#use wml::debian::projectnews::header PUBDATE="2010-05-31" SUMMARY="Bits from the DPL, Parallel booting, DebConf Reconfirmation, Declassification of the debian-private list"
#use wml::debian::acronyms

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<a name="0"></a>
<p>Welcome to this year's fourth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the
Debian community. Topics covered in this issue include:</p>
<ul>
  <li><a href="#1">Bits from the Debian Project Leader</a></li>
  <li><a href="#2">Parallel booting enabled by default</a></li>
  <li><a href="#3">DebConf Reconfirmation Deadline</a></li>
  <li><a href="#4">Declassification of the debian-private mailing list</a></li>
  <li><a href="#5">LILO about to be removed in Debian 6.0 <q>Squeeze</q></a></li>
  <li><a href="#6">Firmware support in Debian's installation system</a></li>
  <li><a href="#7">... and much more</a>.</li>
</ul>


<a name="1"></a>
<h2>Bits from the Debian Project Leader</h2>

<p>Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli sent a <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/05/msg00008.html"><q>Bits
from...</q></a> mail reporting some of his recent activities.  He started
with a call to help Debian's Release Team as the current members need more help
getting the upcoming release of Debian 6.0 <q>Squeeze</q> ready.
He also mentioned some interviews and public appearances he had, and
delegations of the Debian System Administrators and a Debian Auditor.  In
a summary of his report of his recent visit to the Ubuntu Developer Summit,
he asked for volunteers to act as the contact point for Debian derivatives.
Their job would be to help developers of Debian derivatives to find ways to
contribute back to Debian.</p>


<a name="2"></a>
<h2>Parallel booting enabled by default</h2>

<p>Debian Developer Petter Reinholdtsen announced that after enabling
reordering the init scripts of a boot sequence back in last July, <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/05/msg00009.html">parallel
booting</a> is now also enabled by default in recent
installations, which should help to reduce boot and shutdown times of new
Debian systems.  There is still some work <a
href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Parallellized_boot_seem_to_hold_up_well_in_Debian_testing.html">left
to do</a> which would further improve shutdown speed of Debian systems, such
as reducing the number of scripts that just kill a daemon during shutdown.</p>

<a name="3"></a>
<h2>DebConf Reconfirmation Deadline</h2>

<p>DebConf organiser Pablo Duboue asked <a
href="http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20100525.175712.4b6eb245.en.html">all
attendees</a> of the <a href="http://debconf10.debconf.org/">eleventh
Debian Developer Conference</a> to reconfirm before 10 June 2010
that they still plan to attend the conference.  Reconfirmation can be done
using the <a href="https://penta.debconf.org/">Conference Organisation Web
Interface</a>.  Reconfirmation is especially important for people who
requested sponsored food and/or accommodation.</p>


<a name="4"></a>
<h2>Declassification of the debian-private mailing list</h2>

<p>Over four years ago the Debian Project decided to open up the <a
href="http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_002">archive of its private mailing
list</a> for everyone after a period of
three years.  With this three year period being over for the first posts,
Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli is now looking for<a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/05/msg00105.html">volunteers
to look through the archive</a>, contact authors of
these mails and open the archive.  Martin Krafft proposed to change the<a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/05/msg00106.html">workflow</a>,
by making parts of the archive open on a regular basis
and letting people delete mails they don't want to see published.  Several
problems were pointed out with this approach, such as that people might have resigned as Developers
in the past three years and therefore no longer have enough access to delete their mails.</p>


<a name="5"></a>
<h2>LILO about to be removed in Debian 6.0 <q>Squeeze</q></h2>

<p>William Pitcock explained that <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00769.html">due to some
limitations</a> (for example in the size of supported kernels) the boot
loader <a href="http://packages.debian.org/lilo">LILO</a> is about to be removed
from the upcoming release of Debian 6.0 <q>Squeeze</q>.  He therefore asked
users to test the replacement boot loader <a
href="http://packages.debian.org/grub-pc">GRUB 2</a>.</p>


