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Fedora Weekly News Issue 253

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 253[1] for the week ending November 24, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

In announcements, notice that Toshio Kuratomi has been appointed to the Fedora Board, moving /var/run and /var/lock to tmpfs in Rawhide, and lots of information regarding the various Fedora elections now ongoing.We have six more reposts of articles and blog postings about Fedora in Fedora In the News. In Ambassador news, several news Ambassadors, from the UK, USA, Indonesia and Italy and a summary of list traffic on the Ambassador and FAmSCO lists. In Security Advisories, we bring up current with the latest security-related package releases over the past week for Fedora 12, 13 and 14. Enjoy!

An audio version of some issues of FWN - FAWN - are available! You can listen to existing issues[2] on the Internet Archive. If anyone is interested in helping spread the load of FAWN production, please contact us!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[3]. We welcome reader feedback: news@lists.fedoraproject.org

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

  1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue253
  2. ↑ http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22FWN%22
  3. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, including general announcements[1], development announcements[2] and Events[3].

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/
  2. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/
  3. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events

Fedora Announcement News

The announcement list is always exclusive for the Fedora Community. Please, visit the past announcements at[1]

  1. ↑ https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

Appointment to the Fedora Board

Jared K. Smith announced[1]:

"The Fedora Board consists of five elected seats and four appointed seats. As part of the normal Board succession process[2], one Board appointment is made before elections and the other is made after the election cycle.

I'm happy to announce that Toshio Kuratomi has accepted the responsibility of serving on the Fedora Board. Toshio is a great contributor to open source in general, and has been actively collaborating with people throughout the Fedora Project for many years. I have no doubt that he'll work tirelessly to increase the level of trust, transparency, communication, and innovation within the Fedora community. I thank Toshio for his willingness to serve, and I hope the whole Fedora community will join me in welcoming him to the Board.

Toshio will fill seat A2 (see the Board History[3] for a list of the seats), which has been held by Colin Walters. I'd also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Colin for the work he's done on behalf of the Fedora Board.

Elections for the two open elected seats on the Board (as well as FAmSCo and FESCo elections) will begin on November 20th at UTC 0001, as shown on the Fedora wiki's Elections page[4]. All community members are encouraged to cast their vote until the elections close at the end of the day on November 28th. After the end of elections, another appointment will be made for the remaining Board seat (seat A2).

-

Jared Smith Fedora Project Leader"

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2010-November/002889.html
  2. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/SuccessionPlanning
  3. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/History
  4. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections

Fedora Development News

The development list[1] is intended to be a LOW TRAFFIC announce-only list for Fedora development.

Acceptable Types of Announcements

  • Policy or process changes that affect developers.
  • Infrastructure changes that affect developers.
  • Tools changes that affect developers.
  • Schedule changes
  • Freeze reminders

Unacceptable Types of Announcements

  • Periodic automated reports (violates the INFREQUENT rule)
  • Discussion
  • Anything else not mentioned above
  1. ↑ https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel-announce

Moving /var/run and /var/lock to tmpfs in Rawhide

Lennart Poettering announced[1]:

"Heya!

I hereby want to let everybody know that in the next days I will turn on /var/run and /var/lock on tmpfs on Rawhide/F15. This is in accordance with the following accepted F15 feature[2]

My current tests indicate that we will not run into too much trouble with this and most things should continue to work just fine. However, of course I run only a small subset of packages of the fedora archive on my machine. So here's what might happen and which might need fixing over the next weeks in various packages:

  • Not all packages might be able to create their directory in /var/run on start-up. Since SUSE and Ubuntu have already been shipping systems with tmpfs on /var/run and /var/lock for quite a while I expect the number of packages that are incapable of doing this to be very small. If your software nonetheless fails with this issue, then there are two options to fix this: a) patch the program in question, so that it is able to recreate the directories in /var/run, or b) ship a simple drop-in file for /etc/tmpfiles.d/ which recreates these directories on boot. (see below)
  • There might be permission problems, since the rpms might have set different perms on the subdirs of /var/run than the software itself might apply when starting up. In this case, a drop-in file in /etc/tmpfiles.d/ might help. (see below)
  • The SELinux policy might trigger AVCs and disallow creation of the dirs in question. In this case Dan will be of help of course, so make sure to file a bug. And I guess I don't need to mention this but temporarily falling back to permissive mode is a short-term workaround for this.
  • In some cases daemons might want to create more than one file/dir below /var/run which are supposed to be labelled differently. In this case the daemon can either be modified to fix its labels up itself, or a drop-in file in /etc/tmpfiles.d/ might help (see below).
  • Many .spec files currently own subdirs of /var/run. These need to be updated to %ghost those dirs only, so that the automatic removal of these files/dirs on boot doesnt cause rpm to complain. The list of packages which own such files/subdir you find on the aforementioned feature page. I will mass-file bugs against these packages later tonight, requesting the %ghosting of these entries. For more information on the %ghost directive in .spec files see this page[3]

