Archive:Weekly news 138

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Editors Note

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We are pleased to announce our 138 issue of the openSUSE Weekly News.
Now we have 138 issues full of information about our choosed System openSUSE. We are happy about that. What we're expecting in this issue?
One of the interesting Topics are the new discussed Rules from the Board Election. Then we have a interesting article about Akonadi, and new Stuff from the Mono team.
We hope that you will enjoy reading.


Status Updates

Board

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Andreas Jaeger: Revising the Board Election Rules

"Last years election of seats for the openSUSE board showed that our election rules are not complete. So, before the elections this year start, I propose that we refine the rules and like to start with this post a discussion on how to change them.
I see the following situations not handled:
  • Less candidates than seats for a category (Novell/non-Novell)
  • Equal number of candidates and open seats for a category (Novell/non-Novell)
  • a board member resigning
  • a board member disappearing and not engaging in the board
  • a board member getting hired by Novell or leaves Novell
We also need to clarify when the new board constitutes."


Distribution


Team Reports

Build Service Team

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Martin Mohring: OBS 2.1: Status of PowerPC and MIPS support with QEMU

"Now that ARM support in the OBS is getting more mature, here a report on the Status of PowerPC and MIPS builds using QEMU. They are implemented similiar to the ARM solution, and use QEMU Usermode (to allow speedup with x86 based cross compilers like we do for ARM).
First of all, PowerPC native builds do work since a long time (3+ years). At the beginning, only XEN virtualization was available for OBS, and XEN did not work on PowerPC hardware. Recently, KVM autosetup was added to OBS with release 1.8. KVM also works on PowerPC machines, so there are now fully functional PowerPC native builds with virtual machine support available."

Build Team Meeting

Meeting minutes

Build Service Statistics

  • Projects: 14665 (+96)
  • Packages: 98471 (+445)
  • Repositories: 23907 (+126) by 24478 (+98) confirmed users.


KDE Team

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Sebastian KĆ¼gler: Demystifying Akonadi

"The exotic-sounding ā€˜Akonadiā€™ refers to both a mythological figure and the KDE platformā€™s central information framework. This article will dispel some of the mystery about how Akonadi will improve performance and integration, and how it is being rolled out into KDE applications. Iā€™ll also provide some insight how the technology works, and what will become possible with this new PIM framework.
Many people have been asking what the status of the new, Akonadi-based Kontact Groupware suite is. As Iā€™ve been working closely with the PIM hackers, I thought Iā€™d give my readers a heads-up on whatā€™s going on and what to expect. In this article, I will often take KMail as an example for the port, but similar things apply to the other PIM applications that form the Kontact suite as well."


Mono Team

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Stephen Shaw: Mono Accessibility 2.1 Released

"We just released our first 2.x series update this week. This release brings a 127 bug fixes.
Over the last several months a fair amount of attention has been paid to improving at-spi2 as well. For those that donā€™t know what at-spi2 is its the next generation of Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface. The new at-spi2 using dbus in an effort to remove corba and bonobo from the gnome stack."

Mario Carrion: Mono Accessibility 2.1

"Last Tuesday, we presented Mono Accessibility 2.1. We worked really hard on this release. Our main goals were, among other things, to improve our UI Automation Client API implementation, polish the interaction with at-spi2, better Moonlight accessibility and to handle custom and client-side providers. The great work made by all the contributors was the reason this release accomplished those goals."


openFATE Team

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#310402: Driver Printer Konica Magicolor 2490 (and other)

"there exist foo2lava printer drivers for several Konica Minolta magicolor printers (e.g. 2490 MF) for already some time. But they are not included in the standard Suse Distribution. It would be nice to include the drivers in the standard distribution."

#310403: DLNA Client / Service integration

"Many devices and computers in the home can provide DLNA servers and client for media playback and serving. This is to propose 2 things: (...)"

#310405: yast2 wagon should be a fully graphic upgrade tool

"I really like it that yast2-wagon exists for users to upgrade from release to release. It effectively does a zypper dup, but via a nicer gui interface. (...)"

#310406: Make /sbin and /usr/sbin accessible by sudo out-of-the-box

"In current situation, /sbin and /usr/sbin are excluded from user path. If the user wants to use 'sudo' to run superuser tools located in sbin, the command fails. (...)"

#310410: Evaluate switching to libjpeg-turbo

"Quoting http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/libjpeg-turbo: ==== libjpeg-turbo is fork of the original libjpeg project. It contains numerous performance related enhancements and is at least twice faster in JPEG compression/decompression than original libjpeg on platforms with MMX/SSE instruction set. It has same API/ABI like original libjpeg and also runs on non-SSE platforms where is around 25% faster. http://sourceforge.net/projects/libjpeg-turbo ==== We should evaluate this library and see if we can replace libjpeg with it for improved performance."

