Fedora Weekly News Issue 237

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 237^[1] for the week ending August 4, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

This week's issue kicks off with announcements from the Fedora Project, including details of a recent package notifications fix, announcement of FUDCon Tempe in January 2011, and a reminder of Fedora 14 string freeze. In news from the Fedora Planet, blogging Fedora Board meetings, experimenting with purchasing laptops without Windows, and how shipping on time can be a feature for Fedora 14. In Marketing news, coverage of several list discussions, including a suggestion for a combined marketing and design Fedora Activity Day (FAD), Fedora twitter account updates, and Fedora 14 talking points planning. Two articles in Fedora In the News this week, including a Red Hat press release detailing the Fedora Projects contributions to Gnome, and interview comments with Fedora Project leader Jared Smith from the recent FISL 11 event in Brazil. In news from the Quality Assurance team, continuing work on localization testing for Fedora 14, process for upstream bug reporting for the next release, and more details on a couple proven tester work areas. Translation news including Fedora 14 tasks detail, a test day announcement for next month on Anaconda L10n and I18n, and new members of the Fedora Localization Project for Hebrew, Farsi, Brazilian Portuguese, Sinhala, Bulgarian, Serbian and Crotian. In Design team news, creation of a web application for comparing Droid Sans and Cantarell fonts by the team, and a report on a meeting on proposed logo changes. This week's issue finishes up with a short list of Fedora 12 and 13 security-related package updates.

The audio version of FWN - FAWN - is back! 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

Announcements

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

Contributing Writer: Rashadul Islam

Fedora Announcement News

Package update notifications fixed

New Fedora Project Leader Jared K. Smith^[1] on Fri Jul 30 19:56:24 UTC 2010 announced^[2] his first announcement in the announcement list the follows:

"Recent updates to Fedora introduced two unexpected bugs, either of which results in users no longer seeing notifications of or being able to apply new updates.

Updates to the relevant packages have been shipped to fix these issues, but users will not receive notifications for them unless they first apply the pending fixed updates using the "yum" tool. (Please note that these issues should only affect Fedora 13. Fedora 12 does not appear to be affected.) Packages fixing these issues were pushed to the Fedora software repositories around July 22, 2010. Users who have done a manual "yum update" since that push may have already received these fixes.

To fix the issue, please:

1. Open a Terminal (Applications > System Tools > Terminal)

2. Type either of the following commands and enter the password for the root user when prompted.

a. To choose to apply all pending updates now: su -c "yum -y --skip-broken update"

b. To choose to apply updates fixing only the specific issues mentioned above: su -c "yum -y --skip-broken update gnome-packagekit selinux-policy"

3. Log out and and then log back in, or reboot your computer.

Note that logout/login will complete the fix for the notification issue. However, if you applied all updates in the previous step, you may need to reboot for other updates that require it.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and we are working on further improvements to our testing and quality assurance processes to avoid this and similar problems in the future.

If you have any further questions or require additional assistance, please refer to ^[3] for ways to get additional help from the Fedora community.

Outage: SSL Cert - 2010-07-31 12:00 UTC

Mike McGrath^[1] on Sat Jul 31 12:59:07 UTC 2010 announced ^[2],

"There will be an outage starting at 2010-07-31 12:00 UTC, which will last approximately 3 hours?

To convert UTC to your local time, take a look at ^[3] or run:

date -d '2010-07-31 12:00 UTC'

Reason for outage

Our wildcard cert expired. Yes we've monitored this in the past. No we don't know why we weren't alerted this time, researching. The new purchase is in the works but we've run into some logistical issues. Will have it replaced as soon as possible.

Affected Services

Bodhi - ^[4]
Docs - ^[5]
Email system
Fedora Account System - ^[6]
Fedora Community - ^[7]
Main Website - ^[8]
Mirror List - ^[9]
Mirror Manager - ^[10]
Package Database - ^[11]
Spins - ^[12]
Start - ^[13]
Translation Services - ^[14]
Wiki - ^[15]

Unaffected Services

BFO - ^[16]
Buildsystem - ^[17]
CVS / Source Control
DNS - ns1.fedoraproject.org, ns2.fedoraproject.org</ref>
Fedora Hosted - ^[18]
Fedora People - ^[19]
Fedora Talk - ^[20]
Smolt - ^[21]
Torrent - ^[22]

Ticket Link

^[23]

Contact Information

Please join #fedora-admin in irc.freenode.net or respond to this email to track the status of this outage."

