Ubuntu Traffic #10 -- 2004-10-29
Benj. Mako Hill
mako at canonical.com
Thu Nov 4 16:38:36 CST 2004
Ubuntu Traffic #10 For 2004/10/29
By Benjamin Mako Hill
Youc an find the preferred format (HTML) here:
http://people.ubuntulinux.org/~mako/ubuntu-traffic/u20041029_10.html
Table Of Contents
• Standard Format
• Text Format
• XML Source
• Introduction
• Mailing List Stats For This Week
• Threads Covered
1. 2004/10/19� -� 2004/10/23 (8 posts) Ubuntu Marketing
2. 2004/10/22� -� 2004/10/29 (60 posts) Wiki Update
3. 2004/10/22� -� 2004/10/23 (2 posts) New Documentation List
4. 2004/10/23� -� 2004/10/26 (7 posts) Hoary Kickoff Meeting
5. 2004/10/26� -� 2004/10/27 (2 posts) Community Council Meeting
6. 2004/10/27 (1 post) Warty Live CD Released
7. 2004/10/28� -� 2004/10/29 (10 posts) Meet the Hoary Hedgehog
8. 2004/10/27� -� 2004/10/29 (10 posts) Security Advisories
Introduction
Welcome to the tenth edition of Ubuntu Traffic. This issue covers the week of
October 23 - 29 in 2004. Ubuntu Traffic summarizes the most important mailing
list and IRC discussions involving the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.
You can sign up for any of the mailing lists summarized here at http://
lists.ubuntu.com. You can also join the IRC discussion summarized here in #
ubuntu and other channels on the Freenode network: irc.freenode.net. Please
join in and maybe you be featured in the next traffic!
First, the following bits and pieces didn't get a full story but are worth
mentioning:
• Lucas Nussbaum posted to ubuntu-devel asking if anyone was interested in a
Sparc64 port of Ubuntu and, perhaps more importantly, if people were
interested in helping work on making one happen. He got one positive reply
so a few more volunteers would probably be greatly appreciated.
• There was some interested discussion over on the doc list about the
potential creation of an Ubuntu magazine. It's not entirely clear what the
overlap would be with Ubuntu Traffic and if the two projects could just be
merged. There was a separate discussion of a tips and tricks newsletter. I
think there is certainly some good area for collaboration here.
• Sivan Green announced a meeting dedicated to talking about documentation
issues. The location for info is here: http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/
DocumentationTeamMeeting
• Jeff Waugh posted a link to http://www.ubuntu-art.org saying, "Interesting!
I think you have to register to get into the download section though."I'll
second that. It looks great.
• David Eriksson sent a plug for SynCE, a dedicated Windows CE <->
synchronization tool similar to ActiveSync on Windows. Because of a number
of limitations he listed, it's not super well-suited to Ubuntu and he
appealed to Ubuntu developers to help eliminate these and raise its support
to the Ubuntu "Just Work" level.
Mailing List Stats For This Week
We looked at 1755 posts in 8096K.
There were 466 different contributors. 227 posted more than once. 175 posted
last week too.
The top posters of the week were:
• 145 posts in 520K by Matt Zimmerman
• 62 posts in 212K by sparkes
• 57 posts in 232K by John Hornbeck
• 51 posts in 195K by Jeff Waugh
• 46 posts in 198K by Ben Edwards
• Full Stats
�
1. Ubuntu Marketing
2004/10/19� -� 2004/10/23 (8 posts) Subject: "On Ubuntu Marketing"
People: Josh Kress,� John Levin
The Sounder list saw one thread of serious length discussing the marketing of
Ubuntu. Josh Kress started it out saying: "This is mainly intended as the
beginning of a discussion on how the community and Canonical can work together
to promote Ubuntu. Stay in contact with press, volunteer for booths at fairs/
expos, official standpoints of Canonical etc."
The main areas Josh covered included the creation of:
• Core Marketing Team (2-3 members), ideally with at least one member of
Canonical at every time.
• Local Marketing Teams (2-3 members), for each country (or each state in big
countries)
He also posted these general ideas:
□ Discussions should take place on mailing list, either on an extra list
or on sounder with a [marketing] tag in the subject, according to the
[doc] tag on the devel list.
