Marc, from my experience, there is no 'secret' in the console-tools/kbd migration work. Just low involvment of all parties. I have watched the work on console handling stuff in Debian for a few years now, and my conclusion is just that nearly nobody cares about it now. I do maintain console-data that provides console fonts and keymaps. I took it over slowly from Alastair McKinstry (the console-tools maintainer mentioned in Marc's blog entry) because that involved maintaining localization of keymap names....that are used and visible in the installer. Ideas to switch the installer to console-setup and related tools are floating around. Just not achieved...because of lack of motivated manpower. Progress was made because of Anton Zinoviev and Colin Watson's work, but the project is currently hosed on a quite critical choice:

• either ask about keymap layout during install, but that requires internationalization of the model/layout names...that are in an XML file. Nobody worked on this and this is therefore a blocker.
• or use the Ubuntu way to set the keymap (by asking users to type keys and guess the right keymap from that). Colin already said to the D-I team that this is basically a big hack...but, well, it works.

About console-tools being installed by default: this is the consequence of it being Important while kbd is Extra. I think it should be up to kbd maintainers to push the change up. But this brings us back to the initial remark: indeed, now nobody cares about console handling, particularly when it comes at handling non-English environments. Those who still use the console in Linux environments apparently all do it with US keyboards and an English locale. For sure, kbd is more maintained than console-tools so, at least, we should switch to it. Funnily, our installer (even the graphical version) *still* relies on console keymaps during the installation process and, therefore, we rely on mostly unmaintained stuff here (people who think that I maintain console-data are plain wrong: I just keep it surviving...:-))

After last 2.6.25 kernel again dropped support for /proc/acpi, I decided to move forward and try removing things which depend on it on my laptop. That actually involved switching from klaptopdaemon to kpowersave. This is really a must do. I don't know if this happened in KDE tasks but if it is not, we should think about it. Not only is kpowersave properly using /sys/class/power_supply instead of /proc/acpi/battery, but it seems much more powerful and providing reliable information. PS: that /sys interface seems nice but finding where the hell information is stored is really a nightmare: "/sys/class/power_supply" is damn anti-natural to me... And, well, this is probably the 4th or 5th change for system information in Linux. Sometimes, I regret the stability of Windows when it comes at this (/me runs away).

And the winner of the day is "nut". The debconf templates that were sucking for months were just "fixed" (guess what? They still suck). So, we all move a little bit back away from our Grail, reaching 100%. Too bad, I wasn't in a goo dmood today and my bug report with the fixed French translation (as usual, when maintainers "fix" templates, I just changed nothing) was not nice and gentle. I know I'll regret that tomorrow.

(hint: D-I=Debian Installer, the installation system for your favourite distro) Commenting on the blog entry I posted yesterday about D-I releases... I want to make it clear, in case it could be misunderstood, that writing that the next D-I release will certainly be called a Release Candidate and be the final release, is purely personal assumptions. I am not the D-I release manager. Otavio Salvador is. So, my assumption is only based on the small experience I got from a little bit less than 5 years in the D-I team and nearly 3 entire release cycles for Debian and D-I. Pure speculation, then. I could even say "science-fiction". I still believe that there will (should) be only one D-I release until the release of Lenny, but that decision is up to the D-I release manager(s?) and you're free to not believe me and just ask on #debian-boot or the debian-boot mailing list. Still, when it comes at i18n, I still believe that translators should move their asses if they want to make it for the release. And that involves /me saying them that the release is bloody near no matter if it's called a Release Candidate or Yet Another Beta.

Lucas pointed that the Package Tracking System now links to Ubuntu bug reports in Launchpad, for Debian packages. This is of course an interresting feature, which I immediately tried on geneweb, my pet package. Indeed, the only bug I found there comes from a user who was apparently not able to read a damn README.Debian file, which nicely explains what people are expected to do if they want to share the genealogical databases with Geneweb with the system-wide daemon. Maybe they should renamed README.Debian to README.Debian-but-readme-also-if-you-use-Ubuntu. In short, the only bug is user error. Now I really wonder how I could close that thing (yes, I did log in into Launchpad) and be able to claim that I have zero bugs on my pet package. I should do the same for samba, but I guess that Steve Langasek is more or less monitoring things there (LP is apparently Yet Another Thing You Have To Be Online To Use, which is a no-no for me).

