LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 21, 2004
Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian
The much-anticipated Ubuntu 4.10 release happened on October 20. There are a number of interesting things about Ubuntu, including its commercial backing, use of "4.10" as its initial release number, and its desire to change the world through provocative artwork. But the most interesting thing, perhaps, is the amount of attention that Ubuntu has received. New distributions are not exactly an unusual thing; why all the excitement about Ubuntu?The money behind Ubuntu is certainly one reason; new distributions may pop up every week, but few of them have a reported 40 paid developers behind them. When a new distribution has that sort of backing, people have a reason to assume that there is something interesting going on, and that it may stay around for a while.
The quality of the hackers that Ubuntu was able to attract is also clearly a factor. Ubuntu employs a number of well-known developers from the GNOME, FreeDesktop.org, and Debian communities, among others. When top-quality developers get together behind a new project, interesting things tend to happen.
Ubuntu also makes promises which resonate with a great many users. A quick, single-CD installation process backed up by a huge network-based package repository. A strong emphasis on the best desktop experience that Linux can offer. Bleeding-edge packages combined with a promise of free support for 18 months. A promise of a six-month release cycle backed up by some of the developers who lived up to that promise with the GNOME project. A general sort of cool buzz.
Those are all good reasons for Ubuntu to succeed, but there may be something else going on here. Ubuntu may have found a way to become the preferred interface between users and the Debian project.
Debian has a lot of appeal. It is an excruciatingly free distribution characterized by a widely recognized technical excellence. It offers a variety of packages which is second to none and a package management system which is unequaled elsewhere. But Debian scares away a number of potential users. Its "stable" release is painfully out of date most of the time, the "unstable" release is rather too bleeding-edge for many users (while still being slow to pick up new releases at times), and the middle-of-the-road "testing" release seems to offer the worst of both "stable" and "unstable." The process of creating a new stable release looks chaotic, with no timeline for an actual release in sight. The community seems to spend rather too much time arguing about the free status of firmware and documentation and packaging up obscure tools and too little time simply creating a current distribution with a broader appeal. Debian is a great institution, but it worries a number of people.
Ubuntu is the promise of all the good things about Debian without many of the problems. As a stabilized version of Debian sid, it has a remarkably current set of packages. For some software (e.g. GNOME 2.8) Ubuntu was, by design, ahead of everybody else. The release cycle is well defined, and the support period has been made clear from the beginning. There is the obligatory friendly installer as well. Ubuntu looks like a Debian which stays current, and which is safe for ordinary people to use.
Ubuntu is certainly not the first company which has made a go at being a more civilized Debian distribution; others include Progeny, Linspire, Lycoris, UserLinux, and even Corel's old offering. Ubuntu looks rather more community-oriented than many of the other commercial, Debian-based distributions, however; Linspire may be good at attracting attention and lawsuits, but few people would consider it to be truly open or part of the community. Appearances matter, and Ubuntu appears to have the right people and attitude.
Interestingly, Ubuntu appears to have made a bigger splash than even UserLinux, which is arguably a more community-oriented, Debian-based distribution. The UserLinux project is clearly well aware of Ubuntu, to the point of adding an entry to the UserLinux FAQ on the differences between the two distributions:
UserLinux aims to create a standard core for ISV's/whomever to support. This includes very little real packaging of custom software beyond pieces to 'brand' the system. Most of the system is packaged upstream and maintained upstream. Ubuntu aims to create a Debian based desktop distribution and contains a very large number of custom packages. For example, Debian Sarge ships with GNOME 2.6 while Ubuntu is forked off of Unstable around the same time that Sarge did, but ships GNOME 2.8 with significant modifications.
For the purposes of public image in mid-October, 2004, one might state the Ubuntu has added a significant amount of value (or at least changes) to Debian, and has a stable release out now. UserLinux looks to be mostly a rebranding effort with no releases available yet. From that viewpoint, it's not surprising that Ubuntu is currently hogging the spotlight. That situation could change as UserLinux pulls its first release together and gets its distributed support network going.
UserLinux would be well advised to do these things soon.
There is clearly a market for distributors who impose some order upon the Debian development process. With these distributors in place, the undisciplined nature of the Debian release process does not matter anywhere near as much. The emergence of successful, value-added, Debian-based distributions may be one of the best things to happen to Debian in some time.
A look at LionShare
Peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies have been continually vilified, not to mention legally challenged, by the entertainment industry and other groups as a haven for anonymously sharing digital content illegally. The LionShare project seeks to legitimize P2P as an academic resource by doing away with anonymous file-sharing and adding features appropriate to an educational environment. LionShare is in development at Penn State University thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To get up to speed on LionShare, we talked with four members of the LionShare team, project leader Mike Halm and LionShare developers Alex Valentine, Lorin Metzger and Derek Morr.The major influence for the LionShare project was the Visual Image User Study (VIUS) that was completed last September. LionShare came from a proof-of-concept prototype developed during work on VIUS. The project now has a $1.1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop LionShare 1.0. The grant started last year on October 1, and the team plans to have the 1.0 release ready by September 30, 2005. The first public release alpha went live at the end of September.
LionShare differs from traditional P2P networks in a number of ways. First and foremost, LionShare is designed to be a private, secure network. LionShare users will communicate with "PeerServers" to provide file sharing even when users are not online and for centralized management. The PeerServers will allow users to make files available to others authorized to retrieve the files, or even just as a backup of local files they wish to have available from multiple locations. Morr did note that the software will feature user quotas, to ensure that users do not abuse the backup features.
The software will also feature collaboration tools, such as P2P chat, not present in some file sharing utilities. Authentication will not be required for a user to search the network, but authentication will be necessary to actually retrieve or share files. The LionShare white paper also calls for the LionShare client to provide organizational features as well as search and retrieval capability already present in clients like LimeWire. The LionShare will allow users to search their own filesystems, though Morr pointed out that LionShare's organizational features are not as comprehensive as tools like Beagle or Apple's SpotLight.
At this point, however, LionShare's codebase is still in an alpha state. Morr said that the current alpha that's available on the website is missing the security components that will set LionShare apart from other P2P networks. Metzger noted that the next release should have the security integration, though the release will still be an alpha release.
LionShare is based on the LimeWire 4.0
codebase using a modified Gnutella protocol, and is entirely written in
Java. The client and server software are available under the GNU General
Public License, while the SASL-CA software is under a BSD-type
license. At this point, the LionShare team said that there are "
Since the LionShare source code is available, how will the developers
ensure that others aren't able to utilize the source to build anonymous
LionShare client software? According to Morr, it wouldn't matter if someone
were to tamper with the client software. "
In addition to requiring authentication, LionShare is designed to allow
file restriction based on identity or user roles. Users will be able to set
Access Control Lists (ACLs) to restrict sharing of a file to individual
users, groups or to all authenticated members. Morr said that the
attributes will come from the authentication servers, so that the
institutions running LionShare servers will be able to fine-tune the
criteria for file sharing. One potential hurdle for educational
institutions looking to join a LionShare network is the lack of a
standardized schema for ACLs. Morr acknowledged that each institution was
likely to have its own schema at the moment, that wouldn't be compatible
with other institutions. However, a standardized LDAP schema for higher
education called eduPerson
is being developed by Internet2, a partner organization for LionShare.
Morr also pointed out that LionShare was designed to allow users to
authenticate against a number of different sources. He said that the
project was doing a lot of work to make LionShare work with "
We also asked whether LionShare would protect authorized users from
accidentally sharing sensitive or personal files with the wrong set of
users. For example, could LionShare prevent a user from accidentally
sharing all of their files with all authenticated LionShare users? The
LionShare developers said that they had thought about this, and would try
to solve the problem with by having "
Whether LionShare will catch on beyond the academic setting is anyone's
guess. There are valid reasons for integrating authentication into P2P for
academic or business uses, but that approach will become unwieldy for
larger P2P uses such as downloading Linux ISOs. We'll be watching the
development of LionShare with interest, and are looking forward to further
releases to evaluate how useful the project will be in the long run.
The first of these is tomboy, a simple desktop
note-taking tool. Tomboy implements a set of note cards, each of which
contains text and links to other cards. The idea is not particularly new,
but the implementation has been thought out well. Some of the best ideas
from Wiki-style web sites have been absorbed - typing a WikiWord into a
note creates and links to a new note using that word as its title. Links
can also be created through a "link" button or by dragging and dropping. A
simple search capability can quickly find notes containing a given string.
Nat Friedman was
impressed by this application:
I'm not sure it's clear to everyone just how big a space Tomboy has
carved out. If Tomboy can own note taking for me, that's one of
the main purposes of my computer.
Your editor was, with some effort, able to get tomboy running on a Debian
unstable system; this application requires a number of highly-current Mono
and GTK libraries. There are some rough edges and missing capabilities,
which should come as little surprise for an application this new. Even so,
tomboy makes note taking and organization into a quick and easy task; it is
good at staying out of the way. If the current trend continues, tomboy
should quickly reach a level of functionality and stability that will earn
it a place on most distribution disks.
Meanwhile, quite a bit of attention has recently been focused on beagle, which is currently
at a lofty 0.0.2 release. Beagle appears to be the GNOME project's answer
to Microsoft's search plans and Google's (Windows) offering; it provides a
quick way to find things on the desktop. Think of it as a modern version
of locate, but with a few enhancements.
One core beagle feature is its collection of "filters," which enable
searches of a wide variety of files typically found on a Linux desktop
system - and some that aren't. Supported file types include Microsoft
Office, OpenOffice.org, PDF, source code in a number of programming languages,
and a number of image and audio file formats (only metadata is indexed).
Beagle can also search email (mostly limited to evolution users for now),
tomboy notes, weblog entries in the "Blam!" format, application launchers,
and more.
Underneath it all, beagle uses the (still unmerged) inotify mechanism to learn about
changes to the filesystem. New or modified files can be indexed
immediately; there should be no need for a massive "thrash the disk" job
running in the middle of the night. As an added touch, search results
which are currently displayed for the user are updated to reflect the latest
filesystem changes.
There is a command-line search tool which may be used to search beagle, but
the primary interface to the system is best ("bleeding-edge search
tool"). The project has put together a
collection of best screenshots which gives a good idea of what beagle
can currently do.
While tomboy is primarily the work of one developer (Alex Graveley), beagle
is a rather larger affair. The beagle
roadmap posted on October 4 shows that quite a few Novell hackers
have been set to work on beagle. At the top of their list is basic
usability work, things like "
Longer-term goals include reworking dashboard to sit on top of beagle,
adding beagle searches to nautilus,
and, somehow, better encapsulating the relationships between desktop
objects.
