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Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: August 11th, 2003

Content:

1.  Gentoo News

Summary

Gentoo Linux at Linux World Expo


Figure 1.1: From left to right, developers Kurt Lieber, Jason Wever, Daniel Robbins, Seemant Kulleen, Corey Shields, and user Randy Sofia

Fig. 1: From left to right, developers Kurt Lieber, Jason Wever, Daniel Robbins, Seemant Kulleen, Corey Shields, and user Randy Sofia


Figure 1.2: From left to right, Randy Sofia, Jason Wever, user Arlinton Bourne, Corey Shields, Daniel Robbins, and a visitor to the booth

Fig. 2: From left to right, Randy Sofia, Jason Wever, user Arlinton Bourne, Corey Shields, Daniel Robbins, and a visitor to the booth


Figure 1.3: From left to right, Jason Wever, Randy Sofia, Daniel Robbins, Arlinton Bourne, Benjamin Coles, and Seemant Kulleen in front

Fig. 3: From left to right, Jason Wever, Randy Sofia, Daniel Robbins, Arlinton Bourne, Benjamin Coles, and Seemant Kulleen in front

Last week Gentoo Linux was represented at LinuxWorld Expo in the .org pavilion of the expo floor. Gentoo Linux 1.4 was released on the first day of the expo, and 300 CDs were given away in the first 4 hours of the show. CDs were given away for Pentium III, Pentium 4, Athlon XP, and PPC architectures. Everyone who stopped by the booth was given an enthusiastic description about Gentoo as well as flyers on Gentoo Linux, the Gentoo Clustering Project, and Hardened Gentoo.

There were many demonstrations at the booth. A couple of x86 boxes were setup running a live beta demonstration of the upcoming game Savage running on Gentoo. Gentoo Linux on PPC was represented with both a Mac G3 and an iBook. Sun Microsystems was nice to loan us a Ray 150 that was loaded up and later added to the demonstrations. There were also Gentoo Clustering demonstrations (running remotely, shown locally) as well as a running Hardened Gentoo box.

One of the best things to come from the expo was the opportunity for developers to meet some of the Gentoo user base and hear of experiences and praise. A lot of faces were matched with IRC nicknames, and new relationships were made with Gentoo users and other groups who were at the Expo.

A raffle was held at the end of the conference. A Pentium 4 system was won by Nathan Chilton, and an Epson printer was won by Muthuvale Shanmugam. Congratulations to our raffle winners!

Gentoo Documentation Project looking for new lead Dutch translator

Our current lead Dutch translator, Sven Vermeulen, is resigning in order to concentrate on his responsibilities as Operational Manager for the Gentoo Documentation project; we'd like to thank Sven for his contribution to the Dutch team. We're now looking for a new Dutch lead translator to take over his position. Responsibilities would include coordinating the translations, verifying the translated version, and committing it to CVS so it can be viewed on the website. A solid reading knowledge of both written Dutch and written English is a requirement; familiarity with XML and CVS would be helpful but can be acquired after taking the position if necessary. Interested parties should send an email to Sven.

2.  Gentoo Security

Summary

There were no Security announcements this week

New Security Bug Reports

The following new security bugs were posted in the past week:

3.  User stories

User stories is on hiatus this week. Remember to send us your bizarre, hilarious, or incredible Gentoo stories so they can be featured here!

4.  Featured Developer of the Week

Featured Developer is on hiatus this week.

5.  Heard in the Community

Web Forum

Burning Without SCSI Emulations

With the release of cdrtools 2.0 users can ditch the scsi emulation in the kernel config, and still write those CD-Rs. Check out this thread for the specifics on how to set it up.

gentoo-user

Gentoo on Servers

Mailing list contributor Michel Dicroci asked a question that many Linux server SysAdmins are asking: "Is Gentoo stable enough for a server?". The resulting discussion resounded with a general "yes", but also branched into proper use of the ~arch flags, as well as other tips for running a Gentoo Linux server. Thread here.

