openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 185 is out!

23. Jul 2011 | Sascha Manns | No License

We are pleased to announce our new openSUSE Weekly News 185.

Cover

openSUSE Weekly News

### openSUSE Weekly News Team

185 Edition

Legal Notice

This work (compilation) is licenced under Creative Commons attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The rights for the compilation itself are copyright by Sascha Manns.

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Published: 2011-07-23


Table of Contents

Announcements Google Summer of Code Status Updates

Distribution SUSE Studio Team Reports In the Community

People of openSUSE Events & Meetings openSUSE for your Ears Communication Contributors New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE Security Updates Kernel Review Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users For Commandline/Script Newbies For Developers and Programmers For System Administrators Planet SUSE On the Web

Announcements Reports Reviews and Essays Feedback Credits Acknowledgements Copyrights

List of our Licenses Trademarks Translations

We are pleased to announce our 185th issue of the openSUSE Weekly News.

You can also read this issue in other formats here.

Enjoy reading :-)

Header PictureAnnouncements▼

Important

The Articles inside this Section are in full. If you are already knowing the stuff in news.opensuse.org, then you can skip this section through using the TOC.

  [A new milestone on the cloud: openSUSE releases milestone 3](//news.opensuse.org/2011/07/22/a-new-milestone-on-the-cloud-opensuse-releases-milestone-3/)

Just a few days ago the third of six milestones on the road ftoopenSUSE 12.1 has been made available for testing before it goes to final release November 11th, 2011.  (Yes, 11-11-11!)

Main changes on this milestone

The third milestone has a huge number of changes and improvements on top of the latest openSUSE release. And many packages have been updated or upgraded. You can check the latest package versions on this page. What are the major changes?

  • Firefox 5

  • MozillaThunderbird 5.0

  • aaa_base 12.1

  • Kernel 3.0 rc7

  • Python3   3.2

  • Sysstat 10.0.1

  • LibreOffice 3.3.3.1

  • Tomboy 1.7.1

  • Tracker 0.11.0

  • many smaller updates to KDE and GNOME applications and desktops

Systemd needs your feedback

The team welcomes help and bugreports as we prepare for the first release of openSUSE to use systemd.

Hands on to help out easier than ever!

Your input at this early development stage is a great opportunity to collaborate in making the final release into the polished work we always prosecute for. openSUSE 12.1 Milestone 3 has a list of most annoying bugs here, please add issues you find and help fix them. As Will Stephenson has already blogged, fixing an issue is a matter ofBURPing on build.opensuse.org! Find a how-to here.

So go and see for yourself what the next version of openSUSE has in store for you at our download center.

  [Last Call for openSUSE Conference Papers!](//news.opensuse.org/2011/07/22/last-call-for-opensuse-conference-papers/)

With the days closing in on us before the next great openSUSE Conference in Nuremberg, Germany 11-14 September, 2011, we’re seeing a lot of awesome papers being submitted to the Conference Program Committee.  But there’s still time for you to submit that awesome session you’ve dreamed of. The deadline to submit your paperis midnight July 25th.

What We Are Looking For:

This year’s Conference theme is RWX³.  That means its an open conference in which we all get to roll up our sleeves and get involved!  We’re looking for that great session that talks about FOSS projects, openSUSE Community growth, and  workshops that empower our users and contributors to do more awesome stuff.

Types of Sessions you can apply for

As you can see, the possibilities are endless.  And this year’s conference, which is always free, is extra special because we’ll be moving to our new location, Zentrifuge, and co-hosting with the SUSE Labs Conerence.  That’s two for the price of one and one is FREE!

What’s Next

  • Submit your proposal here

  • The Program Committee will be reviewing all submissions and making their votes before August 1.

  • After August 5, we will announce the accepted proposals and contact you with the status of your proposal.

Remember, the deadline is this Sunday, July 24th!

Conference travel sponsorship program

The openSUSE conference “RWX³” is the place to be for anyone using, working on or taking advantage of the openSUSE Project. No matter if you use our technology such as the Open Build Service, contribute packages to 12.1 or evangelize the world as an Ambassadorthis is your conference. You can also meet a lot of your friends from other projects like KDEGNOMELinuxSamba,LibreOffice and, of course many people from other GNU/Linux distributions with whom we collaborate on technologies like packaging, appstores or low-level tools like systemd.

Header PictureGoogle Summer of Code▲▼

![](//michal.hrusecky.net/wp-content/uploads/GSoC2011_300x200.png)

  [Alex Eftimie: PackageKit backend for Software Center: short week 7 report](//alex.eftimie.ro/2011/07/17/packagekit-backend-for-software-center-short-week-7-report/)

Short weekly report is short, this week’s achievements:

  • fixed the install/remove simulation bits (it can now tell what packages will be removed after applying changes)

  • improved PackageInfo testing (works with both AptCache and PackageKit)

  • found the problem with dynamic/static libs conflict: it is gio statically loaded from gtk and then Gio dynamically loaded from PackageKitGlib; loading Gio before everything seems to fix the conflict for now;

  • got another round of refactor changes into trunk, thanks to mvo; this way my PK branch is one step closer to merging into software-center

  [Marcus Hüwe: osc code cleanup – summary of week 8](//lizards.opensuse.org/2011/07/17/gsoc-osc-code-cleanup-–-summary-of-week-8/)

Here’s a small summary of the 8th (coding) week. This week I spentmost of my time with rewriting the working copy code.

