To reduce the duplication and make the maintainence easier, syslinux templates has been splited. Currently both normal and menu share common templates using a common directory and the required files are copied to the image during the build. The only current know regression is PXE that needs fixing to work with this new templates however the rest should just work. I’d suggest to everyone interested on Debian Live do a try on it. The easier way is to use the snapshots of live-helper and use it normaly. Thanks to Daniel by merge all the fixes so fast and to keep this nice peace of software working

Today most of required changes need to get Debian Installer using the current sid kernel has been done and it should be available tomorrow throught our daily builds. Let’s see how it goes on next comming days …

Martin Michlmayr reported Debian's 444444th bug yesterday, for those who like nice-looking numbers. This bug was reported against a Debian Installer package and closed a few hours later by an upload by Joey Hess. As one sees, even if the D-I team is still a little bit jerky after Frans Pop resignation as Debian developer and D-I release manager, the maintenance of the code is still happening. J r my Bobbio and Otavio Salvador, our new release managers, are still learning and building their knowledge to be able to release a beta version in the next months. New interesting mark in Debian's BTS is bug number 500000. It took 10 months (309 days) to go from 400000 to 444444. That means 695 days at the same rate to reach bug #500000 which means one can expect bug #500000 to be reached on Oct 18th 2008. But we all know that the bug report rate is not linear in Debian....:-) Update: thanks Frans for correcting my jerky English: "resignation" is better than "resignment".

Since some time, I’ve been working on live-helper support for syslinux vesa menu due our need for it here at O.S. Systems. Since I got it to work, my focus has changed and I’ve forgotten this code for some time but some days ago, another project at the company required it and then I wanted to forward port it to lastest code. Initial code has been ported and then merged by Daniel on his GIT tree and today I went to try it and did some more changes on it that got it in a very good shape (not yet merged but available on my GIT tree) and I thought that would be nice to share it here so more people can try it and shout if find something is broken on it.

Today I went to #debian-x and asked how they have been doing to update debian/changelog files and they said that they’re using GIT log but updating the files by-hand so, since we’re wanting to use it here at work, I’ve started to write up the script for it. After some time of hacking and some questions answered at #git, on freenode, I was able to get it working. Obviously it has to be improved (hey, send me a patch!) but it works for my tests. It has been made availabe at http://git.debian.org/?p=users/otavio/git-update-debian-changelog.git Update: A new version has been made available since we’ ve found two minor bugs on it. Update: Support to –snapshot has been included.

I completely agree with Adrian's comment. I've recently installed a lab full of OpenOffice for Windows. Of course, the installation is easy (but you have to explicitly accept the GPL to get on with it - why?), but what's really annoying is that the first time each and every user starts the program for the first time, they are also prompted for license agreement. Even worse, they are expected to fill out a quite lengthy survey (which I filled once, of course, but still is too much to ask for the vast majority of our users!). Free Software should be exempt from the stupid click-through nonsense!
Anyway... also echoing Adrian and Otavio: Robert Millan's work on win32-loader just kicks ass. If you are not reading me through Planet Debian, please take a look at this ogg video file (Windows users: you can use VLC) showing what happens if you insert the (Sid) Debian installer CD into a Windows system. No more fiddling around trying to get the stupid machine to boot off your favorite media! Good job!

I’ve blogged about win32-loader integration and after looking the final result of it I got very impressed since it’s very easy to install Debian from Windows however, the README displayed for the user would get some work and I’d like to know if someone that has those skills (well, I lack them) could try to work on that and propose those improvements at debian-boot and debian-cd mailing list. I do think it would be nice since it could make the first contact with Debian, for a Windows user, much nicer… anyone interested?

Since some time, Robert Millan has been working at a tool to make the Debian GNU/Linux installation easier for Windows users[1]. His work has been integrated on Debian Installer daily images and now on Debian-CD (tool used to produce the Debian .iso images) and hence provinding a better user experience.

1. http://packages.debian.org/sid/win32-loader

Up to now, the user would see a “MS-DOS Window”[2] while running Debian autorun to open the README.html existent inside of the CD. It was ugly and user would need to know how to use the CD-ROM to boot and maybe even know how to set the BIOS to allow it. It has improved a lot since it now instead loads a nice graphical application that loads the README (and uses translated versions if available) and minimize itself[3], the tool allows the user to reboot the system and use the Windows bootloader to load the installer without requiring any special knowledge from the user.

2. http://people.debian.org/~rmh/d-i/win32-loader/autorun/before.ogg 3. http://people.debian.org/~rmh/d-i/win32-loader/autorun/after.ogg

Update: Those screencasts were done by Robert, not by me.

