversial one called "Open Windows", developed by -- wait for this -- a law firm!"
Package updates Fedora updatesFedora Core 4 updates: kernel-2.6.14-1.1637_FC4 (rebases to 2.6.14.1 and includes several patches), net-tools (bug fixes), mc (bug fixes, update to the 4.6.1a branch), kdenetwork (rebuild against new wireless-tools), kdebindings (3.4.2-0.fc4.2), chkconfig-1.3.22-0.4 (bug fixes), gaim (bug fixes), chkconfig-1.3.23-0.4 (more bug fixes), xterm (upgrade to upstream version 205), pkgconfig (update to 0.20.0), ghostscript (fix lips4v driver), shadow-utils (fix useradd segfaults), mc (new slang support).Fedora Core 3 updates: gaim (bug fixes), mc (new slang support).
Mandriva updatesUpdates for 2006.0: scim-qtimm (fix for 2006/x86_64), e2fsprogs (fix segfault in mklost+found), ldetect-lst (bug fix), drakxtools (multiple bug fixes), autofs (bug fix), acpid (bug fixes).
Newsletters and articles of interest The Perfect Xen Setup For Debian And Ubuntu (HowtoForge)HowtoForge has a tutorial on setting up Xen on a Debian Sarge box. "This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen (version 2) on a Debian Sarge (3.1) system. It should apply to Ubuntu systems with little or no modifications. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other (e.g. a virtual machine for a mail server, a virtual machine for a high-traffic web site, another virtual machine that serves your customers' web sites, a virtual machine for DNS, etc.), but still use the same hardware."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development Asterisk - the Open-Source PBXNovember is shaping up to be a month of important Linux Telephony releases. Two weeks ago, we examined the GNU Bayonne 2 Telephony Application Server. This week, we look at Asterisk, an open-source PBX (Private Branch eXchange).
Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD and MacOSX and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.
Version 1.2 of Asterisk was released at the IP.4.IT Conference this week: "Asterisk 1.2 is the first major revision to Asterisk since the release of Asterisk 1.0 in September 2004, and includes over 3,000 feature additions and improvements to the overall performance and efficiency of memory usage." The original author of Asterisk is Mark Spencer, president of Digium, Inc. Digium is a supplier of PC telephony cards and telephony systems, and is sponsoring Asterisk development. The company also sells Asterisk Business Edition, a commercial version of the software. The software is being developed by a wide variety of programmers, using the standard open-source development model. Asterisk has been licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Asterisk's feature set and list of supported protocols is lengthy. A few highlights include:
System Applications Database Software PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe November 13, 2005 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with the latest PostgreSQL articles.
Interoperability Samba 3.0.21rc1 Available for DownloadVersion 3.0.21rc1 of Samba has been announced. "This is a release candidate of the 3.0.21 code base and is provided for testing purposes only. While close to the final stable release, this snapshot is *not* intended for production servers."
Networking Tools Shorewall 3.0.0 releasedVersion 3.0.0 of Shorewall, an iptables based firewall with flexible configuration, is out with several new features.
Printing How To Assign Printing Administration Capabilities To Users (CUPS)A new CUPS printing system tutorial is available: "If you want certain users to have access to administer printers and nothing else, you need to create a group."
Miscellaneous Bootchart 0.9 Released (SourceForge)Version 0.9 of Bootchart, is a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the GNU/Linux boot process, is available. "Version 0.9 introduces application monitoring, alternative init invocation (e.g. initng) and offers better FHS compliance."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications LDAS 0.1.1 ReleasedVersion 0.1.1 of LDAS, the Low Delay Audio Streamer, is out with code improvements. Here's the change notice: "More correct use of the memory mapped access to the sound card when copying data from the queue to the sound card. The code should now be more generic, and work for more sound cards."
Business Applications WyattERP version 0.30.1 Released (SourceForge)Version 0.30.1 of WyattERP, an enterprise resource and management application, has been released. "WyattERP is a set of tools to create customized, integrated ERP modules for small businesses. It has been developed and tested with the assistance of Action Target, Inc. This new release features Wylib and Wyseman as separate entities. Wylib enables the creation of tcl/tk ERP modules that closely tie into the database model created and managed by Wyseman."
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.13.2 ReleasedGNOME 2.13.2 has been announced. "This is our second development release on our road towards GNOME 2.14.0, which will be released in March 2006."
