/me giggles at jvw. Oh, hang on. He's already pointed out my own little mistake from last year. Doh! :-)

Welcome to this 8th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the almost monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS. The challengers

• Pierre Tramo with #409352 (mplayer_1.0~rc1-12.diff.gz is CHAOTIC)
• Christian Perrier with #230485 (apache2/ssl-cert's debconf abuse makes baby jesus cry)
• Jeroen van Wolffelaar with #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.)
• Steve Langasek with #410605 (dpkg: bzip2 code in compression.c incorrectly uses zlib define (Z_ERRNO))
• Josh Triplett with #412460 (magicor-data: Penguins don't have teeth) and #398276 (xdm: don't bundle turning on sit0 irradiating me all day)
• Mike Hommey with #413660 (RFP: mozilla-firefox -- Mozilla's firefox package is required in non-free) and #413714 (iceweasel: overflow:hidden ugly chopping characters in half)

How the vote has been done Four Debian related people voted, Raphael Hertzog, Jeroen van Wolffelaar, Ana Guerrero and Margarita Manterola. Full ranking Bugs

• #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.) (34 points)
• #412460 (magicor-data: Penguins don't have teeth) (29 points)
• #230485 (apache2/ssl-cert's debconf abuse makes baby jesus cry) (26 points)
• #398276 (xdm: don't bundle turning on sit0 irradiating me all day) (23 points)
• #410605 (dpkg: bzip2 code in compression.c incorrectly uses zlib define (Z_ERRNO)) (16 points)
• #409352 (mplayer_1.0~rc1-12.diff.gz is CHAOTIC) (15 points)
• #413660 (RFP: mozilla-firefox -- Mozilla's firefox package is required in non-free) (14 points)
• #413714 (iceweasel: overflow:hidden ugly chopping characters in half) (3 points)

Challengers

• Josh Triplett with (52 points with 2 bugs)
• Jeroen van Wolffelaar (34 points with 1 bug)
• Christian Perrier (26 points with 1 bug)
• Mike Hommey with (17 points with 2 bugs)
• Steve Langasek (16 points with 1 bug)
• Pierre Tramo (15 points with 1 bug)

The winners

• Bug: #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.)
• Challenger: Josh Triplett
• Bug reporter: Serge Leblanc
• Voter: Raphael Hertzog with unordered tierc : #412460, #409637 and #230485

Notes To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number or a request to vote, or anything that may help. About DeFuBu

I've returned from FOSDEM in Brussels. Joost drove Jeroen, Christiaan and myself to Eindhoven where we took the train to Utrecht. FOSDEM has been a success again. The event has grown even bigger, still the FOSDEM team managed to create a good event nonetheless, thanks! Meeting up with the Debian crew again, both the usual suspects and new faces, was one of the highlights. The Debian booth has been popular, with the T-shirts in good demand; on Sunday morning I could only offer people the choice between S and XXL sizes. The Debian room had a diverse selection of interesting talks. Holger introduced Debian-Community.org, which I see as a useful initiative to provide recognition aswell as visibility for what already happens. To the Anonymous who returned me my lost backpack: thanks! I'm now off to sign all those keys.

Welcome to this 7th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS. The challengers

• Loic Minier with #407127 (evolution: Dates before 1970 not supported, e.g. for birthdays) and #408989 (epiphany-browser: bugzilla.gnome.org inaccessible)
• Sune Vuorela with #407849 (script for /usr/bin/preloadkde) and #409310 (kmines: Can cheat the timer)
• Josh Triplett with #404915 (iceweasel: Icon resembles booger)
• Jeroen van Wolffelaar with #408424 (apache2: "It works!")
• Florent Bayle with #408524 (If I play piano while my computer starts up, /dev/dsp disappears !)
• Christian Perrier with #408482 (xserver-xorg: please map French Canadian (cf) to Canada (ca) layout)
• Frans Pop with #409018 (base: /etc/ld.so.nohwcap missing)

How the vote has been done Four Debian related people voted for these bugs, Emmanuel Bouthenot, Mohammed Adn ne Trojette, Julien Louis and Jade Alglave. Full ranking Bugs