Done:

  • added support to add and delete packages

  • added some “abstractions” for the tracking file format:currently packages and files are tracked in a xml file

  • thought about the package update algorithm. Basicallyit’ll work like this (verfy simplified version):

    • perform update in a tmpdir (phase 1)

    • if the tmp update finished, copy/rename all files tothe wc (phase 2)

Advantage:If the update is interrupted in phase 1 the wc wasn’t touchedat all and nothing should be broken.If the update is interrupted in phase 2 the wc is _inconsistent_but a subsequent “update” call can resume the update and everythingshould be consistent afterwards (in this case only files arecopied/renamed)

TODO:

  • implement update + commit algorithm

If everything works as expected most parts of working copy codecleanup should be finished after this week.

  [Christos Bountalis: A utility for merging configuration / sysconfig files – Week 9
    Report](//cbounta.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/a-utility-for-merging-configuration-sysconfig-files-week-9-report/)

Exciting news for the project this week. After solving the problem with the comments and the tree representation of the sysconfig files in Augeas, there was a big leap in the project’s progress. By having test data and through debugging i was able to complete the match algorithm.The program is now able to traverse through two trees / files, make the necessary matches between the nodes of these two trees and provide the appropriate information to the later stages. That of merging.

What exactly have been done in the previous week:

  • Tree representation of sysconfig files

  • Matching between two trees nodes completed

  • Sorting of labels (Small Fixes)

  • tree_compare function complete

  • Tree traversal of aug_process_trees ( revisited)

What is for next week:

  • Finish merging functions for aug_process_trees ( I feel optimistic that i will surely complete this next week due to the reason that matching was completed)

  • Create first beta packages

  • Test Test Test

  • Improve code

  [David Williams: Entomologist UI Changes - Weekly Report #9](//redache.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/entomologist-ui-changes-weekly-report-9/)

This week I’ve been working on finishing up the ToDo Lists, which did entail writing a new Item Delegate for the list as the previous method of checking which widget had been clicked was less than optimal!. I have finished the ToDo List and it will hopefully be merged on Monday into an experimental branch that I can go through and ensure that everything works as expected. This will then all be pulled together as a possible version 1.0 of Entomologist, which is great news!.

I am currently researching possibilities for integrating Cloud Services into the ToDo List and I plan on targeting an iCal/WebDAV compatible format export to begin with. Once this basic step is in place I can then look at integrating with various web services and generic iCal/WebDAV support for servers that use these.

This all leads on to how long I have left of my GSoC, which by my count is 5 weeks(!) of GSoC Time,but I would like to stick to the soft pencils down date as much as possible so the final week can be spent ensuring everything works properly. I want to look at the addition of QML after I’ve integrated some Cloud Sync aspects as I think this would be a really excellent feature to have.

Here’s a screenshot of the ToDo List on OS X Lion (Which also shows that nothing has to be done to Entomologist’s code base to make it compatible):

Header PictureStatus Updates▲▼

Header PictureDistribution

    [Andreas
      Jaeger: Factory Progress 2011-07-18](//lizards.opensuse.org/2011/07/18/factory-progress-2011-07-18/)

I’ve noticed the following changes that might interest people using and developing openSUSE Factory:

Package changes

GNOME 3.1.3

The GNOME team plans to have GNOME 3.2 in for openSUSE 12.1 and thus have updated to the current development release 3.1.3. They have also started removing old GNOME 2 packages that are not needed anymore.

systemd

Frederic gave an update on systemd integration. The graphical bootloader allows now to switch during boot between systemd, SysVinit and also shell code.

Also, Lennart Poettering wrote in his “systemd for developers” series about socket activation where he uses cups as example.

hal

The hal daemon has been dropped from Factory after all users with clean spec files have been changed to work with the successors of hal like udisk and udev.

samba

Samba is getting updated to 3.6.0, one of its major features is full SMB2 support.

Linux Kernel Headers

Linux kernel 2.6.38 removed the Video for Linux v1 support and also the file linux/videodev.h. Since we now use the Linux Kernel 3.0, applications using the old interface need to be converted. A replacement is libv4l1-videodev.h from libv4l-dev >= 0.8.4.

Keeping old kernel(s) while installing new ones

Michal Marek descripes in his blog how it’s possible to configure which kernels to keep installed when a new one gets installed. With a simple change to the zypp configuration, you can define e.g. that you always like to keep the latest running kernel when you install a new one.

Upcoming Features

A new page called “upcoming features” has been created to point out new features for the next release. Please help updating the page with new information.

Policy and tool changes

Directories not owned by a package

We have now enabled a build time check that all directories are owned by a package and this hit 49 packages, most of them are fixed by now but packagers should fix the remaining onw.

Other interesting bits

openSUSE 11.4 Milestone 3

Coolo announced that milestone 3 is delayed due to some kernel bugs which the testing team encountered with their daily testing scripts.  On 2011-07-18 the 3.0 RC7 kernel was checked in and should fix this.

openSUSE Conference

The call for papers is continuing to run, please submit session proposals at the conference site. Also, registration is open now.