Action items:

a) Lennart will mass-file bugs regarding %ghost usage tonight

b) Lennart will switch on /var/run and /var/lock on tmpfs either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow

c) YOU need to edit your .spec file and place a %ghost where appropriate.

d) YOU need to test if you package still works, and if necessary file AVC bugs, add an /etc/tmpfiles.d drop-in file to your program, or patch it so that it is able to recreate these directories beneath /var/run on its own.

On /etc/tmpfiles.d:

This is a new feature of systemd, but which is apparently very much liked by people outside of systemd, so this might actually find adoption even on systems which will not adopt systemd any time soon, since it actually is not specific at all to systemd. By dropping a simple configuration file in /etc/tmpfiles.d you can ensure that volatile files and directories are: a) created, deleted or emptied at boot b) their permissions/ownership fixed c) its directory contents cleaned up in regular intervals (a la tmpwatch) and d) it is properly re-labeled at boot.

As an example, here's how such a file might look like for the screen package (name it /etc/tmpfiles.d/screen.conf):

d /var/run/screens 1777 root root 10d

d /var/run/uscreens 0755 root root 10d12h

This encodes that two directories are created under the listed names, with automatic clean up after 10 days resp. 10 days and 12h.

For more details consult the man page[4]

Thank you for your attention!

Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc."

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/2010-November/000726.html
  2. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/var-run-tmpfs
  3. ↑ http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm-snapshot/s1-rpm-inside-files-list-directives.html#S3-RPM-INSIDE-FLIST-GHOST-DIRECTIVE
  4. ↑ http://0pointer.de/public/systemd-man/tmpfiles.d.html

Fedora Board, FESCo & FAmSCo Elections - Voting Information

Robyn Bergeron announced[1]

"Greetings,

The elections for the Fedora Board, Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), and the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo) began at 0000 UTC on 20th November 2010, and are scheduled to run until 23:59 UTC on 28th November 2010. (Please refer to a UTC time zone converter[2] if you are unsure of your time zone's relation to UTC.)

All groups have chosen to use the Range Voting method[3].

Ballots may be cast on the Fedora Elections System[4]. If this is the first time you've used the voting system, please refer to the Fedora Elections Guide[5].

To read more about the candidates, please refer to each group's nomination pages:

There is more general information about the election, as well as finding links for reading candidate answers to questionnaires and IRC town hall transcripts[9].

Please remember to cast your vote!

Thanks,

Robyn"

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/2010-November/000725.html
  2. ↑ http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html
  3. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting
  4. ↑ https://admin.fedoraproject.org/voting
  5. ↑ http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/documents/elections-guide
  6. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAmSCo_election_2010_nominations
  7. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Elections/Nominations
  8. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Development/SteeringCommittee/Nominations
  9. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections

Fedora Board Election IRC Town Hall transcript

Toshio Kuratomi announced[1]:

"The Fedora Board Town Hall happened today at 15:00 UTC. The transcript of the townhall is at the following URL:

Log[2]

Minutes[3]

Minutes (text)[4]

Thanks to the candidates for answering questions and thanks to all the audience members for the insightful questions.

-Toshio"

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/2010-November/000724.html
  2. ↑ http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-townhall/2010-11-19/board-townhall.2010-11-19-14.59.log.html
  3. ↑ http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-townhall/2010-11-19/board-townhall.2010-11-19-14.59.html
  4. ↑ http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-townhall/2010-11-19/board-townhall.2010-11-19-14.59.txt

FESCo Election IRC Town Hall Transcript

Kyle McMartin announced[1]:

"The IRC logs of the discussion are available[2]

I'll be making an edited transcript available (I'll link it from the wiki[3]) which should be a little easier to read, in the next day or so.

Thanks to our candidates, and to all who attended and submitted questions.

regards,

Kyle M."

