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LWN.net Weekly Edition for January 19, 2006GPLv3: a first lookThe Free Software Foundation has, at last, made a draft version of version 3 of the General Public License available for comments. Your editor, having read it five minutes ago, is now ready to comment. What follows is a quick overview of the changes which have been made to the GPL; anybody wanting more information should certainly read the accompanying rationale document, which describes the changes - and their motivations - in detail.The GPL is an important license. It is the most popular of free software licenses, and it covers many important components of a Linux system. It is a codification of the FSF's view of how free software should work, and it imposes some real obligations on those who redistribute GPL-licensed software. It is a core piece of our legal source code. So a major revision of the GPL requires a great deal of thought. In your editor's opinion, the FSF has put in that thought, and has put forward a revised license which meets current challenges while remaining true to the spirit of previous versions.
Digital restrictions managementMany of the changes in GPLv3 have to do with DRM schemes. The license makes the FSF's position on DRM quite clear, and does its best to ensure that GPL-licensed code will stay as far away from DRM as possible. To start, the license makes its intent with regard to DRM clear:
As a free software license, this License intrinsically disfavors
technical attempts to restrict users' freedom to copy, modify, and
share copyrighted works. Each of its provisions shall be
interpreted in light of this specific declaration of the licensor's
intent. Regardless of any other provision of this License, no
permission is given to distribute covered works that illegally
invade users' privacy, nor for modes of distribution that deny
users that run covered works the full exercise of the legal rights
granted by this License.
The purpose here is to help ensure that, in any future court case, all of the terms of the GPL will be interpreted with an anti-DRM bias. An interesting clause can be found in section 3:
No covered work constitutes part of an effective technological
protection measure: that is to say, distribution of a covered work
as part of a system to generate or access certain data constitutes
general permission at least for development, distribution and use,
under this License, of other software capable of accessing the same
data.
This provision is clearly targeted at anti-circumvention laws. If it stands up, it says users can bypass any restrictions encoded in GPL-licensed software without circumventing "technological protection measures," since no GPL-licensed program can be part of such a measure. Another key provision can be found in the revised definition of "source code":
Complete Corresponding Source Code also includes any encryption or
authorization codes necessary to install and/or execute the source
code of the work, perhaps modified by you, in the recommended or
principal context of use, such that its functioning in all
circumstances is identical to that of the work, except as altered
by your modifications. It also includes any decryption codes
necessary to access or unseal the work's output.
In other words, "trusted computing" mechanisms designed to keep people from replacing the software on their gadgets cannot be used with GPLv3-licensed software. This is a large and important change - though its effect will be somewhat limited for as long as the Linux kernel remains licensed under version 2 of the GPL.
Software patentsAs expected, the new version of the GPL addresses software patents in a much more comprehensive manner. One fundamental change is that anybody who redistributes software covered by the GPLv3 is explicitly granting all patent licenses needed to use the software. This grant covers "all versions of the covered work," and would seem to override the "field of use" restrictions imposed by some patent owners. Here's an interesting addition in v3:
This License gives unlimited permission to privately modify and run
the Program, provided you do not bring suit for patent infringement
against anyone for making, using or distributing their own works
based on the Program.
It is, of course, a patent retaliation clause. If you launch a patent suit against somebody using a specific program, you cannot make any further use of that program. It's a big departure from GPLv2; the previous version of the license imposed no restrictions on individual use of the software at all. With GPLv3, the right to use the software - not just to redistribute it - can go away as a result of filing a patent suit. There are no other patent retaliation clauses in the GPL itself; the FSF is not entirely comfortable with this concept in general. From the rationale document:
Several other free software licenses include significantly broader
patent retaliation provisions. In our view, too little is known
about the consequences of these forms of patent retaliation.
There is, however, a subsection which allows the incorporation of additional, limited patent retaliation terms. Terms which take away use of the software for filing a wider range software patent lawsuits can be added:
They may impose software patent retaliation, which means permission
for use of your added parts terminates or may be terminated, wholly
or partially, under stated conditions, for users closely related to
any party that has filed a software patent lawsuit (i.e., a lawsuit
alleging that some software infringes a patent). The conditions
must limit retaliation to a subset of these two cases: 1. Lawsuits
that lack the justification of retaliating against other software
patent lawsuits that lack such justification. 2. Lawsuits that
target part of this work, or other code that was elsewhere released
together with the parts you added, the whole being under the terms
used here for those parts.
So the GPLv3 does not include full-scale patent retaliation, but there should be enough there to get the attention of some types of patent holders.
Additional termsA few other types of additional restrictions are allowed in GPLv3. These include limits on trademark use or the use of contributors' names for publicity purposes. The idea here was to try to make the GPL compatible with a wider range of free software licenses. The much-discussed "web services loophole" is also addressed by way of an optional restriction:
They may require that the work contain functioning facilities that
allow users to immediately obtain copies of its Complete
Corresponding Source Code.
Beyond that, version 3, like its predecessors, explicitly disallows the imposition of additional restrictions.
Other changesUnder version 2, termination of the license was automatic if its terms were violated. In theory, one who had gone against the GPL would have to go and explicitly beg forgiveness before being able to distribute the relevant software again. Back in 2000, Richard Stallman told the KDE developers that they had to ask forgiveness in this way. Version 3 changes the terms to put the onus on copyright holders to terminate a license. Any copyright holder can do so if the terms are violated, but a violator who mends his ways need not ask forgiveness from any copyright holder who has not exercised that right. Version 2 contains a clause saying that, if a program cannot be distributed in a way which complies with both the GPL and any other restrictions (patent licenses in particular), it cannot be distributed at all. There has been some disagreement over just how strong that restriction is. GPLv3 makes it clear that a strong interpretation is expected; this section is now titled "Liberty or Death for the Program." The geographical restrictions clause, which allows terms disallowing the distribution of code in certain countries due to legal problems there, has been retained in GPLv3. The rationale document states, however, that the FSF knows of no actual use of that clause, and they suggest it could be removed during the comment period. There are many other changes, mostly aimed at clarifying intent and ensuring that the license is enforceable worldwide. Again, interested parties are urged to read the license itself and the rationale document for the full story. They will then be prepared to take part in the comment and revision process, which is expected to last for about one year. If all goes well, the FSF hopes to adopt GPLv3 in January, 2007.
The .NET API patent, mono, and GNOMEThe Mono project pushes a lot of buttons in the free software community. Patents, Microsoft, language choice, and platform choice all generate lots of heat individually, and Mono has them all. In spite of all the debate, there are still some issues that remain unresolved. There are undoubtedly some people who have been avoiding Mono just because Red Hat was; now that Fedora has it (while RHEL is still apparently up in the air) it's tough to know if Mono is safe to use or not. I'm not a lawyer, but since everyone who has gotten advice from one (or who is one) is being tight-lipped about it, the rest of us apparently have to figure things out the best we can. I asked Red Hat Deputy General Counsel Mark Webbink about the decision to include Mono, and he replied:
I think you can understand that I cannot discuss Red Hat's internal IP
policy. I would point out that the decision to include Mono with Fedora
was made by the Fedora Foundation and its project folks. I feel confident
the determination was made with an understanding of various patent concerns
that have previously been posed to Novell but also with an understanding
that there are protections available to open source developers, vendors,
etc.
"...protections available to open source developers, vendors, etc."--sounds like the patent pools that are intended to create a mutually-assured-destruction sort of scenario for anyone wanting to sue open source projects for patent infringement. These pools have been derided as PR gimmicks, but Webbink's note makes it sound like some people are willing to actually put some trust in them. This message also makes it sound like the Fedora decision-making mechanisms are finally starting to become separate from Red Hat's. I sent a message to Greg DeKoenigsberg of the Fedora Foundation, and I got the one-sentence official line in return:
"Business considerations that prevented certain Mono components from
being
included in Fedora previously have now been resolved."
Greg also suggested that more information may be forthcoming soon. One of the really interesting aspects of the timing is the fact that the main patent application that has been discussed in the media (the API patent application) appears close to being automatically abandoned. The API patent, if it were granted, would be a big blow to the Mono project. Many patents on various aspects of the implementation could have been worked around, but the API implementation not only makes up a significant portion of the Mono codebase (making it a big project to re-do), but is also what all software written for Mono/.NET uses. If the API becomes unusable, you can't hide a work-around in the Mono internals, because the API forms the connection between Mono and the rest of the world. In October of last year, the patent office issued a "Non-Final Rejection" to the patent application, meaning that Microsoft can try to fix the application. Indeed, if you read the non-final rejection, there are several suggestions the patent examiner makes about how to fix problematic issues. However, there is also a big section of the rejection notice that talks about prior art in the form of two already-issued patents. Those could be harder to work around. The rejection notice says that the deadline for reply is three months from the date of mailing, which was October 21st, 2005. It has now been almost three months, and Microsoft has not yet replied. According to the rejection notice, if there's no reply before the deadline, the application is automatically abandoned. What does that mean? Well, ask a lawyer, I guess, but it sounds pretty good for Mono. More importantly, maybe, is what it means for GNOME. In the spring of 2004, there was a big discussion on whether to begin using Mono in the GNOME core desktop. For example, see Havoc Pennington's essay on the topic. Clearly, it would be good to start writing core functionality in something nicer than C; however, the GNOME developers are understandably reluctant to open things up too widely and end up with a large number of different languages in the core desktop. The debate didn't reach a conclusion, with Novell going one way, Red Hat going another, and the community left hanging, with little information with which to make a decision. Since then, several useful GNOME-targeted applications have been written using Mono. With the confusion regarding whether or not Mono would end up in all the major distributions, though, those applications have undoubtedly not gotten as much support and contributors as they could have. There are also non-Mono alternatives to some of them. While competition between projects is certainly healthy and a good thing in general, one of the strengths of free software is the ability to share and cross-pollinate. If different projects use different languages, libraries, and platforms, though, that sharing becomes much more difficult. Hopefully, some clarity on Mono's risks is forthcoming, and then maybe the split can be resolved. [The author wishes to disclose that he holds stock in Red Hat, Inc.]
