From Fedora Project Wiki

< FWN

Fedora Weekly News Issue 223

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 223[1] for the week ending April 28, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

In Project announcements, a Fedora Community Gaming session this Friday/Saturday, correction on Fedora 11 EOL, and details on the latest round of Fedora elections. In news from the Planet Fedora, details on updates to MobileManager, a look at KDE 4 on Fedora, and jQuery for educational gaming. Marketing provides coverage of recent discussion on keyword optimization to the main Fedora Project web site and a Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier IRC Classroom. Fedora In the News returns with recent coverage of Fedora in the trade press and blogs over the past week, while the Ambassadors beat features an event report from FLISoL of Santo Andre, Brazil. In QA news, details on last week's Test Day on Anaconda (the Fedora installer) storage support, a proposal on new release criterion stating that it must be possible to install a system in such a way that it is immediately remotely accessible and Fedora 13 testing activities. In Artwork team news, details on final art push for Fedora 13, while Security Advisories returns after a week away, providing security-related packages released for Fedora 11, 12 and 13. Our issue wraps up with updates from the Fedora Summer Coding activities. Enjoy FWN 223!

Unfortunately, as Kamisamanou Burgess is busy with study, the audio version of FWN - FAWN - is on hold until early May. You can still listen to old issues[2] on the Internet Archive, though. If anyone is interested in helping spread the load of FAWN production, please contact us!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[3]. We welcome reader feedback: fedora-news-list@redhat.com

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Adam Williamson

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, including general announcements[1], selected announcements to the Fedora user list[2], development announcements[3] and Events[4].

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Fedora Announcement News

Fedora Community Gaming

Bruno Wolff III announced[1]:

A suggestion was made to have game sessions for the community playing games available in Fedora. A pilot project has been started and the first session will be this Friday (or Saturday depending on timezone).

For background you can find the original request at[2]

A wiki page for this project is at[3]

The first session will start this Friday at 9pm EDT (0100 UTC Saturday). We will be playing bzflag and attempting to use Fedora Talk (x2010) as a social channel, as chatting socially by typing, while playing bzflag seems hard to do.

bzflag is a pretty light, chaotic game that allows for easy dropping in and out. The session will last at least 2 hours, but will go longer if people actually show up and want to keep playing. games1.wolff.to will be set up as a private server, but you will just be able to connect without any special password. Before we start playing we will be using the #fedora-games IRC channel to communicate in case there are problems. If you think it's likely you'll show up you can add your name in the wiki so we know how many people to expect.

We will be running a Wesnoth session the week after, using the in-game chat for socializing. That's a much different game and will probably appeal to a different group of people.

After that, it depends on the response both of players and people willing to sponsor games. At least initially we want to try a lot of different stuff. The first two being at the same time has to do with my schedule. I would hope that other people run game sessions at different times in order to be more accessible to other people.

Recent Bugzilla Comment Concerning Fedora 11 EOL

John Poelstra announced[1]:

"All open Fedora 11 bugs recently received a comment warning about the upcoming end of life for Fedora 11. This email serves to correct part of that notification.

Due to an error on my part this warning was sent out earlier than it should have been. The statement "Approximately 30 (thirty) days from now Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 11..." is incorrect. The end of life (EOL) for Fedora 11 will be June 18, 2010, which is thirty days after the release of Fedora 13, currently scheduled for May 18, 2010. When Fedora 11 reaches EOL at that time, bugs open for Fedora 11 will be closed as previously described.

For more information on Fedora's policy for maintenance of our releases, please refer to:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle#Maintenance_Schedule[2]

My apologies for any inconvenience or confusion this error may have caused.

John"

Upcoming Fedora IRC Classroom Sessions - 2010-04-26

Kevin Fenzi announced[1]

"The Fedora IRC Classroom has been quiet of late, but thats about to change! We have a number of great classes coming up:

Date and Time (UTC) Class topic and Instructor

27 April, 2010 at 19:00 UTC How to make life awesome for journalists - Joe Brockmeier

29 April, 2010 at 01:00 UTC How to test Fedora Updates - Kevin Fenzi

30 April, 2010 at 12:30 UTC (6:00 PM IST) A Short Tutorial On i18n Through gettext - Naveen Kumar

03 May, 2010 at 13:30 UTC (7:00 PM IST) Introductory workshop on GNU Autotools - Siddhesh Poyarekar

10 May, 2010 at 01:00 UTC Learn about exciting Fedora 13 Features - Kevin Fenzi

See the classroom page ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Classroom ) for more details and information on how to attend classes on IRC, or sign up to teach one!

