Re: libc6 (security) update does not restart system-services?

[GOTO Masanori]

At Sat, 19 Apr 2003 10:52:51 -0600,
Bob Proulx wrote:
> 
> [1  ]
> Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> > or use tools like "lsof" or my package of "memstat" to find loaded
> > and deleeted libraries.
> 
> I believe this process to be much to complicated to be used
> successfully in the general case.  You would need to match each
> running process back to a /etc/init.d restart methodology.  These
> frequently do not have a one to one mapping.  You could design a new
> methodology to be added to policy which packages with running daemons
> would need to register themselves to ensure a proper restart.  So much
> work would be needed to make this happen smoothly.

Well, it's hard to display package name.  However 

lsof | grep dpkg-new | awk '{print $1, $8}' | sort +0

make a list which describes what binary uses old libraries replaced by
dpkg.  To show more user friendly, it needs to remember that what
library files are replaced, though.

> > This is also good to do on a regular interval if you update your systems for
> > no security reasons:
> > 
> > - it will free memory and will make the filesystem get rid of open/deleted
> > files, which can cause problems like the inability to remount ro or messages
> > like "setting dtime of deleted inode" on fsck.
> 
> Except for the uptime wars (2 years 2 weeks!, between power outs here)
> I generally reboot servers monthly.  This has the added benefit that
> it also ensures that the servers will boot cleanly and an admin has
> not broken something with a manual tweak.

Well, this kind of precaution is better than to leave machines
alone...

Regards,
-- gotom

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Glenn Maynard]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 02:34:25PM +1000, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> What if the full statment was shown once on installation, but not every
> time the program is used, would that be an acceptable compromise to you ?

Again: this is the least of the problems; more important is 1: what are
the real distribution terms? (Do we have legal permission to remove this?
Most guessing says no.) and then 2: are these terms DFSG-free?

It's not completely obvious whether requiring that a page of sponsorship
information being shown on installation is DFSG-free; recent discussions
on d-legal about GFDL invariant sections makes me guess no.  It'd be a bad
idea to recommend a "solution" that would itself be DFSG-unfree.

This aside, it's very clear to me that responding to Hans is a complete
waste of time.  He's trolling.  If he's just going to keep ranting aimlessly,
I'd say Debian can only assume we're in violation of whatever the license
is, that whatever the license is is undistributable, nuke the package
and point people to a clearly free alternative (possibly written by far
more reasonable folks), XFS.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: libc6 (security) update does not restart system-services?

[Bob Proulx]

GOTO Masanori wrote:
> Well, it's hard to display package name.  However 
> 
> lsof | grep dpkg-new | awk '{print $1, $8}' | sort +0
> 
> make a list which describes what binary uses old libraries replaced by
> dpkg.  To show more user friendly, it needs to remember that what
> library files are replaced, though.

I think I see where you are going.  Something like this for libc?

  lsof | awk '$9 ~ /^\/lib\/libc-.*.so/{print$1, $9}'

And then warn the admin with a notice about those running programs?

But there are usually quite a few of them bound to libc.  Of the
difficult ones to restart automatically almost certainly every user
shell and every ssh session would be attached.  Those would need to be
killed which cannot be done automatically.

Bob


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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Hans Reiser]

Glenn McGrath wrote:
What if the full statment was shown once on installation, but not every
time the program is used, would that be an acceptable compromise to you ?
Glenn
 

Maybe, but not very many people run mkreiserfs frequently.   For most 
users, mkreiserfs is performed once on installation, or close enough to 
not matter a lot.

--
Hans

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Chris Cheney]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 09:40:50AM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
> Maybe, but not very many people run mkreiserfs frequently.   For most 
> users, mkreiserfs is performed once on installation, or close enough to 
> not matter a lot.

What about the fact that most installers don't even show the output of
mkfs.*?  I think the primary reason debian still does is because it
hasn't finished its gui installer but this will likely be done for d-i
eventually.

Chris

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Oleg Drokin]

Hello!

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 03:05:16PM -0400, Travis Crump wrote:
> You mean a bug report like 
> ?  Oh, wait... 
>  What if someone wanted to write a gtk frontend to mkreiserfs?  The 

Last time we spoke with EVMS folks about this kind of stuff, we agreed that 
they'd open
a pipe to mkreiserfs and then will show the mkreiserfs' output in separate 
window.
(in fact not only mkreiserfs's output, but output of all tools they run).

Flames to /dev/null.

And there are (were?) another set of tools for making/modifying reiserfs 
filesystems
(except that there is no fsck) called progsreiserfs. (not being developed 
anymore, I think, but it
works as is). Use that, if you like it more.

Bye,
Oleg

If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free then I will be honored to join Stallman and the FSF in the not free section of your distro

[Hans Reiser]

I find it unspeakably ingrateful to Stallman that some of you begrudge 
him his right to express his (discomforting to some) views to all who 
use his software, and to ensure that they are not removed by those suits 
who are discomforted.

As far as I am concerned, I have no desire to have ReiserFS distributed 
for free by anyone who removes the GNU manifesto or similar expressions 
from Stallman's work (or my own) and redistributes it.  It is simply a 
matter of respect that is due the author.

ReiserFS will be converting to the Gnu Free Doc License for its 
documentation. 

I look forward to the release of GPL V3 which will hopefully cover fair 
crediting of code as well as documentation, and stem this rising tide of 
plagiarism and political bowlderization by distros.

I will be happy to work with the FSF in recruiting other software 
authors to this task of stemming plagiarism and political bowlderization 
by distros before it becomes a bigger problem than it is now.

Hans

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free then I will be honored to join Stallman and the FSF in the not free section of your distro

[Russell Coker]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 16:08, Hans Reiser wrote:
> I find it unspeakably ingrateful to Stallman that some of you begrudge
> him his right to express his (discomforting to some) views to all who
> use his software, and to ensure that they are not removed by those suits
> who are discomforted.
>
> As far as I am concerned, I have no desire to have ReiserFS distributed
> for free by anyone who removes the GNU manifesto or similar expressions
> from Stallman's work (or my own) and redistributes it.  It is simply a
> matter of respect that is due the author.

Hans, you are going way off-track here.

No-one in the Debian project has any desire to deny correct attribution to the 
people who deserve it.

However there are technical issues.  When recovering a system you have a 
limited scroll-back buffer that you don't want to have needlessly overrun by 
such material.

When you choose to discuss the matter politely with the right people then I am 
sure that you will be able to determine a suitable solution that gives 
appropriate credit where due in the minimum amount of screen space.

If you find that it is impossible to reach an agreement then you can forward 
the relevant paragraphs of their messages where you believe that they are not 
being reasonable to the appropriate mailing lists and then we can determine 
who is correct and act accordingly.

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page

Recently orphaned packages

[Martin Michlmayr]

Here's a listing of packages I orphaned recently.  If you're
interested in any, check the bug report if the package is still
available and retitle the bug (see http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp
for instructions).

Bug#189528: O: ttfprint -- A utility to print Chinese text using truetype fonts
Bug#189529: O: ccf -- Chinese encodings (GB/Big5/HZ) conversion filter
Bug#189530: O: cedicttools -- Various tools to use with the CEDict data
Bug#189525: O: doc-linux-zh-s -- Linux HOWTOs and mini-HOWTOs in Simplified 
Chinese in HTML
Bug#189524: O: cedictb5 -- Chinese/English dictionary data file (Big5)
Bug#189523: O: cce -- Console Chinese Environment - display Chinese (GB) on 
console
Bug#189522: O: xautolock -- start a program if the X session is idle for some 
time
Bug#189526: O: lpkg -- Newton MessagePad PDA Package Loader
Bug#189527: O: zh-sgmltools -- A wrapper for SGMLtools to process Chinese
Bug#189531: O: cedictgb -- Chinese/English dictionary data file (GB)
Bug#189800: O: t1lib -- Type 1 font rasterizer library - runtime
Bug#189801: O: sphinx2 -- speech recognition library - default acoustic model
Bug#189809: O: ptknettools -- A selection of Internet service clients written 
in Perl/Tk
Bug#189810: O: slmon -- A simple S-Lang based system performance monitor
Bug#189813: O: csl -- Common Sound Layer
Bug#189819: O: wmcdplay -- A CD player based on ascd designed for WindowMaker
Bug#189818: O: bg5cc -- Big-5 wide-characters rectifier
Bug#189817: O: cxterm -- KS supporting files for CXterm
Bug#189820: O: glide -- development files for libglide3
Bug#189952: O: device3dfx -- Device driver source for 3Dfx boards for 2.2+ 
kernels
Bug#189816: O: bg5ps -- A utility to print Chinese Big5/GB documents using 
TrueType fonts

-- 
Martin Michlmayr
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Thomas Viehmann]

Hi Hans.

How about setting the "feelings towards Stallman" issue aside for a moment an
focusing on the problem of how Debian handles the credits in you program.

I'm not sure whether, for example, moving the Credits to sponsors from being
displayed by the programs themselves to the man page and / or the
usr/share/doc/reiserfsprogs directory would be an option for Debian. Also, a
note about where to find credits could be displayed upon invocation of the
reiserfs tools. Another option would be displaying it with --version.
The reason those were removed from the executable seems to be usability. (I.e.
no displaying a whole page when - as in most cases those tools are used -
working in a critical (fs corruption or similar) environment.

Also, if you would ask specifically to include files a, b, c from the source
tarball (and the README file seems to be obmitted in the packages by an honest
mistake - in fact, obmitting documentation files from the tarballs root
directory is all too common in Debian), I'm 100% certain, that this would be
done very soon.

If you don't want you tools to be not distributed without displaying these
credits in all invocations, you should also clearly state this. Then Debian
could decide what to make of it, but right know they have the problem that they
don't know what you want, other than a vage "you don't give proper credit".
Generally, Debian makes every effort (the developers, that is) to ensure that
Copyright is respected.

While I can understand that you're upset about the present reiserfs packages in
Debian, I have to say that neither your nor the Debian peoples' messages have
done much to resolve the issue.

Now, if you prefer to debate the issue Debian has with the Gnu FDL, that's OK,
too, but doing so by complaining "why are all you guys disrespecting Stallman"
in a that *could* have been about properly including credits for reiserfs tools
doesn't help at all.

Cheers

T.


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Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Jarno Elonen]

> (Hans Reiser wrote:)
> I look forward to the release of GPL V3 which will hopefully cover fair
> crediting of code as well as documentation, and stem this rising tide of
> plagiarism and political bowlderization by distros.

I think nobody here has anything against keeping all the credits in 
documentation or trying to take the credit for ReiserFS tools.
The problem now seems to be that:

  if the program outputs a long credits & thanks list in a very uncomfortable
  place such as startup, can a free software license really *prohibit
  modifying the code* so that the listing is moved behind a switch,
  "about" menu item or such?

IMHO, it is reasonable to demand that all credits must be "easily accessible" 
in derived works but not that a long list appears *before the program does 
anything useful* - it both hinders the usability of the program and severely 
restricts the freedom to modify the code.

Hans: Would you consider it a breach of your license if your program is 
modified so that the long credits list is shown in some other place than in 
the original works? Must graphical frontends also parse the output and popup 
a message box or something containing the credits OR would you be happy if 
they are listed in the frontend's "About" box?

RMS: Will GPL v3 take a new stance on this issue as has been speculated?

- Jarno

Re: md5 checksums

[Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 01:08:00PM -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-04-20 at 12:16, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña wrote:
> 
> > Which, IMHO should be required by now. IMHO it's bad enough that dpkg does 
> > not handle this itself (#155799 and, better, #187019).
> 
> And even better than both of those, #155676.
> 

It doesn't tackle the issue of dpkg _not_ storing filesystem permissions. 
This makes it not feasible to easily recover the system after a 'chmod -R
go-rwx /' besides reinstalling all the packages (that's why I pointed to 
#187019)

Regards

Javi


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Re: multiarchitecture binaries - technical obstacles?