The return of software patents in Europe?Last July, when the European Parliament killed the software patent directive, few people thought that it would remain dead forever. The sorts of people who push for that sort of expansion of legal monopoly rights tend to be tenacious; they do not give up easily. Still, the recent headlines proclaiming the return of the software patent debate were a bit of a surprise; one would have thought that the pro-patent camp would lie low for a little bit longer.In fact, what is on the agenda now is not really a return of the software patent directive. It is, instead, the longstanding idea of a "community patent," which would apply across the entire EU. The idea is not entirely nonsensical; patenting an idea across the EU is currently a lengthy and expensive affair. People and companies interested in obtaining patents would really rather go through the process just once; the community patent would make that possible. The text of the proposal [PDF] is available for those who are interested. An attentive reader will note that there is no mention of software patents in the proposal. Where the trouble comes in is with this clause here:
The European Patent Office will play a central role in the
administration of Community Patents and will alone be responsible
for examination of applications and the grant of Community Patents.
So, if somebody were to convince the EPO to start granting patents on algorithms, community software patents would be a reality. The unfortunate news here is that the EPO has been happily granting software patents for some time. FFII has put together a list of some of the worst EPO software patents; included therein are patents on JPEG, MP3, tabbed dialog boxes, form processing in web servers, some remote procedure call protocols, electronic shopping carts, and more. Such patents have no Europe-wide significance now, but, if they were issued as community patents, the situation would then be different. At that point, the only hope would be a court battle with the objective of getting software patents declared invalid. Not a fun process. Besides, it was in the courts that software patents became enforceable in the U.S. Before this situation could come about, however, the community patent proposal would have to be adopted. That has not happened, so far, despite years of trying. Still, if there is to be a renewed push to establish a community patent, it would be much better for that patent to come with clear rules about the patentability of software. The current consultation period goes through the end of March; there will be a European Commission hearing on the community patent on June 13, 2006. So there is not a lot of time to push for changes.
Security Firefox and the ping attributeThe ping attribute is an HTML extension proposed by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. This attribute may be applied to anchor ("<A>") tags; its value is a list of URIs. If the user clicks upon the link created by the <A> tag, the browser will, in addition to displaying the destination page, also send a request for each of the given URIs. Essentially, the browser is phoning home - possibly to multiple homes - to report on the user's action.As it turns out, future Firefox releases will implement the ping attribute; by some accounts, this feature will turn Firefox into spyware. Calling it "spyware" is probably overstating the case a little, but this feature is still worth some thought. Many sites perform tracking of outbound clicks now. The normal technique is to reformat an external link to point at an internal script; that script logs the click, then returns an HTTP "redirect" response which sends the browser to the true destination. The redirect technique is arguably worse than the ping attribute for a couple of reasons. The first is the fact that redirect-style URLs obscure the true destination. Redirected URLs can be moderately obfuscated, such as this one taken from a News.com story:
http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalskillsregistry.in&siteId=3&\
oId=2100-1029-6028107&ontId=1009&lop=nl.ex
They can also be completely obscure:
http://linuxfr.org/redirect/45255.html (The above URL takes the reader to the Fedora directory server page). Redirected URLs can, in the presence of JavaScript, be imposed entirely by stealth. The other problem with using redirect in this way is that it requires a conversation with the logging server before the browser wanders on to the place the user actually wanted to be. If the logging server is sufficiently slow or off the net entirely, the destination becomes unreachable. The ping attribute addresses both of these problems. Destination URLs are not hidden, and the actual phoning home can happen after the destination page has been displayed. The option of ignoring ping attributes can also be presented to the user; there is no such option for links using redirect (though there are some firefox extensions which try hard for specific sites). So, in theory, ping is an improvement over what came before. Still, it is hard to avoid a sense of discomfort with this feature. Firefox is free software, and free software is written with its users' interests in mind. Free software users have grown accustomed to the idea that, for example, applications will not be quietly phoning home in the background. Certainly, Firefox users have no motivation to leave ping enabled - it potentially compromises their privacy while offering them little in return. People will disable ping, and distributors will have a strong motivation to disable it by default in their packages. The Firefox hackers, by adding this feature, risk appearing to serve a community other than their users, and that appearance could reflect back on the reputation of this fine browser in general.
Brief items Felten: CGMS-A + VEIL = SDMI?Ed Felten is looking at the copy protection technologies mandated by the proposed "analog hole" law in the U.S. "The second technology, VEIL, is a watermark that is inserted into the video itself. VEIL was originally developed as a way for TV shows to send signals to toys. If you pointed the toy at the TV screen, it would detect any VEIL information encoded into the TV program, and react accordingly. Then somebody got the idea of using VEIL as a 'rights signaling' technology. The idea is that whenever CGMS-A is signaling restrictions on copying, a VEIL watermark is put into the video."
New vulnerabilities albatross: design error
antiword: insecure temporary file
ClamAV: arbitrary code execution
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
Kolab Server: broken email-signatures or attachments
mantis: multiple vulnerabilities
novell-nrm: heap memory corruption
struts: cross-site scripting vulnerability
sun-jdk: applet privilege escalation
tuxpaint: insecure temporary file
wine: Windows WMF vulnerability
Updated vulnerabilities apache: cross-site scripting
auth_ldap: format string vulnerability
blender: integer overflow
bogofilter: buffer overflow
bzip2: race condition and infinite loop
ktools: buffer overflow
cpio: arbitrary code execution
curl: buffer overflow
cyrus-imapd: buffer overflows
dia: missing input sanitizing
emacs21: format string vulnerability in "movemail"
enscript: arbitrary code execution
ethereal: denial of service
evolution: format string issues
fetchmail: multidrop bug
ffmpeg: buffer overflow
firefox: multiple vulnerabilities
Foomatic: Arbitrary command execution in foomatic-rip
FUSE: mtab corruption through fusermount
gaim: buffer overflow
gdb: multiple vulnerabilities
gdk-pixbuf: multiple vulnerabilities
gedit: format string vulnerability
gettext: Insecure temporary file handling
grip: buffer overflow
groff: insecure temporary directory
gzip: arbitrary command execution
HylaFAX: input validation vulnerability
imap: buffer overflow in c-client
ipsec-tools: denial of service
kdebase: local root vulnerability
kdelibs: kate backup file permission leak
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
libconvert-uulib-perl: arbitrary code execution
libdbi-perl: insecure temporary file
libgadu: memory alignment bug
libgd2: buffer overflows in PNG handling
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
lynx: arbitrary command execution
mailman: denial of service
mod_auth_pgsql: format string flaws
mod_python: remote access vulnerability
mysql: buffer overflow
mysql: low-impact security fix
nbd: arbitrary code execution
ncpfs: multiple vulnerabilities
nfs-utils: arbitrary code execution
ntp: uses wrong gid
openmotif: buffer overflows
openssh: GSSAPI credential disclosure
otrs: multiple vulnerabilities
pcre3: arbitrary code execution
perl: setuid vulnerabilities
perl: symlink vulnerability
perl: integer overflow
petris: buffer overflow
phpbb2: multiple vulnerabilities
phpMyAdmin: multiple vulnerabilities
poppler: arbitrary code execution
postgresql: database initialization errors
pound: HTTP Request Smuggling Attack
pstotext: remote execution of arbitrary code
Py2Play: remote execution of arbitrary Python code
scorched3d: multiple vulnerabilities
scponly: privilege escalation
smstools: format string attack
spamassassin: denial of service
squid: authentication handling
sudo: vulnerability via scripts
sudo: missing input sanitizing
sudo: race condition
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: multiple DoS issues
texinfo: temporary file vulnerability
ucd-snmp: denial of service
udev: insecure files in /dev/input
unzip: race condition
up-imapproxy: format string vulnerabilities
uw-imap: buffer overflow
vixie-cron: crontab allows any user to read another users crontabs
VMware: arbitrary code execution
w3c-libwww: possible stack overflow
xine-lib: buffer overflows
xine-ui - insecure temporary file creation
xloadimage: buffer overflows
xorg-x11: heap overflow
xpdf: buffer overflow
xpdf: arbitrary code execution
xpdf: heap overflows
xpdf: denial of service
xpdf: integer overflows
zlib: buffer overflow
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current stable 2.6 release is 2.6.15.1, announced on January 14. This one contains a dozen or so patches for kernel crashes and security problems.The current 2.6 prepatch is 2.6.16-rc1, announced by Linus on January 17. The details of what's in this release can be found in last week's summary and this week's update (see below). In brief: 2.6.16 will include the OCFS2 filesystem, the swap migration patches, various new drivers, the mutex changeover, high-resolution timers, a transparent inter-process communication (TIPC) protocol implementation, a big netfilter update, a new batch-level scheduler class, and more. See the short log file for an overview (note that "short" is relative) or the long-format log for the details. Linus's post-rc1 git repository contains a pile of network driver updates and a few other fixes. The 2.6.16 merge window has closed, so one would not expect to see a whole lot of new features going in at this point. There will apparently be one exception, however: Andrew Morton intends to merge the openat() series of system calls, along with the pselect() and ppoll() implementation. These new system call were covered here last December. The current -mm tree is 2.6.16-rc1-mm1. Recent changes to -mm include a bunch of reiser3 work ("Please test with caution, but please test."), several more semaphore-to-mutex conversion patches, multi-column oops stack backtraces for i386, and a new software suspend API intended to help move some of the image save/restore work to user space.
Kernel development news More changes for 2.6.16A fair number of patches have been merged since the looking forward to 2.6.16 article was published. In addition to everything listed there, the following patches are part of 2.6.16-rc1, starting with user-visible changes:
Changes visible to kernel developers include:
The merge window for 2.6.16 is effectively closed, so there should not be a whole lot more in the way of significant changes being merged in this cycle.