Important Links

Header PictureSUSE Studio

    [SUSE Studio
      for the big iron](//blog.susestudio.com/2011/07/suse-studio-for-big-iron.html)

After a couple of months of hard work we are now happy to introduce the next version of SUSE Studio for onsite installation. It comes in two editions, the Standard Edition, including everything you need to create, share, maintain, and configure your software and virtual appliances, and the Advanced Edition, which additionally supports workloads for System z, the big iron. (…)

Related Article: h-online.com

Team Reports

Header PictureBoosters Team

      [Henne Vogelsang:
        What are the boosters up to?](//blog.hennevogel.de/what-are-the-boosters-up-to-6/)

Members 1st

This time around the Boosters took on a milestone for the benefit of the Membership Officials team. To explain who they are and what they do we have to look a bit further into the openSUSE Project. Because of its history and relatively young age the project is trying very hard to avoid hierarchies, policies and rules. It emphasizes the creative, a bit chaotic, side of the FOSS ways for openSUSE to get things done, quickly. Everyone that is participating is equal, everyone that is participating is following the same Guiding Principles. The only formal structure is a a group of “Primus inter pares”, that is elected to provide guidance according to the principles: The Board.

But how do you identify who is participating? How do you get affiliated with the project? Who is a member? The Board came up with this definition: Everyone who contributescontinued and substantial to the project. As you can imagine there are a million and one ways to contribute to a huge project like ours, so judging if someones contributions arecontinued and substantial can only be done on a case by case basis. The Membership Officials are tasked by the Board to do this evaluation.

The process to become a member is dead easy. You tell the Membership Officials that you want to be a Member and what you have done so far. They will then evaluate your contributions and vote on your request. Once your request gets more then four positive votes, you’re a Member. If you get four negative votes you get rejected. (…)

Header PictureBuild Service Team

      [Pavol Rusnak:
        Version sorting in Ruby](//stick.gk2.sk/blog/2011/07/version-sorting-in-ruby/)

Today I needed to implement “human sort” for a list of distributions we support in the Open Build Service. I wanted to sort them alphabetically but at the same time the newest ones at the top. I ended up with the following code: (…)

Build Service Statistics. Statistics can found at Buildservice

Header PictureKDE Team

      [Javier Llorente: New namespace for KDE apps maintained by upstream](//lizards.opensuse.org/2011/07/19/new-namespace-for-kde-apps-maintained-by-upstream/)

After some discussion in #opensuse-kde, darix has created the KDE:Apps namespace for KDE apps maintained by their upstream, so that they can serve fresh packages for all distributions supported by the Build Service (which includes openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, RHEL, Debian and Ubuntu).

As the first to join in, we warmly welcome the KMyMoney project!

Got questions? Feel free to contact the openSUSE/KDE Team on the mailing list opensuse-kde@opensuse.org or in IRC: #opensuse-kde (irc.freenode.net).

Header PictureMedical Team

      [Rousinopoulos
        Athanasios-Ilias: openSUSE Medical Meeting](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Medical_meetings/)

We are pleased to announce the first openSUSE medical Meeting.

Time and meeting place

  • 2011-07-27 21:00 UTC/GMT +3 hours

  • #opensuse-medical at freenode

Topics

  • Welcome

  • News and Announcements

New Leadership , Plans and Thoughts Report From openSUSE Collaboration Camp (15-17 of July 2011 , Greece)
openSUSE Conference Participation ( 11-14 of September 2011, Nürnberg) openSUSE Medical 11.4 Feedback openSUSE Medical Mailing list Brainstorms and Ideas (Andre Massing)

  • Milestones

Milestone 1 : Add new software in the distro (aka packaging new software) Milestone 2 : New applications development (Qt/KDE ones) Milestone 3 : Translation of included applications (openEMR,GnuMed, FreemedForms) Milestone 3 : Translation of the non-imported software (openmolar,sheltler Manager) Milestone 3 : Build the new release of the Distro with KIWI toolset Milestone 4 : openSUSE Medical Artwork Milestone 5 : Setting the release dates for the new release of the distro (openSUSE Medical Beta 1,Beta 2,RC,Final Release)

  • Open Floor - General Discuss

More informations at: //en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Medical_meetings/

Header PictureopenFATE Team

Top voted Features

        [decouple download and installation
          (Score: 360)](https://features.opensuse.org/120340)

Network installation could be improved by running package download and package installation in parallel.

        [Look at plymouth for splash during
          boot (Score: 187)](https://features.opensuse.org/305493)

I wanted to open a fate feature about this when I first heard of plymouth, but reading //fedoramagazine.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/interview-fedora-10s-better-startup/ really makes me think we should go this way.

Ray’s comment starting with “Every flicker and mode change in the boot process takes away from the whole experience.” is especially interesting. Is it okay to track the “don’t show grub by default” here?

        [1-click uninstall (Score: 159)](https://features.opensuse.org/305305)

An easy way to remove Software! For example: you installed an application with “1-click install” (which will install all the packages that you need), there should be an easy way (also with 1 click) to remove what you have installed with that 1-click operation… in another words: an “1-click Uninstall” to remove installed software (dependencies and packages included).