[Sven Luther]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 04:37:06AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 10:41:08PM -0400, Shantonu Sen wrote:
> > >reduce the burden on the autobuilders;
> > 
> > Using cross building like this would indeed allow a farm of x86 
> > machines to compile all architectures, instead of needing to support 
> > lots of builder types, which may or may not be as stable as x86. This 
> 
> Cross-compiling is almost invariably *vastly* less stable than native
> compilation.

Do you have any data to support that claim ?

I know many people think so, and were amazed when i ran a ppc kernel
cross compiled on m68k on my apus amiga. Which ran very stably indeed.

And even if it is less stable, is it not because of bugs in the build
suite that could/should be fixed ?

I imagine that running a full cross compiling of the whole debian
archive on every supported arch would identify most if not all of those
bugs, would it not ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free then I will be honored to join Stallman and the FSF in the not free section of your distro

[Jarno Elonen]

We are having a small debate about wheter a user has freedom to modify code of 
free software when it concerns where a long version of author & sponsor list 
is displayed. It has also been speculated that GPL v3 will have a say on 
this. Could elaborate what will be in it?

(The following message was first sent to RMS directly, but thankfully his old 
address bounced. There probably are others of you in the GNU project who can 
answer this as well.)



> (Hans Reiser wrote:)
> I look forward to the release of GPL V3 which will hopefully cover fair
> crediting of code as well as documentation, and stem this rising tide of
> plagiarism and political bowlderization by distros.

I think nobody here has anything against keeping all the credits in 
documentation or trying to take the credit for ReiserFS tools.
The problem now seems to be that:

  if the program outputs a long credits & thanks list in a very uncomfortable
  place such as startup, can a free software license really *prohibit
  modifying the code* so that the listing is moved behind a switch,
  "about" menu item or such?

IMHO, it is reasonable to demand that all credits must be "easily accessible" 
in derived works but not that a long list appears *before the program does 
anything useful* - it both hinders the usability of the program and severely 
restricts the freedom to modify the code.

Hans: Would you consider it a breach of your license if your program is 
modified so that the long credits list is shown in some other place than in 
the original works? Must graphical frontends also parse the output and popup 
a message box or something containing the credits OR would you be happy if 
they are listed in the frontend's "About" box?

RMS: Will GPL v3 take a new stance on this issue as has been speculated?

- Jarno

Re: Recently orphaned packages

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto]

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Hash: SHA1

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Martin Michlmayr wrote:

> Bug#189952: O: device3dfx -- Device driver source for 3Dfx boards for 2.2+ 
> kernels

I don't use it anymore but I still have a working 3Ffx. If anyone wants
the package i can donate the card to the future maintainer.

Fabio

- -- 
Our mission: make IPv6 the default IP protocol
"We are on a mission from God" - Elwood Blues

http://www.itojun.org/paper/itojun-nanog-200210-ipv6isp/mgp4.html
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Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 13:04:50 +0900 (JST), Atsuhito Kohda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
said: 

> From: Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re:
> Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant) Date: Sun, 20 Apr
> 2003 20:52:43 -0500

>> > Without the current cheme all TeX system breaks so, in short, the
>> > new scheme is indispensable infrastructure for TeX system and
>> > there is no choice other than to accept to the new scheme.
>>
>> Rubbish. You could have let the old system remain, and posted a
>> high priority note saying that replace the config files with
>> *.dpkg-new or else TeX shall break. Let the human make the
>> decision. With a manual merge, perhaps the admin would carry
>> changes over.

> In this point, I was very confused.

That has been evident for a long while.

> I have an impression that someone said that we should remark with
> debconf and others said that it was abuse of debconf.  What is the
> correct understanding?

Over writing user changes is a violation of policy. Asking
 users if it is ok with them if we violate policy is not good
 enough. If this is still hard to explain, please ask your
 advocate. If you do not have one, please get one.

manoj

-- 
Take what you can use and let the rest go by. Ken Kesey
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:28:38 +0900 (JST), Atsuhito Kohda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
said: 

> From: Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re:
> Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant) Date: Sun, 20 Apr
> 2003 20:52:43 -0500

>> > Sorry to say but I should say that you don't have enough
>> > knowledge about TeX system.
>>
>> Ah, pissing contest. OK, I have been building TeX since 1989, when
>> we used to buy tapes and compile TeX on a dozen Unix systems at the
>> university. This was before TeTeX, before Debian, and even Before
>> Linux. So, I have 14 years of experience with TeX -- how much more
>> do I need to have to reach the exalted levels of experience you
>> have with the system?

> Perhaps you are happy because you would live happily with only
> original TeX.  Did you ever try to install jadetex, xmltex,
> alml,jtex, ptex, dvipsk-ja etc. and make them work fine?

You, sir, are a moron. Yes, I do use jade and tools. You are
 not the only one who actually know TeX. Descending to trying to prove
 you know more TeX than anyone else in the world shows the paucity of
 your arguments.

> Only the genuine TeX experience is NOT sufficient at all for tetex
> maintenance.

So far, you have deomstrated little that shows your competence
 in packaging Debian software; you seem to be unable to understand
 policy.

> For example, jadetex had an installation failure bug for a long time
> and it was fixed very recently with some way, I didn't want to
> mention how.

I am sure it was fixed in the same horribly gross way that
 texmf.cnf was; by blowing away user changes. 


>> So, how long have you been using TeX? My first TeX document is time
>> stamped Jun 13th, 1988.

> Fine, then it is easy to discuss.  Did you use kpathsea mechanism
> which was fairy recent feature?  Did you use "//" in TEXINPUTS
> etc. which was also fairy recent feature?

Of course. The fact that you think these old texpathsea
 mechanims are esoteric implies that your TeX usage is rusty.

manoj

-- 
Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years. James
Thurber
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:38:25 +0900 (JST), Atsuhito Kohda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
said: 

> From: Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re:
> Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant) Date: Sun, 20 Apr
> 2003 20:57:11 -0500

>> > I don't understand why you say "an admin may no longer freely
>> > synchronize the conffile"?
>>
>> I used to have TeX on 27 machines, including Ultrix, OSF/1, Aix,
>> HP-UX, and later, True64 Unix. And we had the same printer
>> accesible to all these machines, and the same set of users. I
>> maintained the same texmf.conf, and the same metapost/LaTeX/TeX
>> configurations across the whole lab, using a simple home grown
>> rsync mechanism.

> The new mechanism is precisely for this situation if only Debian
> runs on these machines.

Bingo. In other words, we are compatible, as long as
everything else is also Debian. 

>> If Debian had some there, it would blithely have overridden a
>> carefully crafted set of configurations files, un a gratituous
>> incompatibility with how TeX installations are maintained across
>> the rest of the known universe.

> I don't know if Debian runs on these machines but if Debian runs and

Heh. You, A Debian developer, do not know what architectures
 we support?

> you installed tetex then there is almost no need to handcraft
> texmf.cnf any more.  Automatically generated texmf.cnf would contain
> every necessary and sufficient stuffs in it only if you installed
> tetex packages and other TeX related packages.

> I can't understand why this is not an improvement.


So you do not understand the value of being compatible with
 other TeX installations? You think it is not arrogant for Debian to
 assume the rest of the world also runs Debian?

You think this says nothing about your suitability as a Debian
 developer? 

manoj
-- 
"And kids... learn something from Susie and Eddie. If you think
there's a maniacal psycho-geek in the basement: Don't give him a
chance to hit you on the head with an axe! Flee the premises... even
if you're in your underwear. Warn the neighbors and call the
police. But whatever else you do... DON'T GO DOWN IN THE DAMN
BASEMENT!" Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Unidentified subject!

[网易]

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 04:41:43AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:

 >   This code partially funded by DARPA, SuSE, MP3.com, bigstorage.com
 >   and others
 > 
 > would be entirely acceptable to you?

 What about:

 This code partially funded by DARPA, SuSE, MP3.com, bigstorage.com
 and others.  For more info: /usr/share/doc//copyright.

 and put the original text in /usr/share/doc//copyright.  I
 think that serves Hans' intention and purpose better.

 Marcelo

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Hans Reiser]

Jarno Elonen wrote:
the frontend's "About" box?
 

"About" buttons are an abomination, like the term open source, they 
gutlessly pretend to be what they are not in an attempt to please by 
dissembling.;-)  First time users go to them expecting to find out what 
the program does, and instead they get the name of the author and remain 
just as puzzled about what the program itself is for as they were 
before.  I hate them.  I never click on them.

I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies give for 
their actors.  I don't want the distro choosing how they are displayed 
because some distros do things like create boot time splash screens that 
tell about themselves instead of the authors, and so I have to say that 
their track record demonstrates that they cannot be trusted with that 
task.  I think the authors should be the ones to decide how to list the 
credits.  Any end user should of course be free to delete all the 
credits he wants to.

If someone wants to create a boot program and/or screensaver that picks 
a random OS component to describe the authors of at boot time, that 
would be nicest of all.

--
Hans

Unidentified subject!

[网易]

help

[sherkan sharifi]

hi.i have an request please help me.i want to know
what the sherkan meaning is.thanks,bye

__
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Yury Umanets]

Oleg Drokin wrote:
Hello!
On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 03:05:16PM -0400, Travis Crump wrote:
 

You mean a bug report like 
?  Oh, wait... 
What if someone wanted to write a gtk frontend to mkreiserfs?  The 
   

Last time we spoke with EVMS folks about this kind of stuff, we agreed that 
they'd open
a pipe to mkreiserfs and then will show the mkreiserfs' output in separate 
window.
(in fact not only mkreiserfs's output, but output of all tools they run).
Flames to /dev/null.
And there are (were?) another set of tools for making/modifying reiserfs 
filesystems
(except that there is no fsck) called progsreiserfs. (not being developed 
anymore, I think, but it
works as is). Use that, if you like it more.
Bye,
   Oleg
 

It is developed yet, but more slowly than before :)
--
Yury Umanets
"We're flying high, we're watching the world passes by..."

Re: libc6 (security) update does not restart system-services?

[Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 11:14:41PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> GOTO Masanori wrote:
> > Well, it's hard to display package name.  However 
> > 
> > lsof | grep dpkg-new | awk '{print $1, $8}' | sort +0
> > 
> > make a list which describes what binary uses old libraries replaced by
> > dpkg.  To show more user friendly, it needs to remember that what
> > library files are replaced, though.
> 
> I think I see where you are going.  Something like this for libc?
> 
>   lsof | awk '$9 ~ /^\/lib\/libc-.*.so/{print$1, $9}'
> 
> And then warn the admin with a notice about those running programs?


Funny, while I was on vacation I coded a check for the Tiger security tool 
to do just this, it's called 'check_finddeleted' [1] and will point you to 
processes (normal ones and daemons) that are using deleted files. It is 
based on an excellent article by Brian Hatch at 
http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20020507.html. Definitely, a 
must read :-)

Regards

Javi


[1]
http://savannah.nongnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/tiger/tiger/scripts/check_finddeleted?rev=1.1&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup


pgpTAvco749aR.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Atsuhito Kohda]

From: Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 02:13:50 -0500

> > Perhaps you are happy because you would live happily with only
> > original TeX.  Did you ever try to install jadetex, xmltex,
> > alml,jtex, ptex, dvipsk-ja etc. and make them work fine?
> 
>   You, sir, are a moron. Yes, I do use jade and tools. You are
>  not the only one who actually know TeX. Descending to trying to prove
>  you know more TeX than anyone else in the world shows the paucity of
>  your arguments.

It is okay how you understand what I told you but the fact
is; if one is a maintainer of tetex, one has gotten many
bugs or requests from maintainers of related packages.