#310431: Create automatic private group for new user

"In Yast user management, add an option in the new user dialog to have a new, private group created for the user. The group should be named as the user. (...)"

#310433: Support for apt-url

"In the fact there are many webpages and articles (not only ubuntu tutorials) using apt-url feature to install software, would be nice if openSUSE implements own solution for this feature. (...)"

#310442: New .desktop features

"Desktop files should contains lots of information, helping for desktop software.
First of enchancement should be connection with other desktop file. It means, that .desktop files should update status automatically, when used or displayed.
Second would be autmatically removing broken desktop files."

#310443: Preload Improvements in openSUSE

"The preload teams are doing many improvements for preloads, very few of these end in the openSUSE distribution. The improvements are bug fixes, hardware enablement and UI changes.
Goal: Get all preload improvements into the next openSUSE release."

Statistics

Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.4:

  • Total: 185 (+15)
  • Unconfirmed: 171 (+13)
  • New: 6 (+0)
  • Evaluation: 6 (+0)
  • Candidate: 0 (+0)
  • Done: 1 (+1)
  • Rejected: 0 (+0)
  • Duplicate: 1 (+1)
More information on openFATE


Translation Team

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Localization


In the Community

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Sirko Kemter: FrOSCon 2010

"Last weekend took FrOSCon place and openSUSE had a great presentation there. It was the 5th FroSCon and I was there since the second. FrOSCon addresses more developer and so its the best way to make a simple booth there for presenting openSUSE. FrOSCon offers projects rooms for making ther own program in there. Projects like PHP, Django, Perl, Geany and some others used the offer. After LinuxTag I said to Henne let us take an developer room too, we can make what we want in there, we have only what we do in it."

Will Stephenson: openSUSE Boosters at FrOSCon, Day 2

"Back home in Nuernberg now ā€“ Sunday has been a long day of hacking on Elgg and its plugins to shape it into a users site that knows about the social side of the openSUSE community.
Our ā€˜Hack Meckā€™ was a little bit harder after letting loose at the legendary FrOSCon Saturday night party in the balmy August air, but we still managed to put down the glow sticks, hammer the keys and reach our goals for the weekend. These were adapting the user data to include fields that are peculiar to openSUSE such as membership status and IRC cloak, enhancing the Poll plugin to meet our info gathering needs, adapting the Elgg theming to our ubiquitous Bento theme, and working on calendaring and events so that we all know what is coming next in openSUSE world and so you can display your packaging and bug-reporting achievements to the world."

Nelson Marques: The Concept of Marketing and openSUSE Conference 2010

"Dear openSUSE contributor and enthusiast, Is Marketing important for Free Software development? I hope to reach an answer in openSUSE Conference 2010 with the community and help the openSUSE Community to develop their own concepts of Marketing. I believe this is a very sensible and important task that I could accomplish with your help and participation on my small presentation.
My presentation will target ā€˜The Concept of Marketing and FOSS Developmentā€™ and it goal is to establish a Concept of Marketing that can be developed by the openSUSE Community based on a set of small concepts defined by Marketing, such as: trade, value, consumer or processes."

Welcome new Members (Corner for new acknowledged Members)

"We are pleased to announce our new openSUSE Members:

Events & Meetings

Past:


Upcoming:

openSUSE for your ears

openSUSE in $COUNTRY

"Details"

Communication

Contributors

  • 4947 (+18) of 12550 (+40) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 436 (+5) members.


New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

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Packman: imagination 2.1.1

"Imagination is a lightweight and simple DVD slide show maker written in C language and built with the GTK+2 toolkit. I noticed a lack on the Linux platform of a user-friendly DVD slide show maker, so I started developing Imagination. True, there are some other GUIs which do the job, but they usually require a lot of dependencies to be installed first. Imagination has been designed from the ground up to be fast, light and easy-to-use. It requires the ffmpeg encoder ONLY to produce the movie file - to be burned to DVD then with another application. Yes you don't need any other third-party software, I like the KISS principle :) Imagination at present features 26 transitions effects developed as plugins loaded at startup. Exporting of the slideshow as FLV format is supported. No sound and Ken Burns effects yet but they are planned in the next release."