Now that D-I beta2 has been released, the next release of D-I *will* very certainly be called a "Release Candidate" and be the final release used in Lenny. So, it's time for our translators to put their work in shape and we have 61 supported languages so far. In short, expect being nagged by /me quite often in the upcoming two months. The current status is:

• Level 1 (core D-I): 20 complete languages (bg, cs, dz, eo, es, fr, gl, gu, ja, ko, lt, mr, nl, pt, pt_BR, ro, ru, th, tr, vi)
• Level 1 + Level 2 (packages with strings used in default installs): 11 complete languages (bg, cs, es, fr, gu, ja, pt, ro, ru, th, vi)
• Level 1-3 (pkgs prompting during default desktop installs or important for desktop installs): 7 complete languages (bg, fr, ja, pt, ru, th, vi)
• Level 1-4 (adding pkgs prompting during other tasks): 7 (the same)
• Level 1-5 (adding important stuff such as apt, dpkg, aptitude): 2 complete languages (fr, vi)

Of course, I expect these to raise up significantly. I posted new calls for updates this week-ed, in the hope people are not tired of /bubulle nagging them constantly. Please note that Level 1 partial completion (the first two "sublevels") is a requirement for a language to be activated in D-I. As of now, we "only" have about 40 languages in that case.

Yes, Manu Chao was really home yesterday in Paris Bercy. And he was obviously feeling like being home. The concert began at 21:30 and ended up at 00:30. Yes...that makes 3 full hours concert. All that for 25 euros. The crowd support, dance, participation was *amazing*. I often go to concerts in the Bercy arena and never saw the crowd in the upper rows being stood up all concert long. Radio Bemba played their usual tracks first. As usual, the very Manu way to mix songs, themes from all his carreer and mix them up, distord them and make new songs from old ones. This is what always made Mano Negra, then Manu Chao oncerts unique experiences. Just imagine 20,000 people singing Clandestino a capella, most of us not knowing any damn word of Spanish... After about 2 hours of magic without any stop, the very special moments came in. Manu, Gambit, Majiv (what a guitarist when playing rumbas de Barcelona!), Julio (de Barcelona!)...and all others were just feeling like being home with a few friends. So the encores lasted...and lasted...and lasted. They just didn't want to stop (Manu probably said about 3 or 4 times "c'est fini"). Then, they did something I never ever saw in a big 20,000 people concert since my first one back in....long time ago. Manu asked "do you have 5 more minutes?". So, they stopped for 5 minutes to get the guitars re-accorded(sp?)....the crowd just...waited...and the gig re-started again with songs from "Si Sib rie m' tait cont e", the special book-album he made with friends, inspired by the sad winters he spent in Paris in his early years. Soooooo special and, believe me, that *was* special. Seeing all roadies, crew, friends just dancing backstage and partying clearly showed this was not to always happen (this will probably happen again on today's concert). He was just feeling like home. And so were we. Not wanting to leave and shut down the light. Finally, at 00:30, all of us were dead tired and we just hugged around with Manu and left. Just like old friends. I don't know if that will happen everywhere in the upcoming tour (some dates in France, some in Europe, a few in USA....nothing unfortunately in South America as of now)....but if you have the opportunity to go to Radio Bemba concerts, just do it. And (IRC reference), really, Erinn, this was not about "ethnic music for white people" (really wondering where you got this idea...or if you were just kidding me). I dunno what Manu ever did to kill your ears, but just try again and, even more important, go to the gig in your fair city on August 22nd. Radio Bemba concerts will be cheap, about half the price of regular bug size concerts....just use that opportunity.

Yay, we got last minute tickets and I'll be with our son at Manu Chao and Radio Bemba's concert in Paris Bercy tomorrow (7 years after). Scheduled to be 20h-2h and sold out.... Guess I'll be tired on Thursday.