The high-resolution timer APILast September, this page featured an article on the ktimers patch by Thomas Gleixner. The new timer abstraction was designed to enable the provision of high-resolution timers in the kernel and to address some of the inefficiencies encountered when the current timer code is used in this mode. Since then, there has been a large amount of discussion, and the code has seen significant work. The end product of that work, now called "hrtimers," was merged for the 2.6.16 release.At its core, the hrtimer mechanism remains the same. Rather than using the "timer wheel" data structure, hrtimers live on a time-sorted linked list, with the next timer to expire being at the head of the list. A separate red/black tree is also used to enable the insertion and removal of timer events without scanning through the list. But while the core remains the same, just about everything else has changed, at least superficially. There is a new type, ktime_t, which is used to store a time value in nanoseconds. This type, found in <linux/ktime.h>, is meant to be used as an opaque structure. And, interestingly, its definition changes depending on the underlying architecture. On 64-bit systems, a ktime_t is really just a 64-bit integer value in nanoseconds. On 32-bit machines, however, it is a two-field structure: one 32-bit value holds the number of seconds, and the other holds nanoseconds. The order of the two fields depends on whether the host architecture is big-endian or not; they are always arranged so that the two values can, when needed, be treated as a single, 64-bit value. Doing things this way complicates the header files, but it provides for efficient time value manipulation on all architectures. A whole set of functions and macros has been provided for working with ktime_t values, starting with the traditional two ways to declare and initialize them:
DEFINE_KTIME(name); /* Initialize to zero */
ktime_t kt;
kt = ktime_set(long secs, long nanosecs);
Various other functions exist for changing ktime_t values; all of these treat their arguments as read-only and return a ktime_t value as their result:
ktime_t ktime_add(ktime_t kt1, ktime_t kt2);
ktime_t ktime_sub(ktime_t kt1, ktime_t kt2); /* kt1 - kt2 */
ktime_t ktime_add_ns(ktime_t kt, u64 nanoseconds);
Finally, there are some type conversion functions:
ktime_t timespec_to_ktime(struct timespec tspec);
ktime_t timeval_to_ktime(struct timeval tval);
struct timespec ktime_to_timespec(ktime_t kt);
struct timeval ktime_to_timeval(ktime_t kt);
clock_t ktime_to_clock_t(ktime_t kt);
u64 ktime_to_ns(ktime_t kt);
The interface for hrtimers can be found in <linux/hrtimer.h>. A timer is represented by struct hrtimer, which must be initialized with:
void hrtimer_init(struct hrtimer *timer, clockid_t which_clock);
Every hrtimer is bound to a specific clock. The system currently supports two clocks, being:
The difference between the two clocks can be seen when the system time is adjusted, perhaps as a result of administrator action, tweaking by the network time protocol code, or suspending and resuming the system. In any of these situations, CLOCK_MONOTONIC will tick forward as if nothing had happened, while CLOCK_REALTIME may see discontinuous changes. Which clock should be used will depend mainly on whether the timer needs to be tied to time as the rest of the world sees it or not. The call to hrtimer_init() will tie an hrtimer to a specific clock, but that clock can be changed with:
void hrtimer_rebase(struct hrtimer *timer, clockid_t new_clock);
Most of the hrtimer fields should not be touched. Two of them, however, must be set by the user:
int (*function)(void *);
void *data;
As one might expect, function() will be called when the timer expires, with data as its parameter. Actually setting a timer is accomplished with:
int hrtimer_start(struct hrtimer *timer, ktime_t time,
enum hrtimer_mode mode);
The mode parameter describes how the time parameter should be interpreted. A mode of HRTIMER_ABS indicates that time is an absolute value, while HRTIMER_REL indicates that time should be interpreted relative to the current time. Under normal operation, function() will be called after (at least) the requested expiration time. The hrtimer code implements a shortcut for situations where the sole purpose of a timer is to wake up a process on expiration: if function() is NULL, the process whose task structure is pointed to by data will be awakened. In most cases, however, code which uses hrtimers will provide a callback function(). That function has an integer return value, which should be either HRTIMER_NORESTART (for a one-shot timer which should not be started again) or HRTIMER_RESTART for a recurring timer. In the restart case, the callback must set a new expiration time before returning. Usually, restarting timers are used by kernel subsystems which need a callback at a regular interval. The hrtimer code provides a function for advancing the expiration time to the next such interval:
unsigned long hrtimer_forward(struct hrtimer *timer, ktime_t interval);
This function will advance the timer's expiration time by the given interval. If necessary, the interval will be added more than once to yield an expiration time in the future. Generally, the need to add the interval more than once means that the system has overrun its timer period, perhaps as a result of high system load. The return value from hrtimer_forward() is the number of missed intervals, allowing code which cares to detect and respond to the situation. Outstanding timers can be canceled with either of:
int hrtimer_cancel(struct hrtimer *timer);
int hrtimer_try_to_cancel(struct hrtimer *timer);
When hrtimer_cancel() returns, the caller can be sure that the timer is no longer active, and that its expiration function is not running anywhere in the system. The return value will be zero if the timer was not active (meaning it had already expired, normally), or one if the timer was successfully canceled. hrtimer_try_to_cancel() does the same, but will not wait if the timer function is running; it will, instead, return -1 in that situation. A canceled timer can be restarted by passing it to hrtimer_restart().
Finally, there is a small set of query functions. hrtimer_get_remaining() returns the amount of time left before a timer expires. A call to hrtimer_active() returns nonzero if the timer is currently on the queue. And a call to:
int hrtimer_get_res(clockid_t which_clock, struct timespec *tp);
will return the true resolution of the given clock, in nanoseconds.
Containers and PID virtualizationThe folks at IBM would like to add a "container" capability to the Linux kernel. Containers are a way of walling a group of processes off from the rest of the system; a process within a container will only see its fellow inmate processes and whatever resources are made accessible to that container. This feature has some obvious security-related applications. IBM's plans, evidently, also include the ability to pack up a container and move it to another physical host without disrupting the processes trapped inside.The patches which have been circulating so far fall short of the final plan, but they already disturb enough code to have attracted some skeptical criticism. In particular, the 34-part PID virtualization patch creates a simple container type, and implements a separate process ID space within containers. But, as we'll see, doing even that much involves some significant kernel changes. The containers themselves are fairly simple. The patches create a virtual file called /proc/container. If a process writes a string to that file, a new container is created for that process, using the string as its name. The namespace is global, so every container on the system must have a unique name. Any child processes created by the newly-contained process will also be trapped within the container, with no way out. At this point, being inside a container does not affect a process's life that much. The one thing that does change, however, is that each container has its own process ID (PID) space. Processes within the container can only see others in the same container. There is nothing particularly controversial about that behavior, but the developers have another objective in mind: they want to be able to change the PIDs of contained processes without the processes themselves noticing. In particular, they would like to be able to migrate a container to a different system, which will certainly assign new PIDs to every process within the container. Code written for Unix-like systems does not normally expect its PID to change over time, however; so switching PIDs underneath a process could lead to all kinds of strange behavior. To avoid this problem, the plan is that PIDs remain constant within the container, even if those PIDs change in the real world. Implementing constant PIDs (from a viewpoint inside the container) is not a straightforward task; it involves adding a whole new virtualization layer inside the kernel. There are two types of PIDs now, "real" PIDs and the virtual PIDs used by contained processes. Any place in the kernel which deals with PID values must become aware of which type of PID it is using, and convert to the other type when necessary. So, as a general rule, any code which exchanges PIDs with user space must use the virtual variety, while PIDs handled within the kernel are real. The PID logic is complicated by a few little details, like: what happens when containers are nested? A process living within a container has a real PID and a virtual PID associated with the container. If that process creates a container of its own, it will acquire yet another PID associated with the new container. So it is not possible to simply convert a real PID to a virtual PID; such questions require a "context" so that the kernel knows which virtual PID is wanted. The result of all this is that PID handling within the kernel changes significantly. Code which used to get the current process's PID with current->pid must now use tsk_pid(current) for the real PID, or tsk_vpid(current) for the virtual PID - and it must know which one it wants. In situations where more than one virtual PID might be appropriate, tsk_vpid_ctx() must be used to supply the context. Much of the patch set is concerned simply with making these conversions; for good measure, it also renames the pid field of struct task_struct to catch any code still trying to access it directly. Behind all of this is a concept called "pidspaces." The patch carves up the global PID space takes the upper 9 bits of the 32-bit PID value and puts the pidspace number there. A virtual PID as seen within a container is turned into a real kernel PID by stuffing the pidspace number in those upper bits. Since the contained processes only see virtual PIDs, they never see the pidspace number, and they will not notice if that number changes. All of this code seems to work, but there is a certain amount of opposition to merging it. As Alan Cox put it:
This is an obscure, weird piece of functionality for some special
case usages most of which are going to be eliminated by Xen. I
don't see the kernel side justification for it at all.
