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LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 8, 2004A look at PostgreSQLWith the 7.5 release of PostgreSQL not too far away, and news of new features sponsored by Fujitsu and Software Research Associates (SRA), we decided to take a look at the PostgreSQL project and what users might be able to expect in the coming months. We spoke to PostgreSQL steering committee member Bruce Momjian about the upcoming 7.5 release, and the "state" of PostgreSQL. According to Momjian, "the project is doing very well."
We're very organized and thorough in the way we do stuff. That's kind of
paid off [in that] every three or four months it seems like we're making
another kind of milestone in what we can do with Postgres in terms of
adoption and features. It's kind of hard to put it into words, I've stopped
getting surprised at how successful it's been.
Though each new release is a milestone, Momjian said that the 7.5 release would have an unusual number of new features. In part, that's thanks to Fujitsu and SRA underwriting the development of tablespaces, nested transactions development and support for Java server-side programming. Momjian is employed by SRA to work with PostgreSQL and the community, and says the company approached him to broker arrangements with developers already working on those features:
Big missing functionality typically takes weeks to develop, very hard for
developers to spend weeks volunteering, they've got to put food on the
table. Fujitsu would supply X amount of money for the amount of time
they're spending working on these features, [which were] very slow going
because they were only spending a few hours a week... the infusion of cash
allowed them to commit weeks.
The tablespace feature will allow a database to be spread across multiple storage devices. Currently, PostgreSQL requires all of a database to exist on a single filesystem. This can be a problem for performance and space reasons. In 7.5, by default, PostgreSQL will continue to store everything on the same filesystem, but Momjian said that an administrator will be able to use tablespaces to move a table or entire database to another filesystem. Even better, Momjian says that this will not impact an application using the database -- so existing applications will not need to be rewritten to use a database that takes advantage of tablespaces. Oracle users and developers will know nested transactions by the name "savepoints." This feature in 7.5 will give developers "better control over failure cases with multi-statement locks" and allow developers a better option than simply causing an entire transaction to fail if one statement fails. Momjian noted that PostgreSQL already had "a robust system" but that developers porting applications from Oracle needed finer control than the current PostgreSQL system allows. "Some applications needed logic that would say 'I want to try inserting, but if that fails, I want to do something else.'" Another feature in 7.5 of interest to many users will be point-in-time recovery. With point-in-time recovery, PostgreSQL will allow users to recover information "up to the instant of hardware failure." Of course, not all PostgreSQL users are defectors from the Oracle camp. The focus of late for many open source projects seems to be on the "enterprise" features, which might lead hobbyist and small business users to wonder whether those projects will continue to be suitable for their use. We asked whether focus on enterprise features might detract from the "little guy," and he said that while PostgreSQL 7.5 will have many features that are aimed directly at the enterprise users, the PostgreSQL project isn't losing sight of the small-scale users. In fact, there are several features that are directly aimed at the little guy rather than enterprise users. One of those features is direct import of comma-separated value (CSV) files. Momjian said that many users have asked for the ability to directly import a CSV file produced by a spreadsheet program or other utility. Prior to 7.5, users would have to convert those files into a suitable format for PostgreSQL to import using a Perl script or other utility -- but with 7.5 users will be able to "load CSV natively right into Postgres." Another "little guy" feature of interest in 7.5 is the ability to change the data type of a column. In prior versions of PostgreSQL, it would be necessary to add a new column, import data from the existing column into the new column, drop the old column and then rename the new column to change the data type. In 7.5, users will be able to simply alter the data type of a column in one easy step. Momjian also said that the Postgres developers do worry about "bloat," and that "we've managed to come very far with adding features, without impacting performance or readability [of the PostgreSQL code.]" On average, he said that PostgreSQL adds "maybe 50,000 lines every year to the code...no feature goes in unless it fits like a glove." Though not part of the 7.5 release, the recently announced Slony-I replication system bears mentioning as well. The Slony-I replication system, sponsored by Afilias, does asynchronous master-to-slave replication, slave promotion and failover. In addition to the obvious new features, there's also a little work underneath the hood that will benefit PostgreSQL users as well. Momjian told LWN that the PostgreSQL team had done a "major redesign" in the way that PostgreSQL buffers disk writes, which will result in a "serious performance improvement" in the next release. Though perhaps of little interest to the LWN readership, Momjian also pointed out that 7.5 will be the first version of PostgreSQL to have a native port to Win32:
We feel that the Windows port is important to highlight the accomplishments
of open source to the people running on the Windows platform. You can't
show how good open source is if it's not running on their platform.
There is no set date for the 7.5 release yet, but he said that it should be out be out by the end of the year, once the project has been able to conduct extensive testing of all the new features. After the release, he predicts "increased migration from proprietary databases," and notes that the PostgreSQL project is already seeing 1,000 to 2,000 downloads per week of the unofficial, unadvertised testing release of PostgreSQL for Windows. In all, the next release of PostgreSQL should be quite impressive, and allow a number of organizations to dump expensive proprietary databases for an open source alternative.
Looking forward to OLSThe 2004 Ottawa Linux Symposium starts on July 21. The content this year looks as good as ever: the list of presentations includes well-known Linux developers from all over the world. As usual, the talks place OLS at the forefront of kernel-oriented Linux conferences, with some don't-miss desktop topics thrown in as well. It will be a great gathering for anybody interested in where Linux is going, or who just wants to hang out with a lot of developers and drink too much beer. At least, for anybody who has registered; OLS is sold out and is no longer accepting registrations.Once again, OLS will be preceded by the invitation-only Kernel Summit. At the same time, the Desktop Developer's Conference will be happening upstairs; registration for that event is still open. The 2004 event will be the sixth annual Ottawa Linux Symposium. We talked briefly with OLS founder and organizer Andrew Hutton about the event. LWN: The sixth Ottawa Linux Symposium will be happening next month. Can you tell us how this event got its start? What inspired you to create OLS?
After attending Linux Expo in North Carolina in 1998 and 1999 and the Atlanta
Linux Showcase I noticed that the technical events were in danger of being
overshadowed by the Dot.Com inspired multi-million dollar marketing events
that were beginning to happen at that time. Nobody I knew would voluntarily
go to one of these new marketing events. At about 4am one morning while
thinking about this problem I asked Alan Cox if he'd consider coming to
Ottawa and doing the keynote for a new event on the other end of the
spectrum, a pure technical event. He said something like 'sure haven't been
to Canada yet, why not' and 3 months later we had the first Linux Symposium.
LWN: OLS has become one of the definitive gatherings of free software developers, especially in the kernel area. How is it that OLS is able to attract such an impressive list of participants - many of whom have to travel a long way to get there - every year?
Content, content, content. Above all else we try to attract the best leading
edge content we can. The goal is to create an environment in which nobody
goes to a presentation without learning something new about the subject.
LWN: This year, the Desktop Developers Conference will be happening immediately prior to OLS. Can you tell us a little about this event and your expectations for it?
The goal is to bring together the various parties involved in a functional
free desktop from kernel people, to X developers, distribution builders,
desktop infrastructure people (GNOME/KDE/etc) and application developers to
share experiences and discuss the areas in which future cooperation is
possible.
LWN: The 2004 Kernel Summit will also be happening just before OLS. Do you expect to host more such events in the future, along the lines of the successful "miniconfs" which accompany Linux.Conf.Au?
For smaller groups we've encouraged this for years. The Desktop Developers'
Conference will be the first of the more public ones though. It may or may
not remain adjacent to the Linux Symposium in the future. The main reason it
is this year is that despite all the buzz you've heard about the future of
the desktop, there isn't a lot of support for it yet and this makes it easier
for people to justify attending both at this time.
