Gentoo Weekly Newsletter: 30 October 2006

1.  Gentoo news

XMMS being removed

As many of you are probably aware, XMMS is being removed from the tree next month. XMMS has many bugs and requires heavy patching, upstream development and bug-fixes have ceased in favor of the forthcoming XMMS2 and XMMS has no Gentoo maintainer. Audacious is compatible with existing themes and the various Audacious developers have been working with the Gentoo community to ease the transition.

More information about this change can be found at the XMMS page.

#gentoo-uk under new management

With the recent retirement of Gentoo developer Tim Yamin (plasmaroo), the the #gentoo‑uk IRC channel is now managed by Roy Bamford. The #gentoo-uk IRC channel is an English speaking IRC channel mainly for discussion of Gentoo, Linux and other computer related topics. As it is a small channel, the topic rules are relaxed depending on the current business of the channel. However, #gentoo-uk has grown by 25% or so over the last year and as a result, #gentoo-chat has been created as an 'overflow' to allow otherwise off-topic conversations to be started or continued when on-topic chatter picks up in #gentoo-uk. This appears to be working well so far, with most users nudging one another to move to #gentoo-chat to allow on-topic conversations to have priority in the main channel.

There are no residency requirements for dropping in or being a regular - the channel already has several continental contributors. As #gentoo-uk is much quieter than the main #gentoo English language support channel, new IRC users may find it a better place to get started than #gentoo - getting to know their IRC clients and make their mistakes within a small friendly group. It also works well for trying to resolve those protracted issues as there is less distracting material being posted.

Please drop in and say hello, stay a while, or even add us to your auto-join list!

CJK team looking for help

The Gentoo CJK team is understaffed, most of the packages in the tree are old and not actively maintained (on the Gentoo side). As support for CJK languages is something Gentoo would rather not lose, Diego Pettenò (Flameeyes) asks that people interested in maintaining some of the packages contact the CJK team, so that eventual proxy maintainers can be appointed (and eventually lead to the mentoring of the most interested).

Please contact the CJK team if you're interested in maintaining a package already in portage or if you want to add a new package that might replace one already there.

Scheme team looking for help

The Gentoo Scheme herd maintainers are seriously understaffed at this time. Interested parties will either need to currently be a Gentoo developer, or be willing to become a developer to begin maintaining these packages.

If you have an interest in Scheme and the Gentoo project, you are encouraged to contact recruiters@gentoo.org and start working towards becoming a developer today.

Turkish translation team needs your help

The newly-revived GWN Turkish translation team is looking for help translating the GWN each week. Interested parties need good written English and Turkish skills and the availability to work on a weekly schedule. If you're interested in helping with the team, please contact the GWN at gwn-feedback@gentoo.org for more information. There is also a Turkish IRC channel, #gentoo-tr, which could use soem more Turkish-speaking visitors and would be a great place to collaborate on the translations.

2.  Heard in the community

gentoo-user

date in emerge logs

Jorge Almeida wanted to know if the cryptic numbers (e.g., "1161911504") at the beginning of each line in his emerge log were dates, and if so, how to render them human readable. Harm Geerts confirmed that the figure was Unix time ("the number of seconds elapsed since midnight UTC on the morning of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds") and suggested translating it using Python.

$ python -c "import time; print time.ctime(1161911504)"

Bo Ørsted Andresen suggested using awk, instead.

$ tail /var/log/emerge.log | awk -F: '{print strftime("%D %X %Z", $1),$2}'

Peter Ruskin amended this to be shorter and less internationally ambiguous in its output.

$ tail /var/log/emerge.log | awk -F: '{print strftime("%c", $1),$2}'

The last (and to Jorge most suitable) solution was Richard Fish's.

$ date -d @1161911504

There were also suggestions for more portage-specific solutions: Neil Bothwick suggested emerging app-portage/genlop, an emerge log parsing application. Harm Geerts suggested qlop, which is part of the app-portage/portage-utils package.

• http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-user/msg_102804.xml

resolv.conf question/Editing /etc/init.d/net.eth0 to pass options to dhcpcd

Two different users were having similar problems with dhcpcd and resolv.conf. When he booted, Matthew Lee's resolv.conf file was being overwritten by a version with no DNS nameservers in it. Michael Sullivan wanted dhcpcd not to overwrite his resolv.conf.

Richard Fish suggested that Michael read /etc/conf.d/net.example. He pointed out that if Michael really wanted full control of his dhcp options, he could use something like dhcpcd_INTERFACE="DHCP PARAMETERS". However, an easier way to accomplish the goal would be generic dhcp parameters in the form dhcp_INTERFACE="nodns".

Novensiles divi Flamen had the same suggestion for Matthew, while Vikas Kumar suggested dns_servers_INTERFACE=( "DNS SERVER 1 IP" "DNS SERVER 2 IP" ).

