Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In November, 239.25 work hours have been dispatched among 13 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 12.0h (out of 12h assigned).
• Adrian Bunk did 13h (out of 22.75h assigned and 19.5h from October) and gave back 6.5h, thus carrying over 22.75h to December.
• Ben Hutchings did 11.5h (out of 16h assigned and 4.5h from October), thus carrying over 9h to December.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 22.75h (out of 22.75h assigned).
• Holger Levsen did 8.0h coordinating/managing the LTS team.
• Markus Koschany did 12h (out of 22.75h assigned), thus carrying over 10.75h to December.
• Ola Lundqvist did 1h (out of 12h assigned), thus carrying over 11h to December.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 20.5h (out of 22.75h assigned), thus carrying over 2.25h to December.
• Sylvain Beucler did 22.75h (out of 22.75h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 22.75h (out of 22.75h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 22.75h (out of 22.75h assigned).

Evolution of the situation In November we held the last LTS team meeting for 2020 on IRC, with the next one coming up at the end of January.
We announced a new formalized initiative for Funding Debian projects with money from Freexian s LTS service.
Finally, we would like to remark once again that we are constantly looking for new contributors. Please contact Holger if you are interested! We re also glad to welcome two new sponsors, Moxa, a device manufacturer, and a French research lab (Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod). The security tracker currently lists 37 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 40 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 63 months)
• GitHub (for 53 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 31 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 78 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 74 months)
• Linode (for 68 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 57 months)
• Plat Home (for 56 months)
• University of Oxford (for 13 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 79 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 78 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 72 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 64 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 64 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 58 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 47 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 41 months)
• CINECA (for 31 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 25 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 14 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 12 months)
• Platform.sh (for 7 months)
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 6 months)
• Moxa Intelligence Co., Ltd.
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 79 months)
• Evolix (for 78 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 76 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 75 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 74 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 73 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 73 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 72 months)
• NUMLOG (for 72 months)
• WinGo AG (for 71 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 68 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 63 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 60 months)
• Tesorion (for 55 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 54 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 54 months)
• Bearstech (for 46 months)
• LiHAS (for 46 months)
• People Doc (for 42 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 40 months)
• Supagro (for 36 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 34 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 21 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 12 months)
• SPiN AG (for 9 months)
• CoreFiling (for 5 months)
• Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod

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In previous blog posts I talked about QEMU s qcow2 file format and how to make it faster. This post gives an overview of how the data is structured inside the image and how that affects performance, and this presentation at KVM Forum 2017 goes further into the topic. This time I will talk about a new extension to the qcow2 format that seeks to improve its performance and reduce its memory requirements. Let s start by describing the problem. Limitations of qcow2 One of the most important parameters when creating a new qcow2 image is the cluster size. Much like a filesystem s block size, the qcow2 cluster size indicates the minimum unit of allocation. One difference however is that while filesystems tend to use small blocks (4 KB is a common size in ext4, ntfs or hfs+) the standard qcow2 cluster size is 64 KB. This adds some overhead because QEMU always needs to write complete clusters so it often ends up doing copy-on-write and writing to the qcow2 image more data than what the virtual machine requested. This gets worse if the image has a backing file because then QEMU needs to copy data from there, so a write request not only becomes larger but it also involves additional read requests from the backing file(s). Because of that qcow2 images with larger cluster sizes tend to:

• grow faster, wasting more disk space and duplicating data.
• increase the amount of necessary I/O during cluster allocation,
  reducing the allocation performance.

Unfortunately, reducing the cluster size is in general not an option because it also has an impact on the amount of metadata used internally by qcow2 (reference counts, guest-to-host cluster mapping). Decreasing the cluster size increases the number of clusters and the amount of necessary metadata. This has direct negative impact on I/O performance, which can be mitigated by caching it in RAM, therefore increasing the memory requirements (the aforementioned post covers this in more detail). Subcluster allocation The problems described in the previous section are well-known consequences of the design of the qcow2 format and they have been discussed over the years. I have been working on a way to improve the situation and the work is now finished and available in QEMU 5.2 as a new extension to the qcow2 format called extended L2 entries. The so-called L2 tables are used to map guest addresses to data clusters. With extended L2 entries we can store more information about the status of each data cluster, and this allows us to have allocation at the subcluster level. The basic idea is that data clusters are now divided into 32 subclusters of the same size, and each one of them can be allocated separately. This allows combining the benefits of larger cluster sizes (less metadata and RAM requirements) with the benefits of smaller units of allocation (less copy-on-write, smaller images). If the subcluster size matches the block size of the filesystem used inside the virtual machine then we can eliminate the need for copy-on-write entirely. So with subcluster allocation we get:

• Sixteen times less metadata per unit of allocation, greatly reducing the amount of necessary L2 cache.
• Much faster I/O during allocating when the image has a backing file, up to 10-15 times more I/O operations per second for the same cluster size in my tests (see chart below).
• Smaller images and less duplication of data.

This figure shows the average number of I/O operations per second that I get with 4KB random write requests to an empty 40GB image with a fully populated backing file. Things to take into account:

• The performance improvements described earlier happen during allocation. Writing to already allocated (sub)clusters won t be any faster.
• If the image does not have a backing file chances are that the allocation performance is equally fast, with or without extended L2 entries. This depends on the filesystem, so it should be tested before enabling this feature (but note that the other benefits mentioned above still apply).
• Images with extended L2 entries are sparse, that is, they have holes and because of that their apparent size will be larger than the actual disk usage.
• It is not recommended to enable this feature in compressed images, as compressed clusters cannot take advantage of any of the benefits.
• Images with extended L2 entries cannot be read with older versions of QEMU.