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/2010-November/000723.html
  2. ↑ http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-townhall/2010-11-18/fesco-townhall.2010-11-18-15.02.log.html
  3. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections

Fedora Events

Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

Upcoming Events (Sept 2010 - November 2010)

  • North America (NA)[1]
  • Central & South America (LATAM) [2]
  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)[3]
  • India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)[4]
  1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY11_Q3_.28Sept_2010_-_November_2010.29
  2. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY11_Q3_.28September_2010_-_November_2010.29
  3. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY11_Q3_.28Sep._2010_-_Nov._2010.29
  4. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events#FY11_Q3_.28Sept_2010_-_November_2010.29_2

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events[1]

  1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/PastEvents

Additional information

  • Reimbursements -- reimbursement guidelines.
  • Budget -- budget for the current quarter (as distributed by FAMSCo).
  • Sponsorship -- how decisions are made to subsidize travel by community members.
  • Organization -- event organization, budget information, and regional responsibility.
  • Event reports -- guidelines and suggestions.
  • LinuxEvents -- a collection of calendars of Linux events.

Marketing

In this section, we cover the happenings for Fedora Marketing Project from 2010-11-17 to 2010-11-23.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Neville A. Cross

Robyn Bergeron announced[1] that the press archive[2] is now up to date.

The Marketing Team did not meet this past week.

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013591.html
  2. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_14_press_archive

Fedora In the News

In this section, we cover news from the trade press and elsewhere that is re-posted to the Fedora Marketing list[1]

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/

Fedora 14 aka Laughlin Review (muktware)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] another review of Fedora 14, which sums up their experience with:

"Fedora 14 is a good distribution. Parts of it may not be for the inexperienced, such as partitioning disk drives. It may also require more knowledge and understanding to add multimedia functionality to the system, but once everything is set up, the user is generally good to go"

The full article is available[2].

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013601.html
  2. ↑ http://www.muktware.com/a/51/418/22/2010/504

Run Applications in Secure Sandboxes with SELinux (Linux.com)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] an article in Linux.com about SELinux's sandbox approach to application security:

"SELinux runs a Firefox in a restricted session that doesn't have access to rest of the system. That includes the X session. Firefox will run in a nested X server (Xephyr), and you won't be able to even copy & paste from or to the Firefox session and other apps. /But/, it also means that Firefox is totally restricted from reading any other files on your system and that malicious Web pages or attacks on plugins like Flash are sandboxed as well."

The full article is available[2]

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013600.html
  2. ↑ http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/382226-run-applications-in-secure-sandboxes-with-selinux

Fedora 14: Strong follow-up to 13 still suffers from same niche appeal (Linux In Exile)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] another blog review of Fedora 14:

"Don’t get me wrong, Fedora 14 is a great installation in the Fedora time line. It builds upon the strengths of Fedora 13. My biggest problem is in what was left out. It is my belief that ALL Linux distributions (the exception being the likes of Puppy Linux and other small to tiny distributions - as well as rescue distributions) should ship with all the tools necessary to get to work out-of-the-box (on top of the standard and system tools)."

The full post is available[2]

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013547.html
  2. ↑ http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=1982

Fuduntu Is A Fedora 14 Remix For Netbooks And Laptops (webupd8.org)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] announcement of a new Fedora 14 remix for Asus Eee netbooks:

"Fuduntu is a Fedora 14 remix (remaster) designed especially for Asus Eee (but you can of course use it on other netbooks and any laptop/desktop computer) and comes with some interesting performance tweaks by default. It was created by Fewt, the Jupiter (an hardware and power management applet for netbooks and Laptops) developer"

The full post is available[2]

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013582.html
  2. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013592.html

openrespect.org sorgt für Uneinigkeit (Pro-Linux.de Germany)

Henryk Heigl forwarded[1] another posting on openrespect in which he provides some rough English translation:

"Originally the declaration should be carried by several projects together. This can be inferred anyhow to minutes[2] of the last meeting of the Fedora executive committee. The Fedora executive committee appeared surprised that Bacon finally published its own version of the text despite the original offer to co-operation, and decided, not to support these. Individual members of the executive committee saw in the text a transparent attempt, criticism at Canonical, to the company behind Ubuntu to repel. Also the question, whether the text falsely equates politeness with respect, was raised."

The full post, in German, is available[3]

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013590.html
  2. ↑ http://66.196.80.202/babelfish/translate_url_content?.intl=de&lp=de_en&trurl=https%3a%2f%2ffedoraproject.org%2fwiki%2fMeeting%3aBoard_meeting_2010-11-08#OpenRespect.org
  3. ↑ http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/16401/openrespectorg-sorgt-fuer-uneinigkeit.html

Spotlight on Linux: Fedora 14 (Linux Journal)

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] Linux Journal coverage of Fedora 14:

"One of the determining factors in the popularity of distributions is the size of their community. That puts Fedora near the top of the list.