Announcing FUDCon Tempe 2011 -- Jan. 29-31, 2011

Jared K. Smith^[1] announced^[2],

"In the past, the planning and execution of FUDCon events was handled completely by a few Red Hat employees. This seemed out of alignment with the principles of Fedora, so in late January of this year, we kicked off an effort to fix that issue. We wanted to increase the effectiveness and transparency of FUDCon, and our other premier Fedora events. So we assembled a Fedora Activity Day specifically to change the way that we plan FUDCon.

In accordance with those changes, we opened a bid process for FUDCon events. The process encourages Fedora contributors to propose locations for the FUDCon event in their region, pursuant to their commitment to help with the logistics of the event. The first event that went through this lightweight process is the upcoming FUDCon in Zurich, Switzerland, which happens September 17-19, and is being planned by long-time Fedora contributors including Sandro Mathys and Marcus Moeller. In April of this year, we opened bids for the next North American FUDCon event.

As a result of that process, and thanks to the continuing work of Fedora contributors Robyn Bergeron and Ryan Rix, our next community-powered, North American FUDCon event will be held in Tempe, Arizona from January 29-31, 2011, on the Arizona State University campus. We'd also like to thank Adam McCullough from the ASU LUG and the faculty of the ASU School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (CIDSE) for their invaluable assistance thus far.

FUDCon events are held around the globe each year. Our most recent event was held just a couple weeks ago in Santiago, Chile, where contributors from around the Latin American region gathered to exchange information, share ideas, and collaborate on various aspects of Fedora. In the past we've held other FUDCons in diverse places like Berlin, Porto Alegre, Brno, and Boston.

Our last North American FUDCon was in Toronto, Canada. The year previous it was in Boston, MA. We always encourage feedback from the contributors, and the one answer that popped up more often than any other was, "Let's go somewhere warm this coming winter!" So we're pleased our fellow community members in a warmer part of the USA took up that challenge, and stepped forward to work on organizing the next FUDCon.

With that warmer climate in winter, of course, comes higher demand for travel lodging where people vacation. So as with previous FUDCons, we'll once again provide travel subsidies for contributors. Furthermore, our sponsor Red Hat is making an even larger commitment to these subsidies than in previous years, to offset the higher lodging costs. We all want to do our part to help everyone stay together at the conference, for the best possible collaborative experience after hours -- because collaboration is what FUDCon is all about!

As in the past, we encourage our community members to get involved by offering talks and other sessions of interest. The content provided by the attendees is what makes FUDCon events so special and exciting. Over the next few days planners will be setting up more information at the event wiki page: ^[3]

We'll have more details appearing soon there, including but not limited to:

A schedule that makes it easier to see more of the talks you enjoy and value

Lightning talks and hackfest pitches to get attendees excited and motivated to collaborate

The ever popular FUDPub event!

We hope you'll join us for the best North American FUDCon yet. If you want to get involved and help plan the details of the event, you're welcome to join our planning list:^[4]"

Fedora Development News

Software translation

Noriko^[1] announced^[2], " Dear package maintainers

This is kind reminder that it is F14 Software String Freeze today 03-Aug. Please update your POT with latest strings. All translators will be working hard to update your package translation.

To ensure high quality translations in the final release, please be aware Software String Freeze Policy ^[3]. If you think that you need to break the string freeze, then please ask for approval from the Fedora Localization Team prior to breaking the freeze ^[4]."

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 (June 2010 - August 2010)

North America (NA)^[1]
Central & South America (LATAM) ^[2]
Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)^[3]
India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)^[4]

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events^[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.

