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LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 9, 2006Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouthNovell's February 7 press release proclaiming its contributions to the X.org and GNOME projects was generally well received. It is hard to disagree with better graphics and more fun eye candy, after all. Novell's work shows that the free software community has the potential to take the leadership on desktop issues, and that is a good thing. Free software desktops will only take over the world if the community can produce a desktop experience that is truly better than the alternatives.The issue that has come up in some quarters, however, is that of "community." Developers in the wider GNOME community, in particular, are feeling somewhat excluded from the process. Novell's work, to them, is not a community development - it's a product which has emerged in complete form from a corporate cathedral. While it is great that Novell is doing this work, they say, wouldn't it have been better to involve the community from the outset? Now community members are in a position of reviewing a large drop of code that they had no part in designing, and not all of them are happy about it. If the words of Novell's Dan Winship are representative of the company's position (he claims to be speaking only for himself), Novell believes it has taken the right approach:
If we had proposed the changes on the mailing lists, it would have
started a huge discussion about what people hated about the design
("you can't make the panel menu depend on beagle!!!") and how it
should be different. And then we could have either (a) completely
ignored everyone and done it ourselves anyway, or (b) had a long
conversation about the merits of the design and then not actually
finished the code in time for NLD10.
So we did it ourselves, and now either GNOME will like what we did, in which case, yay, free code for GNOME, or GNOME won't like what we did, in which case, no harm no foul for GNOME, and yay, brand differentiation for Novell. Dan goes on to say that it simply is not possible to perform software design in a community setting. Everything good which has ever been done in the GNOME project has been the result of a small group's work. All big community debates tend to do is to slow down or stop the process. "Design by committee," says Dan, does not work.
GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh
This is a very sorry state of affairs for GNOME. But it is not only
Novell and its employees who have adopted this commons-sapping,
community-tearing, morally and intellectually lazy approach to open
design and development in GNOME.... Ultimately, this is *killing
our community*. And it must be fought.
One useful perspective in the discussion came from Alan Cox, who made a distinction between "design by community" and "design in the community." The latter approach leaves the bulk of the design work in the small group which is most interested in it, but which recognizes that the community may have something to add. When design work is taken out of the community altogether, something is lost:
If you design stuff in secret then publish it, it will have no
review of quality, no style checking, no security audit, no extra
pairs of eyes and extra brains on it. Mouths are in oversupply but
brains/eyes are not.
Jeff agreed, and went on to compare GNOME development with how the Linux kernel is managed:
While the Linux process has its warts, there are two things it is
great at that we should mention here: First, a fairly easy to
understand technical and social leadership - decisions get
made. Second, a pretty uncompromising approach to design in the
community - it's really hard to drop a pre-cooked hairball (cat
hair *or* angel hair) into the kernel process without getting
roasted, spanked and harshly reviewed.
If, from this particular perspective, the kernel process is seen as being more successful than GNOME, it might be worth asking why. It is indeed true that the kernel community responds poorly to large piles of code which appear out of the blue. Often, such code must go through substantial revisions before it will be considered for merging - the community gets its say in the end after all. The reiser4 experience is a good example; the new version of the Reiser filesystem showed up in complete form, with a request for expedited merging. Numerous problems were found with the code, however, and reiser4 remains out of the kernel years later, even with numerous fixes made and features removed. In the kernel space, most developers learn, sooner or later, to involve the community early in a project's life. The leadership issue is worth a look as well. As Jeff pointed out, the kernel has a relatively clear decision-making process, though it can be frustrating for contributors to work with. Discussions tend not to go on forever because, in one way or another, decisions get made. Instead, says Jeff, GNOME is "without coherent leadership." He would like to see the GNOME project structure reworked so that decisions are easier to make - though what form those changes would take is yet to be worked out. Another issue, raised by Havoc Pennington, is the vision the project has for itself. The GNOME project, says Havoc, needs to come up with a better idea of who its user community is and to not be afraid to lose users who are outside of that community. When the project has a clearer sense of what it is trying to do, decisions will be easier to make. The kernel project knows what it is trying to do:
They are writing a component for use by developers, not an end-user
product. And they aren't ashamed of it and they optimize for it and
they do it well.
Havoc suggests that GNOME might want to take a similar approach: create a series of components which can be rearranged and customized by distributors and gadget-makers to fit their specific needs. Such an orientation would let GNOME focus on making the best tool possible while allowing others, who are arguably closer to the ultimate users, to make the desktop fit those users' needs. That leads to one of the driving forces behind this entire debate. To a great extent, companies distributing Linux (or products incorporating Linux) tend not to differentiate their offerings with kernel features. Distributors do add kernel patches, but the size of those patches has gone down considerably with the advent of the 2.6 development process. This is an important point: the development process change has had the effect of significantly reducing the differences between distributors' kernels. But user interface changes are visible to all who work with a system in a way which most kernel changes are not. Distributors will thus always have a strong incentive to put their particular mark on the desktop and to try to have the coolest features first. So, at best, we are likely to see more desktop work done in relative secret until it is deemed ready to be shipped. At worst, we could see a repeat of the highly tweaked desktops shipped during the worst of the proprietary Unix days. Distributors have strong reasons to differentiate their offerings, but they also depend heavily on projects like GNOME to provide the foundation on which they can create those offerings. Taking much of their development semi-proprietary may help sales in the next year or so, but that could happen at the cost of eventually tearing apart the community upon which they depend, even if they do not necessarily respect its design guidance. If GNOME is to remain healthy well into the future, these two forces will have to be reconciled. The solution will likely involve a combination of project governance changes and a more community-oriented approach by all participating companies. This should be something the community can achieve.
Easter eggs and free softwareSomeday, when you feel that you have been sufficiently productive for a while, fire up the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet application. Select a cell, and insert =Game("StarWars") into that cell. Launch missiles at alien creatures until you feel ready to get something useful done again. Yes, the OpenOffice.org developers, evidently feeling that the application![[StarWars]](/images/ns/openoffice-starwars-sm.png)
had become too small and quick, decided to toss in an easter egg. Judging
from the occasional German-language popup window, this feature has been
present for quite some time. Others exist as well, happy hunting.
Easter eggs have been present in software - free and proprietary - for many years. Old versions of make used to respond to "make love" with "not war?"; your editor notes with sadness that GNU make does not retain that feature. In general, easter eggs are a way for developers to express themselves, and are generally seen by users as amusing, or harmless at the worst. Recently, however, an OpenOffice user complained about the presence of the StarWars game. Free programs, he says, should not contain hidden features like that. One of the advantages of free software is supposed to be the lack of surprises; if you install an office suite, that is what you should get. The hiding of games, pictures of the developers, and other unrelated features in free software threatens to make the whole enterprise appear to be insufficiently serious. Others have argued that easter eggs can endanger the use of free software in settings (like schools) where hidden games might not be welcome. This is, they say, one Microsoft feature that we do not need to emulate. To that end, various bug reports have been filed asking for the removal of easter egg features. As a counterpoint, one could argue that free software is supposed to be fun for both its developers and its users. Those who don't want to play "StarWars" might be well advised to install a sense of humor upgrade and simply not invoke the feature - which, after all, one has to go looking for in the first place. When the code police start going after easter eggs, humorous diagnostics (the kernel still has several variants of the "peripheral is on fire" message), or possibly offensive code comments, some of the developers will start to think that they want to go elsewhere. As free software development processes mature and the user base increases, it seems likely that many of the easter eggs are likely to disappear, especially in the larger, more mainstream applications. Developers who are interested in code quality and bloat will see an easy way to remove an apparently unnecessary feature. Projects which have their own PR departments (and, yes, such projects exist) will not welcome the sort of attention that easter eggs bring. And those which remain may be excised by the more business-oriented distributors. But, free software developers being what they are, there will always be a surprise or two waiting for those who know where to look.
Security crypt_blowfishIn the early days of Unix, the DES-based algorithm used to encrypt (actually, to generate hashes from) passwords was considered to be quite secure. Hashing a password took a significant fraction of a second, so brute-force attacks were considered impractical. The possibility of attacks using hardware-based DES engines was closed off by the addition of a "salt" parameter which perturbed the algorithm slightly. All in all, the early crypt() authors felt pretty good about their work, to the point that the encrypted passwords were stored in a world-readable file and nobody worried about it.Along came faster processors and smarter software. Simple passwords became easy to crack with the right software (which was widely available), and the harder passwords looked less hard all the time. So a few changes were made, including moving the password hashes to a read-protected file and changing to the MD5 hashing algorithm. Everything looked better for a while. But along came faster processors and smarter software, and now MD5 passwords look rather less secure than they once did. The attentive reader might notice a pattern here. Hashing algorithms must be sufficiently expensive to compute that they are not susceptible to brute-force attacks. But they cannot be so expensive that the user community rebels. So the designers of a password hashing algorithm must find a compromise between security from attackers and security from aggravated users. As computers inevitably become more powerful, that compromise must shift in favor of the attackers. A solution to this problem was presented by Niels Provos and David Mazières in a 1999 USENIX paper. Their conclusion was that, in order to have a future-proof password hashing algorithm, one must be able to dial up the computational cost of that algorithm over time. If the cost can be provided as a parameter - and stored with the hashed password - then password hashing can be made more expensive (in terms of CPU cycles) while maintaining compatibility with currently-hashed passwords. The authors implemented a version of the Blowfish algorithm with a tweak to the key schedule generation mechanism. That code has a "cost" parameter which controls how expensive the generation step is; a higher cost will result in a longer key schedule generation task. Needless to say, code checking a password must use the same cost as the code which initially generated the hash, or the results will not match. OpenBSD has used the variable-cost Blowfish code (called "bcrypt") for some years now, but it is still relatively difficult to find on Linux systems. Perhaps that will change with the release of crypt_blowfish 1.0, just announced by Solar Designer. This release, being "the first mature version," comes with a password-hashing interface and a PAM module for hooking it into Linux systems. It should, thus, be relatively easy for distributors to add to their configurations, as an option, at least. Making the front door to Linux systems a little more secure has just gotten easier. (For more information, see the crypt_blowfish web page).
