[gentoo-gwn] Gentoo Weekly Newsletter 6 March 2006

[Ulrich Plate]

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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter
http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/current.xml
This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of 6 March 2006.
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==============
1. Gentoo news
==============
  
Common Portage error message
----------------------------
  
For those users who encounter a Portage error similar to the following: 
"!!! Cannot resolve a virtual package name to an ebuild." during an 
'emerge --sync' or an 'emerge --metadata' please do not file a bug about 
it. The code may instruct you to do so, however the developers have 
already found a fix and it is already on bugzilla, re-emerging Portage or 
metadata will suffice. Bug reports filed for this bug will only be marked 
as duplicates of bug 114798[1]. Please see that bug report as well as the 
Portage project's documentation page[2] for details and a fix for this 
issue. Thanks in advance from the Portage Team. 

 1. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=114798
 2. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/doc/common-problems.xml
    
PPC project meeting 5 March 2005
--------------------------------
  
The PPC project held a meeting on Sunday, 5 March 2005. The turnout for 
was fairly impressive. It was composed of a large majority of the PPC team 
members. The items on the agenda included gcc 4.1, the 2006.0 release, 
leadership, Genesi/Freescale/IBM developer programs, and installer project 
porting. The meeting lasted about one and a half hours, and included some 
notes by Mark Loeser[3] for gcc 4.1, and Andrew Gaffney[4] for the 
installer project. Minutes for the meeting and a full log can be found at 
the Theaimsgroup Archive[5]. 

 3. halcyon@g.o
 4. agaffney@g.o
 5. http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-dev&m=114159742721701&w=2
    
Download counts for 2006.0 release
----------------------------------
  
Gentoo's central address for release images, the bouncer system[6], keeps 
track of the number of downloads. Since the 2006.0 release was available 
on the mirrors, almost 100,000 images have been downloaded to date. 

 6. http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml
 
 Gentoo 2006.0 downloads  
 gentoo-2006.0-livecd 		29287  
 gentoo-2006.0-minimal 		40988  
 gentoo-2006.0-packagecd 	 3537 
 gentoo-2006.0-packagecd-32ul 	  830 
 gentoo-2006.0-packagecd-64ul 	  206  
 gentoo-2006.0-universal 	 9061  
 
Note: As of Saturday, 4 March 2006. Not included are downloads by those 
users who choose one of the mirrors directly rather than going through the 
bouncer system, and the above figures are not broken down by architectures.
 
Similar statistics exist for the Bittorrent fileshares that are monitored 
via the Gentoo tracker. During the same one week period since the release 
of 2006.0, about 5000 LiveCD downloads were completed via the tracker. The 
complete list of available torrents and their statistics can be viewed on 
the tracker webpage[7]. 

 7. http://torrents.gentoo.org
    
=========================
2. Heard in the community
=========================
  
gentoo-dev
----------
  
enable UTF8 per default?
 
After last week's FOSDEM meeting a few ideas were being discussed - among 
them enabling UTF-8 in the default profiles. PPC has been doing it for 
some time, and it would be helpful to the non-English users. So what has 
kept unicode from being enabled by default? There are few known bugs with 
unicode, so hopefully it will be enabled per default in the near future. 
 
 * enable UTF8 per default? [8] 
 8. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/36314

 
2006.0 - me having a bad day?
 
With the new release come new bugs - and this user seems to have hit all 
roadbumps that he could find while trying to download 2006.0. Some very 
nice criticism that shows how end-users often get a totally different view 
on your product - in this case the download pages - and infra member 
Jeffrey Forman jumps into the discussion and tries to fix all issues 
reported. 
 
 * 2006.0 - me having a bad day?[9] 
 9. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/

 
QA Team discussion
 
The Quality Assurance Team is growing stronger and more active. Until 
recently its authority wasn't well-defined, and it could only try to 
convince people to fix issues, but now Mark Loeser[10] in his role as QA 
lead starts one of the longest threads of the last weeks by offering a 
policy for the QA team and asking the council to vote on this policy in 
the next meeting, thus enabling the QA team to officially fix bugs and 
override developers in the rare cases this may be needed. The proposal as 
such has already been modified, the discussion is still going on. During 
one of the next Council Meetings this should be decided. 