LWN: Another Linux.Conf.Au idea that seems to work well is moving the conference to a different city every year. Might we ever be able to look forward to the Jasper or Victoria Linux Symposium?
Probably not. We discuss this every year and people just enjoy coming to
Ottawa ever year. Ottawa is a nice tourist town these days, and has the
facilities we require all within walking distance. One of the great things
about OLS is never needing a car.
LWN: The Symposium is currently limited to about 500 attendees. Do you think you may ever allow OLS to become larger? Why?
There are two main reasons. Space and communications overhead. It is nice to
have time to find and sit and chat with all the people you're looking for
during the event. We do end up a bit larger than 500 some years, but for now
the space we have isn't suitable either. To keep things productive keeping
it small is key.
As usual, LWN editor Jonathan Corbet will be present at OLS and the Kernel Summit this year.
Europatent preview: Godado patents search enginesAnybody who is curious about what benefits software patents might bring to Europe need look no further than UK patent GB2362971, entitled "A method of searching the internet and an internet search engine." This patent, held by the Italian company Godado Italia Srl, was first filed in May, 2000; it was assigned last February.What does this patent cover?
Upon receipt of a search signification, a search is conducted for
web sites having a textual match with the search signification. In
addition, the thesaurus database is searched to determined the
category of meaning to which the search signification belongs and
the meaning of the search signification thus determined is used to
identify related significations having a correlation with the
meaning of the search signification. The enquirer is then provided
with a list of web sites having a textual match with the search
signification and with a list of related significations as a
suggestion for supplementary research.
In other words, a search engine with the advanced capability of looking up additional search terms in a thesaurus and telling the user about those terms. Godado is not content to sit on this patent. The company has applied with the EPO for a Europe-wide patent, and has also filed a claim in Italy. With those in hand, Godado has selected its first target: the financial portal Portalino. For the curious, Portalino has posted Godado's demand letter (in Italian); your editor has created an English translation to go along with it. Essentially, the letter accuses Portalino of the heinous crime of running a search engine, claims that said search engine is an infringement of Godado's patent, and demands that the search engine be shut down immediately. One might assume that Godado does not intend to content itself with harassing Portalino; according to this Punto Informatico article, the patent has already been filed in Spain, Portugal, Germany, and France (along with the UK and Italy). A new litigation company, it would seem, has been turned loose in Europe. This patent was not filed until 2000; chances are that, with a bit of (yes) searching, sufficient prior art can be found to invalidate it. This will not be the last shakedown attempt by a company wielding a suspect patent, however, especially if the European Union blesses software patents in their full glory. Godado shows that U.S.-style software patent hassles can become part of the European landscape. Unless, of course, the EU manages to avoid the imposition of union-wide software patents.
Security A new set of OIS vulnerability guidelinesThe Organization for Internet Safety has announced the availability, in draft form, of its "Security Vulnerability Reporting and Response Guidelines." These guidelines offer suggestions for how security researchers and software vendors should work together to deal with security problems in the most effective way. Comments are being solicited for this version; they will be accepted until July 16.The guidelines, for the most part, make sense. Essentially, they say that things go as follows:
Of course, it takes the OIS 23 pages, many dozen sub-objectives and contingencies, and several complicated flow charts to communicate the above. The OIS and its guidelines have come under significant fire recently. Many people distrust the OIS after having seen its list of members: @stake, BindView, Foundstone, Guardent, ISS, Microsoft, NAI, Oracle, SGI, Symantec, and our old friends the SCO Group. There are no independent researchers: OIS policy explicitly excludes them. There is also no representation from the free software community. In fact, the OIS is not that impressed with free software in general:
We believe the software author should be given a chance to create a
fix before vulnerability information is made public, but that there
should be no further distribution of that information until the fix
is complete. This priniciple [sic] can be very difficult to adhere to in
certain situations, such as dealing with the open source community
where there aren't protections to keep vulnerability information
secret.
In recent times, the community has shown itself to be quite capable of keeping vulnerability information under wraps for the time it takes to generate a fix. If you want to do that, though, it is imperative to create the fix quickly. The vendor-driven OIS standards seem more oriented toward keeping vulnerability information secret for as long as possible. The OIS claims that it has no intention of promoting legislation which would codify its guidelines. Given the nature of some of the companies involved, not everybody believes that claim. Certainly any attempts in that direction should be watched for and resisted. Perhaps the most interesting perspective on the OIS is this, however: there are no free software organizations or vendors represented because the community has no need for the OIS. As a general rule, vulnerability reporting and response works very well in the free software world. Vulnerabilities are reported to the relevant parties, and a whole set of independent vendors and projects gets fixes out quickly. It is hard to see problems in this aspect of our performance which are amenable to any sort of improvement via a set of official guidelines. Our problems, instead, lie in the fact that we create far too many vulnerabilities in the first place. The OIS is not going to help us with that.
New vulnerabilities esearch: insecure temp file handling
kernel allows unauthorized changes to the group ID
Pure-FTPd - denial of service
XFree86, X.org: XDM ignores requestPort setting
Updated vulnerabilities Apache mod_proxy: denial of service
apache2: stack-based buffer overflow in ssl_util.c
Apache: denial of service
aspell: bounds checking problem
dhcp: buffer overflows
Filename disclosure vulnerability in fam
flim: insecure file creation
FreeS/WAN, Openswan, strongSwan: Vulnerabilities in certificate handling
giFT-FastTrack: remote denial of service attack
gtkhtml: malformed messages cause crash
gzip: temporary file execution problem
Horde-IMP: improper input validation
iproute: local denial of service
racoon: failure to verify signatures
racoon: denial of service vulnerability
kdelibs: cookie disclosure
kernel: symlink overflow in the iso9660 filessytem
kernel: netfilter denial of service
kernel: denial of service
kernel-utils: setuid vulnerability
krb5: unauthorized root privileges
libpng, libpng3: buffer overflow
libxml2 - arbitrary code execution
logcheck: symlink vulnerability
mailman: password disclosure
mikmod: buffer overflow
mod_python: denial of service vulnerability
mozilla: multiple vulnerabilties
mpg321: format string vulnerability
MySQL: temporary file vulnerabilities
neon: buffer overflow
Nessus NASL scripting engine security issues
netpbm: insecure temporary files
openssh: timing attack leads to information disclosure
OpenSSL: denial of service vulnerabilities
pavuk: buffer overflow
postgresql buffer overflow in ODBC driver
python: buffer overflow
rsync remote file write attack
squid: buffer overflow
SquirrelMail cross site scripting vulnerabilities
Subversion: Remote 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
tripwire format string vulnerability
webmin: denial of service
XChat 2.0.x SOCKS5 Vulnerability
xine-ui - insecure temporary file creation
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Kernel development Brief items Kernel release statusThe current 2.6 kernel is still 2.6.7; it has been almost a month since that release (which happened on June 15) and no 2.6.8 prepatches have yet come out.Linus's BitKeeper tree continues to grow, though at a slower rate. Recent additions include a new, faster scrolling mode for framebuffer consoles, a serial ATA update, various architecture updates, many fixes for a new series of locking bugs reported by the Stanford checker, a fix for a /proc permissions bug (see below), and lots of fixes. The current tree from Andrew Morton is 2.6.7-mm6. Recent additions to -mm include packet writing support for DVD-RW and CD-RW drives, a new set of scheduler tweaks, an IDE update and various fixes. The current 2.4 prepatch is 2.4.27-rc3, which was released by Marcelo on July 3. Very few patches were added this time around; things would appear to be stabilizing toward the 2.4.27-final release.
