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LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 13, 2004The Grumpy Editor's diagram editor followupLast week's review of several diagram editors attempted to be comprehensive, but, inevitably, a few were missed. Here, your editor will attempt to do penance by looking at a few tools which were passed over last time.![[Kivio]](/images/ns/grumpy/kivio-sm.png)
Kivio had actually
been considered for the previous article. Your editor, however, had seen a
tool which, apparently, could only draw lines and text. Thinking that
kivio must be a little too young for a real review, your editor set it
aside and moved on. Kivio users will understand the problem at this point:
your editor missed the little icon
Strangely, there seems to be no mechanism built into kivio for the creation and editing of stencils; they all would appear to come from the outside. Nothing in the menus or online documentation says anything about how to get stencils into the system. Unless, of course, you want to buy the proprietary stencil builder or get some stencils on a per-seat license from theKompany.com. Kivio has a number of the features your editor was looking for, including layers, attachment points, etc. But the simple fact is that kivio is an awkward and difficult tool to work with. Attributes (colors, line widths, arrowheads, etc.) must be set individually for every object; there appears to be no way to get kivio to apply user-specified attributes to new objects. There is no way to adjust the dimensions of arrowheads (and, interestingly, the "start arrowhead" appears at the second point of the connector). Connectors can only be straight lines. Alignment operations are done via a separate, popup dialog. The "docker" feature, which puts tools like the layer manager on the edge of the diagram, looks cute, but the tools are forever popping in and out when the diagram is being edited. Kivio cannot export to an image file; it is limited to KOffice format or (via the print operation) PostScript or PDF. Kivio is a reasonable tool for some simple tasks now, and may well develop into a capable, general-purpose diagram editor eventually. But it is not up to your editor's needs at this time.
Once again, your editor found this tool to be awkward and frustrating to work with. The interface is highly modal and confusing at times. Changing the default attributes of objects is hard. The arc-drawing tool is very confusing to use at the outset (though, once you get the hang of it, it turns out to be a powerful tool). The alignment operations require dealing with a separate dialog. On the other hand, skencil has some slick features, such as the ability to draw text along an arbitrary path. There is a plugin mechanism allowing the addition of new features programmed in Python. Skencil also can import images in a number of formats. It may well be a useful tool for those engaged in more artistic pursuits; it is not, however, the best diagramming tool out there.
Worth a quick mention: if your main interest is the creation of UML diagrams, Umbrello may be worth checking out. It is, however, very much a special-purpose tool, with UML assumptions wired deeply into it; as such, it's not suitable for more general purpose diagramming. To conclude: your editor will stick with dia for now for his cheesy diagram creation needs. Of all the tools reviewed, dia stands out for its focus on this particular task, the quality of its output, and its ease of use. There is a lot of development happening in this area, however; the situation could well be different next year.
What's in store for GCCThe 2004 GCC & GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit will take place June 2nd through June 4th in Ottawa, Canada. GCC developers from around the world will get together to discuss the "state of the art," and the long term roadmap for GCC.The conference presentations give some insight into the focus of the developers who are working on GCC, and technical direction for the project. For example, last year's GCC Developers' Summit included three talks on support for 64-bit systems, including the IBM's S/390 and x86-64 architecture. If last year's Summit is any example, you can expect GCC to include many of the features that are being talked about this year at the Summit. One heavy focus that's carried over from last year is testing and benchmarking code produced by GCC. Árpád Beszédes of the University of Szeged will be speaking about the Code-Size Benchmark Environment (CSiBE) for GCC, which is used to measure the size of code produced by GCC. (Beszédes's paper from last year is available for those who are interested.) Paolo Carlini of SUSE is also focusing on performance in his presentation, on approaches being used to improve performance in the GNU Standard C++ Library v3 (libstdc++-v3). David Edelsohn will present a paper on loop optimizations for GCC using high-level loop transformations. The loop optimizations described by Edelsohn are implemented on top of Tree SSA, which was an up-and-coming project for GCC when described at last year's GCC Developers' Summit. (Slides in PDF are available.) Now it's headed for inclusion in GCC 3.5. (See this week's Development Page for more information on Tree-SSA). Diego Novillo will be speaking about the design and implementation of Tree SSA this year. According to Novillo, several other GCC optimizations are being implemented on top of Tree SSA as well. Dorit Naishlos will be speaking about another optimization technique, automatic vectorization, that is implemented on top of Tree SSA. Users of the GNU Compiler for the Java Programming Language (GCJ) may be interested in Andrew Haley and Tom Tromey's paper on the new GCJ binary-compatibility ABI which will "let us upgrade the compiler and runtime library in many useful ways without requiring any application-level recompilation," instead of breaking binary compatibility with each new release. Nathan Sidwell's presentation will make the case for implementing statically typed trees in GCC, with an outline for a full conversion from dynamically typed trees. In all, there are fifteen scheduled presentations, and two Birds of a Feather session, for the Summit. Abstracts for all of the paper presentations are available on the GCC Developers' Summit website. For those with a little extra time on their hands, registration for the event is open and it promises to be a fun three days for anyone interested in GCC and compiler development.
Quick SCO notesSCO's suit against Novell had a day in court on May 11, when two motions were heard. SCO is trying to get this case moved back to state court, where it expects a more friendly hearing and where certain awkward issues, such as whether copyrights were actually transferred from Novell, cannot be considered. Novell, meanwhile, is opposing the move and is, instead, trying to get the whole case dismissed. Judge Kimball - the same judge presiding over the IBM case - has not yet ruled on either motion as of this writing. Groklaw has an informal transcript of the proceedings.The $50 million in capital which was pumped into SCO last October is usually termed the "BayStar investment," but, in fact, $30 million of that total came from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). RBC made a couple of interesting moves last week:
From RBC's point of view, the moves are perhaps understandable. The chances of ever getting the original investment back from SCO were small and shrinking; RBC (or whatever investor is hiding behind RBC) decided to cut its losses and get out while it still could. BayStar's motivation is a little harder to comprehend. After all, BayStar stated last month that it wanted to redeem its investment in SCO and get out; now it has, instead, doubled the number of preferred shares it holds. One assumes that BayStar got the shares for less than their original price, but, given BayStar's public lack of confidence in SCO and its management, why is it increasing its stake in the company? One possibility which has been raised is that BayStar wants to increase its leverage over the board of directors and thereby improve its chances of forcing management changes on SCO. The RBC shares, if converted, would give BayStar an approximately 20% stake in SCO; enough to be heard, but still nowhere near enough to dictate changes. Alternatively, BayStar may think that, by way of court, it can extract the full $40 million represented by those preferred shares from SCO. The most ominous possibility, perhaps, is that BayStar may be maneuvering to take possession (or, at least, control) of the IBM suit after SCO collapses. That suit is, after all, the one SCO asset that BayStar sees as being worthwhile. In this scenario, the case could continue long after SCO collapses. BayStar could, conceivably, apply more financial resources to pursuing this case. But no amount of money can make SCO's claims any more legitimate. Finally, SCO's second fiscal quarter ended on April 30; an earnings report is due within the next few weeks. One assumes that its results will be something other than spectacular. Expect the usual theatrics as SCO's management attempts to distract attention from the fact that the company is losing its traditional customers, is not selling "Linux licenses," and continues to bleed cash.
Security Compromised systems: $0.10 eachMuch attention has been given to the arrest of the Sasser worm author, but, as this Register article notes, the arrest of the author of Phatbot may be more significant. Phatbot, as described by CERT, propagates from one Windows system to the next via a whole set of vulnerabilities. Once established, it connects to an IRC server and awaits orders on what to do next. Systems compromised by Phatbot can be used for spamming, DOS attacks, and more.The interesting thing, perhaps, is the note that there is a market for access to Phatbot zombie systems; the going price for "non-exclusive" use of a compromised box is estimated to be about 10 cents. The emergence of a market for compromised systems has the potential to change the dynamics of the security landscape somewhat. Many compromises are carried out by "script kiddies" who are breaking into systems for the fun of it. Others are attacked by crackers with specific goals: access to supercomputers or confidential information, for example. People who "have nothing worth stealing" on their systems have often taken a relaxed approach to security; even if they get broken into, they claim, there is very little that can actually happen. In a world where zombie systems can be sold, everybody has something worth stealing. As this market develops, expect an increase in attacks as crackers race each other to control vulnerable systems and the money-making potential they represent. Sooner or later, a niche market for compromised Linux systems is almost certain to come into being as well. That will not be a welcome development for system administrators who were not looking for additional motivation for attacks on their systems.
