Like 7 hours ago I finished the new upstream releases of libtorrent/rtorrent 0.11.9/0.7.9, there're amd64 binaries availables here for libtorrent 0.11.9-1 and here for rtorrent 0.7.9-1, this release fixes some segfaults issues because of GCC-4.2.X and fixes some PEX issues. Right now waiting for libtorrent to be uploaded and then consequently rtorrent.

I recently wrote about the new version of xscreensaver and the new hacks but I just forgot to actually install them so now they're installed and thanks to my new co-maintainer Tormod Volden the packaging of xscreensaver is easier ans smooth, yet no in CDBS but easier at least, so the new release is 5.04-2 and right now I'm just waiting for damog to upload it (he's very fast BTW). I updated gkrellm with the new upstream version 2.3.1 fixing some bugs, I cleaned up all the patches and let only one for the gkrellmd.conf file, besides a made a clean up of the BTS of gkrellm, now there're less bugs remaining, the new release is 3.2.1-1 and is waiting for anibal to review it and upload it. Finally but not less important is pgpdump, a package that since a lot of time ago didn't get me any work, new upstream release 0.26 and the release 0.26-1 is waiting for anibal to review it and upload it. This last two were migrated to CDBS, so it's definitely easier to maintain, at least for me!

I decided that my christmas gift will be a new notebook and as I'm always complaining of the weight of my HP dv6000 then my new notebook will be a ThinkPad x61 with a 8cell battery and extended battery life! :-) That gives up to 12 hours of use!! BTW, this version includes a weird antenna in the right side of the screen, I don't know if it's really useful but seems like if were from some movie and is outside of the borders but anyway, still little and light. Now only rests to wait until it gets to my hand since all the custom houses of Venezuela decided to not admit more packages from outside of the country because they're full, so I will have to wait until january probably because of the inefficiency of my country custom officials. But at least I'm gonna have it :-)!

Yesterday, after a lot of time thinking on it, I uploaded all my perl packages to the pkg-perl's SVN, now I can dedicate a lot more of time to xscreensaver, gkrellm and libtorrent/rtorrent :-). I'm pretty sure that in january I will be able (with enough time) to work in some packages of the pkg-perl group.

There's a new xscreensaver version already in Debian, 5.04-1 is in ftp-master waiting to be mirrored in the rest of the archives, thanks to damog :-). In other things a CVE was fixed and new hacks were added.

Finally, thanks to anibal, I got my pgp signature by a DD, now I can continue my NM process. Besides that, I'm working right now on avoiding gdm as build-depend of xscreensaver, I haven't figure out how yet but I'm pretty sure that soon I will found out, and got pgpdump updated today to 0.26! Just waiting for anibal to upload it.

Answering to Christian Perrier about if Ubuntu is not based anymore on debian and that's why debian didn't get named in all their site avoiding any kind of relation with debian as their base even in the announcement of 7.10: I can see my packages there and I'm not a volunteer of Ubuntu (at least not directly) so they're definetely still based on Debian and just copying a lot of packages from debian to their repos.

I found in my dad's office a Macworld of october 90' and saw this 2 page ad:
This is when you think how that people could live? If you need 2G right now for nice working that would make $138.000!! Thanks tech evolution!

This sunday I took the decision of reinstall my notebook over LVM, after that I realize that most of the apps I'm using right now are terminal-based and that I don't use the interface given by GNOME nor KDE even XFCE so decided to come back to FluxBox and didn't installed [X K G]DM. The only thing I miss is the buttons of my notebook working out-of-box but nothing that can't be fixed with some reading of the docs of FluxBox. I knew that I made the right decision when everything worked just like I expected...! :-)

That's my new goal, use full-time in the lab where I work debian/kfreebsd and install it in at least one server working 100%. The only problem I've found is the non-compatibility with LVM in freebsd, I will have to test with vinum or just put a little disk on that machine and connect with NFS to another machine with linux and LVM. Even in test period kfreebsd seems pretty stable, the only thing I can't get working on the desktop is X but since I don't need it for the tests I'm running that's no such a big deal... Congrats to the guys of the kfreebsd port! I could be joining pretty soon I think since the desktop that's for tests now I could get it to work seriously on porting to kfreebsd.

Since today at afternoon I'm officially working as sysadmin of my university linux servers (Debian of course) in the labs. I'm working with Skatox and our main work right now is migrate an ActiveDirectory Server to OpenLDAP and share files in a mixed-domain of Linux and Windows machines (trough Samba for Windows and NFS for Linux) with a lot of desktop limitations (given by the LDAP scheme). Then with this migration we need all the new services in Linux machines: DNS, DHCP and Firewall which are all right now on windows machines. My main question right now is how to regulate the desktop users of windows with LDAP?... I guess I'll find it out later reading more. BTW, all the machines are gonna be installed with debian (testing on desktops and stable on servers). Really, there's a lot of work to do and I cannot publish here all right now, I cannot organize my ideas, but I'll publish how's all going :-) In the middle time I will recruit more debian maintainers now that debian is gonna be used widely there :-)

I was in the third talugian meeting which has the best ambient I have ever been. Is nice when you talk about linux and nobody look at you like this guy what's smoking?!, and is great that the community is growing. I'm feeling that these meetings could get us better and stronger communities and with more experience. And there's a lot coming...! Thanks kamihacker for being such a kind host in this 3 meetings, we swear in the 100th we're gonna change the place ;-) P.S. talugian is from TALUG, T chira Linux User Group, my regional LUG.

