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Fedora Weekly News Issue 160

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 160 for the week ending January 25th, 2009.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue160

A small sample of this week's contents: Announcements notes upcoming events and deadlines for Fedora 11. PlanetFedora picks up on some communication problems in "General" and shares "How To" information on disabling the system bell. Developments rounds up some "Fedora 11 Release Activity" and synopsizes the debate around a "Minimalist Root Login to X?". Infrastructure is back with some essential information on "Fedora Security Policy". Artwork shares the "Fedora 11 Release Banner". SecurityAdvisories provides a handy list of essential updates. Virtualization explains "QEMU VM Channel Support". We are pleased to have an AskFedora Q&A covering the advisability of using the "Ext4 Filesystem on Solid State Disks". Keep sending your questions!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[1]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list@redhat.com

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/

Contributing Writer: Max Spevack

Technical Announcements

John Palmieri (on behalf of Luke Macken and Mairin Duffy) announced[1] the Moksha Project and the Fedora Community Project[2]. They have been consolidating "the Fedora Infrastructure bits under one unified user interface", and have "decided to split the efforts into two projects."

"Moksha is a platform for creating real-time collaborative web applications. It provides a set of Python and JavaScript API's that make it simple to create rich applications that can acquire, manipulate, and visualize data from external services."

"Fedora Community aims at being a portal interface for Fedora Project members to collaborate within and find information about the diverse Fedora universe. It is created from applications built on top of the Moksha platform. Fedora Community is assembled from a wide-ranging set of modules that integrates existing Fedora Infrastructure components such as koji, bodhi, FAS, and PkgDB."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-January/msg00015.html

[2] http://johnp.fedorapeople.org/fedora-community/

Tom "Spot" Callaway announced[1] that the Fedora Packaging Committee has made some changes to the packaging guidelines. For details, read the full announcement linked below.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-January/msg00007.html

Fedora 11

The Fedora 11 Alpha freeze has passed[1], and "we still have a few feature pages in need of an update. Several have not been updated for a month or more," according to John Poelstra. If these pages are not updated by January 28th, FESCo will be asked to drop the features from Fedora 11.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-January/msg00008.html

Upcoming Events

Fedora will have a presence at several events in the next few weeks. Feel free to join us,

February 6 - 8: Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM)

February 20 - 22: Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE)

Also, people are encouraged to register for Fedora or JBoss.org related speaking slots at LinuxTag 2009.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/FOSDEM/FOSDEM2009

[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SCALE7X_Event

[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_at_SCaLE_7x

[4] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LinuxTag_2009_talks

Planet Fedora

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

http://planet.fedoraproject.org

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

General

Thorsten Leemhuis expressed[1] some concern over important communication and decisions taking place over synchronous/real-time mediums (like IRC or conferences like FUDcon) without the ability for people unable to attend to participate. Michael DeHaan agreed[2] and used a personal example of trying to maintain software that runs on EL-4 through Fedora 11 to explain the importance. "I have to use the old libraries and mostly only get to see new releases as things that break API compatibility or bring new bugs...I care about the environment more than the technology." Michael continued, "While many developers see Fedora is about technology, as a mostly "upstream" guy, the joy I find in it is really just about collaboration and working with people all over the globe."

Jef Spaleta continued[3] a disagreement with Mark Shuttleworth over the fact that Canonical has yet to open source some of the community-related components of Launchpad.

Dave Jones mentioned[4] an upcoming change to the p4-clockmod driver. "It no longer exports a cpufreq interface to sysfs. This will no doubt have some people complaining that they can no longer change their CPU frequency. The thing is, they never could." He then explains why such a feature ever existed.

Harish Pillay compared[5] the new White House[6] website copyright policy with that of a number of nations.

Sebastian Dziallas and the Fedora Education SIG[7] announced[8] the preview of an unbranded Education Remix. "As this is still based on F10, the main purpose is to gather feedback concerning the spin for F11."

Michael DeHaan wrote[9] about some of the advancements being made in order to support the provisioning of large datacenters and large-scale virtualization setups under Fedora.

Máirín Duffy showed off[10] some new mockups of screens for the Fedora Community Project[11].

