Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 17

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of April 26th, 2004.
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1. Gentoo News
==============
  
New apache maintainer and public mailing list
---------------------------------------------
  
We're pleased to announce that Chuck Short[1] is the new maintainer of 
Apache-related packages for Gentoo Linux, and leader of the newly-formed 
Apache herd. Chuck succeeds Donny Davies, who is retiring from the Gentoo 
Project. Chuck is being helped by a group of volunteers who responded to 
our recent call for Apache maintainers. We hope that some of these will be 
invited to become full Gentoo developers in the coming months. 

 1. zul@gentoo.org
 
We've set up a new public mailing list for discussing the use of Gentoo on 
webservers. It's also a place to share your thoughts about how we can 
further improve Gentoo as a webserver platform. The mailing list is 
gentoo-web-user@gentoo.org; send a blank email to 
gentoo-web-user-subscribe@gentoo.org to subscribe. 
    
Gentoo Linux seeking a new squid maintainer
-------------------------------------------
  
With the departure of Donny Davies, The Gentoo Linux Project is seeking a 
new maintainer for squid[2]. We're looking for a dedicated developer with 
experience with squid and writing ebuilds. You may want to search 
Bugzilla[3] for squid-related bugs to get an idea of the kind of bugs 
you'll have to deal with. If you're still interested, send an email to 
recruiters@gentoo.org. 

 2. http://www.squid-cache.org/
 3. http://bugs.gentoo.org/
    
==================
2. Gentoo Security
==================
  
ipsec-tools and iputils contain a remote DoS vulnerability
----------------------------------------------------------
  
racoon, which is included in the ipsec-tools and iputils packages in 
Portage, does not check the length of ISAKMP headers. Attackers may be 
able to craft an ISAKMP header of sufficient length to consume all 
available system resoources, causing a Denial of Service. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[4] 

 4. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200404-17.xml
    
=================================
3. Featured Developer of the Week
=================================
  
Donny Davies
------------
  
(This article was contributed by developer Grant Goodyear[5])

 5. g2boojum@gentoo.org
 
This week one of Gentoo's senior developers, Donny Davies (woodchip), 
retired with a message to the gentoo-dev mailing list stating "Because of 
work and various other social commitments I can no longer fulfill my 
duties as package maintainer for this project. As such, I wish to pass on 
responsibilities to whomever wants the job." On behalf of the rest of the 
Gentoo team, I wish Donny well in his new endeavors. I also wish to 
acknowledge here some of woodchip's many accomplishments during his time 
with Gentoo. 
 
Donny became a Gentoo developer sometime during 2001. I had been a 
developer for only a short time when woodchip joined, and my records of 
that period are rather sketchy, so I'm not sure exactly when he joined. 
(It would be possible to grep the cvs log to determine when Donny made his 
first commit, but woodchip touched so many files that wading through the 
log is a highly non-trivial exercise.) On 2 Sep 2001 he committed a samba 
revision where he had stripped out svc support (once upon a time most 
servers in Gentoo were setup to run from daemontools by default), so his 
tenure has been at least that long. 
 
My recollection is that one of woodchip's more impressive early feats was 
the complete replacement of all of the init scripts in Portage for Gentoo 
Linux 1.0_rc6. Through 1.0_rc5 Gentoo had used fairly standard rc scripts 
modified from Stampede Linux, but for 1.0_rc6 Daniel Robbins (drobbins) 
and Martin Schlemmer (azarah) had created a new dependency-based init 
script system that is still used today. Within a span of days Donny 
rewrote every single init script in the Portage tree and committed new 
masked packages to await the release of 1.0_rc6. Thanks to woodchip (and 
drobbins and azarah, of course) the transition to the new init scripts was 
nearly painless. 
 
Since then woodchip has been responsible for maintaining some of the most 
vital packages in Portage. Solar recently posted a  list [6] of all of the 
packages that have woodchip's name in the ChangeLog, and the breadth of 
packages that he has touched is truly impressive. Less visible, but 
perhaps even more important, woodchip was the principle maintainer for the 
Gentoo PAM, apache, and samba packages. As useful as PAM is for 
simplifying authentication on a Linux system, the package itself is a 
nightmare to maintain because for much of its life a great deal of the 
package's most useful functionality has existed only as a barely-coherent 
collection of redhat patches. At the same time, PAM is one package that is 
never (well, hardly ever) allowed to break, since the result of a broken 
PAM configuration is generally an inability to log into the machine. 
Apache is a similarly vital package, and woodchip handled the transition 
from Apache-1.x to Apache-2.x with considerable aplomb. The transparent 
installation of Apache modules into the correct module directory along 
with appropriately installed configuration fragments is entirely due to 
Donny's careful shepherding. Similar care can be seen in the samba 
package. 