First weekly status report on GNOME DictionaryEmmanuele Bassi has announced the first GNOME Dictionary status report. "In order to let others know how's the status of GNOME Dictionary Breaking is progressing (and in order to force myself hacking on it regularly ;-)), I'm sending the Not So Weekly Status Report on GNOME Dictionary Containing the status of the review-slash-breaking-slash-rewrite process of the GNOME Dictionary application and applet."
Clearlooks Gtk-engine cairo patch (GnomeDesktop)If you like animated controls on your desktop, take a look at the Clearlooks gtk-engine patch. "tirpse (aka SchAmane) made an Clearlooks gtk-engine patch to get animated progressbar and checkboxes using cairo. Just download latest clearlooks gtk-engine CVS, patch and compile."
GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
Announcing KDE 3.5 Release CandidateKDE 3.5 is about to be finished, and the first release candidate is now available for testing. "Because of the short timeframe for the release candidates we don't give the distributors a head start of one week for binary packages..."
Oxygen Icons Website Launched (KDE.News)KDE.News notes the launch of the Oxygen web site. Oxygen is the look and feel of the upcoming (someday) KDE4 desktop, so the site gives some hints of what KDE users can expect to be working with in the future.
OpenSync and KDE Cooperate on Unified Data Syncing (KDE.News)KDE.News covers a collaboration between OpenSync and KDE. "The OpenSync and KDE teams have joined forces to create a unified library to synchronize data from mobile devices with the data on the desktop. OpenSync, the successor to the MultiSync project, provides a modular desktop-independent synchronization platform. It can be extended by plugins to support additional devices and data types. Plugins for the most commonly used devices and applications such as Kontact, Palm, Windows CE, mobile phones and more are already available or under development. KDE has now adopted OpenSync as the base for its future synchronization tools."
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
X11R6.9/X11R7 Release Candidate 2 ready for testingRelease Candidate 2 of the X11R6.9/X11R7 window system is out. "This RC includes many bug fixes and updates since the first RC. We have tagged both the monolithic and modular trees and have prepared tarballs for you to test."
Xfce 4.2.3.1 releasedVersion 4.2.3.1 of the Xfce lightweight desktop environment is out. "A new bug fix release of Xfce is finally available, after almost 6 months!" See the change log file for details.
Electronics LEDLoad hardware/software projectThe LEDLoad project has been launched. "LEDLoad is a CPU load display using a single dual color LED. It is designed to use a free internal USB port of any modern PC and replace the power LED in the case with something more interesting. A host driver kernel module is available for Linux."
XCircuit 3.4.9 releasedVersion 3.4.9 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, is available. This release features a number of bug fixes.
Graphics ShadeVis 1.00 Released (SourceForge)Version 1.00 of ShadeVis has been announced. "The ShadeVis tool computes a simple static, but much more correct, per-vertex ambient term. This effect, commonly known as ambient occlusion, is aimed to provide more faithful shading for realtime rendering. In practice rather than considering the ambient lighting to exist uniformally throughout a scene, this approach determines the ambient brightness of each part of a surface to be proportional to the extent to which the surface has "its outward view of its environment" free i.e. ''occluded'', by other surfaces of the object. Inner part will therefore appear darker."
GUI Packages PyQt 3.15.1 announcedVersion 3.15.1 of PyQt, a comprehensive set of Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit, has been announced, it features minor bug fixes.
Interoperability Wine 0.9.1 releasedVersion 0.9.1 of Wine ("a free implementation of Windows on Unix") is out. Here are the changes: "Support for Find function in regedit, Winelib app to eject a CD, Many MSI improvements, Better support for running text-mode apps without X, Improved support for various code obfuscation tools, and Lots of bug fixes."
Mail Clients bogofilter 0.96.6 ReleasedVersion 0.96.6 of bogofilter, a Bayesian email filter, is out with bug fixes.
Medical Applications ClearHealth Version 1.0 RC2 Update (LinuxMedNews)Version 1.0 RC2 of ClearHealth, an open-source medical suite, has been announced. "After a long testing and packaging cycle RC2 is finally available. This release includes numerous fixes, enhancements and entirely new features. Some of these highlights include comprehensive billing support (CA Medicare and CA Medicaid tested/certified), graphical installer and performance improvements."
OpenEMR 2.8.0 Released (LinuxMedNews)Version 2.8.0 of the OpenEMR electronic medical record system has been announced, it includes a long list of new features. "Today OpenEMR version 2.8.0 is released for download at the project's SourceForge site. Concurrently, a companion FreeB release 0.11 is available."