• Debconf 7 was just awesome: It was great to meet up with hendry, daniel, otavio and marco from the Debian Live crew, as well as countless others.. I’m already putting some pennies aside for Argentina.
• I managed to graduate with a 2:1, which was enough to get accepted on my Masters course which starts in September. I still need to find somewhere to live though. Congratulations to everyone else who finished this year!
• Google SoC work is going okay. I was recently in that uncomfortable position where I had taken a wrong turn and was getting less and less motivated to correct myself. However, I now have much more Pythonistic interface around the configuration files, as well as a working wizard based on the gtk.Assistant widget. Now I just need to get the expert mode cleaned up pretty soon and then proceed in fixing up some issues in the underlying shell scripts. I’ll prepare a quick screencast and write about this in more detail again soon.
• LugRadio Live was pretty good. I was manning the Debian stall on the first day: David Watson brought along a TFT and a Debian mirror on a Linksys NSLU2, which was great when demoing Debian Live images as well as the experimental graphical builder. If I had a faster machine it would have been nice to provide some sort of ‘custom live CD service’ for passers by. The second day was interesting and I managed to get to a few talks, as well as meet up with some of the other Bongo guys.
• Yet more groupthink is underway with GUADEC just up the road in Birmingham. I will have to miss Wednesday due to my graduation ceremony and having my flat stripped bare by my parents — just sleeping bags for my brother and I until hometime on Saturday. GUADEC feels slightly different to the other events I’ve been to — I’m not a Gnome developer so there are a lot of unfamiliar faces, but maybe this will make me change my mind: Telepathy does look awesome, and I’ve had ideas about writing a decent mind-mapping tool for some time now…

On the subject of conferences, I’m also planning to attend AngloHaskell, LinuxConf Europe amd PyCon UK. Let me know if you want to meet up or need a place to crash.

• simple-cdd: During lunch Vagrant agreed we need a symlink from simple-cdd to build-simple-cdd, I've added it into my branch with some other minor changes and we will include that stuff in our next upload.
• simple-cdd: After dinner Enrico told Vagrant about a simple-cdd demonstration and I said we could demo a 'merge' of both desktop and gnome-desktop tasks in a simple-cdd image containing just this new desktop profile, shrinking intentionally the list of packages. I'm sure people will be impressed how easy it's; the bonus point is learn more about the underrated tasksel. Stay tuned! :-)
• d-i-g: I've a new branch just for the mirroring support, Otavio and I figured out that dp-m lacks proper multiple architecture support but I'll keep working on mirroring support on the 'dp-m' branch while I solve other problems and add new features on master and help Otavio add multiple arch support into dp-m. Lots of work. Python volunteers are welcome. git repository is at: git clone http://people.debian.org/~stratus/git/d-i-g.git
• pkg-ltsp @ debian: You can say we've reunited here, me, vagrantc, otavio and pere. Vagrant is installing one Ltsp server and since we're short in time today - venue closing @ 11pm, probably we will have a lot more fun tomorrow.
  
• git and stgit: I'm in love with both tools, I blame Otavio that introduced me to them.
• people: Tomorrow I and faw will be changing room and in a few days all the brazilian people will be reunited here. I can't wait to see the canteen really crowded with us and the rest of the Debian people attending debconf. See you all and have a nice trip!

There's a lot more bits but I can't remember everything, oh I've also met siretart. :-)

• baggage: Arrived yesterday in the hostel, thanks Mark, Kevin and Felipe for the help.
  
• people: Otavio Salvador is finally here with us in the hacklab.
• simple-cdd: Figured out an easy way to cross compile images using my ppc machine.
• simple-cdd: I'm now able to work on code cleanup and further modularization.
  
• ltsp: Otavio came with one arm thin-client and suggested some ltsp related work.
  

Where's Vagrant? :)

While updating O.S. Systems infrastructure to generate Live CDs I’ve upgrade to live-helper and we end up with a new set of changes that were need. The best news is that all were accept for the next version.To check the patches, go at: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-live-devel/2007-June/001468.html

I have just send a proposal for a release goal to lenny. I’d like to swtich to GRUB2 as default boot-loader for amd64 and i386. This would allow us to, finally, drop GRUB completely. GRUB has too many patches, right now, and is a maintainence hell since upstream setted it on legacy mode hence only accepting bugfixing. Major of distributions divert its code (Debian included) to support fency features like graphical splash and like what makes our patch queue too big and making difficult to maintain. However, GRUB2 is being actively maintained and has some neat features. The new GRUB (GRUB2) has multi-architecture support and is highly modular allowing us to improve it while continuing to receive upstream support. Let’s see what the Release Team has to say about it

Today I started to prepare the Parted 1.8 to be uploaded to Debian. Parted 1.8 has many improvements against 1.7 release current on Debian and also makes the work easier since it’s the current maintained version by Parted team. On the next days Parted 1.8.7 is going to be release and with this an upload to Debian should happen…