Kernel development news Quote of the week
The stuff that's gone around looks minor. It's not like they're teaching
sched.c to play cpu tetris for gang scheduling or Kalman filtering
profiling feedback to stripe tasks using different cpu resources across
SMT siblings or playing graph games to meet RT deadlines, so it doesn't
look like very much at all is going on to me.
It's pretty obvious why everyone and their brother is grinding out purported scheduler rewrites: the code is self-contained, however, nothing interesting is coming of all this. Never been for have so many patches been written against the same file, accomplishing so little.
-- William Lee Irwin would like to see more ambitious scheduler patches.
TCP window scaling and broken routersEvery TCP packet includes, in the header, a "window" field which specifies how much data the system which sent the packet is willing and able to receive from the other end. The window is the flow control mechanism used by TCP; it controls the maximum amount of data which can be "in flight" between two communicating systems and keeps one side from overwhelming the other with data.In the early days of TCP, windows tended to be relatively small. The computers of that age did not have huge amounts of memory to dedicate toward buffering network data, and the available networking technology was not fast enough to make use of a larger window in any case. Modern network interfaces can handle larger packets and keep more of them in flight at any given time; they will perform better with a larger window. Some kinds of high-speed long-haul links can have very high bandwidth, but also high latency. Keeping that sort of pipe filled can require a very large window; if a sending system cannot have a large number of packets in transit at any given time, it will not be able to make use of the bandwidth available. For these reasons, good performance can often require very large windows. The TCP window field, however, is only 16 bits wide, allowing for a maximum window size of 64KB. The TCP designers must have thought that nobody would ever need a larger window than that. But 64KB is not even close to what is needed in many situations today. The solution to this problem is called "window scaling." It is not new; window scaling was codified in RFC 1323 back in 1992. It is also not complicated: a system wanting to use window scaling sets a TCP option containing an eight-bit scale factor. All window values used by that system thereafter should be left-shifted by that scale factor; a window scale of zero, thus, implies no scaling at all, while a scale factor of five implies that window sizes should be shifted five bits, or multiplied by 32. With this scheme, a 128KB window could be expressed by setting the scale factor to five and putting 4096 in the window field. To keep from breaking TCP on systems which do not understand window scaling, the TCP option can only be provided in the initial SYN packet which initiates the connection, and scaling can only be used if the SYN+ACK packet sent in response also contains that option. The scale factor is thus set as part of the setup handshake, and cannot be changed thereafter. The details are still being figured out, but it would appear that some routers on the net are rewriting the window scale TCP option on SYN packets as they pass through. In particular, they seem to be setting the scale factor to zero, but leaving the option in place. The receiving side sees the option, and responds with a window scale factor of its own. At this point, the initiating system believes that its scale factor has been accepted, and scales its windows accordingly. The other end, however, believes that the scale factor is zero. The result is a misunderstanding over the real size of the receive window, with the system behind the firewall believing it to be much smaller than it really is. If the expected scale factor (and thus the discrepancy) is large, the result is, at best, very slow communication. In many cases, the small window can cause no packets to be transmitted at all, breaking TCP between the two affected systems entirely. In the 2.6.7 kernel, the default scale factor is zero; in Linus's BitKeeper tree and the 2.6.7-mm kernels, instead, it has been increased to seven. This change has brought the broken router behavior to light; suddenly people running current kernels are finding that they cannot talk to a number of systems out there. One of the higher-profile affected sites is packages.gentoo.org. Gentoo users are, unsurprisingly, not pleased. As a way of making things work, Stephen Hemminger has proposed a patch which adds a calculation to select the smallest scale factor which covers the largest possible window size. The result on most systems is that the scale factor gets set to two. This factor will still be corrupted by broken routers, but the resulting window size (¼ of what it should be) is still large enough to allow communication to happen. The patch makes networking with systems behind broken routers work again, but it has been rejected anyway. The networking maintainers (and David Miller in particular) believe that the patch simply papers over a problem, and that adding hacks to the Linux network stack to accommodate broken routers is a mistake. If, instead, the situation is left as it is, pressure on the router manufacturers should get the problem fixed relatively quickly. It has been a few years, now, that Linux has a strong enough presence in the networking world that it can get away with taking this sort of position. In the mean time, anybody running a current kernel who is having trouble connecting to a needed site can work around the problem with a command like:
echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_default_win_scale
or by adding a line like:
net.ipv4.tcp_default_win_scale = 0
to /etc/sysctl.conf.
Cryptographic signatures on kernel modulesThe latest Fedora Rawhide kernels come with an interesting feature: the ability to enforce cryptographic signatures on loadable modules. This capability has a few uses:
The code which handles signed modules was originally written by Greg Kroah-Hartman; it has subsequently been fixed up in various ways by David Howells. Greg wrote a Linux Journal article about his work back in January. The signature code works by looking at the most interesting ELF sections within a module file: the .text (program code) and .data (initialized data) areas. When the module is built, a script uses the objdump utility to extract those sections; the result can be fed to gpg to generate a signature. That signature is then patched into the module as yet another section, called module_sig. Overall, adding signatures is a relatively small change to the module build process. The signatures are not much use, however, if nobody checks them; implementing that check within the kernel is a somewhat larger business. The 2.6 kernel includes a whole cryptographic subsystem, but that code is oriented toward the needs of networking and encrypted filesystems. Verifying module signatures using public keys was not one of the objectives when the crypto API was added. To support this task, several thousand lines of code must be added to the kernel; they perform arbitrary-precision integer arithmetic (this code came directly from GnuPG), DSA signature verification (also from GnuPG), simple in-kernel key management, and the code to actually verify module data against signatures. As things stand in the patch currently, any public keys used to verify modules are built directly into the kernel itself. Being able to add a site-specific key at run time would be a convenient feature, but it would also defeat the purpose of this whole exercise. Any attacker who is in a position to load malevolent modules could just load a new key first, thus circumventing the signature verification. Even as things stand, a kernel using signature verification should be set up to not allow overwriting of in-kernel key data by way of /dev/kmem and such. With all that infrastructure in place, a relatively small set of patches makes the module loader actually verify signatures. Once again, the interesting sections are stripped out, and a checksum is generated with the SHA1 algorithm. If the signature in the module (1) can be decrypted with a public key contained within the kernel, and (2) contains the same checksum, the module checks out and can be loaded. In the code, one can see the traces of a kernel developer encountering an interesting problem. In many systems, the SHA1 transform code is kept in a loadable module. The module loader, when it attempts to verify the signature of a different module, could well force the kernel to try loading the SHA1 module. The module code, however, takes the module_mutex semaphore very early in the process; the recursive attempt will thus simply deadlock the whole thing. To avoid this problem, the crypto API was enhanced with a crypto_alloc_tfm2() function which can be instructed to not load any modules while setting itself up. The SHA1 code will have to be linked directly into the kernel if it is used for module verification. Rawhide kernels come configured to verify any signatures found in modules, but they will also happily load modules with no signature at all. There is a configuration option which tightens things up, however, so that only signed modules will be accepted. One wonders how much a proprietary module vendor might pay to have their public key included in a distributor's stock kernels once that option is turned on.
Fun with /proc permissionsHerbert Poetzl discovered some interesting behavior in the 2.6 kernel: it seems that any user can set arbitrary permissions on most files in /proc. A patch had been merged back in the 2.5 days which enabled changing of permissions, but an important check got left out.For the most part, the security implications of this bug are small, but real. Local users can make files in /proc inaccessible, which can break commands (like ps) which rely on them. Making /proc/sysrq-trigger writable allows some obnoxious mayhem to be created. On the other hand, changing permissions in /proc/sys has no useful effect: the sysctl code performs its own permissions checking on top of what the filesystem does. The actual process entries under /proc do their own checking as well, and do not allow the permissions to be changed. The fix is simple, and has been merged for 2.6.8. But some developers wondered why anybody would want to mess with permissions in /proc in the first place. It turns out that there is some information there which, in some cases, people would like to hide from other users on the system. Command lines for specific processes and TCP connection tracking information were mentioned as specific examples. So permissions tweaking in /proc will remain - but not just anybody will be able to do it.
