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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 16
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gentoo Weekly Newsletter http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of April 19th, 2004. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============== 1. Gentoo News ============== Transition to NFP organization ------------------------------ Daniel Robbins[1], chief architect of Gentoo Linux is now heading an effort to make a transition to a NFP (not-for-profit) organization. The gentoo-nfp mailing list has been set up and discussion is already underway; the list has been archived[2], and is open to subscription: those interested should send a mail to gentoo-nfp-subscribe@gentoo.org. Daniel is targeting the end of April for finalizing the NFP effort, and has submitted a detailed proposal[3] to the mailing list, which has been discussed and clarified there. 1. drobbins@gentoo.org 2. http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/ 3. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/25 In the proposal, Gentoo Foundation, Inc. will hold the intellectual property of the project. It'll have a board of trustees, and will be an open membership trade association. The initial board of trustees will serve for a year, after which a new one will be elected. The Gentoo Store will pay for the establishment of this not-for-profit, as well as for the Gentoo Foundation's legal fees in applying for 501(c)(6) federal association status, which is expected to take around $5000. In addition, Daniel will retain royalty-free rights to use of the "Gentoo" trademark and the "G" logo, allowing him to continue him to run the Gentoo Store if he wants, in order to support his family and attempt to pay some of the $20,000 in debt he accumulated during his tenure as Chief Architect. ================== 2. Gentoo Security ================== CVS Server and Client Vulnerabilities ------------------------------------- There are two vulnerabilities in CVS; one in the server and one in the client. These vulnerabilities allow the reading and writing of arbitrary files on both client and server. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[4] 4. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200404-13.xml Multiple format string vulnerabilities in cadaver ------------------------------------------------- There are multiple format string vulnerabilities in the neon library used in cadaver, possibly leading to execution of arbitrary code when connected to a malicious server. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[5] 5. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200404-14.xml XChat 2.0.x SOCKS5 Vulnerability -------------------------------- XChat is vulnerable to a stack overflow that may allow a remote attacker to run arbitrary code. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[6] 6. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200404-15.xml Multiple new security vulnerabilities in monit ---------------------------------------------- Two new vulnerabilities have been found in the HTTP interface of monit, possibly leading to denial of service or execution of arbitrary code. For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[7] 7. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200404-16.xml ================================= 3. Featured Developer of the Week ================================= Lance Albertson --------------- Figure 3.1: Lance Albertson (aka ramereth) http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20040419_ramereth.jpg This week we are featuring Lance Albertson [8] (aka ramereth), who is doing general system administration and monitoring for Gentoo. This involves managing monitoring tools for the Infrastructure Project[9], such as Nagios[10] server and implementation, Catci graphs, and whateverelse they come up with. He also helps with general system administration using cfengine and other tools. Furthermore, he helps infrastructure team in setting up new servers, when such need arises. He is making his first steps in ebuild maintenance by helping out with WOLK Kernel[11] and various ebuilds, which belong to netmon herd. Apart from all this Lance is taking part in Gentoo server project, throwing ideas and suggesting strategies. 8. ramereth@gentoo.org 9. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/infrastructure/index.xml 10. http://www.nagios.org 11. http://wolk.sourceforge.net/ Lance considers himself to be new to Linux, as his first serious experience with this OS started in January 2001. His first distro was Mandrake, on which he applied a so called "let's install everything strategy". However, he admits that he got bored with it and switched to Debian, which was a suggestion of his boss. Lance came across Gentoo sometimes in 2002, seeing his friend building it on a dual Pentium Pro box. In the beginning he found the idea to be "nuts" but 6 months later decided to give it a try (it was version 1.2 at a time), and as he says "fell in love instantly". ramereth started his way to becoming a dev on #gentoo-server channel on freenode, where he was spending some time. That was when Kurt Lieber[12] asked him if he wanted to help Gentoo with Nagios implementation. 12. klieber@gentoo.org He is most proud of the project he did once for the school. That was an irc- like server/client with xml-based message format. The commands where based on IRC standard, so one could join the channel become an op, kick/ban people etc. Moreover he was using flashes for the client which made it even more interesting. Even though he had a few known bugs, he still got a straight 'A' on it. There are about 15 computers in his house, including x86/SPARC/PPC/Alpha, and all those he ever used run Gentoo. Lance prefers Gnome[13] desktop and first things he runs are evolution[14], gaim[15] and xterms. cfengine[16], irssi[17], screen[18], nagios[19] and cacti[20] are among his favorite tools. 13. http://www.gnome.org 14. http://www.ximian.com/ 15. http://gaim.sourceforge.net/ 16. http://www.iu.hio.no/cfengine/ 17. http://irssi.org/ 18. http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ 19. http://www.nagios.org 20. http://www.raxnet.net/products/cacti/ Lance was attending a school school at Kansas State University, from which he graduated in May 2003 with a degree in Agricultural Technology Management with minors in Agronomy and Computer Science. Now he is working for RHS Inc., doing technical documentation and IT security. Apart from that he is also doing full- time farming with his family. Driving semi truck, combine and various tracktors is also on list of his skills. When he doesn't work and doesn't do anything for Gentoo, Lance enjoys playing trumpet in jazz ensembles. He has been in the top big band jazz ensemble at k- state for several years plus was in the latin jazz combo. Also he likes playing racquetball, poker and hanging out with his friends. Now he lives in his own house in a small community Hiawatha, which is in northeast of Kansas. Though he considers his life to "laid back" it's quite easy to get away from it, cause Hiawatha is just two hours from Kansas City. And he does actually go there quite often! His favorite quote is "Where ever you go, there you are". When I asked Lance to give me a sentence about Gentoo, he said: "Gentoo is the solution to total control." ========================= 4. Heard in the Community ========================= Web Forums ---------- Gentooified coLinux In an bid to add yet another way to run Gentoo under impossible circumstances, Danish Gentoo user janlaur[21] has volunteered a Howto on running Gentoo Linux as a native Windows thread, using coLinux (and involving a complete Gentoo installation contained in a 2 GB image file to be downloaded at some point). Anyone patient enough to try this, check the thread in the Documentation, Tips & Tricks section: 21. http://forums.gentoo.