Ages ago, when building my own kernel packages was my main hobby, I used to apply the GRsecurity patch to my kernels. One of the main benefits I found in this patch was that it would make the kernel terminate or, if that failed to have any immediate effect, downright kill any application that suddenly requests an unreasonable amount of system resources. I was wondering if stock Debian and Ubuntu kernels offered any similar feature that could be enabled e.g. via some /sys register?

Please stop perpetuating the myth that any old grainy image can be enhanced beyond all recognition. It s not possible to read a newspaper at a thousand paces any more than it is to see around corners, even with a Really Big Computer. Every time one of my users brings me a photo and asks, can you make it really detailed like they do in CSI , I die a little inside. Love and kisses.

Bruce Schneier wrote an insightful post about why designing products for wiretapping is a bad idea [1]. It seems that large parts of the Internet will be easy to tap (for both governments and criminals) in the near future unless something is done. The bad results of criminal use will outweigh any benefits of government use. Sam Watkins wrote an informative post about Android security [2]. Among other things any application can read all stored data including all photos, that s got to be a problem for anyone who photographs themself naked Rebecca Saxe gave an interesting TED talk about how brains make moral judgements [3]. Somehow she managed to speak about the Theory of Mind without mentioning Autism once. The Guardian has an amusing article by Cory Doctorow about security policies in banks [4]. He advocates promoting statistical literacy (or at least not promoting a lack of it) as a sound government policy. He also suggests allowing regulators to fine banks that get it wrong. Steven Johnson gave an interesting TED talk about Where Good Ideas Come From [5]. It s a bit slow at the start but gets good at the end. Adam Grosser gave an interesting TED talk about a fridge that was designed for use in Africa [6]. The core of the Absorption Refrigerator is designed to be heated in a pot of water in a cooking fire and it can then keep food cool for 12 hours. It s a pity that they couldn t design it to work on solar power to avoid the fuel use for the cooking fire. Josh Silver gave an interesting TED talk about liquid filled spectacles [7]. The glasses are shipped with a syringe filled with liquid at each side that is used to inflate the lenses to the desired refractive index. The wearer can just adjust the syringes until they get to the right magnification, as there are separate syringes the glasses work well with people who s eyes aren t identical (which is most people). Once the syringes are at the right spots the user can tighten some screws to prevent further transfer of liquid and cut the syringes off to give glasses that aren t overly heavy but which can t be adjusted any more, I guess that a natural extension to this would be to allow the syringes to be re-attached so that the user could adjust them every year to match declining vision. One thing that this wouldn t do is counter for Astigmatism (where the lens of the eye doesn t focus light to a point), but I guess they could make lenses to deal with a few common varieties of Astigmatism so that most people who have that problem can get a reasonable approximation. The current best effort is to make the glasses cost $19, which is 19 days salary for some of the poorest people in the world. Glasses in Australia cost up to $650 for a pair (or a more common cost of $200 or about $100 after Medicare) which would be about one day s salary. Eben Bayer gave an inspiring TED talk about one of the ways that mushrooms can save the planet [8]. He has designed molds that can be filled with Pasteurised organic waste (seed husks etc) and then seeded with fungal spores. The fungus then grows mycelium (thin fungal root fibers) through the organic waste making it into a solid structure which fits the shape of the mold. This is currently being used to replace poly-styrene foam for packaging and can apparently be used for making tiles that are fire retardant and sound proof for constructing buildings. The main benefits of the material are that it can be cheaply made without petrochemicals and that it is bio-degradable, I m not sure how the bio-degradable part would work with constructing buildings maybe they would just replace the panels every few years. Annie Lennox gave a TED talk about her Sing foundation to care for women and children who are affected by AIDS [9]. She describes the effect of AIDS in Africa as Genocide. Robert Ballard gave a very informative TED talk about exploring the oceans [10]. This was one of the most informative TED talks I ve seen and Robert is also one of the most enthusiastic speakers I ve seen, it s really worth watching! We really need more money spent on exploring the oceans. Jessa Gamble gave an interesting TED talk which suggests that the best thing to do is to go to bed at about sunset and then have a couple of hours of relaxing time during the middle of the night [11]. Apparently the subjects of body-block experiments who live for a month in a bunker without natural light or access to a clock get better sleep in this manner than they ever had in their life and feel fully awake for the first time. World Changing is a blog that has a lot of interesting articles about climate change and related issues [12]. It s worth a read. Cynthia Schneider gave an interesting TED talk about how reality competition TV is affecting reality [13]. Shows that are derived from the American Idol concept are driving a resurgence in some traditional forms of performance art while also promoting equality among other things it s apparent that winning is more important than misogyny. The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer is an interesting concept [14]. I think it would be good to have something similar for Computer Science. Benjamin Mako Hill wrote an interesting and insightful essay about Piracy and Free Software [15].