□ Of course, teams can or even must be bigger. However each team, may it
be local or core, should have those 2-3 team-leaders.
□ Try to create professional, decent marketing, focusing on the
strengths: the project, the philosophy of Ubuntu, the people.
His proposal went into much more detail that I'm covering here. You can check
it out on the sounder list. John Levin followed up to say, "I'd like to know
what Canonical, as a company, are planning by way of marketing. I presume they
have some ideas and a press officer of some sort?"
Short answer: No formal press officer yet. I am not the authoritative voice of
Canonical but I am personally very interested and have been active in promoting
Ubuntu (although I tend to like to stay away from the term marketing). My a
process perspective, it's correct to continue this discussion on either the
devel or sounder list with a special tag. Whena more organized structure
because necessary, we can go with that. Other interested parties should look at
sounder and ubuntu-devel.
This has come up before at a community council meeting and we were waiting to
see where the energy would take us. Lets make something happen in terms of an
organized effort and a real push toward the promotion of Ubuntu.
�
2. Wiki Update
2004/10/22� -� 2004/10/29 (60 posts) Subject: "wiki plans"
People: Mark Shuttleworth
Folks that use the wiki frequently may have noticed some serious work on the
wiki and some major changes. Mark Shuttleworth gave the devel list the update
which explained the status with the new wiki (we're switching) plus the
justifications behind this and the drawbacks that this will stick us with:
Congrats to the doc team for getting off to such a fast start, it's amazing
to see it blossoming like this.
Moin was a quickstart option for us, but I'd like to make the wiki a more
central part of the web site, so we are going to be switching to A wiki
that is integrated with the website as of Monday.
The wiki will support the following formats:
□ native HTML
□ ReStructuredText (a very nice format)
□ StructuredText (not great)
□ Moin without tables
We will have to convert the existing tables in the (fantastic) hardware
section of the wiki to HTML to ReStructuredText.
The new wiki has some glitches and gotchas that we will fund development
on, but which we'll have to live with for now:
□ it doesn't have the same level of revision control
□ doesn't do Moin tables (but does native HTML and ReStructuredText
tables)
□ preview mode is very new, so you pretty much need to get it right first
time
But it has some big advantages:
□ it's fully integrated with the web site search, so searching on the
main site will find relevant wiki pages
□ it inherits the full skin of the main web site
Not only that, but we will be able to give permissions for the doc team to
edit FAQ's, HOWTOs, and other web site documents directly.
The new wiki will be at http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/
Steve Alexander (stevea) is responsible for the wiki code update on Monday,
Brad Bollenbach (bradb) will be handling the actual execution of that.
Louise McCance Price (lulu) has overall responsibility for the web site.
We'll try to big-bang it on Monday so that it Just Works, and at the same
time send out a mail telling folks how to log in to the site to work on the
wiki.
It will need registering in the new site, but we promise that's the last
registration you'll ever need to work with the web site or any of our
infrastructure, as we finally have a robust backend for it all.
In case you missed it, the key link there is http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/
The new wiki runs on zwiki. Alexander Poslavsky pointed out the following
useful links on the documentation list:
• http://zwiki.org/FrontPage
• http://zwiki.org/QuickReference#1 (shortcuts!)
• http://zwiki.org/FAQs (DTML scripting)
Simon Michael posted a nice review of the different types of markup available
saying:
• structured text - zwiki's "native type" - the one we use on zwiki.org, so
most tested and works most smoothly with other zwiki features (comments
etc.). Simple, forgiving, allows HTML when you need it, and for my money
the most bang for your buck.
• moin markup - very new in zwiki and will still have issues. Most of your
pages use this at the moment. Moin extended link syntax, macros etc. not
yet supported.
• restructured text - apparently popular, well specified, good for generating
pdfs etc, but fussy and complicated.
• html - plain HTML plus zwiki links. Uses the epoz wysiwyg html editor if
possible; most of your browsers should show this.
Your mileage will vary; I prefer ReST for example. That said, there's going to
be a lot of benefit to standardizing a bit. Mark Shuttleworth has said that he
still wants the default language to be Moin markup. For longer documents that
the Documentation Team are working on, I think the choice will be to go with
something a little more geared toward producing larger docs like ReST.
