Really, I should have known better than to buy myself a rather 'bleeding-edge' laptop. I suppose I've been lucky with my last couple of laptops and was thinking that pretty much everything works on Linux. Or maybe I'm being picky, because in fact pretty much everything does work on my new Dell Studio. I bought this laptop mainly because it has a 1920x1080 screen, without being a 17" monster. I had such a monster about four laptops ago (an enormous Sony Vaio weighing in at around 5kg and with a 1hr battery life) and it was an disaster: lots of weird proprietary stuff that never worked, like the external speakers in the docking station. But I loved that screen right up until the day Fraser threw a pair of scissors into it. With the advent of mass-market 1920x1080 screens I've been waiting for them to arrive in laptops at a reasonable price, and the availability of this screen in a few possible laptops seemed to me to be that point. It's a Dell Studio 15, and as well as the nice screen, it comes with a new Intel i7 Quad Core CPU, 6G RAM, 640G hard drive and a Blu-ray drive. While there are a few similar models around this one seemed to have the best mix of features-for-weight-and-price, so I bought my first Dell. I built a USB key with the latest Debian Installer from Squeeze and installed that and everything came up pretty well. I had to use the broadcom-sta driver for the wireless, since the BCM 43224 is not (yet) supported by the free b43 driver (though from looking the mailing list people seem to be working on it, and it looks like it might not be too far away). Everything seemed good. X came up on the (georgeous) screen. I don't care too much about 3D performance, but it was nice to note that the ATI 5000 series is expected to have full support as soon as it's integrated into the right places - it seems the code is written, and public, it just isn't incorporated into the 'radeon' driver quite yet. The fact that ATI is nowadays a free-software friendly company was one of the reasons for choosing this, in preference to an NVidia-based laptop. But it seems that it isn't all roses. The fan in the laptop seems permanently on, and not on, in a quiet-just-barely-audible way, but ON, in an 'IN UR LAPTOPZ KOOLIN UR P0RCESSAZ' kind of a way. Too damn noisy for me to concentrate in a quiet room. I've investigated what's going on, and it seems likely there are some ACPI misunderstandings happening. Some googling and some pecking around in /sys makes me wonder if the laptop expects some kind of configuration choice between favouring Active cooling and Passive cooling, and it's defaulted to the first one. Perhaps you get better benchmarks that way. Linux ACPI also seems to only half understand it, it has two thermal zones, and one of them always appears with 0 temperature. I can see set points for the fans, but have no control over them. In particular this got me out reading the ACPI 4.0 specification, and it explicitly mentions this choice of favouring 'Active' vs 'Passive' as being done by configuring the passive trip point setting to a higher value than the low & high active trip points. In the ACPI 4 spec (page 409) it says:

To implement a preference towards performance or energy conservation,
OSPM can request that the platform change the priority of active cooling
(performance) versus passive cooling (energy conservation/silence) by evaluating
the _SCP (Set Cooling Policy) object for the thermal zone or a corresponding
OS-specific interface to individual devices within a thermal zone.

This laptop is showing 'passive' at 95000 millidegrees celsius, and 'active' at 55000 / 75000 so right in line with the suggestion. However I don't see any way in Linux to change these trip point values, and in any case I'm not convinced the laptop is actually obeying them at all. It should be that if I do nothing on the laptop for a while the temperature would surely drop below 55 degrees celsius. Surely a modern laptop will sit at under 40 degrees when it's quiescent, and the temperature sensor that does show me something sits at around 30 degrees in this too, 26.8, to be overprecise. That one doesn't budge either. Looking in /sys/ I can't for the life of me find a way to set that cooling policy, and when I disassemble the DSDT it looks like a noop... Thinking that perhaps there was a newer BIOS, I looked at the Dell site and found there was one. Great! Investigating even further, it seems Dell hardware has some interesting capability via libsmbios and some utilities which will let me install my BIOS from a Linux system... even better! Linux is a second-class citizen though, and when I look for the Dell BIOS Hdr file I need there is no version of the file for this laptop - let alone the current BIOS version. And when I download the BIOS from Dell's website and unzip the first layer of packaging I find that both of the files inside will only run on Windows. I added a FreeDOS boot stanza to Grub 2 in order to discover this, also discovering in the process that this is not well explained, and I could not find how to do it on the FreeDOS or Grub2 websites, so in passing, here is what I added into /etc/grub/40_custom :

menuentry 'BIOS Flash 1558 A09' --class os  
        set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
        linux16 /boot/memdisk
        initrd16  /boot/1558_A09.img
 

Which certainly does boot FreeDOS from Grub2, into the image built from the 8M FreeDOS base image, and which I called '1558_A09.img' because that seems to be one of Dell's reference numbers for this model / BIOS version. So still no BIOS update for Andrew, it seems, and the laptop is probably going to continue to be noisy for some time. Possibly forever. Suspend/Resume works though. Kernel mode-setting for the ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5450 (or whatever it is) seems to work. Building kernels seems to work. The Blu-ray drive seems to work, at least as far as reading CDs - just because I got a laptop with a "Full HD" screen doesn't mean I watch movies on it: those pixels are for programming on! In any case, after reading the literature of pain about playing Blu-ray disks on Linux I'm convinced that we won't be shelling out to buy one any any time soon. After a bit more frustration I did manage to get the BIOS installed, using the hack I found here of running the Windows BIOS update under Wine and copying the BIOS file out of the temp directory while the error message is displayed. I could then download a random DOS-installable Phoenix BIOS to get copy of phlash16.exe and put those two files on the FreeDOS image I created earlier. Finally I was able to put that learning about how to boot FreeDOS from Grub2 to good use! Unfortunately, having jumped through all of those hoops (including the frustration of trying to build and use Dell's firmware-extract tools on a Debian system), the fan continues to grind away at annoying volume, with no way that I have been able to find to control it, and the temperature sensors also seem wrong, since one doesn't budge from 0 and the other doesn't budge from 26800. During boot I get a bunch of error messages, like:

[    1.049936] \_SB_.PCI0:_OSC invalid UUID
[    1.052202] pci 0000:00:1c.0: PME# supported from D0 D3hot D3cold
[    1.052210] pci 0000:00:1c.0: PME# disabled
[    1.065228] pci 0000:07:00.2: PME# supported from D0 D1 D2 D3hot D3cold
[    1.065237] pci 0000:07:00.2: PME# disabled
[    1.079086] Unable to assume PCIe control: Disabling ASPM
[    1.086412] HEST: Table is not found!
[    1.249906] ACPI: Fan [FAN0] (off)
[    1.249959] ACPI: Fan [FAN1] (off)
[    1.250093] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: ACPI brightness control misses _BQC function
[    1.259118] acpi device:02: registered as cooling_device2
[    1.262132] thermal LNXTHERM:01: registered as thermal_zone0
[    1.262139] ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZ00] (27 C)
[    1.262561] thermal LNXTHERM:02: registered as thermal_zone1
[    1.262571] ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZ01] (0 C)
[    1.262598] ERST: Table is not found!
[    2.769664] i801_smbus 0000:00:1f.3: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[    2.769670] ACPI: resource 0000:00:1f.3 [io  0x1840-0x185f] conflicts with ACPI
                         region SMBI [bus 1840-184f pref window disabled]
[    2.769672] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it
                         instead of the native driver

