According to this article on InternetNews, Netcraft's January survey counted over 24,000 Gentoo installations on active web servers, showing almost 20% growth over 6 months. Also, as we've reported in the past, Gentoo has been getting more and more recognition from various sources recently - while Gentoo Linux did not win the award, it was a finalist for a Product Excellence Award at LWE 2004, and has been featured in publications like Linux Journal and Linux Weekly News. Here's a shout out to all the developers and community members who keep making Gentoo great.
XFree86 Font Information File Buffer Overflow
Exploitation of a buffer overflow in the XFree86 Project Inc.'s XFree86 X Window System allows local attackers to gain root privileges.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement
Monkeyd Denial of Service vulnerability
A bug in get_real_string() function allows for a Denial of Service attack to be launched against the webserver.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement
Gallery 1.4.1 and below remote exploit vulnerability
The Gallery developers have discovered a potentially serious security flaw in Gallery 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 1.3.3, 1.4 and 1.4.1 which can allow a remote exploit of your webserver.
For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement
Switching for Developers
Moving on from Windows to a bright new future in Linux is becoming a trend not only among desktop users, but also for software developers who grew up using Visual Studio and other Microsoft tools to code applications for the Windows platform. Curious about the possibilities in cross-platform design or outright ready to switch entirely, many of them try to find their way around POSIXish operating systems now. But are there ways to leverage all that knowledge they accumulated before? Sure there are:
Using 2.6 Kernels During The Install
Some Gentoo users have elected to try and use the new 2.6 kernels from the initial install. A few problems remain, one being that devfs is depreciated in 2.6. Read here for some helpful links to get things up and running with its replacement, udev.
2.6 vs 2.4 Speed Issues
Also this week, some users have been trying the 2.6 series and experiencing wildly varying results in regard to speed. Check out some of the rather lengthy and interesting threads here and here.
Reminders: International Linux Shows With Gentoo Involvement
Belgium: FOSDEM, 21/22 February 2004.
Germany: Chemnitzer Linuxtag, 6/7 March 2004
Germany: GLUGHH Website; Next Meeting
Congratulations, the Hamburg-based Gentooists have set up their own website now! Content, desing and future plans will certainly be discussed at the next meeting of the GLUGHH, which is going to take place on Sunday, 22 February, 19:00 hours at the Schachcafé as usual.
The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 06 February 2004 and 12 February 2004, activity on the site has resulted in:
Of the 5046 currently open bugs: 128 are labeled 'blocker', 192 are labeled 'critical', and 363 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:
Using RCS
This week's tip shows you how to use of RCS to keep track of changes in configuration files. To get RCS and its related tools, install app-text/rcs from Portage. To get started with RCS, try putting /etc/make.conf under revision control.
Note: Similarities between CVS and RCS will cause any $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo/xml/htdocs/news/en/gwn/20040216-newsletter.xml,v 1.1 2004/02/17 01:53:48 carlos Exp $ or $Id: 20040216-newsletter.xml,v 1.1 2004/02/17 01:53:48 carlos Exp $ tags to be rewritten when you put files under revision control. |
Code Listing 6.1: Adding files to RCS |
# cd /etc # mkdir RCS (Put make.conf under revision control) # ci -i make.conf RCS/make.conf,v <-- make.conf enter description, terminated with single '.' or end of file: NOTE: This is NOT the log message! >> make.conf - custom settings for portage >> . initial revision: 1.1 done (The file is now in RCS, so put it back in /etc for reading) # co make.conf |
Notice that make.conf is now under revision control and is read-only. To edit the file, you need to perform the following steps:
Code Listing 6.2: Editing a file under revision control |
(Checkout the file with locking enabled) # co -l make.conf RCS/make.conf,v --> make.conf revision 1.1 (locked) done (Edit the file) # ${EDITOR} make.conf (Check the file back in and unlock it.) # ci -u make.conf RCS/make.conf,v <-- make.conf new revision: 1.2; previous revision: 1.1 enter log message, terminated with single '.' or end of file: >> changed DISTDIR to use a drive with more space >> . done |
This can be a tedious process so it's better to put all the commands in a script to do it automatically.
Code Listing 6.3: Example script for revision control |
#!/bin/sh
# Script to edit files under revision control
[[ -f "RCS/$1,v" ]] && co -l $1
${EDITOR} $1
[[ -f "RCS/$1,v" ]] && ci -u $1
|
For more information on using RCS see man 1 rcsintro.
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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