�
3. New Documentation List
2004/10/22� -� 2004/10/23 (2 posts) Subject: "ubuntu-doc mailing list"
Both John Hornbeck and Matt Zimmerman announced the create of a new
Documentation list. The list is for discussing documentation and related
topics. You can sign up at http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc
The new list should be used instead of ubuntu-devel with [doc] tags.
The list has been off to a great start logging in more messages this week than
the entire devel and sounder lists combined!
�
4. Hoary Kickoff Meeting
2004/10/23� -� 2004/10/26 (7 posts) Subject: "Hoary kickoff meeting, Monday
2004-10-25 1600UTC"
Matt Zimmerman announced a meeting to kick off the development of Ubuntu's next
release: the Hoary Hedgehog. The meeting was a marathon running over 4 hours.
It took me almost as long to go through the log and summarize it but it's done
and linked here for your convenience. It's a great read for people that are
curious as to what Hoary Hedgehog will look like:
• Meeting Summary: http://people.ubuntulinux.org/~mako/
hoary_kickoff-20041025-summary.html
• Meeting Log: http://people.ubuntulinux.org/~mako/
hoary_kickoff-20041025-log.html
Look for status updates from Matt Zimmerman. These will also be included in
Traffic.
�
5. Community Council Meeting
2004/10/26� -� 2004/10/27 (2 posts) Subject: "Community Council Meeting --
2004-10-26"
People: Benjamin Mako Hill
Another important Ubuntu meeting this week was the Community Council meeting
which touched on a number of issues. I (Benjamin Mako Hill) wrote up and posted
the summary to the lists. That message is here:
Today Community Council held its third meeting. I've written up a summary
you can read at the link below. The agenda covered:
□ Discussion of proactive security
□ Mentoring new developers:
□ Formation of the Masters of the Universe
□ Future of the Documentation Team; appointing a team leader:
You can read it here:
□ Summary: http://people.ubuntulinux.org/~mako/cc-summary-20041026.html
□ Full Log: http://people.ubuntulinux.org/~mako/
cc-meeting_log-20041026.txt
�
6. Warty Live CD Released
2004/10/27 (1 post) Subject: "Warty Live CD Released"
People: LaMont Jones
LaMont Jones posted an announcement of the release of the Warty Live CD:
Ubuntu 4.10 -- Warty Warthog -- released on October 20th and has gotten
great feedback so far. The Ubuntu Team is now pleased to announce that the
companion Warty Live CD is released as well!
The Live CD contains a snapshot of everything in the Ubuntu 4.10 but in a
bootable trial form. It will allow you to try out Ubuntu before installing
it, without repartitioning or overwriting any existing software or data. To
use it, just place it in the drive and reboot your computer. It also
contains a small collection of Free and Open Source software shipped in
Ubuntu that you can install on your Windows system.
The Live CD is only available for Intel and compatible "i386" processors.
You can get it from one of the follow locations:
□ Bittorrent: http://releases.ubuntu.com/warty/
warty-release-live-i386.iso.torrent
□ Direct download: http://releases.ubuntu.com/warty/
warty-release-live-i386.iso
�
7. Meet the Hoary Hedgehog
2004/10/28� -� 2004/10/29 (10 posts) Subject: "Meet the Hoary Hedgehog"
People: Matt Zimmerman,� John Hornbeck
Matt Zimmerman stepped forward to make an announcement on ubuntu-announce this
week:
In the past few weeks, users who have been following the mailing lists have
heard developers saying "no" to the introduction of new features with
comments like, "we'll put that on the list for Hoary." The Ubuntu
development team is pleased to announce that, while still in an immature
stage, "Hoary" has arrived.
With Ubuntu 4.10 'Warty Warthog' safely and successfully out the door, the
Ubuntu developers have begun doing work on our next release, codenamed the
'Hoary Hedgehog.' With our six-month release schedule, it is due to be
released in April of 2005.
For those of you who have missed the daily churn of new packages, Hoary is
for you. It will include daily updates from Debian's development branch
(sid), with Ubuntu additions and customizations where appropriate. For the
next six months, it is within Hoary that Ubuntu development will be taking
place and where the latest version of Ubuntu packages will always be
available.