Beagle is very much an early-stage project; it can be difficult to install,
and it is not available in packaged form for most distributions. There is
also that "not crashing for failing" issue. But it has reached a point
where the suicidally early adopters are finding it useful, and progress is
happening quickly. Linux, it seems, will not be left behind when it comes
to desktop search capabilities.
some
discussions here and there
" between the LionShare developers and the
LimeWire developers, but not a "concrete, everyday
partnership
", but that the LimeWire developers are pleased to see
their codebase being used in other projects.
In order to get any kind of
public file, you have to certify or authenticate...the other end wouldn't
authorize you to access the file.
"
whatever
authentication you have
", including LDAP directories and Kerberos
sources. Morr said that LionShare should be compatible with Microsoft's
Active Directory as well, though they haven't tested that as of yet.
a good UI
" that would let
users know that they were sharing files.
A couple of applications from your future desktop
By many (but not all) accounts, the Linux desktop has achieved something
close to parity with some of the proprietary alternatives, in terms of both
capability and usability. The desktop developers are certainly not ready
to declare victory and sit back, however; the pace of development is, if
anything, still increasing. As an example of where things are going, we
decided to take a quick look at a couple of bleeding-edge applications
which have been attracting attention recently.
![[Tomboy screenshot]](https://static.lwn.net/images/ns/tomboy-sm.png)
Not crashing or failing, most of the
time.
" Among other things, it seems there are memory leak problems
in Mono which have to be worked around. Email integration remains on the
list ("The primary goal will be Evolution mail integration; patches
for other mail clients will, of course, be accepted.
"). Work
continues on the search interface; among other things, search will be
integrated into the GNOME file selection dialog.
Security
How to kill a web browser
Michal Zalewski recently decided to look for exploitable vulnerabilities in web browsers. So he write a little CGI script which generates random HTML and feeds it to the browser; a refresh tag is used so that the browser will repeatedly request new pages - until things come to a crashing halt. Mr. Zalewski reported his results on Bugtraq as "a mini-farce." It seems that most of the browsers he tested fared rather poorly.The key word here is "most." One browser was able to absorb noisy input indefinitely without crashing; that browser was Internet Explorer.
There has been quite a bit of talk recently about Internet Explorer's security problems, and how the alternatives - both free and proprietary - are more secure. So this kind of result is somewhat embarrassing. As Mr. Zalewski put it:
So what sort of HTML turned out to be problematic? A few examples have been posted - but all you smug, free-software-using folks might want to think twice before clicking on them. Use of a tool like wget is probably more appropriate. One of the examples, which, as your smug, free-software-using editor can attest, kills Firefox is, in its entirety:
<HTML><INPUT
The post notes that this bug is probably exploitable, and that many others certainly exist. The tester also does nothing involving either cascading style sheets or JavaScript - one suspect that those areas might, just maybe, be the source of a bug or two themselves.
The Mozilla project has been quick to capitalize on the recent bout of Internet Explorer security problems. This incident demonstrates, however, that the free software community can, at times, be a little too quick to claim better security. Testing against malformed input has been a standard quality assurance technique for decades; the fact that Mozilla, seemingly, has not done this testing is a little discouraging. Security can be a winning point for free software, but it doesn't happen automatically. If we're going to claim to have a more secure product, we should be sure we've done the homework first. Meanwhile, expect a new set of Mozilla patches sometime soon.
Brief items
Security fixes in 2.6.9
Alan Cox has sent out an announcement regarding a couple of tty-related security fixes which were included in the 2.6.9 kernel release. One of them is, conceivably, remotely exploitable, though it appears to be impossible to exploit in most cases. 2.4 and 2.2 kernels are also vulnerable; expect distributor updates shortly. Click below for the details.
New vulnerabilities
apache: mod_ssl cipher negotiation problem
| Package(s): | apache | CVE #(s): | CAN-2004-0885 | ||||||||||||||||
| Created: | October 15, 2004 | Updated: | November 4, 2004 | ||||||||||||||||
| Description: | Apache's mod_ssl module may allow content to be retrieved without proper negotiation of the requested cipher suite. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||||||||||||||
BNC: input validation flaw
| Package(s): | bnc | CVE #(s): | |||||
| Created: | October 15, 2004 | Updated: | October 19, 2004 | ||||
| Description: | The BNC IRC proxying server contains an input validation flaw which can be remotely exploited for the purpose of running IRC commands. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||
cvs: information disclosure
| Package(s): | cvs | CVE #(s): | CAN-2004-0778 | ||||
| Created: | October 20, 2004 | Updated: | October 20, 2004 | ||||
| Description: | CVS (prior to version 1.1.17) contains an undocumented switch which may be used by an attacker to verify the existence of files and whether the CVS process can access them. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||
ghostscript: symlink vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | ghostscript | CVE #(s): | CAN-2004-0967 | ||||||||||||
| Created: | October 20, 2004 | Updated: | September 28, 2005 | ||||||||||||
| Description: | The ghostscript package (prior to version 7.07.1-r7) contains several scripts which are vulnerable to symlink attacks. | ||||||||||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||||||||||
libpng: integer overflows
| Package(s): | libpng | CVE #(s): | CAN-2004-0955 | ||||||||||||
| Created: | October 20, 2004 | Updated: | October 25, 2004 | ||||||||||||
| Description: | A new set of integer overflows has been found in the libpng library; these overflows could perhaps be exploited (by way of a malicious image file) to execute arbitrary code. | ||||||||||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||||||||||
phpMyAdmin: Vulnerability in MIME-based transformation
| Package(s): | phpMyAdmin | CVE #(s): | |||||
| Created: | October 18, 2004 | Updated: | October 19, 2004 | ||||
| Description: | A defect was found in phpMyAdmin's MIME-based transformation system, when used with "external" transformations. A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary commands on the server with the rights of the HTTP server user. | ||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||
PostgreSQL: Insecure temporary file use in make_oidjoins_check
| Package(s): | PostgreSQL | CVE #(s): | CAN-2004-0977 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Created: | October 18, 2004 | Updated: | December 20, 2004 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description: | The make_oidjoins_check script insecurely creates temporary files in world-writeable directories with predictable names. A local attacker could create symbolic links in the temporary files directory, pointing to a valid file somewhere on the filesystem. When make_oidjoins_check is called, this would result in file overwrite with the rights of the user running the utility, which could be the root user. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WordPress: HTTP response splitting and XSS vulnerabilities
| Package(s): | wordpress | CVE #(s): | |||||||||
| Created: | October 14, 2004 | Updated: | December 20, 2004 | ||||||||
| Description: | WordPress is vulnerable to HTTP response splitting and cross-site scripting attacks, due to the lack of input validation in the administration panel scripts. A malicious user could inject arbitrary response data, leading to content spoofing, web cache poisoning and other cross-site scripting or HTTP response splitting attacks. This could result in compromising the victim's data or browser. | ||||||||||
| Alerts: |
| ||||||||||
Resources
October CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter
Bruce Schneier's CRYPTO-GRAM newsletter for October is out, with articles on disclosing network outage information, license plate scanners, academic freedom, and RFID passports. "Normally I am very careful before I ascribe such sinister motives to a government agency. Incompetence is the norm, and malevolence is much rarer. But this seems like a clear case of the government putting its own interests above the security and privacy of its citizens, and then lying about it."
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Kernel development
Kernel release status
The current 2.6 kernel is 2.6.9, released, at last on October 18. Very few fixes were merged since 2.6.9-final, which, in turn, contained only a small number of changes since 2.6.9-rc4. The -final naming scheme drew a few complaints, to which Linus responded "I'm a retard." One assumes he will not do that again.For those just tuning in, 2.6.9 includes a lot of NTFS updates, block I/O barrier support, a patch allowing unprivileged process to lock small amounts of memory in RAM, a new USB storage driver, cluster-wide file locking infrastructure, completely out-of-line spinlocks, AMD dual-core support, support for the POSIX waitid() system call, KProbes, USB "on the go" support, the "flex mmap" user-space memory layout, m32r architecture support, a bunch of latency-reduction work, and lots of fixes. See the (lengthy) changelog for a full list of changes since 2.6.8.
There have been no 2.6.10 prepatches released yet, but the floodgates have certainly opened; several hundred changesets have found their way into Linus's BitKeeper repository. These include a set of SCSI updates, a big rework of the IRQ subsystem (pulling lots of duplicated code into a single, generic core - no functional changes), some software suspend fixes, a number of scheduler tweaks, CDRW packet writing support, switchable and loadable I/O schedulers, a new version of the completely fair queueing (CFQ) I/O scheduler, the removal of the (unused) wake_up_all_sync() function, a simple generic circular buffer implementation, a big USB update, version 17 of the wireless extensions API, the kernel events notification mechanism, a patch changing the core device model function exports to GPL-only, a PCI subsystem update, the BSD "secure levels" security module, and lots of fixes.
Andrew Morton has not released any -mm patches over the last week.
The current 2.4 prepatch is still 2.4.28-pre4; Marcelo has not released any prepatches since October 8.
Kernel development news
Quotes of the week
SCO has contacted us and identifed [sic] with precise detail and factual documentation the code and intellectual property in Linux they claim was taken from Unix. We have reviewed their claims and they appear to create enough uncertianty [sic] to warrant removal of the infringing portions.
-- Jeff Merkey, of course.
-- Yes, him again.
Sorry, couldn't resist; we'll stop now.
Coming in 2.6.10
A large number of patches have already been merged and will show up in the first 2.6.10 prepatch. Some of those have been covered on this page before, but others have not. As a way of catching up with current events, we'll take a quick look at a few of these patches.
CFQ v2
The completely fair queueing (CFQ) I/O scheduler endeavors to get good performance from block devices while dividing the available bandwidth equally between the processes contending for each device. 2.6.10 will contain a major rework of the CFQ scheduler, called "CFQ v2." Some of the changes in this version are:
- Process I/O context information is maintained for the lifetime of each
process, rather than just for the periods when the process has
outstanding I/O. This change fixes some starvation scenarios which
came up with CFQ v1.
- Grouping of processes can be done by user ID, group ID, thread group,
or process group; the policy in force can be changed at runtime.
- Request ordering is more strictly enforced as a way of limiting the
maximum latency experienced by any given request.
- Small backward seeks are occasionally allowed if they look like they will improve responsiveness.
The code is also more heavily commented; author Jens Axboe says that was done to increase its AAF - "akpm acceptance factor." AKPM is Andrew Morton, who has been known to complain about insufficiently commented kernel submissions.
