|
|
Log in / Subscribe / Register

LWN.net Weekly Edition for June 15, 2006

Interview: Harald Welte (part 1)

Gadgets running Linux are a lot of fun, but much of the value of using Linux is lost if the resulting device is locked down and not hackable. In cases where the device has been opened up, no end of creative hacks have resulted; see, for example, the OpenWrt project. It is hard, however, to imagine a device with more fun hacking potential than the Linux-running Motorola a780 cellular telephone. There is no end of interesting things which could be done (and annoyances which could be fixed) if that platform were to be opened up.

The good news is that Harald Welte has managed to open the a780 and install new software onto it. With the OpenEZX Project, he is working on creating a full replacement for the stock software for Motorola's EZX phone platform. The following interview, the first in a two-part series, discusses the current and future state of OpenEZX.

LWN: What is the status of the OpenEZX project now? Is it at a point where relatively casual users might want to play with it?

I would say it's at a state where the casual linux developer can play with it, i.e. we have a 2.6.16.x based kernel running on the phone, with support for framebuffer, flash, microSD, touchscreen, usb-device (usb-net mode), usb-host.

We have both a working debian-arm root filesystem and an OpenEmbedded one. You can boot your phone using 100% Free Software (blob boot loader, linux kernel, ...), ssh into it via usbnet, start a KDrive X11 server, use your stylus, etc.

However, one of the most fundamental pieces (interaction with the actual 'phone' part, i.e. making calls) is not yet there. After Motorola has released (after much pressure) the sources for the formerly-proprietary kernel modules implementing this, I'm half way through to port them to 2.6. and integrate them.

However, since I'm virtually the only guy working on the -ezx kernel tree, and I have many other projects and real-world issues to take care of, progress is quite slow.

I expect that within one month, we'll have the phone part working, and can work on the remaining sound + camera drivers.

What obstacles remain before an a780 or similar phone will actually be useful as a phone while running a free 2.6 kernel? How can interested people help?

At this time people can start to work on OPIE, GPE, etc. on the phone. They can develop userspace programs, but they can only use the device as a PDA and not as a phone yet.

For getting the phone part working, somebody with kernel device driver development, esp. in the tty layer, usb driver and networking area (in this priority) would be required. For me, the tty layer is new, I'm only familiar with networking and usb driver development.

Once the basics have been taken care of, do you have a shopping list of improvements to make which would take these phones beyond what Motorola ships?

My most important list:

  • add cryptographically secure storage for all personal data such as contacts, calender, SMS, etc.
  • make sure nobody can just dump the flash contents by plugging in a USB cable (like it is the case with the stock models)
  • get the Linux native IPsec code running over GPRS
  • add support to use a Bluetooth keyboard with the phone
  • add a Jabber IM client to the phone. Who wants SMS if they can send and receive Jabber messages over GPRS?

Is Motorola cooperating with (or hindering) this project in any way?

As for OpenEZX itself, I haven't really had any direct positive or negative contact with them.

As for the general GPL compliance (which helps OpenEZX, but which is a legal requirement): Hard to say. To my impression, on the one hand, there are some technical people who really like to help the GPL compliance, and who are pressing for releasing the source of formerly-proprietary modules. They actually also want to get me phone samples in order to help them identify any remaining GPL issues, which is good.

On the other hand, there seem to be some corporate/legal folks who try to play hard, cause delays, and have very rude negotiation skills. I guess they don't really understand what they're doing there.

On the technical front, I've heard some rumors that the A1200 and especially the later models will make use of the TPM (yes, the PXA270 has a TPM!) in order to ensure nobody boots non-Motorola-signed kernels. To me, this would be a clear violation of the intent of even GPLv2, and should those rumours become true, I'll certainly do anything to enforce my position on this. But as said, all rumours, nothing definitive known yet.

Many thanks to Harald for answering these questions. Stay tuned for part two of this interview (covering Harald's GPL enforcement activities), which will appear within the next week or two.

Comments (13 posted)

iTunes runs into trouble in Norway

June 14, 2006

This article was contributed by Eivind Kjørstad

To readers of LWN it is nothing new that DRM (digital rights/restrictions management) systems restrict consumer choice and limit even lawful access to works controlled by them. Now, however there are encouraging signs that some governments are starting to understand this problem.

In Norway (and other Scandinavian countries) there is a "Consumer Ombudsman", his purpose is to ensure that companies act fairly and lawfully toward consumers, and in particular that they adhere to the Marketing Control Act. As it turns out, using DRM may pose problems here, especially when combined with restrictive terms of use (as is typically the case) that prevent the user from bypassing or disabling the DRM. According to the Ombudsman, the terms of service used by the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) are illegal. Furthermore, the DRM used on the downloaded songs further violate the same laws. The situation is similar in Sweden and Denmark as they have nearly-identical consumer-protection laws, and iTMS has nearly-identical terms of use there. The Consumer Ombudsmen in Sweden and Denmark are currently launching similar inquiries.

An 11-page letter of complaint was sent to iTMS on May 30th. The letter became publicly available on the 7th of June and is very encouraging reading. I will summarize the main points of interest for LWN readers as the letter itself [pdf, 11 pages] is available only in Norwegian. There is however a press release available in English.

The main point is that the restrictions imposed by the terms of use and the practical restrictions that arise from the DRM combine to create what is an unbalanced, one-sided and grossly unreasonable agreement for consumers. This is a general impression, conveyed by the agreement as a whole. Additionally to this, the Ombudsman mentions around a dozen points that are individually unreasonable and/or illegal. Many of these points have no relation to DRM, but a few are aimed directly at the DRM and the related terms of use.

iTMS reserves the right to, at any time, even after the sale, retroactively change the terms of use. It is a basic principle of Norwegian contract law that a contract is binding, and that changing a contract after it's been agreed upon requires the consent of both parties. The ombudsman points out that, in its extreme consequence, this term alone removes all rights of the consumer. Even those rights you appear to have at the time of purchase can at any later time be removed by unilateral changes to the terms of use.

Complicating this matter, the terms of use are frequently enforced by the player software and DRM. For example, the software may refuse to burn a CD with certain songs if the terms of use for these songs do not permit that. A concern is that future updates to player software might cause customers to lose functionality that they previously had. Saying that you are free not to upgrade is not an acceptable solution if upgrading is a prerequisite for playing newer songs. This would put undue pressure on the consumer to accept the "upgrade" even if the upgrade will remove many of his previous rights.

The Norwegian iTMS can only be used from Norway. This restriction is enforced by only allowing Norwegian credit cards to be used on the Norwegian iTMS, by the terms of use and by the employed DRM. This is geographical discrimination of consumers, and an artificial barrier to trade. Both are at odds with EU free-competition law. Currently the same song is sold for £0.79 in the UK and $0.99 in the USA, a price-difference of 46% at todays exchange-rate. A customer from the UK is prevented from buying cheaper from the American iTMS.

The DRM on the music ensures that it plays on only a small number of devices, mainly those produced by Apple themselves. Selection of technical protections where licenses are not given to third parties, and where no open source players exist (lack of open source players is explicitly mentioned) can lead to a problematic locking of content and players; in order to listen to your music you might be forced to buy a certain player. Not because it's the one you prefer, but because it's the only one supporting the DRM.

Some content is "iTMS exclusive", which is problematic as long as that means only being playable on a limited number of devices. A result could be that such content is not playable at all in the future, should Apple choose not to cooperate. If it does not generate a profit for Apple to make old content available on the next generation of platforms, the result could be the permanent loss of the content.

"Cultural content has importance to society above and beyond its ability to generate a profit," the Ombudsman writes; he is also critical of developments which might end up limiting access to cultural content that is not profitable. He notes that the lack of licensing of the DRM means that in the future we will either get a monopoly in music distribution, or consumers will be forced to buy two or more playback devices to be able to listen to the music they want. And, for good measure, it is currently easy to remove the iTMS DRM so the restrictions may end up harming lawful consumers while having little or no effect on large-scale illegal copiers.

The next thing that happens is that Apple needs to answer the letter by June 21st. The Ombudsman's first choice is to reach an agreement with Apple and avoid the need to take legal action. It is pretty hard to believe that outcome will be possible in this case. If an agreement is not reached, the Ombudsman will file a formal complaint with the Market Council. The ruling of the Market Council is legally binding unless appealed to the courts within 3 weeks.

It is worth noting that most of the problematic terms of use are not unique to iTMS, neither is the use of DRM. Similar terms and similar technology are used by several of the main competitors to iTMS. According to the Ombudsman, they will demand changes to the terms of use and/or the DRM used also from the other companies if they are successful with iTMS. They choose to start out with iTMS simply because it is the largest actor.

While the issues the Ombudsman raises are valid and important, there is still something missing. The lack of open source players is mentioned, but only in passing as part of the discussion of the DRM used not being widely licensed. It is not stated explicitly, but the impression given by the letter is that removing the possibility of retroactively changing contract terms and licensing the DRM under RAND terms would go a long way toward satisfying the Ombudsman's objections.

The larger good coming from this is thus likely to be the increased awareness of all the issues surrounding DRM. At this stage, increased general knowledge of DRM can only be a good thing.

Comments (23 posted)

Google Earth for Linux

Sometimes, when a fun toy becomes available, your editor has no alternative but to go off and play with it. Later on, when LWN deadlines loom, the next step is obvious: justify all that playing by writing an article. One of those moments came when Google finally made its Google Earth application available for Linux under a free-beer license.

Unlike Picasa, Google Earth is a native Linux application, ported to the Qt widget set. Like Picasa, however, Google Earth is not free software. So it comes as a large shell script which we, trusting users that we are, are expected to feed directly to bash. A few clicks later, the application is installed, and the user can proceed to explore the planet on a Linux system.

At least, that is how it is supposed to work. Google Earth promptly crashed on your editor's x86-64 Fedora Development system. Since this is a proprietary application, there is no way for any of us to fix the problem, or to even build it properly for this architecture. So, no Google Earth on this platform. Happily, the i386 Ubuntu system runs it just fine. Or not so fine; Google Earth is a little shaky there as well. The window is not always rendered properly, it occasionally decides to randomly roam in a [Screenshot] certain direction until stopped, and it locked up entirely once - while having grabbed the pointer and rendered the display useless, of course.

All that notwithstanding, Google Earth is a fun toy. Your editor started at his childhood home, and quickly located the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River range - one of the most beautiful places on the planet; the result was the image shown on the right. Typing in "Venice, Italy" resulted in a rather ballistic-seeming flight across the ocean, yielding a gorgeous view of Piazza San Marco. One can almost make out individual [Screenshot] pigeons. The resolution of the available imagery varies, and there is not always much in the way of additional information, but there are very few spots on the planet which cannot be viewed at some scale. It can be difficult to turn it off and get some real work done.

There are those who have already started to complain about the non-free nature of this application. There is no doubt that a truly free version of Google Earth would be a great thing - imagine what the community could do, starting with a base like this. The simple fact is, however, that Google has not done us any harm by making a non-free Google Earth available. Those who do not want non-free software on their systems can simply refuse to install it. The rest of us can have some fun.

For those of us who want a free tool of this nature, one option would appear to be the WW2D project, which has posted some interesting screenshots. Unfortunately, your editor was unable to get enough of the project web site's attention to successfully download a copy. Also of interest is Earth3d. This application shows some real potential, though your editor found the navigation to be painful and, of course, the higher-resolution imagery is not freely available. Nonetheless, the initial work exists for the creation of a free planet viewer, if we truly want to create one.