I only pointed out #125793 in which a maintainer explained
(about modifying texmf.cnf in its postinst)

  I admit this is an important bug, but also believe it's not serious
  enough to prevent ptex-bin from going into woody.  Anywise there are a
  bunch of packages which modify texmf.cnf or other TeX-related
  conffiles, so more general solution is needed for tetex-bin.

and #70581 where someone who wanted to package extra fonts 
requested;

  You need to put a .map file in /etc/texmf/dvips and then
  add the file name to /etc/texmf/dvips/updmap to the
  variable extra_modules.

  Thus adding and removing can not be done in a 
  trivial and automated way.

or a direct request like;

From: Hesham Hassan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ArabTeX Problem, Suggestion, and Solution
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 00:27:15 -0500

> "psfonts/".  In there, you just need to copy the two pfb files to a directory 
> aptly named "/usr/share/texmf/fonts/type1/arabtex/", and then add the two 
> lines in the file named "arabtex.map" to the bottom of the file named 
> "/usr/share/texmf/dvips/base/psfonts.map".  All it says is really:
> -- start snippet --
> xnsh14 xnsh14  xnsh14bf xnsh14bf  -- end snippet --
> Then run "texhash", and everything works beautifully.  My basic request is 
> that you please add this to your package by default as it really fixes 
> everything for everyone.  Also, you could mention in a README a quick note on 

and then naturally one will try to provide a necessary 
mechanism as a maintainer of tetex, I believe.

Of couse I didn't know all these (except ptex-bin) from
the beginning but as time passes I became familiar with 
these issues and have tried to fix these.  That' all.

> > Fine, then it is easy to discuss.  Did you use kpathsea mechanism
> > which was fairy recent feature?  Did you use "//" in TEXINPUTS
> > etc. which was also fairy recent feature?
> 
>   Of course. The fact that you think these old texpathsea
>  mechanims are esoteric implies that your TeX usage is rusty.

I only want to say that even you has had an experience 
to reset your texmf.cnf and adopted new mechanism before.

Thanks, 2003-4-21(Mon)

-- 
 Debian Developer & Debian JP Developer - much more I18N of Debian
 Atsuhito Kohda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 Department of Math., Tokushima Univ.

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Atsuhito Kohda]

From: Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 02:18:35 -0500

>   So you do not understand the value of being compatible with
>  other TeX installations? You think it is not arrogant for Debian to
>  assume the rest of the world also runs Debian?

I can't understand why you said this so repeatedly.

The current texmf.cnf of Debian is completely the same
as the one upstream teTeX provided, if no local modification
files are put in /etc/texmf/texmf.d/  There is no specific
for Debian at all.

In this sense, it should be completely compatible with
other TeX systems.

Thanks, 2003-4-21(Mon)

-- 
 Debian Developer & Debian JP Developer - much more I18N of Debian
 Atsuhito Kohda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 Department of Math., Tokushima Univ.

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Florian Weimer]

Hans Reiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies give
> for their actors.

So you are concerned with the missing ad when mkreiserfs runs?

In this case, your analogy is wrong.  The message does not give proper
credit to developers (actors), but those who help to fund the
development (the film studio, the producers or some VCs).

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Jarno Elonen]

> ["About" menu item]
> First time users go to them expecting to find out what
> the program does, and instead they get the name of the author and remain
> just as puzzled about what the program itself is for as they were
> before. I hate them.

I see.. :) It has become a GUI idiom though, so most people probably know 
already what an "About" box is.

> I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies give for
> their actors.

An interesting point. However, a movie goer is prepared for five minutes of 
credits with entertaining music in the background before 2 hours of the 
actual movie but a person running a disk utility will probably find it quite 
distracting to see a lot of stuff unrelated to the task at hand. What she 
appreciates, is information about the process.

There are always quite a few programs involved in almost any task you make in 
Unix. If the kernel, disk driver, shell, sed, readline and disk utilities all 
wrote their credits while formatting a disk, the operating system would be 
nearly unusable. In that perspective, I hope you can understand why a Debian 
developer striving to put together a quality OS may consider it necessary to 
trim the output. A small amount of credits (perhaps pointing to a complete 
author list) is usually fine  but if it's more than, say, 5 lines.. It's a 
balancing act between respecting the original work of the software authors 
and the wishes and needs of the users.

What would you suggest as a solution?

> I don't want the distro choosing how they are displayed
> because some distros do things like create boot time splash screens that
> tell about themselves instead of the authors, and so I have to say that
> their track record demonstrates that they cannot be trusted with that
> task.

Mm.. I guess such splash screens are made mainly for two reasons: making their 
marketing easier and because novice users feel intimidated by screenfulls of 
text at startup. I agree that the first reason can be seen as a disrespectful 
act but the coin also has another side: compelling marketing of free 
operating systems helps giving them a wider audience, which is good for the 
distributed software, too.

> If someone wants to create a boot program and/or screensaver that picks
> a random OS component to describe the authors of at boot time, that
> would be nicest of all.

Yes, that's certainly a nice idea. (It would also mask the Linux driver's 
credits though, but at least they would get the same treatment as the rest of 
the system.)

- Jarno

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Matt Ryan]

> > Apologies, 'reply-all' is not clever enough in Outlook Express to
> > evaluate the sender preference on being copied on list emails. Any
> > suggestions for a MUA that can perform this feat are appreciated.
>
> Any mailer that honours the Mail-Followup-To: header that I set would do
> nicely. There are plenty of these in Debian, such as the one I'm using.

As another developer has pointed out, I'm not running Debian on this box.
There are plenty of other email clients for Windows, but I suspect that all
of them are going to be somewhat lax in following follow-up headers in
email. Those that potentially do are most likely not going to support IMAP
at the same time. Despite is parentage, OE is quite acceptable for day to
day use.

Again, if anyone knows of another client that supports both requirements
I'll give it a go.


Matt.

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Thomas Hood]

[Subject line shortened and cc: list cut down]

On Mon, 2003-04-21 at 08:08, Hans Reiser wrote:
> I find it unspeakably ingrateful to Stallman that some of you begrudge 
> him his right to express his (discomforting to some) views to all who 
> use his software, and to ensure that they are not removed by those suits 
> who are discomforted.

I, for one, am not ungrateful for the contributions that Richard
Stallman and you -- Hans Reiser -- have made.

If, however, you are saying that Debian can only use your work on the
condition that Debian becomes your mouthpiece, then I find that an
unacceptable demand.  No gratitude is due for software that comes
with such conditions attached.  Such a tainted offer should be
politely declined.

(By the way, I don't think that "suits" have a lot of influence over
what happens in Debian.  Debian developers are concerned, above all,
with making a free operating system.)

> As far as I am concerned, I have no desire to have ReiserFS distributed 
> for free by anyone who removes the GNU manifesto or similar expressions 
> from Stallman's work (or my own) and redistributes it.  It is simply a 
> matter of respect that is due the author.

Respect is due; but it is up to Debian to decide how to show respect.

The central question is this.  If you are not satisfied by Debian's
show of respect, what are you going to do about it?

Consistently with freedom you can write to the Debian maintainer,
complain on a mailing list, and so on.  Fine.  Hopefully an 
accommodation can be found.

If, on the other hand, you assert a legal right to be shown respect
in a way that you determine, then it becomes clear that your work
is not DFSG-free and so not distributable by Debian.

> ReiserFS will be converting to the Gnu Free Doc License for its 
> documentation. 
>
> I look forward to the release of GPL V3 which will hopefully cover fair 
> crediting of code as well as documentation, and stem this rising tide of 
> plagiarism and political bowlderization by distros.

I think it is altogether reasonable to require that the authors
of software be credited.  However, it must be up to Debian to
decide how to give that credit.

Bowlderization is the removal of content from works.  The issue
there is freedom of speech, not software freedom.  Free speech is
indeed important in all areas of life.  Debian should not interfere
with anyone's freedom of speech.  Notwithstanding this, Debian's
role is not that of soapbox for politically active programmers.
So, while Debian might choose to distribute this or that text
(unbowlderized!) as a service to its users, IMHO it should not under
any circumstances allow itself to be *compelled* to distribute any
text verbatim, no matter how attractive the software to which that
text is attached.  An exception is made for license texts.

DFSG 4 determines how far Debian can go to accommodate an author's
demand that his or her code be distributed unchanged.  Yes, Debian
will agree to distribute the original code, but only if the code
can be patched for building.  So, in the case of mkreiserfs: Yes,
Debian will agree to distribute the original code with its
excessively verbose credits message, but only if the message can
be omitted from the running program.  Out of respect for the
authors, Debian should also include the message in the doc directory
and under --version.  But if I were the maintainer I wouldn't go
any further than that.

> I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies
> give for their actors.  I don't want the distro choosing how
> they are displayed because some distros do things like create
> boot time splash screens that tell about themselves instead
> of the authors, and so I have to say that their track record
> demonstrates that they cannot be trusted with that task.
> I think the authors should be the ones to decide how to list
> the credits.  Any end user should of course be free to delete
> all the credits he wants to.

It is becoming clearer that your software is not DFSG-free.

-- 
Thomas Hood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Matt Ryan]

> True, however it seems clear that he is not running Debian.

This is the case as you have noticed.


> (the irony is almost too much to bear)

Why? I have 5 PC's here (at home) and 4 of them run Debian (mixture of
stable, testing and unstable). I have one Windows box that I use for email
and web browsing as I happen to like OE and IE for these tasks. All the
backend services (DNS, NFS, POP, IMAP, SMB, HTTP) are run on the Debian
servers. It works well and I see no reason to change the way I use it.

Should I have to run Debian (to continue to be a developer?) on every box I
have or can I make an informed decision on the best way to support my work?


Matt.

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Matt Ryan]

> > No offence taken. I joined when Debian wasn't run by anal
> > retentives. Sure there was the whole free software part - but not
> > the SS Nazi version of free software that is being prompted
> > recently. I have to say that I'm beginning to think that your
> > assessment is right and I should find a more liberal bunch of Linux
> > fanatics to join with.
>
> Oooh, is that a promise? Anything we can do to facilitate that?

Get some policy in place that allows you to throw out people who you don't
agree with or don't like would do it one way or another.


Matt.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Matt Ryan]

> The difficulty of their character unfortunately often seems to correlate
with
> the important of their software. ;) So even if the upstreams sometimes
heats
> up easily, please spend extra patience on them for the sake of the users.
> Pretty please.. I'd really hate to lose something like Reiserfs from
Debian
> just because of a few unpolite mails back and forth.

It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
(does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
borders).


Matt.

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Marcelo E. Magallon]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 05:53:09PM +0900, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:

 > The current texmf.cnf of Debian is completely the same as the one
 > upstream teTeX provided, if no local modification files are put in
 > /etc/texmf/texmf.d/  There is no specific for Debian at all.

 Gosh, read what Manoj's been writing already.

 Manoj's concern is that you happyly trash /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf with the
 concatenation of /etc/texmf/texmf.d/*.cnf and do not care about the
 system administrator's actions.

 Your logic is this:

if the previous version is older than N
if there's a texmf.cnf and no texmf.cnf.dpkg-old
rename the current textmf.cnf to texmf.cnf.dpkg-old
endif
endif

trash the current textmf.cnf

 So, if there's an upgrade from N + k to N + k' (k' > k > 0), this
 reduces to:

trash the current texmf.cnf

 Do you see the problem now?

 If that's still _not_ clear, think about this:

* The admin has a system in place to administer the boxes in a lab.

* There are TeX components in use which are not provided by Debian
  (say, ACM's conference proceeding styles)

* These are installed in /random/path/texmf (/random is NFS
  mounted)

* The in-house system takes care of updating every machine's
  texmf.cnf files to point to this new path.  (And no, this is not a
  Debian-only shop, last time I looked there still wasn't a Debian
  GNU/Irix distribution -- there's life beyond Debian, you know?)