New vulnerabilities ADOdb: PostgresSQL command injection
gnocatan: buffer overflow
kernel: denial of service
mozilla: multiple vulnerabilities
OpenOffice.org: bypass security settings
php: multiple vulnerabilities
PHP: safe_mode bypass
unzip: long file name buffer overflow
xpdf heap based buffer overflow
Updated vulnerabilities apache: cross-site scripting
auth_ldap: format string vulnerability
blender: integer 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
drupal: several vulnerabilities
emacs21: format string vulnerability in "movemail"
enscript: arbitrary code execution
evolution: format string issues
fetchmail: multidrop bug
ffmpeg: buffer overflow
firefox: multiple vulnerabilities
Foomatic: Arbitrary command execution in foomatic-rip
gaim: buffer overflow
gallery: cross-site scripting vulnerability
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
imagemagick: arbitrary command execution
imap: buffer overflow in c-client
ipsec-tools: denial of service
kdebase: local root vulnerability
kdelibs: heap overflow
kdelibs: kate backup file permission leak
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel: multiple vulnerabilities
kernel multiple vulnerabilities
LibAST: privilege escalation
libdbi-perl: insecure temporary file
libgadu: memory alignment bug
libgd2: buffer overflows in PNG handling
libmail-audit-perl: insecure temporary file creation
libpam-ldap: authentication bypass
libTIFF: buffer overflow
libungif: memory corruption
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
libxml2: multiple buffer overflows
libXpm: new buffer overflows
lsh-utils: local file descriptor leak
lynx: arbitrary command execution
mailman: denial of service
mod_auth_pgsql: format string flaws
mod_python: remote access vulnerability
mozilla-thunderbird: GUI display truncation vulnerability
mydns: denial of service
mysql: low-impact security fix
nbd: arbitrary code execution
ncpfs: multiple vulnerabilities
nfs-server: buffer overflow
nfs-utils: arbitrary code execution
ntp: uses wrong gid
openmotif: buffer overflows
openssh: GSSAPI credential disclosure
OpenSSH: double shell expansion
otrs: multiple vulnerabilities
Paros: default administrator password
pcre3: arbitrary code execution
perl: setuid vulnerabilities
perl: integer overflow
phpbb2: multiple vulnerabilities
phpMyAdmin: multiple vulnerabilities
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
spamassassin: denial of service
squid: authentication handling
struts: cross-site scripting vulnerability
sudo: vulnerability via scripts
sudo: missing input sanitizing
sudo: race condition
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: multiple DoS issues
tetex: integer overflows
texinfo: temporary file vulnerability
trac: cross-site scripting vulnerability
udev: insecure files in /dev/input
unalz: arbitrary code execution
up-imapproxy: format string vulnerabilities
uw-imap: buffer overflow
vixie-cron: crontab allows any user to read another users crontabs
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: 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 2.6.15.3, released on February 6. It contains a single, one-line fix for a remotely-exploitable denial of service vulnerability in the ICMP code.The 2.6.15.4 release is under review as of this writing. It is a rather larger patch with almost two dozen important fixes. The current 2.6 prepatch is 2.6.16-rc2, released by Linus on February 2. In addition to the expected big pile of fixes, this prepatch adds another set of semaphore-to-mutex conversions, a USB driver for ET61X151 and ET61X251 camera controllers, a big Video4Linux update, the direct migration patches, some slab allocator tweaks for NUMA machines, several new system calls (openat() and friends, pselect(), ppoll()), a big ACPI update, and the EDAC error detection/correction code. The long-format changelog has lots of details. The mainline git repository contains almost 500 post-rc2 patches as of this writing. They are dominated by fixes, but there is also a patch to export the system's CPU topology in sysfs, parallel port support for SGI O2 systems, administrator-changeable permissions in configfs, an OCFS2 update, the unshare() system call, and various architecture updates. The current -mm tree is 2.6.16-rc2-mm1. Recent changes to -mm include a rework of the mempool code, a new version of the core timekeeping and NTP rework patches, better scheduler support for multicore systems, a feature for forcing kernel allocations to be spread across NUMA nodes, and an LED driver subsystem.
Kernel development news Quotes of the week
We've got bin-only kernel modules, much of which are clearly
immoral, they are clearly hurting us and still we do things to keep
them going - e.g. the refusal to remove 8K stacks from the
.config. We are increasingly getting into a situation where
loopholes are found and utilized to give back as little as
possible, upsetting the balance.
so i believe _something_ should be done to tip the balance, because the negative effects are already hurting us. I'd support the move to the GPLv3 only as a tool to move the balance back into a fairer situation, not as some new moral mechanism. The GPLv3 might be overboard for that, but still the situation does exist undeniably. -- Ingo Molnar
After seven years and hundreds of issues, I've decided to take a
break from writing Kernel Traffic for awhile. I'd like to thank all
the people who helped out, providing me with hosting space,
hardware to work on, suggestions and bug reports, and money. And
I'd especially like to thank Linus and the rest of the kernel
developers for so powerfully changing the world for the better.
-- Zack Brown
Asynchronous I/O and vectored operationsThe file_operations structure contains pointers to the basic I/O operations exported by filesystems and char device drivers. This structure currently contains three different methods for performing a read operation:
ssize_t (*read) (struct file *filp, char __user *buffer, size_t size,
loff_t *pos);
ssize_t (*readv) (struct file *filp, const struct iovec *iov,
unsigned long niov, loff_t *pos);
ssize_t (*aio_read) (struct kiocb *iocb, char __user *buffer,
size_t size, loff_t pos);
Normal read operations end up with a call to the read() method, which reads a single segment from the source into the supplied buffer. The readv() method implements the system call by the same name; it will read one segment and scatter it into several user buffers, each of which is described by an iovec structure. Finally, aio_read() is invoked in response to asynchronous I/O requests; it reads a single segment into the supplied buffer, possibly returning before the operation is complete. There is a similar set of three methods for write operations. Back in November, Zach Brown posted a vectored AIO patch intended to provide a combination of the vectored (readv()/writev()) operations and asynchronous I/O. To that end, it defined a couple of new AIO operations for user space, and added two more file_operations methods: aio_readv() and aio_writev(). There was some resistance to the idea of creating yet another pair of operations, and a feeling that there was a better way. The result, after work by Christoph Hellwig and Badari Pulavarty, is a new vectored AIO patch with a much simpler interface - at the cost of a significant API change. The observation was made that a number of subsystems use vectored I/O operations internally in all cases, even in the case of a "scalar" read() or write() call. For example, the read() function in the current mainline pipe driver is:
static ssize_t
pipe_read(struct file *filp, char __user *buf, size_t count, loff_t *ppos)
{
struct iovec iov = { .iov_base = buf, .iov_len = count };
return pipe_readv(filp, &iov, 1, ppos);
}
Here, the read() method is essentially superfluous; it is provided simply because the API requires it. So, it was asked, rather than adding more vectored I/O operations, why not just "vectorize" the standard API? The resulting patch set brings about that change in a couple of steps. The first of those is to change the prototypes for the asynchronous I/O methods to:
ssize_t (*aio_read) (struct kiocb *iocb, const struct iovec *iov,
unsigned long niov, loff_t pos);
ssize_t (*aio_write) (struct kiocb *iocb, const struct iovec *iov,
unsigned long niov, loff_t pos);
Thus, the single buffer has been replaced with an array of iovec structures, each describing one segment of the I/O operation. For the current single-buffer AIO read and write commands, the new code creates a single-entry iovec array and passes it to the new methods. (It's worth noting that, as the code is currently written, that iovec array is no longer valid after aio_read() or aio_write() returns; that array will need to be copied for any operation which remains outstanding when those functions finish). The prototypes of a couple of VFS helper functions (generic_file_aio_read() and generic_file_aio_write()) have been changed in a similar manner. These changes ripple through every driver and filesystem providing AIO methods, making the patch reasonably large. A second patch then adds two new AIO operations (IOCB_CMD_PREADV and IOCB_CMD_PWRITEV) to the user-space interface, making vectored asynchronous I/O available to applications. The patch set then goes one step further by eliminating the readv() and writev() methods altogether. With this patch in place, any filesystem or driver which wishes to provide vectored I/O operations must do so via aio_read() and aio_write() instead. Note that this change does not imply that asynchronous operations themselves must be supported - it is entirely permissible (if suboptimal) for aio_read() and aio_write() to operate synchronously at all times. But this patch does make it necessary for modules wishing to provide vectored operations to, at a minimum, provide the file_operations methods for asynchronous I/O. If the AIO methods are not available for a given device or filesystem, a call to readv() or writev() will be emulated through multiple calls to read() or write(), as usual. Finally, with this patch in place, it is possible for a driver or filesystem to omit the read() and write() methods altogether if the asynchronous versions are provided. If, for example, only aio_read() is provided, all read() and readv() system calls will be handled by the aio_read() method. If, someday, all code implements the AIO methods, the regular read() and write() methods could be removed altogether. That would result in an interface which contained only one method for all read operations (and one more for writes). This change would also realize the vision expressed at the 2003 Kernel Summit that all I/O paths inside the kernel would, in the end, be made asynchronous. There has been little discussion of the current patch set, so it is hard to predict what may ultimately become of it. Given that it simplifies a core kernel API while simultaneously making it more powerful, however, chances are that some version of this patch will find its way into the kernel eventually. (For more information on the AIO interface, see this Driver Porting Series article or chapter 15 of LDD3).