Comments (54 posted)

Page editor: Jonathan Corbet

Security

SPF on vger

June 14, 2006

This article was contributed by Jake Edge.

A recent announcement about adding Sender Policy Framework (SPF) capabilities to the machine hosting the linux-kernel mailing list (lkml) has sparked a lively debate. The first step, it seems, is to add an SPF record for vger.kernel.org and later this summer to enable SPF checking on incoming email. Both steps are controversial and the majority of posters seem to be against the change, but Matti Aarnio, one of the postmasters for vger, plans to go ahead with the changes.

SPF is a technique that allows a domain to specify which hosts are allowed to send email that have an envelope sender (i.e. SMTP MAIL FROM) using that domain. A domain administrator adds a TXT record to the DNS entry for the domain that describes all hosts allowed to send mail. This allows receiving Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) to look up the SPF record and determine whether the domain in the envelope has been forged -- at least in theory.

Unfortunately, there are a number of problems with this scheme, most having to do with email forwarding. Consider the case where a user has a yahoo.com email account that they are forwarding to their ISP. When yahoo forwards email that it receives, it uses the original envelope sender, but that domain has almost certainly not listed yahoo.com as an authorized sender. The same issue occurs if a user is trying to use their yahoo.com email as the sender, but are required to use their ISP's SMTP server. In that case, Yahoo will rightly not have the ISP listed as a legitimate sender for their domain.

The SPF folks have suggested solutions for these problems, but many of them require fundamental changes in how MTAs operate. The Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS) proposal in particular breaks longstanding email tradition by having forwarding MTAs change the envelope sender as they forward email. Opponents of SPF not only argue that changing this tradition is a bad idea, but also that it is very unlikely to be widely implemented any time soon. Additionally, Mail User Agents (MUAs) would need to learn about SRS encoding in order to parse sender addresses for filtering email at the user end.

SPF does provide a way to definitively determine that an email is coming from an authorized host, but failing the SPF check does not in any way imply that the email is invalid, as the mail could have been forwarded by a non-SRS compliant MTA. The main benefit for domains that publish SPF records may be a reduction in the blowback from a 'joe job' (a spammer uses a victim domain as the sender on a large amount of spam, some of which bounces, leaving the victim to deal with all the bounce messages).

Opponents point out that because of the forwarding problems, publishing an SPF record for your domain essentially asks other MTAs to mark perfectly valid mail as suspicious at best and forged at worst. Worse yet, some mail administrators are configuring their MTAs to reject mail that fails SPF checking.

For the lkml, the immediate impact will be minimal, but still annoying to some. People who have subscribed using addresses that are forwarded to SPF-checking ISPs may no longer receive emails from the list. Some list archiving software may also be affected. Once SPF checking is enabled, some users may find their mail getting rejected depending on how strictly the SPF policy is enforced. Expect another hue and cry on the lkml when and if that happens.

Comments (20 posted)

New vulnerabilities

courier: denial of service

Package(s):courier CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2659
Created:June 9, 2006 Updated:August 4, 2006
Description: A denial of service vulnerability has been found in the function for encoding email addresses. Addresses containing a '=' before the '@' character caused the Courier to hang in an endless loop, rendering the service unusable.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200608-06 courier 2006-08-04
Debian DSA-1101-1 courier 2006-06-23
Ubuntu USN-294-1 courier 2006-06-09

Comments (none posted)

dhcdbd: denial of service

Package(s):dhcdbd CVE #(s):
Created:June 14, 2006 Updated:June 14, 2006
Description: The dhcbcd daemon can be made to crash by invalid DHCP responses, causing NetworkManager to fail to work.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-299-1 dhcdbd 2006-06-13

Comments (none posted)

freetype: integer overflows

Package(s):freetype CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0747 CVE-2006-1861 CVE-2006-2493 CVE-2006-2661 CVE-2006-3467
Created:June 8, 2006 Updated:June 1, 2010
Description: The FreeType library has several integer overflow vulnerabilities. If a user can be tricked into installing a specially crafted font file, arbitrary code can be executed with the privilege of the user.
Alerts:
Gentoo 201006-01 freetype 2010-06-01
Fedora FEDORA-2009-5644 freetype1 2009-05-28
Fedora FEDORA-2009-5558 freetype1 2009-05-28
CentOS CESA-2009:0329 freetype 2009-05-22
Red Hat RHSA-2009:1062-01 freetype 2009-05-22
Red Hat RHSA-2009:0329-02 freetype 2009-05-22
Gentoo 200710-09 nx 2007-10-09
Debian DSA-1178-1 freetype 2006-09-16
Ubuntu USN-341-1 libxfont, xorg 2006-09-06
Gentoo 200609-04 libXfont 2006-09-06
rPath rPSA-2006-0157-1 x11 2006-08-25
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:148 xorg-x11 2006-08-24
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0635-01 XFree86 2006-08-21
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0634-01 X.org 2006-08-21
Fedora FEDORA-2006-912 libXfont 2006-08-14
SuSE SUSE-SA:2006:045 freetype2 2006-08-01
OpenPKG OpenPKG-SA-2006.017 freetype 2006-07-28
Ubuntu USN-324-1 freetype 2006-07-27
Slackware SSA:2006-207-02 x11 2006-07-27
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:129 freetype2 2006-07-20
Gentoo 200607-02 freetype 2006-07-09
SuSE SUSE-SA:2006:037 freetype2 2006-06-27
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:099-1 freetype2 2006-06-13
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:099 freetype2 2006-06-12
rPath rPSA-2006-0100-1 freetype 2006-06-12
Debian DSA-1095-1 freetype 2006-06-10
Ubuntu USN-291-1 freetype 2006-06-08

Comments (none posted)

gdm: privilege escalation

Package(s):gdm CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2452
Created:June 8, 2006 Updated:June 14, 2006
Description: gdm has a privilege escalation vulnerability that is tied to the face browser feature. If face browser is enabled, arbitrary users can access the gdm configuration screen, a feature that is normally accessible only to root. Other user accounts, and possibly the root account can then be subverted.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:100 gdm 2006-06-13
Gentoo 200606-14 gdm 2006-06-12
Fedora FEDORA-2006-692 gdm 2006-06-09
SuSE SUSE-SR:2006:013 phpMyAdmin, gdm 2006-06-09
Ubuntu USN-293-1 gdm 2006-06-09
rPath rPSA-2006-0098-1 gdm 2006-06-08

Comments (2 posted)

gforge: cross-site scripting

Package(s):gforge CVE #(s):CVE-2005-2430
Created:June 9, 2006 Updated:June 14, 2006
Description: Joxean Koret discovered several cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in Gforge, an online collaboration suite for software development, which allow injection of web script code.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1094-1 gforge 2006-06-08

Comments (none posted)

libgd2: denial of service

Package(s):libgd2 CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2906
Created:June 14, 2006 Updated:January 16, 2007
Description: Certain GIF images can cause libgd2 to go into an infinite loop, adversely affecting the performance of image processing applications.
Alerts:
rPath rPSA-2007-0008-1 gd 2007-01-15
Debian DSA-1117-1 libgd2 2006-07-21
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:113 tetex 2006-06-27
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:112 gd 2006-06-27
Ubuntu USN-298-1 libgd2 2006-06-13

Comments (none posted)

libjpeg: Denial of Service

Package(s):jpeg libjpeg CVE #(s):
Created:June 12, 2006 Updated:June 14, 2006
Description: Tavis Ormandy of the Gentoo Linux Auditing Team discovered that the vulnerable JPEG library ebuilds compile JPEG without the --maxmem feature which is not recommended. By enticing a user to load a specially crafted JPEG image file an attacker could cause a denial of service, due to memory exhaustion.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200606-11 jpeg 2006-06-11

Comments (none posted)

openldap: stack-based buffer overflow

Package(s):openldap CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2754
Created:June 8, 2006 Updated:June 27, 2006
Description: OpenLDAP is vulnerable to a stack-based buffer overflow in the st.c file from slurpd. Attackers may be able to use a long hostname to execute arbitrary code.
Alerts:
Ubuntu USN-305-1 openldap2, openldap2.2 2006-06-27
Gentoo 200606-17 openldap 2006-06-15
rPath rPSA-2006-0099-1 openldap 2006-06-09
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:096 openldap 2006-06-07

Comments (none posted)

squirrelmail: file inclusion vulnerability

Package(s):squirrelmail CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2842
Created:June 8, 2006 Updated:July 11, 2006
Description: Squirrelmail, a PHP-based webmail package, has a file inclusion vulnerability.
Alerts:
Fedora FEDORA-2006-788 squirrelmail 2006-07-10
Red Hat RHSA-2006:0547-01 squirrelmail 2006-07-03
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:101 squirrelmail 2006-06-14
Fedora FEDORA-2006-680 squirrelmail 2006-06-07
Fedora FEDORA-2006-668 squirrelmail 2006-06-07

Comments (none posted)

tor: multiple vulnerabilities

Package(s):tor CVE #(s):CVE-2006-0414
Created:June 8, 2006 Updated:June 14, 2006
Description: Tor, an anonymizing communication service implementation, has multiple vulnerabilities including a buffer overflow, a denial of service vulnerability and an information leak problem.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200606-04 tor 2006-06-07

Comments (none posted)

webcalendar: uninitialized variable

Package(s):webcalendar CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2762
Created:June 13, 2006 Updated:June 14, 2006
Description: A vulnerability has been discovered in webcalendar, a PHP-based multi-user calendar, that allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary PHP code when register_globals is turned on.
Alerts:
Debian DSA-1096-1 webcalendar 2006-06-13

Comments (none posted)

wordpress: arbitrary command execution

Package(s):wordpress CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2667 CVE-2006-2702
Created:June 12, 2006 Updated:June 14, 2006
Description: WordPress insufficiently checks the format of cached username data. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary commands by sending a specially crafted username. As of Wordpress 2.0.2 the user data cache is disabled as the default.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200606-08 wordpress 2006-06-09

Comments (none posted)

xine-lib: buffer overflow

Package(s):xine-lib CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2802
Created:June 9, 2006 Updated:September 29, 2006
Description: Federico L. Bossi Bonin discovered a buffer overflow in the HTTP input module. By tricking an user into opening a malicious remote media location, a remote attacker could exploit this to crash Xine library frontends (like totem-xine, gxine, or xine-ui) and possibly even execute arbitrary code with the user's privileges.
Alerts:
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:176 xine-lib 2006-09-28
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:175 mplayer 2006-09-28
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:174 gstreamer-ffmpeg 2006-09-28
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:173 ffmpeg 2006-09-28
Gentoo 200609-08 xine-lib 2006-09-13
Slackware SSA:2006-207-04 xine 2006-07-27
Debian DSA-1105-1 xine-lib 2006-07-07
Mandriva MDKSA-2006:108 xine-lib 2006-06-20
Ubuntu USN-295-1 xine-lib 2006-06-09

Comments (none posted)

xine-ui: format string vulnerabilities

Package(s):xine-ui CVE #(s):CVE-2006-2230
Created:June 9, 2006 Updated:January 24, 2007
Description: Several format string vulnerabilities have been discovered in xine-ui, the user interface of the xine video player, which may cause a denial of service.
Alerts:
Gentoo 200701-18 xine-ui 2007-01-23
Debian DSA-1093-1 xine-ui 2006-06-08

Comments (none posted)

Page editor: Jonathan Corbet

Kernel development

Brief items

Kernel release status

The current 2.6 prepatch remains 2.6.17-rc6; no prepatches have been released over the past week. A few dozen fixes have been merged into the mainline repository since -rc6 was released, but the pace has slowed considerably. The 2.6.17 final release may well happen in the near future.