I don't yet know what this all means, so I guess I'll be signing up for the linux-acpi mailing list to see if there's anything I can do to get things working better. Any pointers will be gratefully received :-) Right about now I wonder if maybe I should have gone for the HP or the Asus, even if they were a little heavier and a bit more expensive and next time I get a new laptop I must remember not to spend more than $900 (USD$600) on it. [Updated: 2010-09-08... Noise Problems Solved

The most important moment in a Debian release cycle just happened As an important step of the freeze is choosing the name of the next release (so that ftpmasters and many other parts of the project can prepare the infrastructure), the Debian release team did its duty. Wheezy it is, then. First Debian release named after a character that is *not* in Toy Story 1. Indeed, there was one toy character left that fills in two criteria followed up to now by those who named Debian releases:

• appearing in TS1
• having its name mentioned in the movie itself (Squeeze is already half an exception as they appear in TS1 but their name is mentioned in later movies)

...and that's "Rocky" (Wikipedia names him "Rocky Gibraltar"). That wrestler figure is called for help ("Rocky, the ramp!") to rescue Woody and Buzz at the back of the moving truck, at the end of the film. Guys, you know what to do in 2 years..:-)

As you may not have noticed, I migrated my site to WordPress some time ago as I did not want to maintain the old piece of crap I wrote myself when I was young ;)
Today I want to tell you a story of the development of a plugin for WordPress. As the title says, it s much about joy and pain and I think I should start with the pain :) WordPress is written in PHP, so are the plugins for it. And PHP is REAL pain (but there is no decent blogging software for Django or Zope that would fit all my needs). It is especially pain when you work with Python every day. What the heck are those curly braces and dollar signs and $this-> ? That s just not the way Guido indented it ;)
Additionally my last contacts with PHP were some time back in 2008 when I hacked on SysCP, which today result in commits like this:

-        if (is_int($new_instance['max_items'])) $instance['max_items'] = $new_instance['max_items'];
+        if (ctype_digit($new_instance['max_items'])) $instance['max_items'] = $new_instance['max_items'];

But I have to admit that the WordPress API is pretty good. Not very well documented (the wiki pages at codex.wordpress.org are sometimes outdated), so you have to read the source and google a bit, but when you found the needed sources, it s pretty straight forward.
My plan was to write a simple widget, displaying my Twitter and identi.ca timelines. Yes, both together, not one widget per service. The reason for this is the fact that I mostly post via identi.ca and the messages get synced over to Twitter and only the local replies and retweets/redents differ.
The basic WordPress widget would look like this (source: http://codex.wordpress.org/Widget_API#Developing_Widgets_on_2.8.2B):

class My_Widget extends WP_Widget  
	function My_Widget()  
		// widget actual processes
	 
	function form($instance)  
		// outputs the options form on admin
	 
	function update($new_instance, $old_instance)  
		// processes widget options to be saved
	 
	function widget($args, $instance)  
		// outputs the content of the widget
	 
 
register_widget('My_Widget');

One only has to modify the widget() function and here you go. From some other Twitter plugin I knew that I only had to include rss.php and call fetch_rss(url) for every feed URL to get the timelines as an array via MagPie. But when looking at rss.php, you notice the deprecation message in the header, saying one should use SimplePie now. Some google later I knew that I had to include feed.php and call fetch_feed(url) to get a SimplePie object representing the feed contents. But SimplePie is even cooler: I can call fetch_feed(array(url1, url2)) and get a merged feed, containing both.
Now I added a duplicate filter to elliminate the messages posted to both, twitter AND identi.ca and my widget was ready. You can find the result on http://github.com/evgeni/wp-statusnet-widget and soon on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/statusnet-widget/ :)

Debian and Ubuntu have a set of official membership roles that can be granted to regular contributors. Those roles come with rights that enable the contributors to do their work and to participate in the project governance (elections and other official decision-making processes). It s also a way for the distributions to acknowledge the work done: most contributors are proud of the status they reached. The membership structure plays an important role in the development of a distribution: it defines the kind of contributors that are welcome in the project, it sets expectations of the project towards its contributors and defines their rights. In the end, this shapes the project s ability to recruit new contributors to keep the project alive and kicking. This article introduces the existing statuses in Debian and Ubuntu, and defines the sometimes confusing jargon associated with them. The Debian Case Debian only has two types of official members: Debian Developers (DD) and Debian Maintainers (DM). The rights of the developers are codified in the Debian Constitution while those of the maintainers have been defined in a general resolution of 2007. The Debian Maintainer status is still mostly documented in a wiki page. The integration of this new status in Debian s official processes has been slow to come largely because it was introduced at that time without enough negotiation with the involved parties. Nowadays, it is preferred that people get the DM status before applying for DD. DM is a very limited role: maintainers can only upload packages that already have their name on them (either in the Maintainer or Uploaders field) and a specific flag (DM-Upload-Allowed: yes) that only Debian Developers can add. They have no other rights and limited access to Debian s resources. Besides those official roles, there are also maintainers of packages that have no official status within Debian except that they are listed in the Maintainer field of the package. They are doing the maintenance work but all uploads are done by a Debian Developer after verification of the work done (this is called sponsorship and is the only way to start with official packaging work). Once the DD trusts the maintainer, the developer will typically ask the maintainer to apply for DM status in order to be relieved from the sponsorship work. In the end, that makes three different kind of package maintainers and a lot of confusion when you discuss membership issues in particular when the New Maintainer process is the path that you follow to become a Debian Developer. Don t be fooled by the names when reading Debian s documentation! The Ubuntu Case Ubuntu had, from the start, an official Ubuntu Member status that includes all contributors: developers of course, but also documentation writers, artists, translators, etc. This status notably grants the right to vote in elections of the Community Council, the right to participate on Planet Ubuntu, and the @ubuntu.com email alias. For developers, the situation is more complicated: the wiki page lists no less than five different statuses. Initially, developers were split between Ubuntu Core Developers and the MOTU (Masters Of The Universe). The latter were responsible of the universe/multiverse sections of the archive while the former also had upload rights for the main/restricted sections. But, inspired by the Debian Maintainers concept and facing concrete problems in terms of archive management, they changed their infrastructure to offer more fine-grained control on package uploads. Ubuntu can now grant upload permissions on a package-per-package basis, but it can also delegate the right to grant upload permissions with the same granularity. This lead to the new Per-Package Uploader status which is simply an Ubuntu Member with upload rights on a limited set of packages where they have a specific expertise. The more generic Ubuntu Developers status now encompasses members of various development teams that have been delegated the right to manage upload permissions on a (usually large) package set (the current teams are Ubuntu Desktop, Mythubuntu, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu). Those teams can define their own policy to add new members provided they follow the basic rules defined by the Developer Membership Board (see this wiki page). Ubuntu Contributing Developer is an intermediate status for someone who is not yet ready for one of the other developer statuses but who has still shown enough commitment to be an Ubuntu Member. All those statuses can be obtained in a similar way: you prepare a wiki page listing your past contributions, you collect testimonials from existing members that you have worked with, you add yourself in the agenda of the next meeting of the board (or council) that grants the status that you seek, and you attend the meeting. The members of the board will decide whether you are ready for the status (or not) based on what you provided in the wiki, based on your answers during the meeting (and on a mailing-list for developers), and based on what others have to say about you. The most important boards are usually elected by the community while others are commonly appointed by the community council. Those governance bodies include Canonical employees but not as many as one would expect: two out of eight in the Developer Membership Board, two out of eight in the Community Council, but all six members of the Technical Board. The last figure, while not intended, is not surprising given the high expectations set on potential members of the technical board. Mark, as the founder, is the only person to have a permanent seat on both the Community Council and the Technical Board. Comparison of the Statuses Between Debian and Ubuntu The following table summarizes the rights given to each developer role in the two projects (Put the mouse over the abbreviations to know what they are referring to).