Simple circular buffers
Circular buffers are a common data structure in the kernel, but there has never been a generic implementation available for use. Stelian Pop decided to change that; he was almost certainly surprised, however, by the large number of iterations it took to respond to all the comments he got. In the end, this effort showed the value of having a single, generic implementation in the kernel. Even a data structure as simple as a circular buffer can be tricky to implement correctly; it makes no sense for every developer to go through that process each time a new one is needed. With a single, well-reviewed implementation, the chances of it being truly correct are much better.
A circular buffer is represented by struct kfifo, defined in <linux/kfifo.h>. A staticly-allocated buffer can be initialized with kfifo_init(), or allocation and initialization can be performed together with kfifo_alloc():
struct kfifo *kfifo_init(unsigned char *buffer, unsigned int size,
int gfp_mask, spinlock_t *lock);
struct kfifo *kfifo_alloc(unsigned int size, int gfp_mask,
spinlock_t *lock);
Either way, size is the desired size of the buffer (in bytes, must be a power of two), gfp_mask is a set of GFP_ flags controlling how memory allocations will be performed, and lock is a spinlock which will be used to serialize access to the data structure.
The functions for moving data into and out of the buffer are:
unsigned int kfifo_put(struct kfifo *fifo, unsigned char *buffer,
unsigned int len);
unsigned int kfifo_get(struct kfifo *fifo, unsigned char *buffer,
unsigned int len);
These functions move at most len bytes between the structure and buffer; the actual number of bytes transferred is returned. The number of bytes currently stored in a circular buffer can be obtained by passing it to kfifo_len(), and a buffer may be flushed by passing it to kfifo_reset(). A dynamically-allocated buffer may be returned to the system with kfifo_free(); there does not seem to be a way to free memory from staticly-allocated buffers.
Kernel events
The kernel events notification mechanism has been covered here a couple of times. This code provides a way for user-space processes to learn about important events by way of a netlink socket. The final form of the event generation interface (for now) is:
int kobject_uevent(struct kobject *kobj, enum kobject_action action,
struct attribute *attr);
The kobject describes where the interesting event happened. For the one explicit use currently in the kernel (filesystem mount and unmount events), the kobject corresponds to the disk partition involved. action is a small set of possible events; it is currently one of KOBJ_ADD, KOBJ_REMOVE, KOBJ_CHANGE, KOBJ_MOUNT, and KOBJ_UMOUNT. The "add" and "remove" actions are generated along with hotplug events; "change" describes attribute value changes, and "mount" and "unmount" are for filesystem events. The final parameter (attr) is an optional attribute of the given kobject which provides further information.
The patches merged also modify how hotplug events are handled; such events now are reported in two ways: via the new events mechanism and through an invocation of /sbin/hotplug.
Realtime preemption, part 2
In last week's episode, we saw the release of a number of patches intended to bring (something closer to) realtime response to the standard Linux kernel. The level of activity in this area remains high; here is what has been happening over the last week.Bill Huey of LynuxWorks surfaced to announce that he, too, has been working on realtime preemption; his patches are available at mmlinux.sourceforge.net. Mr. Huey seemed a bit annoyed at the posting from MontaVista which started the current discussion; his version, it seems, has been working for some months. But, by his own admission, he had been sitting on the patches for some time as a result of the "commercial development attitude" at his employer. "Release early" is the kernel developers' mantra for a reason.
The mmlinux patch resembles the others, in that it turns all spinlocks into semaphores and makes most critical sections preemptible. It includes a threaded interrupt handler patch from TimeSys, and uses standard Linux semaphores, without priority inheritance. See the mmlinux release announcement for more information.
The folks at MontaVista must be feeling a bit like their own vehicle has taken off and left them behind. Even so, Daniel Walker announced a new MontaVista realtime patch, based on Ingo Molnar's work. It includes an architecture-independent mutex implementation (but still different from regular Linux kernel semaphores), and some latency tracing code.
The real work, however, continues to be done by Ingo Molnar; he has been
releasing patches at such a rate that some
developers working on slower systems may have trouble simply compiling them
before the next one comes out. Ingo's focus has been the
elimination of the (numerous) remaining spinlocks, especially those outside
of the core kernel. The current situation, as he put it, is "an
opt-in model to correctness which is bad from a maintenance and upstream
acceptance point of view
". With his current patches (the latest is
RT-2.6.9-rc4-mm1-U8 as of this writing, but
that is likely to have changed by the time anybody reads this), over 90% of
the raw spinlock calls have been removed, and most non-core subsystems are
entirely free of spinlocks. At least, that is the case when realtime
preemption is configured into the kernel; without that option, the
situation is mostly unchanged.
To get to that point, Ingo had to make changes to a number of Linux mutual exclusion primitives which got in the way. One of those is per-CPU variables, which are based around the idea that, as long as each processor only works with its own copy of a variable, no locking is required to make that work safe. That assumption only holds, however, if threads are not preempted while manipulating per-CPU variables. So using a per-CPU variable requires disabling preemption, which runs counter to the whole "make everything preemptible" idea. To address this problem, Ingo introduced a new "locked" per-CPU variable type:
DEFINE_PER_CPU_LOCKED(type, name);
get_cpu_var_locked(var, cpu);
put_cpu_var_locked(var, cpu);
Threads which use the "locked" type of per-CPU variable can be preempted
while working with that variable - they can even be shifted to a different
processor while sleeping. The result could be a thread updating the
"wrong" processor's version of the variable. The lock will prevent race
conditions, however, so, as Ingo puts it,
"'statistically' the
variable is still per-CPU and update correctness is fully
preserved.
"
Then, there is the issue of read-copy-update, which also depends on threads not being preempted while they hold a reference to RCU-protected data. Ingo's approach here was, essentially, to dump RCU in the realtime case and just go back to regular locking. This change is hard to do in any sort of automatic way, however, because the RCU read locking primitive (rcu_read_lock(), which, normally, just disables preemption) does not identify which data is being protected. So converting RCU code requires picking out a spinlock or semaphore which can be used to prevent races with writers, and to change the rcu_read_lock() calls to one of the many new variants:
rcu_read_lock_sem(struct semaphore *sem);
rcu_read_lock_down_read(struct rwsem *sem);
rcu_read_lock_spin(spinlock_t *lock);
...
This API, Ingo notes, is still in flux. There does not seem to have been any benchmarking done yet to determine what effect these changes have on the scalability issues RCU was created to address.
Atomic kmaps were another problem. An atomic kmap is a mechanism used to quickly map a high memory page into the kernel's address space. It is, for all practical purposes, an implementation of per-CPU page table entries, and it has the same preemption issues. The solution here was the addition of a new function (kmap_atomic_rt()) which turns into a regular, non-atomic kmap when realtime preemption is enabled. In this case (as with many of the others) the low-latency imperative brings a small overall performance cost.
As a sort of side project, many users of semaphores in the kernel were changed over to the completion mechanism. Some new completion functions have been added to help with that process:
int wait_for_completion_interruptible(struct completion *c);
unsigned long wait_for_completion_timeout(struct completion *c,
unsigned long timeout);
unsigned long wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(struct completion *c,
unsigned long timeout);
Quite a few other changes have gone in, but the idea should be clear by now: a vast number of changes are being made to the kernel's fundamental assumptions about locking and the execution environment. Few readers will be surprised to learn that the brave souls testing these patches have been encountering significant numbers of bugs. Those bugs are being squashed in a hurry, though, to the point that Ingo can say:
I also think that this feature can and should be integrated into the upstream kernel sometime in the future. It will need improvements and fixes and lots of testing, but i believe the basic concept is sound and inclusion is manageable and desirable.
The interesting thing is that nobody has come forward to challenge that statement. As the realtime preemption patches become more stable, and the pressure for their inclusion starts to build, that situation may well change. It is hard to imagine a patch this intrusive going in without some sort of fight - especially when many developers are far from convinced about the goal of supporting realtime applications in Linux to begin with.
MODULE_PARM deprecated
It's hard to turn down an opportunity to give Rusty Russell some grief, so let's take a moment to review a comment he posted on LWN in 2003:
Those who held off on changing their out-of-tree modules may want to do so now. Rusty has sent out a patch marking MODULE_PARM() obsolete in preparation for its removal from the kernel. A set of companion patches deals with many of the remaining MODULE_PARM() uses in the mainline tree.
MODULE_PARM() declares parameters for loadable modules; these parameters can be changed when the module is loaded to affect its operation. One of the many changes that came with the new module loader in the 2.5 series was a new mechanism (module_param()) for declaring module parameters. The new scheme has a number of advantages over the old one: it is type safe, it allows module parameters to be represented (and changed) in sysfs, and it provides a flexible mechanism for new types of parameters. But, since the older way continued to work, many modules were never updated.
Under the old development model, things probably would have gone as Rusty suggested: MODULE_PARM() would have remained through the 2.6 series in order to avoid breaking things. The new development model lacks the same sort of obvious demarcation point where compatibility can be broken, so those changes end up going into the regular patch stream. This is especially true of internal API changes, where there never has been a guarantee of any sort of continuity, even in an old-style stable series. So some of these changes are coming more quickly than some developers might have expected.
With regard to MODULE_PARM, The current patches in circulation suggest that the time to update to module_param() is running out. Consider yourself warned.
Patches and updates
Kernel trees
Architecture-specific
Core kernel code
Development tools
Device drivers
Filesystems and block I/O
Memory management
Miscellaneous
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet
Distributions
News and Editorials
New Linux Firewall Releases: IPCop 1.4.0 and Devil-Linux 1.2
Although much less glamorous than the desktop or server distributions, Linux-based firewalls have proven themselves as reliable workhorses capable of turning many an old computer into useful appliances, guarding corporate and home networks from bad elements traversing the cyberspace. Among them, IPCop Firewall and Devil-Linux are just two examples of the power behind collaborative efforts of developers across the Internet. Both projects provide simple, yet powerful products contributing to greater peace of mind in our ever more complex, inter-connected world of computers.IPCop 1.4.0
IPCop Firewall, launched in 2001 as a fork of SmoothWall, is developed by Charles Williams and a small group of developers who found themselves disenchanted with the attitude of some of the SmoothWall developers on their support forums. Starting with the recently released version 1.4.0, IPCop is now built from ground up and based on Linux From Scratch. The developer's mission is simple: to provide a free, stable and secure Linux firewall that is highly configurable and easy to maintain. With some of the press reviews rating IPCop higher than certain expensive commercial firewall products, the IPCop developers have certainly succeeded in achieving their goal.
The size of the IPCop ISO image, at 40 MB, leaves little doubt about the specialist nature of this distribution. It offers packet filtering, VPNs, a caching web proxy, DNS, DHCP and time server, traffic shaping, and intrusion detection, but not much else. System administration is done through a web browser over the network using a secure connection. IPCop is designed to run on a dedicated box with as little as 300 MB of hard disk space and 32 MB of RAM, but it can also be installed on a compact flash card and run as a network appliance. The sophisticated web-based configuration interface provides many useful functions, including password modification and secure shell access settings, firewall and VPN configuration, and management of services. Security updates and fixes can also be installed through the web interface.
