Gentoo Managers' Meeting Summary - 15 December 2003
A summary and log of the Gentoo Managers' Meeting have now been posted on the Gentoo Managers' Meetings page. The main item on the agenda that week was the election of a new desktop lead. Unfortunately, during the meeting it became clear that the method of electing a new manager was far from well-defined, and instead a long discussion about the procedure for electing managers took place. One important point was that the voice of the developers and the managers would have to be balanced so that leaders who would work well with both groups could be in place. This discussion was put on hold so that the other items on the agenda could be discussed, but in the end it was decided that the issue would have to be discussed elsewhere in greater length.
The other point on the agenda was the pending changes to app-portage. Karl Kalleberg and Marius Mauch presented the work that was being done on the tools-portage herd. Basically, a programmatic interface to the Portage database and configuration files is being developed to insulate third-party scripts from the internals, and changes being made in Portage will have an effect on some existing tools.
Quote from http://ccvs.cvshome.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsID=88:
"Stable CVS 1.11.11 has been released. Stable releases contain only bug fixes from previous versions of CVS. This release adds code to the CVS server to prevent it from continuing as root after a user login, as an extra failsafe against a compromise of the CVSROOT/passwd file. Previously, any user with the ability to write the CVSROOT/passwd file could execute arbitrary code as the root user on systems with CVS pserver access enabled. We recommend this upgrade for all CVS servers!"
Behave...
Off the Wall has been one Forum section this newsletter has always tried to ignore as much as possible. It's the place people hang out in while waiting for emerge to finish (Cerement), and it contains everything that can be put into words, ranging from discussions of your favourite food morsels via the Ministry of Silly Walks to religious war mongering. Although most of it is in good nature, many things appear in bad taste. Be that as it may, none of the regulars have managed to completely stay away from the Forum's apres-tech lounge. After a particularly stormy season inside OTW over the past ten days, the new year has started with a refreshing reminder from Forum admin klieber that it is not the place to be squeamish in, but will stay within the bounds of civilised speech or else. What exactly that means? You'll find out when one of the ever-vigilant moderators spots a flaw in your interpretation of "professional" and "courteous":
To GUI or not to GUI
The Gentoo install process is admired (by some) and leaves some things to be desired (for some). So ensues the great GUI or Non-GUI Installer debate in this week's gentoo-user highlight.
Telnet
A wonderful little discussion took place in the -dev mailing rooms this week about the benefets and risks of using telnet, especially when related to users, and the typical questions they have about it. Also, there were some ideas about giving advice to users through ebuilds, especially when related to security. Have a look here and here for the posts.
Italy: GECHI Domain Now Up And Running
GECHI (GEntoo CHannel Italia) proudly announced on 1 January that the new year starts with a domain name of their own, and a working website to back it up. If you are Italian, living/working in Italy or the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, or just generally interested in Things Italian, read the manifesto and see what you can do to contribute to the promotion of Gentoo Linux.
Germany: Photo Gallery of Hamburg GLUG Meeting, Next Meeting Scheduled
Interestingly enough, most participants of the first Hamburg Gentoo Linux User Group Meeting last December seem to be glad that their photos are beyond recognition. Whatever their motives are to keep a low profile, they are going to show in public again: A tentative meeting date has been set for 25 January, to be held at the same location as last time, the Schachcafé. Coordination thread in the Forums as usual, i.e. here.
Spain: gentoo-es.org now open
Gentoo-Es, a Spanish Gentoo community site, is now open. Complete with various articles and blogs, forums, and Spanish language documentation, this site should be a great resource for Spanish-speaking Gentoo users.
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. For the two weeks between 20 December 2003 and 02 January 2004, activity on the site has resulted in:
Of the 4497 currently open bugs: 101 are labeled 'blocker', 183 are labeled 'critical', and 324 are labeled 'major'.
The developers and teams who have closed the most bugs during this period are:
The developers and teams who have been assigned the most new bugs during this period are:
Shell Auto-logout
This week's tip shows you how to have your shell automatically logout after a set period of time.
Use the TMOUT variable in your shell to control how long your shell will remain logged in with no activity. For example, to have your shell automatically logged out after 1 hour of no activity, add TMOUT=3600 to your shell initialization file (e.g. .bashrc or .zshrc). This setting could also be added system wide in /etc/profile as a default setting for all users.
The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:
The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:
The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo Linux project:
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