Bubulle's improvements on running make me envy him. Of course, I'm nowhere close to Dirk's (or for that matter, I can only hope never to be as insane as Mauricio).
I must admit that I have heavily reduced my running. This is in no small part due to the fact that it's not easy to find decently-priced running shoes of the right size in Mexico - But well, that's only an excuse after all. But yes, if I run over 7Km with my current shoes, I get blisters, invariably. And I'm a bit short on money right now...
Partly, I've been moving my preferred excercise to biking - I don't do heavy biking, of course, but I do try to get at least 15Km every day (and as I bike to and from work, I only have to take small extra detours to reach that point - although splitting an excercise session in several sub-sessions is very close to cheating on myself) and at least a longer, continuous, 25-30Km ride every weekend. But yes, I've lowered my rythm.
Also, I'm running less because of where I am currently living - Very close to my usual area, but quite a bit more hilly, and it has made my knees ache every now and then.... And by far, it is not as nice and friendly area.
I do hope to work on this - And, of course, the Debconf Morning Jog is one of the events I most look forward to. Running in Edinburgh was, after all, my favorite and most productive way to get to know the city.

The (still alpha) 4.0.0 release of Samba is now in experimental. Both Samba 3 and Samba 4 packages are likely to coexist in the archive as Samba 3 is still for a while the production code for File and Print services while Samba 4 is the development branch of the Samba team to implement Active Directory domain control (among other things). Samba4 packages also bring a big bunch of libraries, most of which being used to related development such as Openchange. Expect some neat new packages in experimental, then unstable, pretty soon now. Please do NOT replace production servers running samba 3.0.* or samba 3.2.* by samba4....not yet..:-) The samba4 packages are maintained by Jelmer Vernooij, one of the two main developers for Samba 4 in the Samba Team (the other being Andrew Bartlett). Jelmer is someone we should stuck out from the NM queue as soon as possible..:-) Anyway, this is again another success of that small team we built around Samba and samba-related packaging. Thanks to all involved people (Steve Langasek, No l K the, Jelmer Vernooij, Peter Eisentraut, etc.).

Dirk often blogs about running and generally posts his running paces as minutes/mile. Well, we're both geeks, so numerical challenges are logical for us..:) I follow my own 'performance' (or lack of) in terms of speed in kilometers per hour. Which makes the conversion fairly hard. Just to confirm that we live on different planets, this week, I tried to get a rough idea and then calculated my usual pace (for distances ranging from 15km to 25km, as well as short distances such as 5km):

• On short distance (5km), my best pace is currently 11.75km/h, which turns to 5'06" per kilometer, or 8'19" per mile. I run such distance fairly rarely. It probably could be improved to about 12km/h. For those who care, that makes 25 minutes for 5000m while the world record is less than 13..:-)
• On medium distance (15km), my pace is around 10.75km/h, turning to 5'33" per kilometer, or 9'05" per mile.
• On my longest distance (27km), the pace was 10.16km/h, turning to 5'54" per kilometer, or 9'37" per mile (however, that time, I had to stop a few times to have a look at my map as I was using new paths). I once ran 26km at 10.5km/h, so nothing really reproducible there, still.

The challenge I give myself currently is not really running faster (I apparently reached a level which I can't easily break), but more running longer. My current estimate is that 30-35km could be achievable (I only need to find enough time for this) while a marathon is still out of question. Frankly, I couldn't even imagine this when I (re)started running, less than 1 year ago. Anyway, for people going to Debconf, I plan to gather the Debian runners and share the pleasure of running together during the conference. I'll probably open an "event" for this in Pentabarf. Of course, the point there will be sharing the pleasure, not performance. So, even if you are a very occasionnal runner, you're welcome.