New vulnerabilities apache: multiple vulnerabilities
clamav: improper string checking
exim: stack-based buffer overflows
SUSE Live CD: no-password root access
Updated vulnerabilities apache - denial of service in mod_ssl
cvs: client-side file overwrite vulnerability
eterm: command execution
ethereal - multiple vulnerabilities
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
flim: insecure file creation
gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash
iproute: local denial of service
racoon: failure to verify signatures
racoon: denial of service vulnerability
kdelibs: cookie disclosure
kdepim: VCF file information reader vulnerability
kernel: symlink overflow in the iso9660 filessytem
kernel - root exploit in MCAST_MSFILTER
Linux kernel 2.2.10 failing function and TLB flush vulnerability
kernel-utils: setuid vulnerability
kolab: password disclosure
LHA: stack buffer overflows and directory traversal flaws
libpng: denial of service vulnerability.
libpng, libpng3: buffer overflow
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
logcheck: symlink vulnerability
mailman denial of service
mc: multiple vulnerabilities
metamail: integer and buffer overflows
mikmod: buffer overflow
mod_python: denial of service vulnerability
mozilla: multiple vulnerabilties
mpg321: format string vulnerability
MySQL: temporary file vulnerabilities
neon: format string vulnerabilities
Nessus NASL scripting engine security issues
netpbm: insecure temporary files
openssh: timing attack leads to information disclosure
OpenSSL: denial of service vulnerabilities
postfix: denial of service vulnerabilities
proftpd privilege escalation
python: buffer overflow
rsync remote file write attack
samba: local root and symlink vulnerabilities
ssmtp format string vulnerability
sysklogd: heap overflow
sysstat: temporary file vulnerability
File overwrite vulnerability in tar and unzip
tcpdump: ISAKMP payload handling denial-of-service vulnerabilities
Multiple vendor telnetd vulnerability
utempter problems with symlink and strncpy
XChat 2.0.x SOCKS5 Vulnerability
xine-lib: malicious code execution
xine-ui - insecure temporary file creation
Resources The Hackademy JournalThe Hackademy Journal is a new subscription publication aimed at coverage of security issues at a high technical level. Click below for more information.
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current 2.6 kernel is 2.6.6, which was announced by Linus on May 9. Changes since the last prepatch include an NTFS update, an XFS update, some small virtual memory patches, an ACPI update, various architecture updates, and lots of fixes. The list of changes since 2.6.5 is much more extensive, including POSIX message queues, significant ext2 and ext3 filesystem performance improvements, the "laptop mode" patch, 4KB stacks for the i386 architecture, non-executable stack support for several architectures, a big reiserfs update, the lightweight auditing framework, the "completely fair queueing" I/O scheduler, TCP "Vegas" congestion avoidance, and much more. The long-format changelog has the details.As of this writing, no 2.6.7 prepatches have been released. Patches are accumulating in Linus's BitKeeper repository, however; they include a libata update, some architecture updates, the scheduling domains patch set (covered here last month), the removal of the Intermezzo filesystem due to lack of use and support, a sysctl variable giving "huge page" access to a administrator-specified group (see below), the ability to re-enable interrupts while waiting in spin_lock_irqsave() (for all architectures now), support in reiserfs for quotas and external attributes (added over Hans Reiser's objections), and lots of fixes. The current prepatch from Andrew Morton is 2.6.6-mm1. Recent additions to -mm include backing store for sysfs (covered here last February), a number of patches for shrinking the heavily-used dentry structure, another set of (relatively small) virtual memory patches, ia64 hotplug CPU support, a generic qsort() function for the kernel, and the usual pile of fixes. The current 2.4 kernel is 2.4.26; no 2.4.27 prepatches have been released since 2.4.27-pre2 came out on May 3.
Kernel development news Magic groups in 2.6The 2.6.6-mm1 tree includes, among many other things, patches which add two new /proc/sys variables. They are:
The current Linux kernel will not allow a process to perform either of the above actions unless that process has the CAP_IPC_LOCK capability; in practice, this means that the process needs to run as root. The main user of huge pages would appear to be a small program called "Oracle," which is something that many users would rather not run with root privileges. The new sysctl variables allow an administrator to give the ability to use huge pages (and mlock()) to a specific group; if Oracle runs within that group, it will be able to do what it needs without higher privileges. These patches are not universally popular; the addition of "magic groups" with special meaning inside the kernel strikes many developers as an inelegant, un-Unix-like solution to the problem. So these developers were not happy when the hugetlb_vm_group patch was merged for 2.6.7 shortly after appearing in the -mm tree. Rather than rush an ugly hack into the kernel (which will then have to be supported indefinitely into the future), they argue, it would have been better to come up with a proper solution. The problem, it seems, is that there are no better solutions on the horizon. Says Andrew Morton:
Capabilities are broken and don't work. Nobody has a clue how to
provide the required services with SELinux and nobody has any code
and we need the feature *now* before vendors go shipping even more
ghastly stuff.
The problems with capabilities were covered here back in April, when this issue last came up. SELinux can, in principle, solve this problem, but there is the little disadvantage that nobody has been able to put together a production-ready, working distribution with SELinux yet. The distributors have been creating their own patches to enable Oracle to use the huge pages feature, and many of those are seen as being worse than the "magic groups" approach. Rather than see each distribution take the kernel in a different direction, Andrew merged the magic groups patch as the least evil alternative:
Nasty workarounds will be shipped to end users by vendors. That's
a certainty. We cannot change this now. What I wish to do is to
ensure that all users receive the *same* nasty workaround. Call it
damage control.
To some, however, the control appears worse than the damage. If vendors add their own hacks, they take responsibility for maintaining those hacks, or for weaning users off of them at some future time. Pulling features out of the mainline kernel is harder. Be that as it may, for lack of a better short-term solution the "magic groups" patch is now part of 2.6.
4K Stacks in 2.6Traditionally, the Linux kernel has used 8KB kernel stacks on most architectures. That stack must suffice for any sequence of calls that may result from a system call - plus the needs of any (hard or soft) interrupt handlers that may be invoked at the same time. In practice, stack overflows are pretty much unheard of in stable kernels; the kernel developers have long since learned to avoid large automatic variables, recursive functions, and other things which can use large amounts of stack space.There have been patches circulating for some time now which reduce the kernel stack to 4KB. It is generally understood that the switch to smaller stacks will happen at some point; as a result, much work has recently gone into finding code paths in the kernel which are overly stack-hungry. Part of that effort is simply lots of testing; for that reason, recent -mm kernels no longer even offer an 8KB stack option. The hope is that, if enough people try out the smaller stacks and shake out the bugs, 4KB stacks can be merged into 2.6 in the near future. The smaller stacks are scary to some people; it is hard to be certain that all of the possible paths through the kernel have actually been tested. 4KB stacks also break binary modules, and the nVidia drivers in particular. So there is a certain amount of pressure to defer this change into 2.7. One might well wonder why the kernel hackers are trying to put this sort of change into a stable kernel series. The problem with 8KB stacks is that they require an "order 1" memory allocation: two pages which are contiguous in physical memory. Order 1 allocations can be very hard to satisfy once the system has been running for a while; physical memory can become so fragmented that two adjacent free pages simply do not exist. The kernel will try hard to free up pages to satisfy larger allocations; the result can be a slow, painful, thrashing system. Each process on the system has its own kernel stack, which is used whenever the system goes into kernel mode while that process is running. Since each process requires a kernel stack, the creation of a new process requires an order 1 allocation. So the two-page kernel stacks can limit the creation of new processes, even though the system as a whole is not particularly short of resources. Shrinking kernel stacks to a single page eliminates this problem and makes it easy for Linux systems to handle far more processes at any given time. Arjan van de Ven also made the interesting claim that the 4KB stacks are actually safer. His reasoning has to do with one other aspect of the 4KB stack patch: it moves interrupt handling onto a separate, dedicated stack. Software interrupts also get their own stack. Since interrupt handling has been moved away from the per-process kernel stack, the amount of space for system call handling remains about the same, and the stack space for interrupts has been increased. The final decision on the integration of 4KB stacks has not yet been made; there are, seemingly, a few problems which still need to be tracked down. If things settle out, however, this fairly significant change could yet be merged into 2.6.