 Now image this: there's security upgrade for tetex-bin and the poor
 fool has a cronjob that installs it.  After its installation, the local
 texmf.cnf is trashed.  A local user is writing a paper for a conference
 and the deadline is later that day.  He runs latex on the paper and it
 complains that it can find the style which was working perfectly 20
 minutes ago.  He's got no clue how latex searches for its styles and at
 this point the only thing he really cares about is the paper and the
 deadline.
 
 It's 3 am in the morning.

 Guess whose telephone is going to ring.

 Marcelo

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Matt Ryan]

> Ah, pissing contest. OK, I have been building TeX since 1989,
>  when we used to buy tapes and compile TeX  on a dozen Unix systems at
>  the university. This was before TeTeX, before Debian, and even Before
>  Linux. So, I have 14 years of experience with TeX -- how much more do
>  I need to have to reach the exalted levels of experience you have
>  with the system?

There is a reason that more enlightened business do not run a LIFO policy
when making redundancies these days. This is because length of service is
not a measure of how good an employee is. There will always be smart people
who after a short length of time exceed the performance of there more
experienced colleagues.


Matt.

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Mark Brown]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 05:53:09PM +0900, Atsuhito Kohda wrote:
> From: Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> > So you do not understand the value of being compatible with
> >  other TeX installations? You think it is not arrogant for Debian to
> >  assume the rest of the world also runs Debian?

> The current texmf.cnf of Debian is completely the same
> as the one upstream teTeX provided, if no local modification
> files are put in /etc/texmf/texmf.d/  There is no specific
> for Debian at all.

As soon as the admin decides to make changes to it it becomes
incompatible with non-Debian installations.  If the admin changes it
using the Debian mechanisms then the other installations will just
ignore the changes.  If the admin changes it by just editing the file
then Debian will merrily come along and trash it.

To do this in a way that's compatible with the rest of the world support
for texmf.d would need to be integrated into the standard TeX code.
This would be better all round - all users (not just those who use
Debian) would be able to benefit from texmf.d.  Things would be a bit
nicer for Debian users too since they wouldn't need to run this external
tool to regenerate their configuration files.

-- 
"You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream - or a fever."

Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness

[Matt Ryan]

> Perhaps it would, if it had not come on the tails of a string of
unwarranted
> insults against other developers (most of whom seem to agree with my ideas
> on the technical subject under discussion).

The closest I got to an insult was accusing Manoj of having a prune up his
rear. In comparison I have been called most names under the sun in both
public and private responses to my emails. This matches with my assertion
that a minority of people get too excited when their precious Debian is
perceived to be under attack or not technically pure enough (another issue
not directly related to this thread).

All I have said to date is that the overwrite question was suggested in the
past by another developer as a way of dealing with the problem when it came
up before. Some of us implemented the suggestion and it seems no one has had
a problem with it until now (I have had no bug reports on this). There are
other suggestions now that may accomplish the same thing (though I don't
like the XML or UCF stuff as they add dependencies) and when the dust has
settled I'm sure I will implement the recommendation put forward.


Matt.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

On Sunday 20 April 2003 22:30, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>   If the upstream author is rude to me, he does not deserve any
>  consideration from myself.  If he chooses to alienate his clientele,
>  he should expect to reap what he sowed.

Buit, this doesn't get any problems solved. Using 'an eye for an eye' as 
basic for interaction with humans (i.e. neither lawyers nor real trolls) 
doesn't work.

Uli

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Lars Wirzenius]

On ma, 2003-04-21 at 13:03, Matt Ryan wrote:
> As another developer has pointed out, I'm not running Debian on this box.
> There are plenty of other email clients for Windows, but I suspect that all
> of them are going to be somewhat lax in following follow-up headers in
> email.

I would like to point out that support for the Mail-Followup-To header
is not required. It is sufficient that the mail client lets you edit the
headers before sending the mail. This works in all mail clients I'm
aware of, even if some of them make things a bit awkward.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Jarno Elonen]

> It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
> (does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
> email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
> honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
> etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
> borders).

Quite true. And while it certainly looks like Hans' was angry or at least 
frustrated, I for one, consider my English better than the average among 
Finns but often don't have a clue how my English messages sound for a native. 
They are probably full of grammar errors, making them sound 
careless/negligent and contain words that sound funny/obsolete or expressions 
that are not exactly suitable in the situation.

In a face-to-face conversation these shortcomings are compensated by body 
language. A slightly raised tone of voice is immediately reflected on the 
other person's face so you don't have to exaggerate like in email.

- Jarno

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Matt Ryan]

> I would like to point out that support for the Mail-Followup-To header
> is not required. It is sufficient that the mail client lets you edit the
> headers before sending the mail. This works in all mail clients I'm
> aware of, even if some of them make things a bit awkward.

Trouble is I need to know what the sender of the email, I'm replying to,
wanted in regards to getting copies of the response to both list and direct.
One could manually parse the email headers and set the reply appropriately
but this is a rather onerous task when replying to a large number of emails.


Matt.

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Russell Coker]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 18:25, Hans Reiser wrote:
> I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies give for
> their actors.

30 seconds after the movie ends the cinema is 95% empty and the credits are 
only just started.  Only the first few names get seen, and those are the ones 
that advertised the movie on the billboard (because most people only watch 
movies that have well known actors).

> If someone wants to create a boot program and/or screensaver that picks
> a random OS component to describe the authors of at boot time, that
> would be nicest of all.

Sounds like a good idea.

But in the mean time could we summarise the list in one or two 80 column 
lines?

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page

Re: Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Michael Banck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>> Anything to do with the ability to mix-and-match 32 and 64-bit code in this 
>> processors?
>
> Yes.

Is there a reason for mixing 32 and 64 bits ? Isn't it just a feature
included in the processor because other proprietary operating systems
(and all the software) cannot be changed fastly to 64 bits ?

Why don't we consider the x86-64 as beeing a 64-bits-only architecture
?

Cheers,

Thomas
-- 
PETAZZONI Thomas - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - UIN : 34937744
http://www.enix.org/~thomas/
KOS: http://kos.enix.org/ - Lolut: http://lolut.utbm.info
Fingerprint : 0BE1 4CF3 CEA4 AC9D CC6E  1624 F653 CB30 98D3 F7A7

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Richard Braakman]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 12:07:24PM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
> Trouble is I need to know what the sender of the email, I'm replying to,
> wanted in regards to getting copies of the response to both list and direct.
> One could manually parse the email headers and set the reply appropriately
> but this is a rather onerous task when replying to a large number of emails.

If you're not sure, you should just follow list policy and not Cc.
It's also nice to attribute your quotes, btw.

Richard Braakman

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:14:05AM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
> It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
> (does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
> email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
> honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
> etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
> borders).

Nice try, but Hans is an ugly American, I'm afraid.  (Born and bred in
California?)  Went to grad school in Berkeley, but left because no one
listened to his ideas.

- Ted

P.S.  This is the first I've heard about GPLv3 having the equivalent
of an advertising clause (in fact, it's worse than an advertising
clause, since at least the BSD advertising clause was only in
documentation, not in the program startup messages).  Given the FSF's past
position on the BSD advertising clause, it seems... surprising... to
me that RMS would put such a clause in GPLv3.  I am eagerly awaiting
to hear RMS's views on the subject.

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Martin List-Petersen]

On Mon, 2003-04-21 at 12:58, Jarno Elonen wrote:
> > It's also worth considering that perhaps there is a language difference
> > (does Hans have English as a first language?) that make it seem that the
> > email seem harsher than it really is. Many Europeans are naturally very
> > honest with what they say and at first this comes across as been rude/blunt
> > etc (especially to people who rarely consider the world outside there own
> > borders).

[SNIP]

> In a face-to-face conversation these shortcomings are compensated by body 
> language. A slightly raised tone of voice is immediately reflected on the 
> other person's face so you don't have to exaggerate like in email.

Definatly, even though there you can be misunderstood by the native english 
speaking, because of
the directness in some european cultures, that are mostly avoided, meaning 
things are said well
packaged, not to offend the counterpart.

Regards,
Martin List-Petersen
martin at list-petersen dot dk
--
This universe shipped by weight, not by volume.  Some expansion of the
contents may have occurred during shipment.



signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Theodore Ts'o]

This issue has degenerated to name calling at this point, and in other
threads, Godwin's law has even been invoked, perhaps not to great
effect.

I agree with you Manoj, as I suspect most people who have commented on
this list, but perhaps this is time to refer the issue to the
Technical Committee, and get them to issue a ruling on this question
one way or another?

- Ted

Re: GDM is ancient version

[Scott Henson]

On Sat, 2003-04-19 at 23:36, Juhapekka Tolvanen wrote:
> Package: gdm
> Version: 2.2.5.5-2
> 
> 
> That version of gdm is fscking ancient! maintainer of that package
> really needs a clue. I got version 2.4.1.3-1woody1 with these apt-lines:
> 
> deb 
> http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/mirrors.evilgeniuses.org.uk/debian/backports/woody/
> gnome2.2/
> deb http://mirror.raw.no/ gnome2.2/

The maintainer of gdm doesnt want to upload it till some key components
build on all archs.  Basically he doesnt want to leave certain
archs(which he uses) without a gdm.  Also I believe he is one of the FTP
masters, so no one can do an NMU(which they probably shouldnt be doing
in this situation anyway).  You can get gdm 2.4 compiled for sid from:

deb http://harshy.homelinux.org/files/debian/ ./
deb-src http://harshy.homelinux.org/files/debian/ ./

Check the debian-gtk-gnome list archives from earlier this year for a
full explanation on why gdm is the way it is.  You also might want to
email the maintainer of gdm and ask him _nicely_ to upload gdm 2.4, but
be prepared for him to say no(situation may have changed recently so it
doesnt hurt to ask).
-- 
Scott Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Outlook Express (Re: stop abusing debconf already)

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:08:04AM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote (and CC'd me):

> > (the irony is almost too much to bear)
> Why? I have 5 PC's here (at home) and 4 of them run Debian (mixture of
> stable, testing and unstable). I have one Windows box that I use for email
> and web browsing as I happen to like OE and IE for these tasks. All the
> backend services (DNS, NFS, POP, IMAP, SMB, HTTP) are run on the Debian
> servers. It works well and I see no reason to change the way I use it.
> 
> Should I have to run Debian (to continue to be a developer?) on every box
> I have or can I make an informed decision on the best way to support my
> work?

This need not be a philosophical discussion, and it need not involve your
software preferences.  The difficulty is that the MUA that you choose to use
is lacking (and/or broken) in ways which inconvenience others on this
mailing list (carbon copies, threads, etc.).  If it can be fixed, please fix
it, and if it cannot, please consider an alternative.

-- 
 - mdz

Re: md5 checksums

[Steve Kemp]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 09:05:58AM +0200, Javier Fern?ndez-Sanguino Pe?a wrote:

> It doesn't tackle the issue of dpkg _not_ storing filesystem permissions. 
> This makes it not feasible to easily recover the system after a 'chmod -R
> go-rwx /' besides reinstalling all the packages (that's why I pointed to 
> #187019)

  One of the things the standalone checksecurity package was going to do
 was maintain a `database` of file modes, permissions, and their
 checksums.

  Sadly this hasn't happened yet, but if it does get split away from the
 cron package then I would be happy to implement all the required
 features.

Steve
---



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Re: multiarchitecture binaries - technical obstacles?

[Andrew Suffield]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 09:17:42AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> I know many people think so, and were amazed when i ran a ppc kernel
> cross compiled on m68k on my apus amiga. Which ran very stably indeed.

Kernels, and the toolchain, are amoung the few things which can be
cross-compiled fairly reliably - because you have to do that when
bootstrapping a new architecture.