GLIS Project is Hiring

Bound to be one of the "next big things", the Gentoo Linux Installation Script--or GLIS for short--is looking for GUI programmers. The discussion started out as a simple "want ad", but in typical Open-Source fashion turned into a spawning pool of suggestions and ideas of how to make the project even better; making it one of the most active topics on Gentoo-User this week. Check out the GLIS project, then read the thread.

gentoo-dev

How conservative are you?

Jani Monoses posed the question about how liberally package masks are dispensed. What resulted what various opinions on what package masking actually means.

6.  Gentoo International

Gentoo Linux in another Brazilian magazine

The Brazilian magazine PcMaster, a monthly publication about Information Technology mostly geared towards experienced users, is featuring Gentoo Linux in its latest issue. The latest issue features a Gentoo LiveCD with KDE 3.1.2, XFree86 4.3.0, Totem, Kernel 2.4.20, Gnome 2.2.1, Gxine, and many other apps ready to run off the CD.

7.  Portage Watch

The following stable packages were updated or added to portage in the last two weeks:

Total categories: 95 (3 categories added in the last two weeks)

Total packages: 5984 (278 packages added in the last two weeks)

8.  Bugzilla

Summary

Statistics

The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 01 August 2003 and 07 August 2003, activity on the site has resulted in:

  • 422 new bugs during this period
  • 235 bugs closed or resolved during this period
  • 7 previously closed bugs were reopened this period

Of the 3539 currently open bugs: 87 are labeled 'blocker', 153 are labeled 'critical', and 280 are labeled 'major'.

Closed Bug Rankings

The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period are:

New Bug Rankings

The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during this period are:

9.  Tips and Tricks

Using script

This week's tip shows you how to use script as a way to store or share everything printed during a terminal session. This can be a great way to remotely demonstrate command-line Linux to a less experienced user. Alternatively, it's a good way to keep a record of everything you do (or did) for a specific session.

First we'll look at keeping a record of everything. The can be done by just issuing the command script. The output of your session will be written to a file named typescript. If you want to specify a file other than the default, use script file where file is the name of the file storing the session.

Code Listing 9.1: Creating a script session

% script
Script started, file is typescript
% uptime
 13:27:53 up 89 days,  3:50,  1 user,  load average: 0.27, 0.35, 0.29
% uname -srvmpio
Linux 2.4.20-gentoo-r4 #1 SMP Fri May 9 08:54:35 EDT 2003 i686 Intel(R) Xeon(TM)
 CPU 2.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
% exit
Script done, file is typescript

The session file can be reviewed later with a pager such as more, less, or cat.

Code Listing 9.2: Viewing a script session

% more typescript
Script started on Wed Aug  6 13:27:47 2003
% uptime
 13:27:53 up 89 days,  3:50,  1 user,  load average: 0.27, 0.35, 0.29
% uname -srvmpio
Linux 2.4.20-gentoo-r4 #1 SMP Fri May 9 08:54:35 EDT 2003 i686 Intel(R) Xeon(TM)
 CPU 2.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
% exit

Script done on Wed Aug  6 13:28:01 2003

Now we'll look at sharing a terminal session. The easiest way to do this is combining script with mkfifo (which creates a named pipe). Note that you need to use the -f option (script -f) to flush output after each write. This way, the terminal can be written to by User A and viewed in (near) real time by User B.

Code Listing 9.3: User A's terminal

% mkfifo demo; script -f demo
Script started, file is demo
% echo 'Hello World'
Hello World
% exit
Script done, file is demo

Note: User A's terminal will wait for input until User B issues the cat command (or accesses the named pipe).

Code Listing 9.4: User B's terminal

% cat demo
Script started on Wed Aug  6 13:48:51 2003
% echo 'Hello World'
Hello World
% exit

Script done on Wed Aug  6 13:49:04 2003

There are many other ways script could be used - hopefully this will give you some ideas to get you started.