[1] http://thorstenl.blogspot.com/2009/01/communication-is-important.html

[2] http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=825

[3] http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/33352.html

[4] http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/2009/01/18/forthcoming-p4clockmod/

[5] http://harishpillay.livejournal.com/135485.html

[6] http://www.whitehouse.gov/

[7] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Education

[8] http://sdziallas.joyeurs.com/blog/2009/01/fedora-edu-a-remix-and-more-to.html

[9] http://www.michaeldehaan.net/?p=830

[10] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/68603.html

[11] http://johnp.fedorapeople.org/fedora-community/

How-To

James Morris explained[1] how to work around an issue where MacBooks have trouble talking to projectors over the VGA output.

John Poelstra started[2] an interesting thread[3,4,5,6,7,8] (only some of which was serious) about disabling the system bell. Who knew that such an ancient component (a relic of computers from decades ago when soundcards had yet to be invented) could be so interesting?

Tim Waugh described[9] how to transfer e-mail and addresses from Evolution to Thunderbird

[1] http://james-morris.livejournal.com/38392.html

[2] http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/disabling-the-fedora-10-system-bell/

[3] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1429

[4] http://kanarip.livejournal.com/8662.html

[5] http://thecodergeek.com/post/84

[6] http://www.chruz.com/2009/01/25/pcspkr-be-gone/

[7] http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/speaker/

[8] http://jwboyer.livejournal.com/29470.html

[9] http://cyberelk.net/tim/2009/01/24/switching-mail-clients/

Events

Fedora Infinity Day 2009, at Presidency University, Dhaka[1]

Lots of videos[2,3] of various Fedora and Red Hat events

[1] http://angel.linux.org.bd/?p=8

[2] http://domsch.com/blog/?p=27

[3] http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1421

Developments

In this section the people, personalities and debates on the @fedora-devel mailing list are summarized.

Contributing Writer: Oisin Feeley

NFS Mounts and Caching DNS Nameserver Problem

An update on problems with NFS mounts was posted[1] by Warren Togami. It was decided that nfs-utils will revert to its pre 2009-01-14 behavior.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01242.html

Fedora 11 Alpha Release Activities

There was a flurry of activity related to the Fedora 11 Alpha release (scheduled[1] for 2009-02-03). Denis Leroy inquired[2] on 2009-01-21 what had happened to the freeze, originally scheduled for the previous day, and whether all builds in rawhide were queued until after the freeze. Mamoru Tasaka responded[3] with a link to Jesse Keating's explanation[4] that the freeze is a non-blocking freeze which allows targeted fixes to be made. Tom Lane wanted[5] an "all-clear signal that the alpha tag has been made and we can go back to breaking rawhide ;-)" Jesse created [6] the alpha tag and apologized for slacking on it. He suggested that if many dependencies were going to be broken by Tom's mysql-5.1 push that Tom should ask for a koji tag specifically to land it and build all the deps for it before moving it into rawhide itself.Josh Boyer demonstrated[7] how the Koji command-line can be used to answer queries about what tags are present: 

$koji list-tags | grep f11-alpha
$koji list-tag-inheritance f11-alpha

Rahul Sundaram requested[8] that knowledgeable folks would help build the Release Notes[9] for Fedora 11 by adding relevant information to the wiki. After Rahul got the ball rolling, with some information on the use of ext4 as the default filesystem, the experimental provision of the btrfs filesystem and more, Richard W.M. Jones added information on the MinGW windows cross-compiler and Todd Zullinger added information about git-1.6.

The 2009-01-23 Rawhide Report[10] contained some large lists of broken dependencies which were pounced on by the respective developers. As the majority were due to the new MySQL mentioned above Jesse Keating asked[11] why his advice to use a special tag had been ignored. Tom Lane replied that there had been no objections when he mooted the idea a week ago and that a non-standard tag would cause more work for affected developers than the current rebuilds. Jesse re-iterated[12] his request to "[p]lease consider using it in the future if you're going to break such a wide array of packages."

Richard W.M. Jones reported[13] problems using yum on Rawhide. Tom London suggested and Richard W.M. Jones confirmed[14] that reverting to sqlite-3.6.7-1.fc11.x86.64 fixed the problems. It transpired[15] that there was indeed an SQLite bug which was quickly fixed by Panu Matilainen.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/Schedule

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01275.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01276.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg00664.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01298.html

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01348.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01299.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01511.html

[9] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Alpha_release_notes

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01510.html

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01510.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01533.html

[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01464.html

[14] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01485.html

[15] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01483.html

Minimalist Root Login to X ?