Planet Fedora

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora^[1] - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

As you may have noticed, FWN's Planet Fedora beat has been on a vacation for the past few weeks. Well, we're back. This week's coverage will include a number of selections from the past month or so.

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

↑ http://planet.fedoraproject.org

General

John Poelstra explained^[1] how shipping on time can be a feature for Fedora 14. "In the grand scheme of things, two weeks late on a software release is hardly anything, and yet, given a choice, I’d like Fedora to be known as the distribution that always ships on time."

Máirín Duffy decided to start blogging the Fedora Board meetings. So far, posts are up from the July 2, 2010^[2] and July 16^[3] meetings. Highlights include the announcement of a new Fedora Project leader (Jared Smith), a trial change in the board meeting format and information about all Fedora contributors getting ponies.

In a separate series of posts, Máirín updated^[4] us on the status of the Fedora websites since "the Fedora Design team and Fedora Websites team along with the Fedora Board have been working towards a completely updated web presence for Fedora over the past couple of releases." Included is a mockup^[5] for the front page of the Fedora Project website and potential fedoraproject.org page headers^[6].

Scott Williams experimented^[7] with purchasing brand name (and other) laptops, sans Windows.

Richard W.M. Jones suggested ^[8] a number of ways in which command line tools can be made more script friendly.

Luis Villa added^[9] some thoughts about the Bilski Supreme Court patent case.

Peter Hutterer wrote^[10] about how input event processing works under X. "The terms Core Pointer, VCP, extension devices, etc. are thrown around much these days. But they either mean very little or just very little to most. Especially because since X server 1.7 and to a lesser part 1.6, the definitions have changed a lot. So here's a bit of a high-level overview of what happens with input events in the server."

Daniel Berrange posted^[11] "More than you (or I) ever wanted to know about virtual keyboard handling" and "A summary of scan code & key codes sets used in the PC virtualization stack"^[12].

Dave Airlie reposted^[13] a message originally sent to the Linux Kernel Mailing List about the inclusion of open source 3D drivers for mobile devices in the kernel. It can be summarized as "if you aren't going to create an open userspace driver (either MIT or LGPL) then don't waste time submitting a kernel driver to me."

Karel Zak mentioned^[14] a new utility included with util-linux-ng 2.18, findmnt(8). "This new util is a command line interface to the libmount library, the util is able to search in /etc/fstab, /etc/mtab or /proc/self/mountinfo."

David Ramsey announced^[15] that "cryptography in the kernel" is a proposed feature for Fedora. With this feature, "the kernel implementation of cryptographic algorithms will be made available to user-space programs, so that user-space programs do not need to handle encryption keys directly."

Marketing

In this section, we cover the happenings for Fedora Marketing Project from 2010-07-28 to 2010-08-03.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Neville A. Cross

Paul Frields^[1] asked for the final status change on @fedora_linux account on twitter. Now it said "Follow the Fedora Project at our new Twitter feed, @fedora." That's right finally we are fully using @fedora twitter account.

Paul^[2] also remarked that it is time to pick up talking points for Fedora 14. Robyn Bergeron^[3] pointed out that the list is starting to get fill. Ryan Rix^[4] extended the invitation to Fedora Ambassadors to pitch in.

Henrik Heigl^[5] proposed to make a combined FAD, Design plus Marketing. Hiemanshu Sharma^[6] viewed this as a opportunity to push forward Fedora Insight^[7]

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

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

Contributions to GNOME Desktop Project (Red Hat)

Henrik Heigl forwarded^[1] a Red Hat press release regarding the Fedora Project's contributions to the GNOME Project:

"The GNOME project, governed by the GNOME Foundation, was founded over 13 years ago with the goal of creating a free software desktop user environment for UNIX-type operating systems. Today, the project constitutes a large body of source code that is used by the free, Red Hat-sponsored Fedora distribution and the commercially supplied Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as other Linux distributions and platforms. "

The full post is available^[2].