IPCop 1.4.0 is the project's first stable release in 18 months. A lot of work has gone into this version, which is now available for both i386 and Alpha processors. Hardware support has been extended considerably to include more network cards, USB and PCI DSL modems, as well as SCSI and PCMCIA hardware. ACPI and multi-processor systems are now also supported. In terms of new software, Snort has been included for intrusion detection and most packages are now compiled with the GCC Stack Smashing Protector. The web-based interface has been redesigned, offering enhanced log viewing, DHCP and host editing, as well as newly introduced system performance graphs. This version of IPCop has excellent multi-lingual capabilities, inclusive of some exotic languages, such as Hungarian and Vietnamese.
Devil-Linux 1.2
Devil-Linux started as a personal project of Heiko Zuerker in early 2001. It departed from the established ways of developing a Linux distributions in that Devil-Linux was a live CD, meant to be run directly from a bootable CD-ROM. As such, argued the lead developer, it offered more security, simply because it ran from a read-only file system. Therefore, certain common cracking techniques, such as installing a rootkit on the target machine for cracking passwords, were not available to intruders. Many users found this technique intriguing and Devil-Linux matured into a popular distribution.
The scope of Devil-Linux is a lot broader than that of IPCop. Besides the usual firewall and router software, Devil-Linux also ships with a web server (Apache 2 + MySQL + PHP), mail server with TLS support and spam and virus filtering (Postfix TLS + SpamAssassin + ClamAV), FTP server (vsftpd), and a number of other server applications. However, all services, including networking, are turned off by default. System configuration is accomplished via a ncurses-based menu. One of the most interesting features of this distribution is the ability to easily add or remove applications with the help of a Devil-Linux build kit, a well-documented procedure for customizing and building one's own live CD.
Devil-Linux 1.2 is the first major upgrade in a year. Besides kernel (2.4.27) and package version updates, there are several noteworthy security enhancements in this release - notably the Stack Smashing Protection for most binaries included on the CD, and the GRSecurity patch for the kernel, with chroot restrictions, address space modification protection, and randomization features. Additionally, Devil-Linux provides an easy way to setup chroot jails and supplies a number of Netfilter modules not found in the standard kernel.
Distribution News
Ubuntu 4.10 released
The final version of Ubuntu 4.10 ("Warty Warthog") has been released. "Ubuntu is a new Linux distribution that brings together the extraordinary breadth of Debian with a fast and easy install, regular releases (every six months), a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default and a commitment to security updates with 18 months of security and technical support for every release." The Ubuntu folks even offer to mail a CD to interested users for free; click below for the details.
OpenPKG 2.2 released
Version 2.2 of the OpenPKG meta-distribution is available. "Since the previous release four months ago, the OpenPKG package repository has grown by 10%. A subset of 528 packages were carefully selected for inclusion into the OpenPKG 2.2 release, including the latest versions of popular Open Source Unix software like Apache, Bash, BIND, GCC, INN, Mozilla, MySQL, OpenSSH, Perl, Postfix, PostgreSQL, Samba, Squid, teTeX and Vim."
Ubuntu Traffic #7
The seventh issue of Ubuntu Traffic is out, with summaries of discussions regarding the Ubuntu distribution. Covered topics include "installer preseeding," the Ubuntu Preview live CD, and more (but no word on the controversy over the new artwork).Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 18 October 2004
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of October 18, 2004 looks at the upcoming 2004.3 release and covers several other topics.Debian GNU/Linux
Raphaël Hertzog has announced the availability of the the first French book about Debian.The Debian Weekly News for October 19, 2004 covers Raphaël's new book, a report about using Knoppix for system recovery, the launch of the Debian GIS sub-project, the debian-legal discussion of the Academic Free License, and several other topics.
The Debian project will be present at several conferences and exhibitions in Europe, including Systems in Munich, Germany, Berlinux in Berlin, Germany, OS04 in Graz, Austria, LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and more.
DistroWatch Weekly
The DistroWatch Weekly for October 18, 2004 looks at the Anaconda installer, features the Devil-Linux live firewall and looks forward to the release of FreeBSD 5.3, hopefully next week.
New Distributions
knopILS
knopILS is a customized version of Knoppix that has an Italian boot prompt, default keyboard, and default language. Each .deb package installed belongs to the free tree of Debian GNU/Linux, or could be classified as such if it is not an official one. Localized .deb files are present when available, and minor changes were made to graphics. Version 0.7 was released this week.XenoLinux
Thanks to a tip from Fred Mobach we've added XenoLinux to our List of Linux Distributions, in the special purpose category. Xen is a virtual machine monitor for x86 that supports execution of multiple guest operating systems. Xen is Open Source software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. XenoLinux is a fully functional port of Linux, 2.4 and 2.6, running over Xen, for a virtual general purpose Linux server.
Minor distribution updates
Aurora Build-1.92 (Code Name Tangerine)
The Aurora Sparc Project has a full set of sparc packages that match up to Fedora Core 2, and its name is Tangerine. Click below for more information.Devil-Linux v1.2 released !
Heiko Zuerker has announced Devil-Linux v1.2. The changes include Kernel 2.4.27, many program updates, printing support, 32 MB systems are supported again, Apache HTTP Server, PHP, and many many other changes.Ewrt
Ewrt, a Linux distribution for the Linksys WRT54G, has released v0.2-final. "Changes: Many build fixes and nocat fixes. PMTU, cron, and check_ps have been fixed."
Fedora
Fedora Core 2 updates:- k3b-0.11.14-0.FC2.2 (fixes bug 134642)
- gimp-2.0.5-0.fc2.2 (fixes bug 135675)
- w3m-0.5.1-3.1 (rebuilt)
- glib2-2.4.7-1.1 (many bug fixes including bug 126666)
- gtk2-2.4.13-2.1 (bug fixes, improved file chooser)
H3Knix
H3Knix, a small desktop distribution, has released v1.6. "Changes: This release adds a new init, faster startup base modifications, better performance, updated applications, a new installation disk, and easier/faster installation scripts."
INSERT
INSERT (INside SEcurity Rescue Toolkit) has released v1.2.16. "Changes: This release upgrades to kernel 2.4.27 (again with the backported NTFS drivers from the Linux-NTFS-project). A bunch of packages have been updated and a few were added. Also, a few bugs were fixed, notably the often-not- working WLAN configuration (wrong PCMCIA config)."
Linux Live
Linux Live, a project that provides scripts for building a live CD, has released v4.2.4. "Changes: One function in liblinuxlive was fixed. It could return an incomplete list of library dependencies, resulting in a LiveCD that didn't boot. A new "installimg" script has been created in /tools/. A toram boot option has been added as a synonym for copy2ram."
TopologiLinux
TopologiLinux has released v5.0.0. "Changes: Colinux was integrated, making it possible to run TopologiLinux from within Windows. A new grub-based boot manager was also added. The installation was rewritten and new scripts were included. The packages were upgraded to Slackware 10 with updates until 14 October 2004. Demo and full versions are now available - the demo is about 350MB and contains X, KDE, networking, and libraries, while the full version is supplied on two CDs."
Newsletters and articles of interest
Linux wants to earn your trust (FCW.com)
Federal Computer Week takes a look at Trusted Linux. "TCS officials expect Trusted Linux to be certified under Common Criteria at Evaluation Assurance Level 4, [TCS COO Ed] Hammersla said. The EAL scale runs from 1 to 7, and 7 is the highest score. TCS officials plan to begin beta testing Trusted Linux this fall, Hammersla said. The operating system will form the foundation of a trusted computing base, a system of software, hardware and firmware that enforces a unified security policy."
Distribution reviews
UserLinux Beta 1: The Precursor to the Next Enterprise Linux Distro? (LinuxPlanet)
LinuxPlanet takes the UserLinux beta for a test drive. "UserLinux is a Linux distribution with very high aspirations. Founded and backed by Linux luminary Bruce Perens, part of the UserLinux mission is to repair the economic paradigm of enterprise Linux. The recently released UserLinux Beta 1 is perhaps a tangible small step on the path toward achieving its lofty ambitions."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol
Development
Transcode - The video transcoder to rule them all
Transcode (also available here), is the knock-out punch of video processing tools under Linux. What began life as an AVI-file transcoding tool has blown up into a general purpose video processing tool that is capable of taking virtually any video file and encoding it to any other video codec. If you've ever tried to coerce MPlayer or its accompanying Mencoder into doing any sort of work, then you're familiar with what transcode does on a small scale. Like MPlayer, transcode does everything conceivable within its paradigm.I stumbled across transcode under some interesting circumstances. A year ago I tried to coerce Mencoder into making MPEG files that I could image with VCDImager so I could burn my collection of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV episodes to SVCD. In doing so I downloaded a virtual metric ton of yuvscaler, mpeg2enc, and all sorts of other tools. I literally filled up my home directory trying to build the toolchain that every Linux/SVCD How-To instructed me to build. None of them built, and I wasted many hours at it. More recently I was fooling around with KDEnlive, trying to determine on a whim whether or not I could actually edit movies with it. I've entertained a fantasy about chaining the Back in the Red series of Red Dwarf episodes into one long movie. After wasting several hours by not reading the fine manual, I learned that to work KDEnlive I needed input files in the venerable DV format.
Not knowing what DV was, I Googled it. DV, of course, is what your digital camcorder gives you. Upon learning that, I went in search of a tool that would convert the MPEG files I had to DV, so I could make a poor man's Red Dwarf movie. I found transcode, and it appeared to be the only tool that even came close to what I was trying to do at that particular moment in time. So I started reading the documentation and quickly discovered that transcode, with the help of only some of the toolchain I had previously tried to build, would make the SVCD-compatible MPEGs I needed to burn off my Hitchhiker's collection. I found the missing pieces by doing a quick search through the available Mandrake packages, and I completely forgot about making DV files. Instead, three hours later I finally burned my first SVCD in the first truly productive tangent I had taken in months. It was the first episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I was amazed, to say the least. My wife had to physically stop me from bouncing off the walls.
Transcode works by utilizing a heavy plugin-based architecture. Everything transcode does is with a plugin of some sort. First it decodes the video/audio stream to an internal format. Then you can have it process the stream internally, if you wish. Then it streams to an output plugin where you can do additional processing before/during the final encoding. This web page has a pretty picture that's worth a lot more than a thousand words.