Open Healthcare Framework - Eclipse (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews looks at an Open Healthcare Framework extension to the Eclipse development framework. "eclipse.org states: 'The goal of the Open Healthcare Framework (OHF) is to extend the Eclipse Platform to create an open-source framework for building interoperable, extensible healthcare systems.'"
Office Applications HylaFAX 4.2.3 ReleasedVersion 4.2.3 of Hylafax, a fax modem application, has been announced. Changes include a security update, bug fixes, and new capabilities.
Office Suites Korn: Massachusetts, Open Document, and AccessibilityPeter Korn, an accessibility architect at Sun, has posted a detailed look at accessibility issues involving OpenOffice and the OpenDocument format. "The accessibility issues affecting people with disabilities in the applications that read and write Open Document Format are real. While some users with some disabilities should have no difficulty with ODF (and in fact in some specific cases an improved experience), for others a move to Open Document capable applications today would have significant impacts on their productivity and efficiency. However, the first significant Open Document deployment affecting people with disabilities - in the State of Massachusetts - is still nearly 14 months away."
Science Release 1.0 of StrBio Java classes (SourceForge)The 1.0 release of the StrBio Java classes have been announced, the code has just been released under the LGPL license. "The StrBio library is a set of Java classes useful for development of software for computational structural biology research. These classes are the basis for software in several published research projects, including the Pred2ary secondary structure prediction software, the JThread fold prediction algorithm, and parts of the ASTRAL Compendium for Sequence and Structure Analysis (http://astral.berkeley.edu)."
Video Applications CinePaint 0.20 Released (SourceForge)Version 0.20 of CinePaint has been released. "CinePaint version 0.20 is a major release of the popular motion picture deep colour paint and retouching program. Thanks to Kai-Uwe Behrmann for creating this release. This release is the latest Film Gimp (GTK) version of CinePaint. CinePaint developers continue to maintain this legacy architecture until the future Glasgow architecture is complete (in 2006)."
DVDStyler v1.5 beta 2 ReleasedVersion 1.5 beta 2 of DVDStyler, a cross-platform DVD (movie) authoring system, is available. Changes include bug fixes, translation work, and more.
Web Browsers Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 Available (MozillaZine)MozillaZine has announced the second release candidate of Mozilla Firefox 1.5. "Like the first release candidate, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 2 is intended to allow testers to ensure that there are no last-minute problems with the Firefox 1.5 code."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe November 8-15, 2005 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with the latest Caml language articles.
Java Jericho HTML Parser 2.0 released (SourceForge)Version 2.0 of Jericho HTML Parser, a Java library which supports the manipulation of HTML documents, has been announced. "Version 2.0 is a complete rewrite of previous versions, including the core parser and caching mechanism. The major new feature in 2.0, in addition to the HTML form manipulation features added in 1.5-dev, is the ability to easily define new tag types for recognition by the parser. Performance is also greatly improved and the documentation has been expanded significantly."
Lisp ECL 0.9h releasedVersion 0.9h of Embeddable Common-Lisp has been announced. "This version reduces memory usage, improves the FFI, includes new build scripts, now runs also on OpenBSD, and fixes a few bugs."
PHP XOAD 0.6.0.0 released (SourceForge)Version 0.6.0.0 of XOAD is out with several new features. "XOAD is a PHP based AJAX/XAP object oriented framework that allows you to create richer web applications. Formerly known as NAJAX, XOAD has many benefits: it uses JSON, supports server / client side events, HTML manipulation, Caching and many more."
PostScript AFPL Ghostscript 8.53Release 8.53 of AFPL Ghostscript has been released. "Artifex Software, Inc. and artofcode LLC are pleased to announce the release of AFPL Ghostscript 8.53. This is a maintenance release in the stable 8.5x series." Changes include bug fixes, performance improvements, and more.
Prolog JLog 1.3.4 Released (SourceForge)Version 1.3.4 of JLog, a Prolog interpreter written in Java, is available. "Version 1.3.4 includes a substantial number of improvements and refinements, introduced throughout the development cycle of the 1.3.0-1.3.3 Developer Preview versions."
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The November 16, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
PySizer 0.1 announcedThe 0.1 release of PySizer has been announced. "I'd like to announce the first release of PySizer, a memory usage profiler for Python code. PySizer was written as part of Google's Summer of Code."
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe November 13th, 2005 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at the latest discussions from the ruby-talk mailing list.