<a name="6"></a>
<h2>Firmware support in Debian's installation system</h2>

<p>Debian Developer Petter Reinholdtsen announced <a
href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">some
changes</a> he is introducing into Debian's installation system to allow more
flexible handling of the loading of firmware files (binary programs loaded and
executed in hardware, for example some network adaptors).  Steve McIntyre, leader of
the Debian CD/DVD team, has already adapted the <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100527141708.GA27043@einval.com">build system
for CD/DVD images</a> to reflect these changes and created some <a
href="http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/sid_d-i/20100527-7/">test
images</a>.</p>


<a name="7"></a>
<h2>Other news</h2>

<p>Ana Guerrero noticed that quite a few of the <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100522130720.GA1982@ana.debian.net">recent
Non-Maintainer Uploads</a> are quite intrusive
and reminded NMUers to keep changes minimal.</p>

<p>After visiting the Électricité de France Research and Development centre, Debian
Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli blogged about their <a
href="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/05/Debian-based_scientific_computing_at_EDF/">reasons</a>
for basing their cluster (and an increasing number of desktops,
too) on Debian.  One of their main reasons was the large amount of scientific
software available as packages and the high quality standards Debian sets.</p>

<p>Aurélien Jarno reported a bit about <a href="http://blog.aurel32.net/?p=56">Debian's
switch from GLIBC to EGLIBC</a>.</p>

<p>Debian System Administrator Martin Zobel-Helas announced that with the<a
href="http://dsa.debian.org//dsablog/2010/05/Dropping_security.geo.debian.org_zone/">successful
introduction of a GeoDNS setup</a>, the experimental subzone
security.geo.debian.org is obsolete and should be replaced by the normal
security.debian.org entry in <tt>/etc/apt/sources.list</tt> files.</p>

<p>Roland Mas blogged <a
href="http://roland.entierement.nu/blog/2010/05/23/fusionforge-news-may-2010.html">bits
of news from the FusionForge project</a>, the software running <a
href="http://alioth.debian.org">Debian's collaboration platform</a>.</p>

<p>While a similar list for Debian Developers already existed for some time, it
was reported that <a
href="http://upsilon.cc/~zack/blog/posts/2010/05/debian_maintainers_list/">Enrico
Zini</a> has just finished the code to produce a <a
href="https://nm.debian.org/dm_list.html">list of Debian Maintainers and their
packages</a>.</p>

<p>After wondering what distribution specific tools Debian's KDE might miss,
Sune Vuorela reported some of the <a
href="http://pusling.com/blog/?p=167">feedback</a> he got. To quote him: <q>All
in all, it looks like we are
quite far already. We just need to get the last bits put together.</q></p>

<p>Ana Guerrero announced that the <a
href="http://lists.debian.org/20100525173727.GA5200@pryan.ekaia.org">migration</a>
of the <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen">Debian-Women wiki</a> into
the Debian wiki is now complete. There is still a little bit of work to do: if
you want to contribute, take a look at the <a
href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWomen#migrationTODO">migration TODO
list</a>.</p> 


<a name="8"></a>
<h2>Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release</h2>

<p>According to the <a href="http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php">unofficial
RC-bugs count</a>, the upcoming release, Debian 6.0
<q>Squeeze</q>, is currently affected by 395 release critical bugs.  66 of them
have already been fixed in Debian's <q>unstable</q> branch. Of the remaining
329 release critical bugs, 44 already have a patch (which might need
testing) and 27 are marked as pending.</p>

<p>Ignoring these bugs as well as release critical bugs for packages in
contrib or non-free, 199 release critical bugs remain to be solved for the
release to happen.</p>


<a name="9"></a>
<h2>Important Debian Security Advisories</h2>

<p>Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others):
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2046">phpgroupware</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2048">dvipng</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2050">kdegraphics</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2051">postgresql-8.3</a>,
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2052">krb5</a> and
<a href="http://www.debian.org/security/2010/dsa-2053">linux-2.6</a>.
Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.</p>

<p>Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about
security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please
subscribe to the <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/">security mailing
list</a> for announcements.</p>