Warren Togami suggested[1] "mak[ing] root logins from GDM a stripped down desktop with only a terminal and a menu with only configuration tools [and making the desktop] ugly and with a very obvious note explaining why [users] shouldn't be logged in as root."

"Nodata" was among those who wondered[2] if Warren's use cases "[...] where /home filesystem is full and logins fail, or /home is remote and inaccessible[...]" were anything other than odd edge cases. Jeff Spaleta and Chris Adams expanded[3] upon this line of thought: "[...] if /home is full, can users really not log in? If that is the case, that's broke and should be fixed. The user should be able to log in and remove files."

The impetus for this discussion may have been another thread which asserted that the denial of root login via GDM on Fedora 10 systems made it too difficult to maintain said systems. The thread yielded[4] good examples by Jud Craft and Dave Airlie[5] of arguments that such modifications merely penalized experienced users and failed to enhance security as the users could just login as root on the console anyway. As an aside Benjamin LaHaise brought up the issue that Ctrl+Alt+F2 no longer worked. DanHorák explained[6] that "F2-6 are blocked when you have getty running on vt1 (/etc/event.d/tty1 is the same tty[2-6]) and Xorg server runs on vt1 too (gdm runs with --force-active-vt) Then there are messages like `unable to switch vt' in /var/log/Xorg.log. [Such behavior] requires manual editing of at least /etc/event.d/tty1, it should not happen in default setups." Nicolas Mailhot suggested[7] an imperfect upgrade as another possible cause. A further nugget of information revealed in the thread was as Fedora 10 had implemented hiddenmenu as a default in grub it was best to hold down any key once the BIOS had finished the POST routine. Jesse Keating suggested[8] the shift key as it typically had no bindings either in BIOS or grub. Andrew Haley pointed out[9] that many of the recent changes were breaking established use patterns. Kevin Kofler and Christopher Wickert suggested[10][11] that anyone who wished to revert to the previous status should just edit /etc/pam.d/gdm to comment out 

auth required pam_succeed_if.so user != root quiet

Back in the later thread which sought to deal with some of the difficulties raised above Tom spot' Callaway suggested: "A Rescue Mode' in GDM which goes to a root session with minimal apps, marked as "Rescue Mode", rather than a root X login (even though it does need root credentials)." Lyos Gemini Norezel preferred[12] that "[...] the root login should use the user selected interface (gnome, kde, xfce, etc)" but Matthew Woehlke emphasized[13] the maintenance benefits of choosing a single Desktop Environment and forcing that as the safe root login.

Variations on this topic have been covered previously in FWN#133[14] and FWN#103[15]

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01387.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01542.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01547.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01300.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01335.html

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01399.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01398.html

[8] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01455.html

[9] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01408.html

[10] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01278.html

[11] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01291.html

[12] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01493.html

[13] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01495.html

[14] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue133#Running_As_Root

[15] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue103#Root_Login_And_Display_Managers_In_Rawhide

Fedora Geo Spin for USB Key and LiveCD

Yaakov Nemoy announced[1] a "[...] respin of Fedora with packages for doing OSM[0] and cartography installed out of the box, or included on a LiveCD and/or LiveUSB. For OSM people, the primary advantage is a live usb stick that can be used at mapping parties to save time cono/guring user computers to do mapping. The USB stick can then be brought home, and the user can continue doing mapping there."

[0] OpenStreetMap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01155.html

Draft Guidelines for Approving provenpackagers

Jesse Keating drafted[1] a definition of provenpackager' (see FWN#151[2)]. Alex Lancaster was worried[3] that too many hoops would mean that maintainers such as himself would lose motivation to continue their work.

As a subsidiary concern Alex was worried that there were still some packages not being opened up. KevinKofler assured Alex that he would become a provenpackager' based up his sterling work and Jesse confirmed[4][5] that this redefinition and re-seeding of the `provenpackager' group was in part to address such concerns.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01573.html

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue151#Security_Exceptions_to_the_Mass_ACL_Opening

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01620.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01629.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01628.html

Cloning of Bug Reports ?