REXML: Processing XML in RubyKoen Vervloesem introduces REXML in an O'Reilly article. "REXML (Ruby Electric XML) is the XML processor of choice for Ruby programmers. It comes bundled with the standard Ruby distribution. It's fast, written in Ruby, and can be used in two ways: tree parsing and stream parsing. In this article, we show some basic constructs on how to use REXML for XML processing. We also introduce the use of Ruby's interactive debugger irb for exploring XML documents with the help of REXML."
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The November 15, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is available. Take a look for new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Miscellaneous aegis 4.21 releasedVersion 4.21 of aegis, a transaction-based, software configuration management system, is out with lots of new features and bug fixes.
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading New approaches to Linux package management (Linux.com)Linux.com looks at package management tools such as Portage and Conary. "Traditional Linux package management systems such as RPM, Debian's dpkg, and Slackware's pkgtool present several problems for users. Users who want optimized packages often have problems finding them, different package repositories have conflicting naming conventions, and binary packages are often not available for packages in a timely fashion. However, for users willing to stray from the beaten path, there are alternatives. Two projects have taken up the challenge of making a package management system that overcomes these shortcomings."
Saving the Net (Linux Journal)The Linux Journal is running a lengthy piece by Doc Searls on threats to open networking. "The carriers are going to lobby for the laws and regulations they need, and they're going to do the deals they need to do. The new system will be theirs, not ours. The NEA principle--Nobody owns it, Everybody can use it, Anybody can improve it--so familiar to the Free Software and Open Source communities will prove to be a temporary ideal, a geek conceit. Code is not Law. Culture is not Free. From the Big Boys' perspective, code and culture are stuff nobody cares about. That's us: Nobody."
Sony Numbers Add Up to Trouble (Wired)Wired reports on some research done by Dan Kaminsky. He queried DNS servers worldwide to see if they had the addresses of Sony's "mother ship" systems cached. "The results have surprised Kaminsky himself: 568,200 DNS servers knew about the Sony addresses. With no other reason for people to visit them, that points to one or more computers behind those DNS servers that are Sony-compromised. That's one in six DNS servers, across a statistical sampling of one third of the 9 million DNS servers Kaminsky estimates are on the net."
Trade Shows and Conferences Cruise Report 3: New Species Discovered at Sea (Linux Journal)Doc Searls has another report from last month's Geek Cruise. "This is what I learned from Andrew [Morton] and Ted [Ts'o]. After sitting in on their sessions (which ran many hours--the cruise was something of a crash course at sea), I realized that Linux's nature, as a building material, is akin to that of a species."
Open Source Symposium report (NewsForge)NewsForge has this report from Seneca College's fourth annual Open Source Symposium. "A fourth speaker, Stephen Downes, a senior researcher with the National Research Council of Canada, laid out a challenge to not only open software, but open content. He spoke of the different business models and different approaches of commercial/proprietary vs. open source. Part of the distinction is the different distribution models for not only the software, but the content, he said. The current World Wide Web is somewhere between closed and open, what he called "never never land, neither here nor there.""
Autumn Symposium Rakes Over Copyright and Patent Law (O'ReillyNet)Andy Oram reports on the recent Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity, and the Innovation Process. "The glow of this conference lingers on in the shape of a new center that has just been announced by the law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a conference sponsor. Conference organizer David Harrison says of the center that "Leading researchers and practitioners in all areas that depend upon innovation and creativity will work together to achieve real change through practical applications. The center is intended to provide applied solutions to preserving and promoting the creative incentives necessary for social, cultural, and economic growth." My hope is it will lead to more conferences of this nature and ultimately, new policy."
Companies Musical chairs continues at Novell (DesktopLinux.com)DesktopLinux.com covers the resignation of Hubert Mantel from Novell Inc. "In the latest bit of personnel-related news from beleaguered Linux software/services provider Novell Inc., Nuremburg, Germany-based SUSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel announced his resignation Tuesday via email to friends and business associates on one of the SUSE mailing lists. Mantel, chief maintainer of the SUSE Linux kernel, simply said in the brief letter that he could no longer work for the company any longer."