Rights	Debian		Ubuntu
	DM	DD	UM	PPU/UD	MOTU	UCD
Package maintenance via sponsorship	Y	N/A	Y	Y	Y	N/A
Official email alias	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Participate in votes for members	-	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Participate in votes for developers	-	Y	-	Y	Y	Y
Upload rights restricted to pre-approved packages	Y	-	-	Y	-	-
Upload rights restricted to a section of the archive	-	-	-	-	Y	-
Unlimited upload rights	-	Y	-	-	-	Y
Number of contributors (as of 2010-07-27)	117	904	462	27	85	63

Please note that the number of contributors are not 100% accurate for Ubuntu. A contributor can have multiple statuses (direct membership to a launchpad group) granted over time (while gaining experience). The problem has been mostly avoided by calculating differences between number of members of the various groups but it s not perfect and it can t be: some MOTU are also PPU for packages in main and it s legitimate (but I only counted them as MOTU and not as PPU). Another limitation is that members of some administrative teams are included indirectly in many teams and thus appear in the count while they should not. Anyway, this simple table makes it obvious that Ubuntu s structure offers a broader choice of statuses. They acknowledge the work of all contributors from the start while still giving the most critical rights only to those who have proven that they deserve them. Despite this difference, Debian still has a significant advantage in terms of number of developers. That number does not tell the whole story though: the Ubuntu contributors include many Canonical employees (e.g. 36 out of 63 core developers have a @canonical.com email registered on their launchpad account) that are likely to spend more time working on the distribution than the average Debian member. But even if comparing person-hours would be a challenging thought experiment, in practice it s of not much interest if both projects continue to cooperate and if more and more of the contributions flow in both directions. Debian is aware of the shortcomings of its structure. Changes to better accommodate non-packagers have been discussed several times already. The last efforts in that direction were unfortunately perceived as a solution ready to go rather than a proposal to be discussed, and the project got quickly buried by a general resolution (GR). Even if that resolution invited for further discussion and a new proposal, the truth is that when someone s initiative is corrected by way of GR, it usually kills any motivation to go forward. Possible Evolution? On the Ubuntu side, the infrastructural changes were completed recently and they don t expect any further change in the near future. They do plan, however, to expand usage of those new features so that more teams benefit from the possibility to control upload rights on packages that are relevant to them, and so that more individuals developers apply to become Per-Package Uploaders on packages that they know very well. On the Debian side, a recent discussion on the debian-project list brought back the topic of the bad terminology and it was agreed that the New Maintainer process should be renamed into something else ( New Developer process has been suggested). But Christoph Berg Debian Account Manager and hence heavily involved in the New Maintainer Team suggested that Debian would be better off implementing the long-awaited membership changes before trying to update all the documentation. It would certainly imply some more vocabulary updates. Later in the discussion, he confirmed that membership reform is on the top of the TODO list of the new maintainer team (just after the rewrite of the nm.debian.org website). What can be expected from this reform? The following answers are my own guesses based on my experience of Debian, but the project hasn t decided anything yet.

• First of all: a new status for contributors that are not packagers. The tricky part will be defining the process to follow and the rights granted.
• Changes to the technical implementation of the DM status. The current implementation does not allow to give upload rights to a single DM if two are listed in the Uploaders field of a package (and both might not have the same experience for that package). Furthermore, it suffers from annoying restrictions like the inability to upload new binary packages.
• A change of the Debian constitution to integrate those new statuses is almost unavoidable.
• Other more invasive changes have been proposed like replacing the NM process by a simple designation by other DD, but it s unlikely to happen. The NM process can already be greatly simplified by the application manager if the applicant can show good testimonials from other developers and if he has a track record of real contributions (e.g. as witnessed by changelog entries in Debian packages).

Almost two years have elapsed since the previous efforts in that direction, the new maintainer team has recruited new members and is in a general better shape. Hopefully, the next episode of this saga will have a better outcome.

This article was first published in Linux Weekly News. In a comment, Mark Shuttleworth tried to explain how the Ubuntu community is being setup.

10 comments Support my work

For me, the most enjoyable part of traveling is the inspiration that I derive from visiting different places, talking to people, and generally being outside of my normal environment. This bank holiday weekend, when so many Londoners visit faraway lands, my partner and I stayed in London instead, and my sought inspiration closer to home. The city has been delightfully quiet, and in contrast to the preceding week, the weather was mostly pleasant, apart from the sudden downpours the BBC described as squally showers .
We spent Saturday afternoon in Richmond Park, a 2500-acre nature preserve easily accessible via public transport from London. The plentiful oak trees, fallow deer, and various species of water fowl made it easy to forget the city for a while. Having visited a few times on foot, I think it would be fun to cycle next time, and see different areas of the park. Afterward, we had dinner at a tapas restaurant in Parsons Green which offered notably excellent service as well as good food. By this time, it was nearly 7:00pm, and we took a chance on getting last-minute theatre tickets to see Jeff Goldblum and Mercedes Ruehl in Neil Simon s The Prisoner of Second Avenue. We arrived at the theatre just in time for the show, which was not sold out, and in fact had quite reasonable seats available. The show had several good laughs, holding up fairly well after nearly 40 years since the original Broadway production.
On Sunday, we visited the Design Museum for the first time. Having been disappointed by the nearby Fashion and Textile Museum, our expectations were not too high, but it turned out to be very worthwhile. The Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition showcased designs from architecture, fashion, furniture, transport and more. Some of my favorites were:

• Pachube, a system for sharing real-time sensor data and fostering a community around its uses
• Grassworks, a line of flat-pack, self-assembled furniture constructed entirely from bamboo, without glue or fasteners
• The Gocycle, a lightweight (16kg) electric bicycle for city dwellers
• The Eyewriter, a low-cost eye tracking system powered by open source software
• The Land Glider, a small (1 3 meters), enclosed electric vehicle which maintains stability by leaning into turns
• Analog Digital, a clock which is operated by a person covering and revealing segments using paint
• BMW GINA, a fabric-skinned shape-shifting car concept

I was delighted to see that there were a half dozen or so exhibits which related to open source software. Even including the theatre tickets, it was a very inexpensive holiday compared to traveling overseas, and generated a lot less CO2. I was more than satisfied with the inspiration available within a relatively small radius. I don t think I ll give up traveling, as I really enjoy seeing friends who live far away, but I think I ll be more inclined to stay home during peak travel times and enjoy local activities.