> And even if it is less stable, is it not because of bugs in the build
> suite that could/should be fixed ?

Yup. Wanna go fix a few thousand build systems? And then keep them
fixed even when upstream has no understanding of the issues or
interest in making it work? Nobody has yet, probably because native
compilation works just fine.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'  | Imperial College,
   `- -><-  | London, UK


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Non-debian running DD's (Was: Re: stop abusing debconf already)

[LapTop006]

I use both Mutt and OE to read my E-mail (mostly mutt). The one feature
OE has (on both mac and windows) that NO other client I've seen matches
(Mozilla 1.0 came close, haven't tried since then) is its support for
offline IMAP. This e-mail comes to you via putty on my laptop being
NAT'd via my debian proxy, to my debian server at work, both running
woody which runs mutt that then sends via the postfix on the box.

We should not be larting people who use other operating systems, I run
debian across several different archs (Sparc, Alpha, HPPA, soon: MIPS, 
m68k, powerpc), but on x86 and PPC I also run the native OS' (Mac OS and 
Windows 
(windows stays on my laptop because I can kernel-panic linux with a 
keystroke...)).

For example packages like samba would be ideally packaged by someone who
had at least one windows box to test with (both as a client and server),
many other packages are similar.


On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 02:32:30PM +0300, Richard Braakman arranged a set of 
bits into the following:
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 12:07:24PM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
> > Trouble is I need to know what the sender of the email, I'm replying to,
> > wanted in regards to getting copies of the response to both list and direct.
> > One could manually parse the email headers and set the reply appropriately
> > but this is a rather onerous task when replying to a large number of emails.
> 
> If you're not sure, you should just follow list policy and not Cc.
> It's also nice to attribute your quotes, btw.
> 
> Richard Braakman


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Re: Status of mICQ code audit

[Robert Lemmen]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 09:43:05PM +0200, Martin Loschwitz wrote:
> can you please inform the list and me about the current status of the 
> mICQ code audit you two wanted to do? It's been a while and I didn't 
> hear anything further from you since then.
> 
> However, since it is my principle to finish the things I've started, 
> i'm writing this mail now. I'd be happy if I could get an answer.

ok we are 2/3 through the code and are making only little progress
because we have tons of other stuff to do, but we will get there
eventually. as expected, we didn't find anything bad except the easter
egg, and a couple of non-intentional errors (buffer overruns,
null-dereferences, etc)

when we are done with the manual audit we wanted to have some programs
examine it, then talk to you and upstream about the core issue and then
come back to the list with a more detailed report.

cu  robert


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Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Roland Mas]

Matt Ryan (2003-04-21 11:03:49 +0100) :

> Again, if anyone knows of another client that supports both
> requirements I'll give it a go.

A good mail client that works on Windows, provides IMAP and obeys
standard headers?  I suggest Gnus.  It does all that, and more.

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

Sauvez les castors, plantez des arbres.

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Denis Barbier]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 11:03:03AM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> Denis Barbier wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 07:14:19PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > Enough already.
> > > 
> > > Folks, if you don't stop abusing debconf with useless notes that belong
> > > in README.Debian and config file overwriting, I will stop maintaining
> > > it. 
> > > 
> > > Stop slapping incorrect uses of debconf in everywhere. Feel free to run
> > > any package using debconf by me before you upload it, or take the time
> > > to understand yourself how things should work.
> > 
> > I do not understand exactly what is good and bad use of debconf.
> > For instance all questions asked by the debconf package have good default
> > values, so there is no reason to prompt user, a configuration file is
> > enough.  So what am I missing?
> 
> The only reasons debconf itself asks those questions still are:
> 
> - example of how debconf works
> - they _are_ overridable with the config file, in an appropriate way
> - it's not asked at new installs anyway
> - people are used to that
> 
> I did have some bad ideas about how debconf could be used back years ago
> when I wrote it. Those debconf questions (and some really ill-advised
> stuff slrn used to do) were the result.

I hope my understanding of the big picture has been seriously improved.
Honestly you should not be so upset by these debconf abuses about
configuration files overwriting, this is a difficult issue and AFAICT
documentation does not help.
IMO debconf itself could be a better example.  Currently configuration
items can indeed be overridden in debconf.conf, but its parsing is
performed by debconf itself, so other packages cannot reproduce the same
logic.
As you explained, they have to parse their configuration files and set
updated question values, in order not to lose user changes.  Debconf
has a different behavior when configuring itself, it does not update
question values with those found in debconf.conf.  To be a truly useful
example, it could also overwrite its own configuration file in order
to show how to do it right.

Denis

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

* Roland Mas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Matt Ryan (2003-04-21 11:03:49 +0100) :
> 
> > Again, if anyone knows of another client that supports both
> > requirements I'll give it a go.
> 
> A good mail client that works on Windows, provides IMAP and obeys
> standard headers?  I suggest Gnus.  It does all that, and more.

Mulberry, but it's not free

-- 
Ralf Hildebrandt (Im Auftrag des Referat V a)   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Charite Campus MitteTel.  +49 (0)30-450 570-155
Referat V a - Kommunikationsnetze - Fax.  +49 (0)30-450 570-916
AIM: ralfpostfix

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Lars Bahner]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 01:10:47AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> This aside, it's very clear to me that responding to Hans is a complete
> waste of time.  He's trolling.  If he's just going to keep ranting aimlessly,
> I'd say Debian can only assume we're in violation of whatever the license
> is, that whatever the license is is undistributable, nuke the package
> and point people to a clearly free alternative (possibly written by far
> more reasonable folks), XFS.

Let me just start with saying that I started out with agreeing
with Hans until it became possible that he doesn't really know
what it is he wants to be saying.

That is: he obviously perceived Debian as having deliberately
removed some credits, and - somewhat agitated - posted an e-mail
about this to several mailboxes and lists, which is understandable
to a certain extent.

Now it would seem the reply from Debian has only agitated Hans
further to the point where he isn't listening to what we are
trying to convey to him about:
manners;
apologies;
and request of clarification.

I believe all Debian developers wishes to adhere to and honour the
academian tradition of giving due credits.

The way this discussion has turned out it seems that the way we
practice the upholding of this tradition doesn't satisfy one of
the upstream authors, namely Hans. 

I have been assumeing all along that this discussion was only relevant
to the reiserfsprogs-packages, not the kernel-code itself. This may or
may not be the case, but as fas as the filesystem utilities go there 
is of course a free alternative in debian in the progsreiserfs-package.

So I propose that Ed drops the reiserfsprogs-package for now, initiates
a dialog directly with Hans Reiser to see if this matter can be settled
soberly, while the rest of us use progsreiserfs.
-- 
Lars Bahner: http://lars.bahner.com/; Voice: +4792884492; Fax: +4792974492


Key fingerprint = A913 7B54 E5FC 804D C12B  18DE 493D 83DE 5DE6 C5D6

Re: Debian Usability Research

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Enrico Zini]
> What would a Debian Usability project do?

What about looking at the new installer, and give suggestions to how
it can be made easier to understand and user for new users?

[OT]Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[iain d broadfoot]

* Russell Coker ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 18:25, Hans Reiser wrote:
> > I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies give for
> > their actors.
> 
> 30 seconds after the movie ends the cinema is 95% empty and the credits are 
> only just started.  Only the first few names get seen, and those are the ones 
> that advertised the movie on the billboard (because most people only watch 
> movies that have well known actors).

personally, i always make a point of staying to the end of any credits -
apart from anything else, some films put 'bonus' footage after the
credits. :D

iain

-- 
wh33, y1p33 3tc.

"If sharing a thing in no way diminishes it, it is not rightly owned if it is
not shared." -St. Augustine

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:07:24 +0100, Matt Ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

>> I would like to point out that support for the Mail-Followup-To
>> header is not required. It is sufficient that the mail client lets
>> you edit the headers before sending the mail. This works in all
>> mail clients I'm aware of, even if some of them make things a bit
>> awkward.

> Trouble is I need to know what the sender of the email, I'm replying
> to, wanted in regards to getting copies of the response to both list
> and direct.  One could manually parse the email headers and set the
> reply appropriately but this is a rather onerous task when replying
> to a large number of emails.

*Sigh*. The rule, for Debian lists, is *NO* to send CC's to
 anyone, and is spelled out on the mailing list policy/rules of
 conduct web page. So if you do not know better, the default is _not_
 to send copies.

manoj
-- 
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
person a car.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:21:59AM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:

> > Perhaps it would, if it had not come on the tails of a string of
> unwarranted
> > insults against other developers (most of whom seem to agree with my
> > ideas on the technical subject under discussion).
> 
> The closest I got to an insult was accusing Manoj of having a prune up his
> rear.

...and telling Ben Collins to "take a Valium" after what appeared to be a
pretty even-handed message

...calling Joey Hess "jumped up" and being generally rude in response to a
justifiably exasperated message about a long-standing problem, which was
accompanied by a standing offer to assist any developer with interfacing
with debconf

...and stating that you'll "use debconf how [you] please and if that's
against the 'pure' view of others [...] then its [sic] just hard luck".

The first two being insulting to the developers involved, and the third
being insulting to the spirit of cooperation and consensus that the project
as a whole depends on.

-- 
 - mdz

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:36:10 +0200, Ulrich Eckhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On Sunday 20 April 2003 22:30, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> If the upstream author is rude to me, he does not deserve any
>> consideration from myself.  If he chooses to alienate his
>> clientele, he should expect to reap what he sowed.

> Buit,

I see. So, you don't practice what you preach, eh?

> this doesn't get any problems solved. Using 'an eye for an
> eye' as basic for interaction with humans (i.e. neither lawyers nor
> real trolls) doesn't work.

Rudeness does not solve things. OK. I suppose the people who
 are being rude to us should also understand that, no? And there are
 limits to the abasement I am going to perform before attempting to
 demonstrate to the people being rude to me the truth of the adage
 that rudeness does not pay.

Take that as you will.

manoj
-- 
Hear about the Californian terrorist that tried to blow up a bus?
Burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:53:09 +0900 (JST), Atsuhito Kohda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
said: 

> From: Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re:
> Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant) Date: Mon, 21 Apr
> 2003 02:18:35 -0500

>> So you do not understand the value of being compatible with other
>> TeX installations? You think it is not arrogant for Debian to
>> assume the rest of the world also runs Debian?

> I can't understand why you said this so repeatedly.

> The current texmf.cnf of Debian is completely the same as the one
> upstream teTeX provided, if no local modification files are put in
> /etc/texmf/texmf.d/ There is no specific for Debian at all.

> In this sense, it should be completely compatible with other TeX
> systems.

I see. So the statement shoulkd be modified to: We are
 interoperable and compatible as long as every one else runs Debian,
 or if the local admin never modifies a configuration file.

And you think somehow this system is adequate?

manoj
-- 
Do you know the difference between a yankee and a damyankee?  A yankee
comes south to *_visit*.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Steve Greenland]

On 19-Apr-03, 11:44 (CDT), David B Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> 
> From debconf-devel(8): "low: Very trivial items that have defaults that
> will work in the vast majority of cases; oinly control freaks see
> these."

>From Debian policy, 11.7.3, regarding how to achieve the requirement of
not overwriting maintainer changes:

"The easy way to achieve this behavior is to make the configuration file
a conffile. This is appropriate only if it is possible to distribute a
default version that will work for most installations, although some
system administrators may choose to modify it. This implies that the
default version will be part of the package distribution, and must not
be modified by the maintainer scripts during installation (or at any
other time)."

When I wrote this, and it was approved, I believe the intent was that
the conffile mechanism be used unless a package configuration did not
meet the requirement regarding "acceptable defaults". The unfortunate
phrase "This is appropriate *only* if..." is there because at the time,
the problem was with people modifying conffiles, rather than not using
conffiles. Now that the pendulum has swung the other way, perhaps we
need to rephrase it, to make it clear that conffiles are the preferred
choice.