 6. 
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/17456/match=solar+woodchip
 
Donny, thank you very much for all that you have done for Gentoo, for your 
willingness to answer all sorts of weird and naive questions, and for your 
friendship. Gentoo will be much poorer without you. Best wishes. 
    
=========================
4. Heard in the Community
=========================
  
Web Forums
----------
  
New Forum Administrator 
 
Since Wednesday 21 April, former moderator ian![7] is now giving the other 
site admins a helping hand in keeping the Gentoo Forums fully functional. 
Sadly, his new duties will also include the cancelation of a steady number 
of user accounts that are being abused to spam the Forums each week... 

 7. http://forums.gentoo.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=15031
 
 * [forums-announce] New administrator ian![8] 
 8. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=164038

    
gentoo-user
-----------
  
Portage Slotting 101 
 
Here's[9] an informative thread about Portage and how "slotting" of 
different package versions works. 

 9. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/76402
 
UTF-8 Console Fonts and More 
 
International Gentooers may be interested in the  UTF-8[10] thread that 
blossomed into a detailed discussion of how non-english fontsets and 
languages are handled in Gentoo. 

 10. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/75908
    
=======================
5. Gentoo International
=======================
   
Germany: German NFP Registered, Local Gentoo Merchandise Shop Opened 
 
While Daniel Robbins is busy converting Gentoo into a not-for-profit 
organisation on his side of the Atlantic, the German Gentoo developers 
have finalised all the necessary steps for registering an almost identical 
legal entity, called "eingetragener Verein" (registered association) under 
the German law. It'll take the commercial courts another four to six weeks 
to acknowledge the setup, but the association[11] is already operational, 
has opened a bank account, and started raking in bushels of money via 
their new online shop[12], whose main advantage over the Gentoo store[13] 
in the US lies in its comparatively low-cost deliveries to customers in 
Germany. Proceeds from the online sales are split between the manufacturer 
of the goods on offer, and the association who'll reinvest the leftovers 
in things like burning and printing LiveCDs to be thrown around the crowds 
at events across Europe, and covering the costs for the increasing number 
of Gentoo booths at those same trade fairs and conferences. 

 11. http://www.gentoo-ev.de
 12. http://www.spreadshirt.de/shop.php?sid=22258
 13. http://store.gentoo.org
 
UK: New Gentoo-UK IRC Channel Opened 
 
The British Gentooistas have been lagging behind their European 
neighbours, at least in creating regional Gentoo support sites. Now, even 
if they cannot possibly be blamed for lacking the same type of online 
activities (traditionally centered on translations of the English Gentoo 
documentation), they could at least have agreed on a venue for their first 
regional user meeting by now, let alone a date. But last week's creation 
of a UK-specific IRC channel (#gentoo-uk on irc.freenode.net) on Freenode 
by Edinburgh-based Gentoo developer Ciaran McCreesh should finally provide 
a good starting point for future activities. Looking forward to their 
announcements. 
    
==================
6. Tips and Tricks
==================
   
Tips and Tricks is on hiatus this week.
    
===========================
7. Moves, Adds, and Changes
===========================
  
Moves
-----
  
The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
 
 * Donny Davies (woodchip) - Apache and system components 
    
Adds
----
  
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
 
 * None this week 
    
Changes
-------
  
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux 
project:
 
 * None this week 
    
====================
8. Contribute to GWN
====================
   
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 14. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org
    
===============
9. GWN Feedback
===============
   
Please send us your feedback[15] and help make the GWN better.