How to use this? Extended L2 entries are available starting from QEMU 5.2. Due to the nature of the changes it is unlikely that this feature will be backported to an earlier version of QEMU. In order to test this you simply need to create an image with extended_l2=on, and you also probably want to use a larger cluster size (the default is 64 KB, remember that every cluster has 32 subclusters). Here is an example:

$ qemu-img create -f qcow2 -o extended_l2=on,cluster_size=128k img.qcow2 1T

And that s all you need to do. Once the image is created all allocations will happen at the subcluster level. More information This work was presented at the 2020 edition of the KVM Forum. Here is the video recording of the presentation, where I cover all this in more detail: You can also find the slides here. Acknowledgments This work has been possible thanks to Outscale, who have been sponsoring Igalia and my work in QEMU. And thanks of course to the rest of the QEMU development team for their feedback and help with this!

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In October, 221.50 work hours have been dispatched among 13 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 16.0h (out of 14h assigned and 2h from September).
• Adrian Bunk did 7h (out of 20.75h assigned and 5.75h from September), thus carrying over 19.5h to November.
• Ben Hutchings did 11.5h (out of 6.25h assigned and 9.75h from September), thus carrying over 4.5h to November.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 20.75h (out of 20.75h assigned).
• Holger Levsen did 7.0h coordinating/managing the LTS team.
• Markus Koschany did 20.75h (out of 20.75h assigned).
• Mike Gabriel gave back the 8h he was assigned. See below
• Ola Lundqvist did 10.5h (out of 8h assigned and 2.5h from September).
• Roberto C. S nchez did 13.5h (out of 20.75h assigned) and gave back 7.25h to the pool.
• Sylvain Beucler did 20.75h (out of 20.75h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 20.75h (out of 20.75h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 20.75h (out of 20.75h assigned).

Evolution of the situation October was a regular LTS month with a LTS team meeting done via video chat thus there s no log to be shared. After more than five years of contributing to LTS (and ELTS), Mike Gabriel announced that he founded a new company called Frei(e) Software GmbH and thus would leave us to concentrate on this new endeavor. Best of luck with that, Mike! So, once again, this is a good moment to remind that we are constantly looking for new contributors. Please contact Holger if you are interested! The security tracker currently lists 42 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 39 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 62 months)
• GitHub (for 52 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 30 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 77 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 73 months)
• Linode (for 67 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 56 months)
• Plat Home (for 55 months)
• University of Oxford (for 12 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 78 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 77 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 71 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 63 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 63 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 57 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 46 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 40 months)
• CINECA (for 30 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 24 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 13 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 11 months)
• Platform.sh (for 6 months)
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 5 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 78 months)
• Evolix (for 77 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 75 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 74 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 73 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 72 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 72 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 71 months)
• NUMLOG (for 71 months)
• WinGo AG (for 70 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 66 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 62 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 59 months)
• Tesorion (for 54 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 53 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 53 months)
• Bearstech (for 45 months)
• LiHAS (for 45 months)
• People Doc (for 41 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 39 months)
• Supagro (for 35 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 33 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 19 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 11 months)
• SPiN AG (for 8 months)
• CoreFiling (for 4 months)

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In September, 208.25 work hours have been dispatched among 13 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 12.0h (out of 14h assigned), thus carrying over 2h to October.
• Adrian Bunk did 14h (out of 19.75h assigned), thus carrying over 5.75h to October.
• Ben Hutchings did 8.25h (out of 16h assigned and 9.75h from August), but gave back 7.75h, thus carrying over 9.75h to October.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 19.75h (out of 19.75h assigned).
• Holger Levsen did 5h coordinating/managing the LTS team.
• Markus Koschany did 31.75h (out of 19.75h assigned and 12h from August).
• Ola Lundqvist did 9.5h (out of 12h from August), thus carrying 2.5h to October.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 19.75h (out of 19.75h assigned).
• Sylvain Beucler did 19.75h (out of 19.75h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 19.75h (out of 19.75h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 8.75h (out of 19.75h assigned), while he already anticipated the remaining 11h in August.

Evolution of the situation September was a regular LTS month with an IRC meeting. The security tracker currently lists 45 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 48 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 61 months)
• GitHub (for 51 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 28 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 76 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 71 months)
• Linode (for 66 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 55 months)
• Plat Home (for 54 months)
• University of Oxford (for 10 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 77 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 76 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 70 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 62 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 62 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 55 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 45 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 39 months)
• CINECA (for 29 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 23 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 12 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 10 months)
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 4 months)
• Platform.sh (for 4 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 77 months)
• Evolix (for 76 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 74 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 73 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 72 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 71 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 71 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 70 months)
• NUMLOG (for 70 months)
• WinGo AG (for 69 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 65 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 60 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 58 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 52 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 52 months)
• Tesorion (for 52 months)
• Bearstech (for 44 months)
• LiHAS (for 44 months)
• People Doc (for 40 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 38 months)
• Supagro (for 34 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 32 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 18 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 10 months)
• SPiN AG (for 7 months)
• CoreFiling (for 3 months)

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In August, 237.25 work hours have been dispatched among 14 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 10.0h (out of 10h assigned).
• Adrian Bunk did 31h (out of 21.75h assigned and 9.25h from July).
• Ben Hutchings did 6.25h (out of 16h assigned), thus carrying over 9.75h to September.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Holger Levsen did 7h coordinating/managing the LTS team.
• Markus Koschany did 20h (out of 21.75h assigned and 10.25h from July), thus carrying over 12h to September.
• Mike Gabriel did 16.0h (out of 8h assigned and 8h from July).
• Ola Lundqvist did 6.9h (out of 8h assigned and 16h from July), and gave back 5.1h, thus carrying over 12h to September.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Sylvain Beucler did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 21.75h (out of 21.75h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 32.75h (out of 21.75h assigned and anticipating 11h from September).