• [1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/09/wiretapping_the.html
• [2] http://sswam.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/android-security-model-is-insufficient-and-it-needs-a-firewall/
• [3] http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html
• [4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/21/password-security-cory-doctorow
• [5] http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html
• [6] http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/adam_grosser_and_his_sustainable_fridge.html
• [7] http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid_filled_eyeglasses.html
• [8] http://www.ted.com/talks/download/video/9786/talk/971
• [9] http://www.ted.com/talks/annie_lennox_why_i_am_an_hiv_aids_activist.html
• [10] http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/robert_ballard_on_exploring_the_oceans.html
• [11] http://www.ted.com/talks/jessa_gamble_how_to_sleep.html
• [12] http://www.worldchanging.com/
• [13] http://www.ted.com/talks/cynthia_schneider_the_surprising_spread_of_idol_tv.html
• [14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Engineer
• [15] http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/20101011-00

I just had another conflict with a debatable anti-spam configuration. I think it was debatable rather than obviously wrong, so I m not going to rant about the specific setup, but while discussing it with other postmasters, the following two Domain Name Service Blacklist (DNSBL) facts surprised me:

1. UCEPROTECT3 can be evaded if you pay them EUR 75 every 2 years. UCEPROTECT is a German organisation but refuses to publish the details usually found on an Impressum so you could be funding spammers, for all you know. Their four suggestions to stop spam (no C-R, rate limits, block port 25, refuse to sell) seem so unlikely to stop spam it s either na ve or insincere.
2. SORBS asks ISPs to pay USD 50 to get delisted from the SORBS SPAM database. It s to charity rather than SORBS, but it still seems like a protection racket. Spammers can get out of jail for a few dollars?

Those lists both seem quite trigger-happy to me, which isn t surprising as these payment demands encourage listing first and asking questions later. It means I won t be using these two lists anywhere soon.

A little while back, as part of a discussion on debian-devel, I spent some time bad-mouthing pkg-config, and then later realized (with the help of an IRC conversation) that I was doing so unfairly. So as penance here is some documentation for how to add a pkg-config configuration file to a typical Automake project. This information is also in my build system coding style and will be maintained there (so if you see this some time after I wrote it, check that page for more up-to-date information). pkg-config is a tool to provide the flags required to compile or link against a shared library. It's a replacement for complex Autoconf probes and for all of the incompatible and occasionally buggy *-config scripts. To install a pkg-config configuration file, provide a template pkg-config configuration in a file named after the library but with a .pc.in extension. Here is an example:

    prefix=@prefix@
    exec_prefix=@exec_prefix@
    includedir=@includedir@
    libdir=@libdir@
    Name: <library>
    Description: <short description>
    URL: <upstream url>
    Version: @PACKAGE_VERSION@
    Cflags: -I$ includedir 
    Libs: -L$ libdir  -l<library>
    Libs.private: @KRB5_LDFLAGS@ @KRB5_LIBS@

Replace <library> with the official name of the library (which isn't necessarily the library name with lib removed). This is only informational, may contain spaces, and isn't used to locate the file. Its filename is used for that. Replace <short description> with a short description of the purpose of the library. Often the short description of the package from the start of the README file works well here. Replace <upstream url> with the URL of the package's distribution page. Normally, all Cflags needs to contain is what's indicated above, which lets the compiler find the header files if installed in a non-standard location. For Libs, note that pkg-config distinguishes between the shared libraries that must be linked against on a system with proper transitive dependency support and the libraries that must be linked for a static build or on a system with poor support for shared libraries. For a well-designed shared library, one should rarely need anything in Libs other than what's listed above. Libs.private, on the other hand, needs all the LDFLAGS and LIBS of everything the library itself links with external to this package. In this example, the shared library is linked with the Kerberos libraries and therefore needs the Kerberos LDFLAGS and LIBS; modify as needed for your example. If the dependencies of the shared library also use pkg-config, just list the other pkg-config file names in Requires or Requires.private instead of using Libs or Libs.private for them. Finally, add the Automake code to build and install the pkg-config configuration file. It should look like this:

    pkgconfigdir = $(libdir)/pkgconfig
    nodist_pkgconfig_DATA = lib/libfoo.pc
    lib/libfoo.pc: $(srcdir)/lib/libfoo.pc.in
            sed -e 's![@]prefix[@]!$(prefix)!g' \
                -e 's![@]exec_prefix[@]!$(exec_prefix)!g' \
                -e 's![@]includedir[@]!$(includedir)!g' \
                -e 's![@]libdir[@]!$(libdir)!g' \
                -e 's![@]PACKAGE_VERSION[@]!$(PACKAGE_VERSION)!g' \
                -e 's![@]KRB5_LDFLAGS[@]!$(KRB5_LDFLAGS)!g' \
                -e 's![@]KRB5_LIBS[@]!$(KRB5_LIBS)!g' \
                $(srcdir)/lib/libfoo.pc.in > $@

Replace libfoo with the actual name of the library and change its path in the source package as needed. Note the pattern above and use it for any Autoconf substitution variables that you need to replace in the pkg-config template. The above example adds KRB5_LDFLAGS and KRB5_LIBS to the variables; you may have other ones you need, particularly to construct Libs.private. The above installs the pkg-config configuration file under $(libdir)/pkgconfig. $(datadir)/pkgconfig is appropriate instead if one is certain that the flags required to link with this library will never vary by architecture, but that's not the case for most libraries due to Libs.private. Note that the Automake documentation recommends using comma as the sed delimiter for doing this sort of trick, but LDFLAGS frequently contains a comma since it's the separator for parts of a linker-specific option. I use an exclamation point instead.

Today, I prepared a patch to dpkg to add support using Lzip compression. A patched dpkg of squeeze for amd64 and i386 can be fetched from here. An example package using Lzip compression, lzip itself, is here (for this example, the package is build as 3.0 native on purpose). Hopefully the patch will be merged so we can make use of lzip compressed binary and source packages in Debian.

Recently [1], Zack, from an original idea of Jorge, asked the project whether it makes sense to have a debian instance of Shapado (a free software web application for question and answer support for our users). The idea was well accepted and http://ask.debian.net showed up quite quickly[2]. More recently, I stumbled upon an article[3] which announces the birth of the pretty same service but for Ubuntu users (in partnership with Canonical, Ltd.). It was known for some time as http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com. Then, it was redesigned (I guess) and offered a new domain name. The service runs Stack Exchange which is like Shapado but closed-source. It even runs on Windows Server and .Net. Admittedly, there is also http://ubuntu.shapado.com but it doesn t seem very active (nor seems to be supported by Canonical). In 2 days timeframe, both distributions gained the same service but they did it quite differently. I found this chain of events quite funny. And, really, I m quite happy to be on Debian s side (as always) [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/09/msg00123.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2010/10/msg00028.html
[3] http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/ubuntu-stack-exchange-is-askubuntu-com/

Yesterday, the Application Bridging for Federated Authentication working group was approved in the IETF. This working group s charter includes the IETF technologies needed by Project Moonshot. The group will meet at IETF 79 in Beijing this November. Meanwhile, at last month s Moonshot meeting in Copenhagen, an initial version of the technology was demonstrated. We re still working through some of the administrative details needed before we can release the code for public review. There have been several exciting discussions both on the Moonshot implementation list and on the ABFAB list over the past few weeks.

The bad news is that you won t be able to use ZFS as your root filesystem in Debian Squeeze with the official installer. The blocker is missing support in GNU Parted. Unfortunately the patch I sent in August wasn t integrated in time for the freeze (and still isn t, but there s no hurry now, it ll hopefully be there for Wheezy). The good news is that all fixes required for the installed system (including ZFS userland utilities and GRUB) made it and are already in Squeeze. As a result, the unofficial installer I built in September will (unless something weird happens) continue to work during Squeeze life cycle. Note that although the installer itself is modified, it installs a pristine Debian GNU/kFreeBSD system from official packages. Hope this is helpful to you if you plan on deploying ZFS in your organization and the other approaches don t fit well enough with your needs.