The developers answer that the ability to checkpoint and restart process trees, possibly moving them in between, will be highly useful. Some other virtualization projects also require this capability - not everybody wants to use Xen. So the pressure for PID virtualization probably won't just go away. What might happen is that the hiding of current->pid might be taken out, greatly reducing the size of the patch. Another idea which has been floated is to eliminate, to the greatest degree possible, the use of PIDs within the kernel. Almost any in-kernel use of a PID can be replaced with a direct pointer to the task structure. If a PID eventually is reduced to little more than a process-identifying cookie used for communication with user space, it will be easier to virtualize without complicating large amounts of kernel code.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Janitorial
Networking
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials What's New in Fedora Core 5 Test2After several weeks of delay, the second development release of Fedora Core 5 was finally made available on January 16th. This is a much anticipated version - not only will this be Fedora's first new release after switching to a longer, 9-month release cycle, it is likely that much of the distribution's current core will form the basis of the upcoming release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5. As such, Fedora 5 is expected to be well-tested and relatively bug-free, with fewer experimental features, but better stability and reliability. According to Fedora's release schedule, Test2 will be followed by Test3 in about a month's time before the final release on March 15th.What's new in Fedora Core 5? Users performing a new installation will immediately notice that the Anaconda installer has been given a major interface overhaul. The informational pane on the left of the installation screens has been removed and many of the installation dialogs have been simplified, with more advanced options hidden behind an extra click. The screens providing partitioning and package selection dialogs have also been modified, while the option to set SELinux functionality has been moved into the post-installation setup. Personally, I can't say I like the changes. Anaconda, a de facto standard among Linux installers, has been barely touched for years, so why the sudden need for a major interface surgery? The core system components have been upgraded. Test2 comes with kernel 2.6.15, a development release of glibc 2.4, as well as a CVS build of the yet-to-be released GCC 4.1. The upgrade to glibc 2.4 is particularly significant since Fedora Core 5 will be the first distribution shipping with the new major version of the GNU C library. Although it is still in heavy development, we know that the new glibc will no longer be compilable with GCC 3.x, it won't support LinuxThreads (only Native Posix Thread Library), and all non-desktop CPUs will be moved to an unsupported ports add-on. As for the GCC 4.1 series, one of the most important improvements in its code is the introduction of fstack-protector, a feature whose purpose is to assign a random and verifiable value to the stack of key functions. This feature will make it harder for remote attackers to exploit buffer overflows. On the desktop, a current development release of GNOME 2.14, combined with a brand new desktop theme, wallpaper and screensaver, represent a major visual change from the previous test release. With GNOME 2.14, much effort has been focused on the Evolution mail client, which is undergoing subtle interface changes, including dialog simplification and general improvements in consistency and polish. There has been a lot of emphasis on reduction of load times and memory footprints of both the GNOME desktop and its applications. The users of GnomeMeeting and Eye Of GNOME will also notice substantial interface changes, while much of Gedit's code has been rewritten under a new Multiple Documentation Interface specification. The Nautilus search engine has also been enhanced. Coincidentally, GNOME 2.14 final is scheduled to be released on March 15, exactly the same day as Fedora Core 5 - a fact that will almost certainly give rise to a few heated debates on the Fedora mailing lists and forums. As for the main applications, Firefox 1.5 and OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 feature prominently on the desktop, but other recent additions to Fedora Core, such as the Beagle desktop search tool (version 0.1.4), F-Spot photo manager (0.1.5) and Tomboy note-taking utility, are also being pushed under the spotlight. On the other hand, Mono, a software suite for developing .NET client and server applications and which was added to the Fedora tree only recently, is not even mentioned in the release announcement - despite the fact that its sudden presence in Fedora caused a stir on many Linux news sites just last week. Although Mono is now an integral part of Fedora Core, Red Hat has stated that the product, which is developed by Novell (Red Hat's main commercial competitor) will not be included in the next release of the company's enterprise range of products. Another new piece of software in Fedora Core 5 is "Package Updater", or pup for short. This is an application with a very simple interface - it lists all available updates after checking with the main update server, and allows the user to receive the latest security and bug fixes. There is nothing else to it - no intuitive way to configure the location of the update server or to prevent certain applications from being replaced with newer versions. Following the installer, this is another area which the Fedora development team decided to simplify in order to appease the non-technical computer user and perhaps to reduce the cost of technical support further down the line. Of course, power users can still reach for the command line to run yum and customize the package update options, but those who are not prepared to read the man pages are now expected to use pup. Overall, I found that using this test release of Fedora Core was mostly a positive experience. Although I disliked the simplification effort in the installer and some of the applications, if it proves to be a successful way of bringing more users and companies to Linux, then I am all for it. On the application side, I haven't had any major problems during the two days of testing, but some users on the Fedora test list reported crashes in Evolution and GNOME Terminal, as well as a non-operational Nautilus CD Burner. At one time, while running Beagle and pup, my system became unresponsive and had to be rebooted, but I wasn't able to reproduce this later. A large number of updates have appeared on the Fedora development server since the release so it is likely that some of these bugs are fixed already. A decent release overall, but it still needs a fair amount of testing before it can be declared stable.
New Releases K/Ubuntu Flight CD 3Flight CD 3, milestone CD images of K/Ubuntu's Dapper Drake release, are available for testing and bug busting. The Edubuntu release should be available soon. Click below for a list of notable changes in this release.
Announcing Fedora Core 5 Test 2The Fedora Project has announced the second release of the Fedora Core 5 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and PPC/PPC64 architectures. Please note that Fedora Core 3 has now been transfered the the Fedora Legacy Project.
Fedora-netdev FC4The latest Fedora Core 4 netdev kernel, kernel-2.6.14-1.1656_FC4.netdev.8 is now available. Click below for a list of patches that have been applied to this kernel package.
Novell Releases SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SP3 (ITJungle)ITJungle covers the release of Service Pack 3 for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. "SLES 9 SP3 also has the AppArmor security program that Novell bought when it acquired Immunix, a provider of application security software for Linux, last May. SLES 9 SP3 has AppArmor woven in as well as Linux application security profiles for selected applications; the exact number was not revealed in the SP3 release notes. As the company revealed when it took the AppArmor product open source as an openSUSE project earlier this week, the full AppArmor code and a more complete set of application security profiles--some made by Novell, some made by application providers through the openSUSE community--are expected to be embedded into the future SLES 10 operating system, which is expected some time in May of this year."
Distribution News AGNULA loses its fundingThe AGNULA project, whose goal is to put together a "reference multimedia distribution" based on Debian, has sent out a terse announcement saying that the Italian agency which has funded the project for the last few years has moved on to other things. As a result, AGNULA is now a 100% volunteer project. Projects like AGNULA are important - few people would say that the Linux multimedia experience is in no need of improvement. Hopefully they will be able to carry their work forward.
Debian newsWatch for some major bug busting in the unstable tree. "This note is just some advance notice so that folks who don't want to risk any negative consequences, whatever they end up being, can ensure they don't have any RC bugs that are weeks old. Note that the RMs have declared it open season on NMUs, so do look at packages you care about even if you don't maintain them."Here's a note about how the mirrors will be split. "First, the executive summary for mirror operators reading this: we'll be switching the primary mirror stuff for Debian to be for a small number of architectures rather than all of them; initially this will just be i386, but will probably expand to include amd64." There are currently two proposals in discussion on debian-vote. This post contains links for those interested in keeping up with the discussion.
Ubuntu Bugzilla to Malone (Launchpad) migration completeUbuntu has made a transition from Bugzilla to Launchpad's Malone bug tracker. All bugs are still available for browsing in Bugzilla, but logins are disabled.
New Distributions GParted LiveCD 0.1 (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop introduces the GParted LiveCD, a small, fast, Slackware-based live CD that syncs its releases with GParted.
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsThe Debian Weekly News for January 17, 2006 is out, with a look at a proposed a license sufficient for Debian and FreeBSD for the Internet Engineering Task Force that releases RFC documents, the availability of X.org packages for the Hurd, the status of the m68k port, splitting mirrors by port, new scripts to discover neglected packages, maintaining packages by a team, and several other topics.
Fedora Projects Weekly ReportIn an attempt to widen the communications channel, the Fedora Project has started a series of weekly reports; the January 16 edition is available now. It contains a terse summary of changes in rawhide, current known issues, and more.
Fedora Weekly News Issue 29The Fedora Weekly News covers Fedora Initiatives at LinuxWorld, Fedora Projects Weekly Report, Kadischi Screenshots in osdir.com, Mono and Fedora, Fedora Directory Server in Media, Fedora Rescue CD in Media, Thunderbird 1.5 Released, and other topics.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of January 16, 2006 is out. This edition covers new baselayout with improved runscripts, Portage changes USE flags default behavior, PPC development roadmap, AMD64 project update, and other topics.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 134The DistroWatch Weekly for January 16, 2006 is out. "Several interesting announcements at last week's MacWorld provided fuel for many technology web sites, but an important question remained unanswered: will Linux run on the new MacBooks? Read on for an expert opinion. A rather quiet week on the Linux distribution front, but expect things to pick up shortly as the second test of Fedora Core 5 will be officially out today (Monday), while the first beta of SUSE Linux 10.1 should appear on mirrors later this week. Also in this issue: Fedora or Yellow Dog for your Mac, Xandros seeks beta testers, Debian terminology explained, news from the development of Dapper Drake, a new SUSE-based distribution for musicians, GParted Live CD for all your disk partitioning tasks, and a good round-up of popular Linux live CDs."
Package updates Fedora Core updatesFedora Core 4 updates: system-config-bind (restore pre-FC5 pam configuration file), flex (bug fixes), alsa-lib (new ainit (0.7), fix for SW modems and root users), groff (bug fixes, spec cleanup), openoffice.org (rebuilt with alternative -mtune parameters for ix86), libwpd (update to latest libwpd), foomatic (fixes a conflict introduced by the HPLIP update, plus other additions and bug fixes), tcpdump (bug fix).One last Fedora Core 3 update: tzdata (meta changes).
Mandriva updatesUpdates available for Mandriva Linux 2006.0: xorg-x11 (update to upstream 6.9.0 final), festival (rebuilt to prevent crashes), klamav (update to v0.32), OpenOffice.org (fix random crashes).Updates for Mandriva Corporate Server 2.1: squid (new features).
Slackware updatesThe January 14 entry on the slackware-current changelog shows new linux-2.6.14.6 packages in testing, an upgrade to x11-6.9.0, and a few other changes.
Trustix updatePostgreSQL has been updated for TSL 3.0 and 2.2, fixing various bugs.