The transcode documentation is fairly thin if you don't already know a lot about video processing, but it is pretty complete otherwise. There are numerous man pages for each tool bundled with transcode, but there isn't a lot of information on the web to help you get started. Conversely, there are two mailing lists specifically for transcode that will help you solve virtually any problem you encounter, and there are also several Linux distribution mailing lists where you'll find most of the problems you may encounter already solved. After reading the documentation, I realized I hadn't actually learned anything. This is mostly due to the fact that I know next to nothing about video processing. I can list a few codecs and almost know what I'm talking about, and I'm fairly well acquainted with the standards for VCDs and SVCDs. I can also use the word "multiplex" in a conversation and sound like I know what it means. Other than that, I felt like I had been drop-kicked into a rugby match. So I went looking for the idiot guides and found them. They are thin on details, but thick on command line examples, so I was pretty confident I could convince transcode to make my SVCD for me. I also felt pretty certain I knew exactly what I needed to make it work.
Armed with this new information, I searched my package manager looking for the mjpeg-tools that I had previously wasted so much time trying to build. I didn't expect to find them, so it was a happy surprise that I only had to install a package rather than build a tool chain. Then I searched for VCDImager and cdrdao, the two tools you need to build and burn an SVCD image. I still had to build the multiplexer, but luckily this time it built and installed without any trouble. I finally felt like I was ready to make an SVCD, and at long last I thought I was finally going to see if the light at the end of the tunnel was really a train. I estimated that I was only about halfway through the process at this time, figuring it would still take me at least as long to figure out how to get each tool to do its part.
I was really wrong about how much time I had left on this tangent. Using the provided command line examples for transcoding an AVI file to an MPEG file compliant with the SVCD standard was a matter of copy, paste, and light edit. Then I waited about an hour for my slow-as-lava machine to finish working on it. Next, I ran VCDImager with a command line created by doing a simple copy and paste operation. I followed that up with another feat of middle-clicking the terminal, waited another half-hour and then told my 4 year old to put the CD back in the tray, it was done.
Then I relaxed, got some iced tea, grabbed two of my kids, and sat back to watch Arthur Dent lay in front of the bulldozer and pat myself on the back for doing such a good job of copy and paste.
Transcode is an interesting tool. It builds easily without dependency problems. It is also provided in packages for most distributions. Packages are available for Fedora, SuSE, and Gentoo. I assume Debian packages are available, I generally assume Debian has a package for anything I find until proven otherwise. Google even showed me a fink package for it. I was mystified, however, by the fact that I had never uncovered this tool before. I had literally spent days searching for something to convert my AVI files to SVCD-styled MPEGs and turned up nothing. The best I could hope for was a bash script bundled with MPlayer that probably only works on the machine it was written on. So I Googled transcode and turned up the kind of search results that tell you its time to bury the tarball with a nice-looking headstone. Upon taking a closer look I found that most of what I was seeing was recent, and there is even transcode news on both of its homepages that are recent enough to indicate vitality. I can't account for how it seems to have just appeared like it fell through a wormhole from another dimension in time to send me careening back into the tunnel which can only end in a train.
Transcode is about as full-featured as you would expect from a solid command-line video processor. It supports every codec under the sun, both as input and as output. This support includes MPEG (all flavors), still pictures, Ogg Theora, DivX, Xvid, QuickTime MOV, and more. Transcode's supported audio formats includes PCM, AC3, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 (with Lame), and others. The maximum video resolution transcode will work with is 1920x1088. It also comes with a bunch of tools that fulfill a number of uses, such as merging/splitting AVI files, fixing broken AVI files and indexes, and probing media files so you can determine the best way to encode them. You can rip DVDs with it, even encrypted DVDs using the controversial libdvdcss. Since transcode supports DV files, you can take your home videos and transcode them to SVCD MPEGs to burn and send to your friends and family. You can put images in the finished file just like your least favorite TV station, and you can even try to remove images other people have placed in the file.
Transcode is extraordinarily powerful, and when it comes to transcoding a video file from one codec to another, it's second to none. If you need to do anything of this sort, I recommend giving it a spin.
System Applications
Audio Projects
Planet CCRMA Changes
The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include a new versions of STK and a new Site FAQ document.
Database Software
knoda 0.7.2-test2 released
Version 0.7.2-test2 of Knoda, a database frontend is out with bug fixes and null value handling improvements. Also, a new test version of hk_classes has been released.Montag 0.6 released (SourceForge)
Version 0.6 of Montag, a web services system for XML database interaction, is available. "This version includes a new web service, XUpdateService, for modifying a single document or a collection of documents without retrieving them, through the XUpdate language."
PostgreSQL Weekly News
The October 18, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with another round of PostgreSQL database information.
Embedded Systems
BusyBox 1.0 released
For a project which has been widely deployed and shipped in commercial products for many years, busybox has taken its time to reach 1.0. The site's front page now carries the news. "Over three years in development, BusyBox 1.00 represents a tremendous improvement over the old 0.60.x stable series. Now featuring a Linux KernelConf based configuration system (as used by the Linux kernel), Linux 2.6 kernel support, many many new applets, and the development work and testing of thousands of people from around the world."
Filesystem Utilities
Gnome VFS Mount 0.1 is out
Version 0.1 of Gnome VFS Mount 0.1, a program for mounting gnome-vfs-uris directories on Linux filesystems, is out with numerous improvements.
Libraries
libxklavier 1.10 announced
Version 1.10 of libxklavier, the X keyboard utility library, has been released. "As a start of new libxklavier development series. I announce the version 1.10 of the X keyboard utility library. This version contains improved architecture of the configuration process - not the entire configuration compilation process is performed on the client side, so X server gets absolutely prepared X configuration - this allows to eliminate problems where X server and X client have different configuration bases."
Mail Software
PopGavaMail 0.1.2 released (SourceForge)
Version 0.1.2 of PopGavaMail, a POP3 server proxy for accessing gmail e-mail, has been released. "Version 0.1.2 fixes a major bug which was causing a NoClassDefFoundError when it was run."
Networking Tools
NetworkManager 0.3.1 is available
Version 0.3.1, the first public release, of NetworkManager is available. "It serves as a network policy manager for the HAL-ized freedesktop.org stack. It will automatically establish wired and wireless connections, manage wireless keys, and provides developers with a high-level DBus API for controlling networking."
Printing
CUPS 1.1.22rc2 released
Release candidate 2 of CUPS 1.1.22 (Common Unix Printing System) has been announced. "CUPS 1.1.22 is a bug fix release which fixes device URI logging, file descriptor and memory leaks, crashes related to printer browsing, and error handling in the browsing code. The new release also adds support for PostScript files from other Windows PostScript drivers."
Security
BASE 0.9.8 Released (SourceForge)
Version 0.98 of BASE, a web front-end to the SNORT intrusion detection system, has been announced. "This version adds PHP 5 support along with a user authentication system. We have also changed the look and feel of the application and fixed a number of bugs. Working with the Snort and BASE community, we have tried to incorporate all of the features that users have asked for."
Web Site Development
Albatross 1.20 released
Version 1.20 of Albatross, a Python-based toolkit for developing highly stateful web applications, has been released. "There have been many improvements and bug fixes since release 1.1."
Araneida 0.9 released
Version 0.9 of Araneida, a Common Lisp-based HTTP server, is available. "This version improves portability and provides SERVE-EVENT fixes."
Midgard 1.6.0rc2 released
Version 1.6.0rc2 of Midgard, a web CMS platform, has been released. New features include multiple language support, PAM support, an Apache2 module, Apache 2/PHP interoperability, and more.mnoGoSearch 3.2.22 search engine
Version 3.2.22 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine has been released. Changes include a new template section, support for user defined sections, speed improvements, bug fixes, and more. See the Change Log for more information.Quixote 2.0a1 released
Version 2.0a1 of the Quixote web development platform is out. Changes include software restructuring, support for Unicode, and more, see the CHANGES file for details.UnCommon Web 0.3.1 released
Version 0.3.1 of UnCommon Web, a Common Lisp-based web application development framework, is out. "This version provides optional cookie based session tracking, a MOP-based component implementation, an improved template-component API, a more robust application dumping facility, and more."
Miscellaneous
GNOME Schedule 0.1.0 released
Version 0.1.0 of Gnome-schedule, a configuration tool for at and cron, is out. "This release is a BETA release and we hope to get sorted out as many bugs as possible before the main release, there will be no new features added. But we are very intersted in your comments or proposals."
MultiTail 3.4.0 released
Stable release 3.4.0 of MultiTail is available. "MultiTail lets you view one or multiple files like the original tail program. The difference is that it creates multiple windows on your console (with ncurses). It can also monitor wildcards: if another file matching the wildcard has a more recent modification date, it will automatically switch to that file. That way you can, for example, monitor a complete directory of files."
Desktop Applications
Accessibility
Update on Assistive Technologies for Qt4 (KDE.News)
KDE.News reports on a new release of cspi-dbus bridge. "Together with the Qt 4 D-BUS bindings, it is now possible to write KDE assistive technologies that transparently interact with Qt/KDE applications as well as GTK/GNOME applications."
Audio Applications
Goobox 0.1.0 released
Initial version 0.1.0 of Goobox, a CD player and ripper for the Gnome Desktop environment, is out. "it uses gstreamer to play and rip CDs and cddb-slave2 (distributed with gnome-media) to get and edit CD metadata such as track titles and album name."
Data Visualization
Gmsh 1.56 released
Version of Gmsh, a 3D mesh generator, is available. The announcement says: "This release contains small updates and bug fixes all over the map, as well as a new utility to reorder mesh files."
Desktop Environments
GNOME Applets 2.8.1.1 are out
Version 2.8.1.1 of the GNOME Applets are available with bug fixes. "Just about everyone uses a GNOME Applet or two, the package includes applets like the battery applet, CPU load applet, weather applet and mixer applet."
Metacity 2.8.6 announced
Version 2.8.6 of Metacity, a simple window manager for GNOME 2, has been announced. "This is a stable release for Gnome 2.8.1." Numerous bug fixes are included.
Konqi Graphics Updated, Promo Video Makes Debut (KDE.News)
New Konqui graphics are available, according to KDE.News. "A range of new Konqi the Dragon graphics and the first Konqi video has been put together by newcomer to the KDE Artists mailing list Bastian Salmela (Basse). Unlike previous versions, this new Konqi wireframe model is made in the Free Software application Blender. You can find Konqi and the Magical Rope of Curiosity video (our killer feature at LinuxWorld London) as well as still graphics and their sources on the KDE Clipart page and Basse's KDE page."
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)
The October 15, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online. Here's the content summary: "Pixie Plus returns with new maintainer. Krita now shears and rotates images. KPresenter adds master page support. amaroK now support NMM. Plus coverage of the GStreamer presentation from the aKademy conference."