        [Update to GRUB v2 (Score: 140)](https://features.opensuse.org/308497)

Every single bug or feature that anyone has developed for GRUB 0.97 has been rejected by the upstream project in favor of using GRUB 2. There has been resisitence in the distribution community to switching boot loaders, but this stalemate isn’t going to go away. The code itself isn’t well written or well maintained. Adding a new feature involves jumping through a lot of hoops that may or may not work even if you manage to work around all the runtime limitations. For example, a fs implementation has a static buffer it can use for memory management. It’s only 32k. For complex file systems, or even a simple journaled file system, we run into problems (like the reiserfs taking forever to load bug) because we don’t have enough memory to do block mapping for the journal so it needs to scan it for every metadata read. (Yeah, really.) (…)

        [Popularity contest (Score:
          106)](https://features.opensuse.org/305877)

We need a feedback about packages that are preferred by users and actively used. Debian already has a tool named Popularity contest (popcon)

  • reusing popcon will give us results that are directly comparable with Debian and Ubuntu

  • packagers team can take care of the package

  • we need a configuration dialog in YaST that is visible enough

  • we need a server infrastructure on opensuse.org. (There are certain privacy issues, see Debian FAQ for details)

Recently requested features

Features newly requested last week. Please vote and/or comment if you get interested.

        [Preserve Running Kernel On Kernel
          Update by Default](https://features.opensuse.org/312647)

My suggestion is to enable multiversion kernel & preserve running kernel for safer kernel updates, to reduce support problems when new kernels won’t boot. This is now possible for 12.1 by 1 line change to zypp.conf.Since Online Update was first introduced (SuSE 7.1?) it replaced the running kernel by default, which can lead to problems booting. For a while multiversion kernel has been supported by libzypp (1 line edit in zypp.conf). The drawback with multiversion was manual deletion required of unwanted kernel packages (see //lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-kernel/2011-07/msg00056.html ). Now in Factory 12.1 M3 Michel Marek has included & announced - kernel package retention options (see //lizards.opensuse.org/2011/07/14/improved-kernel-package-retention-in-12-1/ ).The default is sane, to preserve the Lastest & Running Kernels. So lets use it and make 12.1 kernel updates safer for all, and by default do the right thing!

        [Automatically add keys to the
          ssh-agent at X11 login](https://features.opensuse.org/312649)

I’d like to have a simple way to have the ssh-agent load a number of keys automatically when I log in to the system. The simplest way in my opinion would be a directory, say ~/.ssh/ssh-add/, where the user can copy all the keys he wants to add. 

Currently ssh-agent is already started when the user logs in using X11 by /etc/X11/xdm/sys.xsession. /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc which runs a bit later also executes scripts in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/. To me this seems the perfect place to add a small script containing the following lines:

#!/bin/bash if test -S “$SSH_AUTH_SOCK” -a \ -x “$SSH_ASKPASS” -a \ -d ~/.ssh/ssh-add; then ssh-add ~/.ssh/ssh-add/* < /dev/null fi

In fact, I use this script for a few years now. And I am sick of adding it to /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/ after each distribution update.

        [openSUSE Linux 12.1/LXDE: Add support
          for the XZ Utils in Xarchiver](https://features.opensuse.org/312659)

openSUSE Linux 12.1/LXDE: Add support for the XZ Utils in Xarchiver .

        [Enhance YaST=System=BootLoader](https://features.opensuse.org/312671)

If I need to do a bisection to find a kernel fault, the number of kernels in the GRUB list gets very large.

The existing code handles the edit of /boot/grub/menu.lst; however, the kernels and modules that correspond to a deleted entry are orphaned. A manual cleanup of /boot and /lib/modules is tedious. An optional delete of the kernel files and modules would eliminate the tedium.

Feature Statistics

Statistics for openSUSE distribution in openFATE

Header PictureTesting Team

      [Larry
        Finger: Weekly News for July 23](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-testing/2011-07/msg00031.html)

The Testing Core Team held an IRC meeting at 17:00 UTC, July 18 on Channel #opensuse-testing on the Freenode IRC Network. irc://irc.freenode.net/opensuse-testing.

Our first agenda item was for discussion of our experiences with 12.1 MS3. As this release was not available at that time, our discussion was limited.

Our second agenda item concerned our request to rename MS6 to Beta in hopes of increasing the number of testers in the critical late stages of testing. As reported last week, Stephan Kulow, the Release Manager, has agreed to make the name change although he doubts that it will make much difference. He also asked how we will measure the effect of this change.

We then discussed what metrics we might use to test the effectiveness of the name change. Thus far, only the number of downloads and the number of bug reports have been proposed. If you have any other suggestions, please send them to me. An interesting look at the number of bugs reported against release can be seen at //tinyurl.com/3mbrine for all versions since 11.2. The decrease in bugs against the Final makes it look as if we are doing something right. Of course, all statistics are lies!

Our final item of discussion was planning our next Open Bugs Day, which will be held on August 21, 2011 from 0:00 to 23:59 UTC. This date is 10 days after the scheduled release of 12.1 MS4. The emphasis will be on testing whether bugs reported for 11.4 are still in 12.1. They will be fixed if possible, or updated to reflect the fact that they still exist. All individuals interested in making 12.1 be an exceptionally good release are welcome. As we get closer to the date, more specific instructions will be posted. As usual, we will have special on-line tools to help you select a bug for investigation.