Sleepycat - a blue ribbon example of open source financial success (IT Manager's Journal)IT Manager's Journal looks at the successful business model used by Sleepycat software, the company that produces the Berkeley DB database. "What originally piqued my interest in Sleepycat was the question of why a company that claimed to be as successful as Sleepycat was still private and, to the best of my knowledge, did not have a single venture capitalist on its board of directors, nor is it beholden to one or more venture capital (VC) groups. To find out the answers, I got in touch with Rex Wang, vice president of marketing for Sleepycat. Wang confirmed that Sleepycat is an extremely profitable concern. Sleepycat employs about 30 people, and is looking to add to that workforce as it expands the company. Moreover, Sleepycat has not just refrained from using venture capital, the company does not even borrow money to finance its development. The company funds itself entirely from the profits it receives from its license fees."
Linux Adoption New Linux phone standards effort in the works (ZDNet)ZDNet reports on the creation of another Linux-based phone standards effort. "The Linux Phone Standard (Lips) Forum wants to standardize Linux interfaces so that higher-level software won't have to be customized for each variation of the open-source operating system appearing in different cell phone models. If successful, the allies believe they'll make Linux a better competitor the fast-growing market."
Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to Linux (KDE.News)KDE.News presents a translated article from Automatiseringsgids magazine about the use of KDE and Linux at a Dutch record store chain. "At first glance, a shop is not a place where you would expect to find KDE in the workplace. Yet the Dutch Free Record Shop is deploying it on a large scale as the operating system for their point of sale systems. According to the supplier Novell, it is one of the application areas where simple and restricted functionality is required, leading to a breakthrough for GNU/Linux on the PC."
Linux at Work Linux continues supercomputer domination (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at Linux in supercomputing. "The last few Top500 Supercomputer Site lists left little doubt that Linux is the operating system of choice for these bleeding edge systems, but the latest list highlights the popularity of Linux in supercomputing and cites it as the OS of choice for 78% of the world's fastest machines. 391 of the systems rely on Linux of one flavor or another -- far more than Unix (yesterday's supercomputing king), Mac OS X, Solaris, or any others. Microsoft Windows didn't even turn up on the list."
Resources Avoid Common Pitfalls in Greasemonkey (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet looks at security concerns and scripting pitfalls in Greasemonkey. "Once upon a time, there was a security hole. (This is not your standard fairy tale. Stay with me.) Greasemonkey's architecture has changed substantially since it was first written. Version 0.3, the first version to gain wide popularity, had a fundamental security flaw: it trusted the remote page too much when it injected and executed user scripts."
CLI Magic: netcat (Linux.com)Linux.com introduces netcat. "In the simplest terms, netcat is a utility that reads and writes data across the network. As you probably know already, you can write to a file or read from a file on your local machine using the cat utility. By running cat filename > filename2 , you can write the contents of a file to another file. By using cat > filename , you can write directly to a file from standard input."
Using Perl in PostgreSQL (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet uses Perl to write server-side extensions to PostgreSQL. "In fact, PostgreSQL lets you create server-side routines in quite a few languages, including one called PL/PGSQL that is all its own, and is somewhat similar to Oracle's PL/SQL. The PostgreSQL core distribution supports and maintains three other procedural language interfaces to third-party interpreters: Perl, Python, and Tcl (the first procedural language that PostgreSQL supported). There are also other languages maintained outside of the core distribution for various reasons, including PL/Java (or an alternative flavor, PL/J), Pl/R, PL/Ruby, PL/PHP, and a vastly better PL/Python. If you, like me, are at home in Perl, you will probably want to write your server-side functions in Perl, too."
At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software for Linux, Part 2 (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips covers music notation software for Linux, on Linux Journal. "CMN is a powerful music notation specification language. Although it lacks a mouse-driven graphical interface, the language elements will be immediately familiar to users who know the naming conventions for common, and some not so common, music notation symbols. CMN is capable of handling almost any scoring requirement, including many 20th century additions to the standard notation symbol palette."
Reviews Enhancing kernel security with grsecurity (Linux.com)Linux.com has takes a look at grsecurity. "If the prospect of configuring 30+ options seems daunting, relax. You can choose from predefined low, medium, and high settings. In fact, it's a good idea to start with the low setting and see how things go. After rebooting into the grsecurity-enhanced kernel, check that all of your services are still running. If everything goes okay, try bumping the security level up to medium and then up to high. There is also a custom setting that allows you to mix and match options."
Inside a Luxury Synth (O'Reilly)O'Reilly's digital media site has a review of the Korg OASYS, a high-end digital synthesizer. "In fact, Linux's greatest success on the OASYS project may be that it's almost entirely invisible, letting Korg's designers focus on their proprietary sound engine. That was a big part of the appeal to Korg. 'You can change things easily in Linux,' says Phillips. 'There's more granularity when you compile the kernel.'"