The current -mm tree is 2.6.17-rc6-mm2. Recent changes to -mm include a new statistics infrastructure for the memory management subsystem, virtualized namespaces for SYSV interprocess communications primitives, and some lock validator work.

Comments (none posted)

Kernel development news

Quote of the week

I think the interesting point is how we're moving away from the "global development" model (ie everything breaks at the same time between 2.4.x and 2.6.x), and how the fact that we're trying to maintain a more stable situation may well mean that we'll see more of the "local development" model where a specific subsystem goes through a development series, but where stability requirements mean that we must not allow it to disturb existing users.

And even more interestingly (at least to me), the question might become one of "how does that affect the tools and build and configuration infrastructure", and just the general flow of development.

-- Linus Torvalds

Comments (none posted)

Ext3 for large filesystems

Linux supports a wide variety of filesystems. While it is true that the Linux VFS layer treats all filesystems equally, the ext3 filesystem is certainly the first among equals. Ext3 is the default choice for a large majority of distributions; it can thus be found on vast numbers of installed Linux systems. If any filesystem were to be named the Linux filesystem, it would be ext3.

Ext3 is based on decades of experience with Unix filesystems. As a result, it is relatively straightforward to understand and highly reliable in its operation. It is, however, also showing its age in a number of ways. One of those is the maximum size of the underlying device it can handle. This limit is a mere 8 TB. That is enough to hold most of our mail spools - even before spam filtering - but it is a limit which is already affecting some users. With the size of contemporary disks, the creation of an 8 TB array is not an entirely outlandish thing to do now, and it will only become easier over time.

There are a couple of reasons for this limit. One of them is the use of 32-bit block numbers within the filesystem - and signed 32-bit numbers at that. The ext3 code can only track 2 gigablocks, which, using a 4K block size, sets the limit at 8 TB. Switching to an unsigned type can double that limit, but that only pushes back the problem by about one year. Clearly, larger block numbers are required.

The other problem has to do with how ext3 tracks the blocks associated with any given file. The ext3 inode structure contains an array of fifteen 32-bit pointers; the first twelve of those pointers contain the indexes of the first twelve blocks of the file. Thus, with a filesystem using 4K blocks, the first twelve pointers can describe a file of up to 48KB in length. If the file exceeds that length, an "indirect block" is created. This block is a big array of block pointers, holding the indexes for the next 1024 blocks; the 13th pointer in the inode structure tracks the location of this indirect block. Should that space not suffice, the 14th pointer is used for a double-indirect block - a block holding pointers to indirect blocks. Finally, the 15th pointer will be used for a triple-indirect block if need be.

This arrangement is not too different from how Unix systems structured filesystems two decades or more ago. It imposes a per-file maximum size of about 4 TB - big, but perhaps limiting for today's hot applications (such as comprehensive, nationwide telephone call archival). It works well for small files but, as files get larger, this organization becomes increasingly inefficient. Keeping a pointer to every single block is expensive, both in terms of space usage and the time it can take to locate a specific file block. Since larger filesystems will tend to hold larger files, this overhead becomes increasingly limiting over time.

A solution to these problems can be found in the extents and 48-bit support patch set. These patches have been posted by Mingming Cao; many other developers - especially Alex Tomas - have worked on them as well. They change the way files are stored to make things more efficient, and to allow the filesystem to index the blocks on larger devices.

The core of the patch is the support for extents. An extent is simply a set of blocks which are logically contiguous within the file and also on the underlying block device. Most contemporary filesystems put considerable effort into allocating contiguous blocks for files as a way of making I/O operations faster, so blocks which are logically contiguous within the file often are also contiguous on-disk. As a result, storing the file structure as extents should result in significant compression of the file's metadata, since a single extent can replace a large number of block pointers. The reduction in metadata should enable faster access as well.

An ext3 filesystem mounted with the extents option enabled will handle files stored in the old way, using block pointers, as always. New files will be created using extents, however. In these files, the fifteen-pointer array described above is overlaid with a new data structure. There is a short header, followed by a few occurrences of this structure: 

    struct ext3_extent {
	__le32	ee_block;	/* first logical block extent covers */
	__le16	ee_len;		/* number of blocks covered by extent */
	__le16	ee_start_hi;	/* high 16 bits of physical block */
	__le32	ee_start;	/* low 32 bits of physical block */
    };

Here, ee_block is the index (within the file, not on disk) of the first block covered by this extent. The number of blocks in the extent is stored in ee_len, and the pointer to the first of those blocks (on disk, now) lives in the combination of ee_start and ee_start_hi. By storing physical block numbers this way, ext3 can handle 48-bit block numbers - enough to index a 1024 PB device. That should be enough to last for a couple years or so.

For files with few extents, all of the information can be stored within the on-disk inode itself. As the number of extents grows, however, the available space runs out. In that case, a form of indirect blocks is used; the in-inode extents array describes ranges of blocks holding extents arrays of their own. The tree of indirect extents blocks can grow to an essentially unlimited depth, allowing the filesystem to represent even very large, highly-fragmented files.

Beyond extents, relatively little had to be done to prepare ext3 for 48-bit block addressing. The signed, 32-bit block numbers are gone, having been converted to the larger sector_t type. Some reserved space in the ext3 superblock has been grabbed to store the high 16 bits of some global block counts. Much of the tracking of free blocks within the filesystem is done using block numbers relative to the beginning of the block group, so that code did not need to change much at all. A few tweaks to the journaling code were required for it to be able to handle the larger block numbers.

The end result is an enhancement to the ext3 filesystem which enables it to work with much larger devices. Existing filesystems can use the new features immediately with no dump-and-restore cycle. It would appear to be (nearly) universally agreed that these changes turn ext3 into a better filesystem. Whether that better filesystem should still be called ext3 is controversial, but that is a subject for another article.

Comments (18 posted)

Time for ext4?

As described in this article, patches which add extents and 48-bit capability to the ext3 filesystem have been circulated for wider review. Everybody seems to agree that these changes are good and should be part of the Linux kernel. Well, almost everybody agrees. But the way in which these features get in has become the inspiration for an extended discussion on how filesystem development should work.

Some developers, most prominently Jeff Garzik, have expressed concerns about merging these changes into ext3; they would rather see a new ext4 filesystem created for new features. There are a number of reasons put forward for doing things this way. First and foremost, perhaps, is the fact that using the extents/48-bit features results in filesystems which are no longer backward compatible. If a system administrator enables extents on a filesystem, a special "incompatible feature" flag will be set in the filesystem superblock. Thereafter, it will no longer be possible to mount that filesystem with any older kernel which does not recognize that flag. Until now, it has generally been possible to mount ext3 filesystems on older kernels - even those which only support ext2 (with one ugly exception involving a distributor which was heavily pushing SELinux features).

The overall effect of all these changes on filesystem stability is also a concern. Filesystems are important, and users tend to take a very dim view of "upgrades" which introduce bugs or impact performance. As Linus puts it:

For me, the biggest cost tends to actually be support. A stable filesystem that is used by thousands and thousands of people and that isn't actually developed outside of just maintaining it IS A REALLY GOOD THING TO HAVE.

The incorporation of major features into ext3 certainly takes it out of the "just maintaining it" realm.

As more features are added, the filesystem code (which must support filesystems both with and without that feature) gets more complicated. In particular, one sees increasing amounts of code which looks like: 

    if (has_this_fancy_feature)
    	do_it_the_fancy_way();
    else
    	do_it_the_old_boring_way();

Such code can be harder to follow, and it tends not to isolate the new feature code as nicely as one might like. If, instead, one were to put the new features into a new filesystem, a lot of these conditionals could be taken out.

Finally, it is said that the need to be so careful about backward compatibility is a drag on filesystem development. By separating development filesystems from those which are meant to be stable, the developers can push forward with the new capabilities they would like to implement. For practical examples, consider the separation of ext2 and ext3, the separation of the SMB and CIFS filesystems, and the creation of libata rather than shoehorning serial ATA support into the old ATA drivers.

Needless to say, the ext3 developers have their own take on all of this. A filesystem with the new features will not work on older kernels regardless of whether it is called ext3 or ext4. Since a feature like extents must be explicitly enabled by the system administrator (assuming the distributor does not quietly do it for them), nobody should be surprised by a filesystem which no longer works on older systems. Pushing the new features into an ext4 would simply slow their uptake without buying much else.

While some think that splitting out development into a new filesystem will ease code maintenance, others are less sure. In particular, there is worry that bugs fixed in one of the filesystems may not get fixed in the other.

It has been noted, repeatedly, that users very much like to be able to get new features into their filesystems without having to backup and restore the whole thing. The transition from ext2 to ext3 is a clear example of how this can work; if moving to ext3 had required restoring the filesystem from scratch, ext3 would have been adopted much more slowly, and less universally, than it was. As this example shows, however, putting new features into a new ext4 filesystem would not necessarily preclude this sort of upgrade.

The ext3 developers also point out that they have been working on that filesystem for many years and have not yet created big problems for the Linux user base. They have, they feel, earned a certain amount of trust. So they would rather move ahead with some features which have been put together with great care and extensive review rather than cloning ext3 into ext4 and starting something new.

An attempt to guess how all this might settle out could start with these words from Linus:

Quite frankly, at this point, there's no way in hell I believe we can do major surgery on ext3. It's the main filesystem for a lot of users, and it's just not worth the instability worries unless it's something very obviously transparent.

Yet another point of view comes from Andrew Morton:

All that being said, Linux's filesystems are looking increasingly crufty and we are getting to the time where we would benefit from a greenfield start-a-new-one. That new one might even be based on reiser4 - has anyone looked? It's been sitting around for a couple of years.

As reiser4 shows, getting a truly new filesystem into the kernel isn't necessarily an easy thing to do. It may well not happen before large numbers of users start running into the current limits of ext3. So the current set of enhancements will probably find its way in - though what the resulting filesystem will be called is still not entirely clear.

Comments (31 posted)

64-bit resources

"Resource" is the term used within the Linux kernel for a specific set of I/O-related hardware resources - I/O memory and ports, in particular. Device drivers allocate specific resources with functions like request_region(), but, underneath that layer, Linux has a set of generic resource allocation utilities. And at the core of that code is struct resource, which tracks individual resource allocations. A read of /proc/iomem or /proc/ioports is really just dumping out one of those resource data structures.

Since the resource management code was added by Linus at the beginning of the 2.3 development cycle, the unsigned long type has been used to track actual resource values. That worked at the time, but it can be problematic on 32-bit machines which have I/O memory resources at high addresses. If a memory region is located out of the 32-bit range, the resource management code can no longer deal with it.

The solution, of course, is to start using 64-bit numbers to track resource allocations. Vivek Goyal (along with others) has been working for some time on a set of patches which makes this change. Those patches have been fixed up by Greg Kroah-Hartman and, by all appearances, are set for merging once the 2.6.18 development cycle starts.

Introducing new typedefs into the kernel is generally frowned upon, but this patch creates resource_size_t anyway. Early in the patch series, this type is just unsigned long; only when the type has propagated through the source is it changed to a 64-bit value. There is a configuration option controlling whether 64-bit resources are used; interestingly, 64-bit is the default, and the old 32-bit mode is marked "experimental."