Deleting timers quicklyKernel timers are a mechanism which allows kernel code to request that a function be called, in software interrupt context, after a given period of time has passed. They are heavily used for all sorts of delays and deferred actions within the kernel. The timer interface has been relatively stable for some time; it has not changed greatly in 2.6. Linux Device Drivers, Chapter 6 covers the timer interface in some detail.Often, kernel code which has queued a timer finds that it needs to delete that timer. There are two functions which perform this task:
int del_timer(struct timer_list *timer);
int del_timer_sync(struct timer_list *timer);
del_timer() ensures that the given timer is not queued to run anywhere in the system; it returns a non-zero value if the timer actually had to be dequeued. del_timer_sync() performs the same function, but it also guarantees that the timer is not actually running on any processor in the system; it will block the current process if necessary while it waits for a running timer to complete. The stronger guarantee is often needed; an unexpected timer running in the corner can create no end of unpleasant race conditions. Geoff Gustafson recently discovered that del_timer_sync() was one of the biggest kernel CPU hogs on a 32-processor NUMA system running "an enterprise database application." The problem is that del_timer_sync() must query each processor to ensure that the given timer is not currently running there. As the number of processors grows, this query loop takes longer to run. The situation is even worse on NUMA systems, since the loop must look at non-local (read "slow") memory for each processor. Geoff posted a patch which solved the problem by remembering where each timer last ran. Since the kernel does not move timers across processors, the query loop in del_timer_sync() could then be reduced to looking at the single processor where the timer would have to be. It was observed, however, that a simpler solution is possible:
if (! del_timer(timer))
/* Do the full CPU query loop */
The idea here is that, if the timer was successfully deleted from the queue before it ran, there is no need to check to see if it is running anywhere. The only problem with this idea is that it is wrong. Timer functions can - and often do - resubmit themselves. If the timer to be deleted has resubmitted itself, but is still running, the above code will fail. If kernel code is deleting a timer, it really should first ensure that said timer will not resubmit itself, but the timer code cannot count on that behavior. That said, some of the top callers of del_timer_sync() within the kernel are using timers which do not resubmit themselves. There is no reason why that code should pay the overhead of a full system search when, if a timer has been deleted off the queue before running, it is already guaranteed that the timer will not be running on any processor. For cases like this, a new function has been created:
int del_singleshot_timer_sync(struct timer_list *timer);
Callers of this function must guarantee that the timer does not resubmit itself; in its current form, del_singleshot_timer_sync() will generate an oops if it detects a resubmitted timer. This function has not yet found its way into the mainline, but, given that it can yield a performance improvement of 2-3 orders of magnitude on large NUMA systems, its addition seems likely.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials Knoppix 3.4 Has LandedThe Knoppix live CD has justly earned a reputation of staging a mini-revolution in our Linux world. By delivering an instant and portable Linux operating system that anybody could use without having to go through a sharp learning curve, the Knoppix developers have not only provided a superb rescue tool for Linux power users, they have also created the best possible advocacy tool to entice computer users not yet familiar with Linux. And although more than a hundred Knoppix clones have sprouted all over the Internet in the last year alone, none of them has surpassed the popularity of the original king of the Linux live CDs. The much awaited Knoppix 3.4 was released last week, inclusive of all the latest software packages, and for the first time, kernel 2.6.What's new in Knoppix 3.4? The lion's share of the development work is done by Klaus Knopper (the founder of Knoppix), Christian Perle and Fabian Franz, and much of their effort goes into one of the following four areas: software updates, hardware auto-detection, the "cloop" compressed files system, and the "knoppix-installer".
Knoppix 3.4 continues in the tradition of excellence by providing many of the latest open source packages on the Knoppix CD, by continuously adding new hardware to its extensive hardware database, and by developing interesting new features. As the undisputed leader among Linux live CDs, Knoppix is an indispensable rescue disk, a demonstration tool, and a quick Debian installer all-in-one. An already remarkable product has just gotten better.
Distribution News Astaro Security LinuxAstaro Corp. has announced the availability of Version 5 of its Astaro Security Linux, which now includes Intrusion Protection and added Virus Protection for HTTP and FTP. Click below for more information.
SUSE LINUX 9.1 is availableSuSE has announced the general availability of SUSE LINUX 9.1. Click below for details.
Debian GNU/LinuxThe Debian Weekly News for May 11, 2004 covers the New York version of PacMan (PacManhattan), EU patents, Debian OASIS membership, documentation, the Debian-Installer release process, a draft proposal for modification of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, Debian trademarks, Debian Day at LinuxTag, and several other topics.The upcoming stable Debian release (sarge) will feature fully integrated XML support. Multiple toolchains for XSL(T) processing, a fully standards-compliant XML catalog system, and a Debian XML policy document for both Debian developers and users provide the backbone of a complete, out-of-the-box system for XML developers and authors. Here's some information about the DebConf key signing party.
Fedora News UpdatesFedora News Updates #11 is available; it features a message from project leader Cristian Gafton, notes on the Fedora Core 2 Test 3 release, an update on Fedora Legacy, and more.
Gentoo Weekly NewsletterThe May 10 Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is out; this issue looks at the status of the Gentoo Documentation Project, proposed changes in how kernels are handled in Portage, and various other topics.
Xandros Desktop OSXandros has announced that the Xandros Desktop OS serves as the core framework for the new line of ION laptops from Element Computer. Element customized the Xandros Desktop OS with their ION Parchment icon theme, the new Mozilla Firefox browser, and "Unbreakable Upgrade" support. Click below for press release.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 48The DistroWatch Weekly for May 10, 2004 looks at source based distributions and other topics.
MandrakelinuxMandrakelinux updates:
Slackware LinuxThis week the slackware-current changelog shows upgrades to lots of GNOME packages, with a few old ones removed; KOffice has been upgraded; Linux kernel 2.6.6 is in testing; and there are bug fixes and upgrades to several other packages.
Trustix Secure LinuxTrustix has fixed a bug in rsync 2.6.1 dealing with the sorting of the filenames.
New Distributions OpenLab GNU/LinuxOpenLab GNU/Linux is a product of South Africa's DireqLearn, an organization that seeks to make a significant positive impact on education in Africa. It is a thin client-enabled Linux distribution based on Slackware Linux, and is designed with an educational focus. It features unique desktop themes for maximum user friendliness without sacrificing compatibility, integrated thin client support that requires no complex setup, the 2.6 series kernel for maximum desktop performance, many DireqLearn enhancements, a unique system administration interface, KDE, and Dropline GNOME. OpenLab joins the list at version 3.0.5, released May 11, 2004. (Thanks to Joe Klemmer)
Minor distribution updates KnoppiXMAMEKnoppiXMAME has released v1.3 beta 19 with major bugfixes. "Changes: This is a preview of what 1.3 will be like, minus the features of NTFS write access and arcade monitor support. VIA AC97 sound is fixed, and the NVidia binary driver is now supplied."
Lineox Enterprise Linux DesktopLineox has released v3.0 of the Lineox Enterprise Linux Desktop. Click below for more information.
Onebase LinuxOnebase Linux has released 2004-r3. "This release features a number of package updates including improved kernel driver support and hardware detection. The installer itself has been given more polish and some issues were resolved. The most noted item of this release is OLM version 2.2.1, which comes with a significant amount of improvements."
PLD Live CDPLD Live CD has released v0.95 with major bugfixes. "Changes: [0.94] is mainly a bugfix release, in which some packages and a few script mistakes were fixed. New features include new packages (KDE 3.2.2, GNOME 2.6.1, and many more) and improved autodetection (more PCI IDs for network, IDE, and SCSI controllers and better PCMCIA controller detection). Some unusual screen resolutions for laptops are now supported. [In 0.95] The kernel has been upgraded to 2.6.6. It works on nforce2 and i865 chips now."
ThinStationThinStation has released v2.0 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: The Dillo and Mozilla Firefox Web browsers were added to the contribs section. The Samba options were improved, and a USB keyring can be mounted as a Samba share. VT220 and TN5250 terminal emulators were added. rdesktop was upgraded to version 1.3.1, which features 24-bit color and sound. XFree86 was upgraded to 4.3.99.rc2. A bootable CD that works everywhere (like Knoppix) can be created. Lots of new keymaps were added. A boot splash screen with a progress bar was added. A Web Management package was added. Most software was updated to the latest versions."
XoL - Diskless X office LinuxXoL has released v18.00 with major feature enhancements. "Changes: This version features a full desktop and OpenOffice environment in both English and German. The unique USB-TO-GO feature offers you the freedom to continue your work on any other system using XoL and a USB storage device. KDE and GNOME are included. The entire distribution fits on one standard 700MB CD. Multimedia software includes voice and video-over-IP applications, DVD-players, MP3 players, and many more. XoL can also be installed onto a hard disk."