Newsletters and articles of interest Linux Live CDs: All the Linux with None of the Commitment (informit.com)Informit.com looks at some popular live Linux CD distributions. "Unfortunately, I can't cover everyone's favorite distro because I'd end up with a text book rather than an article, but I'll be looking at several popular distributions including SimplyMEPIS, SLAX, Damn Small Linux, Knoppix, and Puppy, and on the Mac side of things, Ubuntu. I'll also take a quick look at LG3D (Looking Glass 3D) and INSERT (Inside Security Rescue Toolkit). This should give you a good overview of just what's out there, as well as some of the cool things you can do with a live Linux CD."
Distribution reviews Review: Grafpup Linux live CD for graphic designers (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews Grafpup, a distribution for graphic designers. "Based on Puppy Linux, Grafpup is a small distribution despite its plethora of tools. Download the 75MB ISO and you'll be amazed at its speed and simplicity. When running from the live CD, Grafpup loads the entire operating system into your RAM, ensuring that the applications run instantly. The first time you run the live CD, Grafpup saves a file called "pup101" on your hard disk that contains settings for your keyboard layout, mouse type, and more, so that you don't need to configure your machine each time you boot. Every successive boot completes in less than 20 seconds."
GhostWriter: A Linux distro for writers (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews the GhostWriter LiveCD. "GhostWriter is a live CD that provides a small number of tools for writers of short stories, novels, and screenplays. But GhostWriter can be used by someone authoring works of non-fiction as well. It's easy to use and has a small footprint. In fact, there's nothing to install -- you run GhostWriter off a CD. Unlike some live CD distros, GhostWriter doesn't have install scripts that let you make it a desktop distribution, but [author Billy-Bob] Ming has hinted that a future version might come with such scripts."
Review: FreeBSD 6.0 (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews FreeBSD 6.0. "For software that's been around since the late '70s, before any of today's more popular operating systems, open source BSDs (in their current avatars) don't get their due share of hard disks. FreeBSD, one of the first BSD flavors to emerge from the 386BSD project, is a Unix-like free operating system based originally on the BSD branch of 386BSD and later 4.4BSD-Lite. This makes BSD's more like traditional Unixes than Linux. Late last year FreeBSD unleashed release 6.0, with better support for 64-bit and wireless hardware."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development Using open-source tools for documenting researchIntroductionGetting published is a major concern for students conducting graduate studies in science. I'm a PhD student in molecular biology and I started using Linux at the beginning of my graduate studies. Public science research mostly looks like open-source software development. You work hard and give your methods and results to everyone through publications in scientific journals. Ironically, the majority of people working in the field of science use only proprietary software. I myself work in a Microsoft Windows environment.A typical scientific article will require the use of several tools to reach its final published state. First, most researchers use Microsoft Word and Excel for text writing and tables. They also use EndNote to manage and create the bibliographies you will find in every scientific article. Finally, scientists use a graphics suite, such as Adobe's Photoshop, for figures and PDF creation. This software listing scales up to more than one thousand dollars. It's practically impossible for the regular student to purchase such a platform. In some laboratories, when the head researcher is kind enough, you will find a computer where most of these tools are installed and shared by all members of the team. But what if you could create your own open-source research writing box for free? In fact, you can. You can accomplish the entire array of tasks associated with scientific writing with any good Linux distribution.
The easiest stepOne of the most popular open source application that has boosted the Microsoft to Linux transition is certainly OpenOffice.org. For anybody working in science reporting, it is a first and easy step that enables you to step out of proprietary software and remain compatible with Microsoft Office formats. In addition, several journals will ask that the submissions should be in the .doc or PDF format. OpenOffice.org saves you a lot of trouble with its useful PDF export tool.Although OpenOffice.org can complete a fair portion of the job, it doesn't contain a bibliographic manager tool such as EndNote yet. Such a facility is necessary for academic writer and OpenOffice.org is supposed to fill the blank with some bibliographic extensions in its next version. For now, there is a commercial web-based tool called WriteNote which offers a 30 day free trial and enables you to produce a bibliography with RTF files created by OpenOffice.org.
LaTeXWhile OpenOffice.org may be a first step toward writing scientific articles under Linux, the true power resides inside LaTeX. As it is mentioned on the latex project website: "LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system, with features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation". "LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents."Some of the LaTeX features include insertion of tables and figures as well as the capacity to create complex mathematical equations. Additionally, there are tremendous advantages in learning to write with LaTeX. In fact, BibTeX could get you out of proprietary software tomorrow. You can gather your bibliographic references in a simple text file with the BibTeX syntax and easily insert quotations inside your LaTeX documents, automatically generating a bibliography at the end of your articles. While the LaTeX format requires a minimum of learning, you can rely on the useful TeXmed web-based tool to query NCBI PubMed and generate BibTeX entries for you. You must specify, in your LaTeX document, a bibliography style to format it according to the journal's recommendations. In fact, many journals now offer their bibliography style on their website. If you can't find the format that you need on the web, you can use custom-bib to create the style you need.
LyX and friendsLaTeX basics can be learned quite easily, but you might need to read a lot from the web or buy some books (like I did) to use its full potential. But do you really need to go through all this trouble? That's where LyX comes into play.LyX is a GUI front end to LaTeX. Though it has its own file format, it can import and export to LaTeX. LyX looks like a word processor while taking care of all the formatting, just like LaTeX. LyX is fully featured and let you insert figures, tables, mathematical equations and more. Though managing a bibtex text file is very easy, you can rely on graphical tools here too. Software like gBib and JabRef will help you deal with your numerous references and even let you insert them in LyX, just like EndNote does with Word.
GnuplotContinuing in your path to build an open-source research writing box, you need a powerful tool to generate plots from your precious experiment results. That is where Gnuplot enters the scene, with its almost limitless possibilities. Gnuplot is a command-line plotting utility with easy to learn commands that enable you to create high quality 2D and 3D plots suitable for scientific publications. It can output LaTeX and EPS code which can be inserted in your LaTeX documents. You can check out this demo that shows the wide variety of Gnuplot's capabilities.
InkscapeOne thing that was really missing in Linux in the past was a good vector graphics editor. I had to install Adobe Illustrator under Wine to be able to draw high quality figures showing various metabolic pathways. Now, with Inkscape, I have everything that I need to create high quality vector graphics which can be exported to EPS and inserted in my LaTeX documents. Inkscape can draw shapes, paths, text and can also export to PNG.
The GimpTo complete your open-source research writing box, you need a powerful image manipulation program to process your photos and to generate figures from them. That's where The Gimp comes into play. With The Gimp, you can process gel photos, crop the area that you like, obtain negatives of your originals and add labels where you want, all with a few mouse clicks.
Linux drawbacksWhile this path can be rewarding, a significant effort will be required. The first thing you need to do is to install a Linux distribution. This might seem frightening to the newcomer, but there are powerful Linux distributions such as Mandriva, Fedora and Ubuntu which are very easy to install and have packaged most of the tools mentioned it this article.You also need to learn how to use new software. A few of the applications mentioned above only have a command-line interface, but most operations can be performed using GUI-based tools. There is plenty of documentation online, and you can always join an IRC channel to get live help. In a short time, you will become very functional, and you will reach new levels of productivity. The worst drawback of using Linux in a Microsoft-based environment may involve compatibility issues with your coworkers. Since my boss insists on working with .doc files, I have to convert my papers to RTF using latex2rtf before I send him anything, even if PDF is the most portable format out there. But this doesn't stop me from benefiting of the LaTeX functionality. Finally, you must rely on the Internet for support. Most of the system administrators in the research field don't know much about Linux (at least not in Quebec, where I'm working) and won't be able to support you if you have problems.
Linux superiorityBeside the fact that Linux and all this software is free, there are many advantages in building an open-source research writing box. Linux provides a robust environment that is a virtually virus-free. Interoperability among applications is quite good, all of the applications mentioned in this article can share data through the LaTeX and EPS file formats.With little experience, you will start working faster and more efficiently. Serious page formatting issues found in Windows-based WYSIWYG software will be gone. Finally, you will be able to easily share your work by creating high quality PDF files. An example screenshot of my desktop publishing environment can be seen here.
System Applications Database Software MySQL 5.1.5-alpha has been releasedVersion 5.1.5-alpha of the MySQL database has been released. "This is a new alpha development release, adding new features and fixing recently discovered bugs."
New Event Feature in MySQL 5.1.6Trudy Pelzer explains events under MySQL version 5.1.6. "In this article, I'll give a preliminary description of a new MySQL feature for scheduling and executing tasks. In version 5.1.6, MySQL has added support for events. That is, you can now say: "I want the MySQL server to execute this SQL statement every day at 9:30am, until the end of the year" -- or anything similar that involves any number of SQL statements, and a schedule. Note that events are new and still in alpha, so there is still a good chance that we'll have to make adjustments as people experiment with them. This article describes the state of affairs only for the 5.1.6 release of MySQL."
Embedded Systems BusyBox 1.1.0 is outVersion 1.1.0 of BusyBox, a compressed collection of command line tools for embedded systems, has been released. "The new stable release is BusyBox 1.1.0. It has a number of improvements, including several new applets. (It also has a few rough spots, but we're trying out a "release early, release often" strategy to see how that works. Expect 1.1.1 sometime in March.)"
KLone 1.0.1 releasedVersion 1.0.1 of KLone, a small embeddable web server, has been released. LinuxDevices.com is also running a review of KLone. (Thanks to Steven Dorigotti.)
Web Site Development Campsite 2.4 ReleasedVersion 2.4 of Campsite, a multi-lingual content management system for news websites, is available. "Version 2.4 is a major feature release."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications SilentJack version 0.1 announcedThe initial version of SilentJack is available. "SilentJack is a silence/dead air detector for the Jack Audio Connection Kit. It monitors the peak levels on a single JACK input port, and checks to see if they are below a specified theshold. SilentJack then runs a command after silence has been detected for a given number of seconds. It then waits for the command the finish, and waits for a grace period before detecting silence again."
Sweep 0.9.0 ReleasedVersion 0.9.0 of Sweep, a graphical audio file editor, is out. This is the first release of a new unstable series, it includes a switch to GTK2, improved mp3 capabilities, translation work, and more.