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=22752 * HOWTO coLinux with gentoo[22] 22. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=163154 New Finnish Forum The Great Scandinavian Unification that the Forums saw about a year ago was intended to create a lively atmosphere among the nordic faction of Gentooism, mostly under the impression that Swedish was sort of a lingua franca for most of the region and looked like a good common denominator at first. But now the Finnish users, linguistically very different from, err, most of the planet's other humanoids, have achieved critical mass and decided they deserve a forum in their own language. Pleased to announce jaska[23] and Mikessu[24] as the new forum's inaugural moderators, tervetuloa 'n all that: 23. http://forums.gentoo.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=22041 24. http://forums.gentoo.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=32106 * Finnish Gento Forum[25] 25. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?f=47 gentoo-user ----------- Linux Partiton Resizing Utilities There are plenty of commercial partition-resizing utilities on the market. But what about Linux ones? Here's a thread[26] that talks about commercial and free utilities for all your resizing needs. 26. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/75114 Ebuild overflow? Some capable Gentoo users have noticed that user-contributed ebuilds have not[27] been making their way into Portage on a timely basis. It comes down to developer overload, so if you've got some free time... become a Gentoo Package maintainer! 27. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/75545 ======================= 5. Gentoo International ======================= Italy/Switzerland: Joint GECHI and Ticino LUG Meeting On Friday and Saturday, 16 and 17 April, the notorious GECHI[28] group of Italian Gentoo users will join forces with the Ticino Linx User Group to organize a friendly event at one of three SUPSI (Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana) sites in Switzerland, this one located in a town called Manno, not far from the Italian border. Dates and times are to be taken with a grain of salt (check the TiLUG site[29] for details), but the Forum coordination thread[30] appears to have everything under control. And in any case, springtime in Ticino is supposed to be lovely.... 28. http://www.gechi.org/ 29. http://tilug.org/cms/index.php?ind=14 30. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=157613 =========== 6. Bugzilla =========== Summary ------- * Statistics * Closed Bug Ranking * New Bug Rankings Statistics ---------- The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[31]) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 10 April 2004 and 16 April 2004, activity on the site has resulted in: 31. http://bugs.gentoo.org * 597 new bugs during this period * 370 bugs closed or resolved during this period * 20 previously closed bugs were reopened this period Of the 5615 currently open bugs: 122 are labeled 'blocker', 187 are labeled 'critical', and 455 are labeled 'major'. Closed Bug Rankings ------------------- The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period are: * AMD64 Porting Team[32], with 45 closed bugs[33] * Gentoo Linux bug wranglers[34], with 27 closed bugs[35] * x86 Kernel Team[36], with 19 closed bugs[37] * Sven Vermeulen[38], with 18 closed bugs[39] * Jeremy Huddleston[40], with 18 closed bugs[41] * Gentoo Games[42], with 17 closed bugs[43] * Portage team[44], with 16 closed bugs[45] * Mirror Admins[46], with 15 closed bugs[47] 32. amd64@gentoo.org 33. http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED& (Log in to post comments)
Seemant left? Posted Apr 20, 2004 22:03 UTC (Tue) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link] Erm, did anyone else notice, tucked into the "Moves, Adds and Changes" section at the bottom, that Seemant Kulleen has left the development team? That seems rather significant, as he was one of the main guys running Gentoo, next to Daniel Robbins. I wonder what happened? Was there some big personality clash that's been hushed up, or what?
Seemant left? Posted Apr 21, 2004 9:02 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] I don't believe it was personality, or anything terrible. He seemedactive (on the devel list and around) until very recently. I may be getting people mixed up since I'm still new to Gentoo and following the lists still from Mandrake as my operational distrib, but /someone/, I /think/ him, said they had to pull the mandatory year's military service in his country, and wouldn't be able to do much, nothing /at/ /all/ for several weeks of training, then mostly only attempting to keep up with the general direction of things catching up with things mainly on the weekend. He might get time to contribute a comment or two here or there, but mostly, it'd be lurking and simply attempting to keep up. Assuming I have the person right that /was/ going on military duty, it seemed he planned, at least at this point, to come back to gentoo after the year, and indeed to try and keep up with it in the mean time. However, we all know how life tends to move on and sometimes even the best intentions don't end up being reality. Anyway, from the sound of things, it's fairly common knowledge that folks doing that year's tour don't have all that much free time, so it seemed he was /hoping/ to keep up with things but was a bit afraid it wouldn't work out that way. I read the "going away note" perhaps a week ago or something, and it sort of shocked me then, as I realized he was a heavy contributor (that's why I think it must have been him tho I can't remember for sure as I'm to new). However, I was still surprised by this, because I suppose I thought gentoo had some sort of sabbatical or something, I guess. However, it does sort of make sense to mark it as "leaving", now, rather than sort of letting him just drift away and folks wonder what happened. Anyway.. I guess it's just one of those rude awakenings we in cyberspace get, once in awhile, when we realize those we know in cyberspace have a meatspace life just as we do. <g> May the year go fast and he come back refreshed and ready to tackle all the problems accumulated in his absence! =:^) Duncan
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