Dear lazyweb,

• I've tried to avoid join or start flamewars in the Debian mailing lists. I think i managed this task very well.
• Based on my experience into pkg-perl, i had the idea to start a related Python project since there were a lot of Python modules out there and just a few packaged. I've founded python-modules with Guilherme Pastore (pkg-python name wasn't available) and we were joined by Raphael Hertzog some time later.
• I had the idea and talked with Otavio Salvador in Brasilia, Brazil during a cluster, linux and FOSS community gov't related event about the ltsp status in Debian and how it would be cool start a project in cooperation with Ubuntu. We've founded pkg-ltsp and had a online meeting at #ltsp were ogra and mdz (from Ubuntu fame) participated too. Since then, ltsp in Debian is way better than it was. I did technically way less than i could to the project itself, but i've an entire year to fix this. Thanks vagrantc and pere too for all the hard work and help.
• Merged debian-desktop development page, mailing list and alioth project in a focused thing with permission of the founders and was joined by pkg-gnome, pkg-kde, pkg-xfce, pkg-galago and tasksel members. The group did some great stuff together and it was just a restart.
• Worked very hard on Custom Debian Distributions camp, specially with Vagrant Cascardian on Simple-CDD for Etch.
• Joined pkg-gnome, tasksel and a lot (really) others projects that i did my best to help.
• I did my first security upload.

Looking back, what a insane year, but not due to the Debian related stuff that was fun to do, to say the least. Anyway, i hope to write similar stuff in the next year but with a even more exciting content. Thanks for those that helped me and those who did something for Debian in the past year. See you!

Happy New Year! Happy 2007!

And a really happy one!

After the cloud of ideas and subjects on the last post, giving the clear idea that I should keep this blog more up-to-date, here is an important note that is missing (including old news that I should had post but didn't, sorry for that). I'm aware that a few people are interested in how the Debian NM process evolves from person to person, on my last update on that topic, I told you that I was recommended to the DAM by my AM. Almost three months later (2006-11-18) Myon (Christoph Berg, Front Desk Member) couldn't find my final report, he pinged my AM and one week later everything was fine again and I got approved to the next step: DAMnation. On the Christmas' evening I got a nice gift from Joerg, DAM approval. Yesterday (2007-01-02) I got the nice e-mail with the subject: New Debian maintainer Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (Thanks to James Troup, aka, elmo). The entire process took me 8 months and 10 days. I would like to say thanks to everybody that helped me pass thru this experience: Otavio Salvador (my advocate and mentor), Christian Perrier and Luk Claes (Mentors and Uploaders), Clément Stenac (my AM), Christoph Berg (Front Desk), Joerg Jaspert and James Troup (DAMs). They are directly involved in my NM process, but they were not alone, thanks for every single person that helped me with tips and hints, that took some time to teach me and all the people behind different projects in Debian (I really start naming everybody but then I realize that it got very large for Planet): Debian Brasil, Debian Volatile (aba, zobel, sgran), Release Team, Debian Women, Debian i18n Task Force and Debian l10n Brazilian Portuguese, Debian Weekly News Team, buildd.net project, Alioth admins and staff, Debian Installer Team, Debian Kernel Team, Debian Mentors, DebConf Team, OFTC Staff, Debian QA Team, Debian Doc Team, Debian WWW Team, Debian Admin Team (DSA)! People, you know who you are, thank you VERY much! You can check my Status Page to see more details about my NM process and more information about the acronyms used on this post. Now, Brazil has 17 Debian Developers (not counting the one that already retired). :-)

I’ve uploaded grub to unstable and it has a lot of simple but important fixes. Most of them are related to XEN support. Please test it and report any problem you have…

My wishlist for the next DPL election ballot: (in random order, and incomplete)

• azeem
• bdale
• marga
• Joey
• liw
• mako
• ths
• aba
• otavio
• Q
• Maulkin
• Yoe
• fjp
• joeyh
• vorlon
• dondelelcaro
• Sesse

I personally continue to work on Debian how I can but the Dunk Tank think made me thoght about the priorities that some people are putting in few (better, one) position only of project. I disagree completely how is this working and see, not too few people, reducing their work on Debian. Some are clearly not caused by this annoyance but others not. Why does our FTP Masters and NEW queue processing people are not included on that list of people that are receiving money to work? Debian Security team? Debian Installer team? Those teams has the same importance of RM team. Can we release without a propor security or lacking a Debian Installer? Of even, can we release without a good libc or a stable and well maintained GCC compiler? That “Dunk Tank” or, in my understanding, “How we workaround a project concensuos” thing, is wrong. Obs.: you don’t need to agree with me and that is my point of view.

During this week, Robert (one of maintainers of grub), proposed on the mailing list to freeze it. We won’t do a hard freeze but we’ll only accept patches that:

• Fix bugs
• Were accepted upstream
• Adds a feature that’s need to a lot of people

Besides, he did a lot of good work on GRUB2. All new developments, improvements and refactorings are focused on GRUB2 now. We intend to move to it as soon as Etch goes out and ’cause of that we engourage everyone to make a test and report his/her results to us. I also want to ask to everyone who did previous work on grub and that wasn’t merged until now, try to convert it to grub2 and coordenate with us how we can integrate it better with grub2.