Our next IRC meeting will be at 17:00 UTC, July 25 on Channel #opensuse-testing on the Freenode IRC Network. irc://irc.freenode.net/opensuse-testing. We will discuss our experiences with MS3, now that it has been released.

Larry Finger: Testing Core Team Planning Open Bugs Day on August 21, 2011

The Testing Core Team is planning an Open Bugs Day, to be held on August 21, 2011 from 0:00 to 23:59 UTC - 10 days after the scheduled release of 12.1 MS4. The emphasis will be on testing whether bugs reported for 11.4 are still in 12.1. They will be fixed if possible, or updated to reflect the fact that they still exist. All individuals interested in making 12.1 be an exceptionally good release are welcome. As we get closer to the date, more specific instructions will be posted. As usual, we will have special on-line tools to help you select a bug for investigation. Coordination of the bug testing will be through the TCT’s IRC channel on the Freenode IRC Network. irc://irc.freenode.net/opensuse-testing. 

Header PictureTranslation Team

Header PictureIn the Community▲▼

People of openSUSE

    [People of
      openSUSE: Mihnea Dobrescu-Balaur](//news.opensuse.org/2011/07/05/people-of-opensuse-manu-gupta/)

Please introduce yourself!

Hello! My name is Mihnea and I’m a 19 year old student from Bucharest, Romania. (…)

Events & Meetings

Past

Upcoming

You can find more informations on other events at: openSUSE News/Events. - Local Events

openSUSE for your Ears

The openSUSE Weekly News are available as podcast in German. You can hear it or download it on //saigkill.homelinux.net/podcast.

Communication

Contributors

Header PictureNew/Updated Applications @ openSUSE▲▼

        [Richard Bos: Steampunk beautiful theme for KDM and ksplash](//lizards.opensuse.org/2011/07/17/steampunk-beautiful-theme-for-kdm-and-ksplash/)

I created packages for the nice KDM and ksplash theme Steampunk. For this theme a matching color scheme,wallpaper and mouse theme exist and those are packed in the same rpm. Youtube shows the theme in action for Kubuntu, the version in the rpm is distribution neutral. The rpm can be obtained from the home:rbos repository, I hope you enjoy the theme.

Bruno Friedmann: new package squidview available

squidview

squidview is one of the software, I’ve always build and installed on each squid proxy server I build for me or customers. It’s small, stable, and usefull. So it was a clear real nice candidate to be use to improve my obs and packager skiil.

I would like to thanks T1loc, yaloki, mrdocs, coolo, alin, and all others great packagers around, for helping and teaching me during the process.

Introduction

Squidview is an interactive console program which monitors and displays squid logs in a nice fashion, and may then go deeper with searching and reporting functions.

(If you don’t know what squid is or does this program is probably not for you.)

To use squidview you must at least have read access to squid’s access.log file. You may need to see your administrator for this. Squidview uses this text log file for all operations. It does not generate its own database for tasks.

homepage www.rillion.net/squidview (…)

Header PictureSecurity Updates▲▼

To view the security announcements in full, or to receive them as soon as they’re released, refer to the openSUSE Security Announce mailing list.

openSUSE-SU-2011:0762-1: critical: mariadb: Fixed missing innodb support after last update

Table 1. SUSE Security Announcement
Package: **mariadb**
Announcement ID: openSUSE-SU-2011:0762-1
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:06:05 +0200 (CEST)
Affected Products: openSUSE 11.4 openSUSE 11.3
Vulnerability Type: Fixed missing innodb support after last update

  [openSUSE-SU-2011:0788-1: important: bind: fixing remote Denial of Service
    (CVE-2011-2464)](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2011-07/msg00006.html)
Table 2. SUSE Security Announcement
Package: **bind**
Announcement ID: openSUSE-SU-2011:0788-1
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:06:51 +0200 (CEST)
Affected Products: openSUSE 11.4 openSUSE 11.3
Vulnerability Type: remote denial of service

  [openSUSE-SU-2011:0803-1: important: kvm](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2011-07/msg00008.html)
Table 3. SUSE Security Announcement
Package: **kvm**
Announcement ID: openSUSE-SU-2011:0803-1
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 05:08:14 +0200 (CEST)
Affected Products: openSUSE 11.4 openSUSE 11.3
Vulnerability Type: A privileged guest user could cause a buffer overflow inthe virtio subsystem of the host, therefore crashing theguest or potentially execute arbitrary code on the host(CVE-2011-2212, CVE-2011-2512).

Header PictureKernel Review▲▼

  [h-online/Chris von Eitzen/Real-time patches for the Linux kernel take a major step
    forward](//www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Real-time-patches-for-the-Linux-kernel-take-a-major-step-forward-1282492.html)

Thomas Gleixner has released the first test version of a real-time (RT) Linux kernel based on a current release candidate of Linux kernel version 3.0; having been slightly delayed, version 3.0 is due to be released any day now. With version 3.0-rc7-rt0, the developers have taken the biggest step towards a modern basis for the RT kernel, a kernel that is chiefly maintained by Gleixner and several other developers – the current stable kernel with real-time capabilities is still based on the Linux 2.6.33 series, which Greg Kroah-Hartman has continued to maintain specifically for the RT developers. (…)

Linus Torvalds: Linux 3.0 release

So there it is. Gone are the 2.6. days, and 3.0 is out.