Shereen El Feki gave an inspiring TED talk about Islamic youth culture [1]. She shows some interesting exerpts from the 4SHBAB TV network which is known as Islamic MTV , the music video from the US was of particularly high quality while I expect high quality videos to be made in the US I don t generally expect quality Islamic videos from the US (or anywhere else really). She also notes that the videos show a kinder gentler face of Islam . She contrasts that with a clip by Haifa Wehbe [2] a Lebanese pop star who appears to have a lot in common with Britney Spears (Shereen describes her as a pan-Arab pinup-girl ). She cites the comic The 99 which has Islamic super-heros who represent the 99 attributes of Allah. One thing that I found very interesting was that the 99 character Jemi is shown using what is obviously an OLPC. This seems to indicate some very positive trends for the interaction of Islamic culture with the European and American culture which is Christian and Atheist dominated. Kavita Ramdas gave an interesting TED talk about radical women embracing tradition [3]. She highlights a woman who teaches girls to read in Afghanistan based on the religious edict that every Muslim should read the Koran and a Croatian Lesbian choir that sings traditional folk songs. Naif al-Mutawa gave an interesting TED talk about the creation of The 99 [4]. He starts by comparing some of the characters in the Justice League of America to Christian traditions and then describes the back story behind his Islamic super-heroes. His major aim is to provide positive role models for Muslim children. Apparently a cross-over production involving characters from The 99 and the Justice League of America is being developed at the moment Wonder Woman wears clothing that is less revealing than usual though. It s worth noting that Naif is a practicing psychologist who s clients include victims of political torture, so he seems to have some insight into the problems that most people will never have.

• [1] http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/shereen_el_feki_pop_culture_in_the_arab_world.html
• [2] http://www.haifafans.net/
• [3] http://www.ted.com/talks/kavita_ramdas_radical_women_embracing_tradition.html
• [4] http://www.ted.com/talks/naif_al_mutawa_superheroes_inspired_by_islam.html

Back in August 2007 I looked at the state of embedded md5sums in Debian packages and found that approximately 3% of the files in the archive didn't have checksums. Three years later, things have improved: only 0.76% of the archive is now missing checksums (sid, main/contrib/non-free). (See this lintian report for the list of affected packages.) Since then there's also been various discussions on this subject and there is now a policy bug open to make md5sums a requirement (at the "should" level). There is also a wishlist bug against debhelper to turn dh_md5sums into dh_checksums with a stronger hash algorithm, but MD5 still being good enough for simple integrity checking, it seems rather pointless to upgrade the algorithm without a trust path in the form of in-package signatures ala RPM... Anyway, what's perhaps more surprising is the growth of the distribution in only three years: sid has gone from 20774 to 30314 packages, a 45% increase. Similarly, the number of regular files has gone from approximately 2 million to just above 2.9 million. Indeed, looking at our last five releases, the distribution's growth is impressive:

• woody (2002): 8273 packages
• sarge (2005): 15195 packages (+83.7%)
• etch (2007): 18043 packages (+18.7%)
• lenny (2009): 22277 packages (+23.5%)
• squeeze (2010?): 28870 packages (+29.6%)

Whether or not that is a good thing is, of course, yet to be determined. As a data point, I used the UDD to know how many of these thousands of packages are actually used, and to my surprise, 22321 binary packages have a popcon installation count that is less than 500! (By comparison, dpkg's installation count is 89393.) So while each new release adds lots of packages, the majority of them have very few users. (If you want to check yourself, the query I used is select p.package, version, insts from packages p, popcon where (p.architecture = 'i386' or p.architecture = 'all') and p.release = 'squeeze' and p.package = popcon.package and popcon.insts < 500 order by insts;.)

CVE-2010-2959 allows to exploit an integer overflow in the CAN protocol driver to escalate privileges to root. This requires the CAN BCM module (can_bcm) to be loaded, so its impact is either null or easily mitigated since it is never used on normal systems. If this command finds the alias needed to autoload the module then an unpatched system is vulnerable:

grep can-proto-2 /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/modules.alias -r /etc/modprobe.d/

In practice, the combination of the unpatched lenny kernel and module-init-tools packages are not (normally) vulnerable because the alias does not exist, while more recent kernels are: nowadays kernel modules carry their own built-in aliases, which are collected by depmod(8).

Urban Honking has an insightful article about the Arduino and suggests that it is one of the most important factors for the development of the computer industry in the near future [1]. It compares the Arduino to the Altair. Wired has an interesting article about a company that provides a satellite kit and a launch into low Earth orbit for $8000 [2]. Arduino in space? Linux Journal has an interesting article by David Rowe about the Mesh Potato which is a Wifi mesh router that also runs VOIP [3]. One particularly interesting aspect of this article is the explanation of the way they designed and tested it. Susan Shaw gave an informative TED talk about the toxic effects of the attempts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico [4]. It seems that trying to disperse the oil just makes it worse, and the chemical companies are refusing to disclose the chemicals that are being used. The New York Times has an interesting article by David Leonhardt about the value of pre-school teachers [5]. Some research on the difference that good teachers can make in economic terms suggests that the make an economic difference to the children to the value of $320,000 per annum (IE a class of 16 children who were taught for a year would on average each receive a benefit of $20,000 over their lifetime). Also there are social benefits which aren t counted by that study. While I can t imagine pre-school teachers getting paid $320,000 any time soon, it does seem obvious that good teachers deserve significantly better pay. Of course one problem is how to determine which teachers are good, better test results are not a reliable indication. Paul Krugman describes America as being on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere due to the policies of saving money by cutting funding for schools, street-lights, and roads [6]. The Chive has an amusing post about how to quit a bad job [7]. It would be good if someone really did this, I m sure that there are enough creative people who don t like their job. Hell Pizza in New Zealand published a zombie themed choose your own adventure on Youtube [8]. Unfortunately the options to choose the next segment don t work on HTML5 with Chromium so if you don t have flash you miss out. AskThePilot.com has an informative essay about airline security written by a commercial pilot [9]. The anecdote about the pilot not being allowed to take the type of knife that is issued to first and business class passengers is rather amusing. FredOnEverything.net has an interesting analysis of Wikileaks and why the Pentagon and Fox News hate it [10]. Fred is a very skillful writer, while he s not the first person to say some of these things he may have said it best. The Wikipedia page on Borosilicate glass (which is best known under the trademark Pyrex) is really interesting [11]. Borsilicate glass was formerly known as Duran and it s main characteristic that makes it suitable for lab use is resistance to Thermal Shock, but it s also harder and has a higher melting point. Apparently you can get Pyrex drinking glasses, I want some! Eben Moglen gave an interesting talk Freedom in the Cloud about the development of free servers to manage personal data and replace Facebook etc (among many other things) [12]. The Debian Wiki has an articla about designing such a system [13]. The APNIC published an interesting paper on IPv4 background radiation [14]. Apparently some /24 s receive so much random traffic (from broken applications and viruses) that they can t be delegated. IPv6 will solve this problem by making it infeasible to scan all IP addresses. Also it s interesting to note the excessive amounts of traffic to 1.0.168.192 which is from applications too broken to correctly send data to 192.168.0.1 which have been installed by sysadmins who are too incompetent to watch what is being sent out of their network.