Another advantage is the level of quality found throughout the distribution. Fedora developers contribute not only to Fedora, but also to upstream projects, and cherish the highest standards of quality control. Bugs are everywhere in code and Fedora is no exception, but Fedora developers seem to rise just a bit higher than some other distributions."

The full post is available[2]

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/marketing/2010-November/013589.html
  2. ↑ http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/spotlight-linux-fedora-14

Ambassadors

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Ambassadors Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

  1. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

Welcome New Ambassadors

This week the Fedora Ambassadors Project had a couple of new members joining.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Renault from France mentored by Mathieu Bridon

Miles Kjeller from the United Kingdom mentored by Paul Mellors

Xavier from the USA mentored by Larry Cafiero

Arif from Indonesia mentored by Caius C. Chance

Francesco (zerodev) D'Aluisio from Italy mentored by Robert Scheck

Summary of traffic on Ambassadors mailing list

David Ramsey informed [1] about Fedora pulling ahead of Ubuntu in rankings [2]. Christoph Wickert explained [3] that it was possible due to the Fedora 14 release within the timeframe of the past month. The thread [4] had some further conversations around the focus of Fedora and Ubuntu and the general perceptions.

Heherson Pagcaliwagan informed [5] about the meeting for Fedora Ambassadors in the APAC region on 2010-11-21 at 0300 UTC. The proposed agenda [6] was also posted

Marcus Moeller invited [7] all those who live nearby or, liked to travel to join the LinuxDay 2010 at Dornbirn, Austria

Christoph Wickert informed [8] the Ambassadors about the second FAmSCo Election IRC Townhall scheduled for 2010-11-19 at 1000 UTC. The logs to the first townhall were also referenced [9] Susmit Shannigrahi provided [10] the list of the questions asked in the first meeting to ensure that the candidates are asked similar questions. However, as Christoph was unable to moderate the meeting [11] as he would be traveling he called for volunteers and provided the scope of duties

Harish Pillay provided details [12] about Fedora 14 Launch in Singapore on 2010-11-29

Ryan Rix posted [13] minutes and logs of the FAmSCo Townhall meeting

Larry Cafiero posted a query [14] around an issue raised at the second FAmSCo Townhall pertaining to "upgrade ambassadors to superambassadors" The following thread [15] had clarifications from Caius 'kaio' Chance and others about the proposal and objective

Abdel G. Martínez L invited all [16] to be part of FUDCon Panama 2011 [17]

Buddhika Kurera proposed [18] a T-shirt design [19] for Ambassadors in APAC. Matthias Kranz pointed to the existing page on a similar issue [20] and Mathieu Bridon asked about the possibility of reusing the design that is used in EMEA [21] The thread [22] has more discussion about designs and other possibilities of "Ambassador wear"

Joerg Simon posted [23] Meeting Minutes [24] from FAD EMEA 2010 at Rheinfelden along with a few photographs [25]

Caius 'kaio' Chance asked [26] whether the Meetup at Beijing on 2010-11-14 [27] could be called a FAD

Robyn Bergeron posted [28] Voting Information about the Fedora Board, FESCo and FAmSCo elections

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016223.html
  2. ↑ http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity
  3. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016224.html
  4. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/thread.html#16223
  5. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016230.html
  6. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Meetings/2010-11-21
  7. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016237.html
  8. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016238.html
  9. ↑ http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-townhall/2010-11-16/fedora-townhall.2010-11-16-16.47.html
  10. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016239.html
  11. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016242.html
  12. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016241.html
  13. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016243.html
  14. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016252.html
  15. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/thread.html#16252
  16. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016258.html
  17. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Panama_2011
  18. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016262.html
  19. ↑ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Bckurera/APAC-shirts
  20. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork/T-Shirt
  21. ↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/PoloShirt
  22. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/thread.html#16262
  23. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016312.html
  24. ↑ http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-fad/2010-11-20/fedora_emea_fad_2010.2010-11-20-09.56.html
  25. ↑ http://jsimon.fedorapeople.org/events/2010/FAD_Rheinfelden/
  26. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016324.html
  27. ↑ http://linuxtoy.org/archives/fedora-user-group-beijing-fest.html
  28. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/2010-November/016325.html

Summary of traffic on FAmSCo mailing list

Joerg Simon informed [1] that the FAmSCo meeting for 2010-11-22 was adjourned. There was some informal conversation

  1. ↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/famsco/2010-November/000433.html

Security Advisories

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce.

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Fedora 14 Security Advisories

Fedora 13 Security Advisories

Fedora 12 Security Advisories

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