 15. gwn-feedback@gentoo.org
    
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===================
   
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 16. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
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Yuji Carlos Kosugi <carlos@gentoo.org> - Editor
AJ Armstrong <aja@clanarmstrong.com> - Contributor
Brian Downey <bdowney@briandowney.net> - Contributor
Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> - Contributor
Stuart Herbert <stuart@gentoo.org> - Contributor
Kurt Lieber <klieber@gentoo.org> - Contributor
Rafael Cordones Marcos <rcm@sasaska.net> - Contributor
David Narayan <david@phrixus.net> - Contributor
Ulrich Plate <plate@gentoo.org> - Contributor
Simon Holm Thagersen <simon@lysbro.net> - Danish Translation
Jesper Brodersen <broeman@gentoo.org> - Danish Translation
Arne Mejlholm <aaby@gentoo.org> - Danish Translation
Hendrik Eeckhaut <Hendrik.Eeckhaut@UGent.be> - Dutch Translation
Jorn Eilander <sephiroth@quicknet.nl> - Dutch Translation
Bernard Kerckenaere <bernieke@bernieke.com> - Dutch Translation
Peter ter Borg <peter@daborg.nl> - Dutch Translation
Jochen Maes <linux@sejo.be> - Dutch Translation
Roderick Goessen <rgoessen@home.nl> - Dutch Translation
Gerard van den Berg <gerard@steelo.net> - Dutch Translation
Matthieu Montaudouin <mat@frheaven.com> - French Translation
Xavier Neys <neysx@gentoo.org> - French Translation
Martin Prieto <riverdale@linuxmail.org> - French Translation
Antoine Raillon <cabec2@pegase.net> - French Translation
Sebastien Cevey <seb@cine7.net> - French Translation
Jean-Christophe Choisy <mabouya@petitefleure.org> - French Translation
Thomas Raschbacher <lordvan@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Steffen Lassahn <madeagle@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Matthias F. Brandstetter <haim@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Lukas Domagala <Cyrik@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Tobias Scherbaum <dertobi123@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Daniel Gerholdt <Sputnik1969@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Marc Herren <dj-submerge@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Tobias Matzat <SirSeoman@gentoo.org> - German Translation
Marco Mascherpa <mush@monrif.net> - Italian Translation
Claudio Merloni <paper@tiscali.it> - Italian Translation
Stefano Lucidi <stefano.lucidi@gentoo-italia.org> - Italian Translation
Katuyuki Konno <katuyuki@siva.ddo.jp> - Japanese Translation
Hiroyuki Takeda <hiro@extreme.jspeed.jp> - Japanese Translation
Masato Hatakeyama <hatake@mx2.ttcn.ne.jp> - Japanese Translation
Masayoshi Nakamura <masayang@masasushi.com> - Japanese Translation
Yasunori Fukudome <yasunori@mail.portland.co.uk> - Japanese Translation
Tomoyuki Sakurai <web-gentoo-doc-jp@trombik.mine.nu> - Japanese Translation
Lukasz Strzygowski <lucass@gentoo.pl> - Polish Translation
Karol Goralski <gooroo@gentoo.pl> - Polish Translation
Atila "Jedi" Bohlke Vasconcelos <bohlke@inf.ufrgs.br> - Portuguese 
(Brazil) Translation
Eduardo Belloti <dudu@datavibe.net> - Portuguese (Brazil) Translation
Jo??o Rafael Moraes Nicola <joaoraf@rudah.com.br> - Portuguese (Brazil) 
Translation
Marcelo Gon??alves de Azambuja <mgazambuja@terra.com.br> - Portuguese 
(Brazil) Translation
Otavio Rodolfo Piske <angusy@gentoobr.org> - Portuguese (Brazil) 
Translation
Pablo N. Hess -- NatuNobilis <natunobilis@gentoobr.org> - Portuguese 
(Brazil) Translation
Pedro de Medeiros <pzilla@yawl.com.br> - Portuguese (Brazil) Translation
Ventura Barbeiro <venturasbarbeiro@ig.com.br> - Portuguese (Brazil) 
Translation
Bruno Ferreira <blueroom@digitalmente.net> - Portuguese (Portugal) 
Translation
Gustavo Felisberto <humpback@felisberto.net> - Portuguese (Portugal) 
Translation
Jos?? Costa <jose_costa@netcabo.pt> - Portuguese (Portugal) Translation
Luis Medina <metalgodin@linuxmail.org> - Portuguese (Portugal) Translation
Ricardo Loureiro <rjlouro@rjlouro.org> - Portuguese (Portugal) Translation
Aleksandr Martyncev <amncorp@bk.ru> - Russian Translator
Sergey Galkin <gals_home@list.ru> - Russian Translator
Sergey Kuleshov <svyatogor@gentoo.org> - Russian Translator
Alex Spirin <asp13@mail.ru> - Russian Translator
Denis Zaletov <dzaletov@rambler.ru> - Russian Translator
Lanark <lanark@lanark.com.ar> - Spanish Translation
Fernando J. Pereda <ferdy@ferdyx.org> - Spanish Translation
Lluis Peinado Cifuentes <lpeinado@uoc.edu> - Spanish Translation
Zephryn Xirdal T <ZEPHRYNXIRDAL@telefonica.net> - Spanish Translation
Guillermo Juarez <katossi@usuarios.retecal.es> - Spanish Translation
Jes??s Garc??a Crespo <correo@sevein.com> - Spanish Translation
Carlos Castillo <carlos@castillobueno.com> - Spanish Translation
Julio Castillo <julio@castillobueno.com> - Spanish Translation
Sergio G??mez <s3r@fibertel.com.ar> - Spanish Translation
Aycan Irican <aycan@core.gen.tr> - Turkish Translation
Bugra Cakir <bugra@myrealbox.com> - Turkish Translation
Cagil Seker <cagils@biznet.com.tr> - Turkish Translation
Emre Kazdagli <emre@core.gen.tr> - Turkish Translation
Evrim Ulu <evrim@core.gen.tr> - Turkish Translation
Gursel Kaynak <gurcell@core.gen.tr> - Turkish Translation