Patches and updates Kernel trees
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Documentation
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Networking
Architecture-specific
Security-related
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet Distributions News and Editorials Fedora Core 3 and the communityAccording to the Fedora web site:
The Fedora Project is a Red-Hat-sponsored and community-supported
open source project... The goal of The Fedora Project is to work
with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose
operating system exclusively from free software. Development will
be done in a public forum.
The "about" page adds this:
Red Hat will retain editorial control over The Fedora Project but
will explicitly include external developers in the process of
making technical decisions that align with the project objectives.
In this context, it is interesting to consider the Fedora Core 3 plan, which was posted on July 2. The plan calls for all kinds of interesting things, including:
And a lot more. It looks like a bunch of good stuff. One should note, though, that the scheduled date for the first test release is July 12 - ten days after the announcement. Before the plan announcement, there was very little public discussion of what FC3 was going to contain. At this point, there is not a whole lot of time to "include external developers in the process of making technical decisions." Instead, it looks much like, once again, the core decisions have emerged in final form from a smoke-filled room at Red Hat headquarters. Let there be no mistake: Fedora Core is an unmitigated good thing. Red Hat is giving the world a high-quality distribution with (mostly) highly current software and a certain degree of visibility into the development process. One should not complain about such a gift; we are certainly richer as a result of it. But Fedora clearly is not meeting its stated goals of being a community project, and, apparently, it is not even making much progress in that direction. Red Hat would do well to clarify its plans for Fedora at this point. If Fedora is to be a community project, interested developers need to see some progress in that direction. Opening up the promised CVS server would be a good start. Another promise that would be good to keep is this one:
With minimal necessary exceptions (such as information from
partners under NDA), Red Hat's own internal development on Fedora
Core will be done, starting immediately, on public mailing
lists. One of the reasons for Red Hat's success has been an open
process for making engineering decisions; our engineers have been
welcome to take opposing points of view in development discussions
and to argue passionately for their point of view. Now, with Red
Hat development going on in public, Red Hat developers will be
arguing their points of view on public mailing lists.
The FC3 plan was clearly not developed in this way. The formation of the promised technical committee, which is supposed to include outside members, would also be a good step. If, instead, Red Hat plans to keep Fedora in its current form (essentially, a development and testing platform for technologies eventually slated for the enterprise products), it should say so. Red Hat would be entitled to take this position, and, certainly, large numbers of users are content to run a Fedora distribution which is developed in this way. Who can complain? It is a free, high-quality distribution with good security support. But outside developers who would like to participate in its creation have a right to know whether (and when) that will be possible.
Distribution News Conectiva Linux 10 releasedConectiva Linux 10 is out; this release includes the 2.6 kernel, additional spam-fighting software, Samba 3, the latest KDE and GNOME, Conectiva Office (OpenOffice.org with a Portuguese translation), and lots of other goodies. Click below for details and download coordinates.
Which Linux distribution is the most powerful? (linux-elitists)Mr. Bad asks (on linux-elitists), which distribution is the most powerful? "So, after seeing the umpteenth Debian package description mentioning what a powerful throbbing ur-package is barely contained within the bulging envelope of this particular .deb, I started wondering: how much of the software in Debian is actually POWERFUL? Like, so notably powerful that that's how you'd describe the software; it impresses its powerful powerness on the maintainer that much that they can't help mentioning its power."
Debian GNU/LinuxThe Debian Weekly News July 6, 2004 is available with news about a Debian Trivia Quiz, GNOME 2.6 in testing, the future of Debian's X11 packages, and several other topics.An unofficial announcement has gone out: the Debian Project has voted to postpone its recent social contract changes until after the next major release ("Sarge") goes out. The changes in question force the removal of all documentation, data, and other materials seen by Debian as not being free; they had threatened to delay the (already tardy) Sarge release. This vote should pave the way for a faster release. Note that the project adopted the resolution wording which defers the changes indefinitely, rather than the version which put a September deadline on the release. The full results are available for the curious; the full text of the several variants of the resolution is available over here. The announcement from the project Secretary is here. Chris Cheney reports that the Debian AMD64 port is the second most complete port behind i386. Chris's post contains more details about the status of this port.
Libranet 2.8.1 trial downloadLibraNet GNU/Linux is offering free trial downloads.
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 27The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of July 5, 2004 is out. This week's edition has an announcement for the Gentoo web redesign contest, among other topics.
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 56The DistroWatch Weekly for July 5, 2004 is out with an up-to-date look at new and updated distributions.
FedoraThe Fedora Core 3 announcement lists plans for this release which include integrating GCC 3.4, GNOME 2.8, KDE 3.3, another (less ambitious) attempt at SELinux, Indic language support, VNC, etc.Fedora Core 2 has updates for GConf2 (fixes a problem when using merged files) and xorg-x11 (new release with minor enhancements to the package upgrade process).
MandrakelinuxMandrakelinux has an updated autofs package that fixes a stalling problem in Corporate Server 2.1/x86_64.
New Distributions Resala LinuxThe Resala Linux Project is a single CD distribution based on the Fedora Core Project. Its main objectives are: to make an Arabic ready distribution, make it easy for normal users to use Linux in Arabic speaking countries, open the doors for Arabic developers to participate positively in the OSS, to be a test bed for Arabic application and introduce these applications to other main stream distributions. Resala Linux Core 1 was released June 21, 2004.
Minor distribution updates Astaro Security LinuxAstaro Security Linux has released v5.013 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: This Up2Date adds possibility to fetch Up2Dates via proxy, improves the downloader and spamscore capabilities for the Contentfilter, improves the POP3 Extensionfilter and fixes the Openswan vulnerability CAN-2004-0590 besides a list of fixes for other small problems."
Deep-Water/LinuxDeep-Water/Linux has released v0.4.0 with minor feature enhancements. "Changes: This release replaces the GUI, adds a new file browser, and updates to a newer kernel."
Feather LinuxFeather Linux has released v0.5.3 with lots of bug fixes. From the changelog:- Fixed multiple fpkg "Additions" menu creation - Fixed HD install script - Fixed XFCE script, and edited it so that it requires less memory - Changed Fluxbox menu text size to 12 - Changed some wording of the X setup script and mount.app. - Downgraded Firefox to 0.8 because of dependencies
LEAFLEAF (Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall) has released Bering-uClibc 2.1.3 with minor bugfixes. "Changes: Maintenance release for the stable 2.1 series."
LormaLINUXLormaLINUX has released v5 RC2. "his release of LormaLinux makes sure that all packages are clean and have all the dependencies covered. Replaced Xpdf with Acroread (Adobe Acrobat Reader) that works with Firefox enabling you to view and copy content of a PDF file right on your browser. Added the latest version of wine (a Windows emulator) for your extreme cross-platform gaming pleasure."
Onebase LinuxOnebase Linux has released OnebaseGo v2.0 with numerous package updates, improved EPS and Docking. Onebase 2004r4 has also been released.
tinysofatinysofa has released v2.0-pre2 (Persistence). "The C#/ASP.NET suite has been updated to 1.0. vsftpd is now at 2.0.1 and includes SSL/TLS support. Apache version 2.0.50 brings forth many feature enhancements and bug fixes. The slony1 replication engine for PostgreSQL also features in pre2, with version 1.0.0 being included in the distribution. Additionally, ruby is now included in the distribution."