PunBB: A simple, speedy bulletin board (NewsForge)Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier reviews PunBB on NewsForge. "For some time now, I've been looking for a good, open source bulletin board package to run a discussion board on my Web site. After a lot of searching, I've settled on PunBB because it offers the features that I want, and is available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). PunBB is extremely easy to set up and configure. The requirements are minimal, and the entire procedure should take only a few minutes for users who are moderately familiar with Linux."
Project management with Trac (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at managing projects with Trac. "Trac integrates a capable wiki engine with a number of project management features. In particular, Trac provides a Web-based interface to a Subversion source code repository, a job/bug ticketing system, and basic scheduling features. Each of these is integrated with the wiki engine. Trac can be readily adapted to nearly any project management style."
Miscellaneous Linux backers form patent-sharing firm (ZDNet)ZDNet covers the launch of the Open Inventions Network. "Patents owned by OIN will be available without payment of royalties to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against others who have signed a license with OIN, when using certain Linux-related software." This company has been formed by IBM, Sony, Royal Philips Electronics, Red Hat, and Novell.
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements Public Patent Foundation challenges JPEG patentThe Public Patent Foundation has announced that it has filed a formal challenge to the image compression patent currently being used by Forgent in its shakedown attempts. The full request for reexamination is available in PDF format.
Sony's rootkit EULAOne might think that Sony's rootkit-installing CD was bad enough as it was. But the EFF read the accompanying license agreement and found that it gets worse. "Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to 'enforce their rights' against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this 'self help' crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm."
Commercial announcements Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit Version 1.0IBM has released version 1.0 of the Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit "The Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) is a breakthrough microprocessor with unique capabilities for applications requiring video, 3D graphics, or high-performance computation for imaging, security, visualization, healthcare, surveillance and more. Based on the Power ArchitectureTM, a choreographed high-bandwidth memory architecture, and multicore technology, the Cell BE has been shown to accelerate some algorithms to many times the speed of a traditional microprocessor. Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) Software Development Kit Version 1.0 provides everything Cell software developers need to create, build, simulate, and test Cell applications. The SDK enables a cross development environment which is hosted on fedora 4/x86 platforms."
IBM Teams Up With Net IntegrationIBM and Net Integration Technologies have announced a partnership. "Net Integration's Nitix for application servers has obtained "Ready for IBM DB2 Software for Linux" designation. With IBM DB2 universal database on Net Integrations Nitix technology, SME's can benefit from affordable autonomic features such as Linux reliability, affordability, intelligent and quick installation, and automatic back up of application program files and data."
Mercury and Terra Soft Offer Linux for Cell-based ProductsMercury Computer Systems, Inc. has announced its collaboration with Terra Soft Solutions to deliver a complete Linux distribution for the Mercury Dual Cell-Based Blade. The Dual Cell-Based Blade is Mercury's first product based on the IBM(R) Cell BE (Broadband Engine) processor.
Here comes another Microsoft-funded reportIt seems we were due for yet another Microsoft-funded study showing what an expensive pain Linux is. "To compare reliability and manageability differences between Microsoft Windows- and Linux-based solutions, SI delved into the true extent that maintenance, patch application and system failures contribute to IT pain and cost as business requirements evolve over time. Simulating a real-world enterprise e-commerce environment over the course of a year, SI compared two teams of experienced IT administrators as they maintained and enhanced on Windows Server 2000 and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 8, then upgraded to Windows Server 2003 and Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux 9, respectively." Reading the results, one might wonder how people manage to operate Linux systems at all.
OpenMFG Launches Development Partner ProgramOpenMFG, LLC has announced an expansion of its OpenMFG Partner Program. "The new program will significantly expand the opportunities for developers and systems integrators to build software solutions on the OpenMFG platform. OpenMFG's flagship product is an advanced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution built with open source components, such as the Linux operating system, the PostgreSQL database, and the OpenRPT report writer."
PalmSource Joins Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) ForumPalmSource, Inc. has announced its membership in the the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) Forum. "The LiPS Forum, a consortium of leading companies, has come together to accelerate the adoption of Linux in fixed, mobile and converged devices by standardizing Linux-based services and APIs that most directly influence the development, deployment and interoperability of applications and user-level services. Alongside PalmSource, the founding members include France Telecom/Orange, FSM Labs, Huawei, Jaluna, MontaVista Software, MIZI Research, Open Plug, Arm, Cellon and Esmertec."