OMG!SUSE! team: Photographers Rejoice! digiKam 1.4 hits the streets

"Professional-grade photo management app digiKam bumped to version 1.4.0 today, fixing a roll-full1 of bugs, including several crashes (full changelog).
For the unfamiliar, digiKam is an aphoto management app for KDE (but you can use it on GNOME too!), which makes importing and organizing photos easy peasy."
  • You can find other interesting Packages at:
  • PackmanOBS


Security Updates

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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.

SUSE Security Summary Report: SUSE-SR:2010:016

  • Announcement ID: SUSE-SR:2010:016
  • Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:00:00 +0000
  • Cross-References: CVE-2010-0211, CVE-2010-0212, CVE-2010-1168
  • CVE-2010-1447, CVE-2010-1507, CVE-2010-1797
  • CVE-2010-2497, CVE-2010-2498, CVE-2010-2499
  • CVE-2010-2500, CVE-2010-2519, CVE-2010-2520
  • CVE-2010-2527, CVE-2010-2541, CVE-2010-2548
  • CVE-2010-2576, CVE-2010-2783, CVE-2010-2805
  • CVE-2010-2806, CVE-2010-2807, CVE-2010-2808
  • CVE-2010-3019, CVE-2010-3020, CVE-2010-3021

openSUSE-SU-2010:0430-4 (important): MozillaThunderbird: Update to 3.0.6 security release

openSUSE-SU-2010:0540-1 (important): opera: version 10.61 fixes various vulnerabilities

openSUSE-SU-2010:0546-1 (moderate): openldap2: fixed MODRDN DoS, replicating inconsistencies and \0 character-DoS (openSUSE 11.2)

openSUSE-SU-2010:0547-1 (moderate): openldap2: fixed MODRDN DoS, replicating inconsistencies and \0 character-DoS (openSUSE 11.1)

openSUSE-SU-2010:0549-1 (critical): freetype2: security update for various bugs

openSUSE-SU-2010:0553-1 (moderate): java-1_6_0-openjdk security update


Kernel Review

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h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log: New X Server, 3D drivers for Radeon 5000 and new stable kernels

"While the new kernel versions mainly correct minor bugs, X.org's next generation X Server offers a range of improvements. Various code segments released by AMD developers allow the X.org open source drivers for Radeon GPUs to utilise the 2D and 3D acceleration features available with Radeon series 5000 graphics cards."

Rares Aioanei: openSUSE Kernel Review

Rares Aioanei gives a good Weekly Review about the Kernel.

Linus Torvalds: Linux 2.6.36-rc2

"Another week, another -rc. I didn't really ever get around to announcing -rc1 when I released it, and we had enough niggling small problems (like a memory corruptor in the HID layer that ended up causing some random problems etc) there that I never got around to fixing that lack of announcement. And hopefully -rc2 is a good point to correct the lack of earlier commentary."


Tips and Tricks

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For Desktop Users

makeuseof.com/Justin Pot: BleachBit ā€“ A Utility To Clean Up Your Linux System

"Itā€™s no secret: many programs fill your hard drive with well-meaning, but useless, crap. From browser caches to install leftovers to logs, computers are full of unnecessary information.
Windows users can turn to CCleaner ā€“ a program that can make your computer run faster - to systematically remove such fluff from their drive. But what about Linux users who need to wipe and clean their Linux machine?" You can find bleachbit in our Repositories: http://bit.ly/a1oiiK

For Commandline/Script Newbies

Linux Journal/LJ Staff: Stupid tar Tricks

"One of the most common programs on Linux systems for packaging files is the venerable tar. tar is short for tape archive, and originally, it would archive your files to a tape device. Now, you're more likely to use a file to make your archive. To use a tarfile, use the command-line option -f . To create a new tarfile, use the command-line option -c. To extract files from a tarfile, use the option -x. You also can compress the resulting tarfile via two methods. To use bzip2, use the -j option, or for gzip, use the -z option. (...)"

ServerWatch/Juliet Kemp: Single vs. Double Quotes in Bash

"In Bash, whether to use single or double quotes depends on exactly what you want to do, and the differences can trip you up if you're not concentrating. Here's a quick rundown of what each does and when to use them. (...)"


For Developers and Programmers

IBM developerWorks/Wei Dong Xie: Avoiding memory leaks in POSIX thread programming

"POSIX thread programming defines a standard set of C programming language types, functions, and constantsā€”and pthreads provide a powerful tool for thread management. To use pthreads to the fullest, you'll want to avoid the common mistakes. One common mistake is forgetting to join joinable threads, which can create memory leaks and cause extra work. In this tips-oriented article, learn the basics of POSIX threads, see how to identify and detect thread memory leaks, and get solid advice for avoiding them."


