Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 180[1] for the week ending June 14,
2009.
In this week's issue, we open with useful links announcing the
'hot-off-the-bitpress' Fedora 11 (Leonidas) release, and also reminders
about voting for the code name for Fedora 12 and other Fedora elections.
There are many FUDCons, FADs and other Fedora events, helpfully listed
as well. From Planet Fedora, two interesting samples: news from Fedora
blogs and contributors including an interview with Eric Sandeen about
ext4, linux filesystems and Fedora 11, and rave reviews on Presto,
Fedora 11's enhanced DeltaRPM service that can be configured. In the
Quality Assurance beat, review of the Bugzappers weekly meeting and
changes this will have to triage work, as well as availability of a set
of Fedora 11 delta ISO images. In Translation news, announcement of new
localization team members for Norwegian and Arabic, and reports on work
to convert the Translation Quick Start Guide (TQSG) to a format usable
by Publican. In Design team news, detail on the recent discussion to
potentially redesign the fedoraproject.org homepage, and summary of a
heated debate over distribution branding in general and spins in
particular. The 20 year-old hacker e-zine, Phrack 66, is noted in the
Security Week beat along with a Firefox security update, and in
virtualization news, details on how to add a custom-built vm to
virt-manager, and discussion about how to restrict VNC to specific VMs
per guest. We finish this week's issue off with AskFedora, which answers
general questions posed by the community. In this installment, find out
what Fedora's official policy on Mono is. Read on, and enjoy!
If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page[2]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list@xxxxxxxxxx
FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue180
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join
-- Announcements --
In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project[1] [2] [3].
Contributing Writer: Max Spevack
1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/
2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events
--- Fedora 11 (Leonidas) ---
This week brought the official release of Fedora 11, complete with
release announcement[1] and third-party repos[2].
Check out the Fedora 11 tour[3] for more information about features and
screenshots.
Similarly, as Fedora 9 moves closer to its end-of-life, no new Fedora 9
CVS branches are allowed[4].
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-June/msg00006.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-June/msg00007.html
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_tour
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-June/msg00004.html
--- Elections ---
The current round of Fedora elections is currently taking place. All the
information[1] that you need for voting is included in the reference link.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-June/msg00004.html
--- FUDCons and FADs ---
This section previews upcoming Fedora Users & Developers Conferences, as
well as upcoming Fedora Activity Days.
---- Fedora Activity Day: Southeast Linuxfest ----
A Fedora Activity Day focused on documentation[1] will accompany
Southeast Linuxfest this weekend (June 14th).
About 10 people will be participating, and a variety of activities are
planned, with more details available by following the reference link.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_SELF
---- FUDCon Porto Alegre 2009 ----
FUDCon Porto Alegre[1] will take place June 24-27 in Brazil. About 30
people have signed up so far, and we're hopeful for an attendance of
over 100.
If you would like more information, please visit the wiki page.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:LATAM_2009
---- FUDCon Berlin 2009 ----
FUDCon Berlin[1] will be held from June 26-28, and we're got almost 150
people pre-registered for the event.
If you would like more information, please visit the wiki page.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009
---- Upcoming Events ----
Consider attending or volunteering at an event near you!
June 13: Southeast Linuxfest[1] in Clemson, South Carolina.
June 14: Docs FAD @ Southeast Linuxfest[2] in Clemson, South Carolina
June 17-19: Open Source Bridge[3] in Portland, Oregon.
June 24-27: FUDCon Porto Alegre[4] in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
June 24-27: LinuxTag[5] in Berlin, Germany.
June 26-28: FUDCon Berlin[6] in Berlin, Germany.
1. http://southeastlinuxfest.org/
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAD_SELF
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OSBRIDGE_2009
4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDConLATAM2009
5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxTag2009
6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDConBerlin2009
-- Planet Fedora --
In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora[1] - an
aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.
Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin
1. http://planet.fedoraproject.org
--- General ---
Jack Aboutboul interviewed[1] Eric Sandeen, "renown file system hacker,
Red Hat Engineer and Fedora Contributor" about ext4, Linux filesystems
and Fedora 11.