(update with right spellings for Catalan names, thanks Guillem) So, we (Elizabeth and /me) spent four days in May-end in Barcelona...without my laptop. That was already 2 weeks ago but it took me time to cook this blog entry..:-) Indeed, we enjoyed that a lot. That city is deeply appealing and friendly, and welcoming, and etc. Elizabeth found a good, though expensive, hotel in the city center, close to La Rambla (career Junta de Comer for those who care)....but far enough from La Rambla's noise..:-) The city is of course full of tourists...just like us...but, in some way, it absorbs the "load" very well and it doesn't look like the Touristorama that Paris turns into from May to September, for instance. It probably comes from the city having several interesting places to go without hard "hot spots" where all international buses of hurried folks run around like a sheep cattle...:-) Of course, we went to the "famous" places and, well, we enjoyed them a lot. For instance, the city hot spot, namely La Sagrada Familia... I wouldn't really have guessed that I would enjoy it that much. I was expecting something crazy and full of religious crap, just like Paris' "Sacre Coeur". I actually found a marvel of modern architecture. The portal of Passion is....astonishing and its modern sculpture framework is full of emotion. The inside, though still under huge work left me thrilled. That forest of pilars, the size of the ceiling and the elegance of all this is....wonderful. Really, I hope I'll live enough to see the end of this. We spent more than 4 hours there... La Rambla is as well somethign one has to enjoy. Of course full of crappy tourist-oriented stuff....but also a really living place and a place where one just want to "ramble on". We visited Park G ell on Friday with the best weather we had. Just sitting there on the terrace and enjoy the sun and some music by a quite good trumpetist was a great first introduction to the week-end. We wandered a long time around Montjuich hill, enjoying the view on the city. Definitely a place I would love running in if I was a Catalan. We also wandered through Gr cia which was a separate village in the past, though close to city's center. Nice walk in small places. Go there on evenings. The Musuem of the City's history is also a place to go. Great visit of remainings of the Roman and post-Roman city, under places just near to the cathedral. We were also lucky to see the Corpus Christi procession with Giants and related things (interrupted by rain, unfortunately) as well as attend a local "sardane" contest on a small place close to the cathedral on Saturday. Just friendly and nice being sitting there. We also went on some event I have no idea about, which featured some kinds of "fratenities" of people in a procession, with many giant flags (I mean *really giant*: about 5-8 meters high and held by one single person). We followed them for 1-2 kms in the avenues around the University after seeing them from the bus...:-) Barcelona's transport system is great. We had the great idea to buy "Barcelona cards" which just give you free access to bus, trains, metro, tram and several reduced fees to museums and such other places. This way, we could go around the city without walking too much and be too tired... If you do so some day, just use busses. They go everywhere, are very fast and they come often, even on Sundays. The metro is faster but you don't see the city. My favourite bus line is 24. Another option is the bicycle rental system. It seems fairly easy to use and, just like Paris V'lib, you find bicycles everywhere. Just remember that you'll ride in Spain (the same stands for Paris...) so buy eyes for all around your head. I still have so many things to say about Barcelona, but I want to complete that blog entry. In short, go there and enjoy. It deserves it. Ah, and if you live in Barcelona (and are not veg'), just try the "Biblioteca" restaurant in Junta de Comer o (I hope I remember the name well...anyway there are not that many restaurants in that street). We went there two nights in a row just because we wanted to try more stuff from their great menu..:-).

My flights: ORY->MAD 2008-08-07 21:10 -> 2008-08-07 23:05 Air Europa
MAD->EZE 2008-08-08 00:55 -> 2008-08-08 09:20 Air Europa EZE->MAD 2008-08-17 12:00 -> 2008-08-18 05:10 Air Europa
MAD->ORY 2008-08-18 07:50 -> 2008-08-18 09:50 Air Europa (ORY is Paris' second airport, which has most of the flights to Spain) So, I apparently share the schedule and route with Noodles but not the airline (he's probably using Iberia). I'll probably try to gather with him to take the bus to Mar del Plata, though. In case someone flies the same day on Air Europa (should be people coming from France, UK, Hungary, Czech Rep., Poland, Italy or Israel...these are connections of Air Europa inside Europe to bring ppl in Madrid, which is their hub), get in touch with me. And, in any case, see you in Mar del Plata.