I attended this meeting last Saturday, taking up the Cooperatives-SW invitation (we have been invited before, as reported on this blog). It was held, once again, at SCAT in Taunton. First, we had introductions from everyone. The Go! Co-op rail plan for Yeovil-Oxford and beyond got a mention by the chair after I introduced myself I didn t realise it at the time, but C-SW member Co-Cars were next door at an exhibition in the Genesis centre and are preparing to launch in Taunton. Then there was a formal welcome from Christopher Irwin, TravelWatch SouthWest CIC Chair and a keynote presentation from First Great Western s operations director Kevin Gale. Delays on the GW Main Line have returned in the last three months, with performance below targets. The blame was squarely laid at the door of not-for-profit infrastructure company Network Rail, but this area is still better than it used to be. The FGW 30 train fleet (refurbished Sprinters from London Midland and London Overground?) start arriving in about two weeks. There s a new consistent company organisation. In the Q+A, I think we were told:

• passenger information distribution will become a phone tree to cut the load on central control when there s disruption;
• central control with authorise station staff overtime when services are late;
• the current 1960 signalling system will be renewed over the next 7 years;
• The Reading area rebuild may be causing later failures;
• FGW want more new rolling stock, not just the FGW 30;
• network rail is basically good but has been cut back this yr;
• they would like us to keep feeding back through travelwatchsouthwest and keep lobbying politicians.

Then there was a discussion asking: what should be the SW transport priorities in the era of 30% cuts? I suggested co-op-friendly right-to-try measures should be in those priorities. Interestingly, a reply was given by Duncan Hames MP (Chippenham, LD), followed by a talking point from transport portfolio holder Richard Gamble of Wiltshire Council. After lunch came the just a minute speeches on: arctic oil, Devizes-Bath bus mistakes (change of operator, not serving Bath bus station), Local Enterprise Partnerships and bus cuts, a suggestion to require council transport officers to use public transport to get to meetings, the need for better integrated transport info for the Wessex area, senior citizen fares and CTAs (I don t remember what this stands for sorry), the big subsidy of High Speed 1, and the problem of Dorset s main towns having poor westward rail links. There was a quick summary of the report from the CIC board which can be downloaded from the TWSW website and a presentation on integrated smartcard ticketing system from Andrew Seedhouse of GO-SW. The West of England back-office system has been launched, but there is still more to do for the SW and to connect it to operators. The event ended with the second keynote address by TfL Commissioner Peter Hendy which I m sorry to say I don t really understand my notes about and have little recollection of the key points at the end of the day. As before, I felt that the best bits of the event were the morning question-and-answer sessions and the just a minute points immediately after lunch. So, in that line: what do you think are the biggest issues and the priorities for mass transport in the South West?

How many bugs can be filed at once? 55 bugs in a row, so that the desired bug number is reached. It took some time to prepare all those reports, which eventually resulted in 55 successive bug numbers, on top of last-reported #599945 at the time, ta-da! I love it when a plan comes together! Just as a reminder, the main idea behind those bug reports is to get as many FTBFSes as possible reported, as previous mentioned. How many X packages can be uploaded between two dinstall runs? 14 packages. Now that things are settling down a bit on the squeeze front, I managed to have a look at X Server 1.9 (more precisely, 1.9.0.901 aka 1.9.1 rc1), which had already been worked on by Christopher James Halse Rogers (thanks!). Uploaded source packages include:

• xorg-server: the X server itself. Selective users want xserver-xorg-core and xserver-common from that one.
• xorg: a set of Debian-specific meta-packages. xserver-xorg is mostly what s wanted from that one.
• xserver-xorg-video-fbdev: a FrameBuffer-based video driver.
• xserver-xorg-video-vesa: the well-known generic video driver.
• All supported input drivers for which debian-x@ is listed in Maintainer. That means xserver-xorg-input- acecad, aiptek, elographics, evdev, joystick, mouse, penmount, synaptics, vmmouse, void.