Jóhann B. Guðmundsson asked[1] for input, in the form of suggestions and votes, as to whether Bug Hunters (which later seemed to mean testers, but not triagers) should file a separate bug entry for each of: past supported release, current release and rawhide or just annotate a bug for one of the former with a note that it was present in the others.

There was general agreement that mailing list votes were ineffective and unwanted.

Kevin Kofler objected[2] to the tack taken by Jóhann which seemed to assume an authority over a decision which would affect not just QA, testing and triage teams but also packagers and maintainers. It appeared[3] that the matter would be elevated to FESCo for a decision but as of going to press this had not happened.

Mark McLoughlin suggested[4] a more flexible policy and warned that "[...] you can be sure you'll have maintainers who haven't read or replied to this thread waking up and getting annoyed that they've 3x bug reports to deal with :-)"

Jesse Keating argued[5] that the multiple bug-entry option was preferable on four heads: 1) that bugs may have different causes in their releases; 2) users of past releases will not be helped by closing bugs on rawhide; 3) bodhi updates are not pushed at the same time; 4) maintainers are the only people with the knowledge to make such a call.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/thread.html#01497

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01423.html

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01490.html

[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01442.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-January/msg01342.html

Infrastructure

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-infrastructure-list

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure

Contributing Writer: Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

Why Puppet uses config instead of configs

susmit shannigrahi asked[1] on the @fedora-infrastructure-list asked why, in the fedora-infrastructure implementation of puppet when we add a new file, in the .pp file the path is written as puppet:///config where as the actual path of the file is in the configs directory. To this Jeroen van Meeuwen answered [2] by saying that the [config] fileserver mount may point to /path/to/configs which may allow this discrepancy to exist.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-January/msg00084.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-January/msg00085.html

Fedora Security Policy

Mike McGrath wrote[3] on the @fedora-infrastructure-list about the proposed Fedora Security Policy. Mike asked that he would like everyone in the sysadmin-* group to be compliant with this policy.

[3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-January/msg00103.html

On this thread several people commented about changes they would propose in iptables[4] & [5]


[4] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-January/msg00105.html

[5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-January/msg00107.html

Alpha Release Readiness

John Poelstra wrote [6] on the @fedora-infrastructure-list about the Alpha Release Readiness meeting on the 3rd Feb 2009. Mike McGrath replied[7] that he will be attending the meeting on the behalf of the Infrastructure team.

[6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-January/msg00112.html

[7] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-infrastructure-list/2009-January/msg00114.html

Artwork

In this section, we cover the Fedora Artwork Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

Fedora 11 Release Banner

With the Alpha release of the upcoming Fedora 11 approaching fast, Paolo Leoni created[1] a banner[2] to be used on various websites for the announcement "Since we are still in a initial session for the official F11 theme, I've used a simple image to point the birth of a new fedora version".

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-January/msg00061.html

[2] http://pleoni.altervista.org/fedora11-banner-alpha5c.png

Artwork for the Education SIG

Following a request[1] from Sebastian Dziallas for updated graphics for the Education SIG, Maria Leandro posted[2] a couple of very cute graphics, with one of them[3] being the favorite of the team. She still to add some improvements, incorporating the feedback received.

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-January/msg00070.html

[2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-January/msg00080.html

[3] http://tatica.fedorapeople.org/EduSig/thumb_wallpaper3.jpg

Wallpaper Survey

Máirí­n Duffy reported[1] on @fedora-art about the results of an informal survey she ran on her blog[2] about the wallpapers used by various people "So far as I've been able to read through them, they seem to fit into 3 categories: #1 stick with the default (distro default or desktop env default) or flat solid color #2 personalized no matter what (photos they took themselves or photos of family members) or a photo of an interest hobby (racecars, bikes, hometown, etc) #3 beautiful pictures of nature, usually with some depth". Máirí­n is trying to use this data so the Art Team can come with more useful wallpapers "we should think about these wallpapers that folks are actually using and try to create something that they will like having as their desktop background as much as possible".

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-art-list/2009-January/msg00088.html

[2] http://mihmo.livejournal.com/68292.html

Security Advisories

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

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-package-announce

Contributing Writer: David Nalley

Fedora 10 Security Advisories

Fedora 9 Security Advisories

Virtualization

In this section, we cover discussion on the @et-mgmnt-tools-list, @fedora-xen-list, @libvirt-list and @ovirt-devel-list of Fedora virtualization technologies.