KDE Performance Tips Updated (KDE.News)
KDE.News mentions the availability of a new KDE Performance Tips document. "Many aspects of KDE performance depend on the underlying system or the user's configuration. The KDE Performance Tips document, which lists some of the performance related issues together with instructions how to avoid or fix the problems, has been updated with new tips."
Desktop Publishing
Kile 1.7 released
Version 1.7 of Kile, an Integrated LaTeX Environment for KDE, has been released. Changes include a new tool system, support for other TeX systems, LaTex command autocompletion, system check, and a detailed clickable error summary.New LGPL font available: Essays 1743 0.2
The Essays 1743 font is available in TrueType and PostScript formats under the LGPL. "It's based on the typeface from a 1743 English translation of the essays of Montaigne; so, broadly speaking, it looks old without being so old it's hard to read. If you've read any of Neal Stephenson's last three books, you've seen such a font."
Electronics
Open Collector Releases
The latest new electronics applications on Open Collector include Kicad 11-10-04 (a PCB suite), Icarus Verilog 0.8 (a Verilog simulation language compiler), and XCircuit 3.3, (a schematic capture application).
Games
Atlas-C++ version 0.5.91
Version 0.5.91 of Atlas-C++ has been announced. "Atlas-C++ is the C++ implementation of the WorldForge protocol. This released is aimed at developers working on code that will be used with the Atlas-C++ 0.6 API which is currently in development." Changes include API improvements and codec fixes.
GNOME War Pad 0.3.3 released
Version 0.3.3 of GNOME War Pad, a GNOME VGA Planets client, has been released with numerous changes and translation improvements.
Graphics
Tux Paint 0.9.14 announced
Version 0.9.14 of Tux Paint has been released. "To briefly describe the app., it's a drawing program for children 3 and up, which has been translated to over 45 languages, runs on various OSes, and is released under the GNU GPL."
GUI Packages
FLTK 1.1.5 is out
Version 1.1.5 of FLTK, the Fast, Light Toolkit, has been released. "The FLTK 1.1.5 release is primarily a bug-fix release including documentation updates, fixes for 64-bit platforms, FLUID, several widgets, and GLUT emulation, and fixes for several platform-specific issues. The new release also adds project files for Visual C++.NET and supports KDE 3.x icons."
Gazpacho 0.3.1 announced
Version 0.3.1 of Gazpacho, a GUI builder for the GTK+ library, has been released. Changes include preparations for adding unit testing, a Gazpacho loader delegate, bug fixes, and more.
Instant Messaging
Silky 0.5.2 released
Version 0.5.2 of Silky, a secure chat client for GTK2, is out. Changes include GTK 2.2 compatibility, a new GETKEY command, bug fixes, and more.
Interoperability
Wine 20041019 Released (SourceForge)
Version 20041019 of Wine has been released. Changes include primary Direct3D 9 support, improvements to the IDL compiler and the COM headers, a new MSCMS dll, and bug fixes.Wine Traffic
The October 15, 2004 edition of Wine Traffic is online for your reading enjoyment.
Mail Clients
Evolution 2.0.2 is available
Version 2.0.2 of the Evolution mail client has been released. Lots of bug fixes are included in this release.
Music Applications
liblo 0.13 announced
Version 0.13 of liblo, an implementation of the Open Sound Control protocol for POSIX systems, has been released. "This release adds Mac OSX compatibility fixes from Taybin Rutkin, a memory leak fix from Jesse Chappell and methods and examples to allow server polling from exisitng threads from Sean Bolton. Some legacy compatobility code has been removed, but this should not affect anyone."
Office Suites
PyOpenOffice 0.23 released
Version 0.23 of PyOpenOffice, a platform-independent Python class library and command-line utility which can convert OpenOffice.org files to PDF, is available.
Peer to Peer
BTQueue 0.0.16 has been released (SourceForge)
Version 0.0.16 of BTQueue, a console-based BitTorrent Client, has been released. "BTQueue 0.0.15 is stable enough for long run. BTQueue. 0.0.16 has been modified to extend its functionality for maximum extensibility."
Digital Photography
digikam 0.7-beta1 released
Version 0.7-beta1 of digikam,a digital photo management application for KDE, has been released. This version adds a long list of new features.DigikamImagePlugins 0.7.0-beta1 released
The first beta release of digiKam Image Editor Plugins 0.7.0 is out. "DigikamImagePlugins are a collection of plugins for Digikam 0.7.0 Image Editor. These plugins add new image treatment options like color management, filters, or special effects."
Science
gNumExp 0.9 announced
Version 0.9 of gNumExp, a gui frontend to the NumExp math-oriented programming language, has been released. Changes include integration with a new MIME system, improved user interface, better MathML rendering, a new load/save progress dialog, bug fixes, and more.it++ 3.8.0 release candidate 1 (SourceForge)
Release candidate 1 of it++ 3.8.0, a cross-platform C++ library of mathematical, signal processing, speech processing, and communications classes and functions, is available. "The kernel of the package are templated vector and matrix classes and lots of functions for vectors and matrices. As such the kernel is similar to the Matlab functions. IT++ is based on LAPACK, CBLAS and FFTW. This is the first release candidate of a new major release. It has tested on Linux and Cygwin on Windows but not on Windows using Visual C++ .Net 2003."
Web Browsers
Epiphany 1.4.4 released
Version 1.4.4 of Epiphany, a browser for GNOME, is out with several bug fixes.Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)
The Mozilla Independent Status Reports for October 11, 2004 are available. Here's the content summary: "This week's set of reports includes updates from cuneAform, Gnusto, MozManual, purgecontrol, Caminol10n, Mozilla Archive Format, OutSidebar, HONcode Status, and Mail Redirect."
Miscellaneous
Animal Shelter Manager 1.36 Released (SourceForge)
Version 1.36 of Animal Shelter Manager is available. "Animal Shelter Manager is a complete computer solution for animal sanctuaries and shelters. Features complete animal management, document generation, full reporting, charts, internet publishing, pet search engine integration, web interface and more. This release adds many new features, including native installers for all platforms, editable vet book, FIV/L result tracking, automatic logout, better media support, multiple movement donation support, tattoo support, improved database handling, better UI widgets, video capture (Linux only) and many bug fixes."
GNOME Terminal 2.8.0 is out
Version 2.8.0 of GNOME Terminal has been released. "This is mostly a release to get updated translations and to have a new release for GNOME 2.8.1."
Seahorse 0.7.4 is out
Version 0.7.4 of Seahorse, a PGP key management application, has been released with a long list of changes.
Languages and Tools
Erlang
Erlang/OTP R10B has been published
Version R10B of the Erlang/OTP environment is available. Changes include better performance, a new tutorial, the addition of try/catch to the language syntax, a new Query List Comprehensions addition, a new XML parser, improvements to the Erlang shell, and more.
Java
XML Messaging Using JBoss (O'ReillyNet)
Benoit Aumars writes about the Java Messaging Service on O'Reilly. "Simple communication in an enterprise system is possible through various schemes, but not all of them answer the question of coordination. Benoit Aumars presents a hypothetical case study that shows how generating and sharing information in XML is made easier with Java Messaging Service (JMS) and Java Management Extensions (JMX)."
Lisp
AspectL 0.6.2 released
Version 0.6.2 of AspectL, a library that provides aspect-oriented extensions for Common Lisp/CLOS, has been released. "Pascal Costanza has released AspectL 0.6.2 on 10 October 2004. This version changes the way special classes are handled."
Perl
Optimize Perl
Martin C. Brown shows how to optimize Perl code on IBM developerWorks. "Perl is an incredibly flexible language, but its ease of use can lead to some sloppy and lazy programming habits. We're all guilty of them, but there are some quick steps you can take to improve the performance of your Perl applications. In this article, I'll look at the key areas of optimization, which solutions work and which don't, and how to continue to build and extend your applications with optimization and speed in mind."
This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)
The October 11-17, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out with a 5 year celebration of the release of Perl 5 and other Perl topics.FMTYEWTK About Mass Edits In Perl (O'Reilly)
Geoff Broadwell edits multiple files with Perl on O'Reilly. "For those not used to the terminology, FMTYEWTK stands for Far More Than You Ever Wanted To Know. This one is fairly light as FMTYEWTKs usually go. In any case, the question before us is, "How do you apply an edit against a list of files using Perl?" Well, that depends on what you want to do...."
PHP
Migrating to Page Controllers (O'ReillyNet)
Ethan McCallum discusses the Page Controller design pattern on O'Reilly. "Simple web apps can start simple, but when they grow more complex, they often need pruning and refactoring to be maintainable. The Page Controller design pattern can help separate concerns such as templates and logic. Ethan McCallum demonstrates this language-neutral technique with PHP."
Python
Python 2.4, beta 1 Released
The first beta of Python 2.4 has been announced (click below). If you like living on the bleeding edge, download it, kick the tires, and report those bugs.python-dev Summary
The September 16-30, 2004 edition of the python-dev Summary is available. Take a look for recent discussions from the python-dev mailing list.Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!
The October 18, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with the week's Python language article links.
Tcl/Tk
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!
The October 19, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online. Take a look for a weekly dose of Tcl/Tk articles.
XML
The State of Python-XML in 2004 (O'Reilly)
Uche Ogbuji has assembled a giant table of Python-XML utilities in an O'Reilly article. "The general rules of thumb for including software are, firstly, whether it implements a technology or set of technologies strongly associated with XML; and secondly, whether it does so in a way that is useful for any arbitrary XML file I may want to process."
Control information access with XACML (IBM developerWorks)
Manish Verma covers XML security issues on IBM developerWorks. "Providing the right people with the right access to information is as important as (if not more important than) having the information in the first place. eXtensible Access Control Markup Language -- or XACML -- provides a mechanism to create policies and rules for controlling access to information. In this article, author Manish Verma continues his series on XML security issues by showing you how to incorporate XACML into your own applications."
SVG At the Movies (O'Reilly)
Antoine Quint writes about SVG and multimedia on O'Reilly. "If you're a regular reader of this column, or if you just read the specification carefully, you would know that SVG is more than just a vector graphics XML vocabulary. While I won't bore you here with the list of application contexts SVG is suited for, I will point out that since Day One there have been synergies between the work that took place at W3C around multimedia (SMIL) and SVG."
Build Tools
iCompile 0.4 Released (SourceForge)
Version 0.4 of iCompile, an automated build system for C++ projects, is out. "The 0.4 release topologically sorts library dependencies (so *you* don't have to figure out whether -lSDL comes before or after -lpthreads in the link list) and adds .icompile and ice.txt files to allow project customization."