Data Visualization Gmsh 1.62 announcedVersion 1.62 of Gmsh, a 3D finite element grid generator, has been announced. "This release adds a new option to draw color gradients in the background, an enhanced perspective projection mode, a new "lasso" selection mode, a new snapping grid when adding points in the GUI, a new extrusion syntax and nicer normal smoothing. This release also contains various small bug fixes and enhancements."
Desktop Environments GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
Formation of the KDE Technical Working Group in Progress (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the formation of the KDE Technical Working Group. "The first Technical Working Group for KDE is now being formed, with elections due over the next few weeks. The Group will help the hundreds of KDE contributors come to technical decisions and smooth processes such as major releases. It will also provide technical guidance to KDE contributors."
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Desktop Publishing LyX 1.3.7 is releasedVersion 1.3.7 of LyX, a GUI front-end to the TeX typesetting system, is out. Changes include support for the new file format 245 standard, improvements to the Windows version and more.
Electronics Covered 20060109 releasedVersion 20060109 of Covered, a Verilog code coverage analysis tool, is available. "It has been almost a year since the last development release of Covered, but in the meantime there has been a lot of work put into the score command of Covered during this time to fix bugs, add more coverage support for various Verilog constructs, simulate more accurately, remove memory corruption/estrangement and improve the run-time speed of the score command. I think that user's of Covered will appreciate the enhancements. Documentation updates have been made and build problems have been fixed (Covered now compiles cleanly for Fedora Core 3 builds)."
Kicad 2006-01-13 releasedVersion 2006-01-13 of Kicad an electronic printed circuit board CAD package, is out with a bug fix and one new feature.
GUI Packages pyFltk-1.1RC2 announcedRelease candidate 2 of pyFltk-1.1, a Python binding to FLTK 1.1, has been announced. "This release candidate has been tested with fltk-1.1.6 and requires Python2.4."
SPTK 3.0.12 announcedVersion 3.0.12 of SPTK, the Simply Powerful ToolKit, has been announced. "SPTK 3.0.12 adds support for the database driver messages. These messages may be sent to the driver by the database server on different occasions. These messages may include the extended error information, and the messages created by a stored procedure using (for MSSQL, for instance) PRINT statement."
Mail Clients Thunderbird 1.5 ReleasedThunderbird 1.5 is out. Changes in this release include improvements to the automatic update system, smarter address auto-completion, on-the-fly spelling checking, better searching, some simple phishing detection (covered here last October), the ability to delete attachments, and much more; see the release notes for details. (As seen on MozillaZine)
Office Applications Beagle NewsletterIssue 11 of the Beagle Newsletter has been published. "Beagle is a search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you're looking for. Beagle can search in many different domains."
HylaFAX 4.2.5 releasedVersion 4.2.5 of HylaFAX, a fax-modem utility, has been announced. "The HylaFAX development team is pleased to announce our 4.2.5 patch level release! This fixes the problems users have been reporting in 4.2.4, which will be removed from the FTP and web sites. As always, our sincerest thanks go to all who participate and provide feedback." Several security fixes are included in this release.
Office Suites Moving to OpenOffice: Batch Converting Legacy Documents (O'Reilly)Bob DuCharme writes about the conversion of legacy documents to OO.o in an O'Reilly xml.com article. "Like its Microsoft counterpart, OpenOffice has a macro language. You can start up OpenOffice from the Linux or Windows command-line prompt with instructions to to run a particular macro, and you can even pass a filename as a parameter to that macro. Adding the -invisible switch to the command line tells OpenOffice to start up without the graphical user interface (GUI). Put all these together, and you've got a command line that converts a Microsoft Office file to an OpenOffice file (or an Acrobat file) with no use of the GUI. To convert a hundred files, you can use a Perl script or other scripting language to create a batch file or shell script that has the hundred commands necessary to convert those files."
Streaming Media Gst-Python 0.10.2 announcedVersion 0.10.2 of Gst-Python, has been announced. "Gst-Python provides Python bindings for the GStreamer project. These bindings provide access to almost all of the GStreamer C API through an object oriented Python API. This release allow fractions in structures and added vmethods for base classes. "
Web Browsers Minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting (MozillaZine)The minutes from the January 4, 2006 mozilla.org staff meeting have been announced. "Issues discussed include Upcoming Releases, Marketing, Thunderbird, 1.9 Roadmap, Firefox 2 Process and Calendar. The mintues have been posted to the new mozilla.dev.general newsgroup, which is accessible via news.mozilla.org."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe January 10-17, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml articles. Topics include: Pickling for OCaml?, Marching Tetrahedra and A bunch of ocaml programs.
Java An Exception Handling Framework for J2EE Applications (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly is running an article on J2EE exception handling. "One common hassle in J2EE development is exception handling: many apps devolve into a mess of inconsistent and unreliable handling of errors. In this article, ShriKant Vashishtha introduces a strategy for predictably collecting your exception handling in one place."
Secure Java apps on Linux using MD5 crypt (IBM developerWorks)Vladimir Silva shows how to interface Java to the PAM system in an IBM developerWorks article. "If you are a security developer and need to interface a Java application with the local operating system user registry, what do you do? This article gives you the answer: UNIX/Linux PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module)-compatible systems that use authentication based on the GNU MD5 extensions to the crypt() system call. I'll describe these extensions and show you a Java implementation of MD5 crypt (using FreeBSD as my UNIX)."
Lisp GNU CLISP 2.37 releasedVersion 2.37 of GNU CLISP, a Common Lisp implementation, is out. "This version adds new options to SOCKET-SERVER, changes the way a proxy can be specified for EXT:HTTP-PROXY, treats named pipes correctly, and fixes a few bugs."
HEUTE 1.0 announcedThe initial public release of HEUTE is available. "HEUTE (Hierarchical Extensible Unit Testing Environment for Common LISP) is a unit testing framework written in Common Lisp. It features a hierarchical approach to testing in which a test suite is represented by a CLOS class, with subclasses corresponding to sub-suites. A suite is considered passed only when its sub-suites also pass."
Perl What is Perl 6? (O'Reilly)chromatic looks at the motivation for designing Perl 6 in an O'Reilly article. "Perhaps the biggest imperfection of Perl 5 is its internals. Though much of the design is clever, there are also places of obsolescence and interdependence, as well as optimizations that no one remembers, but no one can delete without affecting too many other parts of the system. Refactoring an eleven-plus-year-old software project that runs on seventy-odd platforms and has to retain backwards compatibility with itself on many levels is daunting, and there are few people qualified to do it. It's also exceedingly difficult to recruit new people for such a task."
PHP PHP 4.4.2 and 5.1.2 ReleasedVersion 4.4.2 of PHP has been announced. "This release address a few small security issues, and also corrects some regressions that occurred in PHP 4.4.1. All PHP 4 users are encouraged to upgrade to this release."Also, development version 5.1.2 of PHP is out. "This release combines small feature enhancements with a fair number of bug fixes and addresses three security issues."
Python pyPdf 1.1 releasedVersion 1.1 of pyPdf, a Python-based PDF toolkit, is out. Changes include a new page rotation capability, Improved PDF reading support and PDF 1.5 support.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The January 18, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with new Python articles and resources.
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe January 15th, 2006 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at the latest discussions from the ruby-talk mailing list.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The January 17, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the latest Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading There Is No Open Source Community (O'ReillyNet)OnLamp has published a lengthy tome on open source as a purely economic phenomenon. "An updated open source mentality has profound implications for businesses looking to leverage open source in commercial ventures. Reevaluating the open source equation in economic terms presents a different takeaway. The commoditization of software and a gradual, long-term reduction in price have played far more important roles than previously recognized. Business strategy designed to leverage open source should focus more on economies of scale (in terms of user and developer bases) and less on pleasing a mythical, monolithic community."
The Open Source as Prior Art Discussion Begins (Groklaw)Groklaw takes a look at the Open Source as Prior Art Project. "It's easier to want to have something crash if you are not one of the likely first victims. The US patent system is broken. Everyone knows it. It's a runaway train. And in my opinion, it's heading toward FOSS, not because it should, but because some have SCO-like desires to work the system to target it, to slow down Linux and FOSS adoption. There haven't been enough trained USPTO examiners. And it's hard for them to find prior art, for reasons I'll explain."
Reactions to the GPLv3 Draft and a GPLv2-V3 Comparative Chart (Groklaw)Groklaw takes a look at some reactions to the draft GPLv3, and presents a chart comparing v2 to v3. "But if decent businesses want to use the code -- and that is voluntary -- perhaps they need to consider being more "freedom friendly" and realize that the GPL community is quite serious about protecting users' and developers' freedoms, by protecting the code's freedom. While many businesses are buying into the DRM, cuff-the-customer balkanization strategy, the GPL stands for users and against the business mentality of profit at *any* cost to anyone and anything."
Trade Shows and Conferences Intel and More Inside (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly has published coverage of Steve Jobs' Macworld keynote. "When Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivers his Macworld keynote address, it is some of the best theatre you will ever see. This year, in a little over an hour and a half, he reported on Apple sales statistics, introduced the many changes in iLife '06, rushed past the lack of much in the way of improvements to the iWork suite, and introduced the new Intel-based iMac. Almost as an afterthought. he let the audience know that there was one more thing. Nearly 90 minutes into his talk he just casually mentions the PowerBook is being replaced by the Intel-powered MacBook Pro. Pure theatre."
Fresh eyes to greet linux.conf.au (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld.com.au looks forward to linux.conf.au, coming up soon in New Zealand. "Like last year's conference in Canberra, the show will again play host to Free and Open Source Software bigwigs including Andrew Tridgell of Samba fame, Linux International's Jon "maddog" Hall, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, PHP founder Rasmus Lerdorf, and HP's CTO for Open Source and Linux, Bdale Garbee."