 10. halcy0n@g.o
 
 * [RFC] QA Team's role [11] 
 * QA Roles v2 [12] 
 11. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/36188
 12. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/36438

    
=======================
3. Gentoo international
=======================
  
USA: Gentoo seminar at Embedded Systems Conference
--------------------------------------------------
  
Sergei Larin, Senior Applications Engineer at Freescale Semiconductor[13] 
will give his first class on Gentoo[14] on 4 April at the Embedded Systems 
Conference in San Jose (3 to 7 April at the McEnery Convention Center). 
His joint presentation with Gentoo developer Pieter Van den Abeele[15] 
explores the possibilities of reducing the time to market for 
PowerPC-based devices using open-source software. Freescale decided to go 
with Gentoo as the foundation for that approach because of its 
configurability and the ease of applications in the embedded market. The 
scope of this Linux design seminar will be how to build a "Home Media 
Center with Linux on the PowerPC archiecture." Freescale is planning to 
give similar classes at LinuxWorld in Boston and other events in the 
future. 

 13. http://www.freescale.com
 14. https://www.cmpevents.com/ESCw06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1102
 15. pvdabeel@g.o
    
UK: Gentoo UK Conference preparations underway
----------------------------------------------
  
George Prowse[16] and some UK-based Gentoo developers and users have 
started initial planning for a 2006 Gentoo UK users-and-developers 
conference, based upon the success of the 2004[17] and 2005[18] events. 

 16. cokehabit@×××××.com
 17. http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/2004
 18. http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/2005
 
This year's event will be hosted in London, and the provisional dates are 
10th/11th June 2006. The exact location is yet to be decided. 
 
In order to cover costs, we are seeking sponsorship from interested 
organisations. If you are in contact with an organisation who may be able 
to help, please email George Prowse[19] with any available information. 
For those interested in attending, watch this space for updates. 

 19. cokehabit@×××××.com
    
Germany: Call for papers for FrOSCon
------------------------------------
  
FrOSCon is a two-day conference on free software and open source, which 
takes place on 24th and 25th June 2006 at the University of Applied 
Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, in St. Augustin near Bonn, Germany. One of its 
organizers is Gentoo developer Sebastian Bergmann[20]. The focus of the 
conference is a comprehensive range of talks about current topics in free 
software and open source. Furthermore, space will be provided for 
developers of free software and open-source projects to organize their own 
developer meetings or even their own program. FrOSCon is organized for the 
first time in 2006 by the department of computer science in collaboration 
with the Linux/Unix User Group Sankt Augustin, the student body and the 
FrOSCon e.V., and aims to establish itself as the largest event of its 
kind in Rhineland. The call for papers[21] is still open until 15 March, 
and developer rooms and booth space are also available to interested 
projects. 

 20. sebastian@g.o
 21. http://www.froscon.org/wiki/CallforPapers
    
======================
4. Gentoo in the press
======================
  
Riverbanks Zoo (4 March 2006)
-----------------------------
  
Riverbanks Zoo and Garden (in Columbia, South Carolina) has ten Gentoo 
penguins that haven't been named yet. The Zoo's administrators have 
decided that they are too many to be named by the staff, and call upon the 
general public to submit suggestions. The "Riverbanks' Penguin Naming 
Contest"[22] continues to accept entries until 15 March, with the winners 
to be announced on 20 March. 

 22. https://ssl29.pair.com/riverban/contest.shtml
    
SageTV (March 2006)
-------------------
  
SageTV[23] has released a "Linux OEM edition" of their media center -- 
based on Gentoo Linux: "The installation medium is a customised Gentoo 
install CD, you can modify it for the needs of your company if you plan to 
build many identical systems," says the SageTV website[24]. They are 
looking for hardware manufacturers who would be interested in including 
the Gentoo-driven personal video recorder software in their offerings. 

 23. http://sagetv.com/
 24. http://sagetv.com/linuxOEMinstall.html
    
Techgage (1 March 2006)
-----------------------
  
Pars pro toto: Rob Williams, an author for Techgage[25], has written a 
very enthusiastic review of Gentoo 2006.0[26], with a close look at the 
new graphical installer. 

 25. http://techgage.com
 26. http://techgage.com/review.php?id=4334
    
Heise (2 March 2006, in German)
-------------------------------
  
This week Germany's most important computer magazine carried a sneak 
preview on an article[27] that will be officially published in the 
"Open-source yearbook[28]" that will be published later this month. Bill 
Hilf, Platform Technology Strategy Director at Microsoft and responsible 
for the Linux and open-source lab there, gives some interesting insights 
to what the "open-source bubble in a Microsoft sea" does, how it's 
equipped etc. The article isn't entirely up-to-date (it still mentions 
Daniel Robbins as a prominent member of the team), but it identifies 
Gentoo and Portage as fields of research and explains what Microsoft's 
"shared source" project is about. 