Editors
GHex 2.8.1 released
Version 2.8.1 of GHex, a binary file editor, is available. "A quick follow-up to the still warm 2.8.0: I have fixed a build bug that might have, under very special circumstances, caused an incompatible version of dependencies (like glib or gtk) to be pulled in the build, and a bug in the converter that caused only one byte of hex to be displayed."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Richard Stallman on Software Idea Patents (Groklaw)
Groklaw prints Richard Stallman's response to patent alternatives. "The supposition that software idea patents are inevitable is a form of defeatism that is already visibly mistaken. The movement against software idea patents in Europe, led by FFII (fii.org) and supported by organizations as diverse as Deutsche Bank Research and the Confederation of Associations of Small and Medium-size Enterprises, has already persuaded the European Parliament once. The outcome will be so close that it is absurd to think you can predict the winner."
IPac created to lobby for sensible intellectual property policy (NewsForge)
NewsForge covers the political action committee, IPac. "Over the past few years, intellectual property policy in the U.S. has shifted dramatically in favor of business at the expense of the public interest. Software patents, automatic copyright extensions that can last as long as Congress wants them to last, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act have all become policy with very little opposition from either Democrats or Republicans. A new political action committee, IPac, hopes to change that by giving a voice to the public interest."
Advice to Microsoft: Learn to love Linux (ZDNet)
Disruptive technology guru Clayton Christensen thinks that Microsoft should refocus its market toward Linux on handheld devices, according to this ZDNet article. ""Where Linux takes root is in new applications like Web servers and handheld devices. As those get better, applications will get sucked off the desktop onto the Internet, and that's what will undo Microsoft," he said. The software company can respond to this market disruption by setting up a separate business that will "kill Microsoft," Christensen said. If it doesn't react to the rise of Linux desktops on handheld computers, it will miss a coming wave of new applications and market opportunities, he said."
Trade Shows and Conferences
'Does Open Source Deserve a Place in Your IT Portfolio?' (NewsForge)
NewsForge reports from Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo. "[Gartner vice president Mark Driver] said the major change in attitude toward open source over the past few years was recognition that it is an important and recognized part of the software landscape. He said many open source applications are reaching "technical maturity" and that a growing number of people are accumulating experience with open source software, so finding qualified support is no longer a problem. In general, he said, open source "is becoming more institutionalized today.""
KDE at LinuxWorld London Report (KDE.News)
KDE.News covers LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in London. "We ran a joint stall with the GNOMEs which gave us one of the biggest spaces in the .org village and was used to jointly promote freedesktop.org and X.org. Only one GNOME turned up so we spread ourselves, and the excellent collection of machines that had been lent to us, along the stall."
Schools, patents and the future of Linux (Register)
The Register covers a UK LinuxWorld panel discussion. "Open source activists need to get Linux into schools if Windows' pre-eminance on the desktop is ever to be seriously challenged, a panel discussion at LinuxWorld conference in London last week concluded. StarOffice is offered free to schools and has made significant progress as an alternative to Microsoft Office. But Windows remains "entrenched" in schools, so children have no opportunity to get to know alternatives."
LMN At WONCA 2004 (LinuxMedNews)
Tim Cook covers the World Conference of World Organization of National Colleges, Academies and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians (WONCA) conference for LinuxMedNews. "My last station was to chat with the Director of the Center for Healthcare IT (CHIT) at the AAFP, Dr. David Kibbe. I of course asked him about his fray with the open source community and he offered his side of the events. He feels he has ...scares from being burned. He also stated that the open source community let him down because when he wanted to take the MEDPLEXUS EMR open source, ...they [the open source community] wanted to do it their way and not mine. I responded by reminding him that there were many people offering to help him understand the open source processes and really wanted to see him succeed."
The SCO Problem
Groklaw gets some anti-Linux competition (ZDNet)
ZDNet reports on a new web site that SCO is going to launch. "The SCO Group plans to launch a website to chronicle its legal battles relating to Unix and Linux, as part of an effort to counterbalance Groklaw.net - which was set up to poke holes in the company's legal claims. The site, to be called Prosco.net, will feature an archive of legal filings, hearing dates and SCO positions on various matters, spokesman Blake Stowell said Tuesday. The Utah-based company plans to launch the site by 1 November, he said." SCO isn't planning on including any mechanism for posting reader feedback on the site.
Today's Hearing in SCO v. IBM - Eyewitness Report (Groklaw)
Groklaw has a report from today's hearing in SCO v. IBM. "The summary is this: each side argued its position, SCO as to why it needed more AIX and Dynix code and remote access to CMVC etc., and IBM as to why it's a needless burden and all a red herring anyway, that IBM has already given them what they need."
Interviews
Pete Gordon on Portable Usability Labs (KDE.News)
KDE.News has an interview with Pete Gordon, on portable usability labs. "The key is in developing user oriented software. When we are developing software for others besides ourselves, we need to understand others. And, the Usability Engineer or the developer that has a free couple hours and can meet with users, can capture that user experience and communicate it back to others. Now maybe Usability Professionals will frown on me saying developers can do it, but I can't help to say they can do it--I am a developer and I do it--a lot. Granted some people are more suited to do it than others."
Interview: Martin Taylor, Microsoft's Linux expert (vnunet)
Vnunet talks with Martin Taylor, global general manager of platform strategy at Microsoft. "How are you seeing Linux in the market? The other thing we're finding is more and more people wanting to deploy a commercialised Linux version. They don't want their own custom configured kernel [or] custom distribution. They want to pick up the phone [and say]: 'Help me this is broken.' So that puts you into Red Hat/Novell-SuSE's ballpark. Both those have pricing models for support and security patches more expensive than Windows Server. So in some cases you could say I am under-priced compared to the marketplace. That's what we're seeing."
Resources
The Basics of DNSSEC (O'ReillyNet)
Ibrahim Haddad and David Gordon introduce DNSSEC in an O'Reilly article. "Securing DNS is important in order to deal with the various threats originating from the Internet, threats that the original DNS design did not anticipate. One technique for securing DNS is through DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a set of extensions to DNS that provide authenticity and integrity. In this article, we will provide an overview of DNS and DNSSEC and a step-by-step tutorial that gives you the needed instructions to secure your own DNS servers with DNSSEC."
An Introduction to Embedded Linux Development, Part 1 (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal examines embedded development with Linux. "Linux, available for many architectures, is an obvious candidate for an embedded system, and it already is being used widely in this area. Its open nature makes it particularly attractive to developers. Development tool suites have begun to appear in response to the perceived need, although one can work without such luxury and employ less integrated tools already available in Linux. New embedded systems companies using Linux have opened for business, and various older embedded systems companies have added Linux to their product line."
Reviews
An Introduction to Hydrogen (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips introduces Hydrogen, a drum machine/rhythm programmer. "Hydrogen is endowed with all the features and amenities expected in a hardware drum machine. Like its contemporary software counterparts, it's also blessed with the expanded capabilities of the virtual drum machine. Let's take a look at how Hydrogen is put together, and then we'll walk through a simple example of its typical use."
Seven Cool Mono Apps (O'ReillyNet)
O'ReillyNet takes a look at seven applications built on Mono. "[There] are many cool open source programs being built on Mono, even though Mono 1.0 has only been released for a short time. This article provides a tour through some of these programs, along with details about how you can start experimenting with them yourself. Not all of the programs featured here are finished products, but they're all exciting and show off interesting aspects of Mono."
PHP 5's new look (NewsForge)
NewsForge introduces some of the new features in PHP 5. "The greatest change in PHP 5 comes with a complete redesign of its object model, and with it, a tighter integration to object-oriented (OO) paradigms. Previous versions' usage of objects had one major drawback: Objects were not tightly aligned with the behavioural patterns observed in other object languages like Java or C++. While PHP offered a simpler approach, the disparity created a considerable chasm for those wanting to use PHP in a truly object-oriented manner -- in the sense of what the industry perceives as object-oriented."
Learning PostgreSQL at the Big Nerd Ranch (Linux Journal)
Doug Hall reviews a PostgreSQL training course that was held at the Big Nerd Ranch. "We started each day with breakfast at 8:30. Lunch was at 12:30 and dinner at 6:30. Each day, around 2pm, we took a break from training and took about a 45-minute walk through the woods, exploring the different sites and scenic trails around Historic Banning Mills. This was a good thing, because it helped stave off the afternoon food coma that ordinarily would have set in."
Sharp to ship world's first HDD-based PDA (Register)
The Register looks at the new Linux-based Zaurus SL-C3000 PDA from Sharp. "The new model is based on a 416MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor backed by 64MB of SDRAM and 16MB of Flash ROM. Crucially, the unit also features a 4GB hard drive - the first PDA to do so. The Sl-C3000 sports a 3.7in 640 x 480 LCD mounted above a QWERTY keypad with a five-way navigator control." The device is only available in Japan.
ZoneMinder: Linux home security par excellence (NewsForge)
NewsForge looks at ZoneMinder, a free software application for home security. "I recently installed a remote home camera security system using wireless Internet cameras and a fine free software application for Linux called ZoneMinder. The cameras are installed at a friend's house, and the application runs at mine. ZoneMinder is powerful, feature-rich, and sophisticated."
Miscellaneous
Silicon.com's Agenda Setters 2004
Silicon.com has posted its list of "agenda setters" for 2004. Familiar names on the list include Linus Torvalds, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Stallman, Marten Mickos, Mark Cox, OSRM's Daniel Egger, and, interestingly, Donald Knuth. "Donald E Knuth's seminal work on computer algorithms has fresh relevance - he's risen 4 positions from last year - in the current software patent debate. Because he has documented so many algorithms and they can be regarded in the public domain, programmers and companies have a defence in fighting copyright infringement suits."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Announcements
Non-Commercial announcements
The New York Times ad for Mozilla Firefox (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine mentions a fund raising campaign which is aimed at Firefox advertising. "A portion of each donation will go towards taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times celebrating the release. All donors will be listed in the ad."
PostgreSQL for Co-operative banks in Keralam a southern state of India
The PostgreSQL News mentions a new banking project in India that uses the PostgreSQL database and Linux. "Sanghamitra is a new generation information technology tool to assist primary and urban co-operative banks and co-operative credit societies. Sanghamitra is a service rendered by Open Software Solutions industrial Co-operative society Ltd, Ernakulam."
Towards a "World Intellectual Wealth Organisation"
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has sent out a press release concerning the concept of creating a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation. "We need a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation, dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge. Granting limited monopolies and limited control over some kinds of knowledge may be part of this new organisations tool-set, but not the only one, and maybe not even the most important one."