Hope to see everyone there.

kevin"

Elections: Nominations open Sat 2010-04-24

Paul W. Frields announced[1],

“With a Fedora release coming soon, it's also time for Fedora Elections. Both the Fedora Project Board and the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) will have open seats during this election cycle.

Nominations for these seats open tomorrow, Saturday, April 24, 2010.

You can nominate yourself, or someone else. It's recommended if you intend to nominate someone else that you consult with that person first. The entire election schedule, and other important information for all nominees, is posted on the wiki's main Elections page[2], and the specific nomination pages for the Board[3] and FESCo[4]

You can also find more information about both these at their main wiki pages[5][6].

Please thoughtfully consider how you can best contribute to Fedora by serving on one of these important committees, or encourage someone you know who can make a difference to serve. Thank you!

-- Paul (25 days to Fedora 13!)

Fedora Development News

Outage: Buildsystem/koji - 2010-04-25 14:30 UTC

Mike McGrath announced[1]

There was an outage starting at 2010-04-25 14:30 UTC, which lasted approximately 1 hour.

To convert UTC to your local time, take a look at [2] or run:

date -d '2010-04-25 14:30 UTC'

Reason for outage:

db3, koji's primary database, was throwing read/write errors on it's underlying storage device. The RSA-II adapter was not showing anything was wrong. Not being able to log in I powercycled the host and it came back up on its own. We'll be keeping an eye on it.

Affected Services:

Unaffected Services:

Ticket Link:

https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/ticket/2118

Contact Information:

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

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 (March 2010 to May 2010)

  • North America (NA)[1]
  • Central & South America (LATAM) [2]
  • Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)[3]
  • India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)[4]

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events[1]

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.

Planet Fedora

In this section, we cover the highlights of Planet Fedora[1] - an aggregation of blogs from Fedora contributors worldwide.

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

General

Chris Tyler and students at Seneca have helped[1] get ARM rolling as a secondary architecture on Fedora. Meanwhile, Adam John Miller wants[2] Intel chips for mobile devices to continue to improve.

Dan Williams shared[3] some updates to ModemManager, a tool that can manage mobile (3G, etc...) connections under Linux.

Richard W.M. Jones examined[4] the concept of verifying a VM's integrity from the host (for example, using rpm -V). Richard also asked[5] "Should you ever have to reinstall VMs?"

And Richard released[6] Tech Talk PSE 1.0.

Karsten Wade described[7] how to use "The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of contributors", a community-written textbook on Open Source and communities.

Steven Moix posted[8] a summary of what it has been like to use KDE 4 on Fedora for the past six months.

Greg DeKoenigsberg suggested[9] ways to move education forward, including that "jQuery is the ideal language for educational games."

Marketing

In this section, we cover the happenings for Fedora Marketing Project from 2010-04-21 to 2010-04-27.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Neville A. Cross

Garland Binns opened this week with a suggestion for keyword optimization for our web site.[1] This was warmly welcomed. From Portugal, Nelson Marques did a comparison on YouTube search results for Fedora[2]. It was a good reflection on how some people do things for Fedora without even being part of the project.

We got back to the change from LiveCD to LiveDVD with a message form Jonathan Nalley[3]. He pointed out how this was seen by the news. This is actually a lack of consistency that we need to fix. News doesn't have to be dull, Mel Chua pointed out the winners of the "We're Linux" video contest hosted by Linux Fundation[4].

We had plenty of sprints and content done, some with the help of students at Allgheny. AS one example of this, Hannah Kowen gave the final touches to the BTRFS Feature Profile[5]. Kara Schiltz announced that Python Feature Profile is ready[6].

Gerard Braad is looking at how to get Chinese marketing[7]. He will be traveling and would like to improve the participation from the Chinese community and also see what the marketing team can do better for them.

Probably the most important thing for Marketing Team was the Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier IRC Classroom. Mel Chua posted the log for this Fedora Classroom at the list[8], This is part of an effort to build skill within the Marketing Team, and there are more classes to come.

Adam Williamson is becoming a valuable team member by helping as a bridge between QA team and Marketing team. He pointed out confusing news[9] regarding an Ubuntu memory leak issue, that may be misinterpreted as Red Hat/Fedora related. We should be informed and ready to clarify this. The other mail from Adam was asking for help promoting Test Day[10]. It is recommended that you take a look to his blog[11].