Osnabrueck IV Meeting Brings 'Akonadi' PIM Data Storage Service (KDE.News)KDE.News has this report from the Osnabrueck IV Meeting. " For the fourth consecutive year a group of KDE PIM developers followed the gracious invitation of Intevation GmbH to meet at their headquarters in Osnabrück, Germany on the first weekend in January. As in the past years, the face-time proved very productive especially since everyone felt that with KDE 4 the time for more fundamental changes has come. By the end of the meeting the group had agreed on a vision and initial architecture for a unified, extensible storage service for PIM data and metadata, allowing all applications on the desktop fast and reliable access as well as powerful search capabilities. This service, codenamed "Akonadi", together with intiatives like Plasma and Solid will form the basis of an exciting KDE 4 experience."
Companies HP Appoints New VP for Open Source, Linux (eWeek)eWeek covers the appointment of Christine Martino as HP's new VP for Open Source and Linux. "Asked what her immediate goals were for HP's open-source and Linux division, Martino said she is not coming in with a plan to make big strategy shifts, "as we already have the right strategy, which is borne out by the fact that we have top market share and the success we have had with customers," she said. "We offer them choice on the hardware side, a multiple operating system strategy and a level playing field across all of those, which works well.""
Companies push Linux partitioning effort (News.com)News.com looks into efforts by SWsoft to get OpenVZ into the Linux kernel. "In this, it has a major ally: Red Hat, the top seller of the open-source operating system, which plans to add the software to its free Fedora version of Linux for enthusiasts. The companies' move to make OpenVZ partitioning standard in Linux is timely, said Pund-IT analyst Charles King." (Thanks to Andrew Kornak)
Business TurboCASH debates moving to Linux (NewsForge)Here's a NewsForge report on the possibility that TurboCASH - a GPL-licensed but Windows-only small business accounting program - might move to Linux. "The debates surrounding these decisions sum up the major problem that the new TurboCASH faces: its 20- year legacy is both its greatest asset and its main liability. For example, it's unlikely that a brand new project would have a debate over FreePascal/Lazarus or Python."
Linux Adoption 25 Reasons to Convert to Linux (Bellevuelinux)Bellevuelinux.org presents twenty-five reasons to switch to Linux. "(10) Linux is highly resistant to system crashes and rarely needs rebooting (i.e., restarting). This can be very important for large organizations for which even a few minutes of down time can result in a substantial cost. The reason is that Linux has been designed from the ground up to be an extremely stable and robust operating system, incorporating all that has been learned about attaining these goals from the more than 35 years of history of Unix-like operating systems."
Legal Some Safety and Reliability Questions About DRM, by Victor Yodaiken (Groklaw)Victor Yodaiken discusses DRM issues in a Groklaw article. "We are entering the era of ubiquitous and safety critical computing, but the developers of DRM technologies seem to believe that computers are nothing more than personal entertainment systems for consumers. This belief is convenient, because creating DRM mechanisms that respect security, safety, and reliability concerns is going to be an expensive and complex engineering task."
Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer)Here's an Inquirer article on a company called SoftVault, which is suing a long list of companies for infringement of its DRM patents. If we weren't so opposed to software patents, we might be tempted to see this as a sort of poetic justice.A look at SoftVault's web site is also instructive: "Access to software programs or digital content, or to a device, is enabled by periodic authorization messages, akin to a 'heartbeat,' exchanged between the server and client agents. As long as these periodic authorization messages continue to be exchanged, access is enabled. If for any reason the authorization messages are terminated, access is disabled. In the case of software or digital content, disabling may involve encrypting or deleting files. In the case of a device, the disabling logic would essentially turn the device into a 'brick' that is unusable and therefore has no practical resale value."
Math You Can't Use, Ch. 6 ~ by Ben Klemens (Groklaw)Groklaw has an excerpt from Math You Can't Use, a book on copyrights, patents and software. "The world of software engineering is in no way restricted to software companies. Beyond Microsoft or thousands of smaller software vendors, almost every corporation in the world keeps a stable of programmers in the basement to write little scripts that move the company's e-mail and make the "add to cart" button do what it should. I am a programmer because I write simulations and statistical analyses. Even you are a software programmer if you use the Record Macro feature of your spreadsheet or word processor."
Interviews Previewing KDE 4 (O'ReillyNet)John Littler talks with Aaron J. Seigo about KDE 4. "Recently at a Linux show, John Littler saw a preview of a new version of KDE running on a KDE developer's laptop. The interface looked cleaner than before, and apparently there was a whole raft of new stuff under the hood. John recently interviewed KDE developer Aaron J. Seigo about the forthcoming KDE 4 (due in the fall) and also a little about the recent controversy surrounding the porting of KDE to operating systems other than Linux."
Görkem Çetin (People Behind KDE)The People Behind KDE talk with Görkem Çetin, leader of KDE Turkey. "How and when did you get involved in KDE? I got my first KDE installation when it reached version 0.3. After doing some translation for KDE in 1998, I took over the Turkish translation team work and I have been the lead of this group for 7 years now. It was the time when Linux was referred as "multithreaded, multiplatform, ..." etc. Sounds funny now." (Found on KDE.News)
Resources CLI Magic: Learn to talk awk (Linux.com)Linux.com slices and dices text with awk. "When it comes to slicing and dicing text, few tools are as powerful, or as underutilized, as awk. The name "awk" was coined from the initials of its authors, Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan -- yes, the same Kernighan of the famous Kernighan and Ritchie "C Programming Language" book. In the Linux world, every distribution includes the GNU version, gawk (/bin/awk is usually a symbolic link to /bin/gawk). The GNU version has a few more features than the original. Let's play with some of the core features common among POSIX-compliant awks."
Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)Tom Lynema assembles a Ubuntu-based Linux home media center. "Like a lot of people nowadays, I have a growing collection of digital media. My digital media is stored on a home Linux server. Most of the digital media players available today do not support protocols to connect to a Linux server, which make them unsuitable for my use. I realized the best way to connect my digital media library with my home theatre was to build my own Linux home media center (LHMC)."
SAMBA Server For Small Workgroups With Ubuntu 5.10 (Howto Forge)Howto Forge presents a tutorial on setting up Samba under Ubuntu 5.10. "This is a detailed description about the steps to set up a Ubuntu based server (Ubuntu 5.10 - Breezy Badger) to act as file- and print server for Windows (tm) workstations in small workgroups. This howto uses the tdb backend for SAMBA to store passwords and account information. This is suitable for workgroups for up to 250 users and is easier to setup than an LDAP backend."
Xen Virtualization and Linux Clustering, Part 1 (Linux Journal)Ryan Mauer introduces Xen in a Linux Journal article. "In this article, I briefly introduce the concepts of Xen virtualization and Linux clustering. From there, I show you how to set up multiple operating systems on a single computer using Xen and how to configure them for use with clustering."
Reviews Google Talk API and source code release (NewsForge)Nathan Willis examines the recently released Google Talk software. "Last month, the Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) released documentation for two extensions to the Jabber (XMPP) protocol, named Jingle Signaling and Jingle Audio. On the same day, Google -- co-creators of the extensions -- released a BSD-style-licensed library called libjingle, the implementation of the extensions that powers the company's Google Talk software. In addition to opening the API used in Google Talk itself, both actions will benefit open source instant messaging clients and perhaps increase the pressure on closed systems like Skype."
Exploring natural media graphics with Krita (Linux.com)Linux.com has a review of Krita. "[Boudewijn] Rempt's guidance has taken the project away from the 'GIMP for KDE' philosophy towards what he describes as a painting model -- namely, simulating the tools, materials, and work flow of a real-world artist, who creates a picture out of physical 'stuff' -- not pixels or shapes -- and puts 'gunk on his paper or canvas and generally pushes that around.' For starters, this means drawing tools (pens, brushes, and paint) take center stage over the image adjustment tools (histograms, contrast controls, and masks) found in the GIMP. It also requires built-in pressure sensitivity and new ways to model color. The real difference, though, is conceptual. Eventually, Rempt wants Krita to simulate the experience of working with physical media, right down to mixing colors on the artist's palette."
Xen Virtualization and Linux Clustering, Part 2 (Linux Journal)Ryan Mauer continues a look at Xen and clustering. "We ended last time after configuring our first unprivileged Xen domain. In this article, we complete our cluster and then test it using an open-source parallel ray tracer. The first thing we need to do is create additional slave nodes to be used with the cluster. So, let's get down to business."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements The Apache Software Foundation Accomplishments of 2005The Apache Software Foundation has sent out a a press release that highlights its accomplishments in 2005. "In addition to the Apache HTTP Server, recognized ASF projects include Ant, Axis Web Services, Derby, Forrest, Geronimo, James, Lenya, Lucene, Maven, mod_perl, MyFaces, Tomcat, SpamAssassin, Struts, Tapestry, and Xerces - from the core basics to in-demand solutions such as scalable Internet architectures, Cocoon, DB, Jakarta, and XML. All software developed within the ASF is free to download, use, modify, and distribute under the Open Source Apache License."
Patents back on EU agendaFlorian Mueller, founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com Web site, tells us that software patents are once again on the EU agenda. "[Mueller] believes that it is "imperative for our movement to influence the new debate on the community patent on a timely basis, or else we would find it hard, if not impossible, to stop the avalanche". In his opinion, it is "a steep challenge" to ensure that a community patent law would simultaneously address the issue of the EPO's patent granting practice, "because many politicians believe that the community patent is an important measure from a competitiveness point of view, and won't like the all-or-nothing notion of having to solve two huge problems at one fell swoop". But, he adds, "defining what is patentable would be needed to really make Europe more competitive"."
Commercial announcements Aheeva collaborates with Asterisk and SugarCRMAheeva has announced a new version of their Asterisk-based IP Contact Center Software. "Aheeva CCS Version 2.0 is smarter IP contact center software, featuring improved quality monitoring tools, enhanced statistical analysis and tools to increase agent efficiency. Now supporting SugarCRM, a customer relationship management solution, Version 2.0 remains a cost-effective solution based on open source technology."