Bryan Clark created[2] a Jetpack[3] (the new extension framework for
Firefox) addon to detect mid-air collisions in Bugzilla before hitting
the submit button.
Udit Sharma collected[4] more than 70 Firefox-themed wallpapers from
around the interwebs, for your viewing pleasure.
Peter Hutterer continued[5] his series on XI2, the new X11 Input API.
"In this part, I will cover how to query and modify the device
hierarchy." Sample code included.
Mel Chua has worked[6] to bring "open-source educational technology to
the Philippines. The OLPC and Sugar projects serve as convenient
starting places for this." Along the way, objections were raised, to
which Mel posted[7] "Responses to objections on transparency" which can
serve as a starting point for other projects experiencing similar issues.
Andreas Thienemann traveled[8] to Amsterdam, and ended up having a
productive conversation with airport security:
"I was asked to take my notebook out of my bag and put it on the
belt by itself. Easily done. Usually the security guys ask you to switch
it on for a moment. No idea why that is though.
Anyway, this time it was a bit different, the security guy asked me
if the notebook sporting the Linux advertisement (lovingly applied by
Alex Maier) is actually running Linux. After confirming this and stating
that it's only natural as I've been with Red Hat in the past, was
wearing my Spacewalk Hacker shirt and am still doing Fedora work, the
guy was very happy as he seemingly could vent his frustration with Linux
at someone knowledgable."
Peter Gordon wrote[9] about some of his favorite new features in Fedora
11, including Presto: "Size of all updates downloaded from
Presto-enabled repositories: 14M Size of updates that would have been
downloaded if Presto wasn't enabled: 128M This is a savings of 89 percent"
Ryan Lerch mentioned[10] that in Fedora 11, Ctrl+Alt+Backspace no longer
immediately and forcibly kills the X server, but posted instructions for
how to easily re-enable such functionality.
Matthew Garrett hacked[11] the new Palm Pre to see what goes on behind
the scenes and also noted that "It's recognisably Linux in a way the
Android isn't."
Michael DeHaan wondered[12] about the "Just Works" philosophy in
operating systems, and whether Fedora should go after OS X in this respect.
Matt Domsch suggested[13] that split-media CDs should be killed off for
Fedora 12 (and included statistics to back up why this would be a good
idea).
Steven Moix noticed[14] that there are a lot of different options to
choose from on the Download[15] page, which may cause confusion for new
users. A possible solution follows.
1.
http://jaboutboul.blogspot.com/2009/06/fedora-11-and-ext4-straight-bits.html
2. http://clarkbw.net/blog/2009/06/08/the-pattern-is-not-full/
3. https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/
4. http://uditsharma.in/?p=41
5. http://who-t.blogspot.com/2009/06/xi2-recipies-part-2.html
6.
http://blog.melchua.com/2009/06/08/radical-transparency-guys-it-doesnt-work-retroactively/
7.
http://blog.melchua.com/2009/06/08/responses-to-objections-on-transparency/
8.
http://blog.vodkamelone.de/archives/154-No-good-deed-goes-unpunished..html
9. http://thecodergeek.com/post/200
10.
http://ryanler.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/controlaltbackspace-shortcut-does-not-restart-the-x-server-in-fedora-11/
11. http://mjg59.livejournal.com/111453.html
12. http://michaeldehaan.net/2009/06/10/just-works/
13. http://domsch.com/blog/?p=85
14. http://www.alphatek.info/2009/06/13/fedora-marketing-feedback/
15. http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora
-- QualityAssurance --
In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1].
Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA
--- Test Days ---
There was no Test Day last week, as we finally released Fedora 11.
Currently, no Test Day is scheduled for next week - it is still very
early in the Fedora 12 cycle. If you would like to propose a test day
which could result in changes for post-release updates for Fedora 11, or
an early test day for Fedora 12, please contact the QA team via email or
IRC, or file a ticket in QA Trac[1].
1. https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/
--- Weekly meetings ---
The QA group weekly meeting[1] was to be held on 2009-06-10, but was
cancelled for the week due to many key group members being busy with the
Fedora Development Cycle Activity Day[2]. Next week's meeting will cover
the ground.