I think this is the first time this happens since etch was released: French translations of po-debconf templates are now "virtually" complete. It means that all packages with an incomplete translation in the above linked page do indeed have a bug reported against them with the corrected translation. It's just a matter of the maintainer uploading..:-) For several of these, a NMU work is under progress. For some others, the maintainer *will* upload. In short, we're now targeting the *real* 100%. For what's is worth, German is now very close to "virtual 100%" and so should be Portuguese (I've not checked, this is what they claim) and Czech shouldn't be far as well.

Yes, *Macedonia*, not "The Former Yougoslavian Republic of Macedonia" as some greek nationalists (and indeed most of Greece) are claiming loudly because "the name of Macedonia" is their property, belonging to their patrimony. Silly, indeed. This is what prevented Macedonia to enter NATO (because of Greek veto). I don't really care about NATO, so, well.... But it could be what prevents Macedonia to enter the European Union which is somethign I care much more about, despite its defects. And still because Greece could do its best to block name for a stupid name fight. All this while most of Macedonians want their country to enter the EU. Such sillyness and nationalist crap makes me angry. A lot. I respect cultures. Deeply. I however dislike cultures that don't respect other cultures.

Those people who overread the previous blog entry but are interested in samba, please test the 3.2.0~rc1 packages we have in experimental. We still haven't decided whether we'll push to have it in lenny or not (Samba 3.2.0 should be released very very soon and the Samba Team pushes for us to have it in Debian lenny....which might need solving out issues induced by the move to GPLv3)....but it deserves as much testing as possible. I think that it's safe to use it on "semi-production" machines (those machines you might already have using testing because you want bleeding edge software). So, please, given the very various ways to use samba, please help us and our upstream to test it. The packages are in experimental, by the way.

There has been some hype around samba this week. On May 21st, the Samba Team released Samba 3.0.29, an update from their stable branch. The Debian package maintainers quickly built and uploaded a package for unstable/lenny the very same day. Then, on 27th, we got notified of CVE 2008-1005, which affects both etch, lenny and unstable (not the 3.2 versions we have in experimental). I contacted the security team and, after some brief discussions, I uploaded with their blessing, a fixed package to stable-security (3.0.24-6etch10). Then, I immediately uploaded samba 3.0.30 to unstable (1:3.0.30-1), that version being the Samba Team response to the security issue. All this lead to DSA 1590. Up to now, everything perfect. In the meantime, Karolin, the Samba Team's release manager announced the Releace Candidate 1 of Samba 3.2.0. So, yesterday (Saturday), I started building it....which succeeded. Then I started to screw up..:) Instead of uploading that version to experimental, as planned, I uploaded 1:3.2.0~rc1-1 to unstable. Yes, AGAIN (I already did that in April). There's no excuse for that, except distraction and failure to use our tools properly ("dch -r"). Thankfully, I noticed that nearly immediately, but not immediately enough. So, I had to re-upload 3.0.30 to unstable (which is urgent: that's a security fix) and increase the epoch (we already had one as this is the second identical screwage): 2:3.0.30-2. Sorry, autobuilders... Yesterday evening, I uploaded 3.2.0-rc1 again to experimental (2:3.2.0~rc1-2). Then, finally, I went on the last bit of remaining work: spend some time on Jelmer Vernooij's samba4 packages. Jelmer is one of the two lead developers of Samba 4, a huge masterpiece still under heavy delveopment. To give it more exposure, it is planned to upload it a few times in experimental, then move it to unstable, block it so that it does not enter testing, and make some noise about this. I finally uploaded samba4 this morning (triple checking that I was uploading to experimental!) and samba4 4.0.0~alpha4~20080522-1 is now waiting for NEW processing (which might take time: this is a big piece of new stuff). I'm sad for the screwage because, apart from it, that was nearly a perfect process. But, anyway, I'm still proud of the result: 4 successful uploads for samba in a little more than a week (which included 4 day away). It could even have been 5 as the samba version in sarge is affected by the security issue, but we don't support sarge anymore.

As of yesterday, Czech is back to 3rd place, ahead of Portuguese, in the debconf translation ratio ranking. Funny competition, indeed, which result is....more l10n. Jacobo is now 80 strings from his ultimate goal: make Galician the most translated language from Spain, for debconf..:-) And French is missing 28 strings only...