Distribution reviews SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal Edition Review (JemReport)The Jem Report reviews SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal Edition. "Personal Edition includes all of the basics: CD playing, ripping and writing software and other multimedia tools; office software in the form of the much-acclaimed OpenOffice.org suite; the KDE desktop environment; photo and graphics editing software; and the Konqueror web browser with built-in plugins for Macromedia Flash and the Sun Java Runtime Environment. In other words, you have everything you need for a standard home computer."
Review: The Sun Java Desktop System (UnixReview.com)Unix Review looks at the Sun Java Desktop System. "I've had JDS installed for more than two months, and I've used it off and on since then. Overall, it's a solid distribution but I can't say I was "wowed" by it. I had seen screenshots of Sun's JDS prior to actually installing it, and I was pleasantly surprised when I sat down and started using it. The screenshots I had seen certainly didn't do it justice."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development GCC gets a new Optimizer FrameworkEarlier this week, the first bits a major compiler internals overhaul have been merged into the development mainline of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for inclusion in the next release.GCC is used as the system compiler for GNU/Linux and many other operating systems. The system compiler is one of the components of an operating system that has a massive impact on the performance of the system as a whole. From the kernel to productivity applications, from the C library to even the compiler itself, almost all executable binaries are compiled with the system compiler, so it has to be stable and produce good code. It is therefore not surprising that major changes to the internals of a stable compiler almost never happen. But computer architectures change, so at some point an aging compiler will have to undergo big surgery or risk becoming irrelevant. And GCC is aging. While GCC produces reasonably good code for a large number of architectures, even its most recent version essentially builds on the compiler framework started by Richard Stallman in the early 1980's. In this framework, code improving transformations are performed on an intermediate representation called Register Transfer Language (RTL), an architecture independent, lisp-like assembly language. Older versions of GCC used this framework mostly for local optimizations, but such limited optimizations are insufficient for modern architectures with RISC-like properties and a significant difference between the speed of the chip and of memory access. So, with the release of GCC 3.0, a number of global optimizations acting on RTL were introduced. Unfortunately, for many code transformations, RTL is not a suitable and effective representation because it is too close to the actual machine language. This hinders several of the high-level analyses performed by modern compilers. It has become more and more obvious that a new, high-level intermediate representation needs to be added to GCC. The Tree SSA project has been started to address this need. The goal of the Tree SSA project is to build a completely machine-independent optimization framework based on the Static Single Assignment (SSA) form. SSA is an intermediate representation (IR) that is becoming increasingly popular because it allows efficient implementations of data flow analysis and optimizing transformations. In SSA form, every temporary variable is only assigned a value once. Actual programs are seldom in SSA form initially, because variables tend to be assigned multiple times, not just once. An SSA-based compiler modifies the program representation so that every time a variable is assigned in the original program, a new version of the variable is created. Different versions of the same variable are distinguished by subscripting the variable name with its version number. Variables used in the right-hand side of expressions are renamed so that their version number matches that of the most recent assignment. It is not always possible to statically determine what is the most recent assignment for a given use. These ambiguities are the result of branches and loops in the program's flow of control. To solve them, the SSA form introduces a new type of operation called PHI functions, these merge multiple incoming assignments to generate a new definition; they are placed at points in the program where the flow of control causes more than one assignment to be available.
For example, consider the code fragment in Figure 1, where it may not be known at compile time which of the branches will execute. The USE-DEF chains for 'x' are drawn in the figure. In the second 'switch', the compiler has to assume that any of the assignments to 'x' in the first switch may have been executed. In this case, the SSA conversion process will introduce a PHI function for 'x' to create the needed unique definition, as shown in figure 2. Notice that PHI functions are an artifact used internally by the SSA form and are never emitted in the final code. The PHI function that defines 'x_4' in the previous example simply means that 'x_4' can take the value of 'x_1', 'x_2', or 'x_3' at run time. Once the program is in SSA form, flow of control and USE-DEF chains are explicitly represented in the intermediate representation, giving almost instantaneous information to passes like constant propagation and folding. The properties of the SSA form greatly simplify data flow analysis, and indeed many traditional compiler optimizations, such as constant and copy propagation and also some forms of common subexpression elimination, are relatively straightforward and fast on functions and even whole programs represented in SSA form. Before work on these optimizations could start, a whole new optimization framework had to be implemented:
All the language front-ends now emit a very high-level IR called GENERIC. Each function is handed over to the language independent parts of the compiler as a tree in GENERIC form. Next, this tree is lowered to GIMPLE form, another new IR derived from the SIMPLE representation proposed by the McCAT project out of McGill University. The GIMPLE representation looks like three-address code. All side effects are explicit so that a function in GIMPLE form is ready for analysis. Most of the existing front-ends have been modified to emit GENERIC so that they can be optimized using Tree SSA. The next release will also include a Fortran 95 front-end, which is the first front-end built directly to emit GENERIC. To avoid unnecessary code duplication, a lot of effort was spent on rewriting the old framework so that it was possible to share many of the basic control flow graph manipulations between the old and the new framework. Data flow analyses had to be implemented from scratch. One particularly interesting analysis is alias analysis. GCC now implements several types of alias analysis: type-based flow-insensitive analysis, flow-insensitive points-to analysis, and flow-sensitive points-to analysis. Most analyses are currently intra-procedural, although some inter-procedural analyses are partially implemented or planned. All the new parts together account for about 100,000 lines of new code, not including the many changes to existing parts of the compiler. The framework implemented as part of the Tree SSA project adds a whole new path to the compilation process, while no RTL passes have been disabled yet. Still, a compiler with the Tree SSA passes enabled is not significantly slower than the recently released GCC 3.4.0, and a number of very expensive passes in the RTL framework have already been subsumed by Tree SSA passes. Once these RTL passes have been disabled and removed, the resulting compiler will be a lot faster than GCC 3.4.0, while the generated code is at least as good, and often better.
System Applications Audio Projects Planet CCRMA ChangesThe latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of Ecasound, Seq24, Libfishsound, and Aeolus.
Database Software SQL Database Access with DBTags (O'ReillyNet)Deepak Vohra explains the use of Jakarta DBTags on O'Reilly. "Jakarta DBTags is a custom tag library that consists of tags to access and modify a database. This tutorial explains the procedure to incorporate Apache Jakarta DBTags custom tag library tags in an example JSP."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe May 11, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with several new PostgreSQL database articles.
Interoperability New stable Samba releasesThe Samba project has announced the release of Samba 3.0.4. This is the version that production Samba servers should be running. Samba 2.2.9 is also out.
Libraries libxml++ 2.6.1 (stable) releasedVersion 2.6.1 of libxml++, a C++ wrapper for the libxml XML parser library, is out."This release fixes 2 annoying bugs found in libxml++ 2.6.0."
libxml++ 1.0.3 (stable) releasedVersion 1.0.3 of libxml++, a C++ wrapper for the libxml XML parser library, is available and features bug fixes.
Mail Software Milter.org announcementsThe milter.org mail filtering site lists new versions of SPF Milter and milter-spamc.
Medical Software FreeMED 0.7.0 Beta 4 Released (LinuxMedNews)Version 0.7.0 Beta 4 of FreeMED, an open source medical practice management and electronic and computer records system, has been announced. "This release consists mostly of packaging fixes and user contributed bugfixes, as well as more specialized reports. All users who are currently testing the 0.7.0 beta series should upgrade to this release."
Printing LinuxPrinting.org changesThe LinuxPrinting.org site mentions the availability of new from Kyocera PPD files.
LPRng-3.8.27 releasedVersion 3.8.27 of the LPRng printing system is available. Change information is in the source code.
Web Site Development Bricolage 1.8.0 Arrives (use Perl)Version 1.8.0 of Bricolage, a Perl-based content management and publishing system, has been announced. "Version 1.8.0 represents a significant new pinnacle for the much-lauded open source content management and publishing system. This release offers more new features, improvements, and performance gains than any previous release."
CPS 3.1.0 (development branch) has been released today.Development version 3.1.0 of CPS, a collaborative Web content management system, is out. "CPS 3.1.0 (development branch) is an intermediate release that takes place in the development process of the future stable release of CPS3, which will be CPS 3.2.0 (stable branch). It is fairly stable, and most of the products are currently used in production, but, except for unit tests which are usually written along the code, it has not received yet a thourough QA process. Some API may also change until CPS 3.2."
mnoGoSearch-php-3.2.5 is outVersion 3.2.5 of mnoGoSearch-php, the PHP front-end to the mnoGoSearch-php web site search engine, is available. See the ChangeLog for more information.Also, version 1.88 of mnoGoSearch-php-extension has been released.