Evolution of the situation August was a regular LTS month once again, even though it was only our 2nd month with Stretch LTS.
At the end of August some of us participated in DebConf 20 online where we held our monthly team meeting. A video is available.
As of now this video is also the only public resource about the LTS survey we held in July, though a written summary is expected to be released soon. The security tracker currently lists 56 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 55 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors Sponsors that recently joined are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 60 months)
• GitHub (for 50 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 27 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 75 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 70 months)
• Linode (for 65 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 54 months)
• Plat Home (for 53 months)
• University of Oxford (for 9 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 76 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 75 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 69 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 61 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 61 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 54 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 44 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 38 months)
• CINECA (for 28 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 22 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 11 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 9 months)
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 3 months)
• Platform.sh (for 3 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 76 months)
• Evolix (for 75 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 73 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 72 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 71 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 70 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 70 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 69 months)
• NUMLOG (for 69 months)
• WinGo AG (for 68 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 64 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 59 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 57 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 51 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 51 months)
• Tesorion (for 51 months)
• Bearstech (for 43 months)
• LiHAS (for 43 months)
• People Doc (for 39 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 37 months)
• Supagro (for 33 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 31 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 17 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 9 months)
• SPiN AG (for 6 months)
• CoreFiling

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Like each month, albeit a bit later due to vacation, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In July, 249.25 work hours have been dispatched among 14 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 18.0h (out of 14h assigned and 6h from June), and gave back 2h to the pool.
• Adrian Bunk did 16.0h (out of 25.25h assigned), thus carrying over 9.25h to August.
• Ben Hutchings did 5h (out of 20h assigned), and gave back the remaining 15h.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 60h (out of 5.75h assigned and 54.25h from June).
• Holger Levsen spent 10h (out of 10h assigned) for managing LTS and ELTS contributors.
• Markus Koschany did 15h (out of 25.25h assigned), thus carrying over 10.25h to August.
• Mike Gabriel did nothing (out of 8h assigned), thus is carrying over 8h for August.
• Ola Lundqvist did 3h (out of 12h assigned and 7h from June), thus carrying over 16h to August.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 26.5h (out of 25.25h assigned and 1.25h from June).
• Sylvain Beucler did 25.25h (out of 25.25h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 25.25h (out of 25.25h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 25.25h (out of 25.25h assigned).

Evolution of the situation July was our first month of Stretch LTS! Given this is our fourth LTS release we anticipated a smooth transition and it seems everything indeed went very well. Many thanks to the members of the Debian ftpmaster-, security, release- and publicity- teams who helped us make this happen!
Stretch LTS begun on July 18th 2020 after the 13th and final Stretch point release. and is currently scheduled to end on June 30th 2022. Last month, we asked you to participate in a survey and we got 1764 submissions, which is pretty awesome. Thank you very much for participating!. Right now we are still busy crunching the results, but we already shared some early analysis during the Debconf LTS bof this week. The security tracker currently lists 54 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 52 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 59 months)
• GitHub (for 50 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 27 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 74 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 70 months)
• Linode (for 64 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 53 months)
• Plat Home (for 53 months)
• University of Oxford (for 9 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 75 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 74 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 68 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 60 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 60 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 54 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 44 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 38 months)
• CINECA (for 27 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 21 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 11 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 9 months)
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 3 months)
• Platform.sh (for 3 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Evolix (for 75 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 75 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 72 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 71 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 70 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 69 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 69 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 68 months)
• NUMLOG (for 68 months)
• WinGo AG (for 68 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 64 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 59 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 56 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 51 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 51 months)
• Tesorion (for 51 months)
• Bearstech (for 42 months)
• LiHAS (for 42 months)
• People Doc (for 39 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 37 months)
• Supagro (for 32 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 31 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 17 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 9 months)
• SPiN AG (for 6 months)
• CoreFiling

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In June, 202.00 work hours have been dispatched among 12 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 8h (out of 14h assigned), thus carrying over 6h to July.
• Ben Hutchings did 20h (out of 20h assigned).
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 4h from his backlog of 58.25h from May, thus carrying over 54.25h to July.
• Markus Koschany did 60h (out of 48.25h backlog from May and 11.75h extra hours manually assigned).
• Mike Gabriel did 8h (out of 8h assigned).
• Ola Lundqvist did 12.5h (out of 12h assigned and 7.5h from May), thus carrying over 7h to July.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 28.75h (out of 30h assigned), thus carrying over 1.25h to July.
• Sylvain Beucler did 30h (out of 30h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 30h (out of 30h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 30h (out of 30h assigned).

Evolution of the situation June was the last month of Jessie LTS which ended on 2020-06-20. If you still need to run Jessie somewhere, please read the post about keeping Debian 8 Jessie alive for longer than 5 years.
So, as (Jessie) LTS is dead, long live the new LTS, Stretch LTS! Stretch has received its last point release, so regular LTS operations can now continue.
Accompanying this, for the first time, we have prepared a small survey about our users and contributors, who they are and why they are using LTS. Filling out the survey should take less than 10 minutes. We would really appreciate if you could participate in the survey online! On July 27th 2020 we will close the survey, so please don t hesitate and participate now! After that, there will be a followup with the results. The security tracker for Stretch LTS currently lists 29 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 44 packages needing an update in Stretch LTS. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold. We welcome CoreFiling this month!

