FWN/Beats/Announcements

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, including general announcements, development announcements and Events.

Contributing Writer: Rashadul Islam

Fedora Announcement News

Package update notifications fixed

New Fedora Project Leader Jared K. Smith on Fri Jul 30 19:56:24 UTC 2010 announced his first announcement in the announcement list the follows:

"Recent updates to Fedora introduced two unexpected bugs, either of which results in users no longer seeing notifications of or being able to apply new updates.

Updates to the relevant packages have been shipped to fix these issues, but users will not receive notifications for them unless they first apply the pending fixed updates using the "yum" tool. (Please note that these issues should only affect Fedora 13. Fedora 12 does not appear to be affected.) Packages fixing these issues were pushed to the Fedora software repositories around July 22, 2010. Users who have done a manual "yum update" since that push may have already received these fixes.

To fix the issue, please:

1. Open a Terminal (Applications > System Tools > Terminal)

2. Type either of the following commands and enter the password for the root user when prompted.

a. To choose to apply all pending updates now: su -c "yum -y --skip-broken update"

b. To choose to apply updates fixing only the specific issues mentioned above: su -c "yum -y --skip-broken update gnome-packagekit selinux-policy"

3. Log out and and then log back in, or reboot your computer.

Note that logout/login will complete the fix for the notification issue. However, if you applied all updates in the previous step, you may need to reboot for other updates that require it.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and we are working on further improvements to our testing and quality assurance processes to avoid this and similar problems in the future.

If you have any further questions or require additional assistance, please refer to for ways to get additional help from the Fedora community.

Outage: SSL Cert - 2010-07-31 12:00 UTC

Mike McGrath on Sat Jul 31 12:59:07 UTC 2010 announced ,

"There will be an outage starting at 2010-07-31 12:00 UTC, which will last approximately 3 hours?

To convert UTC to your local time, take a look at or run:

date -d '2010-07-31 12:00 UTC'

Reason for outage

Our wildcard cert expired. Yes we've monitored this in the past. No we don't know why we weren't alerted this time, researching. The new purchase is in the works but we've run into some logistical issues. Will have it replaced as soon as possible.

Affected Services

• Bodhi -
• Docs -
• Email system
• Fedora Account System -
• Fedora Community -
• Main Website -
• Mirror List -
• Mirror Manager -
• Package Database -
• Spins -
• Start -
• Translation Services -
• Wiki -

Unaffected Services

• BFO -
• Buildsystem -
• CVS / Source Control
• DNS - ns1.fedoraproject.org, ns2.fedoraproject.org</ref>
• Fedora Hosted -
• Fedora People -
• Fedora Talk -
• Smolt -
• Torrent -

Contact Information

Please join #fedora-admin in irc.freenode.net or respond to this email to track the status of this outage."

Announcing FUDCon Tempe 2011 -- Jan. 29-31, 2011

Jared K. Smith announced,

"In the past, the planning and execution of FUDCon events was handled completely by a few Red Hat employees. This seemed out of alignment with the principles of Fedora, so in late January of this year, we kicked off an effort to fix that issue. We wanted to increase the effectiveness and transparency of FUDCon, and our other premier Fedora events. So we assembled a Fedora Activity Day specifically to change the way that we plan FUDCon.

In accordance with those changes, we opened a bid process for FUDCon events. The process encourages Fedora contributors to propose locations for the FUDCon event in their region, pursuant to their commitment to help with the logistics of the event. The first event that went through this lightweight process is the upcoming FUDCon in Zurich, Switzerland, which happens September 17-19, and is being planned by long-time Fedora contributors including Sandro Mathys and Marcus Moeller. In April of this year, we opened bids for the next North American FUDCon event.

As a result of that process, and thanks to the continuing work of Fedora contributors Robyn Bergeron and Ryan Rix, our next community-powered, North American FUDCon event will be held in Tempe, Arizona from January 29-31, 2011, on the Arizona State University campus. We'd also like to thank Adam McCullough from the ASU LUG and the faculty of the ASU School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering (CIDSE) for their invaluable assistance thus far.

• * *

FUDCon events are held around the globe each year. Our most recent event was held just a couple weeks ago in Santiago, Chile, where contributors from around the Latin American region gathered to exchange information, share ideas, and collaborate on various aspects of Fedora. In the past we've held other FUDCons in diverse places like Berlin, Porto Alegre, Brno, and Boston.

Our last North American FUDCon was in Toronto, Canada. The year previous it was in Boston, MA. We always encourage feedback from the contributors, and the one answer that popped up more often than any other was, "Let's go somewhere warm this coming winter!" So we're pleased our fellow community members in a warmer part of the USA took up that challenge, and stepped forward to work on organizing the next FUDCon.

With that warmer climate in winter, of course, comes higher demand for travel lodging where people vacation. So as with previous FUDCons, we'll once again provide travel subsidies for contributors. Furthermore, our sponsor Red Hat is making an even larger commitment to these subsidies than in previous years, to offset the higher lodging costs. We all want to do our part to help everyone stay together at the conference, for the best possible collaborative experience after hours -- because collaboration is what FUDCon is all about!

• * *

As in the past, we encourage our community members to get involved by offering talks and other sessions of interest. The content provided by the attendees is what makes FUDCon events so special and exciting. Over the next few days planners will be setting up more information at the event wiki page:

We'll have more details appearing soon there, including but not limited to:

• A schedule that makes it easier to see more of the talks you enjoy and value

• Lightning talks and hackfest pitches to get attendees excited and motivated to collaborate

• The ever popular FUDPub event!

We hope you'll join us for the best North American FUDCon yet. If you want to get involved and help plan the details of the event, you're welcome to join our planning list:"

Fedora Development News

Software translation

Noriko announced, " Dear package maintainers

This is kind reminder that it is F14 Software String Freeze today 03-Aug. Please update your POT with latest strings. All translators will be working hard to update your package translation.

To ensure high quality translations in the final release, please be aware Software String Freeze Policy . If you think that you need to break the string freeze, then please ask for approval from the Fedora Localization Team prior to breaking the freeze ."

Fedora Events

Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

Upcoming Events (June 2010 - August 2010)

• North America (NA)
• Central & South America (LATAM)
• Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
• India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events

Additional information

• Reimbursements -- reimbursement guidelines.
• Budget -- budget for the current quarter (as distributed by FAMSCo).
• Sponsorship -- how decisions are made to subsidize travel by community members.
• Organization -- event organization, budget information, and regional responsibility.
• Event reports -- guidelines and suggestions.
• LinuxEvents -- a collection of calendars of Linux events.