OpenPSA 1.9.0 ReleasedVersion 1.9.0 of OpenPSA is available. "Nemein has released the first Open Source licensed version of the OpenPSA suite. OpenPSA is a management software package for consultancies including project tracking, CRM, help desk, group calendaring and document management functionalities."
SC-Track Roundup 0.7 availableVersion 0.7 of the Roundup, an Issue-Tracking System for Knowledge Workers with command-line, web, and e-mail interfaces, is available. This version adds a lot of new features.
TBNL toolkit announcedThe TBNL toolkit project has been announced. "TBNL is a new "toolkit for building dynamic websites with Common Lisp" by Edi Weitz. It is based on Apache for HTTP communication between the server and the browser, and mod_lisp for communication between the server and Lisp."
UnCommon Web 0.2.1 releasedVersion 0.2.1 of UnCommon Web, a common Lisp-based web application development framework, is out. "The new features in this version are component threads, improved error handling and application administration, improved TAL environments."
ZopeMag Weekly NewsIssue #30 of the ZopeMag Weekly News is available with another collection of Zope related articles.
Miscellaneous Ganymede 1.0.12 archive fixedThe recently released version 1.0.12 of the Ganymede metadirectory system had installation problems. The version has been re-released.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Audacity 1.2.1 releasedVersion 1.2.1 of Audacity is available. "Audacity 1.2.1 is a new stable version of the free Audacity sound editor. This release fixes several minor bugs that were found in Audacity 1.2.0. It also includes several new and updated translations."
Ecasound 2.3.3 releasedVersion 2.3.3 of Ecasound, an audio processing utility, is out. This is the first stable release for 2004, numerous bugs have been fixed.
Muine 0.6.1 releasedVersion 0.6.1 of Muine, a GUI-based music player, is out. "This release mainly includes a workaround for a Mono bug that caused compilation problems with 0.6.0 for many people. Upgrade to 0.6.1 if 0.6.0 didn't compile for you." Version 0.6.0 featured some performance improvements.
WaveSurfer 1.6.4 releasedVersion 1.6.4 of WaveSurfer, a sound visualization and manipulation tool, is out. The changes include a new chooser dialog, file splitting by transcriptions, updated demos, bug fixes, and more.
Desktop Environments GDM 2.6.0.2 stable is outVersion 2.6.0.2 stable of GDM, the GNOME Display Manager, is out. "This release has some major bugfixes especially some long pending PAM fixes and basically I integrated a bunch of patches from bugzilla. Also the IPv6 support is now off by default since it's still not as reliable as the IPv4 code, and really, if you need IPv6 for your private lab of X terminals, there is something wrong with your head."
Metacity 2.8.1 releasedVersion 2.8.1 of Metacity, a window manager for GNOME 2, is out with bug fixes and improved translations.
Bag of Software (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org mentions the release of new versions of three GNOME applications. "New releases of Passpartout, the GNOME CPUFreq Applet and Notify are now available."
KDE 3.3 Release to Coincide with KDE Community World Summit (KDE.News)A new release of KDE is being planned. "Developers should make sure to get the stuff listed they plan to have ready for 3.3 in the planned-features document as soon as possible. KDE 3.3 Alpha is prepared around May 23rd and June 1st will see the first freeze (excluding outstanding listed features and i18n strings) kicking in."
KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The May 7, 2004 KDE-CVS-Digest is out, here's the content summary: "KMail adds filter for attachments and Evolution import. KDE has a new configuration creator and editor. Work continues on Quanta PHP debugger, KJSEmbed with more examples, KDevelop documentation browser, Kexi query designer and much more."
Tutorial: Write your own KFile Plugins (KDE.News)KDE.News points to a tutorial on KFile plugins. "For those not familiar, a KFile plugin is the meta-data magic that powers the "MetaInfo" tab when you display the properties of a file, and the Info List View in Konqueror. It's easy to write one, and there are a lot of file formats we don't have support for yet. This is a fun way to get into KDE development!"
Electronics XCircuit 3.2.16 releasedVersion 3.2.16 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing program, is out. Here are the changes for this version: "Autoconf fix for Solaris, to handle the gcc compiler with the non-gcc linker. Created local version of strdup() to do its allocation through Tcl_Alloc(). Modified the library manager "library import" routine to load any library instances of an object in addition to the object itself. Added the ability to ignore a specific element when selecting."
Financial Applications SQL-Ledger 2.2.7 releasedVersion 2.2.7 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting system, is out. The changes include a revised reconciliation screen, a new reconciliation report capability, a new backup routine, and more.
Games WorldForge Weekly NewsThe May 7, 2004 edition of the WorldForge Weekly News is out with the latest WorldForge game project developments.
Graphics An Introduction to GraphViz and dot (O'Reilly)Michele Simionato explores dot and GraphViz on O'Reilly. "First of all, let me make clear that dot is not just another paint program, nor a vector graphics program. dot is a scriptable, batch-oriented graphing tool; it is to vector drawing programs as LaTeX is to word processors. If you want to control every single pixel in your diagram, or if you are an artistic person who likes to draw free hand, then dot is not for you. dot is a tool for the lazy developer, the one who wants the job done with the minimum effort and without caring too much about the details."
GIMP Animation Package version 2.0.2 ReleasedVersion 2.0.2 of gimp-gap is out. "gimp-gap 2.0.2 is a bug-fix release of the GIMP Animation Package. If you had problems to use GAP with GIMP 2.0.1, please upgrade to this version."
GUI Packages vtkFLTK 0.4.5 releasedVersion 0.4.5 of vtkFLTK, a C++ class library for interfacing with VTK, has been announced. "The 0.4.5 release of vtkFLTK eliminates annoying improper redrawing of sibling widgets upon parent resize. This was the last of the known runtime bugs experienced with vtkFLTK and represents a major milestone for the quality of the library."
Interoperability Wine 20040505 releasedVersion 20040505 of Wine has been announced. Changes include filesystem improvements, drive autodetection, Direct3D improvements, sound driver fixes, and other bug fixes.
Music Applications galan 0.3.0-beta6 releasedVersion 0.3.0-beta6 of galan, The Graphical Audio Language, has been released. "This release has vst(i) support through libfst. So if you ever wanted to wire up networks of vst plugins and instruments, you can do this now."
jMax 4.1.0 released (SourceForge)Version 4.1.0 of jMax is available. "jMax is a visual programming environment for building interactive real-time musical and multimedia applications. This release is the first release with ASIO support for Windows. There is also a lot of bug fixes."
Office Suites OpenOffice.org build 1.1.55 is outBuild 1.1.55 of OpenOffice.org is available. "This package contains the desktop integration work for OpenOffice.org, and a much simplified build wrapper, making an OO.o build / install possible for the common man. It is a staging ground for up-streaming patches to OO.o."
PDA Software Guikachu 1.4.0 releasedVersion 1.4.0 Guikachu, the premiere solution for creating PalmOS resource files on UNIX operating systems, is out. This release has many new features and improvements.
Web Browsers Mozilla 1.4.2 Released (MozillaZine)Stable version 1.4.2 of the Mozilla browser has been announced. "This latest release from the 1.4 branch features only bug fixes (no new features) and will be mainly of interest to developers building products from the stable branch. Most end-users will want Mozilla 1.6 or the upcoming Mozilla 1.7."
mozilla.org Status Update (MozillaZine)The May 3, 2004 edition of the Mozilla.org Status Update has been announced. "It includes news on Mozilla 1.7 Release Candidate 1, Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6, Camino, the default build configuration, Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird extensions, the Mozilla newsgroups, the RDF module, newsgroup filters, Find in This Page , FTP upload, the UIEvent interface, junk mail controls, phishing, XPI software installation, cookies and more."
Minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting (MozillaZine)The minutes of the April 26, 2004 Mozilla.org staff meeting are available. "Issues discussed include Mozilla 1.7 final and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6."
Miscellaneous gi8k 1.2.2 releasedVersion 1.2.2 of gi8k is out with minor bug fixes. "gi8k is a small Gnome applet that reads the CPU temperature and fan speeds on Dell laptops. It also allows direct control over the fans by simply clicking on the applet."
HylaFAX/libtiff incompatibilityUsers of the HylaFAX fax modem software who have libtiff 3.6.1 should be sure to apply this patch, which fixes an incompatibility problem.