• http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-user/msg_102822.xml
• http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-user/msg_102834.xml

gentoo-catalyst

Finally getting around to building live CDs with Catalyst

Ed Borasky is using catalyst to build a Gentoo-based live CD for advanced applied mathematics (see http://rubyforge.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/Rameau/Rameau.pdf?root=cougar&view=co ). During the course of building, he had to unmask the hard-masked sys-apps/gli, the Gentoo Linux Installer. He wanted to know if that was correct and also how to create a live CD without installer.

To the first question, Andrew Gaffney suggested use of portage_overlay in the spec file or unmasking gli in Ed's snapshot. To create a non-installer live CD, gli should be removed entirely from the spec file.

Ed also wanted to know how to install some testing packages and whether there was an overlay for make.conf. Chris Gianelloni said that there wasn't by design (since catalyst's purpose is creating releases, for which unstable software cannot be used). However, Ed could mark whatever packages he wanted stable in his snapshot.

Ed responded that since he needed only a few unstable packages, this would work for him.

3.  Gentoo in the press

EngadgetHD (Oct 26 2006)

Author Ben Drawbaugh details how to upgrade the hard drive in a Series3 TiVo. What software does he recommend to use when copying your data to your shiny new drive? Why, Gentoo, of course. Drawbaugh describes using the Minimal InstallCD and dd to copy the data.

• http://www.engadgethd.com/2006/10/26/how-to-upgrade-your-series3-drive/

4.  Gentoo developer moves

Moves

The following developers recently left the Gentoo project:

• Emanuele Giaquinta (exg)

Adds

The following developers recently joined the Gentoo project:

• Christian Faulhammer (opfer) emacs/x86

Changes

The following developers recently changed roles within the Gentoo project:

• none this week

5.  Gentoo security

OpenSSL: Multiple vulnerabilities

OpenSSL contains multiple vulnerabilities including the possible remote execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

Apache mod_tcl: Format string vulnerability

A format string vulnerability has been found in Apache mod_tcl, which could lead to the remote execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

Cheese Tracker: Buffer Overflow

Cheese Tracker contains a buffer overflow allowing the remote execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

PHP: Integer overflow

PHP is vulnerable to an integer overflow potentially allowing the remote execution of arbitrary code.

For more information, please see the GLSA Announcement

6.  Upcoming package removals

This is a list of packages that have been announced to be removed in the future. The package removals come from many locations, including the Treecleaners and various developers.

Last Rites:

XMMS and friends:

Due to the large volume of packages in the XMMS masking, they have been added into a section of their own. This is to ensure that they get proper exposure, as this affects many people and is a hotly-debated item.

7.  Bugzilla

Summary

• Statistics
• Closed bug ranking
• New bug rankings

Statistics

The Gentoo community uses Bugzilla (bugs.gentoo.org) to record and track bugs, notifications, suggestions and other interactions with the development team. Between 22 October 2006 and 29 October 2006, activity on the site has resulted in:

• 913 new bugs during this period
• 559 bugs closed or resolved during this period
• 36 previously closed bugs were reopened this period
• 180 closed as NEEDINFO/WONTFIX/CANTFIX/INVALID/UPSTREAM during this period
• 192 bugs marked as duplicates during this period

Of the 11128 currently open bugs: 32 are labeled 'blocker', 116 are labeled 'critical', and 536 are labeled 'major'.

Closed bug rankings

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

• AMD64 Project, with 30 closed bugs
• Gentoo Sound Team, with 28 closed bugs
• Gentoo Games, with 26 closed bugs
• Xavier Neys, with 20 closed bugs
• Default Assignee for New Packages, with 18 closed bugs
• Gentoo KDE team, with 15 closed bugs
• Gentoo Security, with 14 closed bugs
• Gentoo's Team for Core System packages, with 12 closed bugs

New bug rankings

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

• Default Assignee for New Packages, with 24 new bugs
• Gentoo TreeCleaner Project, with 17 new bugs
• Default Assignee for Orphaned Packages, with 13 new bugs
• Gentoo net-p2p team, with 11 new bugs
• AMD64 Project, with 11 new bugs
• Gentoo KDE team, with 9 new bugs
• Net-Mail Packages, with 8 new bugs
• Gentoo Sound Team, with 7 new bugs

8.  GWN feedback

The GWN is staffed by volunteers and members of the community who submit ideas and articles. If you are interested in writing for the GWN, have feedback on an article that we have posted, or just have an idea or article that you would like to submit to the GWN, please send us your feedback and help make the GWN better.

9.  GWN subscription information

To subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank e-mail to gentoo-gwn+subscribe@gentoo.org.

To unsubscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, send a blank e-mail to gentoo-gwn+unsubscribe@gentoo.org from the e-mail address you are subscribed under.

10.  Other languages

The Gentoo Weekly Newsletter is also available in the following languages:

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• German
• Greek
• French
• Korean
• Japanese
• Italian
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Russian
• Slovak
• Spanish