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 58 months)
• GitHub (for 48 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 26 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 73 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 69 months)
• Linode (for 63 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 52 months)
• Plat Home (for 51 months)
• University of Oxford (for 8 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 74 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 73 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 67 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 59 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 59 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 53 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 42 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 36 months)
• CINECA (for 26 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 20 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 9 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 7 months)
• Platform.sh
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 74 months)
• Evolix (for 73 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 71 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 70 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 69 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 68 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 68 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 67 months)
• NUMLOG (for 67 months)
• WinGo AG (for 66 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 63 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 58 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 55 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 50 months)
• Tesorion (for 50 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 49 months)
• Bearstech (for 41 months)
• LiHAS (for 41 months)
• People Doc (for 37 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 36 months)
• Supagro (for 31 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 29 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 16 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 8 months)
• SPiN AG (for 4 months)
• CoreFiling

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In May, 198 work hours have been dispatched among 14 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 18.0h (out of 14h assigned and 4h from April).
• Anton Gladky gave back the assigned 10h and declared himself inactive.
• Ben Hutchings did 19.75h (out of 17.25h assigned and 2.5h from April).
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 17.25h (out of 17.25h assigned).
• Dylan A ssi gave back the assigned 6h and declared himself inactive.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did not manage to work LTS in May and now reported 5h work in April (out of 17.25h assigned plus 46h from April), thus is carrying over 58.25h for June.
• Markus Koschany did 25.0h (out of 17.25h assigned and 56h from April), thus carrying over 48.25h to June.
• Mike Gabriel did 14.50h (out of 8h assigned and 6.5h from April).
• Ola Lundqvist did 11.5h (out of 12h assigned and 7h from April), thus carrying over 7.5h to June.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 17.25h (out of 17.25h assigned).
• Sylvain Beucler did 17.25h (out of 17.25h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 17.25h (out of 17.25h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 17.25h (out of 17.25h assigned).

Evolution of the situation In May 2020 we had our second (virtual) contributors meeting on IRC, Logs and minutes are available online. Then we also moved our ToDo from the Debian wiki to the issue tracker on salsa.debian.org.
Sadly three contributors went inactive in May: Adrian Bunk, Anton Gladky and Dylan A ssi. And while there are currently still enough active contributors to shoulder the existing work, we like to use this opportunity that we are always looking for new contributors. Please mail Holger if you are interested.
Finally, we like to remind you for a last time, that the end of Jessie LTS is coming in less than a month!
In case you missed it (or missed to act), please read this post about keeping Debian 8 Jessie alive for longer than 5 years. If you expect to have Debian 8 servers/devices running after June 30th 2020, and would like to have security updates for them, please get in touch with Freexian. The security tracker currently lists 6 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 30 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold. With the upcoming start of Jessie ELTS, we are welcoming a few new sponsors and others should join soon.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 57 months)
• GitHub (for 47 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 25 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 72 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 68 months)
• Linode (for 62 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 51 months)
• Plat Home (for 50 months)
• University of Oxford (for 7 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 73 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 72 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 66 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 58 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 58 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 52 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 41 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 36 months)
• CINECA (for 25 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 19 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 8 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 6 months)
• Platform.sh
• Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG
• Bronze sponsors:
• Evolix (for 73 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 73 months)
• MyTux (for 72 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 70 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 69 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 68 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 67 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 67 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 66 months)
• NUMLOG (for 66 months)
• WinGo AG (for 65 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 62 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 59 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 57 months)
• Adfinis AG (for 54 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 49 months)
• Tesorion (for 49 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 48 months)
• Bearstech (for 40 months)
• LiHAS (for 40 months)
• People Doc (for 36 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 35 months)
• Supagro (for 30 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 29 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 15 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 7 months)
• SPiN AG (for 3 months)

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In April, 284.5 work hours have been dispatched among 14 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 10.0h (out of 14h assigned), thus carrying over 4h to May.
• Adrian Bunk did nothing (out of 28.75h assigned), thus is carrying over 28.75h for May.
• Ben Hutchings did 26h (out of 20h assigned and 8.5h from March), thus carrying over 2.5h to May.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Dylan A ssi did 6h (out of 6h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did not report back about their work so we assume they did nothing (out of 28.75h assigned plus 17.25h from March), thus is carrying over 46h for May.
• Markus Koschany did 11.5h (out of 28.75h assigned and 38.75h from March), thus carrying over 56h to May.
• Mike Gabriel did 1.5h (out of 8h assigned), thus carrying over 6.5h to May.
• Ola Lundqvist did 13.5h (out of 12h assigned and 8.5h from March), thus carrying over 7h to May.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 28.75h (out of 28.75h assigned).
• Sylvain Beucler did 28.75h (out of 28.75h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 28.75h (out of 28.75h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 24h (out of 24h assigned).

Evolution of the situation In April we dispatched more hours than ever and another was new too, we had our first (virtual) contributors meeting on IRC! Logs and minutes are available and we plan to continue doing IRC meetings every other month.
Sadly one contributor decided to go inactive in April, Hugo Lefeuvre.
Finally, we like to remind you, that the end of Jessie LTS is coming in less than two months!
In case you missed it (or missed to act), please read this post about keeping Debian 8 Jessie alive for longer than 5 years. If you expect to have Debian 8 servers/devices running after June 30th 2020, and would like to have security updates for them, please get in touch with Freexian. The security tracker currently lists 4 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 25 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 56 months)
• GitHub (for 46 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 24 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 71 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 67 months)
• Linode (for 61 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 50 months)
• Plat Home (for 49 months)
• University of Oxford (for 6 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 72 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 71 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 65 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 57 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 57 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 51 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 40 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 34 months)
• CINECA (for 24 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 18 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 7 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 5 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 72 months)
• Evolix (for 71 months)
• MyTux (for 71 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 69 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 68 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 67 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 66 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 66 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 65 months)
• NUMLOG (for 65 months)
• WinGo AG (for 64 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 61 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 58 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 56 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 53 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 48 months)
• Tesorion (for 48 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 47 months)
• Bearstech (for 39 months)
• LiHAS (for 39 months)
• People Doc (for 35 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 33 months)
• Supagro (for 29 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 27 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 14 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 6 months)
• SPiN AG

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In March, 252 work hours have been dispatched among 14 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 16.0h (out of 14h assigned and 2h from February).
• Ben Hutchings did 12.25h (out of 20h assigned and 0.75h from February), thus carrying over 8.5h to April.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Dylan A ssi did 6h (out of 6h assigned).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 19.5h (out of 30h assigned and 6.75h from February), thus carrying over 17.25h to April.
• Hugo Lefeuvre gave back the 12h he got assigned.
• Markus Koschany did 10h (out of 30h assigned and 18.75h from February), thus carrying over 38.75h to April.
• Mike Gabriel did 10.25h (out of 8h assigned and 2.25h from February).
• Ola Lundqvist did 6h (out of 12h assigned and 2.5h from February), thus carrying over 8.5h to April.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 6.25h (out of 8h assigned), and gave back the remaining 1.75h.
• Sylvain Beucler did 30h (out of 30h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 30h (out of 30h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 24h (out of 24h assigned).