Quanta 3.3 BE 2 Released (KDE.News)Version 3.3 BE (Bleeding Edge) 2 of Quanta, a web development tool for the K Desktop Environment, has been announced. "The Quanta team has just released the first Bleeding Edge technology preview of Quanta from the new kdewebdev module. This includes KMDI, CSS enhancements, a new link checker, imagemap editor and a new embedded PHP debugging interface".
Languages and Tools Assembly Language Why Learning Assembly Language Is Still a Good Idea (O'Reilly)Randall Hyde talks about code efficiency and assembly language skills on O'Reilly. "Because greatness is a multifaceted attribute, a short article such as this one cannot begin to describe all the possible components of a great piece of software. Instead, this article will describe one component of writing great code that has been neglected in recent years as computer systems have increased in capacity and power: efficiency."
C++ Use shared objects on LinuxSachin O. Agrawal explains shared objects on IBM's developerWorks. "Making the most of shared memory isn't always easy. In this article, IBM's Sachin Agrawal shares his expertise in C++, showing how the object-oriented among us can take key advantage of a uniquely useful interprocess communications channel."
Java XDoclet v1.2.1 released (SourceForge)Version 1.2.1 of XDoclet, a java code generator, is available. "v1.2.1 is mainly a bug fix release, plus a couple of new modules have been added to support the Spring framework and OpenEJB application server."
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The May 3-9, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is available. "On the menu of the P5P summary this week, you will find language constructions, segmentation faults, proposals for new tied methods, pronunciation issues, and (in fine) a few bugs."
This Week on Perl 6The May 07, 2004 edition of This Week on Perl 6 is available with the latest Perl 6 discussion topics.
Building Testing Libraries (O'Reilly)Casey West covers Perl testing issues on O'Reilly. "Testing is an important step in developing any important body of work. In today's pragmatic culture, we're taught to test first, test often, and design with tests. The expectation is that chanting "test test test" forgives all sins. To a large extent, this is true. Testing helps us produce quality software at all scales. The extreme code produced by this extreme lifestyle hides in the test suite itself. Often the ugliest code we write resides in files with a .t extension. Riddled with redundant, ghastly expressions, the test suite is the collateral damage on our road to beautiful production code. Let's review some common pitfalls made when testing."
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The May 10, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with this week's Python language article links.
Dive Into PythonVersion 5.3 of Dive Into Python, a free online Python book, is out. See the revision history for details on what's new.
PyAlsa 0.0.1 is availableVersion 0.0.1 of PyAlsa is available. PyAlsa is a Python language wrapper for the ALSA audio driver's mixer.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The May 10, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is available with more Tcl/Tk article links.
XML UML, XMI, and code generation, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)Benoît Marchal continues his IBM developerWorks series on UML with part two. "In the second part of this series on UML and XML, Benoît introduces the UML metamodel. He proceeds to XMI, the XML-based specification for the exchange of models. He then shows how to map from the metamodel to XML schema. As an illustration, he includes two stylesheets that provide simple round-trip engineering between UML and XML."
Utility Stylesheets, Part Two (O'Reilly)Bob DuCharme continues his series on XML Stylesheets with part two. "Last month we looked at some short utility stylesheets, each dedicated to a specific task that may be necessary with a wide variety of XML documents: stripping empty paragraphs, converting mixed content to element content, and adding ID values to elements. Stylesheets like these can serve as building blocks in the creation of a large, complex workflow composed of pipelined modular processes. This week, we'll look at several more such stylesheets."
Editors MlView 0.6.3 releasedVersion 0.6.3 of MlView, an XML editor for GNOME, is out. "This release adds tons of bug fixes, a lot of polishing and also some internal architecture enhancements to prepare the future. It's also the first version of MlView that is 100% gtk+2 based."
IDEs Build GUIs with the Eclipse Visual Editor project (IBM developerWorks)David Gallardo introduces the Eclipse Visual Editor project on IBM's developerWorks. "Like many Eclipse.org projects, the goal of the Visual Editor project is to build a tool for building tools -- in this case, tools for building graphical user interfaces. The most interesting thing about the Visual Editor Project is that it has already released a reference implementation. The Visual Editor release 0.5 is a GUI builder for AWT/Swing applications, an Eclipse feature that has long been awaited. Coming soon in release 1.0, slated for delivery in mid-2004, is added support for SWT. In this article, you'll get an overview of Visual Editor and the technology behind it, along with a short demonstration of Visual Editor 0.5's features for building AWT/Swing applications and a preview of the SWT support in Visual Editor 1.0."
Profilers OProfile 0.8 releasedVersion 0.8 of OProfile, a code profiler, has been released. "New in this release is experimental call-graph profiling support, new hardware support, support for separate debug files, and some important bug fixes."
Test Suites Use Jython to build JUnit test suitesMichael Nadel works with JUnit TestSuite classes on IBM's developerWorks. "Developers decide to automate unit tests for a number of reasons. Many take it even a step further and automate the location and execution of those tests. But what if you need your test harness to act as if it were statically defined? Follow along with developer Michael Nadel and see how to use Python to feign statically defined JUnit TestSuite classes."
Version Control cvsdelta 1.7.0 ReleasedVersion 1.7.0 of cvsdelta, a utility that lists what has changed in a CVS repository, is out. The news file says: "Fixed handling of newly added files. Fixed so that files pending removal are not attempted to be re-removed. Made banner (header and footer) optional. Fixed errors in --no-changes mode. Fixed to handle different output for files not found for a revision or date."
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading Bad laws, bad code, bad behavior (ZDNet)News.com looks at bad laws in the U.S. including a new bill which would require parental consent before installing "peer to peer" software. "Software distribution sites like those of SourceForge and the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network would be outlawed, if they did not follow these byzantine legal rules, which include obtaining 'verifiable parental consent,' if the downloader is a minor, ensuring that the software can be readily uninstalled, keeping 'records of its compliance' and so on. Anyone running such a Web site outside the United States would be required to hire a "resident agent" and file reports with the FTC--hardly a boon to the burgeoning global open-source movement."
Living Down to a Low Standard (ComputerWorld)Nicholas Petreley trashes GNOME 2.6 in a ComputerWorld column. "Of all the criticisms one might lodge against GNOME, it's the hypocrisy of its design philosophy that looms largest. GNOME grew out of the desire to free people from Microsoft's ability to dictate what users can or can't do. Yet GNOME is built on the premise that its developers are so much wiser than users when it comes to navigating folders and setting colors that GNOME users shouldn't have a choice in the matter."
Benchmarking Filesystems (LinuxGazette)LinuxGazette compares journaling filesystems. "I recently purchased a Western Digital 250GB/8M/7200RPM drive and wondered which journaling file system I should use. I currently use ext2 on my other, smaller hard drives. Upon reboot or unclean shutdown, e2fsck takes a while on drives only 40 and 60 gigabytes. Therefore I knew using a journaling file system would be my best bet. The question is: which is the best? In order to determine this I used common operations that Linux users may perform on a regular basis instead of using benchmark tools such as Bonnie or Iozone. I wanted a "real life" benchmark analysis."
Trade Shows and Conferences The Linux Audio Conference 2004 (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips reports from the Linux Audio Software Conference in the Linux Journal. "Developer Bob Ham revealed plans for his Linux Audio Session Handler (LASH), a system for saving and restoring the states of and connections between any number of LASH-aware audio applications. LASH is a much-needed system. As Linux audio applications continue to subscribe to the JACK bus, a means for saving and restoring their states becomes most valuable."
Open Source in Africa (O'ReillyNet)Here's an O'ReillyNet report from the Africa Source conference. "This meeting, called Africa Source, was the first event of its kind, bringing together developers from roughly 25 countries on the continent, as well as visitors from a dozen countries outside Africa. Africa Source had several organizers, including SchoolNet Namibia, The Tactical Technology Collective, and The AllAfrica Foundation, with support from The Open Society Institute, and USAID."
The SCO Problem Canadian bank backs away from SCO (News.com)News.com reports that the Royal Bank of Canada has sold the bulk of its investment in SCO to BayStar, which is currently trying to redeem its stake. "'The timing and price of our purchase of RBC's holdings in SCO presented a strategic and financial opportunity for BayStar and its investors,' a BayStar representative said, declining to discuss the motivation or terms of the sale."Update: Interestingly, RBC has converted the remainder of its holdings into common stock at a rate of $13.50/share - over twice the current market price. One might conclude that RBC has had enough of this particular game.