The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[3] was held on 2009-06-09. The full
log is available[4]. The group discussed revising the components and
active triagers page[5], as is traditional at the start of a new release
cycle. Adam Williamson suggested that, once the planned change to have
the FAS 'triagers' group automatically grant membership of the
'fedorabugs' group, have new members apply to 'triagers' rather than
'fedorabugs', and ensure all current triagers are members of 'triagers'
went through, the 'triagers' group membership list should become the
canonical source of active triagers. The group agreed, but also decided
to keep the Wiki page up to date. There was some discussion about
whether changes directly from FAS, or from FAS via the triage metrics
system, could be automatically fed into the Wiki page, but no decision
was reached. In the end, Niels Haase volunteered to update the page by hand.
Edward Kirk proposed removing yum and anaconda from the list of
components requiring triage, as their maintainers did not want help from
the Bugzappers group. This prompted Adam Williamson to report that he
had been working on engaging the kernel and anaconda teams in the
Bugzappers process, at the request of James Laska. Andy Lindeberg, who
currently works on triaging anaconda, is working on a Wiki page that
will document the process used in Bugzilla by the anaconda team, and
then Adam will try to work with her and the Bugzappers group to
reconcile the process with the normal Bugzappers process.
Matej Cepl pointed out that the group had made a conscious decision at
the start of the Fedora 11 cycle not to triage kernel bugs, as in the
past it had taken a lot of time for little result. However, two group
members - Brennan Ashton and Richard June - said they were interested in
attempting some kernel triage, if a good process could be found. Adam
Williamson promised to continue the discussion with the kernel
maintainers and bring in Edward and Richard with a view to agreeing a
workable process for kernel bug triage.
The next QA weekly meeting will be held on 2009-06-17 at 1600 UTC in
#fedora-meeting, and the next Bugzappers weekly meeting on 2009-06-16 at
1500 UTC in #fedora-meeting.
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Meetings
2.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_Fedora_Development_Cycle_2009
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings
4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Meetings/Minutes-2009-Jun-09
5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/Components_and_Triagers
--- Fedora 11 Delta ISO availability ---
Andre Robatino announced[1] that he had built and made available delta
ISOs - files containing the difference between two ISO images, allowing
the reconstruction of the latest final image - for Fedora 11 final
release, from the Fedora 11 preview image. He also noted that he had
built but could not publish ISOs for Fedora 10 to Fedora 11, and
suggested that these could be provided as torrents on the official
Fedora torrent tracker, but this has not yet been adopted.
1.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-June/msg00336.html
--- Components and Triagers page revision ---
Niels Haase announced[1] that he had revised the Components and Triagers
page as agreed at the weekly Bugzappers meeting, to list only triagers
known to be active. He recommended everyone check the diff for his
changes[2], and make appropriate corrections if they had been
incorrectly added to, removed from or kept on the list.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-June/msg00401.html
2.
http://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=BugZappers%2FComponents_and_Triagers&diff=107583&oldid=107350
--- QA, Bugzappers and others involvement in release documentation ---
A post[1] by Scott Robbins, suggesting a particular issue in Fedora 11
be noted on the download page, led to an extensive discussion of how
those involved in the QA and BugZappers group, as well as those involved
in front-line user support, could best document important issues at
release time. Adam Williamson opposed documenting common problems on the
download page as it would be hard to draw a line to prevent too
extensive a list of problems complicating the page and discouraging
people from downloading Fedora at all[2]. In that post and others in the
thread, Adam advocated trying to have all teams contribute known issues
to a well-defined set of canonical pages, so that these pages would gain
widespread use and acceptance among the community, particularly the
Release Notes and Common Bugs pages. Adam also suggested[3] that members
of the QA, BugZappers and other teams with an interest in documenting
significant issues with releases should join the Documentation
project[4] in order to improve the communication between these teams and
the docs team, and hopefully ensure that future Release Notes cover all
the material they would like to see covered.
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-June/msg00345.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-June/msg00347.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2009-June/msg00370.html
4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs_Project
-- Translation --
This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n)
Project[1].
Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N
--- Changes to translate.fedoraproject.org ---
The translate.fedoraproject.org page now points directly to the main
page of the Transifex instance[1]. This move and related changes were
waiting to be implemented when the freeze on Fedora Infrastructure was
slated to be lifted post the release of Fedora 11[2].
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-June/msg00076.html
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue169#FLP_Meeting
--- TQSG Transformed to Publican Format ---
The Translation Quick Start Guide (TQSG) was converted[1] to a format
suitable for compilation by the Document compilation tool Publican.
Additionally, Shankar Prasad from the Kannada team has reviewed the
Guide and posted his suggestions for change[2].
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-June/msg00041.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-June/msg00068.html
--- FLP Meeting Proposed ---
Runa Bhattacharjee put forward a proposal[1] for the next meeting of
FLP, following the Retrospective meeting of Fedora 11 on June 16th[2].
The date under consideration is currently June 18th, 1900 UTC[3].
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-June/msg00060.html
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-June/msg00054.html
3.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-June/msg00110.html
--- New members in FLP ---
Ahmed Alhosiny (Arabic) and Sindre Wetjen (Norwegian) joined the Fedora
Localization Project last week[1].
1.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-trans-list/2009-June/msg00073.html
-- Artwork --
In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team[1].
Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei
1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork
--- A New Design for the Fedora Frontpage ---
Máirín Duffy posted[1] on @design-team a mockup idea for a
fedoraproject.org front page redesign "I don't know if it's a good idea
or feasible to redo our look & feel yet again. I do think our current
site is a bit too sparse though." Ricky Zhou (周家杰) appreciated[2] it
for styling "I like the large tabs and your colors[]... From a CSS point
of view, this layout would probably be a lot simpler than what we have
now, which is great" with some concerns about some elements "Another
thing that I'm a bit worried about is that the placement of the banner
might look a bit strange right next to the large banner on the left
side". Henrik Heigl also apreciated it[3] "Wow, its cool" but haslo had
some concerns "Also I personaly dislike 2 things on such a design[...]
that first the navigation is on the right side and not on the left side
as most people would expect it[...] and second this
textbased-sidemap-thingy at the bottom". On the contrary, the position
of the navigation block was one of Nicu Buculei's favorite parts[4] "I
*love* you moved the navigation bar on the right", who pleaded for
simplicity, easy readability and not-fixed (liquid) layouts.
1.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000141.html
2.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000143.html
3.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000146.html
4.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000169.html
--- About Branding ---
A heated debate was fired after Ujjwol Lamichhane forwarded[1] to
@design-team a controversial article about KDE and distribution branding
in artwork[2] from the prominent KDE developer Aaron Seigo. It was seen
as not useful[3] by Kevin Kofler "don't think this offer is of much
value to Fedora at this point because we don't have our logo in the
wallpaper anyway" and Jaroslav Reznik "Short conclusion: we have to lost
our Fedora identity...", two of the top Fedora KDE contributors.
William Jon McCann was more radical[4] "Eventually, the Fedora board
will realize that today's conception of spins is a failed experiment and
force this change" and suggested Fedora KDE contributors should go the
Kubuntu way "If I were working on a KDE desktop that is based on Fedora
packages the first thing I would do is make sure I differentiate it from
Fedora since Fedora is a GNOME based project - and that is not going to
change[...] his is not a new idea - Kubuntu has been doing this for
years now". He was countered[5] by Jeroen van Meeuwen "GNOME is not
upstream for Fedora in it's entirety. Without GNOME, there would still
be a viable Fedora Project. Where did you get the impression Fedora is a
GNOME based project?" who defended the spins concept "Today's conception
of spins is not a failed experiment although maybe in your opinion it
doesn't meet your personal needs and/or expectations" and outlined the
Fedora KDE spin as a positive example "I think the KDE spin in this
regard has been one of the most outstanding examples of building a
show-case spin exactly doing what is the purpose of spins to begin with."
1.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000165.html
2. http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2009/06/building-brand-together.html
3.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000175.html
4.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000178.html
5.
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/design-team/2009-June/000181.html
-- Security Week --
In this section, we highlight the security stories from the week in Fedora.