So, what about the major (ati/radeon, intel, and nouveau) drivers? More on that later; if you want to test 1.9 with those, pick xserver-xorg-dev from experimental and build your driver against it. Hopefully only a few days should pass before you get an update on that topic. How many times did this blog go haywire? Possibly none, even though it was recently reworked so that http://ikibiki.org/ and http://blog.ikibiki.org/ are distinct. Some d-i or xorg tags may be added to older posts when time allows, but those shouldn t pop up in planet again.

How many bugs can be filed at once? 55 bugs in a row, so that the desired bug number is reached. It took some time to prepare all those reports, which eventually resulted in 55 successive bug numbers, on top of last-reported #599945 at the time, ta-da! I love it when a plan comes together! Just as a reminder, the main idea behind those bug reports is to get as many FTBFSes as possible reported, as previous mentioned. How many X packages can be uploaded between two dinstall runs? 14 packages. Now that things are settling down a bit on the squeeze front, I managed to have a look at X Server 1.9 (more precisely, 1.9.0.901 aka 1.9.1 rc1), which had already been worked on by Christopher James Halse Rogers (thanks!). Uploaded source packages include:

• xorg-server: the X server itself. Selective users want xserver-xorg-core and xserver-common from that one.
• xorg: a set of Debian-specific meta-packages. xserver-xorg is mostly what s wanted from that one.
• xserver-xorg-video-fbdev: a FrameBuffer-based video driver.
• xserver-xorg-video-vesa: the well-known generic video driver.
• All supported input drivers for which debian-x@ is listed in Maintainer. That means xserver-xorg-input- acecad, aiptek, elographics, evdev, joystick, mouse, penmount, synaptics, vmmouse, void.

So, what about the major (ati/radeon, intel, and nouveau) drivers? More on that later; if you want to test 1.9 with those, pick xserver-xorg-dev from experimental and build your driver against it. Hopefully only a few days should pass before you get an update on that topic. How many times did this blog go haywire? Possibly none, even though it was recently reworked so that http://ikibiki.org/ and http://blog.ikibiki.org/ are distinct. Some d-i or xorg tags may be added to older posts when time allows, but those shouldn t pop up in planet again.

As Roozbeh noted, Unicode 6.0 came out yesterday. Somewhat fittingly (given it having been National Coming Out Day), it adds
U+1F46C TWO MEN HOLDING HANDS and
U+1F46D TWO WOMEN HOLDING HANDS

Unfortunately most people will probably be looking at small boxes with numbers in there for a while yet, which is probably a wonderful metaphor but I'm not quite sure for what.

I love Unicode. I love that it lets me produce correct typography without having to resort to . I love that it allows for hilarity like Zalgo and years of entertainment in searching for the limits of the LCA conference badge rendering. I'm thrilled that a poorly managed introduction of IDNs let me get away with things like www. .net, and that nobody's got around to taking it away from me yet. And U+1F64C PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION is going to be a core part of my IRC character set the moment I get a compose map that includes compose+\+o+/. But I also love little things like having the typographical freedom to express whatever kind of relationship I choose to.

Well, providing that it's between two adults. Maybe 6.1 should add combining variants?

I took most of the weekend off, although took a look at an upgrade bug on e16. Turns out Tolimar's got it handled, right? :) Tonight I put together a tentative patch for bug #557580 on aptitude to make it respect configuration under /etc/apt/preferences.d/ - aptitude is written in C++, and I have had some recent exposure to that language at work. Unfortunately, it means aptitude takes most of an hour to build on my desktop. Since aptitude is an important package, I'm not yet entirely confident about my patch, and it's already half eleven, I think the NMU can wait a few evenings.

Here it is. Debian had six hundred thousand bugs reported. Cyril "KiBi" Brulebois is the winner in the "race of bug #600000" by reporting "db4.5: FTBFS on mips: configure: error: No off_t type." against the "db4.5" package. Such "honor" is very well deserved. Cyril is a tireless buildd admin and reports dozens of ports build failures, which is a significant part of the work involved in a release. Kudos. Once again, the French gang becomes visible in this as "we" had #200000 (by Michel Grentzinger) and #400000 (by /me). Bravo, Cyril. Rene Mayorga is the winner of the "bug #600000 contest" bet. He planned it to be reported on October 10th 2010 and only missed it by 2 days. Please note that Rene already won the "bug #500000 contest" (by missing the date by 1 day.... Congratulations again, Rene.