• #408989 (epiphany-browser: bugzilla.gnome.org inaccessible) (28 points)
• #408524 (If I play piano while my computer starts up, /dev/dsp disappears !) (21 points)
• #407849 (script for /usr/bin/preloadkde) and #408424 (apache2: "It works!") (18 points)
• #407127 (evolution: Dates before 1970 not supported, e.g. for birthdays) (17 points)
• #404915 (iceweasel: Icon resembles booger) and #408482 (xserver-xorg: please map French Canadian (cf) to Canada (ca) layout) (11 points)
• #409310 (kmines: Can cheat the timer) (10 points)
• #409018 (base: /etc/ld.so.nohwcap missing) (10 points)

Challengers

• Loic Minier (45 points with 2 bugs)
• Florent Bayle with (21 points with 1 bug)
• Sune Vuorela (28 points with 2 bugs)
• Jeroen van Wolffelaar (18 points with 1 bug)
• Christian Perrier and Josh Triplett (11 points with 1 bug)
• Frans Pop (10 points with 1 bug)

The winners

• Bug: #408989 (epiphany-browser: bugzilla.gnome.org inaccessible)
• Challenger: Loic Minier
• Bug reporter: Tshepang Lekhonkhobe
• Voter: Emmanuel Bouthenot with two first bugs correct: #408524, #408989

Notes To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number. About DeFuBu

Just spent a long weekend (Thursday night to Monday afternoon) in Finland. Hanna invited me over a while ago with a promise of sauna and ice swimming, and I'm a sucker for travelling to parties these days... *grin*. Unfortunately, the weather in Finland (just like in the UK) at the moment is ridiculously warm for the time of year. When I visited in November for the BSP, there was some snow on the ground and temperatures were as cold as I expected. This time, there was no sign of any snow and I was worried that we might not get any ice...! Lars was kind enough to offer me some crash space at short notice for my visit (there's nothing like last-minute organisation for this kind of jaunt!). On Friday we met up with Jesus, Jeroen, Hanna, Pixie and Dave for lunch and some wandering around in the middle of Helsinki. Then on to some bars later for some drinks and food. I could get used to this... :-) On Saturday, we got up early, bought large amounts of food and drink to take with us, and caught the bus north-west out of Helsinki towards central Finland. 90 minutes on the bus and in a taxi, and we were dropped off at Hanna's family's cottage by the lake below: As we got there, the temperature was dropping just enough that we could actually see the ice forming on the lake. Beautiful! In the middle of nowhere in the forest, things were incredibly quiet and peaceful. We lit the fire for the the sauna, and wandered off for a walk through the forest. Later on, beer, sauna and (almost) ice swimming. Naked geeks! I must admit that I chickened out a little - coming out of the sauna into freezing temperatures slowed me down a little. By the time I reached the bottom of the steps to the lake surface, I couldn't force myself into the lake fully. I got three toes wet, then ran back inside into the warm... :-) Dave was more resilient (in and out FIVE times!), but it looks like he maybe overdid things. He crashed out later and was acting quite oddly for a while - we worked out that he was probably dehydrated. We carried on drinking and snacking at the cottage, then headed back into Helsinki for the bars and clubs later that night. More of the same on Sunday along with a cinema visit, and I was thoroughly exhausted and ready to head back to the UK on Monday. Thanks very much to Hanna, Lars, Jesus and the others for making my trip so much fun. Helsinki is a lovely place to visit, although probably too expensive for me to manage it too often. I'm saving already for the next time! I've put my photos online as usual.

Today I had problems trying to fix the versioning information of bug #343593. Neither the correct command notfound 343593 4.2.26-2 nor an unversioned reopen made the bts forget the wrong "found in 4.2.26-2". Jeroen told me of a heavier boot to kick the bts with: reassigning somewhere else and back again. This worked nicely. Documented here, so I will be able to look it up later.

The general freeze for Debian Etch has been postponed because of too many open RC bugs. This is handy because ones packages can be even more polished, but only once the archive is frozen it will really stabilize. There's also some people who think now is a good time to do an automated search for RC bugs (instead of a year ago...?), bringing the number even further up. More effort is required here to squash those bugs, and squash them sooner rather than later. That's why Jeroen, Bas and I have decided to work on this together the upcoming Wednesday evening. A small-scale BSP, but everyone is welcome to come along and join in! In other news, my iBook is broken again, it might have been stocked with refurbished parts after its previous breakdown according to the Apple Store. Although it's October, I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon with Stefan on a sunny terrace . I booked tickets to Stockholm, and a very good looking hostel.