FISL 11: new project leader says that Fedora is the solution (TerraTV - Brazil)

Kara Schlitz forwarded^[1] and Daniel Bruno translated^[2] a posting about Fedora Project leader Jared Smith's comments during his attendance at the Brazilian FISL 11 event:

"Consider a system that is free and aggregate values such as reliability, soundness, innovation and lightness. What would be the answer? For the new world leader of the Fedora project, Jared Smith, the project he heads is the solution.

Fedora is an operating system that works from Linux with the latest technology open source and free software. For Smith, it's more than that. "Imagine a place where you can get everything for free and safe: the tools to build your online life. In simple words and objective, that is the Fedora defined."

Talk about "technology that liberates" in a country that do not have access and tools well-distributed, as in the USA, for example, could be an obstacle to the project that engages in global scale. For Smith, however, this is a challenge. "There exists a big diference, of course, that influences the strategies of the project here, in Chile, in Russia. Fedora understands local specificities, behaviors, culture, language and works in each society differently and personalized", he explained in an interview for Terra during the FISL 11.

The initiative consists of many people around the world and anyone is welcome to use, modify and distribute Fedora. In Brazil, users can access the site^[3]. As Smith says, Fedora doesn't work with the means to reach a final. He is the most advanced stage and users need to perform their active role in this game.

Another use of Fedora growing and increasingly consolidated is on the academic world. "There are dozens of universities, including Brazil, using our project because it's more stable, is lighter and hasn't reason to worry about bugs. This, moreover, is the diference of Fedora in the world."

For Smith, the importance of the events like FISL is central. The reflection on the collaborative process of the user in the building of a digital world that actually belongs to all is the reason for it's existence. "Events like FISL become relevant the extent that they incite discussion and make people think that absolutely everything they pay to have on the internet, they can get for free", Smith said.

The FISL 11 was held in Porto Alegre on PUCRS events centre, until this past Saturday. Terra TV broadcasts lectures live daily from 9am to 9pm. All videos of the FISL can be accessed^[4]."

The original post in Brazilian Portuguese is available^[5]. Further information about FISL in English is also available^[6].

QualityAssurance

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team^[1]. For more information on the work of the QA team and how you can get involved, see the Joining page^[2].

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

Localization testing

Discussion on the topic of localization testing continued, with Rui He proposing to run a Test Day during the Fedora 14 cycle for localization testing, particularly of keyboard layouts^[1]. Igor Pires Soares thought this was a great idea and proposed some dates^[2]. Eventually, Rui and Igor agreed on 2010-09-09 as the date, and added the event to the schedule^[3].

Upstream bug reporting

Discussion also continued on the topic of providing instructions for reporting bugs to upstream bug trackers. Ankur Sinha proposed^[1] a rough draft^[2]. Jonathan Kamens felt it encouraged users to report bugs upstream instead of reporting them to Fedora, which he thought was a bad idea^[3]. Adam Williamson suggested focusing solely on the actual steps for reporting bugs upstream, rather than providing any potential reasons why someone might want to do so^[4]. Jóhann Guðmundsson suggested that the instructions should be incorporated into the pages for particular components in the Wiki, rather than being a separate page of their own^[5].

Rawhide acceptance testing

James Laska reported^[1] on the third (and final) automated Rawhide acceptance test plan^[2] run for Fedora 14, and linked to the full results^[3]. The run encountered only a single bug, and the test images were declared 'last known good'. However, James cautioned that the images had not included systemd or Python 2.7, which could cause significant changes for the test composes.

SELinux use in testing

Adam Williamson reminded the group that SELinux should always be enabled when testing Fedora, if possible^[1]. He explained that since SELinux being enabled is the default configuration of Fedora, it is best for testers to enable SELinux so problems related to it can be caught and fixed as soon as possible.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-July/092273.html

Proven tester special testing procedures

Adam Williamson recalled a previous proposal to have special testing procedures for the kernel for proven testers, and suggested the idea be put into place as a general concept and proposed some specific procedures for PackageKit, in light of a recent update which had broken update notification for some users^[1]. The general response to the proposal was positive. Bob Lightfoot suggested integration with fedora-easy-karma, so that it would display the special testing procedure, or a link to it, when requesting feedback on a package for which a special procedure existed^[2]. Adam thought this was a good idea and promised to look into it^[3].