EnterpriseDB Announces Partner ProgramEnterpriseDB has announced a new partner program. "EnterpriseDB, the worlds leading enterprise-class, open source database company, today launched a formal partner program that enables companies to incorporate the award-winning EnterpriseDB database into their business models. Via the new partner program, Technology Partners, including SugarCRM, JasperSoft, Continuent, and TenFold, will collaborate with EnterpriseDB to certify products with the EnterpriseDB database, Service Partners, including dbConcert, Fusion Technologies, Optaros and Buda Consulting will grow market opportunities by providing professional services supporting EnterpriseDB, and Business Partners, including Contegix, will offer EnterpriseDB as an integral component of solutions for end-user customers."
HP to sell Mandriva systems in Latin AmericaMandriva has announced a deal with HP wherein HP will offer systems preloaded with Mandriva Linux throughout Latin America. "The first pre-loaded machines - one targeted to the consumer market and one for the enterprise - are shipping in Brazil. HP and Mandriva have been collaborating for several months to certify various system configurations and optimize performance, as well as expand language support. Technical support will be offered in both Spanish and Portuguese for all of Latin America."
Lattix LDM for Eclipse Now AvailableLattix, Inc. has announced the release of Lattix LDM for Eclipse. "With this new Eclipse plugin, Lattix further extends the developers' capabilities to visualize and maintain the architecture during application development by delivering the power of Lightweight Dependency Models (LDM) to formalize, communicate and control the architecture of Eclipse projects."
Linux Professional Institute Offers Certification Exams at IBM Software UniversityThe Linux Professional Institute will be offering discounted exams at the IBM Software University event in Las Vegas, NV on January 19, 2006.
MySQL Awarded GSA Contract Schedule 70MySQL AB has announced the award of a five-year US government GSA contract. "More than 8 million active installations around the world employ MySQL, including thousands of federal, state, and local government organizations such as Los Alamos National Labs, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Geological Survey, NASA and the Department of Defense. MySQL database products are recognized for low cost-of-ownership (TCO), as well as superior ease of use, performance and reliability. MySQL's inclusion on the GSA schedule is enabled by an agreement with Carahsoft Technology, a leading government IT solutions provider based in Reston, Virginia that represents a select group of top tier software and hardware manufacturers."
Novell Reaffirms Commitment to ODFNovell sent out a reaffirmation of its support for the OpenDocument format. "Novell today reaffirmed its roadmap for support of the OpenDocument file format in current and future Novell(r) products, which reinforces Novell's commitment to open standards, customer choice and flexibility. Novell has delivered OpenDocument support in its SUSE(r) Linux distribution since March 2005. Novell will deliver complete OpenDocument support in the next edition of its enterprise desktop in 2006."
Open-Xchange Hires Executive VP of Marketing StrategyOpen-Xchange has announced the hiring of Daniel M. Kusnetzky as the executive vice president of Marketing Strategy. "Kusnetzky, most recently vice president of IDC's System Software research, was responsible for research and analysis on the worldwide market for operating environments and virtualization software. Prior to his 11 years at IDC, he spent 15 years with Digital Equipment Corporation, where he was responsible for program and product management, and marketing in the areas of client software, server software, and clustered and networked systems. Kusnetzky appears regularly as a keynote speaker at industry trade shows and is a noted expert on the open source industry."
Penguin Computing Recruits HP ExecPenguin Computing has announced the hiring of Pauline Nist as Senior Vice President of Product Development and Management. "Pauline, formerly Vice President of HP's Enterprise, Storage and Servers business unit, brings over 20 years of in-depth experience in the high performance computing (HPC) and enterprise markets to this new position."
LI president Jon Hall to form UnifiedRoot Advisory BoardLinux International president Jon Hall will form a UnifiedRoot Advisory Board. "UnifiedRoot, the company that has created a new and simplified Internet addressing system for corporate and public top-level domains (TLDs), has appointed Jon Hall, president of Linux International, as a founding member of its advisory board. He will assist UnifiedRoot in the expansion of the advisory board with the specific task of addressing technical and policy issues."
New Books Embedded Linux System Design and Development publishedThe book Embedded Linux System Design and Development by Amol Lad is available from Auerbach Publications.
Pragmatic Bookshelf releases "Learn to Program"Pragmatic Bookshelf has published the book Learn to Program by Chris Pine.
Running Linux, Fifth Edition - O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book Running Linux, Fifth Edition by Matthias Kalle Dalheimer and Matt Welsh.
Understanding Linux Network Internals - O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book Understanding Linux Network Internals by Christian Benvenuti.
Resources Three new Audio Libre articlesLinuxUser & Developer magazine has announced three new PDF articles in the Audio Libre series. Titles include FAVE raves - a new event for free software creativity, The 64-bit question - 64 Studio distribution and Snake dance - the Kamaelia streaming media system.
Grid Computing Newsletter Looks at Key Open Source Development EffortsA new issue of the Globus Consortium Journal has been announced. "The Globus Consortium (founded by IBM, HP, Sun, Intel, Nortel, Univa and Cisco) today published the latest issue of the Globus Consortium Journal. (http://www.globusconsortium.org/journal). The newsletter focuses on open source Grid computing projects - and this month features developer interviews with the leaders of the three most important services in the Globus Toolkit (www.globustoolkit.org)."
Contests and Awards Performance Technologies wins Product of the Year awardPerformance Technologies has announced the naming of their NexusWare(TM) Linux-Based Software Suite as Product of the Year by Internet Telephony Magazine. "The NexusWare Software Suite is a development, management and operating system environment which enables users of Performance Technologies' hardware and platform products to rapidly develop and deploy value-added capabilities with their solutions. NexusWare was chosen as an INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year due to its strong embodiment of Linux and its ability to facilitate the use of open-source software packages."
Upcoming Events Austin Group to meet in Ottawa, Feb 2006The tenth plenary of the Austin Group meeting will be held in Ottawa, Canada on February 21-24, 2006.
EUSecWest papers and CanSecWest CFPThe selection of papers for EUSecWest (London, U.K. February 20-21, 2006) and a call for papers for CanSecWest (Vancouver, Canada April 3-7, 2006) have been announced. CanSecWest papers are due by March 15, 2006.
FrOSCon 2006 - Call for PapersA Call for Papers has gone out for FrOSCon 2006. The event will take place on June 24 and 25, 2006 near Bonn, Germany. The Deadline for submission is March 15, 2006.
2006 GCC and GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit CFPA call for papers has gone out for the 2006 GCC and GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit. The event will be held on June 28 - 30, 2006 in Ottawa, Canada. Submissions are due by February 15, 2006.
HLUG Special Event February 1st with Peter Salus (Groklaw)Groklaw has announced a panel discussion that is being put on by the Hamilton Linux User Group. "For those of you near Hamilton, Canada, or those who like to travel, here's some news of an event you might like to attend. Peter Salus, Bob Young, owner of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Lulu.com digital publishing, founder of The Center for the Public Domain, and co-founder of Red Hat Software, and EFF's Policy Coordinator, Americas, Ren Bucholz will be the guests at the Hamilton Linux User Group on February 1st. The topic of the panel discussion will be Linux v. SCO and the relevant freedom issues and legalities."
LinuxFest Northwest 2006 call for presentersA call for presenters has gone out for LinuxFest Northwest 2006. The event will take place on April 29, 2006 in Bellingham Wash. "This is an annual, International grass roots event put on by Lugs from the USA and Canada."
LinuxTag 2006 Call for ProjectsA Call for Projects has gone out for LinuxTag 2006. The event takes place in Wiesbaden, Germany on May 3-6, 2006. Projects are due by February 3.
Call for help for LinuxTag2006A LinuxTag 2006 call for help has been sent to the Linux Audio Users list. The event will be held in Wiesbaden, Germany on May 3-6, 2006. "A booth at LinuxTag is a good opportunity to present Linux Audio to the people, not only to developers but more to users. The crowd is mostly industry (producers, technicians, musicians) at the weekdays and home-recording-users at the weekend. Don't be afraid, there won't be much questions about setting up drivers for consumer-cards (and If there are, we usually send them to their distributions booth :-) ). But there will be a lot people thinking about using your app in studio! So you definitly don't want to miss this chance!"
LPI Exam Labs in Houston, Texas, January 2006The Linux Professional Institute will be holding a discounted exam lab at the daratechPLANT conference in Houston, Texas on January 23-25, 2006.
OpenOffice.org 2006 Conference - Call for LocationA Call for Location has gone out for the 2006 OpenOffice.org Conference. "The first three OpenOffice.org conferences in Hamburg, Berlin and Koper/Capodistria were a huge success. The highlight so far was this year's conference which, for the first time, was organized by a team of volunteer community members. Now we are wondering if this outstanding event can actually be bettered. Therefore, we are searching for the perfect location for the OpenOffice.org Conference in 2006."
SELinux Symposium Online Registration is OpenOnline registration for the next SELinux Symposium has been opened. The event takes place on February 27 - March 3, 2006 in Baltimore, Md.
TimeSys to Host Educational Webinars for Embedded DevelopersTimeSys has announced a pair of educational webinars for embedded Linux developers. "Each webinar will be led by a Linux development expert using LinuxLink by TimeSys(TM), a continuously updated, Web-based resource for embedded Linux development. Webinar hosts will guide attendees through the process of creating a custom Linux platform for an embedded development project targeting a PowerPC or x86 processor..." The events will take place on January 24 and 31, 2006.
Events: January 19 - March 16, 2006
Audio and Video programs Tux Power! - a compilation of music made with LinuxTux Power! is a freely available music compilation from members of Linuxaudio.org. "Linuxaudio.org has released its first compilation CD of music by artists using libre software - Tux Power! Every single part of the CD was made on Linux, including all the music, the mastering (with Jamin) and the artwork (with Scribus)."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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