Wiki source for CwN20060114
CookerWeeklyNews - January 2006 [ [[CwN20060114 in English]] ] - [ [[CwN20060114Fr en français]] ] - [ [[CwN20060114Es en espanol]] ] - [ [[CwN20060114De Deutsch]] ] -
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====Cooker ML Digest for January 2006====
===USB keys become root-read-only ?===
The first (?) discussion [1] about USB keys appeared in November, soon followed [2] by bug 19667 for NTFS USB Key mounted as root readonly. It appears again in January [3] USB key mounted automatically but with wrong permissions and for another user as well [4] leading to bugs 20379 & 20496 [5] & [6]. A user asks [7] whether root will remain or will it go back to mounted as user one day? A short answer [8] by Andrey Borzenkov : "Well, as it stands now, it is likely to remain broken for some time." and possible solutions involve KDE/Gnome + HAL and D-bus. Dick Gevers proposes [9] to add ivman as a service with chkconfig (tested with Gnome). Frederic Crozat explains [10] that the new version of HAL 0.5.6 can be uploaded when kernel 2.6.15 is available (as it is a pre-requisite) after a user comments that it could correct things automagically.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2005-11/msg00677.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2005-11/msg00766.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00205.php
* [4] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01801.php
* [5] http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=20379
* [6] http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=20496
* [7] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01791.php
* [8] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01816.php
* [9] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01833.php
* [10] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-02/msg00321.php
===One idea to improve installation...===
A user suggests to download available updates BEFORE the packages installation [1]: it should have made its way to IdeasForMandrivaLinux2007. Even though it received the classical objections of chicken and egg problem (with internet connection necessary when installing). Authentication is another thing as well to take into account. It is suggested as well more interesting documentation to read while installing or even a game (frozen bubble ?).
Well anyone interested in these features ? Then enter the bug and update the wiki page [2] by linking to the thread, then bring new pros against cons so that it is made real !
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01648.php
* [2] http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/IdeasForMandrivaLinux2007
===Many mailing-list problems...===
People get unsubscribed possibly because a too strict policy is applied to the list : multiple mail server, multiple sympa servers, mail silently ignored, silent unsubscribe at first mail error. Some humour and answers [1] at first then a test leading to a long thread [2] but at the beginning of the year [3], no real solution identified :-(
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00925.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00890.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00673.php
===Miscellaneous===
Some people overlook or forget [1] that there is no "updates media" for packages in cooker: main / contrib receive directly new packages.
Maybe gnash can be a free replacement for Flashplayer ? Based on swfGames, provides plugin and application to run flash documents.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01578.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01201.php
Wine suffers too from WMF (proprietary data format for videos) security hole (patch provided), it's suggested that wine be moved to contrib to benefit from versions upgrades instead of security-updates only, which is not accepted. Then comes a discussion of how wine has become now suficiently mature to be easy to use, even for newbies.
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01230.php
Hibernate could be used for laptops' suspend mode [1]: gnome-power-manager uses HAL that calls the helpers coherently (/usr/sbin/hal-system-power-*) , this framework is suficiently good that it should be supported, hibernate being one example. Another thread [2] goes in deep detail about modular IDE and hibernation/resume, giving a how-to initiate/resume manually easily (with echo -n 3:2 > /sys/power/resume). Backports for KDE are identified as necessary [3] and may be done to get suspend/resume to work correctly.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01219.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00665.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00853.php
AMD K6-2 processors still suffer in 2006.1 from choices of compilation optimisations [1], a faulty package should be identified and bug reported upstream to be taken into account by developers (rather than only by packagers). Austin Acton ends up proposing solution once discussion has calmed down a little : make a policy that people agree with and a proposal is made to identify packages with mmx-processor for example. Michael Scherer finds the same issue raised on fedora [2] and rhl [3] mailing-list. Gwenole Beauchesne reminds that you can build i686+sse binaries but place them in */lib/sse/. If you use i686(w/cmov)+mmx, place them in */lib/i686/mmx. etc.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00061.php
* [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/rpm-list/2002-May/msg00257.html
* [3] http://listman.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2004-December/msg00098.html
Parallel init - also called Pinit - may bring some more improvements in the boot process [1], thanks to the fact that most of the initscripts containing parallel initialization headers have been converted [2] to use LSB headers (see [3] Linux Standard Base specification)
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00000.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01073.php
* [3] http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/
Shorewall is polluting syslog, making it unusable and a user wonders [1] if shorewall could have it's own logfile? Then a bug is identified [2] in shorewall setup through drakfirewall (should make its way in 2007 enhancements). Two enhancements are proposed [3] so that when you switch between profiles (which means you change from one network setup to another), so your firewall configuration and proxy settings probably change too : the proposal is to add /etc/shorewall/* and /etc/urpmi/proxy.cfg to the file /etc/network/list by default.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01327.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00915.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01022.php
An initial question [1] about purpose of /incoming, then unmaintained packages, leads to a question about the life-cycle of packages and how one can adopt [2] a package whose maintainer has not time to keep it up to date.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00995.php
* [2] http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/ContributerHowto
Mozilla firefox 1.5 and dependencies : It usually takes a week to rebuild all packages requiring it, as there are many dependancies and it may break many things [1]. To get an evaluation of it, just run urpmf --requires firefox | sed 's/:.*/ /'| grep -v mozilla-firefox |wc -l # to list / count the number of packages currently depending on firefox.
