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Welcome to issue # 105 of openSUSE Weekly News

In this Week:

Announcements

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Sascha Manns: openSUSE Weekly News Team searches for Translators
"The openSUSE Weekly News Team searches for Translators for the German Weekly News. If you would like to participate us, just send an Email to: mailto:saigkill@opensuse.org."
openSUSE Spotlight: Call for Volunteers: SCALE
"The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is coming up shortly. Weā€™re looking for some volunteers to help man the openSUSE booth at the show. If youā€™re an openSUSE enthusiast and planning on attending SCALE, please drop a note to the openSUSE marketing list.
The show is February 19-21, but the expo floor is only open on the 20th and 21st. We wonā€™t need a lot of help setting up the booth, just folks who can help man the booth, answer questions about openSUSE, hand out some swag, and be friendly. You donā€™t need to be able to answer every technical question that an attendee might ask, but should know your way around openSUSE 11.2 and be able to answer general questions about openSUSE."
openSUSE Spotlight: openSUSE 11.2 Promo DVDs and How to Get them
"Happy 2010! Itā€™s great to be back from vacation, and itā€™s time to start getting a jump on the new year. Part of that is getting openSUSE 11.2 media to ambassadors and folks running open source events.
If youā€™re looking for openSUSE 11.2 DVDs for events or groups, we have plenty in stock. Weā€™re happy to send openSUSE 11.2 DVDs to openSUSE Ambassadors and folks running FLOSS/Linux events."
openSUSE Spotlight: The next openSUSE Survey
"Working on a first draft of questions for the next openSUSE survey. Itā€™s been a while since we queried our users, and itā€™s about time we do it again.
A couple of challenges here:
# Weā€™d like to know as much as possible about openSUSE users and contributors to best understand the community. This means asking quite a few questions.
# We want to keep the survey short so people donā€™t lose interest and stop before theyā€™ve completed the survey. This means that we have to be choosy about the questions we ask, which slightly conflicts with the first goal.
# Need to make sure the questions and options are clear and cover the bases. Since most of the survey should be multiple choice, we need to have sane options."


In the Community

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Greg Kroah-Hartman: Twitter experiment over
"Way back in 2008 I started to use twitter as a dump of my command line. Well, 23 thousand tweets later, most of them being something as boring as q ref, I've stopped the experiment. Turns out just seeing one side of the conversation (what I type) and not the output, is a pretty boring thing.
That being said, 155 people did find it amusing enough to follow, and for that, I am totally amazed. True, 150 of them are probably bots, I sure hope their scripts enjoyed the show. Twitter also started to rate limit me after the first few months, in a silent manner. The server would say it accepted the message, yet it would never show up anywhere."


Status Updates

Distribution

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Katarina Machalkova: YaST is falling, make a wish
"There it is - a new year and /me turning into fossil more and more each day :P I've never been much into making New Year's resolutions, as failure to fulfill them (almost always) only contributed to my overall frustration. So, what about making an exception and try some this year? Such as "I will finally lose some weight, my rear end is way too big" (but downhill skiing won't help me much there, will it?). Or "I will try harder to keep my apartment clean" (but frying a heap of falafels for dinner will turn the kitchen back to the state where it was before the cleaning). Or "I will be nice and friendly to my sister" ( er, ehm, ufff, ... ). "


Wiki / Communication / Events

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Andreas Jaeger: Feed Problems on lizards/spotlight Solved
"During the last couple of days the feeds used by news readers for both lizards.opensuse.org and spotlight.opensuse.org were broken. This has been fixed now and I apologize that it took so long due to the christmas break."
Michal Hrusecky: Media Wiki Theme - status update
"Last time I informed you about Media Wiki theme I've been working on for our Umbrella project. There were plenty of reactions to the screenshot. I'll skip the positive feedback and let's talk about the negative one. Most of the negative feedback was about the color. Some people didn't liked that it is grey and not green. Robert responded to this and instead of citing him, you can read his whole reaction here. In short, grey has some advantages against green (high contrast, elegant, neutral, ...) and we can use green elsewhere and for highlighting."


Tips and Tricks

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For Commandline/Script Newbies

The Geek Stuff/Sasikala: Awk Introduction Tutorial ā€“ 7 Awk Print Examples
"This is the first article on the new awk tutorial series. Weā€™ll be posting several articles on awk in the upcoming weeks that will cover all features of awk with practical examples.
In this article, let us review the fundamental awk working methodology along with 7 practical awk print examples."
Masim Sugianto: Bash Script for Replace Multiple Words in a Multiple File
"Iā€™m using the following script to replace a configuration file. As example, Iā€™m trying to create an auto-configuration for setting up PXE boot service. YAST maybe the best tools to do what I want, but YAST need a few step to do. I could make a same result with a simple task by preparing default configuration file (the successful configuration on my server), ask some question and then automatically replace some words with the answer."
Linux.com/Joe Brockmeier: Bash 101: Working at the CLI
"The command line can be very intimidating to new users. Having to use the command line is one of the chief complaints and fears for a lot of users who venture into Linux. But it doesn't have to be scary, and you don't need to know everything to dip your toe in and find out how useful the CLI can be."