During the last 4 days, I didn't read Planet. So I started an interesting exercise and wanted to comment very briefly on a few entries I just read quickly to catch up. My Planet premium, so to say..

• (not Planet related...I read that on NASA mailing lists...some of which I'm subscribed since 1988) NASA's Phoenix lander successfully landed on Mars. This is actually the first successful soft landing on Mars since 1976 (recent landings were hard ones, with airbags....or failures). This stunning picture shows the spacecraft with its parachute during its descent on Mars. It was taken by the HiRISE camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The very first time a spacecraft photographs another one while it's landing. Amazing, right?
• Marga and the Spanish keymap: I can't disagree with your comments, Marga. Still, that's a though issue: changing the behaviour of a keymap that's used by millions of users is not a trivial change. OTOH, you're right and that tilde should be dead, indeed. I think there is barely no other option than a fork, here: have both keymaps, one with asciitilde and another one with dead_tilde on the same key combination and let users choose. That keymap should be named "es-standard" to avoid changing the existing "es".
• John Goerzen biking to work: John is among the people I never met but who I know I share ideas and vision of life with. So, seeing him comment on alternative ways to commute to/back work is a pleasure for me (alternative transportation systems with the goal of abandoning the heresy of individual cars is part of my hobbies....while I still don't always apply these principles myself). And, well, seeing someone writing that this is still possible in the flat MidWest of the country that contributes the most to climate change is a relief for me: change can happen.
• Joey reads USENET again. Long time since I last read news... In the past I used to have my own feed, through UUCP. I still receive a lot of my mails by UUCP, though (bubulle@kheops.frmug.org comes this way)
• Pollocks were in Europe. Andrew is another of these people I feel like having connections with while we never met. Next time, plan a stop in Bubulle Hotel and visit Paris, Andrew.
• Dirk mentioned Bike the Drive, which I assume to be a bike-related event in Chicago... Yet another occasion to see there's still some hope for alternatives to cars in the US of A...
• Kartik is back home in Mumbai after some months working in Bangalore (and not enjoying it). I'm happy for him that he can be again with his family.
• Ganneff also bikes. Of course, he does it the geek way. Would you have guessed? Joerg, are you ready for the DebConf daily running tour which I plan to do in Mar del Plata?
• Manoj is the last Emacs user, along with /me
• Jaldhar who I have much respect for in the project, still supports the US republican party, the most conservative party in the so-called western world. It is still completely out of my understanding how FLOSS "spirit" can fit with this (the same stands for the political stance of Eric "Gun" Raymond, indeed). Mysteries...
• Lucas wonders how to find cheap flights. Voyages SNCF (aka Expedia), the online travel agency of the French railway company, always gets my preference. Yes, French *railway*.
• MJ also posts about biking. I have to mention that easy bike-on-demande systems in cities are one of the best ways to develop this. Barcelona's system seems pretty cool. Paris' Velib is amazing and so is the system in Lyon (who initiated the movement in France). All this is something I personnally follow pretty closely (I'm a addicted reader of the French professionnal magazine named "Ville et Transport", "Town and Transportation") in the hope it also develops in my Suburbia.
• Too many technical issues on Planet. I can't follow..:-)

Some more progress on debconf l10n...during a week-end where I was away. I like that..:-)

• Galician is not ranked 8th after passing Swedish
• However, I see some increased activity on Swedish l10n now. Would that be related? :)
• Basque is now 14th, ahead of Italian. The activity of the Basque team is pretty high while the activity on Italian localization is lower. I wonder if they're suffering the same problem we face in the French team: much much less new blood than a few years ago. I suspect some "responsibility" by Ubuntu there, attracting much more potential contributors (with all the reserves I have wrt their l10n processes, though).

Maintainers are still very cooperative. I still have to discover who changed debconf templates while I was away, though... Moreover, some things are currently broken on i18n.debian.net (indirect consequences of the OpenSSL breakage) and I begin to wonder if our current stats (which depend on scripts that are run on that machine) are really representing the real debconf l10n status.