• [1] http://www.urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2009/05/why_the_arduino_matters.html
• [2] http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/tubesat-personal-satellite/
• [3] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10604
• [4] http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_shaw_the_oil_spill_s_toxic_trade_off.html
• [5] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/economy/28leonhardt.html
• [6] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/09krugman.html
• [7] http://thechive.com/2010/08/10/girl-quits-her-job-on-dry-erase-board-emails-entire-office-33-photos/
• [8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p1yBlV7Ges
• [9] http://www.askthepilot.com/essays-and-stories/terrorism-tweezers-and-terminal-madness-an-essay-on-security/
• [10] http://www.fredoneverything.net/Wikileaks.shtml
• [11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borosilicate_glass
• [12] http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=1338
• [13] http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
• [14] http://meetings.apnic.net/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/23398/ipv4-background-radiation.pdf

OCaml compiles native executables in static mode. It allows to have a minimal set of dependencies when delivering an executable. It has also disadvantages like the size of the executable and problems arising when considering libraries update -- but this is another topic. There is still one strong dependency that you should not forget when you want to deliver a product for most of the Linux distributions: dependency on the glibc version. Trying to run OASIS compiled with Debian Lenny, on CentOS 5.5:

$ OASIS
.../OASIS: /lib64/libc.so.6: version  GLIBC_2.7' not found (required by .../OASIS)

So when compiling for delivery, one should choose the oldest distribution he targets. In my case, I choose CentOS 5 which comes with glibc v2.5. I usually choose Debian stable at the moment of writing Debian Lenny. But for now, the Debian Lenny's glibc is newer (v2.7) than the one coming from the CentOS 5.5 stable release. CentOS is a Red Hat like Linux distribution. I use a Debian Lenny amd64 host system and I decided to setup a chroot of CentOS 5 i386 and amd64. I also setup schroot to use my CentOS chroot. CentOS 5 amd64 setup First of all we use rinse, which can setup a RPM based distribution in a chroot. The version v1.3 shipped with Debian Lenny has some bugs: it doesn't install nss and other mandatory packages. So I downloaded v1.7 directly from Debian Sid. There is no dependencies problems and the package is arch:all, so it is straightforward to install:

$ wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/r/rinse/rinse_1.7-1_all.deb # Replace ftp.de.debian.org by your preferred Debian mirror
$ dpkg -i rinse_1.7-1_all.deb

Then I create the chroot directory and launch rinse:

$ mkdir /srv/chroot/centos5-amd64
$ rinse --arch amd64 --distribution centos-5 --directory /srv/chroot/centos5-amd64 # N.B. you must use --arch, the default is i386

Once installation is complete, you can add an entry for this distribution in /etc/schroot/schroot.conf:

[centos5-amd64]
description=Centos 5 (amd64)
location=/srv/chroot/centos5-amd64
priority=3
users=XXX
groups=
root-groups=root
type=directory
run-setup-scripts=true
run-exec-scripts=true

Replace XXX by your login. If you try to login directly, you will get warnings:

$ schroot -c centos5-i386
I : [chroot centos5-i386-a952de23-7f4b-4bae-a9b9-752ecee4a185] Ex cution de l'interpr teur de commandes initial :  /bin/bash 
-bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
-bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
-bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
-bash: /dev/null: Permission denied
-bash: /dev/null: Permission denied

This is a bit misleading because the real problem is that nothing is created in /dev/. CentOS delegates creating char/block devices to udev. You have two solutions to solve this issue:

• login and call MAKEDEV to create missing devices:

$ MAKEDEV random
$ MAKEDEV console
$ MAKEDEV zero
$ MAKEDEV null
$ MAKEDEV stdout
$ MAKEDEV stdin
$ MAKEDEV stderr

• use an already setup Debian chroot to copy the missing devices:

$ rsync -av /srv/chroot/lenny-amd64/dev/* /srv/chroot/centos5-amd64/dev/

That's it, you now have a functional chrooted CentOS 5 environment:

$ schroot -c centos5-amd64 cat /etc/redhat-release
I : [chroot centos5-amd64-b9bae264-285b-4d17-a046-13386736cecd] Ex cution de la commande :   cat /etc/redhat-release  
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)

CentOS 5 i386 setup To setup an i386 environment, we follow almost the same scheme, except we need to fix a bug in rinse v1.7: we need to call linux32 before executing chroot. The problem is that the first stage installation of rinse install an i386/686 environment but as soon as you call chroot yum install ..., it will guess that the system is amd64 and will install missing packages. See the Debian bug report and the example patch attached to correct this behavior. WARNING: this patch is just an example, you can apply it for creating CentOS i386 chroot on Lenny amd64 host but you should remove the patch as soon as the installation is complete.

$ mkdir /srv/chroot/centos5-i386/
$ rinse --arch i386 --distribution centos-5 --directory /srv/chroot/centos5-i386 # With /usr/lib/rinse/centos-5/post-install.sh patched 
$ rsync -av /srv/chroot/lenny-i386/dev/* /srv/chroot/centos5-i386/dev/

Add this distribution to /etc/schroot/schroot.conf:

[centos5-i386]
description=Centos 5 (i386)
location=/srv/chroot/centos5-i386
priority=3
users=XXX
groups=
root-groups=root
type=directory
run-setup-scripts=true
run-exec-scripts=true
personality=linux32

You now have a schroot of CentOS 5 i386:

$ schroot -c centos5-i386 cat /etc/redhat-release
I : [chroot centos5-i386-9acafa91-9862-4488-aaef-4ab2a482771e] Ex cution de la commande :  cat /etc/redhat-release 
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)

Happy schroot hacking!

This post concerns Romanian politics, internal affairs and improper direction of public funding for new hideous churches in spite of education, culture, health, technic development and old monuments. Thus I will write this in Romanian. Curious foreigners can try to read the text via Google's translation.

---

Din cauz c suntem n secolul XXI i consider c e o prostie imens s b g m bani n biserici n detrimentul educa iei, culturii, s n t ii, dezvolt rii tehnice i a vechilor monumente, iar politicul din Rom nia pare dornic s dea bani cultelor, am ajuns la concluzia c este cazul s -i scriu reprezntantului meu (teoretic) n Parlament, Deputatul Florin Iordache. Am aflat de ce colegiu apar in uit ndu-m aici i apoi n lista oficial cu deputa ii.




I-am trimis textul de mai jos:

M numesc Petri or Eddy i sunt unul dintre cei pe care i reprezenta i n Parlamentul Rom niei. Este pentru prima dat c nd scriu unui parlamentar care m reprezint n conducerea statului rom n i o fac pentru a-mi exprima n mod clar i r spicat ideile i opinia n ceea ce prive te subiectul pe care l voi discuta mai jos. Am 30 de ani, sunt programator, am muncit i mi-am pl tit taxele de c nd am fost angajat, din anul 4 de facultate p n n prezent, adic de vreo 6-7 ani. Nu, acest mesaj nu este un strig t de ajutor, nu a tept pomeni, nu am milogit niciodat , mereu am muncit de i v d c pentru unii parazitismul fiscal a devenit un mod de via . Din acest motiv sunt revoltat.

Sunt revoltat pentru c :
- de i pl tesc taxe i impozite care ajung la peste 60% din venitul brut, nu primesc n schimb nici un fel de servicii, nici un fel de infrastructur , nici un fel de respect, nici un fel de eficien
- de i lucrez de ceva timp, am observat c pe unde am lucrat competen a i performa a erau o necesitate; n aparatul de stat nu este cazul
- de i sunt destui ca mine care pl tesc taxe i impozite, vocile noastre sunt ignorate i banii no tri sunt arunca i pe fereastr de cei ce administreaz fondurile colectate.

