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 ANNOUNCEMENTS

Notice: dnssec-conf updates in Fedora 11 and 12

Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader, announced that the Fedora Project recently had been issued an update to the dnssec-conf package, to fix an issue that had been caused Fedora 11 and 12 systems using BIND (named) to put an inordinately heavy load on RIPE nameservers. He also mentioned, "However, this update has been found to break some BIND configurations as seen in this bug:

The problem occurs in these packages:

* dnssec-conf-1.21-3.fc11
* dnssec-conf-1.21-7.fc12

To determine if your system is affected, run the following command:

* rpm -q dnssec-conf

If one of the above package descriptors does not appear, your system is not affected and you may safely ignore this message. If you are affected, please continue reading.

• Workaround

If you have already accepted this update, you can downgrade the package and start the failed BIND (named) daemon again using these commands:

* su -c 'yum downgrade dnssec-conf'
* su -c 'service named start'

• Solution

System owners running BIND name servers on Fedora 11 or 12 systems are advised not to accept the specific dnssec-conf pacakge updates listed above. There are several ways to avoid these specific updates.

• If you use the PackageKit graphical client, or another graphical

 client, deselect the dnssec-conf update in the dialog that lists
 package updates.

• If you use the yum command-line client, use this command to exclude

 dnssec-conf from the list of packages to be updated:

 su -c 'yum --exclude=dnssec-conf update'

• Remediation

A new update is being prepared to address this problem for Fedora 11 and 12 users, and will be pushed to our mirrors as soon as possible. Users who are not running BIND nameservers (named) on their Fedora 11 and 12 can safely disregard this notice. When the new updates are pushed, a follow-up announcement will be made here. At that time, affected system owners can safely accept the replacement updates."

FEDORA DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Reminder: Fedora 13 Feature Freeze in Six Days (2010-02-09)

John Poelstra announced, "A friendly reminder that this coming Tuesday, February 9, 2010, is FEATURE FREEZE.". While letting everyone know about the Feature Freeze, he mentioned that Feature Freeze means that all accepted feature for the release are significantly "feature complete", ready for testing, and have a current status.

He also mentioned, "If you have any questions about what this means, please ask now.

Features which are not significantly feature complete at Feature Freeze will be accepted on an exception basis by FESCo or deferred to Fedora 14.

p.s. If you have questions about our release processes or milestones please reply to this email or contact me directly and I will be glad to assist. A summary of the Fedora 13 milestones and exception process is here: "

Outage Notification

Outage Notification - 2010-02-04 23:00 UTC

Mike McGrath announced, "There will be an outage starting at 2010-02-04 23:00 UTC, which will last approximately 1 hour.

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

or run: date -d '2010-02-04 23:00 UTC'

Affected Services:

• Bodhi
• Buildsystem
• CVS / Source Control
• Database
• Fedora Account System
• Fedora Community
• Fedora Hosted
• Fedora Package Database
• Mail
• Mirror System
• Translation Services
• Websites

Unaffected Services:

• DNS
• Fedora People
• Fedora Talk
• Torrent

Ticket Link:

Reason for Outage: Network team is working on stuff in PHX2. This is a "there may be an outage" type deal so it's quite possible this will have no impact on us.

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

Outage Notification - 2010-02-10 17:00 UTC

Stephen John Smoogen announced, "There will be an outage starting at 2010-02-10 17:00 UTC, which will last approximately X hours. Outages will be small but noticble forsmall segments as systems are updated and rebooted.

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

How to or run: date -d '2010-02-10 17:00 UTC'

Affected Services:

All systems will be rebooted, but services should only be impacted in small increments as we take down things in a loop.

Ticket Link:

Reason for Outage: Monthly updates and security updates.

Contact Information: Please join #fedora-admin in irc.freenode.net or respond to this email to track the status of this outage. Note that the Fedora Infrastructure team does not run bugzilla.redhat.com, though."

FEDORA EVENTS

Fedora events are the 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 (December 2009 to February 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.