Development

The Sussen Security Scanner

The Sussen security scanner project is designed to assist in scanning for security vulnerabilities on remote hosts.

"Sussen is a security scanner which remotely tests computers or other devices and provides a report on their vulnerabilities."

A brief summary of Sussen features includes:

• Support for the GNOME desktop environment.
• Works with a number of free and commercial databases.
• Includes Python-language security testing software.
• Produces a variety of customizable reports.
• Has built-in druid windows for common tasks.
• Includes policy and plugin editors.
• Configuration is XML-based.
• Includes language translations.
• Has a built-in help system.

Sussen consists of three components, Sussen, Sussen-sensor, and Sussen-plugins.

• Sussen is the user interface for the GNOME environment.
• Sussen-sensor is the server component that carries out the security scans.
• Sussen-plugins are Python based security tests that are used by Sussen and Sussen-sensor.

Recently, new versions of the project have been coming out at a rate of one per month. This week, version 0.9 was announced. The release includes bug fixes and quite a long list of new features to the three components. The release came out with this caveat: "Sussen is not currently suited for production use. Many features are incomplete or not working at all." Nonetheless, Sussen could still prove to be useful to the system administrator who is looking to find and plug security holes on their network.

A brief attempt at installation of the three RPMs for the latest version of Sussen resulted in a long list (16 items) of failed dependencies. Those wishing to install Sussen on Red Hat 9 may end up spending some time hunting for extra RPMs.

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ALSA 1.0.2a released

Version 1.0.2a of the ALSA sound driver has been released. "It should fix most of 2.6 kernel compilation problems and adds RME HDSP MADI (hdspm) driver."

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Planet CCRMA Changes

The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of Audacity, terminatorX, Hydrogen, and the TAP Plugins.

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PostgreSQL Weekly News

The PostgreSQL Weekly News for February 2, 2004 is available, with a look at new features, bug squashing, and more.

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BusyBox 1.0.0-pre6 released

BusyBox, a toolkit consisting of command line utilities, is nearing version 1.0.0 with the pre-6 release. "This release adds a number of size optimizations, updates udhcp, fixes up 2.6 modutils support, updates ash and the shell command line editing, and the usual pile of bug fixes both large and small. Things appear to be settling down now, so with a bit of luck and some testing perhaps we can finish off the -pre series in February and move on to the final 1.0.0 release..."

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PyKota 1.17 released

Version 1.17 of PyKota, a print quota system, has been announced. "This new release fixes a problem when using software accounting within the new CUPS backend : users were incorrectly charged for jobs they were correctly denied to print when they were above quota."

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Secure programmer: Countering buffer overflows (IBM developerWorks)

David A. Wheeler explores buffer overflow vulnerabilities in C and C++ programs. "This article discusses the top vulnerability in Linux/UNIX systems: buffer overflows. This article first explains what buffer overflows are and why they're both so common and so dangerous. It then discusses the new Linux and UNIX methods for broadly countering them -- and why these methods are not enough."

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Cooking with Apache, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)

Rich Bowen and Ken Coar go into the details of Apache configuration on O'Reilly. "Last month, we published our first batch of recipes from the recently released Apache Cookbook. This week, we've excerpted three more samples. Find out how to make part of your web site available via SSL, how to place a CGI program in a directory that contains non-CGI documents, and how to redirect a 404 ("not found") page to another page (such as the front page of the site) in these latest samplings."

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Nvu 0.1 Released (MozillaZine)

Nvu version 0.1 has been announced. "Version 0.1 of Nvu, the open-source Web development tool based on Mozilla Composer, has just been released."

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Perl port of Lucene search engine (use Perl)

Use Perl mentions Kasei, a port of the Lucene search engine from Java to Perl.

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Plone 2.0 Release Candidate 4 available. (SourceForge)

Release Candidate #4 of Plone 2.0, a content management system, has been announced. "A new Release Candidate of the highly anticipated Plone 2.0 is ready, this time with a lot of migration fixes."

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What's New in Tomcat 5 (O'ReillyNet)

Jason Brittain reviews the latest version of Apache Tomcat on O'Reilly. "On Dec. 3, 2003, the Apache Tomcat developers released their latest version of the popular open source Java servlet and JSP container, version 5.0.16, as the first stable release of Tomcat 5. If you're already running Tomcat 4, you'll be happy to know that Tomcat 5 is easy to migrate to, and has many new features that make it advantageous to upgrade. In this article, we'll take a look at the latest features in Tomcat 5."

