From:	 Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>
To:	 Debian News Channel <debian-news@lists.debian.org>
Subject: Debian Weekly News - March 27th, 2002
Date:	 Wed, 27 Mar 2002 19:52:17 +0100

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/13/
Debian Weekly News - March 27th, 2002
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to this year's thirteenth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter
for the Debian community.

Daemon Outages During Upgrade. Adrian Bridgett [1]reported a drawback
of Debian, in his eyes. Before an upgrade daemons will be stopped,
then the package gets upgraded, and finally they are restarted. On
fast machines you won't notice the outage normally, but on slow
machines there's a certain amount time where the daemon in question is
not running. Adam Heath [2]explained that daemons have to be stopped
before an upgrade, since start-stop-daemon checks the binary on the
disk.

 1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0203/msg00707.html
 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0203/msg00822.html

Packages Still Located in Potato. Otto Wyss [3]published a list of
packages whose files still reside in the potato directory of the
Debian archive. Before releasing Woody, somebody probably needs to
check if they are suitable for release and request their removal if
not. Some packages may not even be required anymore.

 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0203/msg01548.html

Crypto Software in the Main Archive. Anthony Towns finally
[4]announced that cryptographic software is permitted to be uploaded
to the main archive of Debian. Some time ago (January 2000?) the US
government decided that cryptographic software was actually already
available outside the US and that it wouldn't matter too much if the
controls were relaxed. A specialized group, consisting of Debian
developers and lawyers, have prepared [5]legal advice for this.
Please see Anthony's article for details.

 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0203/msg00019.html
 5. http://www.debian.org/legal/cryptoinmain

Preparing Another Stable Revision. In another quixotic attempt, Joey
is [6]working on an update to the stable Debian version (alias 2.2).
The list of packages contains no less than 24 security uploads and
seven important updates currently. The plan is to get this revision
out at the beginning of April. People should comment to [7]Joey
directly if they disagree.

 6. http://master.debian.org/~joey/2.2r6/
 7. mailto:joey@debian.org

New IceWM Maintainer Required. Jérôme Marant [8]told us that the
IceWM package does not have any active upstream developers anymore.
What a pity for such a nice window-manager. Since the Debian
maintainer for IceWM doesn't want to become the upstream maintainer
new people are required to keep this piece of software alive. It's
been added to the [9]list of unmaintained free software.

 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0203/msg01816.html
 9. http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org/

Project Leader Election. The Debian Project Secretary [10]started the
first call for votes for the Debian project leader election 2002.
Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC on April 16th, 2002. Manoj
Srivastava rewrote the voting machinery which works a little bit
[11]differently to before. Apparently, there were some [12]problems
encountered, which have now been resolved.

 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0203/msg00216.html
 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0203/msg00217.html
 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote-0203/msg00218.html

New Boot-Floppies 3.0.21. The boot-floppies team has [13]released a
new set of Woody boot-floppies. Robert Bihlmeyer submitted a
[14]success report afterwards. This set of boot-floppies is not
available for alpha, arm, s390 and sparc yet. Porters need to take
care of these architectures.

 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0203/msg01059.html
 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0203/msg01566.html

Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.

 * [15]listar -- Buffer overflow.
 * [16]mtr -- Buffer overflow.

 15. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-123
 16. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-124

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
Debian archive recently or contain important updates.

 * [17]bochs -- IA-32 (x86) PC emulator.
 * [18]dcgui -- Direct Connect Graphical client (peer-based
   file-sharing).
 * [19]devscripts -- Scripts to make the life of a Debian Package
   Maintainer easier.
 * [20]googlizer -- Utility to search Google via your GNOME
   menu/panel.
 * [21]gpaint -- GNU Paint - a small, easy to use paint program for
   Gnome.
 * [22]iptstate -- Top-like state for netfilter/iptables.
 * [23]ksimus -- KDE tool for simulating electrical circuits.
 * [24]kwave -- A sound editor for KDE2.
 * [25]snoopy -- An execve() wrapper and logger.
 * [26]yencode -- Powerful yEnc decoder/encoder.

 17. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/bochs.html
 18. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/dcgui.html
 19. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/devscripts.html
 20. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/googlizer.html
 21. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gpaint.html
 22. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/iptstate.html
 23. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/ksimus.html
 24. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/kwave.html
 25. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/snoopy.html
 26. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/yencode.html

Orphaned Packages. 4 packages were orphaned this week and require a
new maintainer. This makes a total of 97 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [27]WNPP pages for the full list,
and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you
plan to take over a package.

 27. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

 * [28]fidelio -- Gnome hotline client. ([29]Bug#139347)
 * [30]giflib -- Shared library for GIF images. ([31]Bug#139387)
 * [32]musicbrainz -- Indexes both digital compressed audio and CDs.
   ([33]Bug#139345)
 * [34]srecord -- Manipulate EPROM load files. ([35]Bug#138940)

 28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/fidelio.html
 29. http://bugs.debian.org/139347
 30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/giflib3g.html
 31. http://bugs.debian.org/139387
 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libmusicbrainz1.html
 33. http://bugs.debian.org/139345
 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/srecord.html
 35. http://bugs.debian.org/138940

Got News? Please inform us about everything that is happening in the
Debian community. We are always looking for any interesting stories to
add, especially new items by volunteer writers, and topics we tend to
miss. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at
[36]dwn@debian.org.

 36. mailto:dwn@debian.org


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-news-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org