Evolution of the situation March was a strange month for many people all over the globe. Here we ll just express our hopes that you are and will be well! LTS gained a new contributor in March, Anton Gladky, however he then decided to become active later this year. Similarly Hugo Lefeuvre notified us that he ll be inactive in April. In case you missed it (or missed to act), please read this post about keeping Debian 8 Jessie alive for longer than 5 years. If you expect to have Debian 8 servers/devices running after June 30th 2020, and would like to have security updates for them, please get in touch with Freexian. Hurry up: the end of Jessie LTS is coming in less than three months! The security tracker currently lists 25 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 23 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 55 months)
• GitHub (for 45 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 22 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 70 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 65 months)
• Linode (for 59 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 49 months)
• Plat Home (for 48 months)
• University of Oxford (for 4 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 71 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 70 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 64 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 56 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 56 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 49 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 39 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 33 months)
• CINECA (for 23 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 17 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 6 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 4 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 71 months)
• Evolix (for 70 months)
• MyTux (for 70 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 67 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 67 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 66 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 65 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 65 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 64 months)
• NUMLOG (for 64 months)
• WinGo AG (for 63 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 59 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 57 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 54 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 52 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 46 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 46 months)
• Tesorion (for 46 months)
• Bearstech (for 38 months)
• LiHAS (for 38 months)
• People Doc (for 34 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 32 months)
• Supagro (for 28 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 26 months)
• TrapX Security (for 23 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 12 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 4 months)
• SPiN AG

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In February, 226 work hours have been dispatched among 14 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA gave back 12 out of his assigned 14h, thus he is carrying over 2h for March.
• Ben Hutchings did 19.25h (out of 20h assigned), thus carrying over 0.75h to March.
• Brian May did 10h (out of 10h assigned).
• Chris Lamb did 18h (out of 18h assigned).
• Dylan A ssi did 5.5h (out of 4h assigned and 1.5h from January).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 29h (out of 20h assigned and 15.75h from January), thus carrying over 6.75h to March.
• Hugo Lefeuvre gave back the 12h he got assigned.
• Markus Koschany did 10h (out of 20h assigned and 8.75h from January), thus carrying over 18.75h to March.
• Mike Gabriel did 5.75h (out of 20h assigned) and gave 12h back to the pool, thus he is carrying over 2.25h to March.
• Ola Lundqvist did 10h (out of 8h assigned and 4.5h from January), thus carrying over 2.5h to March.
• Roberto C. S nchez did 20.25h (out of 20h assigned and 13h from January) and gave back 12.75h to the pool.
• Sylvain Beucler did 20h (out of 20h assigned).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 20h (out of 20h assigned).
• Utkarsh Gupta did 20h (out of 20h assigned).

Evolution of the situation February began as rather calm month and the fact that more contributors have given back unused hours is an indicator of this calmness and also an indicator that contributing to LTS has become more of a routine now, which is good. In the second half of February Holger Levsen (from LTS) and Salvatore Bonaccorso (from the Debian Security Team) met at SnowCamp in Italy and discussed tensions and possible improvements from and for Debian LTS. The security tracker currently lists 25 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 21 packages needing an update. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 54 months)
• GitHub (for 44 months)
• Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 22 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• Blablacar (for 69 months)
• Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 65 months)
• Linode (for 59 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 48 months)
• Plat Home (for 47 months)
• University of Oxford (for 4 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• The Positive Internet Company (for 70 months)
• Domeneshop AS (for 69 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 63 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 55 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 55 months)
• Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 49 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 38 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 32 months)
• CINECA (for 22 months)
• Minist re de l Europe et des Affaires trang res (for 16 months)
• Cloudways Ltd (for 5 months)
• Dinahosting SL (for 3 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 70 months)
• Evolix (for 69 months)
• MyTux (for 69 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 67 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 66 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 65 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 64 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 64 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 63 months)
• NUMLOG (for 63 months)
• WinGo AG (for 62 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 59 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 56 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 54 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 51 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 46 months)
• Tesorion (for 46 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 45 months)
• Bearstech (for 37 months)
• LiHAS (for 37 months)
• People Doc (for 33 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 32 months)
• Supagro (for 27 months)
• Demarcq SAS (for 25 months)
• TrapX Security (for 22 months)
• Universit Grenoble Alpes (for 12 months)
• TouchWeb SAS (for 4 months)
• SPiN AG

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The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:

• Gard Spreemann (gspr)
• Jonathan Bustillos (jathan)
• Scott Talbert (swt2c)

The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:

• Thiago Andrade Marques
• William Grzybowski
• Sudip Mukherjee
• Birger Schacht
• Michael Robin Crusoe
• Lars Tangvald
• Alberto Molina Coballes
• Emmanuel Arias
• Hsieh-Tseng Shen
• Jamie Strandboge

Congratulations!