Software suspend - againLast week's Kernel Page looked at one small piece of the software suspend debate. Meanwhile, the wider discussion has flared up yet again, and looks unlikely to slow down. Developers of the in-kernel suspend-to-disk code are working on moving parts of it to user space and generally tweaking the existing structure. Nigel Cunningham and other supporters of the Suspend2 patches, instead, still hope to see that work merged, eventually replacing much of the existing implementation. The discussion does not appear to be nearing any sort of resolution.One has become clear, though: Pavel Machek has a firm grip on the current in-tree swsusp code, and that puts Suspend2 at a significant disadvantage. Pavel has taken a strong position against many aspects of the Suspend2 code, and seems determined that it will never be merged. One gets the sense, sometimes, that he just wishes Nigel and his code would go away. Nigel is somewhat more persistent than that, however. At one point, the two suggested that Linus and Andrew should make a decision between the two implementations and settle the debate. Andrew, however, does not want to do that:
You're unlikely to hear anything dispositive from either of us on
this... What we hope and expect is that you'll come up with an
agreed path in accordance with general kernel coding and
development principles. Linus and I don't want to have to make
tiebreak decisions - if we have to do that, the system has failed.
So much for the easy solution. Since then, the relevant parties have been talking, but without a whole lot of apparent progress. Perhaps the more interesting part of Andrew's note, however, was this:
If you want my cheerfully uninformed opinion, we should toss both
of them out and implement suspend3, which is based on the
kexec/kdump infrastructure. There's so much duplication of intent
here that it's not funny.
kexec(), remember, is a relatively new system call used to boot from one kernel directly into another without going through the whole BIOS startup ritual. The kdump code uses kexec() to perform safe crash dumps. When the kernel panics, it uses kexec() to boot into a small, special-purpose kernel which has been lurking in a reserved part of memory for just this occasion. The new kernel restricts itself to the reserved memory, so the entire memory image of the old, crashed kernel remains intact. That image can then be written to disk in a relatively safe manner. It is true that suspend-to-disk can be thought of as a sort of kernel dump; the only difference is this little desire to be able to restart the kernel from the dump image at a future time. Using kdump for suspend-to-disk has some obvious appeal. A great deal of effort now goes into freezing most processes on the system - but not the ones needed to complete the suspend process. The suspend code also must be very careful about what kernel state it changes as it goes about its work. Simply jumping into a separate dump kernel has the potential to make many of those problems go away. It might almost be like the Good Old Days, when BIOS-based suspend code simply worked most of the time. A kdump-based suspend would not be without its costs. In particular, some people might balk at reserving a substantial chunk of memory for the suspend kernel. And, of course, the entire idea remains vaporware for now. Andrew's suggestion generated little discussion on the mailing list. But, just maybe, it will have ignited a gleam in some hacker's eye. A simpler, more robust suspend mechanism based on kdump which appeared out of left field might just solve this problem - and put the whole tiresome debate in the past - for good.
PID virtualization: a wealth of choicesA set of patches for the management of virtual process IDs within containers was discussed here a few weeks ago. That patch set drew some interest, but a fair amount of concern as well. It is a large set of changes reaching all over the kernel; it seemed to many that there should be a better way. Since then, two candidates for the "better way" have been posted, and the situation seems less clear than ever. This sort of virtualization is clearly of interest to a number of projects, but there is little consensus on how it should be done.One of the new entrants is the OpenVZ PID virtualization code, posted by Kirill Korotaev but originally developed by Alexey Kuznetsov. These patches introduce a container called a VPS (virtual private server), each of which can virtualize a number of aspects of the host system, including process IDs. Each process has a real and virtual PID; all PIDs of the virtual variety are identified by having a specific bit set. In the simple case, the virtual-PID bit is the only difference between the real and virtual IDs, but more complex mappings are possible as well. There is the usual set of functions to convert between real and virtual PIDs (and group, process group, and thread IDs as well). All code which deals with user space must work with virtual PIDs, but internal code uses real PIDs, so a certain amount of awareness is called for. Since there is a specific bit used to mark virtual PIDs, the code is at least able to catch situations where the wrong type of PID is used. There is also a change to the internal fork() implementation allowing a process to be created with a specific virtual PID; this feature can be used to launch a new container with its top-level process having PID 1. The other implementation is this "process ID namespace" patch set from Eric Biederman. It does away with the concept of virtual PIDs in favor of a different view of the problem. For starters, every process gets a "wait ID" - the process ID by which its parents know it. In most cases, the "wait ID" will be the same as the PID, but, in cases where a process is the leader of a virtualized group, the two will be different. Then Eric adds process ID spaces. A process ID space (pspace) is simply a range of independent PIDs, associated with tree of processes. By default, the entire system shares one process space, but, by way of a clone() flag, a new process can be created in its own space. Process IDs are unique within any one pspace, but may be duplicated in other spaces. So the kernel, when it must identify a process unambiguously using a PID, must now use a (pspace, PID) tuple. Functions which deal in PIDs - kill_pg() or find_task_by_pid(), for example - get a new pspace parameter. This approach has the advantage that there is no distinction between real and virtual PIDs - all PIDs are interpreted relative to a PID space. There is no real possibility of confusing real and virtual PIDs, or interpreting PIDs relative to the wrong pspace. So it should be a relatively safe addition to the kernel. On the other hand, Eric's patches don't even try to address the larger virtualization problem; anybody wanting to implement complete containers will still have to do that work separately. Of course, as has been seen, a few projects have already done that work; it's just a matter of seeing which implementation, if any, gets into the mainline. On that question, it is far too early to say what might happen. Linus has indicated that he likes the container concept from the OpenVZ patches, but that does not necessarily extend to the PID virtualization part of it. Eric has tried to focus the discussion with a summary of the relevant issues and questions which must be resolved going forward. But there is a certain amount of disagreement, and a few projects which have each invested significant time into their particular approaches. It may be a while before the dust settles on this one.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials Tools to roll your own distributionCreating live Linux CDs has become a fairly common pastime. Many of the distributions added to the distributions list in the past year are live CDs tailored to specific purposes. Many people start with a live CD that they like and then add and subtract packages to create the CD of their dreams. Debian-based KNOPPIX remains one of the most popular distributions to use as a starting point.Many major vendors will create a live CD to showcase a current snapshot of a release, and often a live CD is used to showcase some other software package. IBM developerWorks takes a look at how to distribute your software packages on a live Linux CD. The Slackware-based SLAX-Live CD is another popular starting point. SLAX and many variants use shell scripts from the Linux Live project to tailor their favorite distribution into a live CD. Canonical Ltd. created Launchpad, a suite of tools (some proprietary, some free) that allows Ubuntu Linux to be easily turned into Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and a host of other variants. Fedora fans now have the Kadischi Fedora Live CD Project, which has recently created Fedora Core 5 Test 2 live CDs. This is only a quick view of the growing number of tools for rolling your own Linux distribution.
New Releases BLAG30002 ReleasedBLAG Linux and GNU has released BLAG30002 (Johannesburg). "BLAG30002 is based on Fedora Core 3 plus updates, adds apps from Dag, Freshrpms, NewRPMS, and includes custom packages. BLAG30002 is the latest update to the BLAG30k series, using the last updates from Fedora before moving to the Fedora Legacy project."
GoblinXThe GoblinX Linux Project has released GoblinX Premium 2006.1 edition, exclusively at On-Disk.com.
Distribution News Ubuntu Distro SprintProgress on Dapper Drake continues, in spite of the "Distro Plague of Death" that had most of the team down before day 3. Most team members were back at work by Day 4, looking at upstream timezone data structures, klibc build failures on Sparc, remaining X bugs, and more. Here's the Day 5 progress report, and the final report from Day 6.
Ubuntu archive now running on Soyuz (Launchpad)The migration of Ubuntu's archive to Launchpad's archive management infrastructure, Soyuz, has been completed successfully. For most users this should be completely transparent.
Debian Project Leader Elections 2006: Call for nominationsIt's time once again for the Debian Project Leader Elections. Nominations will be open until February 26, 2006.
Extremadura Sessions: the i18n infrastructure session September 2006The Debian i18n team is planning on a session in Extremadura, Spain next September. Click below for more information.
YDL v4.1 goes Gold-Master --again.Yellow Dog Linux pulled the gold-master 4.1 ISOs from replication in order to correct some bugs. These have mostly been squashed now, and the gold-master CD-Rs are again on their way to the replication facility. "[One] bug which concerns dual and quad-core G5 Power Macs remains open. We put our best into this issue, but as with all software projects a line must be drawn and the product must ship. As such, this bug is not a show-stopper and the work-around requires less than a minute, post-installation."
Unofficial Fedora FAQ UpdateThe Unofficial Fedora FAQ has had an update. "Also, fedorafaq.org is proud to announce our new subscription service, The Insider FAQ! We provide answers to all sorts of Fedora and Red Hat questions that are not normal fedorafaq.org questions, but with the same detail and simplicity as fedorafaq.org. :-) Try it out, it's really useful, really cheap, and it helps support fedorafaq.org!"
Fedora Core 5 Test 3 SlipThe Fedora Core 5 test3 release has slipped by a week. Test 3 is now due by February 20, 2006.
New Distributions Musix GNU+LinuxMusix is a 100% Free Debian-based operating system intended for musicians, audiophiles and other users. It contains an enormous collection of free programs. It can run as a live CD/DVD and can also be installed to a hard drive. Currently supported languages (as of February 2006): English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalán, Vascuence and Gallego.
Distribution Newsletters Debian Weekly NewsThe Debian Weekly News for February 7, 2006 covers Debian packages for the Kolab groupware server, an update for the stable Debian release, Finnish Debian community has been honored by the Finnish Linux User's Group (FLUG), the call for Project Leader nominations, graphical installer development, and several other topics.