I cannot build the new upstream rtorrent package (at least not as should been built) because of libcurl4-openssl-dev and the dependency on libssh2-0-dev that's a virtual package right now on sid (#442198). But I couldn't wait until curl get fixed so I downloaded libssh2-0-dev for lenny and installed it in my machine so I could build it (not with pbuilder but is built! :-) ) So you can find libtorrent 0.11.8 and rtorrent 0.7.8 binaries (and source of course) for amd64 right now on my server, in some minutes I will have the i386 binaries as well. The most important option added in this new release is the peer exchange option and a lot of commands for XMLRPC that in debian we can't enjoy by the moment. BTW, if someone can take care of xmlrpc-c which seems to be forgotten (or with a MIA maintainer) I would appreciate it (and finally be able to build rtorrent with XMLRPC support!!) Anyway, having rtorrent 0.7.8 in debian unstable could take at least a week more :-/ (while curl get fixed) so if you really want it grab them from my server or built it with my dsc diff.gz and orig.tar.gz and dpkg-source -x package_version.dsc and remember if you're building rtorrent you need libssh2-0-dev installed.

How weird is that a bug get closed by a spam email? Today I checked my email and found that #210857 got closed by a spam email of US army nurses and doctors...!

At least in unstable that's the case, thanks to santiago who uploaded rtorrent yesterday. Unfortunately(for people using testing) the new version 0.11.8/0.7.8 for libtorrent/rtorrent is out, that's why I will wait until rtorrent got into testing so there'll be no mismatch of versions between the library and the client (actually rtorrent 0.7.4 and libtorrent 0.11.7, should be rtorrent 0.7.7) and then will start looking a sponsor for the new packages of libtorrent/rtorrent (which are going to be ready later tonight).

Last saturday around 2100 (UTC-0400) some people started joining the #debian-ve IRC channel at OFTC, in order to participate on the very first Venezuelan Bugsquashing Party. We had a lot of people interested not only in squashing but also developing for Debian and other topics. Some DD’s were around, specially An bal Monsalve Salazar (anibal) who has been very helpful on testing and uploading packages. Both me and Jos Luis Rivas (ghostbar) made a couple of NMU’s (in his case, xfe and divine; in mine, sdr and orca), fixing six RC bugs. Jos Luis is like 17 or 18 years old and has proven to be a very energetic Debian collaborator. Other maintainers from Debian Venezuela (actually, we’re eleven persons as of last week) were around but couldn’t make a NMU at the time of the event. Others weren’t even present. It was a very small BSP indeed, but we learned lots of things and hopefully our work will help improving the quality in Debian a little bit. It also settles our desires as a group to improve our knowledge and work together to improve the Project without disrupting the overall ecosystem. By the way, the Venezuelan Debconf is definitely going to happen between October 17th. and 21st. Hopefully we’ll have Benjamin Mako Hill, Enrico Zini, Alvaro Lopez Ortega (OMG! Cherokee!) and Randal Schwartz sharing a nice time with people from all parts of Venezuela and the rest of South America. Some local Debian maintainers will set up some nice workshops and demonstrations, ranging from Xen and LTSP in Debian to QA and the local GNU/Linux distribution projects. This local Debconf is part of a larger event, the World Forum on Free Knowledge, which some people at Debian Venezuela help to make. Returning to the BSP topic, I was looking out at a couple of bugs out there, but I lack the hardware and the experience to handle them. One of this is #333915 and other orca bugs, and other one is #385078 regarding a Debconf script in xserver-xorg. The morning before the BTS I was testing the MBONE tools with a friend of mine, and we were quite unhappy by the fact that sdr was almost unusable (passing the mouse cursor over some buttons resulted in annoying notices). So, if you use sdr, please test the last NMU I sent, which fixes two bugs. Just for reference, the webpage where I keep my Debian-related work is here. The case where I learned most was #386938, regarding xserver’s FTBFS in s390. Events like BSP are a great way to motivate people to participate in the Project: while trying to learn anything about this bug I ended reading documentation from IBM, asking advice from someone with an S/390, sending a couple of emails to debian-s390@lists.d.o, browsing at a DD patch in upstream, looking at buildd logs, searching the Web for opcodes lists… usually trying to explain how all this pieces join in a sane way (most times; well, some times, well, seldomly) is quite difficult for someone who tries to promote Debian, but technical events like the BSP provide a really accurate way to see how things work in and around Debian.