PLEASE NOTE: While up-to-date, this development snapshot is not (and not
meant to be) a stable distribution. Bugs and breakage, while they will be
kept under control wherever possible, are a reality in such a system.
Pre-release versions of Hoary are not encouraged for anyone needing a
stable system or anyone without who is not comfortable running into
occasional breakage. It is recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who
want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.
To install Hoary, you may edit your /etc/apt/sources.list configuration
file to replace all instances of 'warty' with 'hoary.' You can then go
about updating and upgrading to Hoary with apt, aptitude or synaptic as you
would normally.
Users who decide to upgrade to Hoary may be interested in signing up on the
Ubuntu development mailing list to track major problems and discussion in
the development process if they have not done so already. They may also be
interested submitting any bugs they find in the Ubuntu Bugzilla: https://
bugzilla.ubuntu.com/
Finally, there is also now a mailing list that will include details all of
the changes made in hoary (just like 'warty-changes' did for Warty). You
can subscribe to it here: http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/
hoary-changes
John Hornbeck followed up onto -devel to say, " I am about to make a HOWTO for
starting to use hoary. I would like to see what a fresh hoary sources.list
would look like, I have a ton of crap in mine and don't want to try to sort it
out due to fear of messing myself up. :-) So if someone could post what it
would look like."
Matt Zimmerman posted the following strong warning to John and the answer to
the question:
If you do this, please ensure that it includes appropriate language (as in
the Hoary announcement I sent out) which clearly warns users about what
they are going to do.
If you are going to lower the barrier to entry for Hoary, it is essential
that the uninitiated know exactly what they are signing up for.
A fresh hoary sources.list from a hypothetical fresh hoary install would
look something like this:
## Uncomment the following two lines to fetch updated software from the network
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
# deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe
# deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted
i.e., exactly the same as the Warty one, with the string 'warty' replaced
with 'hoary'.
�
8. Security Advisories
2004/10/27� -� 2004/10/29 (10 posts) Subject: "[USN-3-1] GhostScript utility
script vulnerabilities"
This week saw ten security advisories for Ubuntu. Thanks to Martin Pitt who
sent the advisories and to everyone that had a hand if finding the bugs and
creating the patches. Here's the list:
GhostScript Utility Script Vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-3-1 (CAN-2004-0967)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages are: gs-common
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
0.3.6ubuntu1.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect
the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000002.html
gettext Vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-5-1 (CAN-2004-0966)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: gettext
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
0.14.1-2ubuntu0.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to
effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000003.html
postgresql Contributed Script Vulnerability
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-6-1 (CAN-2004-0977)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: postgresql-contrib
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
7.4.5-3ubuntu0.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to effect
the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000004.html
Imagemagick Vulnerability
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-7-1 (CAN-2004-0981)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: libmagick6
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
5:6.0.2.5-1ubuntu1.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to
effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000011.html
GAIM Vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-8-1 (CAN-2004-0891)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: gaim
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
1:1.0.0-1ubuntu1.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to
effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000006.html
Standard C Library Script Vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-4-1 (CAN-2004-0968)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: libc6
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
2.3.2.ds1-13ubuntu2.2. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to
effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000009.html
tetex-bin Vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-9-1 (CAN-2004-0888)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: tetex-bin
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
2.0.2-21ubuntu0.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to
effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000010.html
libgd2 Vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-11-1 (CAN-2004-0990)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: libgd2-xpm, libgd2-noxpm
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected packages to version
2.0.23-2ubuntu0.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to
effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000013.html
ppp Denial Of Service
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-12-1 (http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/379450)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: ppp
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected packages to version
2.4.2+20040428-2ubuntu6.2. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient
to effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000012.html
XML Library Vulnerabilities
Ubuntu Security Notice USN-10-1 (CAN-2004-0981)
Affected Releases: Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Affected Packages: libxml2
Fix: The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version
2.6.11-3ubuntu1.1. In general, a standard system upgrade is sufficient to
effect the necessary changes.
More Information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-security-announce/
2004-October/000014.html
�
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