Darl Secretly Attended Novell's Brainshare (Groklaw)Groklaw looks at a pair of interviews with Darl McBride and comes to some conclusions about SCO's strategy in its suit against Novell. "Both interviews indicate that the SCO plan in the Novell lawsuit was to have some ex-Novell executives on the stand to testify that they were at Novell at the time when the negotiations were going on and the contract was written up, both when Novell bought UNIX and when it sold whatever portion of UNIX they sold (SCO claims all of it, naturally), whereas the current Novell executives were not participants. They presumed that testimony would carry the day. Darl is one of the ex-Novell executives. Of course, if Novell succeeds in turning it instead into a federal copyright question, that plan goes down the drain."
Now It's Novell v. Canopy (Groklaw)Groklaw delves into a strange, obscure legal battle between Novell and Canopy (SCO's parent company and largest owner) over DR-DOS and the associated Microsoft lawsuit. "According to the Daily Herald article, Canopy says it all happened like this: Novell was really the one that wanted to sue Microsoft but was afraid of retaliation. So they negotiated with Canopy to do it for them, then sold them rights to the DR-DOS source code on condition that Canopy sue Microsoft. Novell retained rights to royalties and license fees, but they kept out of the written agreements the part about Canopy suing on their behalf. That, according to Canopy, was agreed upon orally, their little secret. Now Canopy is trying to compel them to live up to the alleged oral contract. Those Canopy folks seem to have altogether too much time on their hands."
Companies HP brings OpenVMS to the SuperDome (ZDNet)ZDNet covers the release of OpenVMS. "The porting of the operating system to Itanium 2-based systems will give OpenVMS users an upgrade path when HP discontinues the Alpha processor line, which it picked up with the acquisition of Compaq."
Red Hat Desktop strategy: Semantics have been part of the messaging problem (NewsForge)NewsForge has an article by Jeremy Hogan, Red Hat's Community Relations Manager, about the company's desktop strategy. "And here we are. We've just launched the first Red Hat product with "desktop" in its name (albeit with the silent "corporate" in front of it). This move is alleged to be in response to Sun's Java Desktop System. In actuality, it is in line with our market's demand, and the strategy we articulate in our Open Source Architecture. It is also just the first phase, because we aren't ready to give (or exceed) the single system consumer desktop experience currently available."
Linux Adoption A public library's success story (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org covers a library's conversion to Linux. "Over the past year, the Howard County (Md.) Public Library has migrated more than 200 public PCs from Windows 98 and Windows NT to Linux. These PCs are used both to surf the Internet and to access the library's catalogues."
Penguin power may rule in Vic classrooms (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld looks at Novell's plans for Linux expansion in Victoria, Australia. "Swinburne senior systems administrator for IT services, Brian Habel, said the IT staff are very excited by Novells Linux strategy as it opens up a lot of opportunities. If you can run NetWare on Linux you can leverage other [Linux] applications, he said. We may already have Linux boxes installed so we could re-use that hardware. Novells SuSE Linux will give us more flexibility to get the job done."
Interviews Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge)NewsForge interviews Larry McVoy, author of Bitkeeper. "We are strongly committed to helping the Linux kernel community and other open source projects. Not everyone may believe this, but we'd be doing it even if there was no benefit to us. It is our way of giving back some value for all the great free software we use every day. We run our business on free software, we develop our product with free software, the free software community has been great for our business. All companies who benefit from free software ought to find a way to help the people who are producing that software."
de Icaza: Rest of World Will Force US Into Linux (OS News)OSNews talks with Miguel de Icaza about all things Linux and Novell. "Regarding Mono and the Microsoft .NET patents, Ximian is now splitting the "non-free" parts of .NET in Mono, and so OS providers can decide if they want to include in their products the "non-free non-ECMA" portions or not. Apparently, even without the non-free portions, Mono is fully usable, complete with the GTK# bindings, database and other free parts. Miguel knows that a completely "clean" Mono will still find resistance from some OS/distro makers for political reasons, rather than legal or technical ones, and he is prepared for it." (Found on Footnotes)
JBoss CEO Opposes Open-Source Java (CRN)CRN has posted an interview with Marc Fleury, CEO of JBoss. "JBoss CEO and founder Marc Fleury recently spoke with CRN Senior Editor Elizabeth Montalbano about why he's committed to open source as a lucrative business model and how things have changed between his company and Java steward Sun Microsystems since JBoss Inc. became an official J2EE licensee. Fleury also took a firm stand on why, despite objections from IBM and open-source proponents, Sun should continue to oversee Java licensing and compatibility."Thanks to Phillip Warner.
The People Behind KDE: Helio Chissini de Castro (KDE.News)This week the People Behind KDE travels to Brazil to talk with Helio Chissini de Castro. "The first time I took on KDE, I got Ark maintainership. After that I started packaging Conectiva Linux independent packages. Today I work on Kmix, solve a bug, or another time I try to see whats happening with Ark (since I plan to pass maintainership to the other new guys :-). On a non developer basis, I got the task to be the primary contact on South America and the personal task to annoy some guys of core kde from time to time... :-) And of course, I work hard on PR to show KDE to the Brazilian masses." (Found on KDE.News)
MandrakeSoft: An inside look (NewsForge)NewsForge interviews the Mandrakesoft management team. With regard to getting Mandrakelinux back on store shelves: "I can't divulge any specifics, but I can tell you that we are striking a deal with a major partner and we will be making that announcement in the next few weeks.... I will say that users know them and will be very pleased."
OpenBSD PF Developer Interview (O'ReillyNet)Federico Biancuzzi interviewed six leading OpenBSD developers responsible for PF, the packet filter. Daniel Hartmeier, Henning Brauer, Mike Frantzen, Cedric Berger, Ryan McBride and Can Erkin Acar talk about their work on OpenBSD and on new features and goals. The interviews are carried on O'ReillyNet in two parts. Here's part 1 and here's part 2.
Interview: Xandros and KDE (KDE.News)KDE.News interviews Rick Berenstein, Xandros Chairman and CTO and Ming Poon,Vice President for Software Development. "Ming Poon: When we first started our Linux desktop effort back in 1997, we actually implemented a 100% pure Java solution called Cabot which was running on the StrongARM processor on a little NC (Network Computer) called the NetWinder. It had pretty well all the key functionalities of KDE or any other desktop environment including toys like an Internet news ticker in the task bar. It is probably something more close to a true Java desktop than what Sun's Java Desktop is today. It was really 100% Java."
Mozelle Thompson, FTC Commissioner (InternetNews.com)Internet News talks with FTC commissioner Mozelle Thompson about spam, patents and other topics. "There should be a means to have the Patent Office re-examine patent they've granted. One thing we've talked about is to provide the Patent Office with better tools that would give them more granularity to understand and consider the difference between an idea and a technical standard, so they can understand that granting a patent might be overbroad or have unintended consequences." (Thanks to Doug Jensen)
Resources ULB 2004 Preview: Ultimate Linux Box Boots (Linux Journal)Linux Journal is building the 2004 edition of the Ultimate Linux Box. "Previous Ultimate Linux Boxes have had two processors, which generally has been the maximum in the market for parts for roll-your-own machines. Vendors will sell you a bigger system, but when you're building it yourself, the choice has been one processor or two. This year, we're moving up to a four-way. What better way to celebrate the 2.6 kernel?"
XSLT: Taming a functional language (DevChannel)The OSDN DevChannel has an excerpt from XSLT 2.0 Web Development, published by Prentice Hall PTR. "Everything is possible by asking the right questions. XSLT was designed as a functional programming language. The functional programming paradigm dates from the 1980s and has proved very useful, even if in a limited way. Other established functional languages include Haskell and Scheme."
Reviews Linux For Everyone: From Servers To Desktops (CXOtoday.com)CXOtoday reports that ELX, Everyone's Linux, is about to launch in India. "To flag its entry into the Linux segment, ELX plans to launch its low fee desktop operating system, known as Biz Desk 4.0, which will cater to both business and home users, and also its high end server called PowerISP, which is positioned as the primary Internet edge server for organizations, business houses, service providers and educational institutes."
Red Hat launches new desktop Linux (LinuxWorld)LinuxWorld takes a look at Red Hat's new desktop offering and a an upcoming carrier grade Linux product. "[Unlike] the WS distribution, which is sold on a per-system basis, Red Hat Desktop will be available in packages of 10 or 50 units when it begins shipping, said Mike Ferris, Red Hat's product marketing manager for Enterprise Linux. "What we are doing now is extending the Enterprise Linux product family by adding a Red Hat product that is specifically targeted at the front office," Ferris said."