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The Ox Documentation Tool (O'Reilly)

Michael Fitzgerald introduces Ox on O'Reilly. "Ox is a simple documentation tool for people who regularly work at the shell or command-prompt level. It's a command-line Java program that accepts a keyword or term as input and then returns documentation for that term. It's free, open source software (BSD license), and because it uses Java properties, it's easily extensible by non-programmers."

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Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 2.3 Released

Version 2.3 of the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard was released. The new top-level directories /srv and /media have been added, among other things.

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Mono 0.30 released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.30 of Mono, an open-source implementation of the .NET framework, has been announced. "This is mostly a fine tuning release: bug fixing and performance improvements are the major benefits, but new classes and new features are also included."

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PIKT 1.16.1 released

Version 1.16.1 of PIKT, the Problem Informant/Killer Tool, has been announced. "PIKT is a cross-categorical toolkit for monitoring and configuring systems, organizing system security, formatting documents, assisting command-line work, and performing other common systems administration tasks."

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Gnomoradio 0.9.1 Released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.9.1 of Gnomoradio, a peer-to-peer music player for Gnome, is out. "This is a small bugfix release that fixes an abort on startup if the song status pixmaps are not found."

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Tkeca 4.0.2 Released!

Version 4.0.2 of Tkeca, a GUI interface to the Ecasound audio utility, is out. This release fixes a bug in the mixdown properties window.

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WaveSurfer 1.6.1 released

Version 1.6.1 of WaveSurfer, an audio file editing package, is out. This release fixes one bug and adds new sound information to the message bar.

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GNOME Development Release 2.5.3 (GnomeDesktop)

Development Release 2.5.3 of the GNOME desktop environment has been announced. "This release is a snapshot of development code. Although it is buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking purposes."

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GNOME in the Year of the Monkey (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org summarizes some of the GNOME developments last year. "Tim Ney, the executive director of the GNOME Foundation (and unsung hero) has written up a very informative account of foundation happenings over the last year as well as looking into the future. Highlights include an overview of various GNOME deployments over the last year, a new GNOME book in the works and outreach and advocacy efforts."

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The GNOME/Scoop sidebar proposal

Paul Hendrick has proposed a new sidebar for GNOME. "In terms of UI, it's vaguely similar, in terms of the kind of program it would be - it's nothing like dashboard. Really, scoop is just a new type of container widget, which embeds other widgets within itself."

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Gnome Summary (GnomeDesktop)

The GNOME Summary for January 25-31, 2004 is out. "This week's GNOME Summary is now available, featuring news about the GNOME booth in Solutions Linux in Paris. We are also looking for web developers to help with adding more features to the GNOME Summaries."

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KDE 3.2 released

The announcement for the KDE 3.2 release has gone out. See the announcement for a quick summary of what's new; we also ran a review of KDE 3.2 in the January 29 LWN Weekly Edition.

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KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The January 30, 2004 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is online, here's the summary: "Kttsd (text to speech) improves with gui and speaker plugins. KStars adds star motions. And many bugfixes in KDevelop and Khtml."

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A new XFree86 license

David Dawes has sent out an announcement for version 1.1 of the XFree86 license, which will take effect with the 4.4 release. Says David: "The purpose of these changes is to strengthen the 'except claim you wrote it' clause of the Project's licensing philosophy regarding binary distributions of XFree86." To achieve this goal, the license now includes something that resembles the old BSD advertising clause. (Thanks to Andres Salomon and Paul Sladen).

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Release Notes for XFree86 4.4.0

A new version of the XFree86 4.4.0 Release Notes are available. Here is the announcement. "We have brushed upon this before but now it's here.: the 4.4.0 pre-Release Notes in DocBook format. We call it DocNotes. We hope you call it Splendid!"

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NG-SPICE rework 15 released

A new release of NG-SPICE, an electronic circuit simulation package, is available.

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New PyGame releases

New Python-based games releases from the PyGame project include Pydance 0.9 and Bluevade 2.5.

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WorldForge Weekly News

The February 2, 2004 edition of the WorldForge Weekly News is out with the latest development news from the WorldForge game project.