The result of the change is that the prototypes for some commonly-used functions change: 

    struct resource *request_region(resource_size_t start,
                                    resource_size_t n,
				    const char *name);
    void release_region(resource_size_t start, resource_size_t n);

    struct resource *request_mem_region(resource_size_t start,
                                        resource_size_t n,
					const char *name);
    void release_mem_region(resource_size_t start, resource_size_t n);

Most driver code will be unaffected by these changes; simple constant resource locations will still work, and, in many cases, the bus layer handles the details of resource allocation anyway. But, in cases where a driver is directly storing or working with resource locations, the new type will have to be used.

Comments (none posted)

Patches and updates

Kernel trees

Andrew Morton 2.6.17-rc6-mm2 ?
Ingo Molnar 2.6.17-rc6-rt1 ?
Ingo Molnar 2.6.17-rc6-rt3 ?

Core kernel code

Roland McGrath utrace: new modular infrastructure for user debug/tracing ?
Matt Helsley Task watchers: Task Watchers ?
Badari Pulavarty VFS fileop cleanups by collapsing AIO and vector IO ?

Development tools

Mark Hounschell RT exec for exercising RT kernel capabilities ?
Junio C Hamano GIT 1.4.0 ?
Catalin Marinas Stacked GIT 0.10 ?
Catalin Marinas Kernel memory leak detector 0.7 ?
Linus Torvalds suspend-to-ram debugging patches ?

Device drivers

Jeff Garzik Promise 'stex' driver ?
Greg KH Reworked 64bit resource patches ?
Tejun Heo rolled up patch for new Power Management for libata ?

Documentation

Diego Calleja Updated sysctl documentation take #2 ?

Filesystems and block I/O

Mingming Cao extents and 48bit ext3 ?
Dave Hansen Read-only bind mounts ?

Memory management

Peter Zijlstra mm: tracking dirty pages -v6 ?
Christoph Lameter Zoned VM counters V2 ?
Christoph Lameter Zoned VM counters V4 ?
Christoph Lameter Light weight event counters V3 ?

Networking

Gerrit Renker net: RFC 3828-compliant UDP-Lite support ?
Sridhar Samudrala in-kernel sockets API ?

Security-related

kang RSBAC 1.2.7 Released ?
Amy Griffis audit: path-based rules ?

Virtualization and containers

Kirill Korotaev IPC namespace ?
dlezcano@fr.ibm.com [patch 0/6] [Network namespace] introduction ?

Miscellaneous

Thomas Jarosch ipt_ACCOUNT 1.6 released ?

Page editor: Jonathan Corbet

Distributions

News and Editorials

Live CDs Part II: Desktop Replacements

June 12, 2006

This article was contributed by Michael J. Hammel

[Editor's note: this is the second in a four-part series; the next installment will appear in the next week or two.]

If you read Part I of this series, you know all about what a live CD is and why you would want one for your own. This week, it's time to look at examples of live CDs that implement complete replacements for your desktop. Remember that the goal isn't to compare these examples but rather to help you learn to differentiate the options available. The ratings for each review are intended to show how well each option might fit a particular need rather than comparing the CDs against one another.

A number of live CD's offer complete desktop environments based on existing desktop distributions or on hybrid or home grown distributions. I chose three live CDs for this category: KNOPPIX as a representative of the hybrid desktop replacement category, the GNOME live CD to see what new features I might find in upcoming desktop distributions and Berry Linux, for a taste of a language customized version.

Desktop live CDs use "cheatcodes", or command line options to the kernel to deal with special situations. Be sure to check out the web sites for information on how to make best use of these.

KNOPPIX

KNOPPIX may be the grandfather of all live CDs, or at least a distant relative. Developed originally by Klaus Knopper, this highly popular and very complete distribution packs in 2GB worth of data into an ordinary 700MB CD. The shear weight of applications should make this distribution bog down on the low memory test system, but it doesn't. Still, the Debian based distribution manages to use up 214MB of an available 229MB running just the KDE desktop.

Unlike more modern live CDs, KNOPPIX appears to use the cloop driver to use compressed filesystem images from the CD. The alternative would be to use the SquashFS filesystem or other compressed filesystem image drivers. Despite using an older driver, KNOPPIX doesn't appear to be suffering performance issues and certainly isn't hobbled by lack of space on the CD.

The CD was slow to boot but correctly identified the hardware except for the mouse. KNOPPIX configured a generic PS/2 wheel mouse while the test system had a simple 2 button mouse without a wheel. The system boots directly into an X session for the "knoppix" user (not root). While a relatively recent 2.6.12 kernel is used, KNOPPIX is using XFree86 4.3 instead of the newer X.org releases and defaults to the VESA X driver. The display does come up in 1024x768 @ 24bit color depth, which makes best use of the test system hardware.

The desktop runs KDE 3.4.1, which runs surprisingly fast on the test hardware. This is probably due to the way KNOPPIX leaves many read-only files on the CD instead of pushing them into the ramdisks. The menu systems is a bit cluttered, however. There are multiple menu entries for doing configuration tasks, for example. And there are to many entries in the main menu, making the menu a bit overwhelming to a newbie.

Applications abound with this live CD. Office files are handled with OpenOffice, KDE PIM tools and Scribus. Xmms and Xine highlight the multimedia support. Along with the usual KDE tools like KMail and Konqueror, network applications include Firefox, Thunderbird, XChat and GAIM. Add to this a large number of graphics and game applications along with plenty of variety in text editors and you've got a full featured desktop.

As with most desktop replacement live CDs, KNOPPIX comes with it's own cheatcodes, which are actually just a bunch of kernel options that you can use at boot time to deal with old or unusual hardware.

Extending KNOPPIX requires copying the contents of the CD to a local directory, then doing a chroot into that directory. From here you can use "apt" to update packages and add your own packages just as you would on any running Debian system. After updates are complete, you remake the compressed filesystem image used by the cloop driver and then remake the ISO image. The runtime system can also be updated using the KPackage utility found under the Utilities menu.

Cleanliness:7
Originality:7
On Target:9
Extensibility:8

The GNOME Live CD

The GNOME Live CD isn't really a desktop replacement system but more of a technology preview. The CD uses the popular Ubuntu distribution as a base Linux operating system and adds all the bells and whistles of the latest (in this case, version 2.12) GNOME desktop release. While it isn't intended to function like a KNOPPIX distribution, it does contain everything you might need on a desktop.

When the Ubuntu distribution boots you'll get a GNOME splash screen. For some reason I had to hit ENTER at this point otherwise the boot wouldn't continue (this happens on the official Ubuntu live CD as well). The boot takes a long time to do it's hardware detection, partially using text based screens and partially using Bootsplash screens. Eventually, the system boots directly into the "ubuntu" user's desktop.

Hardware detection by the Ubuntu distribution correctly recognized the Via CastleRock graphics support on the EPIA M10000 test system and the CD loaded the "via" X driver. This is different than most of the other live CDs I've tested which default to using the generic VESA driver. It is nice to have the "via" driver for video playing but other than that using the basic VESA driver works just as well on this hardware.

As with KNOPPIX, this GNOME desktop system is heavy on memory use, using 219MB out of 224MB available according to "top". This is expected behavior for this class of live CDs so be certain to have plenty of memory.

Applications include OpenOffice for office documents, Evolution and Firefox for email and the web, the Totem movie player and Rhythmbox music player for multimedia files. The desktop also includes GNOME Meeting, an H.232 compliant VoIP and telephone application that should work with NetMeeting.

Overall the desktop appearance is cleaner than KNOPPIX's. This is probably because KNOPPIX tries to provide every application it can while GNOME is demonstrating GNOME specific features. Again, I'm not trying to compare the two against each other, but rather pointing out how similar live CDs can target different problem spaces.

The GNOME live CD isn't meant as a general purpose solution and as such does not provide tools or methods for extending the ISO image. The desktop does provide the Synaptic package manager which allowed me to install a 3D chess application with ease.

Cleanliness:8
Originality:6
On Target:9
Extensibility:4

Berry Linux

This relative newcomer to the live CD scene offers a polished desktop environment. Originally designed as a Japanese language live CD based on Fedora Core 5 and KDE, Berry Linux now includes an English language version and a GRUB based boot that offers multiple configurations. This includes an Xgl (an OpenGL X server) version, Safe and Expert boot modes, and support for Vaio and Dynabook specific hardware.

The English boot mode was fast through the hardware detection phase. Berry Linux makes use of KNOPPIX's "hwsetup" to configure hardware and it was successful in finding the VIA graphics hardware and configuring the X environment to use it. Unfortunately, it also configured a generic PS/2 wheel mouse, while the test system didn't have a wheel.

Berry uses a modern 2.6 kernel and the Overlay Filesystem (translucency.o module) mixed with SquashFS and UnionFS for it's CD technology.

Like most desktop replacement live CDs, this system doesn't boot into a root user but rather boots directly into the "berry" user. The root password is "root" (which you'll need for basic system management tasks) but you'll only know this if you read the web site.

While hardware detection is fast, getting into the desktop is a bit slow. A very customized KDE offers up a clean desktop with lots of icons that include a small penguin image.

Applications are abundant here, as you'd expect with this class of live CD. Media files are accessed with XMMS, MPlayer and Xine while office documents can be managed with OpenOffice. Thunderbird and Sylpheed provide email access while Firefox handles web browsing chores. As an added bonus, WINE is provided for support of Windows executables.

Berry Linux is a full featured desktop, but a slimmed down version is also available that uses FluxBox as the desktop environment in place of KDE.

Information on remastering the ISO is available but limited. No information on the format used for packages (RPMs or .deb files, for example) is provided, though a web page on the differences between Berry and KNOPPIX says RPMs were used.

Cleanliness:8
Originality:7
On Target:9
Extensibility:4

In the next installment of this series I'll look at Small Footprint live CDs. These are the systems that should serve as the basis for embedded systems or for making use of older or less well supported hardware by making it easy to extend the feature set of the CD. Those live CDs under review will include Olive, Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux.

Comments (12 posted)

New Releases

EnGarde Secure Linux 3.0.7 announced

EnGarde Secure Linux version 3.0.7 has been announced. "Guardian Digital is happy to announce the release of EnGarde Secure Community 3.0.7 (Version 3.0, Release 7). This release includes several bug fixes and feature enhancements to the Guardian Digital WebTool and the SELinux policy, several updated packages, and several new packages available for installation. "

Comments (none posted)

SUSE Linux 10.2 Alpha 1 released

The first alpha release of SUSE Linux 10.2 is available. There is one little known problem, being that the graphical installer does not work. According to the announcement, the changes since 10.1 are "mainly in version updates in some areas (esp. the YaST package manager and KDE)."

Full Story (comments: 8)

BitRock Releases MonoStack distribution

BitRock Incorporated has announced the release of their BitRock MonoStack distribution. "The easy to install distribution contains Apache, mod_mono and XSP, and hooks up to existing Mono installations to allow new users to quickly be up and running with a complete .NET environment on Linux. "MonoStack serves as a complement to the existing Mono installer, by providing the additional software necessary to run ASP.NET on Linux. By downloading and installing the Mono Runtime from the Mono project website and MonoStack from BitRock, users can have a complete Mono development environment in minutes," said Erica Brescia, VP of Business Development for BitRock. MonoStack is freely available for download and use under the terms of the Apache License 2.0 from www.bitrock.com."