This obviously also opens the merge window for the next kernel, whichwill be 3.1. The stable team will take the third digit, so 3.0.1 willbe the first stable release based on 3.0.

As already mentioned several times, there are no special landmarkfeatures or incompatibilities related to the version number change,it’s simply a way to drop an inconvenient numbering system in honor oftwenty years of Linux. In fact, the 3.0 merge window was calmer thanmost, and apart from some excitement from RCU I’d have called itreally smooth. Which is not to say that there may not be bugs, but ifanything, there are hopefully fewer than usual, rather than the normal”.0” problems. (…)

h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: What’s new in Linux 3.0

The transition to the Linux kernel’s ‘third decade’ sees numerous changes to the Btrfs filesystem. The kernel now includes all the major components needed to host guest systems under Xen and includes many new and revised drivers.

Linus Torvalds and his collaborators have taken just two months to complete the latest kernel. The most notable change, however, is cosmetic rather than technical – the transition from version 2.6.39 to 3.0. This not been taken as a cue to insert major changes, however, and the new kernel is in fact a perfectly normal version increment, following the pattern set for the 2.6 series.

New features in Linux 3.0 include the addition of a storage backend for Xen, which means that the kernel now contains all the major components required to run as Dom0 – the merger of Xen support appeared tantalisingly close six years ago, but it has taken until now for it to actually happen. There have also been a number of changes to the Btrfs filesystem and to graphics drivers. Kernel developers have as ever also added several new drivers and have improved many existing drivers. (…)

Linus Torvalds: Linux 3.0 Delayed for Late Breaking Patch

Why do we always find the subtle bugs just before a release?

Looks like I won’t be releasing 3.0 today, just because Hugh found this incredibly subtle pathname lookup bug. We have a patch, we understand the problem, and it looks ObviouslyCorrect(tm), but I don’t think I want to release 3.0 just a couple of hours after applying it.

Of course, the bug is so hard to see that Hugh needs weeks to reproduce it even with his stress test, so we could just ignore it and backport the fix later. But I really hate making releases with known issues even if it’s almost certainly a “nobody will ever hit this in practice” issue

.Oh well.

Linus Torvalds: Note on Linux 3.0 and the 3.1 merge window

As everybody knows by now, not only did I do an -rc7 last week insteadof releasing 3.0 (due to some worries about the RCU code), but I endedup also not doing the 3.0 on Monday because of a pathname lookup bugand then some more RCU issues.

Anyway, those should all be resolved and the fixes merged now, and I’mnot really all that nervous about the pathname lookup issue - I thinkthat got nailed, and the patch for that was literally just moving asingle line (and adding a comment).

The RCU issues worries me a bit, but everything says it’s all good,and the biggest issues were with the new RCU_BOOST feature that reallyneither defaults to on, nor is suggested right now. So I think we’reok, and I’m planning on doing 3.0 tomorrow. (…)

Rares Aioanei: kernel weekly news – 23.07.2011

Rares gives his weekly Kernel Review.

Header PictureTips and Tricks▲▼

For Desktop Users

    [Unixmen/M. Zinoune: How to make your own 20th Century Fox and LIONSGATE intro with
      Blender 2.5 in 5 min](//www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/1823-how-to-make-your-own-20th-century-fox-and-lionsgate-intro-with-blender-25-)

This is an easy tutorial on how to make your own 20th Century Fox and  LIONSGATE styled intro using Blender 2.5. It is very easy you just need to donwload the templates blender and follow the instructions, it shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes to edit it.  To do this, you need to have Blender 2.5 or above installed in your system, if you are an ubuntu or LinuxMint  user, you can install the latest release of blender using PPA from this link. (…)

    [Linux.com/Nathan Willis: Screencasting Stars of the Linux World](//www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/470411:screencasting-stars-of-the-linux-world)

Are you still taking screenshots? That is sooo last decade. Today if you want to showcase your application, your gaming skills, or even your astonishing new desktop wallpaper collection, you need a screen recorder (or screencasting tool) to capture full-motion video and audio of your desktop. You’ll find several solid options, but which one works best for you depends a lot on the type of content you need to capture, and what you intend to do with it.For starters, the output produced by the tool varies considerably. Some alternatives give you a wide choice of video and audio codecs, others just one. But if that one (say, Flash) is the one you need, producing it directly is much quicker than having to save an intermediary file and crank it through a video editor. It also may be important to select just a portion of the screen rather than your whole display, or to choose a specific frame-rate (high for games, low for bandwidth-saving demos). Finally, there are always special features that vary between utilities, such as whether or not they can capture OpenGL content or be started remotely by script. (…)

Editors Note: Both recordMyDesktop and Istanbul are available via OBS.