For System Administrators

Jared Ottley: Alfresco: Permissions Web Scripts

"A couple of months back I was asked to write a couple of web scripts to help one of our customers to be able to check and modify permissions for content/spaces in the Alfresco repository. Iā€™ve finally had the chance to spend sometime testing and now writing about them.
The core of the web scripts was quick to write. The fun (more time consuming) part was working with exception handling in javascipt. I know tons of fun right! There are few different ways to use exception handling based on which version of Alfresco you are using. The customer is on Enterprise 3.1 and I wanted to make sure that the web scripts also worked on the more current releases of Alfresco as well. A change (re: addition) was made in Enterprise 3.2.1 and Community 3.3 to help simplify exception handeling. Iā€™ll talk about exception handling and these differences in a follow up post. For now letā€™s talk about these new web scripts."

IBMDeveloperWorks/Ian Shields: Learn Linux, 101: Maintain the integrity of filesystems

"Learn how to check the integrity of your LinuxĀ® filesystems, monitor free space, and fix simple problems. Use the material in this article to study for the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) 101 exam for Linux system administrator certificationā€”or just to check your filesystems and keep them in good working order, especially after a system crash or power loss."


Planet SUSE

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Wolfgang Rosenauer: Call for testing: Firefox 4.0b4 on KDE (and in general)

"If you are brave enough feel free to update to Firefox 4.0b4 from the mozilla:beta repository. It will not install in parallel to previous versions but will replace your existing Firefox package. As always you want to backup your profile before so you can go back to your previous version without problems.
The latest package contains the KDE integration patches we had in FF3.x which are pretty much untested. So if you run KDE and want to give it a try please report issues you find in Novellā€™s Bugzilla."

Holger Hetterich: SMBTA documentation improving

"While we are working on getting a first release of smbtad and smbtatools out of the door, weā€™ve just released the ā€œSMB Traffic Analyzer Guideā€œ. This is the very first version. The goal of the guide is to have a complete documentation of all components of SMB Traffic Analyzer. We know this initial version has itā€™s problems, but we will continue to improve the SMBTA guide by time. So before you complain, sit back, rest, and think about this is work in progress."

LenZ Grimmer: OpenSQL Camp Europe and FrOSCon: A summary

"With OpenSQL Camp and FrOSCon being over for almost a week now, it's time to come up with a short summary. I traveled home on Monday morning and then took Tuesday off, so I had some catching up to do...
As for the past years, FrOSCon rocked again! According to the closing keynote, they had around 1.500 (unique) visitors and I had a great time there. I really enjoyed meeting all the old and new faces of the various Open Source communities. The lineup of speakers was excellent, Jon "maddog" Hall's keynote about "Free and Open Source Software in the Developing World" was quite insightful and inspiring."

Thomas Biege: SAD 0: Secure Code Development in an Open-Source World

"What does SAD mean? I will clarify it later, it does not matter now... don't be sad about it.
Since some years big software companies like Microsoft (2002) or Cisco (2010) start changing their software development procedures to address the massive amount of vulnerabilities in their products. MS seems to be successful with this strategy and all the charts, numbers and articles look promising. "But what about the open-source world, the world of Linux distributions, what did they do?" you might ask. Led me shed some light on it."

Mike McCallister: Can I Get a 30-hour Day? Searching for Linux Project Management Tools

"My life is getting far too complex to handle simply. Fall is coming, and Iā€™m beginning to think Iā€™m overbooking myself. Consider this:
  • Iā€™m working on another book project that I canā€™t talk about yet. ;-)
  • Iā€™m way behind in working through the SitePoint web development classes I wrote about a few weeks ago.
  • Iā€™m speaking to the Madison Linux Users Group (MadLUG) about openSUSE 11.3 on November 6 (Did I mention that before?), and have to create that presentation.
  • Iā€™m probably leading at least one session at BarCampMilwaukee 5 (which I did mention last week) October 2-3. The minimum is likely to be a dress rehearsal for the MadLUG event, but stillā€¦
  • I want to write more magazine articles too.
  • I have to get another car (an unexpected and urgent task).
  • There may be still another book project after the one at the top of this list that requires a bunch of preparatory tasks.
  • Iā€™ve got to mow the lawn weekly and tend to various other homeowner projects.
  • Oh, and BTW I still have a day job that fills in 40 hours every week.
Now between the Web-based app ToodleDo and a lovely Windows-based desktop app called MyLifeOrganized (MLO) that runs pretty well in Wine, Iā€™ve got my day-to-day task/to-do-lists in good order. But right now, I need something that can help me figure out how to fit all of these big projects into the amount of time left in the day once I get home at night. And, since it is fall, ideally allow me to catch a few football and postseason baseball games in the bargain."


openSUSE Forums

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Would Uptake Increase with a Stable (LTS) Version of openSUSE?