Full Story (comments: 4)

Wyse Technology releases Wyse Linux 6.3

Wyse Technology has announced the availability of Wyse Linux 6.3, the latest release of the Wyse Linux V6 products. The product will be offered as a free software upgrade for current Wyse customers of the S50, V50, and 5150 SE thin clients.

Full Story (comments: none)

Distribution News

Bits from the Debian stable release team

Martin Zobel-Helas reports on preparations for a third update of Debian stable (Sarge). "Expect Debian Sarge r3 to happen soon."

Full Story (comments: none)

Debian Python packages in sid

Matthias Klose reports that Python 2.4 will soon be the default python version in sid. "With the upcoming releases of the last packages which didn't support 2.4 yet (Plone on the Zope application server) we may be able to drop support for 2.3 in sid and etch as well."

Raphael Hertzog has more on the new Python policy. "As we want to do the python 2.4 transition now, we need to make sure the packages match the policy. This will limit the amount of broken packages when python2.4 will become the default and will smooth this transition."

Comments (2 posted)

Fedora news

A read only mailing list has been created so anyone can follow as business is conducted by the Fedora board. "fedora-advisory-board is the list on which the Fedora Board conducts its business, and its membership is comprised of the Fedora Board members, and many of the folks on different Fedora Steering Committees, leaders within the community and within Red Hat."

The Fedora project is looking for a few good people to help create and maintain infrastructure that will take Fedora to the next level.

Max Spevack congratulates the team on the success of Fedora Core 5 and looks forward to FC6.

Comments (none posted)

OpenPKG Demonstration Video

The OpenPKG Project has released a demonstration video featuring OpenPKG 2.5 on FreeBSD 6, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 and OpenSolaris 10 b34 in parallel. "The goal of this video is to illustrate OpenPKG's important cross-platform and multiple-instance capabilities in a more appealing and intuitive way than what is possible with the usual tutorial style step-by-step command lists or simple screenshots."

Full Story (comments: none)

Regular language pack updates for stable Ubuntu

Martin Pitt reports that the language packs of all stable Ubuntu releases will be updated on the first Monday of every month. "This predictable schedule should ease coordination for translators. As a special exception, there will be an additional update for the recently released Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) on June, 14th, since a lot of last-minute updates did not make it into the final release."

Full Story (comments: none)

Maintaining Packages in bzr for edgy

Scott James Remnant looks at maintaining packages in bzr. "Edgy is all about new and exciting things, so we're likely to be doing a fair amount of development work in this time. So now is the time to begin maintaining packages in bzr!"

Full Story (comments: none)

Daily kernel builds for edgy

Automated daily builds of edgy's 2.6.17-based kernel are available for testing. Goals for testers include enabling better results from IBM's ABAT suite and enabling users to help identify more precise points of regressions during edgy development.

Full Story (comments: none)

New Distributions

The Bluewhite64 Linux Project

The Bluewhite64 Linux Project is an unofficial port of Slackware Linux to AMD64 hardware. Bluewhite64-current v20060609 is available for testing.

Comments (none posted)

Voltalinux

Voltalinux is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Slackware GNU/linux and the pkgsrc package system from NetBSD. This project aims to deliver a prebuilt distribution with the clean design of Slackware and the availability of about 5400 ports (packages) ready to install. Version 1.0 was released June 9, 2006.

Comments (none posted)

Distribution Newsletters

Debian Weekly News

The Debian Weekly News for June 13, 2006 covers Debian CGL registration, GNOME 1 packages in Debian may not be around much longer, a graphical Reportbug in progress, sailing with Debian, an interview with the DPL, and much more.

Full Story (comments: none)

Fedora Weekly News Issue 50

This edition of the Fedora Weekly News covers Fedora Project Board Update (2006-06-06), Read-Only copy of fedora-advisory-board list, Fedora mentioned in Information Week, Puplet Icons Design in Progress, Fedora on Mactel Testing in Progress, Fedora Core 5 Review at Linux Magazine, Re-spin your Fedora Core monthly, Fedora Stuff at Red Hat Cool Stuff Store, and more.

Comments (none posted)

Gentoo Weekly Newsletter

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for June 12, 2006 looks at the Portage 2.1 release, Gentoo/Alpha status report, Tetex changes, Gentoo Women and several other topics.

Comments (none posted)

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter - Issue #2

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for June 10, 2006 covers Ubuntu Documentation on Paper, Screenshot Tours of Edubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu, Edgy Development Officially Started, Mark Shuttleworth Interviewed on ``Lug``Radio, Buy a Computer with Ubuntu Preinstalled, Feature Of The Week - Tomboy and much more.

Full Story (comments: none)

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 155

The DistroWatch Weekly for June 12, 2006 is out. "With the recent new Linux distribution releases being digested and evaluated, it's no surprise that news was somewhat slow last week. The developers of Debian GNU/Linux have engaged in yet another major flame war - this time over the new Java licence, while the openSUSE project continued its hard work resolving the package management problems affecting many users of SUSE Linux 10.1. In the opinion section, we take a look at the three major distribution releases of the past two months and suggest the winner. Finally, the annual DistroWatch package database update will take place this week and we would appreciate your input!"

Comments (none posted)

Package updates

Fedora updates

Updates for Fedora Core 5: mc (update from CVS), gdm (bug fixes), gnome-panel (updated, rebuilt), dovecot (sync with rawhide), evolution (bump EDS version requires), evolution-sharp (rebuild for new EDS), planner (rebuild for new EDS), evolution-connector (bump for new EDS), subversion (update to 1.3.2), squid (bug fix), ruby (patched), dovecot (sync with rawhide), autofs (bug fix), perl (bug fixes), coreutils (fixed Polish translation), tog-pegasus (upstream patches), policycoreutils (bug fixes), selinux-policy (bump for FC5), perl-DBD-MySQL (upgrade to upstream version 3.0004), xterm (upgrade to upstream version 213), perl-DBD-Pg (upgrade to upstream version 1.49), libsepol (bump for FC5), system-config-bind (bug fix), avahi (bug fixes), perl-XML-Simple (bug fixes), cups (bug fixes), scim (bug fix), dhcp (bug fixes), tcl (upgrade to Tcl 8.4.13), tk (upgrade to Tk 8.4.13), shadow-utils (bug fixes), rsync (bug fixes), python (added dist in the release), scim (update libtool tweak), gnome-screensaver (now use system-logos), gnome-session (now use system-logos), desktop-backgrounds (branded backgrounds moved to fedora-logos), xfig (bug fixes), gnome-themes (correct %post scripts), gnome-icon-theme (update to 2.14.2), fedora-logos (add the branded desktop background), gdm (require system-logos), rhgb (require system-logos).

Updates for Fedora Core 4: tetex (bug fixes), ruby (backport from devel), autofs (bug fix), xterm (upgrade to upstream version 213), rsync (bug fixes).

Comments (none posted)

rPath updates

Updates for rPath Linux 1: libuser, nss_ldap (mark as initial contents files), booty, mkinitrd (Xen support), initscripts (work with live CD images), initscripts (enables more customizations in software appliances), ltrace (fix x86_64 segfault), bridge-utils (Xen domain 0 support), dovecot (add a logrotate config file), conary, conary-build, conary-policy (API changes, client changes, build changes, server changes, bug fixes, policy update)

Comments (none posted)

Slackware updates

This week the Slackware-current change log shows some rebuilt Python packages, upgrades to doxygen, amorak, dhcpcd, dnsmasq and slackpkg, and more.

Comments (none posted)

Update for SUSE Linux 10.1 Package Management

The Package Update System released with SUSE Linux 10.1 had some problems. Click below for instructions on how to get an update for your system.

Full Story (comments: none)

Trustix update

Trustix has updated dansguardian, kernel, nss_ldap and rsync for TSL 2.2 and 3.0.

Full Story (comments: none)

Newsletters and articles of interest

Using Debconf to configure a system (Linux.com)

Linux.com covers the Debconf configuration tool. "Stripped to its essentials, Debconf is a database of questions with a front end for users. It is not a registry of settings, and does not make changes to the operating system itself. Instead, Debconf is invoked by the config script in a Debian package, and stores the user's answers for the postinst (post-install) script in the package to use. The questions for each package are stored in a .templates file in the package, and the same templates, with their current answers, are available in /var/lib/dpkg/info. Common packages may share the same template file to simplify configuration. Questions are generally prefaced with an explanation of the choice being made, and, in some cases, a button is provided for users to move back in the list of questions to correct mistakes."

Comments (1 posted)

Libranet's last goodbye (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers the discontinuation of Libranet. "Libranet was one of the oldest surviving Debian-derived distributions. First released in 1999, it developed a loyal following because of its easy installation and comprehensive set of packages. The distribution reached its peak in April 2005 with the release of version 3.0, but suffered a major setback when its founder, Jon Danzig, died of cancer a few weeks later. Tal Danzig, his son and partner, continued the distribution, but announced in November 2005 that the company was "restructuring" -- continuing support and keeping its forum open, but discontinuing development and sales while he considered what to do with the business and took a two-month trip to Israel."

Comments (none posted)

Distribution reviews

Ubuntu Dapper: Ready for the long haul (Linux.com)

Linux.com reviews Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. "For this review, I've been testing Ubuntu Dapper, and its Kubuntu and Xubuntu variants, on several desktop systems. The first system is a Pentium 4 3.06GHz laptop with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon R250 video card and Prism-based wireless card. I'm also running Ubuntu Dapper on my primary desktop, an AMD64 3000+ with 2GB of RAM, a 120GB SATA drive, and an Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT. Finally, I put Ubuntu on a ThinkPad T43 with a Pentium M 1.86GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, and ATI Radeon Mobility M300."

Comments (none posted)

My desktop OS: Zenwalk (NewsForge)

NewsForge hears from a Zenwalk fan. "There are so many desktop distributions that I often find myself testing them like I'm looking for the Holy Grail and forgetting what I really want: An operating system for my daily tasks at home. I found my Grail in Zenwalk, a Slackware-based Linux distro that uses the lightweight Xfce desktop environment along with an up-to-date 2.6.16 kernel."

Comments (none posted)

Page editor: Rebecca Sobol

Development

The GnuCash 1.9.7 Release

GnuCash is a GPL-licensed financial application with a wide variety of uses:

[GnuCash] Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. GnuCash is backed by an active development community and is blossoming into a full-fledged accounting system.

GnuCash 1.9.7 (an unstable release meant for testing) was announced on June 6:

The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 1.9.7 aka "Seize the day", the second beta release of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.0.0. This release contains many bugfixes since the first beta release.

This release is primarily aimed at bug fixing efforts, some of the improvements include:

  • Fixes to the XML import capabilities.
  • Fixes to the HBCI code.
  • A change of the documentation from html to xml.
  • Improvements to the MacOS and Windows builds.
  • Progress bar fixes.
  • UTF8 improvements.
  • Fixes relating to glib version 2.6.
Some new features have also been added, including:
  • Support for Guile 1.8.
  • A new splash screen.
  • Updated language translations.
In addition, unfinished functionality has been hidden, and version 1.9.0 of GnuCash-docs has been announced.

Source code for GnuCash 1.9.7 and the latest documentation is available here.

See this LWN article from May for details on the upcoming 2.0 release. GnomeDesktop.org also covers this release, and has some updated screenshots available for viewing.