For Commandline/Script Newbies

    [Carlos
      Gonçalves: SSH connection automation](//cgoncalves.blogspot.com/2011/07/ssh-connection-automation.html)

Part of my daily routine envolves accessing and managing a considered amount of remote servers through the SSH protocol. I use screen a lot to ease the job by having a couple of windows opened on each server, so avoiding multiple connections to the same server. By using screen not only helps me grouping server windows altogether in one console window/tab but also is a time saver in those days when network connection is not in its glory days allowing me to reattach it and carrying on being productive (sighs). (…)

    [Juan Valencia: Split and merge files from the command line](//www.jveweb.net/en/archives/2011/06/split-and-merge-files-from-the-command-line.html)

Although some file archivers offer us the option of split the files, this can be easily accomplished with two commands: split and cat. (…)

    [Vladimir Paskov: Using the rpm command –
      part1](//paskov.biz/blog/?p=724)

RPM is a package management system widely used in various GNU/Linux distributions such as: openSUSE, RedHat, CentOS and Fedora. All this distributions provides various package management tools build around librpm (This library allows programs to make use of a rpm database or rpm packages without using the rpm command ) or making direct use of the rpm command. Examples of this includes: zypper – openSUSE package management tool andyum – Fedora and Red Hat package management tool. This tools provides easy to use functionality for installing, removing, searching, repository management etc, but they lack some functionality provided by the rpm command such as listing the contents of a package, finding what package provides some file etc.

This article will show you how you can use the rpm command to preform various package management task , such as installing, removing, querying the rpm database, etc…

For Developers and Programmers

    [Robert Knight: Qt
      Inspector](//kdemonkey.blogspot.com/2011/07/qt-inspector.html)

Whilst debugging a widget layout problem a few days ago, I was looking around for a tool to view the structure of a Qt application without having to recompile it, or in other words, Firebug / Web Inspector for Qt widgets.  I found the KSpy tool in the KDE repositories which is in need of some love and there are a variety of tools to aid in runtime debugging and modification of QML but not much in the way of tools for QWidget-based interfaces.  Please let me know in the comments if I missed any.

I have put together a simple tool called Qt Inspector.

Python4Kids/Brendan Scott: Tkinter tinkering (Graphical User Interfaces)

Man     Shut up! (It goes quiet next door) That’s better.He walks to a side wall and hangs his club on a hook beneath big old-fashioned art-nouveau sign clearly labelled `The Burlington Wall-banger’. He goes across to bed and gets in. In the bed are a party of four Japanese businessmen in suits with lapel badges, two lady American tourists with rain hats and cameras, three other moustached English gentlemen in pyjamas, four Tour De France riders, three Swedish businessmen, and Winston Churchill.

So far we have been dealing with a command line interface for working with our Python programs.  While command lines are good for a lot of things, they’re usually pretty bad for interfacing with a general user of the program who doesn’t know how the various pieces work.  What we are going to look at now is a different way of presenting the program to a user (and probably a way that you are more familiar with) – GUIs.   GUI stands for “Graphical User Interface”. (…)

Wazi/Juliet Kemp: Tips for using Vim as an IDE

Vim isn’t just a great editor; it’s also a hugely flexible, configurable, and extendable application. You can even set up Vim as an integrated development environment (IDE), giving you all the advantages of a dedicated text editor together with the ability to check syntax, jump between tags, autocomplete, and do all the other useful things you get from a modern IDE. These Vim tips and tricks will get you editing like a pro. (…)

net.tutsplus.com/Charlie Somerville: How to Build a Shortlink App with Ruby and Redis

In this tutorial, we’ll be building a quick shortlink web app with Ruby, the Sinatra web framework, and theRedis database. By the conclusion of this tutorial, you’ll end up with a dead simple, high performance shortlink webapp that’s super easy to scale. (…)

For System Administrators

    [Linux.com/Jack Wallen: Weekend Project: Keep Out Repeat Offenders with Fail2ban on
      Linux](//www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/469597-weekend-project-keep-out-repeat-offenders-with-fail2ban-on-linux)

Tired of automated attacks on your systems? Want to beef up security a bit by denying would-be attackers a third or fourth chance? Then you need Fail2ban. Fail2ban watches logs and then bans IP addresses, based on too many password failures, by updating the firewall rules. Specific rules can be defined by the user and multiple log files can be monitored. This weekend, let’s get started on improving security with Fail2ban. (…)

Editors Note: Fail2ban packages for openSUSE are available from OBS

Linux.com/Carla Schroder: Who and What Is On My Network? Probing Your Network with Linux

In Whose Fault is it When Your Internet Dies? Troubleshooting Networks with Linux we learned some basic network troubleshooting commands. Today we’re going to explore the fine fun world of network discovery and find out who is on our network without ever leaving our comfortable chairs.

Header PicturePlanet SUSE▲▼

  [Holger Hetterich: Halfway on the road to SMB Traffic Analyzer 1.2.6 …](//holger123.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/halfway-on-the-road-to-smb-traffic-analyzer-1-2-6/)

… is a point in time where I think it makes sense to show off a few of the things we are working on. While we will introduce deep changes to the database this time, and are working on a way to establish integrated version control for all components of SMB Traffic Analyzer, we will also have some features that simply rock for end users.