Domnule deputat sunt revoltat c de 15 ani de zile dispar n medie aproximativ 4 coli zilnic i apare, tot n medie, o biseric la fiecare 2 zile, iar asta se nt mpl cu accep iunea aparatului politic. Spitalul din Caracal, ca orice alt spital din Rom nia, e prost dotat, nu exist personal suficient, nu are fonduri pentru medica ie pentru pacien i, pe scurt, este un dezastru care e pe cale s se nt mple. i cu toate astea, banii se duc spre biserici. Se fac dona ii de coli i terenuri c tre biseric , n mod ilegal i abuziv chiar n jude ul Olt.

Ultima perioad n care religia a condus lumea s-a numit Evul Mediu i cred c orice om care a tr it m car 5 ani n secolul XXI poate s observe c nu religia ne-a adus mari beneficii, ci tiin a i tehnologia. n Evul Mediu tratamentul se f cea prin s nger ri , t ieri sub limb , scoaterea argintului viu i tot felul de alte supersti ii f r nici un efect pozitiv sau chair cu efecte negative.

ntre timp umanitatea a progresat i am descoperit medicina, curentul electric, am explorat universul, am aterizat pe Lun , am pus zeci de sateli i artificiali pe orbit , am aflat foarte multe despre univers i lumea care ne nconjoar , am inventat noi materiale (plasticul, p nzele impermeabile, kevlarul), am investigat lumea f r idei preconcepute dup metoda tiin ific , iar lucrul acesta ne-a mbun t it via a n toate aspectele ei. Sperant de via a crescut de la aproximativ 30-40 de ani n Evul Mediu, la 70-80 de ani n prezent, totul datorit tiin ei aplicate. Datorit tehnologiei i tiin ei pot s v scriu aceste cuvinte i tiu c vor ajunge la dumneavoastr , nu datorit unor incanta ii sau ritualuri, nu datorit telepatiei, de i mediul sta de transmisie se apropie foarte mult de ceea ce define te ca fiind telepatie :-) . Cu toate astea, unii consider c religia trebuie finan at pentru c e religie, nici m car pentru c ar avea programe sociale, contribu ii cuantificabile reale, nu, doar pentru c este religie.


Am citit foarte multe articole din pres , articole bine documentate, i am senza ia c tr iesc ntr-o lume incon tient c nd v d cum banii care ar trebui s ajung n drumuri, coli, spitale, cercetare, medicamente, programe sociale cu real impact, ajung n noi i noi biserici de beton n timp ce monumentele istorice, bisericile din lemn, m n stirile cu adev rat valoroase sunt l sate n paragin . Asist cu o senza ie de dezgust continuu la felul n care ne batem joc de cei ce ne salveaz vie ile, medicii, de cei ce ar trebui s ne fac educa ia, profesorii, de cei ce ne sting casele dac iau foc, pompierii, i, de felul n care ridic m misticismul religios la rang de virtute. Este de-a dreptul jignitor i aberant ca alfabetizarea tiin ific n secolul XXI s fie at t de joas nc t s avem 42% din popula ie care cred c Terra este centrul universului, s avem oameni care cred c astrologia este tiin ific , s NU avem nici m car o universitate n top 500 n lume, este jignitor s fim n permanen n coada tuturor clasamentelor pozitive i n fruntea tuturor celor negative.

Recent money.ro a publicat un articol n care esitma foarte conservator c averea Bisericii Ortodoxe Rom ne se nv rte la peste 3 miliarde de euro, are scutiri de impozite, are zeci de afaceri i cu toate acestea, statul continu s scuteasc cultele de impozite, ba chiar le ofer bani ntr-una. La o asemenea avere nu cred c mai poate fi vorba de necesitatea finan rii de c tre stat. Oamenii pot decide s doneze direct c tre bisericile lor bani i nici nu mai implic pierderile inerente ce apar datorit administr rii fondurilor de c tre stat.


Statul nu este un organ aparte, statul trebuie s munceasc pentru mine, cet eanul, iar eu sunt mpotriva acestui tip de batjocorire i napoiere voluntar a noastr ndreptat mpotriva noastr . Alexandru Ioan Cuza a secularizat averile m n stirilor nchinate celor de la muntele Athos, deci unor ter i extreni rii, a a cum afl m din scrierile istoricului A.D. Xenopol, deci nu exist nici o obliga ie a statului s finan eze o institu ie anacronistic :

A.D. Xenopol Domnia lui Cuza Vod Vol.I , CAP. VIII. AI doile minister Cogalniceanu Secularizarea , pagina 291:

Nu vom atinge de c t mprejur rile care au condus la redob ndirea averilor, ajunse n st p nirea c lug rilor str ini, ating nd chestiunea nchin rei m n stirilor p n ntene c tre acele din R s rit, numai ntru c t va fi de nevoie, spre a n alege m sura seculariz rei nsu i.

Din aceste motive i multe altele, deoarece sunte i i reprezentantul meu n Parlamentul Rom niei, v cer ca s vota i pentru proiectul de lege ini iat de domnul Prigoan n ceea ce prive te t ierea finan rii personalui clerical de c tre stat i c t i a altor legi care ar putea duce la eliminarea privilegiilor pe care le au cultele, n condi iile n care singurul motiv real i corect pentru care o entitate ar putea beneficia de scutiri de taxe sau privilegii fiscale sunt doar cele ce nu urm resc interesul financiar i, totodat , au un impact social cuantificabil n mod clar.


Dac dori i, a fi bucuros s v r spund la eventualele ntreb ri sau neclarit i n ceea ce am scris, dac este nevoie.

V mul umesc anticipat!

L-am trimis joi, nc n-am primit r spuns de nici un fel. Pasul doi e s sun. M car s nnebuneasc dac tot sunt nesim i i. A a c , pute i afla de ce colegiu apar ine i i apoi pute i identifica pe cel/cea ce v reprezint n Parlament. Scrie i-le, suna i-i, a venit momentul m car s se enerveze, dac nu s - i fac m car o poleial de datorie.

The Debian Women project aims to get more women to participate in Debian, as packagers, bug reporters, technical documentation writers, bug fixers, translators, artists and in any other area that helps the development of Debian. These goals are achieved through IRC tutorials, a mentoring program, a mailing list and an IRC channel.

The Mentoring Program, allows men and women that want to contribute to Debian but aren t sure where or how to start, to get some help with their first steps.

There have been at least 38 women that have contributed in packaging software for Debian, and there are currently 11 female Debian Developers and 1 Debian Maintainer. We d like to raise those numbers to 50 packagers by the end of 2011, and 20 Debian Developers by the end of 2012.

There are some other interesting statistics about the current female participation in Debian.

We are also interested in getting more women to file and fix bugs, translate debconf templates or package descriptions, contribute to the release notes, as well as participate in any other areas of the Debian project. In order to do this, we will be holding some IRC training sessions in the near future, to help people get started. We are currently making the list of subjects and trainers, we ll publish more news about this once the first sessions are scheduled.