Comments (none posted)

System Applications

Database Software

MySQL 5.1.11-beta has been released

Version 5.1.11-beta of the MySQL dbms has been announced. "This is a new Beta development release, fixing recently discovered bugs."

Full Story (comments: none)

Embedded Systems

Rockbox and SanDisk

Rockbox developer Daniel Stenberg has put up a page on Rockbox and SanDisk. The good news is that SanDisk has indeed contacted the Rockbox project about a port to the Sansa e200 player series and they have made hardware available to the developers. The bad news is that they have not, thus far, provided any developer documentation. Still, it looks like this port may go forward; watch Daniel's page for updates as they happen.

Comments (none posted)

ts7300_opencore 1.0 announced

The OpenCollector site has an announcement for a new Verilog project for the Technologic Systems TS-7300 FPGA Computer. "Intended as a boilerplate for future open-source FPGA designs using this hardware, it includes WISHBONE bus demultiplexing logic as well as a reference implementation of the open-source ethernet core at http://www.opencores.org. Also included is sample WISHBONE stub logic exhibiting the minimal HDL required to implement a single WISHBONE 32-bit register controlling LEDs in the address space of the EP9302 200Mhz ARM9 processor running Linux 2.4."

Comments (none posted)

Interoperability

Samba 3.0.23rc2 Available for Download

Samba version 3.0.23rc2 has been announced. "This is the second release candidate of the 3.0.23 code base and is provided for testing purposes only. While close to the final stable release, this snapshot is *not* intended for production servers. Your testing and feedback is greatly appreciated."

Full Story (comments: none)

Networking Tools

Ethereal becomes Wireshark

Ethereal is a well-known packet grabber/analyzer tool - or, at least, it was. Core developer Gerald Coombs has sent out a notice stating that he has changed jobs, and that, as a consequence, Ethereal will now be known as Wireshark. There has been a certain amount of confusion as to whether this change represents a fork in the project. A followup message from Gerald tries to address some of the issues: it seems that his former employer had trademarked "Ethereal" and is unwilling to release the name. This move might well be a fork, but it looks like Wireshark is where the development action will be in the future. (Thanks to Brad Hards).

Comments (3 posted)

OpenNMS 1.2.8 Released (SourceForge)

Version 1.2.8 of OpenNMS, a Java/XML-based Distributed Network & Systems Management platform, has been announced. "There are a lot of nifty features in this release, but in keeping with the philosophy of the production version of OpenNMS, they should not impact any of the current functionality. What will impact the current functionality is a number of bug fixes that should make OpenNMS even more stable. Most of these features were back-ported from the development branch. Probably the biggest news is support for Nagios plug-ins, both through the Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE) and the Net-Saint Client (NSClient) for Windows."

Comments (none posted)

Security

Sussen 0.23 released

Version 0.23 of Sussen, a vulnerabilities and configuration issue checker, is out. "This release contains performance increases for the interpreter and various bugfixes."

Full Story (comments: none)

Web Site Development

FCKeditor 2.3 released (SourceForge)

Version 2.3 of FCKeditor, a web-based text editor, has been announced. "To best celebrate the one million downloads mark, we are now releasing another great version of FCKeditor. This is mainly a stability version after the Beta release. The "Extreme Fast Loading!" experience is now complete. The editor has been deeply tested and now it is ready to be integrated in your professional applications."

Comments (none posted)

CGI Web Applications with Python, Part Two (Voidspace)

Michael Foord has published part two in a series on Python CGI web applications. "The previous article, CGI Web Applications with Python, Part One, explained the workings of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), demonstrated how HTML forms are processed, and described a Python library you can use to make development of Python CGI web applications a snap. This time, let's build on that expertise, look at some advanced CGI topics, such as CGI environment variables, HTML templating, and Unicode, and develop a complete CGI application."

Comments (1 posted)

Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

GLASHCtl 0.2 announced

Version 0.2 of GLASHCtl, a control applet for LASH, the LASH Audio Session Handler, is out. "This is the first release. Other than my code it contains eggtrayicon.h and eggtrayicon.c (by Anders Carlsson and Jean-Yves Lefort), taken from libegg, and the LASH icon (by Thorsten Wilms) from the LASH project. A patch from Florian Schmidt, adding session renaming and directory switching, has also been applied."

Full Story (comments: none)

Serpentine 0.7 Released (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org covers version 0.7 of Serpentine, an audio CD recording utility. "Serpentine features a simple to use HIG compliant interface. It aims to do one thing and do it right: writing audio CDs. It accepts a big range of audio (and video) formats thanks to the excelent GStreamer framework. It also tries to integrate well with other application, accepting full Drag N Drop from applications like: Nautilus, Rhythmbox and even Firefox!" This release adds support for GStreamer 0.10, new command line capabilities, the use of Cairo graphics and more.

Comments (none posted)

soniK 1.0.0 announced

Version 1.0.0 of soniK, a KDE-based digital audio editor, is available. Changes include build and bug fixes, updated documentation and more.

Full Story (comments: none)

Desktop Environments

GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week: You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

Comments (none posted)

KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week: You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

Comments (none posted)

KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)

The KDE Commit-Digest for June 11, 2006 has been announced. "In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: oKular gets a backend for the DjVu document format. amaroK is renamed Amarok. Guidance, a modular configuration GUI, gets a WINE module. Developments in the Kopete "OSCAR (AIM) File Transfer", "WorKflow" and "KDevelop C# Parser" Summer Of Code projects. KFormula, the KOffice formula component, defaults to the OpenDocument format."

Comments (none posted)

GUI Packages

PyQt v4.0 Released

Version 4.0 of PyQt, the Python bindings for Qt v4, has been announced. "The main change from v4.0beta1 is the inclusion of comprehensive HTML documentation based on the Qt documentation."

Full Story (comments: none)

Interoperability

Wine 0.9.15 released

Version 0.9.15 of Wine has been announced. The list of changes includes: More MS/RPC improvements, Core Audio driver for Mac OS X, More complete DNSAPI dll, Improvements to Web browser support and Lots of bug fixes.

Comments (none posted)

Wine Weekly Newsletter

The June 11, 2006 edition of Wine Weekly Newsletter is online with coverage of the Wine project. Topics include: GLSL Support, OpenAL Audio Driver, Fedora Packages Update, AppDB Update and Anonymous Patches.

Comments (none posted)

Mail Clients

Sylpheed-Claws 2.3.0 unleashed (SourceForge)

Version 2.3.0 of Sylpheed-Claws, a GTK+ based mail client with an emphasis on lightweight and speedy design, has been announced. This release features a long list of new capabilities as well as some bug fixes.

Comments (none posted)

Music Applications

fluxus 0.10 announced

Version 0.10 of fluxus, a cross-platform graphical livecoding environment for Scheme, is out. "Fluxus reads live audio or OSC network messages which can be used as a source of animation data for realtime performances or installations. Keyboard or mouse input can also be read for simple games development, and a physics engine is included for realtime simulations of rigid body dynamics. This release brings a repl (read evaluate print loop) for more interactive Scheme livecoding, better camera control, spotlights, procedural texturing support, more examples and a couple of daft little games thrown in for good measure."

Full Story (comments: none)

Languages and Tools

Haskell

Haskell Communities and Activities Report

The June, 2006 edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report has been announced. Take a look for a long collection of new Haskell language articles. "This is the tenth edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report (HCAR) – a collection of entries about everything that is going on and related to Haskell in some way that appears twice a year. Perhaps the release of the tenth edition is a good time to have a look back at the beginning."

Comments (none posted)

Java

GCJ front-end changed

The GNU Compiler for the Java Programming Language (GCJ) project has announced a switch to a new front end. "RMS approved the plan to use the Eclipse compiler as the new gcj front end. Work is being done on the gcj-eclipse branch; it can already build libgcj. This project will allow us to ship a 1.5 compiler in the relatively near future. The old gcjx branch and project is now dead."

Comments (1 posted)

Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The June 12, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

Full Story (comments: none)

python-dev Summary

The April 4-30, 2006 edition of the python-dev Summary is online with coverage of the python-dev mailing list activity.

Full Story (comments: none)

python-dev Summary

The May 1-15, 2006 edition of the python-dev Summary is online with coverage of the python-dev mailing list activity.

Full Story (comments: none)

Ruby

Ruby Weekly News

The June 11th, 2006 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at the latest discussions on the ruby-talk mailing list and comp.lang.ruby newsgroup.

Comments (none posted)

Tcl/Tk

Tcl your desktop (IBM)

William B. Zimmerly explores Tcl/Tk in an IBM article. "Originating with Dr. John Ousterhout of the University of California, Berkeley, and later of Sun Microsystems and Scriptics, the Tool Command Language and Tk GUI toolkit (Tcl/Tk) scripting language offers a simple and elegant way to code GUI widgets with minimal effort. Programming a computer to do something always involves at least two important issues: how it will look and how it will work. The Tcl/Tk programming language strives to makes it as painless as possible to deal with the how will it look issue; it lets you easily script GUI widgets, such as windows and buttons, and attach them to procedures (the how will it work issue)."

Comments (7 posted)

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The June 14, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: none)

Profilers

Sysprof Linux Profiler 1.0.3 announced

Version 1.0.3 of the Sysprof Linux Profiler is out with support for the latest Linux kernels. "Sysprof uses a Linux kernel module to profile the entire system, not just an individual application. Of course, sysprof handles threads and shared libraries, and applications do not have to be recompiled or instrumented. In fact they don't even have to be restarted. Just insert the kernel module and start sysprof."

Full Story (comments: none)

Valgrind 3.2.0 announced

Version 3.2.0 of Valgrind, a suite of simulation based debugging and profiling tools, is out. "Performance, especially of Memcheck, is improved, Addrcheck has been removed, Callgrind has been added, PPC64/Linux support has been added, Lackey has been improved, and MPI support has been added. In parallel with the 3.2.0 release, a new version (1.2.0) of the Valkyrie GUI is available."

Full Story (comments: none)

Page editor: Forrest Cook

Linux in the news

Recommended Reading

Mashing Up a Commons (Linux Journal)

Doc Searls muses on the Internet commons in this Linux Journal article. "Is it possible that, for all our talk about The Commons, the Net doesn't have one yet? Or at least not a complete one? That's what occurred to me last Sunday night, as Claus Dahl and I sat talking in a smoky Copenhagen bistro. The subject was public spaces. Europeans have a deep appreciation of them. Even in relatively chilly Denmark, there are plenty of outdoor cafés. Narrow streets in the older quarters join in public plazas as big as football fields. We also talked about how Americans seem to have a correspondingly elevated sense of private matters. Private enterprise, for example. Perhaps, Claus suggested, that's why the Net was commercialized first in the U.S."

Comments (none posted)

Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism (Edge.org)

Edge.org is running Jaron Lanier's criticism of the "hive mind,", which includes a couple of paragraphs on free software. "These movements are at their most efficient while building hidden information plumbing layers, such as Web servers. They are hopeless when it comes to producing fine user interfaces or user experiences. If the code that ran the Wikipedia user interface were as open as the contents of the entries, it would churn itself into impenetrable muck almost immediately. The collective is good at solving problems which demand results that can be evaluated by uncontroversial performance parameters, but it is bad when taste and judgment matter."

Comments (25 posted)

Trade Shows and Conferences

Working Model of $100 Laptop Steals MITX Spotlight (eWeek)

eWeek attends the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange where Nicholas Negroponte brought the first working model of the $100 laptop. "This working model sported many differences from the early prototypes that were seen previously. The biggest change is that the laptop no long features a directly attached crank for powering the laptop in areas without electricity--the crank has now been moved to the power supply."