Fedora In the News

In this section, we cover news from the trade press and elsewhere that is re-posted to the Fedora Marketing list[1]

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

A Music Lover's Fedora Linux Workstation

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[2] a posting about using Fedora as a musician's workstation:

"We've got here our very first entry for "The $100.00 (USD) Coolest Linux Workspace Contest". It's from Mauricio, a Music Theory student. If he wins the contest, he says that he will be using the money to buy a USB mic for some serious music recording."

The full post is available[3]

Fedora 13 Beta: The Seen and (Troubling) Unseen (Datamation)

Jonathan Nalley posted[1] a link to two articles, one from Datamation[2] and another related post from the same author from LinuxPlanet[3].

Highlighting some of the new cloud storage options and other new features in Fedora 13, the author raises issues with the back-end commercial service options that two of these packages, Déjà Dup and Zarafa, can tie into. This prompted a discussion thread on the Fedora Marketing list, with several community members clarifying some of these issues from the Fedora Project's perspective, and also resulted in another post by Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier in OStatic[4] about linux commercialization and specifically referencing the Datamation post. Brockmeier's article concludes:

"Linux is evolving and becoming more suitable for mainstream users. Commercialization means more opportunity to expose a wider audience to free and open source software. It also means more people will be paid to produce more free and open source software. If that's off-putting for a minority contingent that can't abide "commercialization," then there's always OpenBSD..."

Fedora taps Zarafa open source groupware for 13 (ZDNet)

Kara Schlitz forwarded[1] a posting from ZDNet from 4/19/2010, which includes:

"Fedora’s selection of Zarafa as an open source groupware component in Fedora 13 is very interesting.

The beta of Fedora 13, code named “Goddard,” was made available on April 13. The final version is expected in mid May.

Red Hat sponsors the open source Linux project and has toyed with the idea of integrating email and calendaring capabilities into its Linux stack from time to time. Novell, of course, promotes its own GroupWise but also endorses other open source offerings for its Linux distribution."

The full post is available[2]

Ambassadors

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project[1].

Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero

Fedora at FLISoL of Santo Andre, Brazil

Claudio Penasio reports that he attended FLISoL of Santo André – SP Brazil on April 24. Claudio said the event had a Free Software atmosphere, and the crowd was engaged -- participating in lectures and other activities. Along with Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu were present. Fernando Silva helped with a Fedora installfest at the event.

Photos can be found here.

Claudio's blog report, in Portuguese, can be found here.

Campus Ambassadors up and running

The Fedora Project's Campus Ambassadors program is up and running, and is looking for participants. If you're a high school or college student who wants to help promote Fedora on your campus, this is the place for you.

For more information, visit https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Campus_Ambassadors

Let us know about your Fedora 13 activities

With the release of Fedora 13 Goddard right around the corner, Ambassadors are encouraged to hold release events. If you are planning to hold an event, let Fedora Weekly News know. Drop a line to lcafiero=at=fedoraproject-dot-org with the details and we'll get it in FWN.


QualityAssurance

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1]. For more information on the work of the QA team and how you can get involved, see the Joining page[2].

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

Test Days

Last week's Test Day[1] was on Anaconda (the Fedora installer) storage support[2]. The turnout was unfortunately low, perhaps due to the hardware requirements for testing, but nevertheless the few testers present managed to expose four bugs.

This week will see the final two Test Days of the Fedora 13 cycle. First up is Preupgrade Test Day[3] on Thursday 2010-04-29, followed by Xfce Test Day[4] on Friday 2010-04-30.

These are two juicy topics: preupgrade[5] is the recommended method for upgrading from one Fedora release to the next, and Xfce is one of the most popular 'alternate' Linux desktops, and has a very dedicated Fedora SIG[6] which works hard to provide a smooth experience and live spin, and has organized the Test Day to make sure the Fedora 13 Xfce experience is second to none.

As always, the Test Days will run all day in the #fedora-test-day channel on Freenode IRC. If you're not sure about IRC, read the guide or use WebIRC[7]. If you can't do the testing on the Test Day, you can still run through the tests and provide your results earlier or later. You can do the Xfce testing with a live image which will be provided on the Test Day page. Obviously this isn't possible for the preupgrade testing, but you can test it in a virtual machine if you don't want to (or can't) mess with your real Fedora installation.