 27. http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/70300
 28. http://www.opensourcejahrbuch.de
    
=========================
5. Gentoo developer moves
=========================
  
Moves
-----
  
The following developers recently left the Gentoo project: 
 
 * Brian Harring  
    
Adds
----
  
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo project: 
 
 * Boris Fersing (kernelsensei) - Forums staffer  
    
Changes
-------
  
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo project:
 
 * None this week 
    
==================
6. Gentoo Security
==================
   
WordPress: SQL injection vulnerability
--------------------------------------
  
WordPress is vulnerable to an SQL injection vulnerability. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[29] 

 29. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200603-01.xml
    
teTeX, pTeX, CSTeX: Multiple overflows in included XPdf code
------------------------------------------------------------
  
CSTeTeX, pTeX, and teTeX include vulnerable XPdf code to handle PDF files, 
making them vulnerable to the execution of arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[30] 

 30. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200603-02.xml
    
MPlayer: Multiple integer overflows
-----------------------------------
  
MPlayer is vulnerable to integer overflows in FFmpeg and ASF decoding that 
could potentially result in the execution of arbitrary code. 
 
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement[31] 

 31. http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/glsa/glsa-200603-03.xml
     
===========
7. Bugzilla
===========
  
Statistics
----------
  
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org[32]) to record and 
track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the 
development team. Between 26 February 2006 and 05 March 2006, activity on 
the site has resulted in: 

 32. http://bugs.gentoo.org
 
 * 908 new bugs during this period 
 * 405 bugs closed or resolved during this period 
 * 20 previously closed bugs were reopened this period 
 
Of the 9549 currently open bugs: 66 are labeled 'blocker', 152 are labeled 
'critical', and 518 are labeled 'major'. 
    
Closed bug rankings
-------------------
  
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period 
are: 
 
 * Portage team[33], with 32 closed bugs[34]  
 * Xavier Neys[35], with 24 closed bugs[36]  
 * Gentoo KDE team[37], with 20 closed bugs[38]  
 * Gentoo's Team for Core System packages[39], with 13 closed bugs[40]  
 * Gentoo Security[41], with 12 closed bugs[42]  
 * Apache Herd - Bugzilla Reports[43], with 12 closed bugs[44]  
 * Gentoo Games[45], with 11 closed bugs[46]  
 * Gentoo Linux Installer[47], with 10 closed bugs[48]  
 33. dev-portage@g.o
 34. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=dev-portage@g.o
 35. neysx@g.o
 36. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=neysx@g.o
 37. kde@g.o
 38. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=kde@g.o
 39. base-system@g.o
 40. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=base-system@g.o
 41. security@g.o
 42. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=security@g.o
 43. apache-bugs@g.o
 44. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=apache-bugs@g.o
 45. games@g.o
 46. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=games@g.o
 47. gli-bugs@g.o
 48. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfield=bug_status&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&resolution=FIXED&assigned_to=gli-bugs@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[49], with 51 new bugs[50]  
 * Default Assignee for Orphaned Packages[51], with 11 new bugs[52]  
 * AMD64 Porting Team[53], with 9 new bugs[54]  
 * Gentoo Sound Team[55], with 7 new bugs[56]  
 * media-video herd[57], with 7 new bugs[58]  
 * Gentoo KDE team[59], with 7 new bugs[60]  
 * Gentoo Games[61], with 7 new bugs[62]  
 * Portage team[63], with 7 new bugs[64]  
 49. maintainer-wanted@g.o
 50. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=maintainer-wanted@g.o
 51. maintainer-needed@g.o
 52. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=maintainer-needed@g.o
 53. amd64@g.o
 54. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=amd64@g.o
 55. sound@g.o
 56. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=sound@g.o
 57. media-video@g.o
 58. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=media-video@g.o
 59. kde@g.o
 60. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=kde@g.o
 61. games@g.o
 62. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=games@g.o
 63. dev-portage@g.o
 64. 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&chfield=assigned_to&chfieldfrom=2006-02-26&chfieldto=2006-03-05&assigned_to=dev-portage@g.o

    
===============
8. GWN feedback
===============
   
Please send us your feedback[65] and help make the GWN better. 

 65. gwn-feedback@g.o
    
===============================
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===============================
   
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===================
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===================
   
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Ulrich Plate <plate@g.o> - Editor
Sebastian Bergmann <sebastian@g.o> - Author
Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o> - Author
George Prowse <cokehabit@×××××.com> - Author
Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> - Author
Chris White <chriswhite@g.o> - Author

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