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Fedora News Updates #11

by Colin Charles

For the week of: Thursday, May 6 2004

Available at: http://fedoranews.org/colin/fnu/issue11.shtml

This is the eleventh issue of the Fedora News Updates. Some newsworthy things with regards to external development have cropped up, it being picked up by some news feeds out there. Of highlights this time around is the message from the Fedora Project Leader, as well as from the Fedora Legacy Project Leader.


A message from the Project Leader

For the past few months, the main task on the ever-lengthy Fedora to-do list, is to open up some form of public repository for contributors to the Fedora Project.

The main issue here is that we're looking for a usable source code management (SCM) system, that can scale well for a large project like ours. Please bear with us, as we would like to get this right on the first try. As you can imagine, changing the internal build system and code management repositories have massive repercussions on our development process and breakages can falter our Red Hat Enterprise Linux deliverables.

Thanks for understanding.

Cristian Gafton
Fedora Project Leader

Fedora Core 2 test3 released

The third and final test release of Fedora Core 2 has been released, with the release message at: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-April/msg02693.html. Yes, SELinux is now disabled by default, meaning Fedora Core 2 will not have it enabled by default. A few more interesting fixes like CD1 not booting and new translations have made it into this test release.

It should be noted that the FC2 Final freeze date is approaching - all packages should in theory be built by the end of the working day on the 6th of May.

A message from the Fedora Legacy Lead

We have a resurgence of interest in the project, most likely due to RHL9 becoming EOL.  We also have a new dedicated download server in place, and as DNS updates users will be directed to that new server.  There are a bunch of mirror requests that have been submitted over the last month or so, that we have not processed due to bandwidth issues, these will now be processed.  Our mirror system will continue to grow. 

There are a large number of pending updates, and newly created bug reports with packages up for initial QA.  We can use all the help we can get to QA these packages so that we can push them into updates-testing, and finally updates.  Some of these include RHL9 packages.  Some very helpful folks at Red Hat have offered their help with keeping some packages updated, which is going to turn out to be a huge service to the project. 

Finally, there has been some talk of making Fedora Legacy a non-profit organization.  Initial reaction by some folks at Red Hat has been favorable, but Red Hat Legal has to get involved.  Who knows how long this will take, or which direction it will go, but I will continue to pursue this transition.

Jesse Keating
Fedora Legacy Project Leader

Dual-head AGP video cards that "just work"

So you're in the market for a new video card, and want to make sure all that money you spend doesn't go to waste - i.e. it will work flawlessly with Fedora. Matthew Polashek asked just that and there were some good recommendations:

Web cams that "just work"

Seems that another popular question popped up, with regards to webcams and which one's work with Fedora. Users have posted their experiences:

Taming the mailing lists

Sopwith sent out a mailing list reminder to all, to make sure people post to the correct lists. Reiterating this more is important - end-users don't want to be filling random cruft on the developer only mailing lists, or assuming they're testing a release, on the Core lists. User discretion is advised, and remember to always search the mailing list archives! These and many more, came out of the "Taming the mailing lists?" thread.

Two new useful scripts

Brian Bober has written a script that has proven useful in logging AVC error messages that SELinux tends to spew out. He has instructions as well as the script at: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-April/msg02503.html.

Chris Kloiber has written fedorasync.sh (http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-May/msg00227.html), which is meant to allow the creation of DVD ISO's on a daily basis from the development tree of Fedora.

FedoraNEWS.ORG gets translated

Thomas Chung has kindly pointed out that the FedoraNEWS.ORG website currently has a site translation, available in French. It should also be noted that there are many more translations available, including Russian, Italian, Spanish, and German.

Some new documentation

Ow Mun Heng has been working on a QoS/TrafficShaping (Shorewall) HOWTO (http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-April/msg04811.html), while Homer adds some improvements for the next HOWTO.

Dave Pawson has been working on the Connecting to a Palm document, which is a step-by-step guide for getting syncing working.

Fedora Core 2 test3 notes

Looking ahead

It's time to plan for Fedora Core 3 and its goals! Of worthy mention are:
If you have a goal, or an aim, the rest of the developers are bound to enjoy hearing it. We're nearly approaching FC2, so hang in there for another release.

Software

Evolution, next generation

David Malcolm has taken over maintenance of the Evolution packages, and the 1.5.7 packages for Fedora are available for download. Read his notes as to how to add it to your regular feed: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-April/msg04011.html.

Project Utopia

John (J5) Palmieri has got experimental Project Utopia packages available at: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-April/msg01072.html. This is a yum repository.

Statistics for sendmail

Philip Chapman mentions he's tried isoqlog, sendmail_stats and mrtg (http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-April/msg04073.html), and then gets pointed out to Awstats or even epylog.

Cooperative bug isolation project

A joint effort between UC Berkeley and Stanford to bring debugging to the Internet age! They're targeting some specific packages in Fedora Core 1, and the notes are here: http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-May/msg00825.html.

Thank you for reading this issue of Fedora News Updates. Think there's some news snippet you'd like to contribute to Fedora News Updates? Send e-mail to colin@fedoranews.org.

This issue of Fedora News Updates brought to you by Colin Charles.