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In October, about 197 work hours have been dispatched among 13 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Antoine Beaupr did 21h (out of 16h allocated + 8.75h remaining, thus keeping 3.75h for November).
• Ben Hutchings did 20 hours (out of 15h allocated + 9 extra hours, thus keeping 4 extra hours for November).
• Brian May did 10 hours.
• Chris Lamb did 18 hours.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 7 hours (out of 20.75 hours allocated + 1.5 hours remaining, thus keeping 15.25 hours for November).
• Guido G nther did 6.5 hours (out of 11h allocated + 1 extra hour, thus keeping 5.5h for November).
• Hugo Lefeuvre did 20h.
• Lucas Kanashiro did 2 hours (out of 5h allocated, thus keeping 3 hours for November).
• Markus Koschany did 19 hours (out of 20.75h allocated, thus keeping 1.75 extra hours for November).
• Ola Lundqvist did 7.5h (out of 7h allocated + 0.5 extra hours).
• Rapha l Hertzog did 13.5 hours (out of 12h allocated + 1.5 extra hours).
• Roberto C. Sanchez did 11 hours (out of 20.75 hours allocated + 14.75 hours remaining, thus keeping 24.50 extra hours for November, he will give back remaining hours at the end of the month).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 20.75 hours.

Evolution of the situation The number of sponsored hours increased slightly to 183 hours per month. With the increasing number of security issues to deal with, and with the number of open issues not really going down, I decided to bump the funding target to what amounts to 1.5 full-time position. The security tracker currently lists 50 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file 36 (we re a bit behind in CVE triaging apparently). Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 25 months)
• GitHub (for 16 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 41 months)
• Blablacar (for 40 months)
• Linode (for 30 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 19 months)
• Plat Home (for 19 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• Domeneshop AS (for 40 months)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 40 months)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 38 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 35 months)
• Dalenys (for 31 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 26 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 26 months)
• Sonus Networks (for 20 months)
• maxcluster GmbH (for 14 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 10 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 4 months)
• Vente-privee.com
• Bronze sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 41 months)
• Evolix (for 41 months)
• Offensive Security (for 41 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 41 months)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 40 months)
• MyTux (for 40 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 38 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 38 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 36 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 35 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 35 months)
• NUMLOG (for 35 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 34 months)
• WinGo AG (for 34 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 30 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 28 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 25 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 23 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 17 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 17 months)
• Quarantainenet BV (for 17 months)
• RHX Srl (for 14 months)
• Bearstech (for 8 months)
• LiHAS (for 8 months)
• People Doc (for 5 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd (for 3 months)

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In August, about 170 work hours have been dispatched among 13 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Antoine Beaupr did 7h (out of 15.75h allocated, thus keeping 8.75h for October).
• Ben Hutchings did 12 hours (out of 15h allocated + 6 extra hours, thus keeping 9 extra hours for October).
• Brian May did 10 hours.
• Chris Lamb did 15.75 hours.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 27 hours (out of 15.75 hours allocated + 12.75 hours remaining, thus keeping 1.5 hours for October).
• Guido G nther did 10 hours (out of 11h allocated, thus keeping one hour for October).
• Hugo Lefeuvre did 15h.
• Lucas Kanashiro did 5 hours.
• Markus Koschany did 15.75 hours.
• Ola Lundqvist did 13.5h (out of 7h allocated + 7 extra hours, thus keeping 0.5 extra hours for October).
• Rapha l Hertzog did 10.5 hours (out of 12h allocated, thus keeping 1.5 hours for October).
• Roberto C. Sanchez did 10 hours (out of 15.75 hours allocated + 9 hours remaining, thus keeping 14.75 extra hours for October).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 15.75 hours.

Evolution of the situation The number of sponsored hours is the same as last month. But we have a new sponsor in the pipe. The security tracker currently lists 52 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file 49. The number of packages with open issues decreased slightly compared to last month but we re not yet back to the usual situation. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 24 months)
• GitHub (for 15 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 40 months)
• Blablacar (for 39 months)
• Linode (for 29 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 18 months)
• Plat Home (for 18 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• Domeneshop AS (for 40 months)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 39 months)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 37 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 34 months)
• Dalenys (for 30 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 25 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 25 months)
• Sonus Networks (for 19 months)
• maxcluster GmbH (for 13 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 9 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 3 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 40 months)
• Evolix (for 40 months)
• Offensive Security (for 40 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 40 months)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 39 months)
• MyTux (for 39 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 37 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 37 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 36 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 34 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 34 months)
• NUMLOG (for 34 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 33 months)
• WinGo AG (for 33 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 29 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 27 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 24 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 22 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 16 months)
• Laboratoire LEGI UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 16 months)
• Quarantainenet BV (for 16 months)
• RHX Srl (for 13 months)
• Bearstech (for 8 months)
• LiHAS (for 7 months)
• People Doc (for 4 months)
• Catalyst IT Ltd

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In August, about 189 work hours have been dispatched among 12 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Antoine Beaupr did 16h.
• Ben Hutchings did 10 hours (out of 15h allocated + 1 extra hour, thus keeping 6 extra hour for September).
• Chris Lamb did 18 hours.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 20.5 hours (out of 20.25 hours allocated + 13 hours remaining, thus keeping 12.75 hours for September).
• Guido G nther did 10 hours.
• Hugo Lefeuvre did 14h (out of 2h allocated + 12 extra hours).
• Lucas Kanashiro did 20.25 hours.
• Markus Koschany did 20.25 hours.
• Ola Lundqvist did 9h (out of 14h allocated + 16 extra hours, he gave back 14 hours, thus keeping 7 extra hours for September).
• Rapha l Hertzog did 12 hours.
• Roberto C. Sanchez did 27.25 hours (out of 20.25 hours allocated + 16 hours remaining, thus keeping 9 extra hours for September).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 20.25 hours.