Distribution reviews Fedora Core 2: Making it work (linux.com)This linux.com author examines Fedora Core 2 on his production system. "Getting FC2 to a state of desktop readiness is a task that requires a medium amount of skill and will probably take close to a full day for the first workstation (assuming that you have a high-speed Internet connection). Subsequent installs should go more quickly; indeed, I intend for my students to get most of it done during their first three-hour class."
The Stealth Desktop Part I (OfB.biz)Open for Business advocates Slackware for the desktop. "The installation and initial setup is to be done by someone with more experience with computers. This is consistent with widespread practice. As I said before, end users installing their own operating systems are an exception, and not the norm, in almost every OS under the sun. Therefore, the install and initial setup should be performed by the "resident nerd" of the office or home, or by an otherwise qualified person."
OpenBSD - For Your Eyes Only (DistroWatch)DistroWatch reviews OpenBSD. "Devout cynics will claim that a "secure network operating system" is an oxymoron. No matter how good you make it, somebody will find a way to break it. Nevertheless, the OpenBSD developers can claim (with considerable justification) that they've worked harder and longer than anyone else to make sure that their OS is secure. The record speaks for itself - in the nearly nine years of OpenBSD's existence, only one remote security hole in the default install has been discovered (and that hole was immediately closed)."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol Development KRename: a Batch RenamerKRename is a batch-mode file renaming utility for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). The primary software developer is Dominik Seichter. The utility is primarily designed for managing large collections of digital photographs and music files, but it is general enough in design to be applicable to a wide variety of uses.![[KRename]](/images/ns/krename.jpg)
Krename offers an easy way to rename hundreds of files in one go, giving you as much freedom as you need. You can use parts of the old filename, information like the current date or even an mp3 tag or the colour depth of an image.
Krename integrates into the Konqueror or Krusader filemanager !
Despite its description as a batch utility, KRename is a GUI-based application, not a shell script. The screenshots page shows some of the features of the GUI. The basic actions of KRename include file renaming, copying, moving and overwriting. KRename can create shortcuts and undo what it changed. Some additional KRename features include:
KRename looks like a very useful application, the software is available for download here.
System Applications Audio Projects Planet CCRMA ChangesThe latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of the Alsa Modular Synth, TAP Plugins, TAP Reverb Editor, Gmorgan, Libfishsound, and Qjackctl.
Database Software Glom 0.8.4 through 0.8.6Version 0.8.4 of Glom, a GUI database table designer, is available. Changes include dependence on a new version of Bakery, connect button behavior changes, build improvements, more translations, and more. Version 0.8.5 was also announced this week, followed by version 0.8.6. Glom is, apparently, under intensive development.
MySQL 4.1.3-beta has been releasedVersion 4.1.3-beta of the MySQL database is available. "This is the first beta development release, adding new features and fixing recently discovered bugs. The change to "beta" level indicates, that all planned major features for MySQL 4.1 have been implemented by now. The focus is now on testing and stabilizing these new features and the rest of the code base."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe July 6 issue of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out; among other things, it looks at what will be in the upcoming 7.5 release. "With the caveat that these features could be removed during the beta cycle, most of the big name features made it in under the wire including nested transactions, PITR, and integrated pg_autovacuum. It is also worth reminding folks about win32 support, tablespace support, and the ARC buffer code, which is making this release one of the most significant in several years."
Slony-I 1.0 ReleasedVersion 1.0 (Production Grade) of Slony-I, a database replication solution for the PostgreSQL database, has been announced. The Slony-I project web site has more details: "Slony-I, which functions on PostgreSQL 7.3 or better, does asynchronous master-to-multiple-slaves replication, slave promotion and failover, and helps you do PostgreSQL upgrades with extremely short downtimes."
Mail Software Qmail-Scanner Log Analyzer (qms-analog) 0.3.4 Released (SourceForge)Qms-analog version 0.3.4, a log file analyzer for qmail-spanner, has been announced.
Security afick 2.3-0 (stable) released (SourceForge)Stable version 2.3-0 of afick (Another File Integrity Checker), a cross-platform intrusion monitoring system, is out. Here is the change summary: "A new command is added in this release : afickonfig, to help afick configuration. Running options are added in reports."
Web Site Development Quixote 1.0 releasedVersion 1.0 of the Quixote web development platform has been released. The CHANGES document shows no differences from the 1.0c1 release.
Samizdat 0.5.2, the Wiki releaseVersion 0.5.2 of Samizdat, a generic RDF-based engine for building collaboration and open publishing web sites, is available. "This version adds Wiki functionality to Samizdat, allowing to edit messages and track history of changes. Messages may use Textile format for advanced hypertext markup, editing may be limited to the original creator or open for all site members. Other highlights of this release are FastCGI support, configurable site logo, multiple usability improvements, and the usual bunch of bugfixes. Once again, database schema is slightly changed."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications QjackCtl 0.2.9 releasedVersion 0.2.9 of QjackCtl is out. "It's been a while, although this time there's not much. Just minor fixes, nothing very outstanding. However here it is, a new public release for QjackCtl, the little Qt (cutie:) application to control the JACK sound server daemon, specific for the Linux Audio Desktop infrastructure."
WaveSurfer 1.7 releasedVersion 1.6.4 of WaveSurfer, a sound visualization and manipulation tool, is out. The Change History document mentions several changes in the transcription section of the code.
Data Visualization Fl_PlotXY V1.0.0Version 1.0.0 of Fl_PlotXY, an XY plotting widget for FLTK, has been announced. Here are the changes: "A complete re-write of Fl_PlotXY. It now draws the data properly and is capable of handling multipule lines of data. More features will be added over the next few days, including loading and saving of .csv files, data manipulation and more." New versions of Gmsh and Table are also available on the FLTK site.
Desktop Environments Bakery 2.3.7 releasedVersion 2.3.7 of Bakery, a C++ Framework for creating document-based GNOME applications, is available with minor changes.
TARBALLS DUE: GNOME Development Release 2.7.3Tarballs are due for the GNOME Development Release Version 2.7.3.
GARNOME 2.6.2Version 2.6.2 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge GNOME distribution, is out with lots of new component software versions.
KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The July 2, 2004 KDE-CVS-Digest is out with the following content summary: "KWord now can mailmerge from KSpread as data source. Less flicker in Konqueror and Kicker. And many bugfixes in KSnapshot , Konqueror, khtml and KMail."
Electronics KRelais 0.2 releasedVersion 0.2 of KRelais, an electronic relay and switch simulation program, has been announced. Here are the changes: "Signal lines on voltage are now highlighted. Pause and continue are simulated. Code cleanup was done."
Games gnome-games 2.7.4Version 2.7.4 of the Gnome-games collection is out. "Lots of new stuff this time around. There are now new ways to play both Aisleriot and Robots. Also, I've removed the shuffle button in Mahjongg, you can currently only shuffle if you run out of moves."
GNOME War Pad 0.3.2 releasedVersion 0.3.2 of GNOME War Pad, a VGA Planets client for GNOME, is out with bug fixes and several enhancements.
Monster Masher 1.7 releasedVersion 1.7 of the game Monster Masher is available. This version has been ported to gtkmm 2.4, and features bug fixes.
Slagpanic, a Qix-like gameSlagpanic is a new game that is available on the PyGame site. "Slagpanic is a colorful modernization of the classic, Qix. Your job is to box in a wild variety of enemies and obstacles. You can also grab powerups to make things easier. Slagpanic also optionally makes use of some accelerated C++ routines, but benefits are only slight."