Pentek Releases Software Radio Development Platform CompliancePentek has announced their Software Radio Development Platform with SCA Compliance. "Pentek, Inc., the industry pioneer of VME board-level technology, today released a development platform containing all hardware and tools required for software-defined radio development compliant with the Software Communication Architecture (SCA) mandated for all future U.S. military radios."
Rocketcalc Announces New Opteron Personal ClustersRocketcalc has announced a new line of personal clusters that use Dual-Core AMD Opteron Processors and run SuSE Linux. "Rocketcalc announced today the Saturn 270 HE personal cluster with sixteen AMD Opteron(TM) processor cores. Available with up to 64 GB total RAM and 8 Gbps total network bandwidth, Saturn brings serious 64-bit cluster computing power to your desk in a compact, quiet and affordable package."
Safe Snaps announces photo archive serviceSafesnaps has launched an online photo archive service. "Unix kernel veterans recently launched a new digital photo archive service for individuals and commercial clients who need to know their snapshots are secure. Safe Snaps (www.safesnaps.com) stores pictures, allows for easy retrieval by subscribers and can backup work on demand."
New Super Computing HardwareSGI, Linux Networx and Penguin Computing have announced new hardware at SuperComputing 2005 (November 12 - 18, in Seattle, Washington). Here is a press release from SGI on the new Altix 4000 platform. eWeek looks at new releases from Linux Networx and Penguin Computing.
Terra Soft Launches Bioinformatics Package for LinuxTerra Soft Solutions has launched its Y-Bio Bioinformatics Package for Linux. "Built upon the RPM Linux standard for package management, Y-Bio offers industry standards NCBI BLAST, EMBOSS, Glimmer, ClustalW, HMMER, Wise, and FastA -- tools which help bioinformatics researchers conduct genetic sequence analysis."
Linux Emporium comes to BrumThyme Software Ltd has acquired the Linux Emporium. "Steve Whitehouse, who has been running the well known Linux Emporium for the past two years has transferred the business to Thyme Software Ltd, in a seamless move facilitated by Steve's involvement in training the people at Thyme. John Pinner, Managing Director of Thyme Software: At Thyme we have great plans for expanding the repertoire of the Linux Emporium, adding appropriate hardware and applications to its list offerings, plus a lot of other great stuff besides, to build on its role as the one-stop buy-on-line shop for everything Linux."
New Books IBM Press Publishes "Apache Derby--Off to the Races"IBM Press has published the book Apache Derby--Off to the Races by Paul Zikopoulos, Dan Scott, and George Baklarz.
Create Websites that Draw Traffic--O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald.
Charles River Media publishes Digital Design From Gates to Intelligent MachinesCharles River Media has published the book Digital Design From Gates to Intelligent Machines by Bruce F. Katz.
PHP in a Nutshell - O'Reilly's Newest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book PHP in a Nutshell by Paul Hudson.
Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition - O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition by Arnold Robbins.
No Starch Press releases "Wicked Cool Java"No Starch Press has published the book Wicked Cool Java by Brian D. Eubanks.
Resources Moodle Newsletter #1 is now availableThe first edition of the Moodle Newsletter is available as a PDF download. Moodle is: "a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 40,000-student University."
"Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!" - updatedDavid A. Wheeler has announced an updated publication of his document Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!. "The big change is that a much shorter, simpler version of the report is available as a presentation, in both PDF and OpenDocument formats. Currently only English is available, but the author hopes that many will translate it into a variety of languages."
Event Reports Linux news from SC2005The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Silicon Graphics (SGI) have announced that an open-source version of the SGI SpeedShop performance analysis tool is now available to developers.HPCwire Publisher Tom Tabor presented four 2005 HPCwire Innovation Awards to SGI's Graphics Prism. Penguin Computing has released the Penguin Application-Ready Cluster Portfolio, a new line of integrated hardware/software Linux-based cluster systems. Platform Computing has announced that Platform Rocks Standard Edition (SE) will be available as a cluster management solution for the HP Cluster Platform 3000. PathScale has announced the release of version 1.1 of its InfiniPath software. This latest InfiniPath software release fully supports the OpenIB Gen 2 software stack and is designed to maximize application scaling and performance on InfiniBand-based Linux clusters.