For more information you can join the IRC channel #debian-women on irc.oftc.net, or subscribe to the debian-women mailing list. If you are a Spanish speaker, you can also join the IRC channel #debian-mujeres on irc.oftc.net.

Contributed by: Margarita Manterola

FrOSCon was a blast. I had two booths of my own MirBSD and FreeWRT as well as shares of Debian and Grml. Well, MirBSD was run by Benny and gecko2 because I just didn t have any time for it, despite XTaran s help with the FreeWRT booth. All I did was the initial setup of both booths, while at the same time answering about three questions regarding FreeWRT in parallel. Wow. What a little small, open hardware can do to you. XTaran and I had fun and we ll do FreeWRT booths again; I managed to flash my two FON2100 devices ( La Fonera the FON2200 can use the same image, says nbd of OpenWrt) and will fix the port s remaining few bugs I found; XTaran will try to push the WL-500gPv2 development. The social part was nice as well, although I think the greek restaurant in the city will not be visited by me again. Anyway, if you didn t attend FrOSCon, your own fault Since the BitTorrent tracker used by MirOS is down, here s the link to the [updated 2010-08-28] current (FrOSCon 2010 Edition) snapshot s torrent, Triforce as usual. We ll probably rewrite torrent files for all our ISOs and publish them on the MirBSD website. I m currently considering OpenBitTorrent plus one or two DHT seed nodes with no statistics. Maybe with webseed. (Need to update the libtorrent/rtorrent MirPorts first, though ) Other options would be different trackers or running one of our own. I will announce the outcome as news entry, once done. On the plus side, the review process of mksh(1) in Android continues, and I fixed the realpath builtin to behave even more POSIX-ish.

During DebConf, I managed to squeeze out of the middle of everything for long enough to write a column, a short article for a participation I have every three months, for Mexican Software Gur magazine. All in all, I liked the resulting text The current number's main topic is alternative user interfaces. I find it sometimes hard to define what Software Gur 's audience is Probably, project leaders in software development; not the actual developers, but people who actually understand about coding... but care more about The Big Picture, Processes, Architecture Engineering and Buzzword Compliance. It is an interesting magazine, all in all, but with a focus and viewpoint I often feel myself not precisely comfortable with. So, if this trimester's topic was alternative user interfaces, I decided to write on the history and future of the man-machine interface (Spanish only) (version in the magazine's site). My viewpoint comes from the fact that I do not believe we are in a state of so great, innovative changes that everybody is trumpeting, and I'd rather get others to really think on whether user interfaces have gone different in the last decades. Yes, there are many changes, but in form rather than essence. Anyway, I shared this text with some friends. Some days later, when I was back in Mexico, Pooka/Alejandro Miranda lent me a very interesting book: Hacer clic: Hacia Una Sociosemiotica De Las Interacciones Digitales (Do click: Towards a Socio-semiotics of Digital Interaction (Cibercultura)), by Carlos Scolari. I am not yet even halfway through it, but I am enjoying it This book speaks, so far, about the meanings of interfaces, and of the history of interfaces themselves, even forgetting that nowadays we (mostly) refer to interfaces as what we have between the man and the machine. Sadly, I cannot find this book in English, as it is very well worth a read. But if the topic sounds interesting and you can understand the language, don't hesitate and pick up the book. It gives an interesting insight on the topic, for a group of people (us techies) used to looking at things in a much more human-cognitive-process-oriented way. [update] I found this nice overview of the "Hacer clic" book, written as a presentation for the book. It explains precisely the part I am currently reading - The four metafora for interaction: Conversational, instrumental, superficial and spatial.

Released just a few hours ago:

We are pleased to announce this maintenance release of xf86-video-geode. It features a plethora of bug fixes, a few documentation updates and one performance enhancement. This release also marks the return of Advanced Micro Devices to the development team. Please read the content of NEWS for more details.

In practice, this Geode 2.11.9 release mostly fixes the growing number of rendering issues that were exposed with each successive release of the X.org server core. Among other things, it restores the ability to correctly view video streams on Totem and other media players, it fixes icon rendering bugs that affected various desktop environments and web browsers, it removes all remaining compiler warnings and, as a byproduct of fixing one rendering issue, the speed of our driver improved dramatically. This is one release that will definitely please users of the OLPC XO-1 and of thin client hardware running on LTSP!

long time no RC bug posting. in july I was at the Munich BSP, & during DebCamp/DebConf I had the excuse of being one of the judges of the RCBC (which was the only reason for the freeze, I'm sure :)).

to keep up with the tradition of posting about my other RC bug activities, here comes a short list. as you can see most of the work was done in or around the pkg-perl group; luckily I often only have to upload packages prepared by ansgar, carnil, & others.

• #560634 src:libparse-debianchangelog-perl: "libparse-debianchangelog-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upload NMU prepared by Ansgar
• #578458 src:libcoro-perl: "libcoro-perl: FTBFS: E: Caught signal 'Terminated': terminating immediately"
  use different backends for different architectures - didn't work :/ (pkg-perl)
• #580479 libdbd-mysql-perl: "libdbd-mysql-perl can access out of string and call craches"
  upload new upstream release, prepared by Ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #582410 libgtk2-perl: "libgtk2-perl: FTBFS on mips: Failed test 'callbacks encountered'"
  don't run tests that need an X server (pkg-perl)
• #585471 webgui: "webgui: License of www/extras/yui/examples/treeview/assets/js/json.js is considered non-free"
  upload new upstream release prepard by SquOnk
• #588118 libmoose-perl: "libmoose-perl [ia64]: test failures"
  upload with patch from Niko (pkg-perl)
• #590409 src:libdbd-anydata-perl: "libdbd-anydata-perl: FTBFS: Can't call method "params" on unblessed reference at /usr/lib/perl5/DBI/DBD/SqlEngine.pm line 721."
  upload NMU prepared by Ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #590453 libgtk2-perl: "libgtk2-perl: Gtk2::Dialog and descendents signal produces different response to ->run()"
  upload new version prepared by Jeffrey (pkg-perl)
• #591108 src:jabref-plugin-oo: "jabref-plugin-oo: FTBFS: package org.antlr.runtime does not exist"
  add .jar to classpath
• #591113 src:libwebservice-youtube-perl: "libwebservice-youtube-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upload fixed package prepared by carnil (pkg-perl)
• #591120 src:libhtml-formfu-perl: "libhtml-formfu-perl: FTBFS: failed test"
  upload fixed package prepard by carnil (pkg-perl)
• #591166 src:nama: "nama: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upload new upstream release prepared by ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #592981 src:jifty: "FTBFS: failed tests t/TestApp-Plugin-SetupWizard/t/001-basic.t with libyaml-syck-perl 1.12-1"
  upload patched package prepared by ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #593012 src:libdevel-ebug-perl: "FTBFS: test t/pad.t fails with libyaml-syck-perl 1.12"
  upload patched package prepared by carnil (pkg-perl)

I hope we as a project can keep up the momentum to fix the remaining RC bugs, & see a release in a not so far future.