People start to wonder why the timeouts for the passwords in sudo seem to be so short recently in squeeze. The reason is a change in the defaults that causes it. The following option changed its default:

tty_tickets

If set, users must authenticate on a per-tty basis. Normally, sudo uses a directory in the ticket dir with the same name as the user running it. With this flag enabled, sudo will use a file named for the tty the user is logged in on in that directory. This flag is on by default.

To change it back you can add this line into your sudoers file:

Defaults !tty_tickets

Please be aware that the change in default is done because of security considerations. You might not always have all the ttys you are logged in directly visible and others might be able to access them (like, sudo on a remote SSH session). Use with caution, you though might consider disabling it on local systems with no remote users. Hope that helps! Actually this blog post was triggered by a question on ask.debian.net, a new service in the Debian eco system.

/debian permanent link Comments: 1

It's the Monday of the Columbus Day weekend here, so I must have been running a Chicago Marathon yesterday. Indeed -- the 34th annual Chicago Marathon took place yesterday but everything was about its 10/10/10 date. The symmetric set of numbers was in all advertisements, posters, street signs, on our bibs, the medals, the (nice, for once) race shirt. Everywhere, and yes, I will admit that it was also part of the reason I finally registered earlier in the year shortly before the race sold out. This was the sixth time I ran this race (and my 14th marathon overall). And I still can't run this course all that well: never got a Boston qualification here. As I had mentioned when I blogged about my third Boston Marathon earlier in the year and the recent Chicago Half-Marathon, I have had some recurrent issue with a sore achilles which limited my running throughout the year. It had gotten better but a quick summary of the miles in my running log showed that I had been running only about 80% of the training miles I had in prior years. And not a single 20-miler. I knew I'd have to pay for that. Plus, as so often, the weather. Not quite as hot as the record-heat of 2007. But close enough: high 60s at the start and high 70s or even low 80s towards the end. But I have to compliment to the race organisers. The race was very well organised (following the experience of 2007) with extra water stops, extra sponges handed out at several spots (!!) and very good communication when during the race the alert level was raised to yellow given the heat and humidity. The searchable results now show a fair number of non-finishers, but at least nobody seems to have died. But it looked ugly on the course. I think I ran by three or four sets of paramedics assisting runners who were 'down and out'.. So how did I do? Fair, I suppose -- I ran pretty well for sixteen miles, then needed a first short walking break and continued to run well towards and past the 18 mile waterstop where a bunch of friends and fellow Oak Park runners were helping. But not long after that, I crumbled and needed to alternate walking and running for most of the remainder. With that I came in at 3:41:41, or a 8:28 min/mile pace. And which is by two seconds slower than the previous 'worst' from 2007. But heck, at least it's still more than three minutes faster than Dubya in Houston in 1993 ... I also got beat by a few local running friends as well as by Chicago's own marathon juggler. So there. Maybe I'll train a bit more next time.