Comments (2 posted)

Companies

For Dell, industry standard now includes Linux (ZDNet)

ZDNet UK looks into the increasing demand for Linux servers by Dell customers. "Long hailed as the provider of choice for companies looking for PC solutions based on Intel hardware and Microsoft software, Dell says that Linux now makes up 25 percent of its enterprise market. The company also claims to have made inroads in the Linux services market and to have reached a comfort level with Linux systems where it can now solve over 90 percent of Red Hat Linux service calls without need to involve Red Hat."

Comments (12 posted)

Symantec Ports Storage Apps To IBM's Linux Servers (InformationWeek)

InformationWeek reports on Symantec's plans to port Veritas to Linux. "IBM said Symantec is working on a port of Veritas products for its Power servers running Linux. Symantec plans to deliver to IBM's Power on Linux platform by the forth quarter high-availability, volume and file systems management software applications, said Karl Freund, vice president of System p at IBM, Armonk, N.Y. The applications include Veritas Cluster Server, Veritas Volume Replicator, Storage Foundation, and Storage Foundation for Oracle RAC. Power servers can run Red Hat or Suse distributions of Linux, Freund said, as well as Red Flag in the Asia region."

Comments (1 posted)

Business

Enterprising Linux (B-EYE-Network)

B-EYE-Network takes an introductory look at making money with Linux distributions. "Open source software companies are in a strange business: they don't usually own exclusive rights to publish the open source software they sell, and many have little or nothing to do with the development of much of the software they sell. Also, by definition, anyone can download their product -- open source software -- for free. So how does a company like Red Hat win new customers when anyone, including their potential customers and competitors, can get the source code to Red Hat's flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)? And why is that an advantage, not a problem?"

Comments (1 posted)

Legal

Anti-DRM campaign expands, faces challenges (NewsForge)

NewsForge covers the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) Defective By Design campaign. "The Free Software Foundation's (FSF) Defective By Design campaign against Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies ran into difficulties when it targeted Apple Stores across the United States on Saturday, June 10. As many as half the events were disrupted by security guards or police, while the campaign as a whole had little success in attracting mainstream media coverage. Despite the difficulties, organizers judged the event a success, both in mobilizing members of the two-week-old campaign and in educating the general public about the implications of DRM."

Comments (none posted)

Interviews

An Interview with Jeff Dike - The creator of User Mode Linux (LinuxHelp)

LinuxHelp has an interview with Jeff Dike. "Jeff Dike is the creator and maintainer of User Mode Linux (UML) - a virtual machine which runs on Linux. In recent times, UML has gained a lot of significance after Linus Torvalds incorporated the UML patch into the official Linux kernel source tree. Now a days Jeff works full time for Intel devoting his time towards further development of UML. He has also authored a book titled "User Mode Linux" published by Prentice Hall." (Thanks to Jake Balmer)

Comments (3 posted)

Oracle: The biggest Linux vendor you've never heard of (TMCnet)

TMCnet talks with Oracle hacker Wim Coekaerts about Oracle's contributions to Linux. "The Oracle database is a large, complex application that places a lot of demands on the underlying OS. When Oracle wants to experiment, changing how the OS works to optimize database performance, it's easier to do with an open source, community-driven OS than a proprietary one. Hence the number of Linux kernel contributions from Oracle engineers; as a fast research and prototyping tool, Linux can't be beat."

Comments (6 posted)

Part III: Shuttleworth on HBD, ImpiLinux, Geographical Ubuntu Appeal and Gnome v KDE (The 451 Group)

The 451 Group has published part 3 of an interview with Mark Shuttleworth interspersed with commentary from 451 Group analysts. "Shuttleworth's venture capital fund, HBD (it stands for Here Be Dragons, an allusion to the scary parts at the edges of old map coverage, which pretty much sums up Shuttleworth's Avast! attitude towards innovation) has, among other investments, invested in ImpiLinux, a localized African-language version of Ubuntu. We wondered whether the demand for this software is strong enough that it would support that kind of commercial development, say, of localized Spanish or Asian language versions of Ubuntu?"

Comments (none posted)

Resources

How To Save Traffic With Apache2's mod_deflate (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge has published a tutorial on using the Apache 2 mod_deflate module. "In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure mod_deflate on an Apache2 web server. mod_deflate allows Apache2 to compress files and deliver them to clients (e.g. browsers) that can handle compressed content which most modern browsers do. With mod_deflate, you can compress HTML, text or XML files to approx. 20 - 30% of their original sizes, thus saving you server traffic and making your modem users happier. Compressing files causes a slightly higher load on the server, but in my experience this is compensated by the fact that the clients' connection times to your server decrease a lot."

Comments (none posted)

How To Set Up suPHP With PHP4 And PHP5 (HowtoForge)

HowtoForge shows how to install and use suPHP with PHP4 and PHP5. "suPHP is a tool for executing PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners instead of the Apache user. With the help of suPHP you can also have PHP4 and PHP5 installed at the same time which I will describe at the end of this article."

Comments (2 posted)

The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, Ch. 24, by Dr. Peter H. Salus (Groklaw)

Groklaw has chapter 24 of The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, by Dr. Peter H. Salus. "Among many things, The Cluetrain Manifesto suggests that the strategem that usually accompanies buying and selling should be replaced by a true attempt at satisfying the needs, wants and desires of those on both sides of the equation. Despite their long digressions, the authors occasionally succeed in making solid, clever points that reveal fundamental flaws in the structure of traditional businesses. Consider this comment about business hierarchies: "First they assume--along with Ayn Rand and poorly socialized adolescents--that the fundamental unit of life is the individual. This despite the evidence of our senses that individuals only emerge from groups.""

Comments (1 posted)

HOWTO: Pick an open source license (part 1) (ZDNet)

Here's a ZDNet blog entry with advice on how to choose a license for a project. "Don't take this choice unless you really mean it. Many people use GPL without realizing the implications or understanding the other options, and thus lock the code away from a whole segment of potential users, so please read the rest of the choices first."

Comments (17 posted)

Reviews

CLI Magic: ext2hide veils sensitive files (Linux.com)

Linux.com takes a look at ext2hide. "ext2hide is a proof-of-concept program that seeks to magically hide confidential data and files where nobody will look for them. It accomplishes its magic by making use of otherwise abandoned space in the superblocks in ext2/ext3 filesystems. Even though Jason McManus, the author of the code, has been testing and using ext2hide on his own machines without catastrophic results, I urge you to use the utmost caution both in testing and using it. If you don't grok superblocks and filesystems, you probably should not experiment with ext2hide, at least until it's out of beta testing."

Comments (14 posted)

Gedit Review (Softpedia.com)

Softpedia.com has a review of Gedit. "My Fedora 5 just crashed after I updated it last night. I just installed the basic applications, and at this point I realized that software that's part of the daily use of almost anyone was never reviewed. Such software is gedit. It's the official text editor for the GNOME desktop environment and almost any ASCII file is opened with it when we use GNOME. It's a big possibility you didn't notice it because the attention was focused on the contents and not at all on the editor. I hope a review will be useful for letting you know what you can do with it." (Found on GnomeDesktop)

Comments (35 posted)

Glom, the point-and-click database tool (NewsForge)

NewsForge reviews Glom. "Glom is a GNOME application that provides a graphical front end to PostgreSQL database creation and maintenance. The developers claim the interface is inspired loosely by Filemaker, for what that may be worth to veterans of proprietary operating systems. I have no experience with Filemaker, but Glom still seems intuitive to use."

Comments (1 posted)

Google Earth for Linux now available (Ars Technica)

Ars Technica reviews the Linux release of Google Earth. "A beta version of Google's popular Earth browsing application has been released for Linux. Google Earth allows users to navigate across the globe, and view detailed satellite imagery of places and buildings. On a high performance computer with a decent video card and 3D acceleration, buildings in major cities can optionally be rendered in 3D. The application also provides a number of practical features, including markers to indicate the locations of restaurants and hotels and the ability to provide driving directions."

Comments (35 posted)

Miscellaneous

PCs to developing world 'fuel malware' (Register)

Our old friend Eugene Kaspersky never gives up; according to this Register article, he is now warning that systems like the OLPC will result in the creation of more malware. "'A particular cause for concern is programs which advocate cheap computers for poor third world countries,' Kaspersky writes. 'These further encourage criminal activity on the internet. Statistics on the number of malicious programs originating from specific countries confirm this: the world leader in virus writing is China, followed by Latin America, with Russia and Eastern European countries not far behind.'"

Comments (16 posted)

Tux for open sew-ers (NewsForge)

NewsForge looks at the Free Penguin Project. "Tux has gone open source in a different way. The Free Penguin Project provides free GPL sewing patterns and advice so that anyone who meets the hardware requirements can create a fluffy stuffed penguin of their own; specifically, would-be Tux tailors need access to a sewing machine and fabric. Joerg Feuerhake, the head of the project, calls the patterns "free executables.""

Comments (1 posted)

Page editor: Forrest Cook

Announcements

Non-Commercial announcements

Fighting an Australian DMCA

The free trade agreement recently signed between the U.S. and Australia requires the latter to adopt a U.S. style anti-circumvention law. That is bad enough, but the media industry is trying to get that turned into a full DMCA-style law. Linux Australia is now running a campaign to push for something more reasonable; there is a petition for Australians to print, circulate, and send in. "We ask the Parliament in the revision of these laws to clearly tie circumvention offenses to things which assist piracy, not activities such as playing our own DVDs or games without explicit permission! We ask the Parliament to commit to market freedom and competition in Australia, and refuse to provide new legal weaponry against competitive and innovative technology companies and users, such as Free and Open Source software."

Rusty Russell will be doing a live question and answer session on this issue the night of Friday, June 16 (Australian time); see the Linux Australia page for details.

Comments (1 posted)

The GNOME Women's Summer Outreach Program

The GNOME project made an interesting observation about its Summer of Code applications: "This year GNOME received 181 applications to Google's program, yet none were from women." In response, the project has decided to redirect some of the Summer of Code money into a program aimed at increasing female participation; interested female students are encouraged to put in an application for a grant. See the outreach program page for details; the application deadline is July 1.

Full Story (comments: 20)

OSDL to Mentor Four Students in This Year's Google Summer of Code Program

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has announced that it will mentor four students in Google's 2006 Summer of Code program. ""Providing mentors for Google's Summer of Code program fits hand in hand with OSDL's mission to increase adoption of Linux and open source software through collaboration with the community and industry," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "By providing guidance to students, we can expose them to a fulfilling career path and help them to have a real impact on solving challenges that will drive the use of Linux and open source software throughout the globe.""

Comments (none posted)

Commercial announcements

Arcom announces new development kit

Arcom has announced the new SBC-GX533 Development Kit. "Arcom's new Development Kit allows faster and easier development of a wide range of embedded devices in a Linux environment. The kit's SBC-GX533 board has a compact Arcom Embedded Linux image installed in its onboard Flash. All onboard hardware features are supported, allowing unrestricted access to their functionality, while all unnecessary software functions have been removed, leaving a compact image of just 13 MB."