DebConf launched with a bang the day I arrived by bike I was up until 3am meeting and greeting in the basement lounge of the Carmen Columbia dormitory, where I was staying. No idea how I managed to be so awake for that. The rest of the week alternated between hacking like crazy on code for my talk and spending a lot of time socializing with Debian folks new and old. For the day trip to Coney Island, I joined the dkg-led bike expedition which ended up running to nearly 30 miles, which was a bit more than expected. The fact that this was all in actual dense city really drove home the scale difference between Boston and New York (I'd never been to NYC before this). We took several breaks to lounge around and eat and drink, so it took quite a long time even given the distance. I hadn't planned on seeing the baseball game that was a part of the trip, but I ended up going anyway and it turns out that a bunch of geeks at a minor league game is actually quite a lot of fun! I hope someone else will put some pictures from the bike ride and game online soon, since I didn't really take any myself. This was the first DebConf where I gave a talk, which resulted in me skipping almost all of the other talks, because my talk was on the last day and I reaaally wasn't ready at the start of the conference due to the rest of life being pretty crazy this summer. I missed some things I would have liked to see because of this, but ultimately I think it was worth it. The good news is: it went well! I was nervous until I actually started talking (never given a talk at a conference before), and then it was fine. If you missed it, the talk video is on the web in low and high quality; slides are here. The audience was great there were excellent questions and people were excited and interested in the project. I couldn't have asked for a better reception. After the talk finished I spent some time aisle-chatting with some folks, and totally failed to recognize Joey despite having met him before, because he'd shaved off his hair. DebConf was, like usual, both inspiring and exhausting. I haven't managed to follow up on much that happened during the conference yet. I definitely plan to do so, though, now that real life is calming down again. I'd hate to waste the post-conference buzz about SD. My todo list includes:

• Working more on the SD debbugs bridge to make it more stable.
  • I ran into Jesse soon after coming back and now have a better idea of how I'm going to handle a lack of history properly.
• Getting my patch to the Debbugs SOAP interface merged.
• Looking into the read-write SOAP interface work that was done as a Summer of Code project.
• After talking with Jesse I also kind of want to hack up a RESTful interface that could be used alongside the SOAP interface. It seems like doing so will make development of and using the Debbugs web API less painful in the future. This may be a rabbit hole that I don't actually want to jump down, but it's an idea.
• Maybe other help on Debbugs proper!
• Fixing SD bugs and generating more documentation.
• Thinking about and thanking people for talk feedback!
• Playing around with monkeysphere for authentication on my personal machines.
• Watching videos of talks I missed (this includes basically everything that didn't have to do with bugtracking).

17 years I guess the puberty is almost a thing of the past and you re getting all grown up and stuff. You certainly changed for the better in the last years. Ok, a few rough edges here and there but overall a quite impressive development. You re already forking regularly and even your offspring is quite handsome. No wonders with those genes if you ask me. Thanks to Ian for starting probably the best Linux distribution out there. I hope you are proud of what you ve started (I certainly was when I met you two years ago) and someone is killing a few beers with you right now. Also big thanks to all the Debian Developers, Maintainers and contributors for making Debian what it is today. Keep up the good work!

* So, here is late report! Sometime back Praveen started discussion at DebianIndia mailing list about having MiniDebConf kind of conference here in India. MiniDebConfs are generally focused on development rather than at introduction to Debian . But, since this was our first attempt, out focus was more on to introduce Debian to student community and after writing this after 5 days I realize that we ve done good job! Many thanks to Joerg Jaspert for setting up Mini website: http://in2010.mini.debconf.org/ Praveen got bunch of sponsors, many thanks to CDAC and other sponsors for making event happen with testy food and tea that kept me awake. Now what really happened at Pune? My flight was nice. I went to guest house of COEP (the host college, 2nd old engineering college in India) and took some rest and called Praveen. He was already at computer lab and setting up Virtualbox and other things. We had two places hall and lab. Unfortunately, both were at different buildings and subway between them I discussed with couple of students and we went to dinner at late night. Pro. Abhijit who was kindly give permission to use lab and college hall was another source of energy. He is handling many FOSS events in college and probably only faculty who encourage students to use and learn FOSS. The Day 1 started with long lines of registration process. As we had around 200 registration, turn out of students were 100% on first day. Hall was almost full. Dr. Shashikumar from CDAC gave nice lecture about contribution which was well received. Praveen and Onkar then took the stage and gave nice introduction about Debian. I met Onkar first time. We had really nice discussion ranging from becoming Ubuntu MOTU to his Powerbook s adapter. After that Vikram took lively session on i18n and l10n in Debian and I took boring session on Contributing to Debian . Yet another boring session from me was Developer Toolbox . Packaging workshop by me at hall made many faces to yawn heavily while Onkar and Praveen handled it nicely at Lab. Main reason for yawning was Wifi and my Macbook s capacity to deal with ndiswrapper and crappy broadcom s drivers. (Note: I should get nice machine.) I met Sham first time. I met Kushal once again and felt energetic again! Day 2 As we expected number was very low compared to Day 1. So, we closed hall and moved entire stuffs to Lab only. Vikram took again nice session on Debian Edu . It was very interactive and I should learn something from his act of presentation. Another nice thing from Day 2 was discussion with BOSS Linux team. Hold on. Lets keep some old woes aside. They are basically doing what their bosses are telling. Developers were clueless about Sending patches to upstream. Their bugzilla had Zorro bug reported. I made promise to follow-up on this and set-up patches from boss at somewhere depending upon their response. That mail is my draft let me finish it by weekend. Pavi and others took video from session. It will be nice if someone will post it somewhere We then continued on discussing bugs and packaging area. It was amazing to see Praveen become DM during conference and also to see: upstream, maintainer and sponsor in one room. I really had nice food at dinners. Mango Mastani was nice. Beer was nice. How can I forget discussion with Ramki, Ninad, Pro.Abhijit, Praveen, Pavi and others after dinner? So lets work for MiniDebConf 2011 now!

Here are some notes I took about the lecture Debbugs New developments in the ongoing struggle against bugs by Don Armstrong at Debconf 10 (that I watched from the stream). Note that the slides are at : http://rzlab.ucr.edu/debian/debbugs_presentation_debconf10.pdf, and here, I ll only mention most noteworthy elements I ve noticed. There s a linear growth of number of bugs reported for several years, from the statistics made by Don. In average, there s same number of bugs filed / archived per day : Debian s not losing ground against bugs A new affect command has been added, for bugs present in a package affecting another package. The summary command which can be used to quickly spot the summary of lengthy discussions deserves more love. Included summary -1 to send a new summary by email. The new local-debbugs package : can mirror your bugs locally and allow to search, show, etc. even offline. Lots of ideas for new features still in development (but lacking manpower). Interesting idea about action required sorting which exhibits different interests for triager, maintainer, user, to maximize productivity. I guess this should be implemented in clients of the BTS also. Interesting ideas about distributed bug tracking : sharing status with other bugtrackers (see other report), sideways syncing with other distributions, and making it available to upstream also. Note this was discussed in a subsequent BoF, which I ve already blogged about. Some elements taken from the Q&A :

• To my question about addition of RDfa, not currently on the TODO list I guess I ll have to do it myself ? Need to provide more convincing hints on the usefulness.
• only 3 status in the BTS : Fixed / Found / Absent
• some other projects are using debbugs

Overall, a very interesting presentation. Well worth watching the video recording. See also my report on the presentation by Christine Spang on Distributing bugtracking for Debian with SD which also discussed some debbugs things.