GUI Packages gtkmm 2.4.4 announcedVersion 2.4.4 of gtkmm, a C++ interface to GTK+, is out with build fixes and other improvements.
News Readers Liferea 0.5.1 releasedVersion 0.5.1 of Lifrea is out with bug fixes and other improvements. "Liferea (Linux Feed Reader) is a fast, easy to use, and easy to install GNOME news aggregator for online news feeds. It supports a number of different feed formats including RSS/RDF, CDF, Atom, OCS, and OPML."
Office Applications anyInventory 1.7.1 Released (SourceForge)Version 1.7.1 of anyInventory, a cross-platform inventory system, has been announced. "Brand new user-requested features in this version include the ability to highlight fields, the addition of an auto-incrementing field, automatic hiding of the administration links from unauthorized users, and an improved quick search. Several bugs that made version 1.7 unusable for some users have been fixed. As version 1.7.1 is the most well-tested and stable release of anyInventory to date, current users of any previous release are encouraged to upgrade."
criawips 0.0.5 releasedVersion 0.0.5 of criawips, a slide show / presentation application for GNOME, is available. "This version includes a preview of the slide within the main window. This is currently affected by a bug (feature?) of the GNOME Canvas that prevents zooming text."
Gnumeric 1.2.13 is outVersion 1.2.13 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet is available. "This is a medium priority release. We finally seem to have fixed the xls export issues around sheet local names and dealt with text overflow for really large workbooks. Andreas chipped in with some LaTeX export fixes and patches for printing problems. While we were playing with Glynn's film game we noticed a problem at the bottom of some of the pictures. Morten found the missing 8 bytes and the jpgs look clear now. This release also has a few nifty features backported."
Office Suites The State of KOffice (KDE.News)KDE.News points to an article on KOffice. "When was the last time you took a look at KOffice, KDE's native office suite? This article looks at the good, and the bad, in the latest version of the 1.3 series. Although OpenOffice.org grabs most of the limelight KOffice has been steadily improving, with a low memory footprint and tight integration with Konqueror you might find useful."
OpenOffice.org NewsletterThe June 2004 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is available with the latest news from the OpenOffice.org office suite project.
Web Browsers Galeon 1.3.16 releasedDespite the previous version being named "End of the Line", version 1.3.16 of the Galeon browser is available. "Yes, it's roughly that time of the month again, and here's our first official release that's compatible with Mozilla 1.7. There's a lot of small fixes and refinements - particularly the fixing of the annoying crash when deleting cookies."
Miscellaneous Alexandria 0.3.0Alexandria 0.3.0, a book collection management application for GNOME, is out." This release considerably improves the dialog box to add books, ships a new provider to the Proxis library and features more GNOME compatibility."
Gwget 0.12 releasedVersion 0.12 of Gwget, a download manager for Gnome 2, is out. This release features code cleanup, notification area support, and more.
Languages and Tools C GCC 3.4.1 releasedVersion 3.4.1 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection is available. The changes document has a long list of fixed bugs. ""
Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe June 29 - July 6, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is available with the week's Caml language development news.
Java Attribute-Oriented Programming with Java 1.5, Part 1 (O'ReillyNet)Don Schwarz writes about code generation and bytecode manipulation in Java on O'Reilly. "In this article, I will consider the case of a status-bar component embedded in a GUI application. I will explore a number of different ways to implement this status reporter, starting with the traditional hard-coded idiom. Along the way, I will introduce and discuss a number of new features in Java 1.5, including annotations and run-time bytecode instrumentation."
Inside Class Loaders: Debugging (O'Reilly)Andreas Schaefer continues his series on class loading with part two. "Though we discussed the basics of class loading in the previous article in this series, we still need more knowledge before we can delve into the advanced class-loading techniques. This article will show how to solve class-loading problems and to overcome some debugging limitations of the JDK class loaders."
Eye on performance: Tuning garbage collection (IBM developerWorks)Jack Shirazi and Kirk Pepperdine discuss Java garbage collection optimizations on IBM's developerWorks. "If you're part of the current blogging craze, then you've likely heard of Blog-City, a blogging site owned and operated by Blog-City Ltd., a small company in Scotland. When some unexpected performance issues cropped up, Java performance experts Jack Shirazi and Kirk Pepperdine were asked to assist in a technical tuning of Blog-City."
Lisp SLIME 1.0-alpha releasedVersion 1.0-alpha of SLIME, an Emacs mode for Common Lisp development, is available.
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The June 28 - July 4, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is available. Here's the content summary: "This was a week rich in discussion. Read about programming with threads, UTF-8 crashes and leaks (and fixes), parsing, globbing, deparsing, and other things."
This Week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)The June 27, 2004 edition of This Week on Perl 6 is available with the latest Perl 6 development news.
Perl 6 Pumpking Wanted (use Perl)Use Perl mentions the search for a new Perl 6 pumpking. "We need a Perl 6 pumpking, someone to take on the responsibility of making the Perl 6 compiler happen. When we started this whole process these many years ago, we thought having one person handle the software end of things was sufficient, but making perl 6 a reality is a much larger task than we'd originally figured, as both Perl 6 the language and Parrot the interpreter have ended up bigger than we'd thought they'd be. Bigger, in fact, than one person can reasonably manage, especially with a volunteer project."
Application Design with POE (O'Reilly)Matt Casher introduces POE on O'Reilly. "My framework of choice is POE. POE is a single-threaded, event driven, cooperative multitasking environment for perl. Basically, POE is an application framework in which a single threaded perl process waits for events to occur so it can act accordingly. This event loop comprises the core of a POE process."
Python Get to know Jython (IBM developerWorks)Barry A. Feigenbaum introduces Jython on IBM's developerWorks. "Jython is an implementation of the popular scripting language Python, but running on a JVM. For Python developers Jython is the best possible entry point to the Java platform; for Java developers it may be the strongest incentive to learn another language. Frequent developerWorks contributor and alternate language enthusiast Barry Feigenbaum introduces Jython and shows you what it can do to enhance your productivity on the Java platform."
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for July 5, 2004 is out. This week's links include Quixote 1.0 release announcement and a discussion of backward compatibility in Python, among other topics.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The July 5, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! has been published.
XML SVG and Typography: Animation (O'Reilly)Fabio Arciniegas A. demonstrates SVG animation on O'Reilly. "In the last part of our exploration of SVG and Typography, we turn our attention to effects with animated type, exploiting SVG declarative animation features."
XML Namespaces Support in Python Tools, Part Three (O'Reilly)Uche Ogbuji presents part three of his series on Python tools and XML on O'Reilly. "In this article I focus on ElementTree, libxml/Python and PyRXPU. I recommend reading or reviewing those articles first, as well as the earlier articles in this namespace series."
Moving On, But Not So FarEdd Dumbill steps down from his position as chief editor at XML.com. "From a personal point of view, my time at the helm of XML.com has been endlessly enriching. The XML community itself is a unique mix of the erudite, the obscure, the eccentric and the inspired. XML as a technology covers such a broad and fascinating range of applications, and perhaps more than most technologies has deserved the soubriquet "world-changing"."
Editors tease 1.1.0 released (SourceForge)Version 1.1.0 of tease is out. Here's the project description: "tease (text editing and scripting environment), language: tcl/tk, using freewrap and tkprint, dual-OS (win32, unix) editor with: basic encryption, fast commenting of code, excellent search/replace (regexp, too), unlimited undo/redo, more features".
Page editor: Forrest Cook Linux in the news Recommended Reading Knowing Their Politics by the Software They Use (New York Times)The New York Times has an article (registration required) trying to figure out the politics of the free software community. "But the politics surrounding open-source software do not always fit neatly into party categories. The people who work on software like the Linux operating system, the Apache Web server and others are an eclectic bunch of technologists. 'You'll find gun nuts along with total lefties,' Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said in an e-mail message."