The recent Debian Bug Squashing Party was quite a success if you ask me. The most problematic was that it coincided with the Utrecht Programming Championship (a qualifier for the ICPC NWERC), which took much of my time as an organiser and of Jeroen and Jelmer as contestants. It was worthwhile though, because their Team J won the contest. On the BSP a significant number of bugs have been squashed, but also a lot of work has gone into debian-cd, the release notes, security updates and removing packages. Steve has very few photo's available. Let's repeat it for etch+1, especially when it doesn't share a weekend with other local events.

Last weekend, Jeroen van Wolffelaar and Thijs Kinkhorst organised a BSP at Utrecht University. I went along for a couple of reasons:

• to help reduce the number of RC bugs in the run-up to the Etch release
• to meet some of the Dutch developers and users, and to encourage them to work their best for Etch

I met up with Hanna Ollila at Schiphol Airport late on Friday evening, and we took the train down to Utrecht together. We found Jeroen and some others at the station and went straight on to a party in the middle of town for a few hours. Then after just a few hours' sleep we headed into the University to get breakfast and start squashing bugs. A group of about a dozen people turned up that day - mainly a mixture of Dutch DDs and other locals.

I took a look at a couple of bugs initially on Saturday: #387419 and #387498. Unfortunately, the first (kdepim FTBFS on alpha) was difficult to reproduce - the alpha machine I had available for testing was too short on memory and took a very long time to build kdepim, long enough that after 2 days I gave up. I couldn't reproduce the latter (system() hanging when running on mips) on any machine I had access to - it looks like more work is needed there... In parallel with those two RC bugs (found on Andreas' great summary page at http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php), I also had a very productive session working in parallel with Christian Perrier, fixing translation/i18n bugs in one of my own packages, CVS. Thanks Christian, you're a pleasure to work with! On Saturday evening, the gang of us headed into the centre of Utrecht for a nice meal, some beer and some spirited conversation at a Greek restaurant. I took the opportunity to talk with Frans Pop about some of the remaining work needed for d-i and debian-cd. On Sunday, the work continued. I was still waiting on feedback on #387498 and my build of #387419, so I decided to make the most of the uninterrupted time to get some debian-cd development work done. I'm still hoping to get multi-arch CDs working before we release etch, so this was a great help. In fact, I got so engrossed in this that I managed to work straight through dinner...! In terms of bugs, I must admit that I didn't do much in terms of reducing absolute numbers. This weekend, there were a lot of bugs in categories that don't really work well for Bug Squashing: licensing/legal bugs (which really need discussion with the maintainer), newly-opened bugs (IMHO it's a little rude to NMU a package when a bug has only just been opened - give the maintainer at least a couple of days to respond!) and deep bugs where intimate knowledge of the package is needed. I expect there will be more to work on next weekend in Zurich, if nothing else some of those "new" bugs will have aged. Early on Monday morning I caught the bus from near Jeroen's apartment to start the journey home. Thanks to the nice reliable public transport, I got all the way to Schiphol well in time. Then my flight back to Stansted was delayed... :-( It was great to meet up with a bunch of enthusiastic people. Some I'd met before (Frans, Jeroen, Hanna). Some I met for the first time (Thijs, Bas, Moritz and others). But all of them were working hard, wanting to help get Etch out on time. Let's keep up the good work! I have a small number of photos online.

#386363... Amazing. Just amazing. I especially appreciate the new arguments and insights contributed by both parties every time.