Contributing Writer: Dale Bewley

Enterprise Management Tools List

This section contains the discussion happening on the et-mgmt-tools list

Improved Device Configuration Support in virt-manager

Cole Robinson posted several device related enhancements to virt-manager including:

  • Support[1] for listing, viewing details of, and removing VM hostdev[2] devices
  • Add hardware wizard[3] for sound devices
  • Support[4] for specifing the model[5] when adding a network device

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-January/msg00039.html

[2] http://www.libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsUSB

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-January/msg00033.html

[4] http://www.redhat.com/archives/et-mgmt-tools/2009-January/msg00032.html

[5] http://www.libvirt.org/formatdomain.html#elementsNICSModel

Fedora Virtualization List

This section contains the discussion happening on the fedora-virt list.

Fedora 11 Virtualization Features

Mark McLoughlin announced[1] the virtualization features in development for Fedora 11.

Define a mapping of SASL authentication into the VNC protocol, and implement it for QEMU and GTK-VNC, providing strongly authenticated, securely encrypted remote access of virtual guest consoles.
Assign PCI devices from your KVM host machine to guest virtual machines. A common example is assigning a network card to a guest.
Combine the kvm and qemu packages into a single package.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-January/msg00024.html

Weekly Status Report

Mark McLoughlin "started sending out a 'Fedora Virtualization status report' to folks at Red Hat to keep people informed about what's going on." Mark also forwarded[1] the report to @fedora-virt. The report identified 186 open bugs, and included information for effectively monitoring the package commits on the @fedora-virt-main[2] list.

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-January/msg00037.html

[2] http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt-maint/

New Virtualization Wiki Pages

Mark McLoughlin has been busy revising[1] existing, creating new, and archiving[2] old Fedora Virtualization wiki pages. You can help[3].

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Virtualization

[2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Virtualization_archive

[3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Help:Editing#Gaining_Edit_Access

Libvirt List

This section contains the discussion happening on the libvir-list.

QEMU VM Channel Support

Richard W.M. Jones proposed[1] adding support for qemu vmchannels to libvirt. A vmchannel is a "communication channel between [a VM] host and various agents that are running inside a VM guest."[2] Richard did note that "One problem is that it is qemu/kvm-only."

As far as Daniel P. Berrange knew[3] "this support is not yet merged in upstream QEMU and the syntax is still being debated." This made Daniel "wary of committing to support it in libvirt" at this time.

The fact that it is a feature only for QEMU did not concern Daniel, saying "I've no problem adding vmchannel support to libvirt even if its only [implemented] for QEMU/KVM. If applications/users of it find that they really badly need it for xen too, then someone will step up to [implement] it."

[1] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-January/msg00446.html

[2] http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kvm/2008/12/14/4413984

[3] http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvir-list/2009-January/msg00448.html

Ask Fedora

In this section, we answer general questions from Fedora community. Send your questions to askfedora AT fedoraproject.org and Fedora News Team will bring you answers from the Fedora Developers and Contributors to selected number of questions every week as part of our weekly news report. Please indicate if you do not wish your name and/or email address to be published.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AskFedora

Ext4 Filesystem on Solid State Disks

A question on Ext4, that has already been made the default in the development tree headed for Fedora 11 was answered by Eric Sandeen, Red Hat ext4 and XFS filesytems developer.

Contributing Writer: Eric Sandeen

Francesco Frassinelli wrote: "I've read that in F11 ext4 will be the default filesystem. What about ext4 on solid state disk? Many websites and bloggers say that it's better to use ext2 because of the journaling, but in some kind of operation (like applying upgrades) it's sooo slow. Could we'll use ext4 on our ssd without compromising their life? TBH I haven't tested ext4 on ssd yet, though we do have some in the lab, I just haven't done it."

Eric Sandeen replied: "By default ext4 still journals pretty much the same as ext3 does, so if you want to minimize writes to your flash, it should not be significantly better than ext3 in that respect. However, there is a patch to ext4 (merged soon if not already) to allow it to run in a no-journal mode, so that may be a good option."

Thorsten Leemhuis added: "FYI, it was merged[1] for 2.6.29"

[1] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=0390131ba84fd3f726f9e24fc4553828125700bb

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