For example [2], avidemux needs in fact Spidermonkey javascript engine from mozilla, which is found in Firefox packages : Isn't it possible to make a real library based install ? It didn't worked, or it wasn't maintainable as is confirmed by Frederic Crozat [3] who takes the opportunity to remind [4] that using bugzilla is easier to track bugs encountered on the latest firefox 1.5 package.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00876.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00965.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00971.php
* [4] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00942.php
Some tips [1] to add device types to diskdrake, with some programming in detect_devices.pm, devices.pm & partition_table.pm
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00653.php
SElinux support is dropped by Mandriva [1]: rsbac is preferred as it does not requires changes to userland stuff and requires less work than SElinux to work out of the box ndiswrapper userspace package [2] can only be updated in sync with the kernel, as the kernel module is packaged in the kernel package and the version of the module has to match the version of the userspace tools.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00906.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00604.php
Some intricacies of rpmsync are explained to prevent local-mirroring of debug packages. The solution is: rpmsync --exclude-from=/path/to/filename (because the script changes directories, you should give an absolute path to the exclude.lst file just to be safe).
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00724.php
----
====Cooker ML Digest for January 2006====
===USB keys become root-read-only ?===
The first (?) discussion [1] about USB keys appeared in November, soon followed [2] by bug 19667 for NTFS USB Key mounted as root readonly. It appears again in January [3] USB key mounted automatically but with wrong permissions and for another user as well [4] leading to bugs 20379 & 20496 [5] & [6]. A user asks [7] whether root will remain or will it go back to mounted as user one day? A short answer [8] by Andrey Borzenkov : "Well, as it stands now, it is likely to remain broken for some time." and possible solutions involve KDE/Gnome + HAL and D-bus. Dick Gevers proposes [9] to add ivman as a service with chkconfig (tested with Gnome). Frederic Crozat explains [10] that the new version of HAL 0.5.6 can be uploaded when kernel 2.6.15 is available (as it is a pre-requisite) after a user comments that it could correct things automagically.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2005-11/msg00677.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2005-11/msg00766.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00205.php
* [4] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01801.php
* [5] http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=20379
* [6] http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=20496
* [7] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01791.php
* [8] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01816.php
* [9] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01833.php
* [10] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-02/msg00321.php
===One idea to improve installation...===
A user suggests to download available updates BEFORE the packages installation [1]: it should have made its way to IdeasForMandrivaLinux2007. Even though it received the classical objections of chicken and egg problem (with internet connection necessary when installing). Authentication is another thing as well to take into account. It is suggested as well more interesting documentation to read while installing or even a game (frozen bubble ?).
Well anyone interested in these features ? Then enter the bug and update the wiki page [2] by linking to the thread, then bring new pros against cons so that it is made real !
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01648.php
* [2] http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/IdeasForMandrivaLinux2007
===Many mailing-list problems...===
People get unsubscribed possibly because a too strict policy is applied to the list : multiple mail server, multiple sympa servers, mail silently ignored, silent unsubscribe at first mail error. Some humour and answers [1] at first then a test leading to a long thread [2] but at the beginning of the year [3], no real solution identified :-(
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00925.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00890.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00673.php
===Miscellaneous===
Some people overlook or forget [1] that there is no "updates media" for packages in cooker: main / contrib receive directly new packages.