Giving XFce4 a Spin (OS News)OS News reviews XFce. "[If] you've got GNOME and KDE as fantastic, complete desktop environments, why use XFce? The simple answer to this is - it's lightweight, and very fast. For users like me, who're stuck with 6-year-old Pentium IIs, KDE and GNOME seem more or less sluggish (depending upon how much RAM you have). But XFce is blazing fast." (Found on Footnotes)
Miscellaneous Luminary joins open-source protection firm (News.com)News.com reports that Bruce Perens has joined the board of directors of Open Source Risk Management, a company that sells insurance-like protection for Linux use. "Perens endorsed the company's mission. "Collective legal defense is the next necessary step for open source to be ready for business," Perens said in a statement. "Through a concentration of legal resources and expertise, OSRM will be a formidable power against the legal opponents to Open Source.""
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements Linux in Defense: Free Software is Just Too ExpensiveHere's another FUD missile (white paper) from Green Hills Software. This time the focus is on free software's high development costs and lack of support. "No one has ever established a profitable open source business model, because no company can sustain an exploitable proprietary advantage. The nature of open source is that every proprietary advantage must be returned to the public domain. The talents of individual engineers can't be retained because the engineers can just quit and take all of their knowledge with them to apply in their next job. The open source process drives the profit out of Linux businesses leading to their eventual demise."
Software Patents: EU Council Plans to Scrap Parliamentary VoteThe Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure reports that a counter proposal to the software patents directive is expected to be confirmed without discussion at a meeting of ministers on May 17-18, 2004. The new proposal allows the direct patent-ability of computer programs, data structures and process descriptions.
The Edinburgh FundThe Edinburgh Fund has been announced by the people at the wxWidgets project. "This is a fancy name for the small amount of money left over from the name change settlement with Microsoft, after legal fees, tax, and labour fees have been deducted. Julian Smart is administering this as a separate fund from SPI donations to avoid 'contaminating' other funds with money that a small number of people consider offensive, due to its source. It also makes for quick decisions about allocation and rapid transfer of funds to people who need it." People who are contributing to wxWidgets may apply.
The Midgard Project Celebrates 5th AnniversaryThe Midgard project is celebrating its 5 year anniversary. "Midgard is an Open Source Content Management System integrating world's most popular Open Source web development tools MySQL, Apache and PHP providing an environment for deploying powerful Internet based content management solutions. The Midgard environment includes a component framework and several web-based authoring and administration tools."
The Xiph.org Foundation joins Linuxaudio.orgLinuxaudio.org has announced a new member: "The Xiph.org Foundation has joined the Linuxaudio.org consortium, becoming the newest member and bringing the total number of members to nineteen."
Commercial announcements Announcing CrossOver Office, Version 3.0Version 3.0 of CrossOver Office is available from CodeWeavers. "We've added new, official, support for Outlook XP, Microsoft Project, and Notes 6.5.1. Unofficially, we're excited by users comments that far more applications are working now. These include programs like Framemaker and Microsoft Money."
BRU Server for Linux enterprise data protectionTOLIS Group has announced enhancements to BRU Server for Linux.
CPUBuilders High Performance Linux PCsCPUBuilders by Stratitec announced the availability of two new higher end Linux PCs with a street price of less than $600.
Eclipse Use GrowsEvans Data Corp. has announced that according to its latest survey the Eclipse open source Java IDE is growing in popularity.
Novell announces Evolution 2.0, free ConnectorNovell has sent out a press release pre-announcing Evolution 2.0 (which will be available in the third quarter). Perhaps more interesting is the announcement that the proprietary Connector product, which interfaces Evolution with Microsoft Exchange servers, will be integrated with Evolution and released under the GPL.
Novell announces tech support offeringsNovell has announced a new set of support offerings for Linux, and is now claiming to be "the only software company to provide comprehensive enterprise-level support for a customer's entire Linux environment, from servers to desktops to laptops." See the press release for details.
Single-kernel real-time Linux supports dual-PPC VMEbus board (LinuxDevices.com)LinuxDevices covers the TimeSys release of a single-kernel real-time Linux board support package as well as a complete development tool set for a dual-PowerPC processor VMEbus single board computer targeting military and aerospace applications.
VA Linux in Collaborative Development Project with NTT DataVA Linux Systems Japan K.K. has announced the undertaking of a collaborative development project with NTT Data Corporation designed to develop a crash analysis tool for the Linux operating system. The project aims to have the tool in circulation by the first quarter of 2005.
New Books "Eclipse" Released by O'ReillyO'Reilly has published the book Eclipse by Steve Holzner. "Eclipse, the popular Java integrated development environment (IDE), provides an elegant, powerful, and (best of all) free remedy for Java's exacting programming requirements."
"Hackers and Painters" Released by O'ReillyO'Reilly has published the book Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham.
Resources The LDP Weekly NewsThe May 5, 2004 edition of the Linux Documentation Project Weekly News has been published. Take a look to see the latest new documentation.
LDP Weekly NewsThe May 12, 2004 edition of the LDP Weekly News is out, take a look for the newest Linux documentation releases.
PyZine Issue 6Issue #6 of PyZine, the Python magazine, has been announced.
Upcoming Events GUADEC 2004 Press Release (GnomeDesktop)GUADEC 2004 has announced an international slate of speakers at the Fifth Annual GNOME User and Developer Europe Conference (GUADEC 2004). GUADEC will be held at Agder University College in Kristiansand, Norway, from June 28-30, 2004.
Hosts wanted for GUADEC 2005! (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop.org has posted a request for a GUADEC 2005 host location. "The GNOME Foundation is looking for a host city for GUADEC 2005. Yes, we haven't even had this years GUADEC in Norway and we're already looking to next year!"
The Desktop Developers' ConferenceIt's official: the Desktop Developers' Conference will be happening in Ottawa on July 19 and 20 - immediately prior to the Ottawa Linux Symposium. Registration is now open.
Linux Audio Miniconf Canberra AustraliaAn early announcement has gone out for the Australian Linux Linux Audio Mini-Conf. "The Linux Audio Mini-Conf @ LCA2005 will be held before linux.conf.au, Australia's national Linux conference, in April 2005 at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia."
Austrian Perl Workshop schedule (use Perl)Use Perl has an announcement that details the schedule of the Austrian Perl Workshop. The event will take place in Vienna, Austria on May 20-22, 2004.
php|works 2004 Call For PapersA call for papers has gone out for the php|works 2004 conference. The event will take place in Toronto, Canada on September 22-24, 2004. "The deadline for submitting talk proposals is May 21st, 2004. Due to organizational constraints, this is a firm date that cannot be postponed."
SciPy 2004 Conference AnnouncedThe 2004 SciPy Conference has been announced. The event will take place at Caltech on September 2 and 3, 2004.
KDE Community World Summit: Call for Papers (KDE.News)KDE.News announces the call for papers for the KDE Community World Summit. The deadline for proposals is May 30, 2004. The conference is in August.
Events: May 13 - July 8, 2004
Web sites pgFoundry Open For BusinessA new PostgreSQL database site is online. "PostgreSQL's new collaboration site for associated projects, pgFoundry, also known as projects.postgresql.org, is up and running at http://www.pgfoundry.org/. This is the beginning of our transition from our own GBorg to a framework which is maintained and improved by a broad external community -- GForge. And of course it runs on PostgreSQL."
A new Wiki for PyQt and PyKDE (KDE.News)KDE.News has an announcement for the new PyQt and PyKDE community Wiki site. "In order to create a community platform, we have set up a wiki entirely devoted to Python GUI development with PyQt and PyKDE. So if you don't know anything about it, the time might be great, because a new version of PyKDE supporting the KDE APIs up to 3.2.2 is currently in Beta stage - and a release is coming soon! In the wiki, you will find links to tutorials on how convenient Qt or KDE programming can be without C++, no matter if you use it for rapid prototyping or for the actual applications."
Software announcements This week's software announcementsHere are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
Page editor: Forrest Cook Letters to the editor A seperate Political Based newsletter for Linux
I don't know about you guys, but I certainly hate mixing Politics with
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
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![[Kivio icon]](/images/ns/grumpy/kivio-stencil.png){kind=small}
(shown at left)
in the toolbar which loads stencils into the system. Kivio, the main
purpose of which is the creation of flowcharts, is all about stencils. A
large set of stencils is provided with the program; they include the full
library of shapes from Dia, national flags, a map of Belgium, UML symbols, and
"people shapes" including a woman in a bikini. Working with kivio is
really a matter of finding the stencils you like, dragging them onto the
screen, and drawing lines between them.
![[Skencil]](/images/ns/grumpy/skencil-sm.png)
![[Inkscape]](/images/ns/grumpy/inkscape-sm.png)