Such as Benjamin Brunner of the development team has taken the search function to a new level by creating a simple way to fuzzy search your full Samba network: (…)

Header PictureOn the Web▲▼

Announcements

    [Intel, Collabora and SUSE to be main sponsors of the Desktop Summit](//dot.kde.org/2011/07/19/intel-collabora-and-suse-be-main-sponsors-desktop-summit)

We are pleased to announce that the Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin will be supported by Intel as the Platinum sponsor. The event organizers also welcome Collabora and SUSE as Gold partners, and are delighted with the community spirit of these generous corporate partners. Mirko Boehm, lead organizer of the Desktop Summit, said: ”Their support is essential for the Desktop Summit’s efforts to bring together Free Software developers from all around the world to work in a collaborative spirit on the next generation desktop technology.” (…)

Reports

    [Michael Gapczynski (MTGap): Testers needed for sharing files with ownCloud](//blog.gapinthecloud.com/2011/07/21/gsoc-testers-needed-for-sharing-files-with-owncloud/)

I have good news this week. First, I’m still here because I passed the mid-term evaluation for Google Summer of Code. Thanks for passing me Robin. Second, I was successful in completing my goal last week and now have everything setup so others can start experimenting with sharing files.

Besides general bug fixing this past week I’ve also refactored OC_SHARE, which is the class that handles the database records of all shared files in ownCloud. It started to get a little messy and I was unhappy with the quality of code so I rewrote many of the functions and moved some of the error handling into OC_FILESTORAGE_SHARED where it should belong. I also commented all of the functions so other developers can use OC_SHARE in their own apps and understand what it is doing. I’ve also added two hooks to OC_SHARE: post_delete and post_rename. These are triggered by OC_FILESYSTEM when files are deleted, renamed, or moved. The database gets updated when these actions occur in order to avoid any missing shared items.

The backend for sharing is pretty much complete so I can now focus on the user interface for the rest of the summer. The only part that needs updating is the permissions system. I was having a difficult time deciding on what to do with permissions and ended up going with only read and write, without the ability to permanently delete files. I’ve changed my mind now and will expand the options to more specific permissions that you can assign users. I was worried before that this would make the user interface too complex, but I now believe I can still achieve simplicity with the user experience. (…)

    [ZDNet/Paula Rooney: SUSE Studio 1.2 ships, SUSE Linux chief to roll out full cloud
      strategy soon](//www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/suse-studio-12-ships-suse-linux-chief-to-roll-out-full-cloud-strategy-soon/9260)

The newly independent SUSE Linux unit unveiled the first leg of its cloud platform today: SUSE Studio Version 1.2.

The development platform, which has been on the market for two years, helps SUSE Linux customers build, update and manage applications. Version 1.2 allows customers to better build, update and manage applications across physical, virtual and cloud environments including public clouds as well as x86 and System Z mainframe systems.

In a recent interview, SUSE’s new chief, a 20-year Attachmate and Novell vet, said he is preparing to roll out a full-fledged cloud strategy for the No 2 Linux distribution, even as his on-the-job training continues. Top Linux distributor Red Hat has unveiled a comprehensive cloud strategy in recent months. (…)

    [Datamation/Sean Michael Kerner: SUSE Joins Xamarin for Mono](//www.datamation.com/open-source/suse-joins-xamarin-for-mono.html)

Mono isn’t dead, and SUSE isn’t giving up on it entirely either. Attachmate’s SUSE Linux division today officially announced a deal with startup Xamarin for support and ongoing development of Mono.

Xamarin is a company founded by former Novell employees including Nat Friedman and Mono founder Miguel de Icaza. The pair founded the company afterAttachmate laid off an undisclosed number of Mono developers in May, following their acquisition of Novell.

“What we’re announcing is that SUSE and Xamarin have entered into a partnering agreement, which will make sure that we are able to effectively support customers using Mono-based products,” Holger Dyroff VP Product Management at SUSE told InternetNews.com. “As part of the partnership we are granting Xamarin a broad intellectual property license.” (…)

    [ZDNet/Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Top Five Linux Contributor: Microsoft](//www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/top-five-linux-contributor-microsoft/9254)

Cats and dogs; apples and oranges; Linux and Microsoft. Two of these three things do not go together. Would you believe that Microsoft—yes Microsoft—was the fifth largest contributor to the soon to be released Linux 3.0 kernel? Believe it.

In a Linux Weekly News story, currently only available to subscribers, an analysis of Linux 3.0 contributors reveals that Microsoft was the fifth largest corporate contributer to Linux 3.0. While only 15h overall, that still puts Microsoft behind only Red Hat, Intel, Novell, and IBM in contributing new code to this version of Linux. (…)

digitizor.com/Ricky: Microsoft Makes A Video For Linux’s 20th Birthday

The Linux Foundation is celebrating 20 years of Linux and as a part of the celebration, they are accepting videos as part of a video contest. One of the video submission came form none other than Microsoft itself.

Reviews and Essays

    [ZDNet UK/Jack Clark: How Linux saved my computer from Windows Update](//www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/how-linux-saved-my-computer-from-windows-update-10023470/)

If it wasn’t for Linux, a Windows Update crash would have forced me to format my drive and reinstall everything. On Friday I got home from work, powered up my HP Pavilion DV6 6055ea laptop and watched as it promptly shut down to churn through Windows Update. It got 30 percent of the way through then the blue screen of death (BSOD) appeared.

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