Europe's software patent policy under siege (Herald Tribune)The International Herald Tribune has taken a lengthy look at the ongoing European software patent debate. "The political storm, which has spread to national parliaments in Germany and Denmark and provoked questions about the EU directive in Poland and Portugal, is the latest twist in a bitter fight between large corporations with significant research investments and scores of patents and small and midsize software companies, academic institutions and supporters of open source software, who oppose software patents."
The SCO Problem SCO Sees Vindication in OSDL Validation Plan (SD Times)SD Times looks at some interesting comments by Darl McBride concerning the OSDL's Linux Developers Certificate of Origin program. "We believe this unchecked process has allowed SCO code to be entered into Linux, McBride said. He called the OSDL decision an admission of errors in the Linux review process. McBride added that the Certificate of Origin program does not make the past issue of alleged intellectual property infringement go away."
Microsoft, DRM, David Boies, and the US Constitution (Groklaw)Here's a long Groklaw article on the application of copyrights to public-domain information (such as the U.S. Constitution or legal information). "Naturally, there has been a case about this, actually two, but with just one company, Jurisline, losing both. David Boies was the attorney for Jurisline, along with Robert Silver, now on the SCO case also, which unsuccessfully argued that copyright law trumped state laws regarding contracts. Small world, isn't it?"
Companies Apple Seeks Rendezvous with Windows, Linux DevelopersApple has released the source code for Rendezvous under the Apple Public Source license. "Rendezvous is a zero-configuration technology designed to be compatible with the requirements of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Zeroconf Working Group, and is used to enable automatic discovery and configuration of compatible devices on a network."
Rendezvous with the Desktop (OfB.biz)Open for Business likes Apple's Rendezvous technology on the Linux desktop. "This week, Apple brought Rendezvous back to the forefront with updated libraries for POSIX systems, as well as support for Java. Unfortunately, despite the fact that these libraries are out there for distributions and developers to use, few in the Free Software community have taken the time to adopt Zeroconf technology (Mandrakesoft's Mandrakelinux being the sole exception that I am aware of). It is time for this to change."
Dell ships first Euro Linux business PCs (Register)The Register covers the launch of Linspire 4.5 Linux laptops from Dell and Questar. "The Linux version is actually sold by Dell partner Questar, an Italian system builder which favours the open source operating system. Purchases are made through Questar's website."
Fujitsu foots the bill for new PostgreSQL database features (NewsForge)Fujitsu has announced that it will be funding the development of new PostgreSQL functions, according to this article on NewsForge. "The Japanese company, folding Windows as well as Linux and other open source into its mix of strategy, will support the BSD-based PostgreSQL database with code contributions and underwriting development that will be a part of version 7.5 of the database, PostgreSQL core team member Josh Berkus said. It is expected to be available before the end of the year."
Novell adds $600 million to war chest (News.com)News.com reports that Novell has raised $600 million in a bond offering. "About $125 million of the money Novell raised will be used to buy back stock that outside investors sold short, the software maker said."
A suggestion for Sun Java Department... (nekita.no-ip.com)Here's an editorial at nekita.no-ip.com, examining the pros and cons of open source Java. "I think that we should basically try to get the software into the Open Source community, but regulate Java by using existing tools we have for that. I think that there could be a "commission" setup within the RFC community that would comprise of members of Sun and the Open Source who would create RFC's that set standards for the Java platform."
Linux Adoption Indian president calls for open source in defense (News.com)News.com covers Indian president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's remarks on the use of free software in defense applications. "Even though the required software for the equipment could be developed by the private industry, it is essential that the technical know-how and the architecture is fully available with these services for ensuring provision of lifetime support for the software which may or may not be forthcoming from the trade." Evidently Mr. Kalam found how "not forthcoming" support can be when the U.S. imposed an embargo after India's nuclear test.
Linux at Work Two Clinics Choose Open Source EMR - OpenEMR (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews covers two recent deployments of OpenEMR. "Pennington Firm, an open source software development company, is chosen by two clinics to implement the open source electronic medical record (EMR) application OpenEMR. Clinics choosing OpenEMR in June 2004 are: West Marion Family Medicine in Florida; and Operation Samahan in California. Pennington Firm is assisting both with electronic billing using a clearinghouse."
Interviews Microsoft: 'Drug-Dealing Methods' (Linux Journal)Linux Journal interviews Brazilian government member Sérgio Amadeu da Silveira, the target of a Microsoft suit concerning comments he made about the use of drug-dealing methods in the promotion of Windows.Question: "Has this episode changed the government's opinion of Microsoft?" Silveira: "I cannot answer on behalf of the entire administration. What I can say is that Microsoft made a huge mistake. The captive market they enjoyed within our government is a thing of the past, and I'm sure they are well aware of that. We live in a democracy where there is competition. They made a big mistake, they appear to have an attitude problem. What they did was unprecedented. We're working for a free-software implementation policy, not against this or that company."
Resources Professor gives Cisco manual away for free (News.com)News.com takes a look at a free Cisco manual. "[Matt] Basham, a professor of information technology and IT security at St. Petersburg College in Clearwater, Fla., wrote his own 800-page Cisco networking textbook and last week made it available for download over the Internet free of charge."
Building a Web Cluster with FreeSBIE (O'ReillyNet)O'ReillyNet uses a FreeBSD-based live CD to build a cluster. "Suppose that we need to build a cluster of web servers to serve HTTP and HTTPS connections. Why do we need a cluster? First of all, our web services are heavily loaded and having one or two CPU systems and a lot of RAM is not enough anymore. Secondly, our services need 24x7 availability and this requires an excellent fail-over backup system, which should be completely transparent for customers and normal web surfers. Nobody cares how many servers and sites we have; everyone only wants to see the requested web page."
Customizing GNOME (NewsForge)Jem Matzan walks through the process of customizing the GNOME desktop in a NewsForge article. "Red Hat and Sun have showed us that GNOME can be both nice to look at and fun to use. However, GNOME is horribly bland in its natural state, and fixing it so that it's more palatable seems like such a daunting task. But what if you could do your own Bluecurve-like customizations and turn a boring and annoying default GNOME installation into a thing of beauty and productivity in about 20 minutes?"
Setting Up Subversion for One or Multiple Projects (Linux Journal)Linux Journal presents a HOWTO for setting up Subversion. "Subversion is receiving the attention of many open-source developers due to its robustness, similarity to CVS and innovative architecture. Having recently marked its 1.0 version release, Subversion is being used in many open-source projects, including SpamAssassin, the Linux 1394 FireWire support project and the SILO Sparc Boot loader."
A parent's guide to Linux Web filtering (NewsForge)Joe Bolin explains how to set up web filtering on a Linux box in a NewsForge article. "Having converted quite a few people to the world of GNU/Linux, I am often asked by parents, "Can I set up parental Web filters for my children using Linux?" The answer is yes, and here's how."
Reviews Installing MPlayer (linux.com)Linux.com installs MPlayer. "The best way to install MPlayer is by compiling it from source code. Though pre-compiled binary packages (.deb and .rpm) are available, a source-based installation gives you a fully customised player, optimised for maximum performance in terms of your system's processor type, video drivers, and other features."
OpenIB Alliance: Broad range of companies have broader hopes for InfiniBand (NewsForge)NewsForge looks at the OpenIB Alliance, aimed at unifying efforts to build on InfiniBand technology. ""Linux is basically where we see most of the demand," said Mellanox director of product marketing Thad Omura. "That's why our charter is a bulletproof stack for Linux.""