Contributing Writer: JoshBressers
--- Phrack 66 ---
Phrack 66[1] came out this week. If you're not aware, Phrack is the
longest running hacker zine, it's impressive that after more than 20
years, it's still going.
--- Firefox 3.0.11 ---
Yet another security update for Firefox was released, be sure to update,
it's important. [2]
1. http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=66
2.
http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox30.html#firefox3.0.11
-- Virtualization --
In this section, we cover discussion of Fedora virtualization
technologies on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-virt,
@fedora-xen-list, and @libvirt-list lists.
Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley
--- Fedora Virtualization List ---
This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list.
---- Adding a VM to Virtual Machine Manager ----
Dennis J. asked[1] "How do I add a custom-built vm to
image:Echo-package-16px.pngvirt-manager?"
This is a two step process with a few ways to accomplish them.
1. Create an XML representation[2] of the guest, or domain,
configuration.
2. Import this definition into image:Echo-package-16px.pnglibvirt.
i.e. virsh define guest.xml
The image:Echo-package-16px.pngvirt-image[3] tool was suggested and
worked for Dennis. There is also a perl script[4] that can be used to
create an XML definition from the set of qemu-kvm command line arguments
used to create the guest. There is a public API in libvirt for
converting back and forth between the native hypervisor configurations
and XML representations.[5]
Finally, virt-install added an --import option which allows creating a
guest from an existing disk image, bypassing any OS install phase.[6]
1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-June/msg00026.html
2. http://www.libvirt.org/formatdomain.html
3. http://people.redhat.com/dlutter/virt-image/virt-image-xml.html
4.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue174#Virt-Manage_an_Existing_Guest
5.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue176#Converting_Between_Domain_XML_and_Native_Configurations
6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue166#New_Release_virtinst_0.4.2
---- libosinfo: Library for Virt OS/distro Metadata ----
Cole Robinson posted[1] a request for comments on "the initial work for
a new library, libosinfo[2] (better name recommendations appreciated).
This library will provide OS meta data for use in virt applications,
replacing the dictionary we currently keep in
image:Echo-package-16px.pngvirtinst." The work was based on a post[3] by
Daniel Berrange.
1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-June/msg00100.html
2. http://fedorapeople.org/~crobinso/osinfo/
3. http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-March/msg00028.html
--- Libvirt List ---
This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.
---- VNC Authorization per Guest ----
Christian Weyermann asked[1] how to restrict "users to only be able to
connect to their own virtual machines via VNC."
Daniel Berrange said "there is no way to specify authorization data on a
per-VM basis. So if you authenticate successfully you have access." Hugh
Brock added[2] "It is on our wish list for Real Soon Now, but we haven't
identified anyone to actually do the work yet... patches welcome :)"
1. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-June/msg00090.html
2. http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-June/msg00137.html
-- Ask Fedora --
In this section, we answer general questions from Fedora community. Send
your questions to askfedora AT fedoraproject.org and Fedora News Team
will bring you answers from the Fedora Developers and Contributors to
selected number of questions every week as part of our weekly news
report. Please indicate if you do not wish your name and/or email
address to be published.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AskFedora
Writers: Paul W Frields, Rahul Sundaram
--- What is the official Fedora policy on Mono? ---
Arthur Pemberton asked: "Fedora traditionally holds fairly strict
guidelines for inclusion of software, and the pursuit of Free Software.
As such I consider their decisions on such things to be quite important.
With that in mind, I would like to ask: what is the official Fedora
policy on Mono? Specifically in terms to its FOSS nature and legality."
Paul W Frields, Fedora Project Leader responds:
Until certain ambiguities such as those concerning Mono's patent
licensing and redistribution are resolved, there is no formal policy
that I'm aware of. We have concerns which are being researched, and any
official policy would likely come through Fedora Legal and the Fedora
Engineering Steering Committee. The substitution of Gnote for Tomboy on
the Desktop Live image and in the default installation for Fedora 12
reduces package load in the standard Fedora Desktop Live image, but for
now Mono remains in the Fedora repositories.
--- end FWN 180 ---
--
Pascal V. Calarco, Fedora Ambassador, Indiana USA
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Pcalarco
--
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