Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: May 10th, 2004

Yuji Carlos Kosugi  Editor
AJ Armstrong  Contributor
Brian Downey  Contributor
Grant Goodyear  Contributor
Stuart Herbert  Contributor
Kurt Lieber  Contributor
David Narayan  Contributor
Bryan Ostergaard  Contributor
Ulrich Plate  Contributor
Simon Holm Thagersen  Danish Translation
Jesper Brodersen  Danish Translation
Arne Mejlholm  Danish 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
Xavier Neys  French Translation
Martin Prieto  French Translation
Antoine Raillon  French Translation
Sebastien Cevey  French Translation
Jean-Christophe Choisy  French Translation
Thomas Raschbacher German Translation
Steffen Lassahn German Translation
Matthias F. Brandstetter German Translation
Lukas Domagala German Translation
Tobias Scherbaum German Translation
Daniel Gerholdt German Translation
Marc Herren German Translation
Tobias Matzat German Translation
Marco Mascherpa  Italian Translation
Claudio Merloni  Italian Translation
Stefano Lucidi  Italian Translation
Katuyuki Konno  Japanese Translation
Hiroyuki Takeda  Japanese Translation
Masato Hatakeyama  Japanese Translation
Masayoshi Nakamura  Japanese Translation
Yasunori Fukudome  Japanese Translation
Tomoyuki Sakurai  Japanese Translation
Lukasz Strzygowski  Polish Translation
Karol Goralski  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
Aleksandr Martyncev  Russian Translator
Sergey Galkin  Russian Translator
Sergey Kuleshov  Russian Translator
Alex Spirin  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

Updated 10 May 2004

1.  Gentoo News

Gentoo Documentation Project Status Report

The Gentoo Documentation Project has released a new status report. Much new documentation has been added since the last status report in April - a coLinux HOWTO has been added, and many other sections have been updated too, like the Gentoo Security Guide, which now has a note on the -glsa-check option to emerge.

In addition, the third part of the Gentoo Handbook, concerned with configuring a desktop machine, is progressing, with sections on various desktop environments, X, 3d acceleration, and sound now complete, and drafts are available for viewing. The Documentation Project plans to officially release this third chapter once the section on integrating a Gentoo machine into a Windows network is complete.

GLEP 26: Handling kernels with Portage

Developers Nathaniel McCallum and Joshua Campbell submitted GLEP 26 last Sunday. This proposal has to do with kernel handling by Portage - specifically, Nathan and Joshua propose that emerge kernel-name, in addition to or instead of installing the kernel sources, also give the user the option of installing a binary kernel, its modules, and a tarballed package of kernel-headers. For more information about the advantages and disadvantages of such a change, read the GLEP or the discussion on gentoo-dev.

2.  Gentoo Security

Multiple format string vulnerabilities in neon 0.24.4 and earlier

There are multiple format string vulnerabilities in libneon which may allow a malicious WebDAV server to execute arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

Multiple vulnerabilities in LHa

Two stack-based buffer overflows and two directory traversal problems have been found in LHa. These vulnerabilities can be used to execute arbitrary code or as a denial of service attack.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

3.  Heard in the Community

Web Forums

Porthole to Portage

Here's one of those cases where the Forums were the first to hear about a programming group effort, and a few months down the line the utility that emerged (pun entirely unintentional) got ascended to Portage. Daniel G. Taylor, Frederik Arnerup, Brian Dolbec and Bill Wheeler Brian Dolbec have rounded some of the edges of their Porthole (a GUI frontend for Portage) enough to get it unmasked in the official Portage tree:

gentoo-user

Setting Up a Local Email Server

If you have more than one PC used for email access, this thread may be for you. It contains a helpful link to setting up a central email box with IMAP that you may use to retrieve your email from anywhere.

Mounting Partition Images

Check out this thread for some tips on imaging and mounting hard drive partitions as a file.

Slowest Gentoo Ever

Gentoo was named after the fastest species of penguin on Earth. However, some very patient people talk about the slowest machines they've ever installed Stage1 Gentoo on. 486/33Mhz? Yikes.

4.  Gentoo International

Japan: GentooJP Core Socialising

Masatomo Nakano is one of the founders of GentooJP, the large and ever-growing Japanese community with a most active developer crowd and a truly exciting web presence. His current visit to Japan (taking a few days off from his overseas job in England) serves as the perfect excuse for a get-together of the Japanese Gentoo developers, translators and other activists. Just in case you're around Shibuya station on Thursday, 13 May at 19:00 hours, do join them for dinner and a drink or two. Cost per person will be 5000 JPY, check the GentooJP mailing list (in Japanese) for further details.

5.  Tips and Tricks

Renaming Files

Often files need to be converted from uppercase to lowercase. Sometimes this is a side effect of moving from case-insensitive file systems to case-sensitive ones.

Here's a quick shell command that will convert everything in the current directory from uppercase to lowercase.

Code Listing 5.1

for n in *; do mv $n `echo $n | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'`; done

6.  Moves, Adds, and Changes

Moves

The following developers recently left the Gentoo team:

Adds

The following developers recently joined the Gentoo Linux team:

Changes

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

7.  Contribute to GWN

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9.  GWN Subscription Information

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