At the Sounding Edge: LilyPond, Part 1 (Linux Journal)Dave Phillips reviews the LilyPond musical typesetting system in the Linux Journal. "Its Web page refers to LilyPond as an automated engraving system, a software music typesetter designed to create beautiful readable output. Set to its defaults, LilyPond automatically formats most music for excellent printed output, at the same time permitting highly detailed customizations to accommodate virtually any music scoring requirement, including unusual and idiosyncratic notations."
Miscellaneous Browser Wars to recommence? (Netcraft)Netcraft looks at the latest round of browser wars, and recommends Firefox. "This experience of the professional quality of free software might even lead some into the ultimate temptation: GNU/Linux itself. That option has been made as convenient as possible by the creation of Knoppix, another image file that can be downloaded, burnt to CDs and passed around. Remarkably, this 2 Gbyte package of GNU/Linux plus applications can be run from any Windows PC without changing a single file on the hard disc simply by booting from the CD drive. The automatic configuration allows users to experience GNU/Linux in a completely risk-free way." (Thanks to Jonathan Lucas)
Page editor: Forrest Cook Announcements Non-Commercial announcements FSFE initiates fundraising-campaignThe Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has sent out a press release that details some of its recent activities in Europe, it also mentions a need for more funding.
OSDL launches new college affiliate programThe Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has announced a new college and university affiliate program.
Aduva joins OSDLThe Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has announced that Aduva Inc., a provider of Linux management automation solutions for distributed and mainframe-based environments, has joined OSDL and will participate in the Lab's Desktop Linux and Data Center Linux working groups.
Perl Mongers Housekeeping (use Perl)The official list of Perl Mongers groups is being cleaned up. "There are, however, still a couple of hundred groups whose status is unknown. These are the groups that I got no response from when I tried to contact them a couple of years ago. If you're a member of a Perl Monger group that isn't listed here then please email me and let me know about your group."
Commercial announcements theKompany.com Releases Aethera 1.1 (KDE.News)theKompany.com has released version 1.1 of Aethera, a cross-platform email/PIM/groupware client. "Aethera is offered for free under GPL in English, German and French while additional plugins for Jabber (including peer to peer file transfer), whiteboarding and voice over IP are offered commercially."
Eclipse 3.0 bundled with free pluginsInnoopract, a provider of Eclipse-based tools and services announced the introduction of Yoxos, an Eclipse Distribution. Yoxos is a distribution of the new Eclipse 3.0 plus a choice of the most popular Open Source plugins, and prepackaged bundles of plugins.
Jataayu and MontaVista partnershipJataayu Software has announced that it has entered into an alliance with MontaVista Software Inc., to make available Jataayu's Infrastructure and Mobile device solutions on the MontaVista Linux platform.
Mandrakesoft reaches definitive agreement to acquire Edge-ITMandrakesoft will be acquiring the company Edge-IT. "Mandrakesoft, publisher of the Mandrakelinux distribution, and Edge IT a provider of support and services in the Linux market, reached a definitive agreement by which Mandrakesoft will acquire all outstanding shares of Edge-IT."
New Books "Programming Jakarta Struts, Second Edition" Released by O'ReillyO'Reilly has published the book Programming Jakarta Struts, Second Edition by Chuck Cavaness.
"Java Cookbook, Second Edition" Released by O'ReillyO'Reilly has published the book Java Cookbook, Second Edition by Ian F. Darwin.
"The Spam Letters" Released by No Starch PressNo Starch Press has published the book The Spam Letters by Jonathan Land.
Resources FSF Europe NewsletterThe July 6, 2004 edition of the FSF Europe Newsletter has been published.
linuxfocus.org July issue availableThe July issue of LinuxFocus is out, with a report from LinuxTag, an interview with Jeff Dike, a look at Dia, and other articles.
July Linux GazetteThe July issue of Linux Gazette is now available with articles, tips and features to help you get the most out of our Linux system.
Terminology Wars: A Web Content AnalysisEric S. Raymond has put together an analysis on the use of the terms "open source" and "free software" on the web. Here are some of his conclusions:
Contests and Awards Voting for 2004 Readers' Choice Awards Now Open (Linux Journal)You can cast your vote for the 10th annual Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards, according to this announcement. "Vote for your favorites in over 20 categories, from favorite programming language to favorite programming beverage. If your favorite isn't on the list, use the write-in option for each category. Voting will take place from July 6 through August 5, and winners will be published in the November 2004 issue of Linux Journal."
Event Reports KDE @ LinuxTag 2004: A Great Success Bodes Well for aKademy (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the KDE presence at the LinuxTag conference. "As usual, the KDE booth in the exhibition area was crowded. Six to eight demopoints were available for LinuxTag visitors to learn about the current KDE 3.2 release, accessibility, the KDE FreeNX project, personal information management (KDE PIM), the award-winning KDevelop IDE as well as the future of KDE. Many users also took the opportunity to personally provide developers with valuable feedback and suggestions. KDE developers used the hacking area to work on KDE FreeNX, jointly develop new ideas and generally hack on KDE."
Upcoming Events Audacity Party 2004The members of the Audacity audio editor project have announced a party. The event will take place near Seattle, WA on Sunday, July 25, 2004. "If you're an Audacity fan, and you live near Seattle, WA or would be interested in traveling there this summer, we would love to meet you! This is your chance to meet the Audacity developers, hang out with other Audacity users, see demos of cool new features under development, and in general have a good time. You must RSVP by Monday, July 19 in order to attend, because the exact location of this event will be determined based on demand. It will likely be at a restaurant with a private room."
NMS Communications Discussion of Linux for Telecom in BrazilNMS Communications has announced a one day conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil on global telecommunication trends. The event will take place on July 13, 2004. "Special emphasis will be given to the recent Brazilian government position advocating the use of free software like Linux to correct the imbalance between software imports and exports and how realistic this is for the telecom market, where consumers and businesses take for granted the highest reliability from applications and infrastructure."
The Minneapolis Cluster Summit, July 29-30Red Hat is sponsoring the "Minneapolis Cluster Summit," happening on July 29 and 30. "We call this the 'Cluster Summit' because it goes well beyond GFS, and is really about building a comprehensive cluster infrastructure for Linux, which will hopefully be a reality by the time Linux 2.8 arrives. If we want that, we have to start now, and we have to work like fiends, time is short." Click below for the details.
Damian Conway Gives Free Talks in Toronto (use Perl)Damian Conway will give two public talks in Toronto, Canada on July 17 and 19, 2004.
Italian Perl Workshop Registration Opens (use Perl)Registration is open for the Italian Perl Workshop. The event will take place in Pisa, Italy on July 19 and 20, 2004.
7th German Perl Workshop: Call for Venues (use Perl)A Call for Venues has gone out for the 7th German Perl Workshop. The event will take place in the Spring of 2005 before the CeBit conference.
Linux Installfest workshop in Davis - Saturday, July 17thThe Linux Users' Group of Davis will be holding another Linux Installfest on July 17, 2004 in Davis, CA.
Events: July 8 - September 2, 2004
Web sites Advogato returnsThe popular community site Advogato is back on the net after several weeks of down time. The future of the site is still unclear, however; as described in this article, Advogato needs a volunteer to help keep the site going. Advogato is worth keeping around; here's hoping that the necessary resources can be found shortly. (Thanks to Nathan Myers).
Software announcements This week's software announcementsHere are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
Miscellaneous Job Opportunities at Care2x (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews mentions a medical company's job posting. "Ok, guys, here you have it. Open source does not ruin the economy, it creates jobs! A notice to all open-source programmers: A Care2x service provider is looking for developers (its paid) to work on Care2x customizations."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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