Full Story (comments: none)

Collabora develops telephony framework for Nokia 770

Collabora Ltd. and Nokia are partnering on the development of the open-source Telepathy framework for the Nokia 770 Internet tablet. "The collaboration between the two companies has already yielded an active open source community around the framework itself. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet OS 2006 Edition uses Telepathy as the foundation of Voice Over IP and Instant Messaging functionality enabling users to communicate via text or voice with friends using Google Talk(tm) and Jabber(tm) servers across the world."

Full Story (comments: none)

Novell Enables Rapid Adoption of Identity Management

Novell has announced (click below) the Bandit project. "Bandit is a system of loosely-coupled components that provide consistent identity services and creates a community that organizes and standardizes identity-related technologies in an open way, promoting both interoperability and collaboration."

Full Story (comments: 2)

Linux from Novell Chosen by China Earthquake Administration

Novell has announced the selection of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server by the China Earthquake Administration for use in an earthquake monitoring network. "The network encompasses 41 national, provincial and metropolitan-level seismographic centers and 360 stations for large cities. CEA selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Server after several benchmark tests among the various Linux distributions available in China."

Full Story (comments: none)

OpenVZ announces support for IPv6 and Bridged Networking

OpenVZ has announced support for IPv6. "...The OpenVZ project today released its operating system-level server virtualization software technology with support for the next-generation Internet Protocol Version 6. In addition, support for bridged networking is now available, which gives OpenVZ virtual servers the ability to run software that relies on special network capabilities such as broadcasts, multicasts, or those having a MAC (media access control) address."

Comments (none posted)

Open-Xchange partners with InTech-Solutions

Open-Xchange and InTech-Solutions are partnering to provide professional services for OX 5.0, a Messaging and Collaboration Solution. "OX 5.0 is a mature product with 11 integrated collaboration modules that allows for easy migration and integration to an open source environment – allowing IT administrators to enjoy state-of-the-art collaboration without changing existing infrastructure components, i.e. databases, directory services, message transfer agents, e-mail servers or web-servers. End users can keep their favourite mail and groupware client -- most often Outlook, but also open source clients such as Kontact."

Full Story (comments: none)

Oracle's "Validated Configurations"

Here is a press release from Oracle on its new "Validated Configurations" offering. Essentially, the company runs stress tests on specific hardware and software configurations and stamps its seal of approval on those which work well. "With this new program, Oracle is focused on providing customers with faster, hassle-free deployment of Linux solutions. Oracle Validated Configurations are a result of the company's real-world testing environment and provide documented best practices, including details on what to deploy, how to deploy and the most robust hardware and software combinations."

Comments (none posted)

Terra Soft Extends HPC Offerings with IBM p5 Servers

Terra Soft Solutions has added the IBM p5 platform to its line of turn-key systems. "The p5 line-up starts with the p5 185 tower, a 32/64-bit replacement for the Apple G5 PowerMacs running Linux. The 505, 510, 520 offer dual and quad core, 64-bit configurations in 1U, 2U, and 4U rackmounts with a variety of on-board, high-throughput storage options. Higher-end p5 systems offer as many as 64 cores in a single configuration with massive on-board storage and I/O options."

Full Story (comments: none)

TimeSys Announces Major Upgrade to Embedded Linux Developer Suite

TimeSys Corporation has announced an upgrade to its Embedded Linux Developer Suite. "This latest update based on Eclipse 3.1 and CDT 3.0.1, provides an end to end solution from kernel hacking to platform application development. Interoperability with a broad collection of third-party plug-ins in the Eclipse ecosystem addresses the primary problems and unique challenges faced by embedded developers."

Full Story (comments: none)

VA Software offers free download of SFEE commercial software

VA Software has announced a free version of its SourceForge Enterprise Edition software. "The download, which includes a perpetual, no-cost license for 15 users, is available at www.vasoftware.com. Built on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition J2EE? platform, SFEE provides developers the features, scalability, reliability and robustness they expect in an enterprise-class product."

Full Story (comments: none)

VariCAD announces new mechanical CAD system

VariCAD has announced a new version of its 3D/2D mechanical CAD system. "Unlike the previous Linux versions of VariCAD, the new VariCAD 2005 3.00 requires less dependencies on system files. It allows running thesoftware on more distributions of Linux."

Full Story (comments: none)

Win4Lin announces virtual desktop server product

Win4Lin has announced availability of their new Enterprise and SMB product, Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server (VDS). "Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server allows organizations to standardize the application environment to users regardless of desktop hardware and operating system - Windows, UNIX, or Linux can be used on the client, but a common application profile can be created and served from Linux server configurations such as blade servers, rack arrays or large multi-way machines."

Full Story (comments: none)

New Books

Learning PHP & MySQL - O'Reilly's Latest Release

O'Reilly has published the book Learning PHP & MySQL by Michele E. Davis and Jon A. Phillips.

Full Story (comments: none)

Build Your Own Website The Right Way--SitePoint's latest release

SitePoint Pty. Ltd. has published the book Build Your Own Website The Right Way by Ian Lloyd.

Full Story (comments: none)

Resources

FSFE Newsletter

The June 11, 2006 edition of the Free Software Foundation Europe Newsletter is out with the latest FSFE event coverage.

Full Story (comments: none)

Announcing the MySQL Journal

A new printed MySQL Journal, known as Tabula, has been launched. "I am pleased to announce the MySQL Journal. During the past two weeks, I've been discussing the journal with MySQL AB, and the plan that's been devised benefits all involved, including authors, readers, the community, and MySQL AB."

Full Story (comments: none)

Contests and Awards

Nominations open for LinuxWorld SF Product Excellence Awards

IDG World Expo and Linux Journal have announced that nominations for the "Linux Journal Product Excellence Awards at LinuxWorld" are now being accepted.

Comments (none posted)

Surveys

Questions for deployments of GNOME

The GNOME Foundation has announced that they are conducting an informal study of GNOME deployments. "Are you a deployment of GNOME? Are you like the City of Largo, Florida, or like the districts of Extremadura and Andalucía in Spain, who have big installations of machines running GNOME? At the GNOME Foundation we are conducting a little, informal study of how we can make your lives easier." The survey questions are available here.

Comments (147 posted)

Education and Certification

TimeSys to Include embedded training in its webinar series

TimeSys Corporation has announced a new series of embedded Linux webinars, starting in June. "The latest series will offer free educational sessions and more in-depth training available to LinuxLink subscribers through the developer exchange. Both the educational and training sessions will be available via webinar, allowing attendees to interact with TimeSys experts and developers. While both sessions will be recorded and archived for convenient replay, the training curriculum will be expanded to provide an on-demand resource for subscribers."

Full Story (comments: none)

Upcoming Events

GUADEC 2006 Official Schedule (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has announced the Official Schedule for the 2006 GNOME User and Developer European Conference, which will take place in Catalonia, Spain. "GUADEC 2006 will take place from the 24th to the 30th of June this year. The week will be split into three phases: The Approach Weekend, GUADEC Core and After Hours In addition, the Core days will have three simultaneous tracks..."

Comments (none posted)

"Open and Connected" at the 2006 O'Reilly EuroOSCON

O'Reilly has announced the 2006 EuroOSCON. "EuroOSCON, the O'Reilly European Open Source Convention, has unveiled the preliminary schedule for its second annual event. With free and open source software use on the rise all across the continent, EuroOSCON creates a place for developers, sys admins, entrepreneurs, and business people working in free and open source software to come together and delve into critical issues across the spectrum of open source technologies." The event will take place in Brussels, Belgium on September 18-21, 2006.

Full Story (comments: none)

EP2006 timetable announced

The EuroPython 2006 timetable has been announced. "We have also secured Alan Kay (the inventor of OO languages, Smalltalk, opencroquet.org etc.) as a key note speaker and are happy that Guido van Rossum will make it again!"

Full Story (comments: none)

The 3rd International GPLv3 Conference

The 3rd International GPLv3 Conference will take place in Barcelona, Spain on June 22 and 23, 2006. "The current schedule includes presentations by Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Georg Greve, as well as panels addressing the key issues of DRM, software patents, and license internationalization."

Full Story (comments: none)

Announcing the Ubucon

The Ubucon conference for Ubuntu users, developers and admins will take place on August 18 and 19, following the LinuxWorld San Francisco conference.

Full Story (comments: none)

Events: June 15 - August 10, 2006

Date Event Location
June 15 - 16, 2006New York PHP Conference and Expo 2006(New Yorker Hotel)New York, NY
June 16 - 18, 2006Recon 2006(Plaza Hotel Centre-Ville)Montreal, Canada
June 18 - 23, 2006Ubuntu Developer SummitCharles de Gaulle, Paris, France
June 19 - 22, 2006Collaborative Technologies Conference(Seaport Hotel)Boston, MA
June 22 - 23, 20063rd International GPLv3 ConferenceBarcelona, Spain
June 24 - 25, 2006Free and Open Source Conference(FrOSCon)(St. Augustin)Bonn, Germany
June 24 - 30, 20062006 GNOME Users and Developers European Conference(GUADEC)Catalonia, Spain
June 24 - 25, 2006PHP VikingerSkien, Norway
June 27 - 29, 2006Corporate Channel and Computing Expo(C3)(Jacob K. Javits Convention Center)New York, NY
June 28 - 30, 2006GCC and GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit(Ottawa Congress Centre)Ottawa, Canada
June 29 - July 2, 2006UKUUG Linux Technical Conference(University of Sussex)Brighton, UK
June 30 - July 1, 2006WebTech 2006(Kempinski Hotel Zografski)Sofia, Bulgaria
July 3 - 4, 20063rd European Lisp WorkshopNantes, France
July 3 - 5, 2006EuroPython 2006(CERN)Geneva, Switzerland
July 4 - 8, 20067th Libre Software Meeting(LSM)(Nancy 1 University)Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy, France
July 5 - 8, 2006V Jornades de Programari LliureBarcelona, Spain
July 8 - 9, 2006PostgreSQL Anniversary SummitToronto, Canada
July 10 - 11, 2006Global db4o User Conference(dUC)(Imperial College, South Kensington)London, UK
July 13 - 14, 2006Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment(DIMVA)Berlin, Germany
July 15 - 16, 2006Crystal Space Conference(University of Aachen)Aachen, Germany
July 16 - 19, 20062nd International Symposium on Free/Open Source Software, Technologies and Content(FOSSTEC 2006)Orlando, Florida, USA
July 19 - 22, 2006Ottawa Linux Symposium 2006(OLS 2006)Ottawa, Canada
July 22 - 23, 2006LugRadio Live(Wolverhampton University)Wolverhampton, UK
July 24 - 28, 2006O'Reilly Open Source Convention(OSCON 2006)Portland, Oregon
July 29 - August 3, 2006Black Hat USA 2006 Briefings and Training(Caesars Palace)Las Vegas, NV
August 4 - 6, 2006DEF CON 14(Riviera Hotel)Las Vegas, NV
August 4 - 6, 2006Wikimania(Harvard Law School)Cambridge, MA
August 4 - 6, 2006Vancouver Python WorkshopVancouver, BC, Canada
August 8 - 10, 2006Flash Memory Summit(Wyndham Hotel)San Jose, CA

Comments (none posted)

Event Reports

Talks from the Red Hat Summit

Videos from the keynote talks at the recently-concluded Red Hat Summit have been posted in several formats. Currently-available talks include Matthew Szulik, Cory Doctorow, and Eben Moglen. Those of you who have never seen Eben speak can get a good introduction by watching his short presentation at this event.

Comments (7 posted)

Page editor: Forrest Cook


Copyright © 2006, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds