[gentoo-gwn] Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 22 May 2006

[Ulrich Plate]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 22 May 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
==============
1. Gentoo news
==============
  
GCC 4.1 on its way into Portage
-------------------------------
  
The long awaited moment of GCC 4.1 being unmasked has almost arrived. The 
toolchain team will be unmasking gcc-4.1.1 this week after it is released. 
The upgrade should be incredibly easy and require no additional work to 
install and use. The number of applications that do not compile with 
gcc-4.1 is extremely small now, and most users should not experience any 
problems with ~arch packages not compiling. To upgrade to the new version 
(assuming you are using gcc-3.4), all that is required is to upgrade GCC 
and then select the new profile using gcc-config. If you are upgrading 
from an earlier version of GCC, please refer to our GCC Upgrading Guide[1] 
for more detailed instructions. 

 1. http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-upgrading.xml
 
If you run into any applications that do not compile, and they do not have 
a bug currently open, please file a "GCC Porting" bug and assign it to 
gcc-porting@g.o so that the GCC Porting team can look into it. 
    
Gentoo Summer of Code
---------------------
  
There were over 6400 applications from students, almost 90 mentoring 
organizations - in almost every respect the Summer of Code program from 
Google has grown a lot since last year. This year Gentoo will be one of 
the mentoring organizations, with the UserRel project acting as organizer. 
While the final numbers will be released on Monday the 22nd we can already 
say that Gentoo got 130 applications. Out of these around 13 will be 
sponsored by Google. We are very happy to see such a great interest in 
Gentoo and hope that all sponsored projects will be successful! 
    
Old-style PHP packages removed from Portage
-------------------------------------------
  
After being package.masked for quite some time, the old-style PHP packages 
(dev-php/php, dev-php/php-cgi, dev-php/mod_php, and friends) have been 
removed from the Portage tree. The new-style PHP packages (dev-lang/php, 
dev-php4/*, dev-php5/*, and friends) are now stable on most architectures. 
    
=========================
2. Heard in the community
=========================
  
gentoo-dev
----------
  
et_EE locale and language of error messages
 
The Gentoo bugwranglers often have to wrangle bugs that have error 
messages in other languages. This makes it difficult to understand and to 
find duplicates. A workaround for this issue would be to set the default 
language used by portage to "C", which is (through historic precedents) 
English and the default when nothing else is set. A different class of 
bugs comes from the estonian locale, et_EE: As their alphabet ordering is 
different some "silly" buildsystems stumble as [a-z] no longer matches all 
letters. While these bugs can be really annoying they should be fixed. 
Setting the locale to another language would prevent these bugs, but it is 
recommended to fix it so that future problems are avoided. 
 
 * et_EE locale and language of error messages [2] 
 2. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38378

 
New eclasses
 
As there are many different Revision Control Systems and it is often 
useful to have ebuild support to check out files directly from a 
repository this week gives us a few eclasses that help with managing 
darcs, git and mercurial. Those three are relatively new RCS that are 
already used by many projects instead of CVS or subversion. 
 
 * New eclasses [3] 
 3. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38364

 
Signing everything, for fun and for profit
 
The first recorded discussions about signing all Gentoo-provided files to 
avoid tampering go back to 2003. Since then there have been a few tries to 
get a Gentoo-wide system to cryptographically sign all files, but there 
was never a consensus, and in the end it never got fully implemented. 
Patrick Lauer[4] revives the discussion in the hope of getting it finally 
done. 

 4. patrick@g.o
 
 * Signing everything, for fun and for profit [5] 
 5. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38363

 
RFC - Gentoo Knowledge Base
 
A new Gentoo project gets kickstarted by Sven Vermeulen[6]. The goal is to 
create a knowledge base that "[...] provides answers to specific questions 
and problems that users (or developers) might encounter. It is easily 
searchable and maintained by developers who are knowledgeable in the 
topic. The knowledge base entries ("topics" as I like to call them) are 
not documentation guides, but very specific to a particular environment 
and question." 

 6. swift@g.o
 
 * RFC - Gentoo Knowledge Base [7] 
 7. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38030

 
Paludis profiles yay or nay?
 
What started as a simple question by Stephen Bennett[8] whether there were 
any objections to adding profiles for the Paludis package manager into the 
mainline Gentoo tree became one of the fastest and most heated email 
exchanges to happen on the gentoo-dev mailinglist. With around 300 
messages in the main thread and three forked subthreads this is an 
impressive debate: 

 8. spb@g.o
 
 * Paludis and Profiles [9] 
 * Alternative Gentoo package managers discussion request (for the 
council) [10] 
 * RFC: etiquette enforcement [11] 
 * 259 paludis-profile messages. ENOUGH! [12] 
 9. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38016
 10. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38231
 11. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38342
 12. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/38351

    
Planet Gentoo
-------------
  
Baselayout 1.12 going stable?
 
Asked by many users Roy Marples now announced that there is only one 
unionfs bug left before he starts building baselayout's 1.12.0 tarball. If 
there don't occur any show-stopping bugs it will take another month before 
baselayout-1.12.0 can be marked stable by our ARCH-teams. 
 
 * Baselayout 1.12 going stable? 
 
Apache 2.0.58 now available
 
Later than expected Apache 2.0.58 finally made it into the tree, including 
some changes how Apache works within Gentoo. Most notable is the 
deprecation of net-www/gentoo-webroot-default as discussed in Bug #90748. 
As of 2.0.58 the /var/www/localhost directory will be leaved untouched if 
it exists. If it doesn’t exist, it will be created and populated. 
 
 * Apache 2.0.58 now available 
    
=======================
3. Gentoo international
=======================
  
Austria: Gentoo at the Grazer Linuxtage
---------------------------------------
  
As announced in last week's GWN, Gentoo was present at the Linuxtag in 
Graz. Markus Lang, Roger Miliker[13], Gregor Perner and Wernfried Haas[14] 
were present at the Gentoo booth, handing out LiveCDs on request, selling 
case badges and chatting with users about Portage features, and giving 
away stickers. As usually, the grml folks (who were next to Gentoo) asked 
if we still were compiling stuff, which was promptly answered by 
demonstrating the installer. Of course this was just poking fun at each 
other between the different distributions, the teams from Funkfeuer, 
Gentoo, grml and Debian had a good time with each other. Wernfried Haas 
also held a workshop introducing people to IRC with focus on the popular 
IRC client irssi and the Freenode network. Both visitors as well as the 
exhibitors had fun at the GLT, thanks to the organisation team and see you 
in 2007. 

 13. roger55@g.o
 14. amne@g.o
 
Figure 3.1: Amne readjusting the word order
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20060522_glt.jpg
 
Note: More pictures of the event can be found on 
http://dufo.tugraz.at/glt06/
    
Italy: Gentoo at the Linux World Summit in Milano
-------------------------------------------------
  
Fellows from GeCHI (Gentoo CHannel Italia www.gechi.it) spent two intense 
days at the Linux World Summit in Milan. Compared to past years, the 
spaces reserved by the organization at the Marriot Hotel for the event 
were small, which is probably why few commercial vendors were represented 
in the exhibition hall. Stands managed by associations were bigger, more 
colorful and funnier. As predicted in the last GWN, the GeCHI showed a Sun 
Fire V120 and an OpenMosix cluster composed of four Via Epia motherboards, 
both systems running Gentoo Linux. In the cluster only the first node is 
connected to the two SATA disks, while the remaining three nodes boot from 
network and are diskless. Due to its unusual casing, the cluster was at 
the center of the public's attention on both days of the exhibition. The 
GeCHI had also prepared a Gentoo brochure distributed at the stand, and 
matching penguins and cows (as in: Larry) on offer. 
 
Figure 3.1: One Larry, four Tuxes: The GeCHI at work
http://www.gentoo.org/images/gwn/20060522_gechi.jpg
 
Note: Left to right, in the back: deadhead, blackman, ElDios, front: 
mouser, riquitoi. More pictures of the event can be viewed at the GeCHI 
website
    
======================
4. Gentoo in the press
======================
  
Dot KDE (16 May 2006)
---------------------
  
In a series of interviews with businesses that benefit from KDE -- or 
vice-versa -- the KDE Dot News magazine spoke with Gentoo developer Caleb 
Tennis[15] in his professional quality as system designer at AEI, a 
company in Columbus, Indiana, specializing in diesel engine durability 
assessment, exhaust research, performance development and numerous other 
services. Caleb sees reliability as a key element in AEI's decision to run 
Linux and KDE, as everything else "may be liveable on your girlfriend's 
computer, but for one that's monitoring a $1,000,000 development engine, 
it becomes pretty important to not have problems because 'Windows 
crashed'." 

 15. http://dot.kde.org/1147698188/
    
Newsforge (19 May 2006)
-----------------------
  
Gentoo trustee and infrastructure lead Kurt Lieber[16] gets his say in an 
article about Gentoo sponsor OSUOSL titled "Oregon lab plays Web host to 
the stars of open source."[17] Setting the backdrop for the following 
interview with OSUOSL's Scott Kveton, Kurt points out how fabulous the 
open-source lab's services to Gentoo have been: "in fact, it's better than 
what I would expect from commercial vendors in a lot of respects." 

 16. klieber@g.o
 17. http://mobile.newsforge.com/mobility/06/05/05/2018250.shtml
    
===
5. 
===
  
Managing your overlays with layman
----------------------------------
  
Note:  This is the first tips and tricks section in a while. If you have 
tips and tricks you would like to share with the Gentoo community please 
drop us a mail at gwn-feedback@g.o. 
 
layman is a small and nifty Python application written by Gentoo developer 
Gunnar Wrobel[18] which allows to easily use and synchronize several 
Portage overlays on your local machine. 

 18. wrobel@×××××.org
 
As of now there is no stable layman version available, so you need to add 
layman to your package.keywords file before installing. 
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 5.1:                                                       |
| Installing layman                                                       |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|# echo "app-portage/layman" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords             |
|# emerge layman                                                          |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
To include the overlays managed by layman to your PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable 
you have to source a file where all layman-managed overlays listed. Note 
that you can still add other overlays to the PORTDIR_OVERLAY variable in 
/etc/make.conf. 
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 5.2:                                                       |
| Sourcing layman overlays                                                |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|# echo "source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf" >> /etc/make.conf    |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
Configuring layman is as easy as riding a bike ;) First you fetch a list 
of available overlays and then start adding overlays you would like to 
use. 
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 5.3:                                                       |
| Configure layman                                                        |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|Fetch list of available overlays                                         |
|# layman -f                                                              |
|                                                                         |
|Add the 'gentoo-de' overlay                                              |
|# layman -a gentoo-de                                                    |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 
layman -l gives you a list of all available overlays, using the -a switch 
you can add other overlays. 
 
The -s switch allows you to synchronize the local overlay copies. You can 
choose between syncing one specific overlay or all overlays you added. 
 
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Code Listing 5.4:                                                       |
| Synchronizing overlays                                                  |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                         |
|Synchronize the 'gentoo-de' overlay                                      |
|# layman -s gentoo-de                                                    |
|                                                                         |
|Synchronize all overlays                                                 |
|# layman -s ALL                                                          |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    
=========================
6. Gentoo developer moves
=========================
  
Moves
-----
  
The following developers recently left the Gentoo project: 
 
 * Rob Holland 
    
Adds
----
  
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo project: 
 
 * Steve Dibbs (beandog) - Planet 
    
Changes
-------
  
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo project:
 
 * None this week 
    
==================
7. Gentoo Security
==================
   
libextractor: Two heap-based buffer overflows
---------------------------------------------
  
libextractor is vulnerable to two heap overflow vulnerabilities which 
could lead to the execution of arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[19] 

 19. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200605-14.xml
    
Quagga Routing Suite: Multiple vulnerabilities
----------------------------------------------
  
Quagga's RIP daemon allows the injection of routes and the disclosure of 
routing information. The BGP daemon is vulnerable to a Denial of Service. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[20] 

 20. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200605-15.xml
     
===========
8. Bugzilla
===========
  
Statistics
----------
  
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[21]) to record and 
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the 
development team. Between 14 May 2006 and 21 May 2006, activity on the 
site has resulted in: 

 21. http://bugs.gentoo.org
 
 * 653 new bugs during this period 
 * 323 bugs closed or resolved during this period 
 * 24 previously closed bugs were reopened this period 
 
Of the 10139 currently open bugs: 56 are labeled 'blocker', 149 are 
labeled 'critical', and 524 are labeled 'major'. 
    
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
  
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period 
are: 
 
 * Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[22], with 21 closed bugs[23]  
 * GNU Emacs Herd[24], with 16 closed bugs[25]  
 * Gentoo Security[26], with 15 closed bugs[27]  
 * Gentoo Games[28], with 14 closed bugs[29]  
 * Robin Johnson[30], with 11 closed bugs[31]  
 * Portage team[32], with 11 closed bugs[33]  
 * Apache Herd - Bugzilla Reports[34], with 10 closed bugs[35]  
 * ppc64 architecture team[36], with 9 closed bugs[37]  
 22. gnome@g.o
 23. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=gnome@g.o
 24. emacs@g.o
 25. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=emacs@g.o
 26. security@g.o
 27. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@g.o
 28. games@g.o
 29. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=games@g.o
 30. robbat2@g.o
 31. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=robbat2@g.o
 32. dev-portage@g.o
 33. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=dev-portage@g.o
 34. apache-bugs@g.o
 35. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=apache-bugs@g.o
 36. ppc64@g.o
 37. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=ppc64@g.o

    
New bug rankings
----------------
  
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during 
this period are: 
 
 * Default Assignee for New Packages[38], with 22 new bugs[39]  
 * AMD64 Project[40], with 17 new bugs[41]  
 * Gentoo Linux Gnome Desktop Team[42], with 11 new bugs[43]  
 * Jon Hood[44], with 9 new bugs[45]  
 * Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[46], with 9 new bugs[47]  
 * Default Assignee for Orphaned Packages[48], with 8 new bugs[49]  
 * Diego Pettenò[50], with 8 new bugs[51]  
 * Gentoo Sound Team[52], with 7 new bugs[53]  
 38. maintainer-wanted@g.o
 39. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=maintainer-wanted@g.o
 40. amd64@g.o
 41. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=amd64@g.o
 42. gnome@g.o
 43. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=gnome@g.o
 44. squinky86@g.o
 45. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=squinky86@g.o
 46. base-system@g.o
 47. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=base-system@g.o
 48. maintainer-needed@g.o
 49. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=maintainer-needed@g.o
 50. flameeyes@g.o
 51. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=flameeyes@g.o
 52. sound@g.o
 53. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-05-14&chfieldto=2006-05-21&assigned_to=sound@g.o

    
===============
9. GWN feedback
===============
   
Please send us your feedback[54] and help make the GWN better. 

 54. gwn-feedback@g.o
    
================================
10. GWN subscription information
================================
   
To subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank e-mail to 
gentoo-gwn+subscribe@g.o. 
 
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===================
11. Other languages
===================
   
The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:
 
 * Danish[55]  
 * Dutch[56]  
 * English[57]  
 * German[58]  
 * French[59]  
 * Korean[60]  
 * Japanese[61]  
 * Italian[62]  
 * Polish[63]  
 * Portuguese (Brazil)[64]  
 * Portuguese (Portugal)[65]  
 * Russian[66]  
 * Spanish[67]  
 * Turkish[68]  
 55. http://www.gentoo.org/news/da/gwn/gwn.xml
 56. http://www.gentoo.org/news/nl/gwn/gwn.xml
 57. http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/gwn.xml
 58. http://www.gentoo.org/news/de/gwn/gwn.xml
 59. http://www.gentoo.org/news/fr/gwn/gwn.xml
 60. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ko/gwn/gwn.xml
 61. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ja/gwn/gwn.xml
 62. http://www.gentoo.org/news/it/gwn/gwn.xml
 63. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pl/gwn/gwn.xml
 64. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt_br/gwn/gwn.xml
 65. http://www.gentoo.org/news/pt/gwn/gwn.xml
 66. http://www.gentoo.org/news/ru/gwn/gwn.xml
 67. http://www.gentoo.org/news/es/gwn/gwn.xml
 68. http://www.gentoo.org/news/tr/gwn/gwn.xml

   
Ulrich Plate <plate@g.o> - Editor
Sebastian Bergmann <sebastian@g.o> - Author
Wernfried Haas <amne@g.o> - Author
Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o> - Author
Mark Loeser <halcy0n@g.o> - Author
Andrea Perotti <deadhead@×××××.it> - Author
Tobias Scherbaum <dertobi123@g.o> - Author

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