<a name="10"></a>
<h2>New and noteworthy packages</h2>

<p>The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive
recently (<a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg">among
others</a>):</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/acgvision-agent">acgvision-agent &mdash; Monitoring client for ACGVision</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bdii">bdii &mdash; The Berkeley Database Information Index (BDII)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/bley">bley &mdash; intelligent greylisting daemon for Postfix</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/browser-plugin-parole">browser-plugin-parole &mdash; multimedia plugin for web browsers based on Parole media player</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cairo-dock-core">cairo-dock-core &mdash; Light eye-candy fully themable animated dock for Linux desktop</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cipux-cat-web">cipux-cat-web &mdash; user and resource management framework CipUX - web-based admin tools</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/colortest">colortest &mdash; utilities to test color capabilities of terminal</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/cscope-el">cscope-el &mdash; Interactively examine a C program source, cscope emacs binding</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/debian-ports-archive-keyring">debian-ports-archive-keyring &mdash; GnuPG archive keys of the debian-ports archive</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/flegita">flegita &mdash; Easy to use scanning interface for GNOME</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/giggle-personal-details-plugin">giggle-personal-details-plugin &mdash; Gtk+ frontend for the git directory tracker - personal details plugin</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/giggle-terminal-view-plugin">giggle-terminal-view-plugin &mdash; Gtk+ frontend for the git directory tracker - terminal plugin</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kdevelop-php-docs">kdevelop-php-docs &mdash; PHP documentation plugin for KDevelop</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/kdevelop-php">kdevelop-php &mdash; PHP plugin for KDevelop</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/klick">klick &mdash; advanced metronome for JACK</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/latexila">latexila &mdash; LaTeX editor designed for the GNOME desktop</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pdfgrep">pdfgrep &mdash; search in pdf files for strings matching a regular expression</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/perl-depends">perl-depends &mdash; roughly find out module depends from a perl file</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/phpbb3-l10n">phpbb3-l10n &mdash; additional language files for phpBB</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/pius">pius &mdash; Quick and easy signing of each UID on a PGP keyring</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/python-sss">python-sss &mdash; Pam module for the System Security Services Daemon</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rails-ruby1.8">rails-ruby1.8 &mdash; MVC ruby based framework geared for web application development</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rekonq">rekonq &mdash; KDE web browser based on Webkit</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/roffit">roffit &mdash; convert nroff manual pages into HTML</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rygel-tracker">rygel-tracker &mdash; GNOME UPnP/DLNA services - Tracker plugin</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sibyl-installer">sibyl-installer &mdash; Install the SiByl boot loader on your disk</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sssd">sssd &mdash; System Security Services Daemon</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uima-doc">uima-doc &mdash; Documentation for the Apache UIMA framework</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uima-examples">uima-examples &mdash; Examples of UIMA components</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/uima-utils">uima-utils &mdash; UIMA tools</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/update-notifier-kde">update-notifier-kde &mdash; Update notifier for the KDE Plasma Desktop</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/v4l-utils">v4l-utils &mdash; Collection of command line video4linux utilities</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/verilator">verilator &mdash; fast free Verilog simulator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/watch-maildirs">watch-maildirs &mdash; watch mailstores for changes and initiate mailbox syncs - server tools</a></li>
<li><a href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/w-scan">w-scan &mdash; Channel scanning tool for for DVB and ATSC channels</a></li>
</ul>

<a name="11"></a>
<h2>Work-needing packages</h2>

<p>Currently 630 packages are orphaned and 123 packages are up for adoption.
Please take a look at the
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OFG6G-0000GZ-Py@merkel.debian.org">recent</a>
<a href="http://lists.debian.org/E1OHnR4-0000NQ-4W@merkel.debian.org">reports</a>
to see if there are packages you are interested in or view the complete list of
<a href="http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested">packages which need
your help</a>.</p>


<a name="12"></a>
<h2>Want to continue reading DPN?</h2>

<p>Please help us create this newsletter.  We still need more volunteer writers
to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the
<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute">contributing
page</a> to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail
at <a href="mailto:debian-publicity@lists.debian.org">debian-publicity@lists.debian.org</a>.</p>


#use wml::debian::projectnews::footer editor="Alexander Reichle-Schmehl"