For Developers and Programmers

IBM developerWorks/Xiaobo Yang: Accessing social networking Web sites through OAuth, Part 1: Build an OAuth-enabled desktop Twitter client
"OAuth is an open protocol that enables users to share their protected resources among different Web sites, without risking exposure. OAuth is an ideal candidate for mashing up today's social networking Web sites like Twitter. The first part of this series gives an introduction to OAuth, followed by an example of the development of an OAuth-enabled desktop Twitter client. The second part of this series demonstrates how to develop an OAuth-enabled Web Twitter client, which will be migrated to Google App Engine (GAE) in the third and final part of the series."

For System Administrators

Masim Sugianto: Tutorial : Samba PDC + OpenLDAP on openSUSE 11.1 ā€“ Part 1
"I would notice that based on my experience, configuring Samba PDC + OpenLDAP on openSUSE 11.1 are a long journey that would bring you into headache, so you must be careful on copying the configuration and make a proper changes to meet with your environment. Please give me a comment if you found a typo or an error message while trying the tutorial.
Iā€™m using vavai.net as domain name, server as hostname and 192.168.1.254 as server IP address. Part2, Part3"
Masim Sugianto: Moving Physical Linux Server into Virtual Image
"These are various reason why I decided to move the physical server into Virtualization. Below are some of the reasons :
1. Simplify system backup & restore. We do not need to reinstall everything because we could backup all system in an image. The restore process should be as simple as copying the image into new server
2. Reduces power & electricity consumes. Virtualization need a few physical server as host to run some virtual machine. Less physical server means a lower power and electricity needed
3. Minimal impact while trying to upgrade to better hardware. Moving virtual server into better server will need a few changes than moving physical into physical server.
4. Standard Driver & Management. Virtualization do not need different driver for different model. The driver would same as others because Virtualization will emulate the host driver.
5. Reduce hardware & peripheral cost. We do not need a new server to host different service
Moving physical into virtual better known as P2V means Physical To Virtual. The popular application to do this are VMWare Converter, that free of charge for open source edition. Anyway, I donā€™t have the VMWare server (VMWare ESXor VMWare server) to act as destination place for converted image, so I take another way by using CloneZilla Linux with VMWare Workstation as described below :..."
Masim Sugianto: Zimbra Mail Server Relay Access Denied & ISP Relay with Authentication
"Below are a common mail server problems that might be hit you if you wish to move and use your mail server as production server without full & complete check :
1. Relay access denied because you have a dynamic public IP Address
2. Email from your mail server delivered to spam box on Gmail or Yahoo mail
3. Some of your outbound mail being deferred while trying to send to certain domain/recipient
The problem occurred for many reason. It can be a dynamic IP that blacklisted as an open relay mail server; Your IP got trapped and blacklisted on some RBLhost; The destination mail server could not look up your defined host and/or ip address; a missing PTR records or Reverse DNS Zone on your DNS Server and much more."
Masim Sugianto: Solution for Zimbra 6.0.4 Logger Problem
"For anyone installing Zimbra 6.0.4 on openSUSE 11.1 64 bit or on SLES 11 64 bit and found a logger problem (the Zimbra logger status are running but the Zimbra Admin status marks with Red X and the Zimbra log has no content), the following thread on Zimbra Forums may help :
1. My own thread regarding Zimbra 6.0.4 logger problem on SLES 64 bit
2. LMStone thread regarding the upgrade process from Zimbra 5.0.18 into Zimbra 6.0.4 on SLES 10 SP3
Actually, I havenā€™t try the suggestion on both thread. Iā€™m currently testing the suggestion on Zimbra 6.0.4 installation on openSUSE 11.1 64 bit and will be updating this post as soon as I try the suggestion."