Automated bug checking tools release criteria

Adam Williamson proposed adding release criteria to cover the functionality of default automated bug checking tools (such as abrt and sealert)^[1]. John Dulaney wondered why making such tools submit reports at an early stage was a high priority. Adam clarified^[2] that the tools should usually always be able to submit reports, and when they cannot, it's an unexpected bug: no regular groundwork is required for the tools to be able to submit reports for new releases.

Proven testers working on Fedora 14

Adam Williamson announced that, with the branching of Fedora 14, proven testers are now needed to test and approve critical path package updates for this release^[1], just as with the stable Fedora 13 release. He explained that the procedure for proven testers to follow was just the same as that for the existing stable release.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2010-July/092324.html

Translation

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Translation (L10n) Project^[1].

Contributing Writer: Runa Bhattacharjee

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N

Fedora 14 Tasks

John Poelstra informed^[1] the list about the upcoming tasks for Fedora 14. As per the schedule the Fedora Package Maintainers were sent a reminder by Noriko Mizumoto^[2]to rebuild all the translated packages ahead of the String Freeze on 3rd August 2010.

Anaconda L10n and I18n Test Day

Igor Pires Soares announced^[1] that a Test Day would be organised on 9th September 2010 for translation and keyboard layout related bugs in Anaconda. A few test cases have already been defined and suggestions for improvement have also been requested from the L10n Teams.

Also, the L10n QA Template has been updated with the addition of the new packages and deprecated packages have been removed^[2].

System-config-printer 1.2.x Branch for Fedora 14

The maintainer of System-Config-Printer, Tim Waugh informed^[1] that translations for this module for Fedora 13 and Fedora 14 are to be submitted to the 1.2.x branch.

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/trans/2010-August/007861.html

Additional Guides Translated in Dutch

The Dutch version of Managing Confined Services and Virtualization Guide have been translated and is now available in the Fedora Documentation page^[1].

↑ http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/trans/2010-July/007843.html

New Members in FLP

Yaron Shahrabani (Hebrew)^[1], Ali Mousavi(Farsi)^[2], Thiago Dias (Brazilian Portuguese)^[3], Prabhash Rajarathne (Sinhala)^[4], IFo (Bulgarian)^[5], Nenad Rasic (Serbian)^[6], Edin (Croatian)^[7] joined the Fedora Localization Project recently.

Design

In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team^[1].

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

↑ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork

Droid versus Cantarell

Emily Dirsh created a web application^[1] for easy comparison of Droid Sans and Cantarell, so the Design Team can chose one of them as a branding body text "Everyone go and try it out so we can pick a font already" and with this visual comparison a number of team members favoured^[2] Cantarell "I'm definitely liking Cantarell more. Like Nicu said, it feels it has more breathing spacing and I think is a bit easier to read." The topic was also discussed at the team's weekly meeting^[3] and it was decided to try Cantarell and look for alternatives for unsupported locales, like Cyrillic and CJK.

Logo Updates

Ian Weller reported^[1] about his meeting with Pamela Chestek about logo changes "Yesterday I met with Pam Chestek, Red Hat's Senior IP Attorney, about some of the requested and proposed changes to Fedora's trademarks", the short conclusion is: the TM sign on the logo is changed to the Comfortaa font, the font for the logo wordmark itself remains the same Bryant 2, Comfortaa is going to be used also instead of MgOpen Modata in the Foundations and FUDCon artwork. Pamela added^[2] additional explanation about the decision to keep the logo unmodified "It is a significant undertaking to rebrand, but in addition to the sheer work of pushing out a change, the lack of consistency during the transition adversely impacts recognizability and creates (at a minimum) subconscious uncertainty about the authenticity and reliability of the brand" and logo distribution "we're pretty clear in all the information we provide about when and how someone has permission to use our logos, so the fact that someone gets their hands on an svg (or png for that matter) can't be construed as permission to use the logo"

Security Advisories

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

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