In the real world, David does not always win over Goliath. That's sad, but it's true. Particularly in the case of a big corporation using its wealth, influence, and minions to stomp down invividuals, to prevent them from reducing those all-important profits. A corporation must profit, by any means necessary. Profit is more important than people. A corporation has exactly as little ethics, morals, conscience, and good behavior as it can get away with. It all pretty much rests the officers, and their personal balance between greed and being good people. While most CEOs and managers and other decision makers in a corporation aren't going to do big evil, say, have people killed, they might not mind being a little bit nasty occasionally. If you have a large corporation, with a culture of profit-worshipping, you'll have a large number of people willing to be a little bit nasty, and that amounts to a lot of nastiness. That's all a long prelude to this: earlier this year, the PTFS corporation bought Liblime, a competitor. They did this to get a controlling interest on Koha, the free software librarary mangament system. Much to their surprise, you can't buy a healthy free software project like that. The community of users and developers of Koha has resisted PTFS's strongarm tactics. PTFS wants control of the code base, version control systems, mailing lists, domains, web pages, wikis, and decision making, but the community doesn't let them. Right now they are attacking Nicole Engard, the documentation manager for the Koha community, spreading lies about her. Nicole is one of the Koha community members who has spoken against PTFS's actions. She also works for a PTFS competitor, another sin against PTFS. This is an unfortunate situation for Nicole, for Koha, and for free software in general. If corporations like PTFS manage to silence their critics by nastiness, then nastiness is a working strategy and will be used more in the future. We need to squash this every time it happens, so it does not spread. However, for PTFS to lose, Nicole will have to have the courage to stand up against even more aggression. In the old world, before the Internet, this would have been quite hard. She would have had to get newspapers interested in her case. PTFS would almost certainly have been able to prevent that, by using their PR muscle to conduct a smear campaign against her. However, with the Internet, it's easier. Anyone can step up and help defend Nicole. That's what this is. I've never actually met Nicole, but in my brief involvement with the Koha community, she was always helpful and professional. She has, personally, helped Koha and free software spread farther than it would otherwise have. She does good. Like pretty much everyone in the Koha community, she is considerate, polite, and just to a fault, even when dealing with those attacking her. PTFS, on the other hand, has done only one honorable thing that I am aware of: they finally released their version of Koha. Every other action from PTFS seems to be an attempt to gain an upper hand by underhanded stratagems. Luckily, they seem to be failing. Let's see if giving more publicity to the attack on Nicole will make it, too, fail. See Nicole's post about this for more information.

Alexander Wirt was so kind to upload the latest icinga (1.2) release to unstable. This will be the next candidate for lenny-backports-sloppy.
If you can t wait, just grab the package from http://ftp.cyconet.org/debian/archive/bpo/icinga/1.2-1~bpo50+1/.
If you are using nagstamon and thinking about upgrading to icinga 1.2, I backported a working version from subversion r151, which you can grab from http://ftp.cyconet.org/debian/archive/bpo/nagstamon/0.9.4r151.1~bpo50+1/. P.S. If you like nagios and/or icinga related software, there is a Nagios Maintainers Group and we would like to invite you, if you want to improve or extend the nagios/icinga ecosystem in Debian.

If you re using Debian, you know that this distribution is built entirely by volunteers that form a very diverse community. And you could be part of it. But why should you do that? I can t tell for you but I can share my own experience. It s been 12 years since I joined Debian and I m going to tell you what keeps me on board. 1. Technical excellence When facing a new challenge, Debian will strive to do the right thing. This pays off in the long term. In many cases, it means that we will take more time to implement our solution compared to other distributions out there, but this is also the reason why our packaging infrastructure allows us to offer painless upgrades and consistency across all packages. Debian is committed to quality and builds up on his experience thanks to the Debian Policy. My time is precious, I like to spend it on something useful in the long term. 2. Inspiring goals In its social contract, Debian has set out to create a 100% free as in freedom operating system. The criteria defining what constitutes a free work are listed in the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). While the above is relatively ambitious in itself, it doesn t inspire me much. What makes the difference to me is the emphasis given by the social contract on our users and free software. We don t build a free operating system in the void, we build it for people. Debian s motto the universal operating system can also be interpreted in multiple ways: universal as in for everybody on the world , on all kinds of computers , or for every possible usage . 3. High impact work Knowing that my work is useful to people is important, but it s even better when I know that it will benefit to lots of people. With Ubuntu and the hundreds of other derivatives, there are nowadays literally millions of users impacted by my work. Even an insignificant one second improvement experienced by 10 millions of people represent 115 days of time saved for something else, you get the idea 4. Working with great people Debian has the chance to have lots of smart people on board. There s always someone sharing valuable advice when you read Debian s mailing lists. When I joined in 1998, I was a real newbie and I learned a lot of things by reading and interacting with people more knowledgeable than me. You can still experience the same thing nowadays but there s one caveat: you must cope with various kinds of mailing list contributors including the smart but uncivilized (don t be offended too quickly!) and the occasional troll (best ignore it, don t feed it!). 5. Recognition of work When you contribute to Debian, people get to know you through your contributions. It s very rewarding to be thanked by your peers and by Debian s users. Check out thanks.debian.net to convince you that many people are grateful for the work we put into Debian. So that s it for me. But what about you? What motivates you to contribute year after year, or to start contributing if you re a prospective contributor?

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