New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

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Packman: qmmp 0.3.1-0.pm.4.1
"This program is an audio-player, written with help of Qt library. The user interface is similar to winamp or xmms. Main opportunities:
* unpacked winamp skins support * plugins support * MPEG1 layer 1/2/3 support * Ogg Vorbis support * Native FLAC support * Musepack support * WMA support * AlSA sound output * JACK sound output"
Packman: reloaded 1.5.2-0.pm.1.1
"Reloaded, a graphical interface for Veejay.
Features: * Thin client (TCP/IP) * MIDI support (auto learning) * Slick interface designed for live performing * Tracks multiple veejay servers"
Thomas Biege: Command-Line Tool Fuzzer Beta 2
"On my train travel to Nuernberg I heavily rewrote fuzz-cmdline while testing it by fuzzing several setuid command-line tools on openSUSE 11.2.
fuzz-cmdline Beta 2 can be downloaded (http://www.suse.de/~thomas/projects/fuzz-cmdline/index.html) and tested now. Your comments are welcome."
Packman: XBMC 9.11-1.pm.4.1
"XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger and Apple TV) and Microsoft Windows, as well as the original Xbox game console. Created in 2003 by a group of like minded programmers, XBMC is a non-profit project run and developed by volunteers located around the world. More than 50 software developers have contributed to XBMC, and 100-plus translators have worked to expand its reach, making it available in more than 30 languages."
Ben Kevan: OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Build 9319 Available for openSUSE
"The openSUSE Build Service repository for OpenOffice Unstable has received OpenOffice.org 3.2.0, build 9319. Iā€™m not sure if this is the final build from OpenOffice.org, as their release schedule doesnā€™t have a final target date for 3.2 release, due to the Holidayā€™s. But the above package is available, and Iā€™ve installed and itā€™s working very well. ..."


Planet SUSE

Ben Kevan: Installing Google Chrome ā€“ openSUSE Fedora Repository RPM
"Recently someone emailed me and said they couldnā€™t get Google Chrome installed on their openSUSE 11 box. So I decided to write up a little installation using Googleā€™s repository and zypper (zypper for opensuse and yum for fedora). ..."
Robert Schweikert: openSUSE 11.2 on Dell Mini 10v
"The Dell Mini 10v is nothing special from a hardware perspective for a Netbook, and follows along the specs of most other Netbook models on the market today. The integrated buttons in the track-pad take some time getting used to, and IMHO separate buttons are more user friendly. For my recently acquired new toy I increased the RAM to 2 GB and added the larger battery. On the software side the Dell Mini 10v is something special as it is one of few Netbooks available with Linux pre-installed. Other Netbook brands either have no Linux option or charge extra when straying of the beaten hardware and OS combination path, at what I consider to be outrages rates. While as a devoted SUSE user Iā€™d rather see openSUSE than Ubuntu pre-installed getting Linux on the machine and not having any of my hard earned money diverted to the monopolist from Redmond was a key purchasing decision."
Jonathan Pryor: What is mdoc?
"mdoc is an assembly-based documentation management system, which recently added support for .NET . I say "assembly based" because an alternative is source-based, which is what "normal" C# XML documentation, JavaDoc, and perlpod provide. Unlike these source-based systems, in mdoc documentation for public types and members are not present within source code. Instead, documentation is stored externally (to the source), in a directory of XML files (hereafter refered to as the mdoc repository)."
Joe Brockmeier: Firefox extension I'm loving: It's All Text!
"Want to use your favorite text editor to write text for online applications? Check out It's All Text! This add-on allows you to edit text from any "textarea" on a Web page in an external editor. Once it's installed, you can configure the extension to use whatever your favorite editor happens to be. In my case Vim (GVIM, in this case), but you could also use Gedit, Kate, or any other editor that you prefer."


openSUSE Forums

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Kaffeine in KDE4
"Some musings on the capabilities of kaffeine kde4. Just ignore the odd kde3 rant. Worth a look, it's a very capable player."
k3b MAD codec issue in kde4 and Packman
"A recent packaging of k3b-codecs for kde4 from Packman lacked the MAC codec. There were still some puzzling aspects to this thread though."
Bad Disk Image?
"What was interesting here is the md5 check and the media check proved OK. But it appears the DVD media quality was Not! Worth getting good quality media, especially for Installs!"
Can't upgrade to kde4.3.4!
"Learning the new features in openSUSE 11.2's package management is going to make things easier for you when it comes to tasks like this."


On the Web

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Announcements

OStatic/Sam Dean: A Bushel of Free FOSS Resources
"On a regular basis, we at OStatic round up our ongoing collections of open source resources, tutorials, reviews and project tours. These educational toolkits are a big part of the learning mission we try to preserve at the site. We regularly collect the best Firefox extensions, free online books on open source topics, free tools for developers, resources for working with and enjoying online video and audio, Linux tutorials, and much more. In this post, you'll find an updated set of almost 50 collections and resources. Hopefully, you'll find something to learn from here, and the good news is that everything found in this post is free."