Tomorrow we'll have the first real-life meeting, together with Thijs Kinkhorst and dr. Bas Zoetekouw, to organize details about the upcoming Debian Bug Squashing party in Utrecht, The Netherlands, on the weekend of September 30th. As a study association, A-Eskwadraat has had Debian Developers for quite some time, from Bas since 2000 until our most recent addition, Thijs, but we've never organized a Debian event – yet. In 2002 though, there was a Mozilla 1.0 release party where also the release of woody was celebrated. The university has been supportive of the initiative, and is offering the location for free, as long as there are not too many people around that they feel the need for (expensive) security to be on-site 24h/day. For that reason, and also for food planning, please do subscribe yourself in wiki. If more than 25 people end up subscribing, we'll let you know how we'll arrange that. We're still not having a definitive deal with a sponsor, so don't know how flexible we are in this regard. At this moment, we've also got a handful of international attendees too, including Debian's "Second in Command", Steve McIntyre. I'm looking forward to it, and to meeting various Debian contributors (mostly again). See you in Utrecht!

As I'm starting this blog post, I'm sitting on the 22:19 train Breda->Roosendaal, on my way home. I'm coming from the Debian Birthday Party that happened in caf Zeezicht on the Grote Markt in Breda, where a number of Dutch Debian people gathered. I'm not Dutch, but I do speak Dutch, and it's always nice to meet fellow Debianistas without having to revert to English. I had a fairly entertaining chat with some people, and eventually Jeroen van Wolffelaar showed up, with whom I had some interesting talk about the state of m68k and related dak-matters. I stayed there for two hours, but they were worth it. So why did give this post a title of Darn? When I got on the train, I broke my wristwatch. When I was taking my backpack off my back, my watch got stuck behind the strap that is supposed to keep the backpack on my back—whatever its name is—and as a result, it fell off my arm. Which isn't supposed to happen under normal conditions. It doesn't seem to be FUBAR, but it's still going to be have to be repaired before I can wear it again. I feel naked now.

Physical reaction while in Mexico for nearly a month on the food, water or weather: Some major sunburns, neglectible stomach issues. Physical reaction back home: severe stomach issues, for nearly two days now and 'running'. Seems that Dutch food is much more dangerous than Mexican food. That's not what my tourist booklet said, but oh well. I'm glad I didn't have the issues I have now during DebConf, being sick abroad is doubly annoying. Montezuma's Revenge reaches far (if this is in reality a backlash, who knows). At least I don't have a jet-lag this way: I don't get to sleep much at all, let alone at the 'wrong time'.

Yesterday, the mailman delivered back my 'new' thinkpad from the IBM warranty repair in England, with a repaired LCD screen (connector?). On the results sheet they also ticked the 'cleaned' box, and one can see that. It looks much better then when I bought this T41 second-hand less than a month ago — it's now as if it's new. Maybe I should break something in my laptop more often ;). Now I gotta fix my wireless, so that I can combine sitting outside in the sun (when it dares coming back) with working on stuff. I seem to be unable to get 'ad-hoc' mode wireless to work, for some reason. Unfortunately the wireless in my server doesn't support "master" (AP) mode, so I'm now opting for having my server connect as client to my laptop (which can act as AP) automatically, instead of the other way around. Oh well, as long as it works. So much to do before leaving for Mexico... And upcoming weekend it's also Koninginnedag, so won't have much time in my last weekend in the Netherlands either. My flatmates gave me last friday a tourist book about Mexico (I gave a late birthday party), which I'm currently reading. And... last night I got mail that my ticket is arranged (in the same hour as that I took a tequilla on the bi-annual FullHouse student party, coincidence?). Thanks a lot to all involved for making this possible, and see you in Mexico! PS: Happy birthday, Steve

I’m one of those waiting until the last call for votes to send the ballot: - - -=-=-=-=-=- Don’t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
52717dc0-26e3-4337-a88b-cc2c260fcb51
[ 3 ] Choice 1: Jeroen van Wolffelaar
[ 4 ] Choice 2: Ari Pollak
[ 2 ] Choice 3: Steve McIntyre
[ 1 ] Choice 4: Anthony Towns
[ 3 ] Choice 5: Andreas Schuldei
[ 6 ] Choice 6: Jonathan aka Ted Walther
[ 4 ] Choice 7: Bill Allombert
[ 5 ] Choice 8: None Of The Above
- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don’t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Good luck to everyone on the election!