If you have a package that is asking only medium and lower priority
debconf questions, then debconf should not be used at all. Those
priorities *exist* because there are packages that have a high-priority,
non-defaultable question, and once you've broken the conffile system,
you might as well include those questions. Perhaps it was a bad
idea. Another use for those lower priorities is for notes to the
admin. I contend that this second use *is* a bad idea, because the
common implementation is to NOT include the same information under
/usr/share/doc/, and thus those of us who have low and medium
priority turned off lose that info.

Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world.   -- seen on the net

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 08:04:38 -0400, Theodore Ts'o <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> This issue has degenerated to name calling at this point, and in
> other threads, Godwin's law has even been invoked, perhaps not to
> great effect.

Yeah, I lost it in the last exchange.

> I agree with you Manoj, as I suspect most people who have commented
> on this list, but perhaps this is time to refer the issue to the
> Technical Committee, and get them to issue a ruling on this question
> one way or another?

I was hoping it would not come to that. So far, we have only
 _once_ over ridden the maintainer on package handling using the
 weight of the tech ctte, and evern there the developer was not dead
 set against it. 

Perhaps I'll take a rest from this thread and let other try
 and convince the TeTeX developer before invoking the tech ctte.

manoj
-- 
It's easier to be original and foolish than original and
wise. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Craig Dickson]

Florian Weimer wrote:

> Hans Reiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies give
> > for their actors.
> 
> So you are concerned with the missing ad when mkreiserfs runs?
> 
> In this case, your analogy is wrong.  The message does not give proper
> credit to developers (actors), but those who help to fund the
> development (the film studio, the producers or some VCs).

Well, I certainly hope he doesn't want the kind of visibility that the
studio and producer have. Can you imagine it?

# mkreiserfs

[clear screen]




N   A   M   E   S   Y   S


  and


H   A   N   S  R   E   I   S   E   R


  in association with


  M   P   3   .   C   O   M


present


  a


H   A   N   S  R   E   I   S   E   R


  production


of  a


H   A   N   S  R   E   I   S   E   R


   program



   M   K   R   E   I   S   E   R   FS

etc. etc. etc.


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Re: Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)

[Russell Coker]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 21:18, Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> Why don't we consider the x86-64 as beeing a 64-bits-only architecture

Because we want to run Netscape, commercial games, Frauhofer MP3 en/decoders, 
Oracle, and other binary-only i386 software.

If AMD had made a 64bit only CPU and devoted those extra transistors to cache 
it would have improved performance for 64bit code.  After paying the 
performance penalty of a 32bit ISA it makes sense to take advantage of it.

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Steve Greenland]

On 20-Apr-03, 21:14 (CDT), Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> 
> "Windows-centric"?  FFS, where do you think the term "registry" /comes/
> from?

While the term registry comes from Windows, it's worth noting that AIX
had the equivalent ('object manager') (which has nothing to do with OOP)
long before.

And it's just as much a pain in the ass on AIX, as one never knows
where a configuration item comes from, and whether changing the usual
configuration file will do something useful, or whether the change
will be preserved. Well, it's not quite as bad as the Windows version,
because it doesn't corrupt itself when looked at sideways, since it was
written by competent people.

Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world.   -- seen on the net

Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 11:21:59 +0100, Matt Ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 


> All I have said to date is that the overwrite question was suggested
> in the past by another developer as a way of dealing with the
> problem when it came up before. Some of us implemented the
> suggestion and it seems no one has had a problem with it until now
> (I have had no bug reports on this). There are other suggestions now
> that may accomplish the same thing (though I don't like the XML or
> UCF stuff as they add dependencies) and when the dust has settled
> I'm sure I will implement the recommendation put forward.

There were serious bugs filed on TeTeX about this, so the
 statement that there were no bugs or complaints is not correct.


Why do you need to wait until dust settles to stop violating policy?

manoj
-- 
A diplomat is man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never
her age. Robert Frost
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Denis Barbier]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 02:15:59AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
[...]
>   Over writing user changes is a violation of policy. Asking
>  users if it is ok with them if we violate policy is not good
>  enough.
[...]

I would be glad to learn why ucf does it right.
In your opinion, is proftpd a good example of configuration file handling?

Denis

Re: stop abusing debconf already

[David B Harris]

On Mon Apr 21, 10:05am -0500, Steve Greenland wrote:
> On 19-Apr-03, 11:44 (CDT), David B Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
> > 
> > From debconf-devel(8): "low: Very trivial items that have defaults that
> > will work in the vast majority of cases; oinly control freaks see
> > these."
> 
> If you have a package that is asking only medium and lower priority
> debconf questions, then debconf should not be used at all. Those
> priorities *exist* because there are packages that have a high-priority,
> non-defaultable question, and once you've broken the conffile system,
> you might as well include those questions. Perhaps it was a bad
> idea. Another use for those lower priorities is for notes to the
> admin. I contend that this second use *is* a bad idea, because the
> common implementation is to NOT include the same information under
> /usr/share/doc/, and thus those of us who have low and medium
> priority turned off lose that info.

I never said otherwise, and in fact I have followed that practice
myself.


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Re: stop abusing debconf already

[Denis Barbier]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 03:49:43PM +0200, Denis Barbier wrote:
[...]
> Honestly you should not be so upset by these debconf abuses about
> configuration files overwriting, this is a difficult issue and AFAICT
> documentation does not help.

Correction, debconf-devel(7) explains how to do it right, it contains
a detailed example.

Denis

Re: GDM is ancient version

[Christian Marillat]

Scott Henson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

[...]

> The maintainer of gdm doesnt want to upload it till some key components
> build on all archs.  Basically he doesnt want to leave certain
> archs(which he uses) without a gdm.  Also I believe he is one of the FTP

This is false because even if the latest gdm doesn't build on all archs
we still have the old gdm package.

> masters, so no one can do an NMU(which they probably shouldnt be doing
> in this situation anyway).  You can get gdm 2.4 compiled for sid from:

Really good analyse, but who does matter ?

Christian

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free then I will be honored to join Stallman and the FSF in the not free section of your distro

[Steve Langasek]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 10:08:57AM +0400, Hans Reiser wrote:
> I find it unspeakably ingrateful to Stallman that some of you begrudge 
> him his right to express his (discomforting to some) views to all who 
> use his software, and to ensure that they are not removed by those suits 
> who are discomforted.

> As far as I am concerned, I have no desire to have ReiserFS distributed 
> for free by anyone who removes the GNU manifesto or similar expressions 
> from Stallman's work (or my own) and redistributes it.  It is simply a 
> matter of respect that is due the author.

Thank you for making your position clear.  If it is your intention that
the license of your software be understood to prevent third parties from
removing this advertising material from the output of the program, I'm
sure that Debian will be more than willing to comply with your wishes by
removing your non-free software from our distribution.

> I will be happy to work with the FSF in recruiting other software 
> authors to this task of stemming plagiarism and political bowlderization 
> by distros before it becomes a bigger problem than it is now.

Get over yourself.

-- 
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer


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Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 12:25:11 +0400, Hans Reiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> I want the same visibility of credits for reiserfs that movies give
> for their actors. 

Now imagine if ls or grep wanted the list of contributors to
 be scrolled past, slowly, on every invocation, and insisted that
 Debian was being disrespectful is not all the thousands of people who
 have contributed to the GNU fileutils package be given due and proper
 visibility for their stellar contribution to the free software
 community. 

manoj
-- 
Bus error -- please leave by the rear door.
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:31:10 +0200, Denis Barbier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 02:15:59AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> [...]
>> Over writing user changes is a violation of policy. Asking users if
>> it is ok with them if we violate policy is not good enough.
> [...]

Perhaps I should elucidate. In the cxontext of this thread, it
 was obvious to me that we are talking about a one time question
 whether or not is is OK to always overwrite configuration files
 forever more, which causes user changes to be silently lost from that
 point on. 


> I would be glad to learn why ucf does it right.  In your opinion, is
> proftpd a good example of configuration file handling?

The gold standard of conffile handling has been dpkg; every
 time the maintainers version changed, dpkg asked if the user wanted
 the changes, iff there were any user changes.

All ucf adds is a way to merge changes in maintainer versions
 into the local copy, and some inchoate thoughts about characterizing
 the magnitude of change in the maintainer versions (this is still in
 early design phase).

Debconf and configuration files have not fundamentally changed
 anything: the new maintainer version, instead of being embedded in
 the package, is now generated on the fly; but the user should still
 be asked if their changes are to be overwrtten, and they should be
 allowed to see the differences, and perhaps defer changing their
 configuration file to later manually merge in the changes. 

Oh, I downloaded proftpd, and on first glance, the postinst
 seems to do the right thing. Nice style too ;-)

manoj
-- 
((lambda (foo) (bar foo)) (baz))
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 11:15:46 -0400, Matt Zimmerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:21:59AM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
>> > Perhaps it would, if it had not come on the tails of a string of
>> unwarranted
>> > insults against other developers (most of whom seem to agree with
>> > my ideas on the technical subject under discussion).
>>
>> The closest I got to an insult was accusing Manoj of having a prune
>> up his rear.

> ...and telling Ben Collins to "take a Valium" after what appeared to
> be a pretty even-handed message

And telling him, repeatedly, that he had his foot in his mouth.

> ...calling Joey Hess "jumped up" and being generally rude in
> response to a justifiably exasperated message about a long-standing
> problem, which was accompanied by a standing offer to assist any
> developer with interfacing with debconf

> ...and stating that you'll "use debconf how [you] please and if
> that's against the 'pure' view of others [...] then its [sic] just
> hard luck".

> The first two being insulting to the developers involved, and the
> third being insulting to the spirit of cooperation and consensus
> that the project as a whole depends on.

manoj

-- 
YOU PICKED KARL MALDEN'S NOSE!!
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: md5 checksums

[Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 01:52:18PM +0100, Steve Kemp wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 09:05:58AM +0200, Javier Fern?ndez-Sanguino Pe?a 
> wrote:
> 
> > It doesn't tackle the issue of dpkg _not_ storing filesystem permissions. 
> > This makes it not feasible to easily recover the system after a 'chmod -R
> > go-rwx /' besides reinstalling all the packages (that's why I pointed to 
> > #187019)
> 
>   One of the things the standalone checksecurity package was going to do
>  was maintain a `database` of file modes, permissions, and their
>  checksums.

That's what Tiger calls 'signatures'. It's pretty easy to do at the moment, 
but I have not updated signatures for Debian for quite some time. If you 
intend to keep a database you also have to consider that for every patch 
(i.e. security update in a DSA) you need to regenerate it..

> 
>   Sadly this hasn't happened yet, but if it does get split away from the
>  cron package then I would be happy to implement all the required
>  features.
> 

Well, we discussed about this but no-one stepped over to implement it. I 
believe the cron package maintainer would be very grateful if someone 
implemented a 'checksecurity' package which fixed all its current bugs 
(#102186, #171980, #177120, #31902, #46779, #54376, #59809, #138484, 
#154390, #163813, #176090) taking over its maintenance.

Regards

Javi

PS: IMHO checksecurity should be priority Standard and should implement 
much more checks than it currently does. Unfortunately, I'm already working 
with Tiger and cannot work on this but I would really appreciate if someone 
helped out here.


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Re: md5 checksums

[Steve Kemp]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 07:16:01PM +0200, Javier Fern?ndez-Sanguino Pe?a wrote:

> That's what Tiger calls 'signatures'. It's pretty easy to do at the moment, 
> but I have not updated signatures for Debian for quite some time. If you 
> intend to keep a database you also have to consider that for every patch 
> (i.e. security update in a DSA) you need to regenerate it..

  I was thinking of several forms of this, to do it properly on a WORM
 and a nightly cronjob that could highlight differences and changes
 throught the preceding day.