Fedora Weekly News Issue 32This week's Fedora Weekly News has the following articles: Red Hat commits to MIT's $100 laptop, Interview with Orv Beach at SCALE, A Report from Solutions Linux 2006, Fedora Core 5 Test 3 Slip, LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards, Create a custom Linux distribution online, and more.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of February 6, 2006 is out. This issue covers GNOME 2.12 moves to stable, Gentoo developer receives a donated Wi-Spy spectrum analyzer, Poppler and KPDF, EUSecWest conference, OSC 2006 (spring edition) in Tokyo, and several other topics.
Born: 'Mandriva Linux Inside' e-magThe first edition of Mandriva Linux Inside has been released in PDF format. It includes the reborn "Cooker Weekly News", which is also available here.
DistroWatch WeeklyThe DistroWatch Weekly for February 6, 2006 is out. "With all eyes on the final stages of development of Fedora Core 5 and SUSE Linux 10.1, other distributions are not resting either; we bring you interesting information about the upcoming releases of Novell Linux Desktop 10 and Kubuntu 6.04. Interested in network security and penetration testing? The brand new BackTrack live CD provides an amazing collection of tools just for this purpose; we'll take a quick look at the first beta released over the weekend. Also in this issue: try the new smart-urpmi for Mandriva and read how a vice president of a large financial firm fell in love with Gentoo. Finally, our January donation, the largest DistroWatch.com has ever made, goes to Gambas and Krusader."
Package updates Fedora updatesBug fix updates and upgrades (featuring KDE 3.5.1) for Fedora Core 4: gnome-python2-extras, vixie-cron, selinux-policy-targeted, selinux-policy-strict, libselinux, udev, kernel, autofs, arts, kdeaccessibility, kdeaddons, kdeadmin, kdeartwork, kdebase, kdebindings, kdeedu, kdegames, kdegraphics, kde-i18n, kdelibs, kdemultimedia, kdenetwork, kdepim, kdesdk, kdeutils, kdevelop, kdewebdev, audit, module-init-tools, authd, docbook-style-xsl, cups, audit.
Newsletters and articles of interest Leapsoft launches African Linux distribution (Computer Business Review)Computer Business Review covers Nigerian distribution, Wazobia Linux. "Lagos, Nigeria-based Leapsoft is aiming to over come those hurdles by providing its Linux distribution in Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo, the three most spoken languages in Nigeria, as well as English. It is also aiming to translate Linux into popular African languages. The operating system comes with translations of the OpenOffice.org 2.0 productivity suite, multiple browsers, desktop search, automated networking tools, multi-media software, and application development tools, amongst other things."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development A look at GCJ 4.1One of the components of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is GCJ, the GNU Compiler for the Java programming language. GCJ is a compiler that can generate both native code and bytecode from Java source files. GCJ includes a runtime library (libgcj) that provides all runtime support, the core class libraries, a garbage collector, and a bytecode interpreter. Programs created by gcj can dynamically load and interpret class files or native shared libraries resulting in pure, or mixed native/interpreted applications. Version 4.0 of GCJ introduced a new deployment model that made is much easier for distributors to package traditional Java programs as native applications without requiring any source level changes. For version 4.1 of GCJ, this new binary compatibility (BC) ABI has also been used for parts of the core library, but only for a minimal subset which includes XML, CORBA and imageio. This change means that those parts of the core library can easily be upgraded with newer versions by the end user. In time, it will become possible to upgrade more parts of the core libraries in a similar manner. All of the major GNU/Linux distributions use GCJ to support programs like OpenOffice, Eclipse and Tomcat. So it is not surprising that the improvements in GCJ 4.1 have been very application and distribution driven. All of the applications supported by GCJ 4.0 run with more stability under GCJ 4.1. And support has been added for a large range of programs like the Azureus bittorrent client, the RSSOwl feed reader, the JOnAS application server, and the java-gnome based system monitoring and debugging tool Frysk. The core library from GCJ 4.0 was based on GNU Classpath 0.15, which was released almost a year ago. The core library of GCJ 4.1 has been updated to use GNU Classpath 0.19, plus selected bug fixes from the new 0.20 release. GNU Classpath is a shared development effort that is supported by a wide variety of projects. These projects include interpreters like JamVM and SableVM, just in time compilers like Kaffe and Cacao, operating systems like JNode and IKVM, and .NET/Mono interoperability and "java-in-java" implementations like JikesRVM. With around 20 projects being based on GNU Classpath and more than 40 people from all these different groups working very hard this last year, the coverage and completeness of the core libraries have increased enormously. An overview of all the supported packages can be found here. Besides lots of correctness and completeness fixes in the more basic packages (lang, math, io, net, text and util), GCJ 4.1 will support HTTP operations on data larger than available memory. It will better support the new NIO package, including correct file locking. Support for AWT, the abstract window toolkit, has been much improved through better integration with GTK+, allowing the transparent copy/paste of various data types between applications. Image loading should be faster and more robust. And the GNU JAWT implementation makes it possible to interface AWT Canvas painting with native screen resources (allowing the jogl OpenGL bindings to work). XML support has been expanded to include xml.transform and xml.xpath. Free Swing has seen a lot of updates that should make it possible to run simple GUI applications using various look-and-feels, and includes support for JTrees and JTables. RMI and Corba implementations have been added, including support for RMI over IIOP. There is even a sample distributed five-in-a-row game included that has been implemented using Free Swing and Corba. Looking toward GCJ 4.2GCC 4.1 has been in freeze since November, to make sure all regressions are fixed. This means that no major features have been added since then. GCJ now supports dropping a classpath directory inside the GCC source tree to get updated core library support. Because of the intertwined nature of the Java language, runtime and libraries, this isn't completely trivial for end users yet. The core GCJ developers will have a much easier way to get a more up-to-date core library. End-users will have to wait until version 4.2 for easier core library upgrading, through more extensive BC ABI support. A lot of projects for GCJ 4.2 have already started. There is a lot of interest in making static linking work more smoothly, especially for embedded devices and for windows developers. There are different projects for shrinking the size of executables, by stripping reflection data, or the core library (micro-libgcj). There is also work on getting more precise information to the garbage collector in order to decrease overall memory usage. To better support debugging of interpreted classes, (for native compiled classes you can just use GDB) support for JDWP is being added to the libgcj interpreter. This should also enable debugging applications from inside of IDEs like Eclipse. The GNU Classpath core libraries are also being updated to support even more core packages. Work is being done on integration of a full JCE crypto provider (GNU Crypto and Jessie) to provide transparent https, ssl and tls networking support. The regular expression engine, gnu.regex, is being updated from the old Posix syntax to provide compatibility with the util.regex syntax and features. StAX support has been added, and work is being done to provide xml.validation. The beans package has been extended to support XMLEncoder serialization. Printing support through CUPS is being added. An ALSA provider that handles MIDI In ports and a DSSI provider that handles software synthesizers has been added. Lots of new security related tests have been added to the Mauve project to check the permission-based access controls in the core library. And GNU Classpath has added support for the new Java 1.5 language features like generics, although those are still being developed in a separate branch. Beyond GCJ and GNU ClasspathThe GPLv3 draft has been enthusiastically received by the GCJ and GNU Classpath hackers. The Java programming language has traditionally been used for extensions to other projects such as Apache and Eclipse. Software from those projects have been licensed under GPLv2-incompatible licenses, preventing cooperation and code sharing. The proposed License Compatibility clause in GPLv3 will make code sharing between GCJ/GNU Classpath and Apache/Eclipse possible. Tom Tromey is the main developer of GCJX, the GCJ frontend successor that supports the new 1.5 language features. He surprised everybody soon after the GPLv3 draft was released by proposing to look into replacing the Java source-to-bytecode part of the GCJ compiler with the Eclipse compiler (ECJ) instead of using his own GCJX effort. The GPLv3 isn't final yet (and won't be for a year), and there are lots of technical issues to discuss. But sharing code and resources between projects seems like a very attractive feature. Various GCJ hackers will meet in two weeks at the GNU Classpath and Friends meeting during FOSDEM. It will be very interesting to see how the roadmap of these projects looks at the conclusion of that event.
System Applications Backup Software GPar2 version 0.2 released (SourceForge)Version 0.2 of GPar2 has been announced. "GPar2 is a GTK+ GUI for par2 recovery sets. This new release provides more feedback, printing the status of each file in the archive. Some bugs in the progressbars have also been fixed. It comes with libpar2 (currently 0.2), which is widely based on par2cmdline client."
Database Software MySQL 4.1.18 has been releasedVersion 4.1.18 of the MySQL database has been released. "Due to a critical performance related bug (Bug#15935) 4.1.17 was not released. The bug was introduced within 4.1.16, we therefore recommend all users to upgrade directly to 4.1.18 if they are using 4.1.15 or earlier."
pgDesigner - Datamodel designer for PostgreSQLVersion 0.0.24 of pgDesigner, a data model designer for the PostgreSQL database, has been announced. "Currently it is still in state of development, but it can be used calmly like base for the construction of database."
phpMyAdmin 2.8.0-beta1 is released (SourceForge)Version 2.8.0-beta1 of phpMyAdmin, a web-based MySQL database management application, is available. "Welcome to this first beta for phpMyAdmin 2.8.0. The jump from 2.7.0 to 2.8.0 is partly because from now on, versions with the same X.Y number will have the same feature set, while the third number will be for bug fixes. Also, 2.8.0 has a new web-based setup script."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe February 5, 2006 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL database articles, events and resources.
Filesystem Utilities Ghost for Linux 0.18 releasedStable version 0.18 of Ghost for Linux has been announced. "Ghost for Linux is a hard disk and partition imaging and cloning tool similar to Norton Ghost and (tm) by Symantec. The created images are optionally compressed, and they can be stored on a local hard drive or transferred to an anonymous FTP server. A drive can be cloned using the Click'n'Clone; function."