Maybe gnash can be a free replacement for Flashplayer ? Based on swfGames, provides plugin and application to run flash documents.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01578.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01201.php
Wine suffers too from WMF (proprietary data format for videos) security hole (patch provided), it's suggested that wine be moved to contrib to benefit from versions upgrades instead of security-updates only, which is not accepted. Then comes a discussion of how wine has become now suficiently mature to be easy to use, even for newbies.
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01230.php
Hibernate could be used for laptops' suspend mode [1]: gnome-power-manager uses HAL that calls the helpers coherently (/usr/sbin/hal-system-power-*) , this framework is suficiently good that it should be supported, hibernate being one example. Another thread [2] goes in deep detail about modular IDE and hibernation/resume, giving a how-to initiate/resume manually easily (with echo -n 3:2 > /sys/power/resume). Backports for KDE are identified as necessary [3] and may be done to get suspend/resume to work correctly.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01219.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00665.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00853.php
AMD K6-2 processors still suffer in 2006.1 from choices of compilation optimisations [1], a faulty package should be identified and bug reported upstream to be taken into account by developers (rather than only by packagers). Austin Acton ends up proposing solution once discussion has calmed down a little : make a policy that people agree with and a proposal is made to identify packages with mmx-processor for example. Michael Scherer finds the same issue raised on fedora [2] and rhl [3] mailing-list. Gwenole Beauchesne reminds that you can build i686+sse binaries but place them in */lib/sse/. If you use i686(w/cmov)+mmx, place them in */lib/i686/mmx. etc.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00061.php
* [2] http://www.redhat.com/archives/rpm-list/2002-May/msg00257.html
* [3] http://listman.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2004-December/msg00098.html
Parallel init - also called Pinit - may bring some more improvements in the boot process [1], thanks to the fact that most of the initscripts containing parallel initialization headers have been converted [2] to use LSB headers (see [3] Linux Standard Base specification)
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00000.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01073.php
* [3] http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/
Shorewall is polluting syslog, making it unusable and a user wonders [1] if shorewall could have it's own logfile? Then a bug is identified [2] in shorewall setup through drakfirewall (should make its way in 2007 enhancements). Two enhancements are proposed [3] so that when you switch between profiles (which means you change from one network setup to another), so your firewall configuration and proxy settings probably change too : the proposal is to add /etc/shorewall/* and /etc/urpmi/proxy.cfg to the file /etc/network/list by default.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01327.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00915.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg01022.php
An initial question [1] about purpose of /incoming, then unmaintained packages, leads to a question about the life-cycle of packages and how one can adopt [2] a package whose maintainer has not time to keep it up to date.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00995.php
* [2] http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/ContributerHowto
Mozilla firefox 1.5 and dependencies : It usually takes a week to rebuild all packages requiring it, as there are many dependancies and it may break many things [1]. To get an evaluation of it, just run urpmf --requires firefox | sed 's/:.*/ /'| grep -v mozilla-firefox |wc -l # to list / count the number of packages currently depending on firefox.
For example [2], avidemux needs in fact Spidermonkey javascript engine from mozilla, which is found in Firefox packages : Isn't it possible to make a real library based install ? It didn't worked, or it wasn't maintainable as is confirmed by Frederic Crozat [3] who takes the opportunity to remind [4] that using bugzilla is easier to track bugs encountered on the latest firefox 1.5 package.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00876.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00965.php
* [3] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00971.php
* [4] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00942.php
Some tips [1] to add device types to diskdrake, with some programming in detect_devices.pm, devices.pm & partition_table.pm
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00653.php
SElinux support is dropped by Mandriva [1]: rsbac is preferred as it does not requires changes to userland stuff and requires less work than SElinux to work out of the box ndiswrapper userspace package [2] can only be updated in sync with the kernel, as the kernel module is packaged in the kernel package and the version of the module has to match the version of the userspace tools.
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00906.php
* [2] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00604.php
Some intricacies of rpmsync are explained to prevent local-mirroring of debug packages. The solution is: rpmsync --exclude-from=/path/to/filename (because the script changes directories, you should give an absolute path to the exclude.lst file just to be safe).
* [1] http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-01/msg00724.php