> Well, we discussed about this but no-one stepped over to implement it. I 
> believe the cron package maintainer would be very grateful if someone 
> implemented a 'checksecurity' package which fixed all its current bugs 
> (#102186, #171980, #177120, #31902, #46779, #54376, #59809, #138484, 
> #154390, #163813, #176090) taking over its maintenance.

  I agreed to take over this checksecurity package, when the maintain
 finds the time to split it out from cron.  There was some discussion
 about it recently upon debian-devel.

  I'll mail Steve Greenland about it tonight to see how it's going, or
 if I can help.

Steve
---

Re: New project proposal: debian-lex

[Andreas Tille]

On 20 Apr 2003, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:

> OK, thanks.  Here (http://people.debian.org/~terminus/debian-lex/) is a
> rough Web page which I have shamelessly plagiarised from your Debian-Med
> project.
I just builded the Debian-med pages just for this purpose by
shamelessly plagiarising from Debian-Jr. ;-)

> I will contact the appropriate people in the mailing list and
> Web page groups to see if we can get this formalised.  I have a
> preliminary list of packages (or proposed packages) that I would want to
> see as part of Debian-Lex, and I will contact those developers also.
Great!

Kind regards

Andreas.
--
Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy

Jumped up developers [Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness]

[Matt Ryan]

Unfortunately your choice is rather weak and doesn't back up your argument
so I feel obliged to continue the thread a bit further (plus its giving my
brain some exercise).

[Oh yeah, the quotes are from some developer who's name I've promised not to
use in my emails]

> ...and telling Ben Collins to "take a Valium" after what appeared to be a
> pretty even-handed message

Unless he's a lunatic who has to take valium to keep some control I don't
see what's wrong with that. Many people would use a similar analogy to
indicate to someone they need to crank it down a notch or two.

> ...calling Joey Hess "jumped up" and being generally rude in response to a
> justifiably exasperated message about a long-standing problem, which was
> accompanied by a standing offer to assist any developer with interfacing
> with debconf

Nope, I never did such a thing. Read the message properly to see what was
said. The message specifically refers to the "view of others" and state my
intention to ignore "jumped up developers" (note the plural). I did however
state I wasn't necessarily going to stick my hand in the fire on the word of
soneone else.

> ...and stating that you'll "use debconf how [you] please and if that's
> against the 'pure' view of others [...] then its [sic] just hard luck".
>
> The first two being insulting to the developers involved, and the third
> being insulting to the spirit of cooperation and consensus that the
project
> as a whole depends on.

And the bit that the "jumped up developers" don't seem to understand is the
co-operation and consensus. I constantly see comments on how we should
restrict the number of maintainers, how we need to make sure everyone's
packages measures up to some indication of worth and importance and how if
you have not got stuck in with some technical solution in the dim and
distant past then your opinion isn't worth jack. My vision of inclusiveness
means that everyone gets a say whether its liked it or not.

There are no ranks in Debian, no one gets paid (AFAIK) and so no view is
more or less valid than another. I think a small minority of developers can
easily get identified as pushing their own agendas if we did an informal
poll on this list. Those are the one's I have issue with and will continue
to say so. Most likely a strong feeling to respond to this message will
promote you to the top of the list 8-)


Matt.

Re: Bug#189370: acknowledged by developer (irrelevant)

[Denis Barbier]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:40:49AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 17:31:10 +0200, Denis Barbier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 
> 
> > On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 02:15:59AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > [...]
> >> Over writing user changes is a violation of policy. Asking users if
> >> it is ok with them if we violate policy is not good enough.
> > [...]
> 
>   Perhaps I should elucidate. In the cxontext of this thread, it
>  was obvious to me that we are talking about a one time question
>  whether or not is is OK to always overwrite configuration files
>  forever more, which causes user changes to be silently lost from that
>  point on. 

Right, thanks for clarifying.
It can also be achieved with debconf, by marking the question as not
already seen if files differ, but I believe that nobody does this.

[...]
>   Oh, I downloaded proftpd, and on first glance, the postinst
>  seems to do the right thing. Nice style too ;-)

I wondered whether this use of ucf is safe.  If postinst fails for any
reason, and package is reconfigured, the backup file is overwritten.
An alternative is to abort postinst if -old already exists, and
to remove it when postinst finishes.  Isn't this safer?

Denis

Re: New project proposal: debian-lex

[Ben Armstrong]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 07:48:08PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> On 20 Apr 2003, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> > OK, thanks.  Here (http://people.debian.org/~terminus/debian-lex/) is a
> > rough Web page which I have shamelessly plagiarised from your Debian-Med
> > project.
> I just builded the Debian-med pages just for this purpose by
> shamelessly plagiarising from Debian-Jr. ;-)

Rats, and they weren't even very good pages to begin with. :/

Ben
--
 ,-.  nSLUGhttp://www.nslug.ns.ca   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 \`'  Debian   http://www.debian.org[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  `  [ gpg 395C F3A4 35D3 D247 1387 2D9E 5A94 F3CA 0B27 13C8 ]
 [ pgp 7F DA 09 4B BA 2C 0D E0 1B B1 31 ED C6 A9 39 4F ]

Re: md5 checksums

[Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 06:27:33PM +0100, Steve Kemp wrote:
> 
>   I agreed to take over this checksecurity package, when the maintain
>  finds the time to split it out from cron.  There was some discussion
>  about it recently upon debian-devel.

Missed that mail. I remember the discussion on what should checksecurity 
include though. Please notice I have include many of the modules we wanted 
in Tiger.

> 
>   I'll mail Steve Greenland about it tonight to see how it's going, or
>  if I can help.

Probably implementing a package fixing bugs, together with a patch to cron
to remove it and help people upgrade (people running woody might expect
this behaviour when they upgrade to sarge) + sending it to experimental
would be a good start :-)

Regards

Javi


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Re: Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)

[José Luis Tallón]

At 01:18 22/04/2003 +1000, you wrote:
On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 21:18, Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> Why don't we consider the x86-64 as beeing a 64-bits-only architecture
Because we want to run Netscape, commercial games, Frauhofer MP3 en/decoders,
Oracle, and other binary-only i386 software.
If AMD had made a 64bit only CPU and devoted those extra transistors to cache
it would have improved performance for 64bit code.  After paying the
performance penalty of a 32bit ISA it makes sense to take advantage of it.

IMVHO, there is an intermediate alternative: why not ...
... create a new x86-64 architecture
... tweak dpkg so that ${DEB_ARCH}=="x86-64" admits both i386 and x86-64 
binaries;
Naturally, x86-64 ("native") would be preferred to i386 when available. If 
there is no x86-64 binary, use i386 instead; Sky is blue, life is good ...

so,
 - We will have native, optimized, packages for x86-64, thus benefiting 
from the increased memory space addressing, extra integer size, Y2K38 
compatibility ;) ...
- Since dpkg will allow installing binary packages from i386
- We can have an x86-64 Debian right now :D ( Opteron should be 
released tomorrow, IIRC )
- Autobuilders will have much less load -- they need not build 
everything *right now*
- We can have an smooth transition to 64 bits


Any comments, remarks, suggestions, etc. very much appreciated
Regards,
J.L. 

Re: Jumped up developers [Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness]

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 06:33:49PM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:

> [more of the same]

Plonk.

-- 
 - mdz

Re: Jumped up developers [Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness]

[Stephen Frost]

* Matt Ryan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
> There are no ranks in Debian, no one gets paid (AFAIK) and so no view is
> more or less valid than another. I think a small minority of developers can
> easily get identified as pushing their own agendas if we did an informal
> poll on this list. Those are the one's I have issue with and will continue
> to say so. Most likely a strong feeling to respond to this message will
> promote you to the top of the list 8-)

"If you don't let me have the last word then I'm gonna put you on my
list  Nyeh!  Nyeh!"  The view of experiance and intelligence is much
more valid than that of inexperiance and stupidity.  If you havn't got
an agenda chances are good that you're not doing much useful.

Stephen


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Re: md5 checksums

[Steve Kemp]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 07:50:11PM +0200, Javier Fern?ndez-Sanguino Pe?a wrote:

> Missed that mail. I remember the discussion on what should checksecurity 
> include though. Please notice I have include many of the modules we wanted 
> in Tiger.

  It may have been a private mail; the way I remember it Steve was going
 to split up the package into two, and I would take the security one.
 
  I'll have a re-read of my mails to make sure that's right.
  
  I remember that you had a lot of good suggestions, and that the idea
 was to create a simplist system which would work well as part of the
 base install; not a fully integrated all singing all dancing system
 like Tiger, tripwire, etc.  (Although certainly incorporating aspects
 of these and other tools).

Steve
---

Re: Jumped up developers [Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness]

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 06:33:49PM +0100, Matt Ryan wrote:
> And the bit that the "jumped up developers" don't seem to understand is the
> co-operation and consensus. I constantly see comments on how we should
> restrict the number of maintainers, how we need to make sure everyone's
> packages measures up to some indication of worth and importance and how if
> you have not got stuck in with some technical solution in the dim and
> distant past then your opinion isn't worth jack. My vision of inclusiveness
> means that everyone gets a say whether its liked it or not.

People can say whatever they want.  They can say that 2+2=5.  That
doesn't make it be technically correct.

> There are no ranks in Debian, no one gets paid (AFAIK) and so no view is
> more or less valid than another. 

Absolutely not.  For issues involving questions of fact, some views
are correct, and views are incorrect.  For other issues, we *must* all
agree to do things a certain way, or the project loses all coherence.
That's what policy is all about.  If your view goes against what
Policy dictates, you can argue that Policy should be changed, but to
say that "your view is just as important as any other" is not a valid
argument which justifies violating Policy.  

And ultimately, your assertion is fundamentally incorrect because we
can ultimately appeal a question to the technical committee, and once
they have ruled, then one particular view *is* valid, and another
particular *is* invalid.

> I think a small minority of developers can
> easily get identified as pushing their own agendas if we did an informal
> poll on this list. Those are the one's I have issue with and will continue
> to say so. Most likely a strong feeling to respond to this message will
> promote you to the top of the list 8-)

Ad hominmem.  If you think they are pushing their own agenda, then
identify it.  What I've seen so far on this thread is an honest desire
to improve the quality of the Debian distribution.  Consistency
between packages and avoidance of using debconf to either (a) display
silly and inane messages about binutils, or (b) as a way to blow away
user managed configuration files are both things which we should
strive for towards improving the quality of the overall Debian
distribution.  As such, those are agendas for the public good, and not
what I would call private agendas.

- Ted

Re: Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)

[Josselin Mouette]

Le lun 21/04/2003 à 19:52, José Luis Tallón a écrit :

> IMVHO, there is an intermediate alternative: why not ...
> ... create a new x86-64 architecture
> ... tweak dpkg so that ${DEB_ARCH}=="x86-64" admits both i386 and x86-64 
> binaries;
> Naturally, x86-64 ("native") would be preferred to i386 when available. If 
> there is no x86-64 binary, use i386 instead; Sky is blue, life is good ..

Re: Jumped up developers [Re: stop the "manage with debconf" madness]

[Lukas Geyer]

"Matt Ryan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Unfortunately your choice is rather weak and doesn't back up your
> argument so I feel obliged to continue the thread a bit further
> (plus its giving my brain some exercise).
> 
> [Oh yeah, the quotes are from some developer who's name I've
> promised not to use in my emails]

Is that necessary?

> > ...and telling Ben Collins to "take a Valium" after what appeared
> > to be a pretty even-handed message
> 
> Unless he's a lunatic who has to take valium to keep some control I
> don't see what's wrong with that. Many people would use a similar
> analogy to indicate to someone they need to crank it down a notch or
> two.