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fl-inventor 1.0.0 is available

Version 1.0.0 of the Fl-Inventor Toolkit, which is used for developing 3D/VR applications, has been announced "Yes, this is the first 1.0.x major release ! The most complete & stable release to date."

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GIMP Animation Package for GIMP 2.0 (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org looks at GIMP-GAP, a newly released animation package for the GIMP. "GIMP-GAP is a set of plug-ins for the GIMP-2.0 that extends GIMP for creation of animations based on a series of frame images. GIMP-GAP is the next development step of the Video Menu that once was part of gimp-1.2."

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GIMP Plug-In Template for GIMP 2.0 (GnomeDesktop)

An updated version of the GIMP Plug-In Template has been announced. "The gimp-plugin-template is essentially an empty GIMP plug-in that is supposed to be useful when you are about to write a more complex GIMP plug-in from scratch. It provides a complete build environment using autoconf/automake, a framework for internationalization, the infrastructure for providing gimp-help and some example user interface code."

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GIMP FreeType Plug-In for GIMP-2.0

A new version of the GIMP FreeType Plug-In has been announced. "The text tool in GIMP 2.0 has improved a lot and in a lot of ways it is even superiour to the GIMP FreeType Plug-In. But there are still a few things that only the plug-in can do and that's why there's now a release for GIMP 2.0."

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GIMP 2.0pre3 Released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 2.0 pre 3 of the GIMP has been announced.

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PLplot version 5.3.0 released

Version 5.3.0 of PLplot, a scientific plotting package, is out. "Release 5.3.0 substantially updates the C++ and Fortran interfaces to the C PLplot library (to the level of our existing Python, Java, Tcl/Tk, Octave, and Yorick interfaces). It also makes the configuration/build system more robust allowing successful installations on platforms like Linux, Solaris, OSF1, MacOS X, Cygwin, and Windows."

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Qt 3.3 released

Trolltech has announced the release of Qt 3.3. New features include .NET, IPv6, and 64-bit support.

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The Independent Qt Tutorial

A new version of The Independent Qt Tutorial has been published, here are the changes: "Added two new chapters. Chapter eight is a complete re-write, chapter nine is completely new (credits to Michael Goettsche for proofing and feedback). Some minor updates have been made too."

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Samba 3.0.2rc2 Available for Download

Release Candidate #2 for Samba 3.0.2 is out. "This is mostly a cleanup of some minor issues in 3.0.2rc1."

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Yet Another Java Based FOSS PMS application (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews looks at openPMS, a java based medical Practice Management System.

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galan 0.3.0 beta 3 announced

Version 0.3.0 beta 3 of galan, the graphical Audio language, is out. "This version has several fixes for loading files. so if you tried out some earlier 0.3.0 and could not load your files back in. then try again."

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simsam 0.1.6 released

Version 0.1.6 of simsam, a MIDI sample playback program, is out with lots of changes.

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Epiphany 1.1.6 released

Version 1.1.6 of Epiphany, a lightweight web browser for GNOME, has been announced. Changes include interface improvements, bug fixes, new documentation, and improved translations.

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Epiphany Extensions 0.7 released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 1.1.7 of the Epiphany browser has been announced. "Not much has changed since the recent Epiphany 1.1.6 release, but this new one has typo fixes, downloader view fixes and a crash fix in the extensions manager."

Also, version 0.7 of Epiphany extensions is out. "This release of Epiphany was made especially to cope with Epiphany Extensions, which are self-contained pieces of code which alter the behavior of Epiphany. Epiphany Extensions 0.7 has been released, which now contains extensions for mouse gestures, per-site popup blocking, extra options in the Tabs menu, a Javascript and HTML page validator (local validation of HTML with the same precision as validator.w3.org), an SSL certificate viewer and a Dashboard frontend."

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Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)

The Mozilla Independent Status Reports are out for February 2, 2004. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from Urlnav, Weather, Dictionary Search, easyGestures and QuickNote."

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Lynx 2.8.5 pre 5 released

Version 2.8.5 pre 5 of Lynx, a text-mode browser, is available for download. Change information is in the source code.

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Mozilla Links Newsletter

Issue #12 of the Mozilla Links Newsletter is out with more Mozilla browser news.