Evolution of the situation The number of sponsored hours is the same as last month. The security tracker currently lists 59 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file 60. The number of packages with open issues decreased slightly compared to last month but we re not yet back to the usual situation. The number of CVE to fix per package tends to increase due to the increased usage of fuzzers. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 22 months)
• GitHub (for 13 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 38 months)
• Blablacar (for 37 months)
• Linode (for 27 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 16 months)
• Plat Home (for 16 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• Domeneshop AS (for 37 months)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 37 months)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 35 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 32 months)
• Dalenys (for 28 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 23 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 23 months)
• Sonus Networks (for 17 months)
• UR Communications BV (for 12 months)
• maxcluster GmbH (for 11 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 7 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum
• Bronze sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 38 months)
• Evolix (for 38 months)
• Offensive Security (for 38 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 38 months)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 37 months)
• MyTux (for 37 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 35 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 35 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 33 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 32 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 32 months)
• NUMLOG (for 32 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 31 months)
• WinGo AG (for 31 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 27 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 24 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 22 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 19 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 14 months)
• Quarantainenet BV (for 14 months)
• RHX Srl (for 11 months)
• Bearstech (for 5 months)
• LiHAS (for 5 months)
• People Doc
• Catalyst IT Ltd

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My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donors (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me. Debian LTS This month I was allocated 12h and during this time I did 4 days of front desk handling CVE triage (28 commits to the security tracker). I had a bit of time left and I opted to work on a package that had been lingering for a while: exiv2. It turns out the security researchers who requested the CVE did not even contact the upstream author so I opened 12 tickets on GitHub. The upstream author was unaware of those issues and is relatively unfamiliar with the general process of handling security updates. I started the work of reproducing each issue and so far they only affect the version 0.26 in experimental. Misc Debian/Kali work live-build and live-config. I pushed a few updates: dropping the useless xorriso hardlinks option (as discussed in https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=4109), adding a .disk/mkisofs file on request of Thomas Schmitt, fixing a severe issue with the handling of locales configuration that broke wayland sessions entirely. open-vm-tools and vmwgfx. The switch of GNOME to Wayland by default resulted in multiple regressions reported by Kali users, in particular for VMWare users where desktop resizing was no longer working. There was a patch available but it did not work for me, so I worked with Thomas Hellstrom (of VMWare) to identify the problems and he provided me an updated patch. I submitted this patch to Debian too (bug report, pull request). Linux 4.12 also showed another regression for VMWare users where the screen would not be refreshed/updated when you are using Wayland/KMS. I did multiple tests for Thomas and provided the requested data so that they could create a fix (which I incorporated into Kali and should come to Debian through the upstream stable tree). Packaging. I uploaded zim 0.67 to unstable. I fixed an RC bug on shiboken to get pyside and ubertooth back into testing. I had to hack the package to use gcc-6 on mips64el because that architecture is suffering from a severe gcc bug which probably broke a large part of the code compiled since the switch to gcc-7 (and which triggered a test failure in shiboken, fortunately) I wonder if anybody will make sure to recompile all packages that might have been misbuilt. Infrastructure. In a discussion on debian-devel, the topic of using tracker.debian.org to store who is maintaining what came up again. I responded to let know that this is something that I d like to see done and that I have already taken measures to go into this direction. I wanted to make an experiment with my zim package but quickly came on a problem with ftpmaster s lintian auto-rejects (which I submitted in #871575). The BTS is now linking to tracker.debian.org on its web interface. To continue and give a push to this move, I scanned all the files in the qa SVN repository and updated many occurrences of packages.qa.debian.org with tracker.debian.org. I also spotted a small problem in the way we handle autoremovals mails in tracker.debian.org, we often get them twice: I filed #871683 to get this fixed on release.debian.org. Bug reports. vmdebootstrap creates unbootable qemu image (#872999). bugs in udebs are not shown on view by source package (#872784). New upstream release of ethtool (#873692). Upstream bugreport on systemd: support a systemd.swap=no boot command-line option. I also shared some of my ideas/dreams in #859867 speaking of a helper tool to setup and maintain up-to-date build chroots and autopkgtest qemu images. More bug fixes and pull requests. I created a patch to fix a build failure of systemd when /tmp is an overlayfs (#854400, the pull request has been discarded). I fixed the RC bug #853570 on ncrack and forwarded my changes upstream (here and here). Thanks See you next month for a new summary of my activities.

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The GNOME 3.26 release cycle is in its final bugfix stage before release. Here s a look at what s new in GNOME Tweaks since my last post. I ve heard people say that GNOME likes to remove stuff. If that were true, how would there be anything left in GNOME? But maybe it s partially true. And maybe it s possible for removals to be a good thing? Removal #1: Power Button Settings The Power page in Tweaks 3.25.91 looks a bit empty. In previous releases, the Tweaks app had a When the Power button is pressed setting that nearly duplicated the similar setting in the Settings app (gnome-control-center). I worked to restore support for Power Off as one of its options. Since this is now in Settings 3.25.91, there s no need for it to be in Tweaks any more. Removal #2: Hi-DPI Settings GNOME Tweaks offered a basic control to scale windows 2x for Hi-DPI displays. More advanced support is now in the Settings app. I suspect that fractional scaling won t be supported in GNOME 3.26 but it s something to look forward to in GNOME 3.28! Removal #3 Global Dark Theme I am announcing today that one of the oldest and popular tweaks will be removed from Tweaks 3.28 (to be released next March). Global Dark Theme is being removed because:

• Changing the Global Dark Theme option required closing any currently running apps and reopening them to get the correct theme.
• It didn t work for sandboxed apps (Flatpak and Snap)
• It only worked for gtk3 apps (it can t work on gtk2 apps)
• Some themes never supported a Dark variant. The switch wouldn t do anything at all with a theme like that.

Adwaita now has a separate Adwaita Dark theme. Arc has 2 different dark variations. Therefore, if you are a theme developer, you have about 6-7 months to offer a dark version of your theme. The dark version can be distributed the same way as your regular version. Removal #4 Some letters from our name In case you haven t noticed, GNOME Tweak Tool is now GNOME Tweaks. This better matches the GNOME app naming style. Thanks Alberto Fanjul for this improvement! For other details of what s changed including a helpful scrollbar fix from Ant nio Fernandes, see the NEWS file.