It is insulting nonetheless. Certainly there are stronger insults, but
that Valium thing was not necessary. Furthermore, you have not engaged
in serious discussion about what the issue was. Hans Reiser accused
Debian as a whole of plagiarism and asked whether we support some
mysterious "de-crediting of Stallman and KDE" by RedHat, whatever that
is supposed to mean. As of yet, he has not even explicitly stated what
the exact license violation is, so we started guessing. Most probably
he means removal of 24 lines of listing of sponsors, advertising of
paid support etc. from the output of mkreiserfs and similar tools. In
my opinion this is not compatible with GPLv2 (which is claimed to be
the license of reiserfs), and thus the whole Reiser rant qualifies as
trolling, no matter whether he is an upstream author or not. Ben
Collins actually advised him on the recommended course of action,
i.e. filing a bug/contacting the maintainer.

> There are no ranks in Debian, no one gets paid (AFAIK) and so no
> view is more or less valid than another. I think a small minority of
> developers can easily get identified as pushing their own agendas if
> we did an informal poll on this list. Those are the one's I have
> issue with and will continue to say so. Most likely a strong feeling
> to respond to this message will promote you to the top of the list
> 8-)

I do not count myself as member of the cabal or an important member of
the project, maintaining only two chess engines. However, the debconf
issue has been discussed in the past, and it seems that some informal
consensus involved that debconf is not to be used as a registry. There
were some good arguments for that point of view, and a point of view
is not much worth if it is not backed up by arguments. The points
which stick from your emails are the insults, and that may be due to
my superficial reading, but it seems that others have the same
impression. (Matt Zimmerman did not even mention the point about "anal
retentives"...)

So, please calm down and discuss technical merits of debconf usage,
not personal motivations of some imagined developer cabal,

Lukas

Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Walter Landry]

Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Op za 19-04-2003, om 22:51 schreef Lukas Geyer:
> > the issue seems to be the fix of #152547. If we are not allowed to
> > remove a screenful of advertising from the output of a program, then
> > this unduly restricts the freedom to distribute modified versions.
> 
> Uhm.
> 
> From the GPL, section 2:
> 
> c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
> when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
> interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
> announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
> notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
> a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
> these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
> License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
> does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
> the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
> 
> Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
> GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message
> is certainly not the same as a list of sponsors, they both require some
> messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
> wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

Actually, what Hans Reiser should do is assign copyright for parts of
the work to all of his sponsors.  Then, an "appropriate copyright
notice" would list all of their names.  That would be fully within the
letter of the GPL.

Regards,
Walter Landry
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Fwd: Re: Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)

[José Luis Tallón]

( forgot to Reply to the list, sorry )
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 20:58:20 +0200
To: Josselin Mouette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: José Luis Tallón <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)
At 20:23 21/04/2003 +0200, you wrote:
Le lun 21/04/2003 à 19:52, José Luis Tallón a écrit :
> IMVHO, there is an intermediate alternative: why not ...
> ... create a new x86-64 architecture
> ... tweak dpkg so that ${DEB_ARCH}=="x86-64" admits both i386 and x86-64
> binaries;
> Naturally, x86-64 ("native") would be preferred to i386 when 
available. If
> there is no x86-64 binary, use i386 instead; Sky is blue, life is good ...

This won't work, because you can't mix 32 and 64 bits code or libraries.
I think the appropriate solution is to make it a completely new arch,
with 32 bits compatibility libraries (at least glibc and xlibs) allowing
to run 32 bits proprietary software.
Correct me if i'm wrong -- you can't run 64bits software with 32bit 
libraries, but you can run 64bit and 32bit processes concurrently, right?

Then: package foo64 would require libfoo64   -- apt-get will do the hard work
If there is no foo64, select foo [foo32] instead, which will pull libfoo 
[libfoo32] from the archive if needed.
[ sonames would need to be tweaked in the 64bit versions, and some 
adjustments might be necessary in the format of 'control' files ]

My point was on easing/accelerating availability of an x86-64 "port" of 
Debian.
I most probably am overlooking something, however if there'd be a "PPC64" 
or something ( transition to 64bits will happen sometime for all 32bit 
architectures, i guess ), we would have  most work already done... wouldn't we?


--
 .''`.   Josselin Mouette/\./\
: :' :   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
`. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  `-  Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom
Regards,
J.L.

Re: Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)

[Arnd Bergmann]

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On Monday 21 April 2003 19:52, José Luis Tallón wrote:
> IMVHO, there is an intermediate alternative: why not ...
> ... create a new x86-64 architecture
> ... tweak dpkg so that ${DEB_ARCH}=="x86-64" admits both i386 and x86-64
> binaries;
> Naturally, x86-64 ("native") would be preferred to i386 when available. If
> there is no x86-64 binary, use i386 instead; Sky is blue, life is good ...

Yes, that is exactly the plan, please read the whole thread on how
this can be done. Note that in the beginning, all the packages are still
built as i386 packages, so dpkg does not have to be changed before it
can be built as a native 64 bit package itself.

Arnd <><
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Re: plagiarism of reiserfs by Debian

[Mark Rafn]

> > c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
> > when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
> > interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
> > announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
> > notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
> > a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
> > these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
> > License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
> > does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
> > the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

> Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Otherwise put: if the program shows the 'no warranty' clause from the
> > GPL at startup, you may not remove it. Although a 'no warranty' message
> > is certainly not the same as a list of sponsors, they both require some
> > messages being printed for legalese reasons. I, personally, see nothing
> > wrong with that; it certainly doesn't result in software being non-free.

It's important to note that it must display "an announcement..." which 
meets certain criteria.  It does not forbid modification of form or 
content of the announcment.

You are free to remove whatever announcement is there and replace it with 
a differently-worded one that contains the required elements.

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Walter Landry wrote:
> Actually, what Hans Reiser should do is assign copyright for parts of
> the work to all of his sponsors.  Then, an "appropriate copyright
> notice" would list all of their names.  That would be fully within the
> letter of the GPL.

I'm not sure even this is required.  It seems reasonable, and I'd expect 
most modifiers would do this.  However, it may be an "appropriate notice" 
to just say "this work is copyright (c) 2003 by multiple authors, see 
"AUTHORS" for details.

IANAL, so I don't know where the edge is here.
--
Mark Rafn[EMAIL PROTECTED]  

Glide co-maintainers request

[Guillem Jover]

retitle 189820 ITA: glide -- development files for libglide3
retitle 189952 ITA: device3dfx -- Device driver source for 3Dfx boards for 2.2+ 
kernels
thanks

Hi,

I'll adopt those packages, and will start triaging all bugs. But I only
have a Voodoo3 2000 PCI, so I would like to have one or more co-maintainers
to deal with specific hardware bugs. We can open an alioth project.
(Optional: as upstream is dead we may discuss to become it as well :)

kind regards,
guillem

Re: Do we need policy changes?

[Martin Schulze]

Nikolai Prokoschenko wrote:
> Hello,

Thanks for your input.

> I really don't know how to express what I want to say :) It has come
> to my mind a few days ago when the Vera fonts were released to public.
> My problem was: everybody was acting like mad, screaming "at last,
> some good fonts for linux!", whereas, as far as I remember, these
> fonts lacks many many scripts, starting with the simpliest ones like
> Cyrillic. I don't even want to mention double-width characters. The
> same with some GPL'ed fonts release newly (don't remember the name,
> something starting with a 'd') - nothing except latin1. Same with

This would require people with skills and tools to extend those
fonts.  I'm not even sure this can be done with Free Software, but
this is probably a very valid request.  Since the Internet is
English-centric, most of its outcome is presumably in English.

Problem: fonts contain insufficient characters
Solution: find font designers to complete them

I don't know how and where to find them.  Maybe newsforge.net wants to
host a story and maybe with much luck a designer is found.

You could also ask Bitstream who just released a set of free fonts, to
complete their work.

> otherwise excellent Knoppix-CD (OK, it's not a Debian release, but a good
> example of not caring about i18n and l10n): if you start it with the
> Russian interface, the fonts are plain ugly - nothing was made to
> ensure anti-aliasing for example.

Since Knoppix is a German effort, it's pure luck that it is
bilingual. :-)

Even though I disagree with you, Knoppix is indeed a very good
example.  Klaus created Knoppix for a particular reason, and since
that reason did not contain l10n other than Germany, why should he
care?  It would only distract him from the main issue.

However, since Knoppix is a Free Software effort as well, you are
welcome to a) re-create a knoppix-ru.iso and add proper Russian
support, or b) subscribe to debian-knoppix[1] and help Klaus add
support if he agrees that this is a desirable goal and it would still
fit on the CD.

As Manoj pointed out, that's how Free Software works: If you find a
lack of something, report it and eventually fix it yourself and
release patches.

> What I think about is some regulated way to care about the needs of
> international debian users. Let's take an example: some
> programm???plays badly along with UTF-8 and therefore can't be properly
> used by me, as I need e.g. both German and Russian. I can as well file

Please name these programs, report proper bug reports, eventually add
patches.

> a bug against it, but it wouldn't matter much, as the maintainer would
> just say 'it's not supported upstream' and nothing would happen. Other

Maybe the maintainer just has no clue about how UTF should work in
that particular application and can't do much about it other than wait
until upstream has a clue and implements it.

However, there's nothing wrong with Debian shipping a fully utf-8
compliant version while the upstream version does not contain support
for utf-8.  That does require somebody skilled enough to implement it,
though.

Even if the Debian maintainer won't include patches to make the
application work well with utf8, you (or somebody else) could still
provide a foo-utf package that contains proper support in addition to
the usual foo package.  That's how Japanese support was added to many
applications when the Debian-JP team actually joined Debian and
inserted their prior work in form of tons of foo-ja packages.  Most of
them should be merged with the normal foo package nowardays.

> situation would arise, if something like interoperability in different
> language environments had been (I'm just speculating) a part of Debian
> Policy. In that case, package at least could have been marked as
> 'non-functioning under non-latin circumstances' and this could
> possibly lead to exclusion from Debian, or separating it into a
> diffenrent part of debian (like non-US is) etc. This way, a possible
> user could be warned in advance and maybe lead to the break-through
> for Unicode.

You could always file grave bug reports against such packages and
prevent Debian to release a new stable version ever...

You could also try to plaster in our policy that a package needs to be
UTF-8 complient.  But then again, it's also forbidden to move over a
street if the light is red.

Somebody else mentioned a web page that contains a list of packages
that work well with UTF8 and a list of packages that doesn't, together
with a list of packages that need to be investigated.  This is how
Debian-IPv6 works.  Fabio maintains such a web page, iirc.

Regards,

Joey

[1] http://mailman.linuxtag.org/ should have details

-- 
If nothing changes, everything will remain the same.  -- Barne's Law

Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.

Re: If Debian decides that the Gnu Free Doc License is not free...

[Michael Banck]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 08:07:19AM -0700, Craig Dickson wrote:
> Well, I certainly hope he doesn't want the kind of visibility that the
> studio and producer have. Can you imagine it?
> 
> # mkreiserfs
> 
> [clear screen]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> N   A   M   E   S   Y   S
[...]

Dude, he should just link statically to aalib and present the credits
like any other movie. That could make for a nice visualization of
progress, too.

Michael

-- 
"However, this an unbelievably side issue even for -devel."
-- Daniel Martin

Re: apache php4-imap Segmentation fault (help needed)

[Jørgen Hermanrud Fjeld]

mandag 21. april 2003, 02:35, skrev Steve Langasek:
> Please see the bug list for the php4 and php4-imap packages.  The
> appropriate place to inquire about package-specific bugs is the BTS, not
> debian-devel.
>
> This bug is being worked on; in fact, it seems the believed-fixed
> package has just been uploaded and will be available in unstable with
> the next archive pulse.

Thank you.
Next time I will consult BTS first.
Sincerely
Jørgen