If you would like to propose a main track Test Day for the Fedora 13 cycle, please contact the QA team via email or IRC, or file a ticket in QA Trac[8].

Update acceptance testing

At the weekly QA meeting[1], Adam Miller asked if a vote would be needed to move ahead with the proventesters policy he was drafting. Adam Williamson said votes were not normally needed and suggested just sending a final draft to the mailing list with a note that it would go into effect if there were no major objections. Adam Miller subsequently sent the final draft to the list[2], where Adam Williamson[3], Shmuel Siegel[4] and others suggested small amendments, which Adam Miller accepted[5].

Kamil Paral reported that the package update acceptance test plan[6] could be completed before the end of the Fedora 13 cycle, for automation and implementation in the Fedora 14 cycle. Kamil later posted a final call for comments[7] on the plan, to which James Laska[8] and Jesse Keating[9] provided detailed responses.

Remote accessibility release criterion proposal

Adam Williamson proposed[1] a new release criterion stating that it must be possible to install a system in such a way that it is immediately remotely accessible. This was in response to reports on the list that it was not possible to do this in Fedora 13, in contrast to previous releases, which was causing sysadmins dealing with remote machines some problems.

Fedora 11 end-of-life notification

John Poelstra announced[1] that he would soon send out the end-of-life notification for Fedora 11 on bugs reported against that release. Jason Tibbitts noted[2] that he had adjusted open package review requests filed against that release, so these would not erroneously receive notifications.

Fedora 13 testing

This week saw the second blocker bug review meeting[1] for the final release. The group reviewed all open blocker bugs with assistance from the development team; in general, progress is being made on all blockers and we don't foresee any major problems resolving them in time for release.

Al Dunsmuir reported[2] a crash in Firefox with the common Noscript extension when browsing the release notes, which he filed as a bug[3].

Joachim Backes reported[4] a problem booting to runlevel 3 with the echoing of login information: he had seen cases where the username was not echoed back to the screen when typed, but the password was (obviously, the behavior should be opposite). Steven I Usdansky confirmed[5] that he had seen a similar issue.

Artwork

In this section, we cover the Fedora Design Team[1].

Contributing Writer: Nicu Buculei

Gearing for Fedora 13

With only a few weeks left until the Fedora 13 release, the Design Team is producing the last missing pieces of artwork: Máirín Duffy proposed[1] a concept for the Anaconda banner which was well liked, then she followed [2] with a firstboot splash design which evolved[3] into a full spec[4].

Paul Frields invited[5] new contributors to try their hands at media art "Anyone willing to take a crack at the labels and sleeves? IIRC the labels are very easy to modify, because there's not much to do" and Alexander Smirnov started working on it[6].

At the same time, Martin Sourada took a step ahead and started[7] the page[8] for the next release, Fedora 14 "I know it's a little bit earlier, but I started the F14 Theme wiki page"

Security Advisories

In this section, we cover Security Advisories from fedora-package-announce. This week's beat covers the period April 14-27, 2010.

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce

Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco

Fedora 13 Security Advisories

Fedora 12 Security Advisories

Fedora 11 Security Advisories

Special topic: Fedora Summer Coding

This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora Summer 2010 Coding[1].

Contributing Writer: Karsten Wade

Students plan proposals while new ideas keep coming

As per the program schedule[1], students are working on research and communication with the community. The result of this work is the student proposal, due by 20 May 2010.

Meanwhile, sub-projects in the Fedora Project and the JBoss.org[2] communities continue to add to the project ideas page[3]. There are currently 20 project ideas, such as Copr[4]:

"Copr (Cool Other Package Repo) is a Fedora project to help make building and managing third party package repositories easy. Copr is being implemented this summer by Seth Vidal and Toshio Kuratomi. They would welcome help from interested students."

Other examples are improvements and new features for the Seam Framework[5], several KDE projects (netbook spin[6], fingerprint support[7], and usability recording tool[8]), and a proposal to integrate Beacon[9] with the Fedora Docs CMS for WYSIWYG editing of DocBook XML sources. The work to add DocBook XML editing support to Beacon was a project from the 2009 Google Summer of Code[10], and the student from that project is back as a mentor for this new project.

Search for sponsors continues

The search for sponsors continues, as the funding pool directly affects how many proposals can be funded.

Karsten Wade wrote[1], "If you work for or with an organization, business, foundation, non-profit, etc. that benefits from a better Fedora Project … consider if you have some budget to help fund a student proposal[2].