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AbiWord Weekly News

Issue #179 of the AbiWord Weekly News is available. "As you would have noticed, 2.0.3 didn't come out, but it certainly will next week! Meantime, the Windows Installer is now available in numerous languages, instructions are included for MacOS X users who might want to try playing with AbiWord early, there's discussion about making BiDirectional text manipulation purely optional, and AbiWord's first Arabic translation just committed! Or, maybe, we're guessing; well, I'm guessing."

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A Dozen Ways to Get the Testing Bug in the New Year (O'Reilly)

Mike Clark talks about Java testing on O'Reilly. "Test-driven development received a lot of attention in 2003, and the interest will grow in 2004. For good reason: everyone agrees testing is important, but now many respected programmers are claiming that by writing tests first, they see better designs emerge. These same programmers quickly point out that test-driven development makes them feel more productive and less stressed. At the end of a shorter programming day they've built a suite of passing tests and code with better designs. Sound too good to be true? Well, there's nothing to lose in giving it a whirl. In fact, there's much to be gained."

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Cultured Perl: Fun with MP3 and Perl, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)

Teodor Zlatanov works on MP3 data with Perl on IBM's developerWorks. "Ted continues his look at manipulating and guessing MP3 tags with Perl, FreeDB, and various CPAN models via his autotag.pl application."

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This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)

This week on Perl 6 for January 25, 2004 is out with the latest Perl 6 news.

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PHP 4.3.5RC2 is available

Version 4.3.5RC2 of PHP has been released. "This is likely to be the last release candidate prior to the final release, so please test it as much as possible."

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PHP Weekly Summary for February 2, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for February 2, 2004 is out. Topics include: Remove value from PHP, Session remarks, Building multiple SAPIs at once, Remove gpc_order, Include/Require and parse errors.

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MySQL Crash Course, Part 3 (O'Reilly)

John Coggeshall continues his PHP series on O'Reilly. "I will wrap up my crash-course series on MySQL by discussing some useful functions available when using SQL and PHP, introducing a clause or two for the SELECT statement, and explaining a few of the principles behind relating one table to another (after all, it is a "relational" database system)."

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for February 3, 2004 is available, with weekly news and links for the Python community.

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PEP 237 - Decimal Data Type

PEP 237 for the Python language, a proposal for a Decimal Data Type, has been announced by Facundo Batista. "The idea is to have a Decimal data type, for every use where decimals are needed but binary floating point is too inexact."

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Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The February 2, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL is out with links to more Tcl/Tk articles.

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A survey of XML standards: Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)

Uche Ogbuji continues his IBM developerWorks series on XML standards with part 2. "The world of XML is vast and growing, with a huge variety of standards and technologies that interact in complex ways. It can be difficult for beginners to navigate the most important aspects of XML, and for users to keep track of new entries and changes in the space. Uche Ogbuji continues this series on XML standards by focusing on XML processing technologies."

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Ximian Build Buddy released as GPL (GnomeDesktop)

The Ximian Build System has been released under the GNU GPL license. "The Ximian Build System, Build Buddy, is now available to the community, in GPL form. This is a very exciting moment, and one that many of us at Ximian have been hoping would come.Build Buddy is a cross-platform packaging system designed with flexibility, reproducibility, and automation in mind."

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Anjuta 1.2.1 released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 1.2.1 of Anjuta is available. "Anjuta is a versatile IDE for C and C++, written for GTK/GNOME. Features include project management, application wizards, an onboard interactive debugger, and a powerful source editor with browsing and syntax highlighting. This is a bugfix release but also includes some new features."

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The New Breed of Version Control Systems (O'ReillyNet)

Shlomi Fish investigates several alternatives to CVS on O'Reilly. "CVS, part of the glue that holds open source development together, is showing its age. Many competitors have emerged recently, fixing misfeatures and adding new ideas. Shlomi Fish explores several current open source version control systems that may be better than CVS for your needs."

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CORBA, Part I (Linux Journal)

Gerry Pocock introduces CORBA on Linux Journal. "CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) is a specification for an architecture that provides support for invoking methods in objects that may exist in a different process. The CORBA architecture is based on the concept of a common object."

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Basic use of pthreads (IBM developerWorks)

Peter Seebach introduces POSIX threads on IBM's developerWorks. "Threads strike fear into the hearts of many programmers. UNIX's process model is simple and well understood, but it is sometimes inefficient. Threading can often allow for substantial improvements in performance, at the cost of a little confusion. This article demystifies the POSIX thread interface, providing practical examples of threaded code for consideration."

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