KleanSweep 0.2.4 releasedVersion 0.2.4 of KleanSweep has been announced. "KleanSweep allows you to reclaim disk space by finding unneeded files. It can search for files based on several criteria: you can seek for empty files, backup files, broken symbolic links, dead menu entries, duplicated files, orphaned files (files not found in the RPM database), and more."
Libraries Ajax JSP Tag Library 1.2 Beta 1 released (SourceForge)Version 1.2 Beta 1 of the Ajax JSP Tag Library is out. "The AJAX Tag Library is a set of JSP tags that simplify the use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) technology in JavaServer Pages. This tag library eases development by not forcing J2EE developers to write the necessary JavaScript to implement an AJAX-capable web form. We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the AJAX JSP Tag Library release 1.2 Beta 1. Version 1.2 Beta 1 includes many enhancements to the JavaScript and several tags."
IT++ 3.9.1 released (SourceForge)Version 3.9.1 of IT++ is available with bug fixes. "IT++ is a C++ library of mathematical, signal processing, speech processing, and communications classes and functions. It is being developed by researchers in these areas and is widely used by researchers, both in the communications industry and universities."
Networking Tools AIM Sniff 1.0beta (stable) releasedStable version 1.0beta of AIM Sniff has been announced. "AIM Sniff is a utility for monitoring and archiving AIM and MSN messages across a network. It can be used to monitor for cases of harassment or warez trading. It has the ability to do a live dump (actively sniff the network) or read a PCAP file and parse the file for IM messages. You also have the option of dumping the information to a MySQL database or STDOUT."
SICM v0.93 is now released (SourceForge)Version 0.93 of SICM has been announced, it includes several new capabilities. "SICM is a tool to monitor, graph and alert the capacity of computing devices and applications. SICM runs on a Windows or Linux device on your network, 24 hours every day and constantly records the capacity parameters of any networked device using snmp, ping or custom modules. The recorded data is stored for later reference via a user friendly menu-driven web browser. E-mail alerts are raised if a user determined number of queries fail."
Web Site Development MoinMoin 1.5.2 (advanced wiki engine) releasedVersion 1.5.2 of MoinMoin, an advanced Python-based wiki engine, has been released. "MoinMoin 1.5.2 is a bug fix release. The 1.5 branch brings you several new features such as the GUI editor, which allows the users to edit pages in a WYSIWYG environment, and many bug fixes."
Silva 1.5 releasedVersion 1.5 of Silva, a content management system, is out. "Silva 1.5 is the first Silva release that really starts using Zope 3 technology in the core, and is the first step in a longer evolution. It does not have a lot of externally visible feature changes, but focuses on making Silva work with Zope 2.8 and Five 1.2."
Zimbra Collaboration Suite 3.0 releasedZimbra has announced the availability of version 3.0 of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. "ZCS 3.0 builds on the groundbreaking server and user interface technologies that have made the beta versions so successful. These include integrated search, single-copy mail store, discovery, anti-spam and anti-virus/security capabilities on the back end, and a rich, full-featured, AJAX-based Web client that brings e-mail and calendar items to life through Web mash-ups on the front end."
Doing HTTP Caching Right: Introducing httplib2 (O'Reilly)Joe Gregorio introduces httplib2 on O'Reilly. "In the latest installment of Joe Gregorio's The Restful Web column Joe goes a bit nuts, presenting httplib2, a Python HTTP client library written with the goal of doing caching in HTTP right."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ardour 0.99.1 releasedMaintenance release 0.99.1 of Ardour, a multi-track audio recording studio, has been announced. "This is the first maintenance release of the Ardour 0.99.x series. Many serious issues were fixed and stability is improved."
jack_capture v0.2.2 releasedVersion 0.2.2 of jack_capture, A JACK Audio Connection Kit application for copying audio streams to files, is out with several new features.
Rhythmbox 0.9.3 announcedVersion 0.9.3 of Rhythmbox, an integrated music management application, is out. "On behalf of the Rhythmbox developers, I'm proud to announce the fourth release of the Rhythmbox 0.9 series, which includes a large number of fixes, improvements and new features. Notable new features include a play queue, GStreamer 0.10 support, full remote gnome-vfs support, much improved DAAP support, library "watching" and support for mass-storage audio players."
soniK 1.0beta1 announcedVersion 1.0beta1 of soniK, A KDE-based digital audio editor, is out. "This is the first beta release for soniK 1.0."
CAD PythonCAD 28 now availableRelease 28 of PythonCAD, a scriptable drafting program, has been announced. "The twenty-eighth release of PythonCAD offers improved abilities to edit entities in a drawing. Previous releases had inconsistent behavior for entity modification as some operations first required selecting then entities to change and then selecting the operation to perform, where other changes were accomplished by first selecting the action and then selecting entities. The latest release allows for entity modifications to be performed in either mode, thus making the code more consistent as well as easier to use."
Desktop Environments GARNOME 2.13.90 announcedVersion 2.13.90 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge GNOME distribution, is available. "We are pleased to announce the release of GARNOME 2.13.90 Desktop and Developer Platform. This release includes all of GNOME 2.13.90 (aka 2.14.0 Beta 1) plus a whole bunch of updates that were released after the GNOME freeze date."
GNOME 2.13.90 releasedDevelopment version 2.13.90 of the GNOME desktop has been announced. "With this release we're entering the UI freeze period which means that no changes in the user interface should be done without approval from the release team. Mail any changes to release-team@gnome.org for review and we prefer png's to a 1000 line patch to some XML file :-)"
GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
Novell announces Xgl/Compiz releaseNovell has sent out a press release on the release of its in-house developed Xgl code and an associated compositing window manager called "compiz." "Under the leadership of engineer David Reveman, Novell has sponsored the effort to develop the Xgl graphics subsystem to benefit both hardware vendors and software developers, and thus end users. Novell's release of Compiz enables developers to easily create graphical effects plug-ins which deliver rich visual effects, including transparency and advanced animation. For the first time, open source developers have the ability to easily add industry-standard effects like transparency and window animations to the Linux desktop, supported on the broadest possible set of hardware." Some more information can be found on the openSUSE Xgl page, but screenshots are sadly lacking. (Update: there are a couple of images on ZDNet).
Electronics XCircuit 3.6.3 releasedDevelopment version 3.6.3 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, is out with expanded undo capabilities.
Games Animation added to WorldForgeThe WorldForge game project is using Blender to create game animations. "With the new IK System from Blender, the animation process has become much easier. The new rig also helps because of the automation contraints. I also went ahead and gave the hands a full set of fingers because I am seeing this in many commercial games. The current animations that you see are going to be avaible only for Ember and are going to happen relatively quick."
ScummVM 0.8.1 released (SourceForge)Version 0.8.1 of ScummVM has been announced. "The ScummVM team is pleased to announce the release of ScummVM 0.8.1. ScummVM is a cross-platform interpreter for more than 50 point-and-click adventure games. This release fixes several bugs from 0.8.0, improves support for Humongous Entertainment games and several international versions."
Sear 0.6.1 releasedVersion 0.6.1 of the game Sear has been announced. "This release brings many improvements to the GUI components. The character creation dialog now has a list of playable character types. This fixes one of major issues with the previous release. Speech Bubbles have been added to improve dialog with other players and NPCs and there is also a basic help system. Other GUI components allow adjusting key bindings and video modes. Two new console commands have been added. /me for emotes and /eat (added to inventory dialog) to nourish our character."
Interoperability Wine 0.9.7 releasedVersion 0.9.7 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: "Directory change notifications can use inotify now, Hardware breakpoints in the Wine debugger, Beginnings of support for tape APIs, A bunch of improvements to the IDL compiler, Better scheme for mapping My Documents etc. to Unix directories, and Lots of bug fixes."
Wine Weekly NewsletterIssue #304 of the Wine Weekly Newsletter has been published. Topics include: WineTools & Wine, SCSI Tape Drive Support, JACK Audio Driver, Overriding Executables With Winecfg, and Hook Problems.
Office Applications iReport 1.1.0 released (SourceForge)Version 1.1.0 of iReport, a Java-based reporting tool, is available with new features, bug fixes and more.
Web Browsers Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1 Released (MozillaZine)Version 1.5.0.1 of the Mozilla Firefox browser has been announced. "The first security and stability update to Mozilla Firefox 1.5 has been released. It is recommended that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest version." See the release notes for details. Note that this release fixes a security problem for which exploits already exist.
Annodex Firefox Extension: Core 0.2.1Core 0.2.1, an Annodex media extension for Firefox, has been announced. "The Annodex Firefox Extension turns the Mozilla Firefox web browser into an Annodex browser. It supports playback of Annodex media encoded with the open-standard Ogg Theora video codec and the Ogg Vorbis audio codec, uses timed URIs to perform efficient, bandwidth-friendly server-side seeking on Annodex media, enables hyperlinking into and out of Annodex media, and displays a "table of contents"-like clip list for CMML content."
Minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting (MozillaZine)The minutes from the January 30, 2006 mozilla.org staff meeting have been announced. "Issues discussed include Firefox 1.5.0.1 Release, Firefox 2 and 3 Planning, Thunderbird, XULRunner, Personnel and Marketing".
Miscellaneous WIKINDX 3.2.3 released (SourceForge)WIKINDX 3.2.3 has been announced, it features minor feature enhancements and bug fixes. "WIKINDX is a single or multi-user research environment storing searchable bibliographies, notes and citations and integrated with a WYSIWYG word processor for the authoring of publication-ready articles automatically formatted to chosen citation styles."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe February 7, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. Topics include: Type-safe interface to Postgres's SQL, OCaml & .NET and async networking.
Java What Is a Portlet, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)Sunil Patil discusses portlets in part two of an O'Reilly article series. "Portlets aim to be your next desktop, providing small pieces of web-based functionality that can be aggregated on a portal page. In this article, Sunil Patil delves deeper into the JSR-168 portlet spec by showing off edit mode, JSP integration, the portlet tag library and preferences API, and Pluto's admin console."
Perl Test-Driving X11 GUIs (O'Reilly)George Nistorica uses Perl's X11::GUITest to test X11 applications. "Interfaces to GUI applications like DCOP or D-BUS allow you to interact with GUI applications in order to get at their internal states or set some arbitrary states. Sometimes GUIs don't allow for such interaction and you need to "click" them. If you're writing such an application, you need some sort of regression tests for it to make sure your widget/windows are as accessible as they should be. If this is the case, there is a Perl module to help you: X11::GUITest."
PHP PHP Weekly SummaryThe February 6, 2006 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary is available. "Topics include: Fishy code, a class named Betty, open() calls and APC, TextIterator, FastCGI reaches 5_1 branch".
Python PyChecker 0.8.17 releasedVersion 0.8.17 of PyChecker, a tool for finding bugs in Python source code, has been announced. It features two new command line options.
python-dev SummaryThe January 1-15, 2006 edition of the python-dev Summary is online with coverage of the python-dev mailing list.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The February 6, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python language articles.
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe February 5th, 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 February 6, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with all new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
IDEs Eclipse Checkstyle Plug-in 4.1.0 beta2 released (SourceForge)Eclipse Checkstyle Plug-in 4.1.0 beta2 has been announced. "The eclipse-cs Checkstyle plug-in integrates the well-known source code analyzer Checkstyle into today's leading IDE - Eclipse. With the Checkstyle Eclipse plug-in your code is constantly inspected for problems. Within the Eclipse workbench you are notified of problems via the Eclipse Problems View and source code annotations just as you would see with compiler errors or warnings. Version 4.1.0 beta2 of the eclipse-cs plugin was just released. It contains some bugfixes and minor features over 4.1.0 beta."
Test Suites LDTP 0.3.0 ReleasedVersion 0.3.0 of The GNU/Linux Desktop Testing Project (LDTP), a desktop testing framework, is out with a new newsletter. "Welcome to the sixth issue of LDTP Newsletter! LDTP community has reached another important milestone with the release of LDTP 0.3.0. This release features the new architecture which is a result of more than 3 months of hard work by the LDTP community. This newsletter also includes latest news on our approach towards achieving an automated test engine. Useful references have been included at the end of this article for those who wish to hack/use LDTP."
Miscellaneous DISIT 01a beta releasedVersion 01a beta of DISIT, an open-source x86 disassembler, is available for testing.
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading X graphics get a boost (NewsForge)NewsForge takes a look at Novell's Xgl framework improvements. "According to Nat Friedman, Novell's Xgl architecture will allow a move away from a raster model of drawing to a vector model, which will provide a "modern" graphics model that should be usable for the next 10 to 15 years. "We're gonna be in good shape for that now, this takes away major concerns. The only other OS that offers the capability to do this is Mac OS X, and the only reason is because they have a tight link to the hardware ... all we're doing is taking advantage of that hardware too. Windows doesn't have this yet and we do ... we're not going to cede 3D graphics acceleration to proprietary software.""
The Next Battleground for VoIP (O'Reilly)Andrew Sheppard predicts difficult times for telephone companies in an O'Reilly article. "When the ground upon which we stand moves, it is the result of a tremor, an earthquake, or a tectonic shift. Internet telephony started as a tremor only a few short years ago. It is now an earthquake. And within a decade, or perhaps less, it will have resulted in a tectonic shift in how phone calls are made the world over. Indeed, it will radically alter how people communicate in all manner of ways, not just by voice. Clearly, the future of telephony is the internet, for which geographic location and distance don't matter. To borrow some words from Churchill: the battle between VoIP and PSTN/POTS is over, and I expect the battle for mobile telephony is about to begin."
Fon time (Linux Journal)Here's a look at Fon from Doc Searls' blog. "At the Fon site, you download software that you install on your FON compatible WiFi routher. Namely, a generic Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL (versions 1x to 4x), which are the ones with Linux inside. You can get one through Fon's store for twenty-five dollars or euros. This is, obviously, below cost."
Trade Shows and Conferences Novell Linux Desktop Demonstration Videos (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org mentions the availability of a video demo of the Novell Linux Desktop 10 system. "A preview of Novell Linux Desktop 10 (NLD10) was shown to an audience at the Solutions Linux conference this week in Paris. We have a selection of videos which display a variety of amazing effects through the use of XGL, including transparency, wobbling windows, a 3D Cube for desktop switching, and a task switcher which displays a preview of windows."
The Producer Electronics Revolution, Part I (Linux Journal)Doc Searls is in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. "Next was Larry Page, co-founder of Google. This talk was especially interesting to me, because Larry would seem to be the least likely public speaker among top Google brass. He's shy, tends to mumble and never struck me as a stage hog. (Like, for example, me.) He was terrific. Unlike the earlier keynotes I saw, Larry's speech wasn't scripted, and he didn't read it off a screen. Instead, he paced the stage with a stack of paper in his hand, occasionally telling the techie running the slides to go forward or back, and was charmingly low key and good humored."
The SCO Problem Report on Hamilton, Canada LUG Special Session on SCO v. IBM (Groklaw)Groklaw has a report from the Hamilton Linux User Group's special session on the SCO v. IBM litigation. "The Hamilton Linux User Group tonight had a special session nominally on the SCOG vs. IBM court case but actually covering a wide range of topics sometimes only vaguely related -- but all of the topics would be familiar to any regular reader of Groklaw. The panel featured Peter Salus (Unix and Linux historian), Robert Young (co-founder of Red Hat), and Ren Bucholz (EFF Policy Co-ordinater). For the first hour, the panelists discussed a variety of issues."
Companies To grow, Borland to cut off its roots (ZDNet)ZDNet looks at Borland's change of direction, noting that free software has closed off its old business model. "Today, Borland's traditional business is being undercut by open-source. In the past two years, the rise of freely available open-source IDEs, notably the Eclipse software, has cut the legs out from beneath the stand-alone tools market, said analysts."
VMware cuts VMware Server price to zero (NewsForge)NewsForge reports that VMware is planning on releasing a free server. "Raghu Raghuram, VMware's vice president of datacenter and desktop platform products, said that the product would be "an advancement over GSX," VMware's current entry-level server virtualization product, and that VMware would begin directing new customers to VMware Server. Though the release is free as in beer, the product is not being released under an open source license. However, Raghuram said that VMware Server will not offer the advanced management tools found in VMware ESX Server. "It does not have all the capability and advanced functionality ... that you'd need for large-scale rollouts.""
Business Open Source's New Frontiers (Business Week)Business Week has put up a series of articles on open source, covering topics like database systems, MontaVista, software patents, and GPLv3. "Stallman's aim is nothing short of utopian. He wants to capitalize on the economy's growing addiction to open-source code as a means of forcing his social vision -- free software for everyone -- on information technology and consumer electronics writ large. 'In the world we're living in right now, no one can make small, cheap consumer electronics without our software,' says Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software Foundation and co-author of GPL3. 'Our pre-market clout, our use as a raw material of manufacturing, is now large enough to bring an industry coalition into being.'"
Linux at Work Linux powers autonomous military ground vehicle (LinuxDevices)LinuxDevices looks at an unmanned vehicle that is controlled by Linux. "iRobot used embedded Linux to build an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) aimed at military scouting, guarding, and hauling applications. The "R-Gator" is based on John Deere's diesel-powered, 658cc M-Gator military utility vehicle platform, with control, navigation, and object-avoidance systems based on BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks."
Legal BitTorrent to crack down on use of name (ZDNet)ZDNet reports that the creators of the BitTorrent file-swapping application will be cracking down on how other software developers use the name. "BitTorrent's speedy downloading features has made it one of the most popular tools online for distributing large files such as movies or software, both legally and illegally. The company is trying to turn its own Web site into a hub for distributing movies legally, and has been in close discussions with Hollywood studios for months."
Interviews The open-source programmer who means business (ZDNet)ZDNet talks to Alan Cox about the GPLv3, Sony BMG, software patents and more. "Q: The first public discussion draft of GPL 3 (General Public License version 3) was released a couple of weeks ago. What are your initial thoughts on it? Cox: The majority of it looks very sensible, such as letting copyright information be displayed in an "about" box, rather than relying on command line instructions (as is the case in GPL 2). Some of the more contentious stuff has sensibly been made optional. One of the other nice things is the work to make the GPL compatible with other licenses. That's really important--it will allow people to share more code."
$100 Laptop: Great for the world, great for Linux (ZDNet)ZDNet interviews Red Hat's Mike Evans about the One Laptop per Child initiative. "ZDNet: Some argue that the $100 target price is unrealistic, and that a machine would already exist at or near this price through market competition if it was possible? M.E.: There are existing models of other technologies, whether it be Dell or Apple, but nothing on this grand a scale, with this price point and with this academic and historical horsepower behind it. The people at the MIT labs have 20-plus years of computer expertise. To me the timing is especially interesting. If someone attempted to do this four years ago it wouldn't have worked, but now I have seen that there is a real will among developing countries to bring their people forward right now."
Interview with Samantha Kleinberg on CL-GODB, Common Lisp & BioinformaticsEmre Sevinc has published an interview with Samantha Kleinberg. "Samantha Kleinberg from New York University is one of the software developers who participated in Google's Summer of Code in 2005. She has developed CL-GODB project using Common Lisp. Her having used Common Lisp and becoming one of the Google celebrities drew our attention and we didn't hesitate to ask about the details. She has provided clear-cut and right-to-the-point answers."
Richard Stallman on P2P (LinuxP2P)There is an interview with Richard Stallman on the LinuxP2P site. "I no longer endorse Creative Commons. I cannot endorse Creative Commons as a whole, because some of its licenses are unacceptable. It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely."
FOSDEM: Three New InterviewsFOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) is coming up at the end of February. As usual, the FOSDEM team is interviewing the speakers and three new interviews have been posted on FOSDEM's website. Click below for more about FOSDEM and pointers to this week's interviews with Michael Meeks, Developer of OpenOffice.org 2.0, Jon Trowbridge, Maintainer of Beagle, and Jan Janak, Core Team Member of SER (The SIP Express Router).
Resources Theming Bash (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet takes a look at creating and using (bash) shell themes. "Shell themes are shell presets that, when invoked, customize the shell with various useful commands for working on a specific project. For example, I can type Theme perl/nav-menu, and then gain some shell commands that are useful for working on my navigation menu module. Among other things, it will also automatically change my directory to ~/progs/perl/www/Nav-Menu/trunk/module/, where I work on the module."
Setting up international character support (Linux.com)Linux.com looks at support for international characters. "Created in 1992 by Ken Thompson on a placemat in a New Jersey diner, UTF-8 has today become a computing standard. Most recent Linux distributions support UTF-8, although many, including Debian, give users the option of using legacy locales that contain only the characters needed for a specific language."
At the Sounding Edge: Article 24 (Linux Journal)In this edition of At the Sounding Edge Dave Phillips revisits some of the core Linux audio applications to see what's new. "The following notes are mini-reports on the development status of some high-profile Linux audio applications. The basic Linux sound system is in good condition, with mature versions of ALSA, JACK, LADSPA, MidiShare, libsndfile and other low-to-middle level system components now available. The engines behind Linux audio applications are running nicely, thanks to various kernel tunings, and some of those applications have attained the status of professional usability. Of course, problems remain. Hardware support is still narrow compared to what's available for Win/Mac audio people. In addition, configuration difficulties still can be show-stoppers for new users."
My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)Linux.com hears from another sysadmin who lists vim, man, mc, ssh, screen, rsync and other favorite tools. "If you need to find differences between two files, you will want to use diff. Running diff -u file1 file2 will show you where they differ. It can also be useful for scripting, if you want to send from a remote system just the changes between certain files. To do this, you can create a cron job and pipe out differences to your email."
Repairing Windows PCs the Linux way (Linux-Watch)Linux-Watch takes a look at repairing Windows PCs with live Linux CDs. "Do you want to know the basics of repairing Windows systems with Knoppix Linux? You should. It's incredibly useful information to have, since with Knoppix, or other live CD-based Linuxes, you can do life-saving surgery on near-dead Windows systems."
Reviews Test drive: D-Link DWL-922 Wireless G Network Starter Kit (NewsForge)Glenn Mullikin hacks on a D-Link DWL-922 Wireless G Network Starter Kit. "D-Link doesn't advertise Linux support for the kit, but I decided to give it a whirl anyway to see how well it fared. The kit comes with D-Link's DI-524 Wireless G router, which has all the features you would expect a router to have, including plenty of security options, and the DWL-G122 USB 2.0 wireless adapter, which you can use at Wi-Fi hotspots or on your LAN."
Openbox: A lightweight window manager (Linux.com)Linux.com reviews the Openbox window manager. "Most Linux-based distributions for the masses have either GNOME, KDE, or both desktops, yet the startup times and resources required by both GNOME and KDE make them unsuitable for old or lower-end hardware. My quest for a standards-compliant, fast, lightweight, and extensible window manager led me to Openbox. Openbox complies with both the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) and the Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH). Originally derived from Blackbox, Openbox version 3 was completely rewritten in C. Among its fancy features, it supports chainable key bindings, customizable mouse actions, and multi-head Xinerama."
OpenZoep: An Open Source VoIP Engine (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet covers OpenZoep. "OpenZoep (pronounced "open soup") is a client-side telephony and instant messaging (IM) communications engine. It supports computer-to-computer (peer-to-peer) VoIP calls, instant messaging, and outbound PSTN and SIP calls to free and premium SIP providers. OpenZoep is available under the GPL license, as well as a commercial license for companies that do not wish to publish the source code of their commercial products based on OpenZoep."
Capturing real-world knowledge with Protégé OWL (NewsForge)NewsForge reviews Protégé OWL. "Protégé OWL runs on my PowerBook all the time, right next to Mail, iCal, and Firefox. I use it daily in places where in the past I might have looked reluctantly at Microsoft Access or an open source alternative. Protégé OWL manages all of the corporate records and information of the small public-sector telecommunications company that I run. The ontology acts as a conventional records-management system, recording file and document numbers, dates, file notes, and cross-references."
Miscellaneous Ben Goodger Reflects on the History of FirefoxFirefox Lead Engineer Ben Goodger has some reflections on the history of Firefox. "The relationship between Netscape and the Mozilla open source project was uneasy. Mozilla wanted an independent identity, to be known as the community hub in which contributors could make investments of code and trust, while companies like Netscape productized the output. Netscape was not satisfied to let Mozilla turn the crank however; building and shipping a product with as many constraints as the Netscape browser was -- and remains -- a mighty challenge. Netscape was convinced it was the only one that knew what needed to be done. At the time, I think it was true." (Found on MozillaZine)
To GPL 3 or not to GPL 3, that is the Linux question (Linux-Watch)Linux-Watch follows ongoing discussions about GPLv3 and the Linux kernel. "Linus Torvalds made it clear on January 25th in a message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), that as far as he was concerned, the Linux operating system is going to stay under General Public License 2 and not migrate to GPL 3. Discussion of the matter, however, has not come to an end. Richard M. Stallman, primary author of the GPL and founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) isn't interested in fighting with Torvalds over the matter. "I don't want to have an argument with him about this," Stallman said."
OOo Off the Wall: The Elephant in the Living Room -- OOo and MS Office (Linux Journal)Linux Journal looks at the relationship between OpenOffice.org and MS Office. "For OpenOffice.org (OOo), MS Office (MSO) is the elephant in the living room. As much as the project might want to ignore MSO, it cannot. Many potential users never have used anything except MSO, and most have to share files with MSO users at some point. The lucky exceptions, of course, are those in a free software work or educational environment, who deal only with equally lucky family members and friends."
Andrew Tridgell Completes OSDL Fellowship (LinuxElectrons)LinuxElectrons notes that Andrew Tridgell has completed an OSDL Fellowship. "''An enormous amount of progress towards the completion of Samba 4 was made while I was an OSDL fellow, which culminated in the release of the first technology preview release of Samba4 last week,'' said Tridgell. ''Having time to concentrate just on the one project really helped. Many thanks to OSDL for providing the fellowship and supporting Samba development.''"
Which is Better: A Partitioned OS or a Partitioned Machine? (IT-Director)IT-Director questions Linux-only virtualization technologies. "While we are rather fond of hardware-based virtualizations, software approaches such as VMware or Xen are quite capable, and do support multiple operating systems on a machine. In fact, Xen is already slated to be included in SUSE 10 later this year. Given the push for efficiency evident in the marketplace, combined with a best-of-breed approach to applications and operating systems, virtualization schemes that do not support multiple OSes seem to achieve less than the full potential of virtualization."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements Annodex Foundation launched at linux.conf.auThe Annodex Foundation was launched at the recent linux.conf.au event. "Annodex is an open source technology that allows the creation of audiovisual content as 'webs' of audio and video, which are fully integrated with the text-based search and surfing capabilities of the World Wide Web. Increasing activity and uptake of the open media technology Annodex has spurred its open source development community into creating the Annodex Foundation, making it sustainable outside its originating organisation, the CSIRO."
Debian Founder Ian Murdock Appointed CTO of the Free Standards GroupThe Free Standards Group (FSG) has announced that Debian founder Ian Murdock has been appointed its chief technology officer and elected chair of the Linux Standard Base workgroup. "As founder of Debian -- one of the most successful open source projects in history -- and commercial custom Linux platform provider Progeny, Murdock brings unmatched experience building open source communities, driving technical consensus and solving Linux distribution challenges. His experience will immediately enhance the open standards initiatives of the Free Standards Group and the Linux Standard Base."
Linux and Open Source Initiative formed (eFinland)eFinland reports that Linux users have formed the Finnish Linux and Open Source Initiative forum. "The founders of the forum include IBM, Ericsson, Nokia, the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu, the Tampere University of Technology, the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, the Finnish IT center for science CSC, and the Centre for Open Source Software COSS."
eBox platform releasedThe eBox platform, a network appliance that is licensed under the GPL, has been released. "eBox manages network services, such as proxy cache, content filter, DHCP server, file sharing, Windows PDC or firewall, through an easy and straightforward manner through a web interface. The officially supported system to use eBox is Debian Sarge GNU/Linux and a tailored Sarge Debian installer including eBox packages is available." (Thanks to Isaac Clerencia.)
Commercial announcements Astaro and Utimaco announce partnershipAstaro Corporation has announced a partnership with Utimaco Safeware AG. "Astaro plans to integrate Utimaco technology into its Unified Threat Management security architecture, and offer the world's first security appliance integrating strong encryption and digital signature mechanisms based on the S/MIME and OpenPGP industry standards."
CrossOver Office for Linspire supports Microsoft Windows softwareLinspire, Inc. has announced the release of CrossOver Office 5.0 for Linspire. "CodeWeavers, Inc., the leading Windows-to-Linux software developer, and Linspire, Inc., maker of the easy-to-use desktop Linux operating system, today announced the release of CrossOver Office 5.0 for Linspire. Linspire users who purchase CrossOver Office can run dozens of Windows applications, including Microsoft Office 2003, Adobe Photoshop and Intuit's Quicken and Quickbooks, natively from their Linspire desktop Linux operating system."
Flander accelerates development of mobile Linux smartphonesFlander will present a reference design of its mobile Linux smartphone platform at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Spain. 3GSM takes place on February 13-16, 2006. "The mobile-software testing and development company Flander develops the architecture of mobile Linux smartphones. A unique feature of Flanders reference design is that it supports several software vendors. The reference model significantly accelerates the development process and time-to-market of mobile Linux smartphones as well as reducing associated costs."