One of the talk slots at DebConf this year will be used for a series of lightning 5-minute talks on different subjects. I finally have more than enough talks to fill up the 45 minute time slot (thanks Jeroen!), but still only three speakers, so the schedule will look something like this:

• (T+0) 2 minutes: Joey, introduction
• (T+3) 2 minutes: Jeroen, How to pronounce Jeroen van Wolffelaar, and other names
• (T+5) 5 minutes: Jeroen, Doing efficient package searches on packages.d.o
• (T+11) 5 minutes: Joey, Debian in 4 MB or less
• (T+17) 5 minutes: Damog, WNPP: Automatizing the unautomatizable
• (T+23) 5 minutes: Jeroen, Actively discovering bugs/issues with packages
• (T+29) 5 minutes: Joey, Significant Choices
• (T+35) 5 minutes: Jeroen, Tracking MIA developers
• (T+41) 4 minutes: Joey, DebConf debconf (cdebconf?)
• (T+45) end!

These choices are a bit arbitrary, Jeroen could also talk about "Working of the PTS", or "Datamining on Debian packages metadata". I could also talk about "Rembering Emeritus Developers". We have more than enough proposals, but not enough people giving them. Me and Jeroen will both be wiped out at the end of this tag-team marathon. Help! If you're not me or Jeroen, please consider submitting your own lightning talk idea, or take over one from the list, like "Debian wish list" or "Rembering Emeritus Developers". It will be much more interesting to hear from a lot of different people, and it's easy to do. The deadline for last submissions is April 15th.

---

This advertisement paid for by the DebConf sauna campaign.

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
52717dc0-26e3-4337-a88b-cc2c260fcb51
[ 3 ] Choice 1: Jeroen van Wolffelaar
[ 5 ] Choice 2: Ari Pollak
[ 1 ] Choice 3: Steve McIntyre
[ 3 ] Choice 4: Anthony Towns
[ 4 ] Choice 5: Andreas Schuldei
[ 7 ] Choice 6: Jonathan aka Ted Walther
[ 2 ] Choice 7: Bill Allombert
[ 6 ] Choice 8: None Of The Above
- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

So the DPL vote just started and I crafted my ballot. So it’s my turn to give you my opinion on the various candidates. Here’s my top 3 by order of preference:

1. Jeroen van Wolffelaar
   I had the occasion to work with Jeroen due to our common involvement in Debian-QA and his work on the PTS. He’s only Debian Developer since 2004 but he’s the proof that you can get involved in core teams if you’re willing to work. His commitment to Debian is impressive. He’s also a strong proponent of the DPL team concept, and he managed to gather a well-balanced team. With some changes to the DPL team concept, this can make a big difference this year. Yes, I hope to be able to serve the project as a member of his team.
2. Steve McIntyre
   I worked with Steve on numerous occasions due to our common involvement in debian-cd. He’s very moderate, appreciated by many people and could be very effective in mediating internal conflicts since he’s not involved in any core team. I look forward working with him, his platform is very attractive.
3. Anthony Towns
   Anthony has been doing a great job for a long time, and I really appreciate his efforts to communicate what he does. I like his idea to bring momentum to the project… and he proposed the last general resolution to bring us to a conclusion on the GFDL problem. That’s the kind of initiative that I’m also expecting from a leader. His strong opinions do not suit everybody but at least he’s trying new ideas.

All the other candidates are well-intentionned (except one) but they do no match all my (fuzzy) criterion for a good DPL.

Last night, the IRC debates for the ongoing DPL elections were held. Having a record number of seven candidates, it was at least from a candidate point of view very chaotic, the time between questions was not enough to both properly answer the questions and also read the responses of the fellow candidates. However, for the public, I guess the tempo was quite okay. I hope it's been an informative event for Developers, even though the nature of such debate doesn't allow for in-depth discussions. See the debian-vote mailinglist for that. Only about 24 hours left to answer questions... need to hurry. When finally reading though the debate answers now, I noticed Anthony Towns saying:

thanks to the wonders of blogging, there's plenty of opportunity to talk about things in a fun interesting way even when they're not finished, or not important enough to warrant a mailing list post

While I believe there's room for some regular reports on various Debian internal projects like I mentioned in my platform, this made me finally get around to actually creating a blog, something I've been meaning to do for over a year. And of course, I needed to because all the other teletubbies have a blog too! Anyway, I'm glad the campaigning period is nearly over, so I have more time for such things as a lintian upload, some PTS hacking, or study. And of course decide on my ballot for the DPL voting period.