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In July, about 181 work hours have been dispatched among 11 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Antoine Beaupr did 20h (out of 16h allocated + 4 extra hours).
• Ben Hutchings did 14 hours (out of 15h allocated, thus keeping 1 extra hour for August).
• Chris Lamb did 18 hours.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 18.5 hours (out of 23.5 hours allocated + 8 hours remaining, thus keeping 13 hours for August).
• Guido G nther did 10 hours.
• Hugo Lefeuvre did nothing due to personal problems (out of 2h allocated + 10 extra hours, thus keeping 12 extra hours for August).
• Markus Koschany did 23.5 hours.
• Ola Lundqvist did not publish his report yet (out of 14h allocated + 2 extra hours).
• Rapha l Hertzog did 7 hours (out of 12 hours allocated but he gave back his remaining hours).
• Roberto C. Sanchez did 19.5 hours (out of 23.5 hours allocated + 12 hours remaining, thus keeping 16 extra hours for August).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 23.5 hours.

Evolution of the situation The number of sponsored hours increased slightly with two new sponsors: Leibniz Rechenzentrum (silver sponsor) and Catalyst IT Ltd (bronze sponsor). The security tracker currently lists 74 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file 64. The number of packages with open issues increased of almost 50% compared to last month. Hopefully this backlog will get cleared up when the unused hours will actually be done. In any case, this evolution is worth watching. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 22 months)
• GitHub (for 13 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 38 months)
• Blablacar (for 37 months)
• Linode (for 27 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 16 months)
• Plat Home (for 16 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• Domeneshop AS (for 37 months)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 37 months)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 35 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 32 months)
• Dalenys (for 28 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 23 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 23 months)
• Sonus Networks (for 17 months)
• UR Communications BV (for 12 months)
• maxcluster GmbH (for 11 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 7 months)
• Leibniz Rechenzentrum
• Bronze sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 38 months)
• Evolix (for 38 months)
• Offensive Security (for 38 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 38 months)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 37 months)
• MyTux (for 37 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 35 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 35 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 33 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 32 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 32 months)
• NUMLOG (for 32 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 31 months)
• WinGo AG (for 31 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 27 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 24 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 22 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 19 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 14 months)
• Quarantainenet BV (for 14 months)
• RHX Srl (for 11 months)
• Bearstech (for 5 months)
• LiHAS (for 5 months)
• People Doc
• Catalyst IT Ltd

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Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS. Individual reports In May, about 161 work hours have been dispatched among 11 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Antoine Beaupr did 12h (out of 16h allocated, thus keeping 4 extra hours for July).
• Ben Hutchings did 20 hours (out of 15h allocated + 5 extra hours).
• Chris Lamb did 16 hours.
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 11 hours (out of 16 hours allocated + 3 hours remaining, thus keeping 8 hours for July).
• Guido G nther did 9 hours.
• Hugo Lefeuvre did 5 hours (out of 15h allocated, thus keeping 10 extra hours for July).
• Markus Koschany did 16 hours.
• Ola Lundqvist did 12 hours (out of 14h allocated, thus keeping 2 extra hours for July).
• Rapha l Hertzog did 12 hours.
• Roberto C. Sanchez did 6.5 hours (out of 16 hours allocated + 2.5 hour remaining, thus keeping 12 extra hours for July).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 16 hours.

Evolution of the situation The number of sponsored hours increased slightly with one new bronze sponsor and another silver sponsor is in the process of joining. The security tracker currently lists 49 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file 54. The number of open issues is close to last month. Thanks to our sponsors New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• TOSHIBA (for 21 months)
• GitHub (for 11 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• The Positive Internet (for 37 months)
• Blablacar (for 36 months)
• Linode (for 26 months)
• Babiel GmbH (for 15 months)
• Plat Home (for 14 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• Domeneshop AS (for 36 months)
• Universit Lille 3 (for 36 months)
• Trollweb Solutions (for 34 months)
• Nantes M tropole (for 30 months)
• Dalenys (for 27 months)
• Univention GmbH (for 22 months)
• Universit Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 22 months)
• Sonus Networks (for 16 months)
• UR Communications BV (for 10 months)
• maxcluster GmbH (for 10 months)
• Exonet B.V. (for 6 months)
• Bronze sponsors:
• David Ayers IntarS Austria (for 37 months)
• Evolix (for 37 months)
• Offensive Security (for 37 months)
• Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 37 months)
• Freeside Internet Service (for 36 months)
• MyTux (for 36 months)
• Linuxhotel GmbH (for 34 months)
• Intevation GmbH (for 33 months)
• Daevel SARL (for 32 months)
• Bitfolk LTD (for 31 months)
• Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 31 months)
• Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 30 months)
• NUMLOG (for 30 months)
• WinGo AG (for 29 months)
• Ecole Centrale de Nantes LHEEA (for 26 months)
• Sig-I/O (for 23 months)
• Entr ouvert (for 21 months)
• Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 18 months)
• Quarantainenet BV (for 13 months)
• GNI MEDIA (for 12 months)
• RHX Srl (for 10 months)
• Bearstech (for 4 months)
• LiHAS (for 4 months)
• People Doc

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FTP assistant This month I marked 100 packages for accept and rejected zero packages. I promise, I will reject more in July! Debian LTS This was my thirty-sixth month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian. This month my all in all workload went down again to 16h. During that time I did LTS uploads of:

• [DLA 994-1] zziplib security update for seven CVEs
• [DLA 995-1] swftools security update for two CVEs
• [DLA 998-1] c-ares security update for one CVE
• [DLA 1008-1] libxml2 security update for five CVEs

I also tested the proposed apache2 package prepared by Roberto and started to work on a new bind9 upload Last but not least I had five days of frontdesk duties. Other stuff This month was filled with updating lots of machines to Stretch. Everything went fine, so thanks a lot to everybody involved in that release. Nevertheless I also did a DOPOM upload and now take care of otpw. Luckily most of the accumulated bugs already contained a patch, so that I just had to upload a new version and close them.