"An interesting discussion here revolving around the release schedule and life cycle of openSUSE, along with the update of applications."

Grub Issues

"Not 1, not 2, but 3 issues all at the same time. Typically confused by grub, our user here is borderline re-install. It's early days but lets see if we can spare him the trouble. Though running 11.1, they may want to consider an upgrade anyway."

Firefox opens but goes nowhere.

"A slightly confusing question, or maybe it's just the way it was worded, but we fixed the problem in the end. Another satisfied customer."

DVD Tray won't re-open!

"Will they ever get to the bottom of this one. At first I was thinking it might be a drive on it's way out, but now it's looking like it might be something (a process) holding on to the drive."


On the Web

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Announcements

PlanetQT/Henry Haverinen: Qt 4.7 Release Candidate and Qt Quick

"As many of you may already know, a few minutes ago we pushed a Qt 4.7 Release Candidate (RC). Qt 4.7 is a great step forward with regard to performance and the introduction of Qt Quick, and with Qt 4.7 we will see Qt applications run faster and smother than ever before.
With the release of Qt 4.7 including Qt Quick, you will immediately gain access to powerful features for building fluid, animated applications and UIs. Qt Quick is made up of three pieces: (1) the QML language and (2) the QtDeclarative module in the Qt framework, and (3) Qt Quick tooling components in Qt Creator."


Reports

linux.com/Jack Wallen: Talking KDE and openSUSE with Jos Poortvliet

"Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with newly minted openSUSE community manager, and former KDE marketing lead, Jos Poortvliet about user-visible changes brought in the KDE 4.5 release. We asked him ten questions about changes in KDE 4.5, what problems needed to be overcome, and what the future of KDE looks like ā€” and his thoughts on openSUSE.
Jos Poortvliet was hired by Novell as openSUSE community manager in early August. Before that he was active as volunteer in the international KDE community as marketing team lead. He coordinated and contributed to the work around releases, creation of marketing materials, visiting and organizing conferences, and maintaining contacts with the press. In his "real" life he worked as business consultant at companies like Royal Bank of Scotland, the dutch Governmental Department of Education and KPN, a major dutch Telecom provider."

LinuxJournal/Doug Roberts: Linux market share

"In the course of a normal work day I take several little breaks to check the news. On my list of news sites are Slashdot, Linux Journal and Linux Today. Frequently I see something that gives me an idea for an article. Sometimes I even find an article on a topic that I was planning to write about myself. Such was the case today when I came across this well-written piece from the Royal Pingdom Blog referenced on Linux Today. Itā€™s about the failure of desktop Linux to break the 1% market share barrier, and I confess that it left me a little depressed. But I decided to add my two cents on the subject anyhow."

Linux Journal/Susan Linton: Two Distributions Celebrate Birthdays

"The Linux community had two birthdays to celebrate recently. Debian GNU/Linux turned 17 on August 16 and openSUSE has been providing an excellent desktop Linux for five years."

LinuxTrends.com: Linux distribution popularity trends plotted

"In order to get a sense of the popularity of various Linux distributions over the past several years, we entered their names into Googleā€™s search insights tool and grabbed images of the resulting graphs. The graphs display some fascinating trends and bode well for the future of Linux. (...)"

TechCrunch/MG Siegler: Diaspora Three Weeks Away From Unveiling Open-Source Facebook Alternative

"Remember Diaspora? Youā€™ll be forgiven if you donā€™t. Since they received a lot of hype as the open-source ā€œFacebook Alternativeā€ this past May, theyā€™ve been quiet. In fact, they hadnā€™t given any updates on their progress since early July. But today theyā€™ve re-emerged with some updates. Notably, they say: ā€œWe have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th.ā€ Thatā€™s just three weeks away."


Warning!

Hacking Truths/rafay: Hack a Website Using Remote File Inclusion

"Remote file inclusion is basically a one of the most common vulnerability found in web application. This type of vulnerability allows the Hacker or attacker to add a remote file on the web server. If the attacker gets successful in performing the attack he/she will gain access to the web server and hence can execute any command on it. (...)"


Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved

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Credits

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Translations

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openSUSE Weekly News is translated into many languages.Issue #138 of the openSUSE Weekly News is available in:

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