10.  Featured Quote/Signature of the Week

This week's featured quote comes from an IRC conversation in #gentoo at irc.freenode.net. User tcv said:

"sqorpiun`: every man must walk the lonely halls of xconfig alone someday. it is a trial of passage :p"

11.  Moves, Adds and Changes

Moves

The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:

  • none this week

Adds

The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:

  • Alexander Gabert (pappy) -- hardened
  • Alvaro Figuerora (fede2) -- sparc
  • Steve Arnold (nerdboy) -- various
  • Mike Gardiner (Obz) -- gnome

Changes

The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux project.

  • none this week

12.  Contribute to GWN

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13.  GWN Feedback

Please send us your feedback and help make GWN better.

14.  GWN Subscription Information

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15.  Other Languages

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Print

Page updated 11 August 2003

Summary: This is the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter for the week of August 11th, 2003.

Yuji Carlos Kosugi
Editor

AJ Armstrong
Contributor

Brian Downey
Contributor

Cal Evans
Contributor

Chris Gavin
Contributor

Luke Giuliani
Contributor

Shawn Jonnet
Contributor

Michael Kohl
Contributor

Kurt Lieber
Contributor

Rafael Cordones Marcos
Contributor

David Narayan
Contributor

Gerald J Normandin Jr.
Contributor

Ulrich Plate
Contributor

Mathy Vanvoorden
Dutch Translation

Hendrik Eeckhaut
Dutch Translation

Jorn Eilander
Dutch Translation

Bernard Kerckenaere
Dutch Translation

Peter ter Borg
Dutch Translation

Jochen Maes
Dutch Translation

Roderick Goessen
Dutch Translation

Gerard van den Berg
Dutch Translation

Matthieu Montaudouin
French Translation

Martin Prieto
French Translation

Antoine Raillon
French Translation

Sebastien Cevey
French Translation

Jean-Christophe Choisy
French Translation

Steffen Lassahn
German Translation

Matthias F. Brandstetter
German Translation

Thomas Raschbacher
German Translation

Klaus-J. Wolf
German Translation

Marco Mascherpa
Italian Translation

Claudio Merloni
Italian Translation

Christian Apolloni
Italian Translation

Stefano Lucidi
Italian Translation

Yoshiaki Hagihara
Japanese Translation

Katsuyuki Konno
Japanese Translation

Yuji Carlos Kosugi
Japanese Translation

Yasunori Fukudome
Japanese Translation

Takashi Ota
Japanese Translation

Radoslaw Janeczko
Polish Translation

Lukasz Strzygowski
Polish Translation

Michal Drobek
Polish Translation

Adam Lyjak
Polish Translation

Krzysztof Klimonda
Polish Translation

Atila "Jedi" Bohlke Vasconcelos
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

Eduardo Belloti
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

João Rafael Moraes Nicola
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

Marcelo Gonçalves de Azambuja
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

Otavio Rodolfo Piske
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

Pablo N. Hess -- NatuNobilis
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

Pedro de Medeiros
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

Ventura Barbeiro
Portuguese (Brazil) Translation

Bruno Ferreira
Portuguese (Portugal) Translation

Gustavo Felisberto
Portuguese (Portugal) Translation

José Costa
Portuguese (Portugal) Translation

Luis Medina
Portuguese (Portugal) Translation

Ricardo Loureiro
Portuguese (Portugal) Translation

Sergey Galkin
Russian Translator

Sergey Kuleshov
Russian Translator

Alex Spirin
Russian Translator

Dmitry Suzdalev
Russian Translator

Anton Vorovatov
Russian Translator

Denis Zaletov
Russian Translator

Lanark
Spanish Translation

Fernando J. Pereda
Spanish Translation

Lluis Peinado Cifuentes
Spanish Translation

Zephryn Xirdal T
Spanish Translation

Guillermo Juarez
Spanish Translation

Jesús García Crespo
Spanish Translation

Carlos Castillo
Spanish Translation

Julio Castillo
Spanish Translation

Sergio Gómez
Spanish Translation

Aycan Irican
Turkish Translation

Bugra Cakir
Turkish Translation

Cagil Seker
Turkish Translation

Emre Kazdagli
Turkish Translation

Evrim Ulu
Turkish Translation

Gursel Kaynak
Turkish Translation

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