Gelato Spotlights Linux Itanium at Brazil MeetingThe Gelato Federation has published a press release that covers a recent Gelato Federation meeting. "Ninety scientists, developers, and engineers convened from all around the globe for the October 2005 meeting of the Gelato Federation, an international technical organization dedicated to advancing Linux on the Intel® Itanium® processor. In attendance were delegates from more than 25 research and enterprise institutions, including Gelato members and sponsors, HP, Intel, and SGI. The event was hosted by the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) at their campus in Porto Alegre, Brazil."
Upcoming Events Linux.Conf.Au Program PublishedThe conference program for Linux.Conf.Au is online. The event takes place in Dunedin, New Zealand on January 23-28, 2005.
linux.conf.au 2006 Early bird registrations close soonEarly bird registrations for linux.conf.au 2006 are available until November 18. "Hi folks, Just a quick reminder that early bird registrations for linux.conf.au 2006 close in just over three days, at midnight on Friday the 18th of November. Please be aware that this date and time is in NZDT, which is currently equivalent to UTC +1300."
4th seminar of Medical Open Source Software Council in Japan (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews has an announcement for the fourth seminar of Medical Open Source Software Council in Japan. The event will take place in Kobayashi, Kyushu, Japan on November 26, 2005.
PyCon 2006 Call for TutorialsA Call for Tutorials has gone out for PyCon 2006. "Enjoy teaching classes or tutorials? PyCon 2006 is looking for proposals for a pre-conference tutorials day. PyCon 2006 will be held February 24-26 in Addison, Texas (near Dallas). Tutorials will be held on February 23, at the same location."
PyPy sprint announcementThe next PyPy sprint (Python-in-Python) has been announced. "The next PyPy sprint is scheduled to be in December 2005 in Gothenborg, Sweden. Its main focus is heading towards phase 2, which means JIT work, alternate threading models and logic programming (but there are also other possible topics). We'll give newcomer-friendly introductions."
Events: November 17, 2005 - January 12, 2006
Web sites OSDL launches patent commons reference libraryOSDL has announced the creation of an online "patent commons reference library," found at patentcommons.org. "The Patent Commons website will catalogue existing patent commitments from companies and individuals who wish to retain ownership of their patents, and will provide information about different types of pledges and covenants and how they work. In the coming months, the site will expand to include other legal solutions that benefit the open source community, including open source licenses, indemnification programs and information for organizations and individuals who wish to contribute to the commons."
Miscellaneous Today's fun patent: space driveFor the sheer fun of it: if you were thinking of heading off to the stars, be careful you don't infringe on patent #6,960,975, being for a "space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state." "A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Letters to the editor Linux boots fast?
> > ...one of the fastest Linux distributions available today. Can you imagine > a complete Linux OS booting into text console in 22 seconds and into full > KDE in 45 seconds? You call that fast? 45 seconds on a 2GHz cpu is 90,000,000,000 clock cycles. In each clock cycle, you can execute one meaningful instruction. In 5,000 clock cycles, you can completely rewrite the text screen. In a 100 clock cycle, you can set up a DMA transfer, read or write a short message on the PCI bus, change the video mode, etc... You could do a million such thing and still not have used 1 billion clock cycles, half a second. Or, you could write your kernel in python, which is 200 times slower than C, and you could still do 10,000 such things in a second. Where is it all going? Can you imagine waiting 25 hours for a commodore 64 to boot? Because that's how long it takes a commodore 64 to run through 90 billion cycles. And yet the commodore 64 boots in about one second, one million cycles. So by my count, modern computers should boot in half a millisecond. One could argue that reading off the disk takes a long time. However, I just now copied a 238MB file from one directory to another on the same disk (which is a lot harder than reading 238MB, which the kernel and windowing environment should under no circumstance ever get close to reading) and that took less than 15 seconds. 15 seconds of I/O, plus half a second of computing is 15.5 seconds and 1 billion cycles. What else could you need? Before someone argues that some real work is going on, I say bullocks. I know you don't need 45 seconds to boot a computer because my Windows laptop can wake up in about 10 seconds after I hibernate it, most of which is probably I/O. In that time, I have my complete desktop, and Matlab, Lyx, Maple, Word, Excel, Firefox, Thunderbird, Cygwin and Adobe Illustrator are all up and running and ready to use. Another half second and the network is up too (which is also an outrage: electrons don't need half a second to travel to the ethernet.) Hell, the linuxbios people boot so fast the hdd hasn't even spun up yet. The time it takes to shut down is equally inexcusable. The people responsible should be given a spreadsheet with 90 billion lines and required to document in detail how each cycle is being used, one cycle per line. Sébastien Loisel
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
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