Funambol's Open Source Push EmailFunambol has announced an open-source push email product for mobile phones. "Funambol, the mobile open source software company, today announced the release of Funambol v3, the first open source push email product for carriers and enterprises. Funambol v3 allows customers to deploy this year's "killer app" push email to the widest range of mobile phones."
IBM gives-away DB2 Linux - not a trial versionIBM has released a free version of their DB2 Express-C Universal Database for Linux. "IBM is giving-away DB2 Express-C, a version of DB2 Universal Database Express Edition to the developer community. DB2 Express-C is a no-charge data server for use in application development and deployment. It provides the same core data server features as DB2 Universal Database Express Edition. DB2 Express-C offers a solid base to build and deploy all applications including: C/C++, Java, .NET, PHP, and more."
Jitterbit announces Jitterbit Open EditionJitterbit, Inc. has announced the availability of the open-source Jitterbit Open Edition business integration product. "Jitterbit's open source integration tool delivers a quick and easy way to design, configure, test, and deploy integration solutions. It supports most standards-based protocols, including Web Services (SOAP), XML, and connectivity to popular databases."
Krugle Announces Search Engine for Source Code at DEMO ConferenceKrugle, Inc. has announced a search engine for source code and related technical content. ""Krugle is a search engine for programmers," said Krugle Co-Founder and CEO, Steve Larsen. "Today programming is more about efficiently assembling and integrating code, than it is about writing new code from scratch. The problem is, finding and evaluating the available code takes too much time. That's the problem Krugle solves.""
MySQL AB Opens Japanese SubsidiaryMySQL AB has announced the opening of a Japanese subsidiary in Tokyo. "MySQL K.K. is partnering with a number of large and leading Japanese resellers and systems integrators to deliver MySQL solutions to the enterprise market, including NEC System Technologies Ltd, NTT Comware, Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation, NRI, Open Source Japan, SmartStyle, and Time Intermedia."
Opera integrates BitTorrent in upcoming browserOpera Software has announced that it has teamed with BitTorrent Inc. to include the BitTorrent(tm) protocol in the upcoming version of the Opera Web browser.
Sleepycat and CollabNet Open Source CollaborationSleepycat Software and CollabNet have announced that the two companies have collaborated, along with the Subversion open source community, to optimize the integration between Berkeley DB and Subversion, ensuring that data is stored reliably and with full, automatic recoverability after a system or application failure.
Sun Announces Release of Open Source NetBeans 5 IDESun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the release of NetBeans 5.0 IDE. "NetBeans 5.0 IDE provides comprehensive support for building Java SE, Java EE, and Java ME applications and includes a variety of unique new features and significant enhancements such as NetBeans GUI Builder (formerly Project Matisse), that differentiates it from all other developer tools."
TimeSys Introduces free LinuxLink EvaluationTimeSys has announced a free LinuxLink Evaluation Subscription for Pentium-class Processors. "Embedded developers can use the evaluation subscription to rapidly determine how LinuxLink by TimeSys(TM) can speed and simplify efforts to create a commercial-grade custom Linux platform for any target processor."
New Books C# Cookbook, Second Edition - O'Reilly's Latest ReleaseO'Reilly has published the book C# Cookbook, Second Edition by Jay Hilyard and Stephen Teilhet.
Resources Bugzilla/Subversion/Wiki Integration Guide (Segetech)Segetech has announced the availability of a Bugzilla/Subversion/Wiki Integration Guide. "This document provides a detailed configuration guide to integrate incrementally several Open Source development tools ... Bugzilla/SVN/MediaWiki are all linked to each other and they together with mailing lists and various SVN utilities provide easily accessible way to see changes to documentation and source code, handling of bug reports, and people contributing to projects without any additional tools or preparations ..."
FSF Europe NewsletterThe February 8, 2006 edition of the Free Software Foundation Europe Newsletter is online. Topics include: Fellowship meetings in Vienna and Berlin, Discussion about Free Software in Austrian schools started, First draft of GPLv3 presented and Microsoft still trying to avoid competition.
Linux Gazette #123 is out!The February 2006 edition of Linux Gazette is out. This month's articles include Re-compress your gzipp'ed files to bzip2 using a Bash script (HOWTO), uClinux on Blackfin BF533 STAMP - A DSP Linux Port, A Short Tutorial on XMLHttpRequest(), Configuring Apache for Maximum Performance, and much more.
Contests and Awards Extend Firefox Contest Finalists Announced (MozillaZine)MozillaZine announces the finalists for the Extend Firefox Contest. "Adblock, All-In-One Sidebar, Deepest Sender, DownThemAll!, Firefox Showcase, Forecastfox Enhanced, Groowe Search Toolbar, IE Tab, My Stickies, PDF Download, Platypus, Reveal, Sage, ScrapBook, Separe, Viamatic foXpose, Web Developer and Wizz RSS News Reader will be vying for awards in eleven categories, including Best New Extension, Best Upgraded Extension and Best Use of New Firefox 1.5 features."
Realm Systems Announces Winners in BlackDog(TM) Skills ContestRealm Systems has announced the category winners in the Project Black Dog skills contest. "The online DogPound discussion group has been very active in talking about the BlackDog, a pocket-sized, self-contained server with a built-in biometric reader and Debian-based Linux operating system. Unlike any other mobile computing device, BlackDog contains its own processor, memory and storage, and is completely powered by the USB port of a host computer with no external power adapter required."
Education and Certification LPI Offers Certification Exams at LinuxWorld MexicoThe Linux Professional Institute will be holding Linux Certification Exams at LinuxWorld Mexico in Mexico City on February 14-17, 2006.
Upcoming Events Black Hat USA CFP opensA call for papers has gone out for the Black Hat USA security conference. The event takes place from July 29 to August 3 in Las Vegas, NV. Submissions are due by June 30.
Novell and Red Hat Sponsor Desktop Linux SummitNovell and Red Hat are the top sponsors of the upcoming Desktop Linux Summit. "The Desktop Linux Summit today announced that Linux industry giants Novell and Red Hat have signed on as platinum sponsors for the show, which is the only event to focus exclusively on Linux and open source software for the desktop. In its fourth year, the Summit will be held April 24-25, 2006 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego, California."
Call for Participation Opens for 2006 O'Reilly EuroOSCONA Call for Participation has gone out for the 2006 O'Reilly EuroOSCON. "This year's theme is "Opening Innovation." With free and open source software use on the rise all across the continent and particularly in governments, EuroOSCON creates a place for developers, sys admins, entrepreneurs, and business people working in free and open source software to come together to delve into critical issues across the spectrum of open source technologies. EuroOSCON takes place 18-21 September in Brussels, Belgium. Proposals are being accepted until 6 March."
GUADEC 2006 - Call for Papers (GnomeDesktop)A Call for Papers has gone out for the 2006 GNOME Users and Developers European Conference (GUADEC). The event takes place on June 24-30, 2006 in Catalonia, Spain, submissions are due by March 31.
First ImageJ User and Developer Conference (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews has an announcement for the first ImageJ User and Developer Conference "ImageJ is a public domain Java image processing program inspired by NIH Image for the Macintosh. It runs, either as an online applet or as a downloadable application, on any computer with a Java 1.1 or later virtual machine. Downloadable distributions are available for Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X and Linux." The event will be held in Luxembourg on May 18 and 19, 2006.
NSPW 2006 Call for PapersA Call for Papers has gone out for the New Security Paradigms Workshop. The event takes place in Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany on September 18-21, 2006. Submissions are due by March 26.
NYPHPCon 2006The New York PHP Conference & Expo 2006 will take place on June 14-16, 2006. "The New York PHP Conference & Expo 2006 is taking place in midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the historic New Yorker Hotel. There will be three full days of sessions, tutorials, exhibits, and networking events." A call for papers is open, submissions should be sent in by April 15.
Python 14 Conference CFPA call for proposals has gone out for the Python 14 Conference. The event will be held in conjunction with the 2006 O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon on July 24-28, 2006. Proposals are due by February 13.
SugarCRM CEO John Roberts to Deliver Keynote at OSBC WestSugarCRM Inc. has announced the selection of its CEO for giving the OSBC West keynote address. "John Roberts, chairman, CEO and co-founder of SugarCRM Inc., has been selected to deliver a keynote address on the open source business model at OSBC West, the Open Source Business Conference that opens in San Francisco on February 14. Roberts and Clint Oram, the company's general manager of Sugar Online & co-founder, will also give three other presentations at the conference."
Want to host the Plone Conference 2006?The 2006 Plone Conference is looking for a host. "Who is interested in playing host to this most talented and excellent community? Who shall come forth to take his/her rightful place in the Hall of Plone Heroes? Where shall we assemble and marshal our forces, and what shall the battle plan be?"
Rockbox International Developers Conference 2006The Rockbox International Developers Conference 2006 will be held in Stockholm, Sweden on March 18 and 19, 2006. "We thought we'd get together for a two-day Rockbox hacking session, and that it would be cool if there were some other Rockbox devs who would drop by and share the fun."
Keynotes Announced for 2nd SELinux SymposiumThe keynotes for the second annual Security-Enhanced Linux Symposium have been announced. The event takes place in Baltimore, MD on February 27 through March 3. "The second annual Security-Enhanced Linux Symposium has announced that its keynote speakers will be IT security pioneer Steve Walker, president of Steve Walker & Associates and managing partner of Walker Ventures, and Dr. Steve Marsh, director of the Central Sponsor for Information Assurance unit in the UK Cabinet Office."
Events: February 9 - April 6, 2006
Web sites The Firebird News PortalA new news portal is open for the Firebird database. It contains: "Links to sites around the world that specialise in news about Firebird or otherwise of interest to Firebird users."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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