Reports

Peter Prior: Tracking a cat with GPS
"I finally got around to attaching my I-gotu GPS tracker to Tuffin to see where he goes. I cleared the device, charged it and attached it to his harness, ending up with a setup like this."
OStatic/Joe Brockmeier: Monty Still Trying to "Save" MySQL
"Let it never be said that Monty Widenius gave up without a fight. Widenius hasn't given up hope of blocking Oracle taking MySQL as part of its Sun acquisition. He started before the holidays by calling for a letter writing campaign, and has stepped it up with an Internet petition and a personal email campaign to recruit signatures. Here's hoping it will fail. It probably wouldn't be fair to call it spamming, but he's gotten pretty aggressive by emailing (in his own words) "every person that I have ever communicated with regarding MySQL." You might not agree with Widenius, but at least you have to credit him with tenacity."
OStatic/Joe Brockmeier: Superphone is Just Another Word for Personal Computer
"It finally happened, and hardly anyone noticed. A major Linux announcement got the Apple treatment from the media, and generated major consumer excitement. Granted, Linux snuck in under the guise of the Nexus One, but if the media excitement over Google's "superphone" is any indication, millions of people will be picking up Linux personal computers in 2010. While not quite the "year of the Linux desktop" Linux enthusiasts have been hoping for, it's still a major win for Linux and FLOSS."
h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log - Coming in 2.6.33 (Part 1) - Networking
"Linux 2.6.33 will have new and improved drivers for Wi-Fi chips by Intel, Ralink and Realtek. Several drivers for old Wi-Fi hardware have been moved to the staging area and will probably soon be discarded. New additions include various LAN chip drivers and several improvements to the network stack. ..."
Computerworld/Eric Lai: CES: Lenovo unveils hybrid tablet laptop with 'two brains'
"Lenovo today announced its IdeaPad U1, a consumer Windows laptop with a touchscreen that can be detached and used as a separate Linux tablet computer. ..."
PR Newswire: MSI Ships First Netbook Powered By SUSE Moblin From Novell
"LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- (International CES 2010) --Addressing the growing demand for lightweight, mobile netbook devices, MSI and Novell today announced the upcoming availability of SUSEĀ® Moblin preloaded on the MSI U135 netbook. Following the recent release of Moblin(TM) version 2.1, this marks the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to sell a fully-supported IntelĀ® Atom processor-based netbook running Moblin-based technology to consumers."

Reviews and Essays

MindBy/Brent McConnell: Community Building 101
"Recently, that quote stirred some controversy among my peers. The part about ā€œresults are not the pointā€ was hard for some people to understand and come to grips with. Arenā€™t results always the point? Well, as with most things, ā€œIt dependsā€. The people and community that evolve around an open source software project will ultimately determine its success. Even if the core team launches the project with spectacular productivity and results, this phase of evolution will be fleeting if the necessary processes and community to make the project a long lasting success are not put into place. This article presents some of the actions open source community leaders can take to ensure not only results, but a system that encourages productivity and longevity."
DigitalKamera: Make a paper Tux Linux penguin in less than 15 minutes!!
"This is a Newyear gift to all Open source Lovers..We all love penguin right? It is not enough to be a real Linux Geek, if you really want to impress then you must have a Linux mascot in your apparment.. This image tells how to make tux linux penguin in less than 15 minutes.All u have to do is print this image , cut it out and then glue according to the numbers printed on it.Thats allā€¦The paper tux linux penguin is ready.."

Warning!

h-online/DJ Walker-Morgan: 768-bit RSA cracked
"Researchers have decomposed a 768-bit number with 232 decimal places into its two prime factors and published a paper with their results. The number is the string released as "RSA-768" under the now defunct RSA Challenge. As a result, RSA encryptions with 768-bit keys must, from now on, be considered cracked."


Security Updates

To view the security announcements in full, or to receive them as soon as they're released, refer to the openSUSE Security Announce mailing list.


Statistics

Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.

opensuse.org

Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 37371 (+2) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 40250 (+417) registered users - Most users ever online was 30559, Jan,08 2010 at 14:06.

Contributors
4131 (+23) of 10722 (+66) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 395 (+0) members.

Build Service
The Build Service now hosts 9946 (+125) projects, 91610 (+904) packages, 18120 (+30) repositories by 20282 (+118) confirmed users.


openFATE


Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.3:

  • total: 436 (+18)
  • unconfirmed: 286 (+15)
  • new: 44 (+2)
  • evaluation: 71 (+0)
  • candidate: 1 (+0)
  • done: 10 (+0)
  • rejected: 15 (+1)
  • duplicate: 9 (+0)
More information on openFATE


Bugzilla

The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:


Localization


openSUSE for your ears

  • The openSUSE Weekly News are available as Livestream or Podcast in the German Language. You can hear it or download it on http://blog.radiotux.de/podcast .


Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved

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Credits

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Translations