Commercial announcements
Astaro Announces New Astaro Secure Client for VPNs
Astaro has announced their new Astaro Secure Client software. "A major upgrade to the existing Astaro IPSec Client, Astaro Secure Client combines an advanced IPSec VPN client offering superior encryption and authentication with a personal firewall and an integrated dialer. It allows mobile workers, home offices, and individual PCs to communicate securely and reliably over the Internet with central offices."
FSMLabs releases new version of Real-Time OS
FSMLabs has announced the availability of RTLinuxPro 2.1 and RTCoreBSD 2.1 hard real-time operating systems. RTLinux and RTCoreBSD work in tandem with Linux and BSD-based operating systems to offer hard real-time responsiveness in a standards-based computing environment. The new releases incorporate a variety of capabilities and features designed to address requirements of advanced communications, control, instrumentation, aerospace and defense applications.Infrae extends Python, Zope, Silva, and Railroad with OAI-PMH facilities
Infrae has announced some new OAI-PMH facilities. "Infrae is pleased to release extensions for Python, Zope and the Silva CMS for harvesting web-based repositories exposed using the OAI-PMH standard (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). In addition we are announcing an extension for the Railroad content repository software for exposing existing Railroad systems as OAI-PMH harvestable repositories."
For First Time, Technology Tracks Growth of Desktop Linux
Linspire, Inc. has announced a plan to count Linux desktop users, at least those running Linspire. When a computer running Linspire connects to the Internet the IP address is converted into map coordinates and a "lightup" appears in the corresponding location on a satellite photograph of the Earth. The map can be seen at lraiser.com.Mandrakelinux PCs meet success in Planet Saturn stores
Mandrakesoft reports good sales of Mandrakelinux PCs through Planet Saturn stores. "Mandrakelinux PCs have been available since July in Planete Saturn stores. The operation's success highlights Linux's growing importance in the personal computer market. The time when Linux was considered an Operating System confined to technical types and server rooms is over. The efforts of free software actors, among them Mandrakesoft, has payed off: Linux is now both powerful and accessible. The commercial success of Mandrakelinux PC's sold in Planète Saturn stores stands as proof of that. Planete Saturn is a branch of Media Saturn Holding, the European retail leader in home electronics and appliances."
Metrowerks 3 News Releases - Automotive Grade Linux, Telematics and Linux Strategy
Metrowerks has sent us three press releases in one large file. Click below to find out more about- Metrowerks Delivers Automotive Grade Linux(r) Technology for Next Generation Telematics Equipment
- A Linux Board Support Package (BSP) for Freescale(tm) Semiconductor mobileGT(tm) Architecture and Total5200(tm) Development Platform
- Metrowerks Sets Agenda for Embedded Linux(r) OS Development
Red Hat Hires Sun Executive to Head up Desktop Infrastructure Technologies
Red Hat, Inc. has announced the appointment of Karen Tegan-Padir as Vice President of Desktop Infrastructure Technologies. Tegan-Padir comes to Red Hat from SUN Microsystems where she most recently held the position of Vice President of Engineering for J2EE platforms and Application Server products.SGI to open-source SpeedShop
SGI has announced that it will be releasing a version of its SpeedShop performance analysis tool under an open source license. "With the development of an open-source version of SGI's SpeedShop tool, researchers can begin relying on the same class of open-source parallel performance tools that they have used for years in HPC environments. This will ensure that researchers working on Linux systems -- not just at the NNSA but throughout the nation and the world -- can accelerate their research efforts by continuously optimizing application and system performance." One aspect of this whole thing won't be speedy, though: the actual release is scheduled for sometime in 2006.
New Books
"Perl Core Language Little Black Book, 2nd Edition" Released by Paraglyph
Paraglyph Press has published the book Perl Core Language Little Black Book, 2nd Edition by Steven Holzner.
Contests and Awards
KDE Docs Competition: Announcing the Winners (KDE.News)
KDE.News has announced the winners of the KDE Docs Competition. "The winners were as follows: Adriaan de Groot with an entry on configuring toolbars. Nicolas Goutte who wrote about Hand Editing Configuration Files. Robert Stoffers whose entry was on Launching Programs."
Upcoming Events
OS04 in Graz, Austria
OS04 will be held this Friday, October 22, in Graz, Austria. "OS04 is an open platform for everyone who can identify with the idea of open development. In addition to conventional exhibits and talks on technology and the professional and private use of open source software you will find various supporting acts."
Open software workshops at BEK
Several workshops on Linux streaming media and related topics will be held at BEK in Bergen, Norway in late October and mid November, 2004.Debian project at conferences and expos in Europe
The Debian Project has announced its presence at a number of conferences across Europe in October.Date set for PyCon 2005
PyCon 2005 will be held on March 23-25, 2005 in Washington DC.Events: October 21 - December 16, 2004
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| October 21 - 22, 2004 | Web.It 2004 | Bari, Italy |
| October 21 - 22, 2004 | 5. Encuentro Linux | Valparaiso, Chile |
| October 22 - 23, 2004 | Berlinux 2004 | (Berlin's technical university)Berlin, Germany |
| October 23 - 24, 2004 | OpenFest 2004 | (Inter Expo Center)Sofia, Bulgaria |
| October 26 - 28, 2004 | LinuxWorld Conference and Expo | Frankfurt, Germany |
| October 26 - 29, 2004 | IBM eServer, pSeries, AIX and Linux Technical Conference | Munich, Germany |
| October 27 - 29, 2004 | Sixth International Conference on Information and Communications Security(ICICS'04) | Malaga, Spain |
| October 27, 2004 | Open Source Enterprise Solutions Conference | University of Maryland Shady Grove Campus |
| October 27, 2004 | Open Source Enterprise Solutions Conference | (University of Maryland Shady Grove)Rockville, MD |
| November 1 - 6, 2004 | International Computer Music Conference(ICMC) | Miami, FL |
| November 4 - 5, 2004 | HiverCon 2004 | (The Davenport Hotel)Dublin, Ireland |
| November 5 - 6, 2004 | Nottingham LUG - Linux at Green's Mill Science Centre | Nottingham, UK |
| November 6 - 12, 2004 | High Performance Computing, Networking, and Storage Conf(SCnn) | Pittsburgh, PA |
| November 7 - 10, 2004 | International PHP Conference 2004 | Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 8 - 10, 2004 | MySQL ComCon Europe | (NH Hotel Frankfurt-Mörfelden)Frankfurt, Germany |
| November 13 - 17, 2004 | ApacheCon US 2004 | (Alexis Park Resort)Las Vegas, NV |
| November 14 - 18, 2004 | COMDEX Conference and Exposition | (Las Vegas Convention Center)Las Vegas, Nevada |
| November 14 - 19, 2004 | Large Installation System Administration Conference(LISA '04) | (Atlanta Marriott Marquis)Atlanta, GA |
| November 18 - 19, 2004 | Forum PHP, Paris | Paris, France |
| November 25 - 26, 2004 | Le forum PHP 2004 | (FIAP Jean Monnet)Paris, France |
| November 29 - 30, 2004 | LinuxPro 2004 | (Hotel Gromada Airport Conference Center)Warsaw, Poland |
| December 1 - 3, 2004 | Australian Open Source Developers' Conference | (Monash University)Melbourne, Australia |
Mailing Lists
Eurolisp mailing list
A new Eurolisp mailing list has been created for discussion of all Lisp topics in Europe.
Web sites
NoSoftwarePatents.com launches
A new site called NoSoftwarePatents.com has launched as a way of spreading the word about the threat of software patents in Europe. "In this campaign, we don't mince words. The issue of software patents is critical for our future. We have to speak out clearly on what is wrong with software patents, and which structural deficiencies the patent system needs to work on before it can even think of expanding into any new areas." This effort is sponsored by Red Hat and MySQL, among others.
Software announcements
This week's software announcements
Here are the software announcements, courtesy of Freshmeat.net. They are available in two formats:
- Sorted alphabetically,
- Sorted by license.
Miscellaneous
Celebrating Eight Years of KDE (KDE.News)
KDE.News celebrates the eighth birthday of the KDE project. Happy birthday KDE.
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Letters to the editor
Linux-PC's and pirated Windows
| From: | "Kapil Hari Paranjape" <kapil-AT-imsc.res.in> | |
| To: | media-AT-osia.net.au, lwn-AT-lwn.net | |
| Subject: | Linux-PC's and pirated Windows | |
| Date: | Fri, 15 Oct 2004 09:24:06 +0530 |
Hello,
Unfortunately, if you examine the sale of "Linux-pre-installed" PC's in
India some of what has been said *is* true. The following is based on
first-hand experience.
1. The shop-owner (not the manufacturer/vendor) will say "don't worry my
`engineer' will install *all* the software for you". This usually means a
lot of un-licensed software including Windows.
2. The reason why the manufacturers pre-install GNU/Linux (rather than
install nothing) is to satisfy the "minimum requirement". A large
institute once got a notice from Microsoft/BSA---"We notice you have
bought a large number of PC's but only a handful of Windows licences.
etc." So the installation of GNU/Linux is a "cover".
3. The pre-installed GNU/Linux is so shabbily installed that it is a
wonder the poor thing boots at all! It is clear that even the
manufacturers expect that this installation will be replaced by
something better---a proper GNU/Linux installation if the user is
willing---or an un-licensed Windows plus stuff.
4. The support from even the big companies like Acer and Dell for their
GNU/Linux installation is negligible in comparison to their support for
Windows. The shop-owner's knowledge of GNU/Linux is usually next to
nothing. Often the PC has hardware for which there are currently *no*
drivers available in Linux.
All these points---especially 3 and 4---are reasons why pre-installed
GNU/Linux systems may not really be a great boon. They may actually end
up deterring users from trying GNU out because of crippled installations.
(Looked at this way it even looks like a pro-Microsoft ploy:).)
However, you have correctly pointed out that Gartner is jumping the gun
in claiming that "pre-installated Linux is *responsible* for Piracy".
The un-licensed copying is happening anyway. "pre-installation of Linux"
is just one more tool for people to share proprietary software in a
manner not permitted by law. In fact, as you point out the installation
of Windows is itself a tool for people to do more of the same.
Thanks and regards,
Kapil H. Paranjape.
--
Checking host system type...
i586-unknown-linux
configure: error: sorry, this is the gnu os, not linux
-- Topic on #Linux
--
http://www.imsc.res.in/~kapil/gpg.html for my Public Key.
------------------------------------------------------------------
1024D/5416E5B8 2004-10-13 Kapil Hari Paranjape <kapil@imsc.res.in>
1024g/3BDF565B 2004-10-13
Key fingerprint = F160 CBB9 03C8 425D 4BBA 79F4 491F 8FDA 5416 E5B8
--
Page editor: Jonathan Corbet