[News]

Fedora Weekly News Issue 168

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 168 for the week ending March 22nd,
2009.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue168

With the Fedora 11 Beta release slipping by one week Announcements
reminds the community about "FUDCon Berlin 2009". In PlanetFedora the
recent Red Hat patent acquisitions are among several topics covered.
Ambassadors reports on the OLPC XO work at Rochester Institute of
Technology. QualityAssurance gets excited about "Test Days" for
DeviceKit, Xfce and an upcoming one for nouveau. Developments reflects a
lot of anxious upgrading and "How to Open ACLs and Find Non-responsive
Maintainers". Translation notes the "Upgraded Transifex" and translation
to Cornish. Infrastructure advises in "Change Requests" that the infra
team is in freeze and lists all the approved recent changes and
hotfixes. Controversy rages in "Artwork" over the choice of Greek temple
imagery. Yet again SecurityAdvisories lists packages that you want,
really, really want. Virtualization worries about "More Flexible x86
Emulator Choice". Needless to say there's lots more to read this week!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see
our 'join' page[1]. We welcome reader feedback:
fedora-news-list ( -at -) redhat.com

1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/NewsProject/Join

FWN Editorial Team: Pascal Calarco, Oisin Feeley, Huzaifa Sidhpurwala

Contents
1 Fedora Weekly News Issue 168
1.1 Announcements
1.1.1 Fedora 11
1.1.2 FUDCon Berlin 2009
1.1.3 Upcoming Events
1.2 Planet Fedora
1.2.1 General
1.3 Ambassadors
1.3.1 RIT Pitches in on OLPC Project
1.3.2 Got Ambassador News?
1.4 QualityAssurance
1.4.1 Test Days
1.4.2 Weekly meetings
1.4.3 Wiki changes
1.4.4 Bugzilla status, priority and severity procedures
1.5 Developments
1.5.1 Auto Upgrading YUM Not Worth It
1.5.2 How to Update from Fedora 10 to Rawhide
1.5.3 Fedora 11 Beta Slips by One Week
1.5.4 Finding the Source
1.5.5 Fedorahosted Releases
1.5.6 How to Open ACLs and Find Non-responsive Maintainers
1.6 Translation
1.6.1 Upgraded Transifex
1.6.2 New Coordinators/Members in FLP
1.7 Infrastructure
1.7.1 svn-to-git Mirror
1.7.2 Change Requests
1.8 Artwork
1.8.1 Post-inclusion Feedback for the Beta Artwork
1.8.2 A Possible New Direction for the Wallpaper
1.8.3 Completing all the Graphic Pieces
1.9 Security Advisories
1.9.1 Fedora 10 Security Advisories
1.9.2 Fedora 9 Security Advisories
1.10 Virtualization
1.10.1 Enterprise Management Tools List
1.10.1.1 Virt-p2v and RAID Controller Drivers
1.10.1.2 NetWare Support added to virtinst
1.10.2 Fedora Xen List
1.10.2.1 Which Xen Configuration Files
1.10.3 Libvirt List
1.10.3.1 Xen PCI Device Passthrough
1.10.3.2 Secure Guest Migration Draft Patch
1.10.3.3 More Flexible x86 Emulator Choice

== Announcements ==

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project.

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Events

Contributing Writer: Max Spevack

=== Fedora 11 ===

Jesse Keating[1] announced[2] that the Beta of Fedora 11 will slip one
week, due to some issues with both PPC and anaconda. The new Beta
release date is March 31.

=== FUDCon Berlin 2009 ===

Max Spevack[3] reminded[4] the community about FUDCon Berlin 2009[5],
including registration[6], lodging[7], and speaking[8] opportunities.

1. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JesseKeating
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-announce/2009-March/msg00015.html
3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MaxSpevack
4.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-March/msg00005.html
5. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009
6. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_attendees
7. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Berlin_2009_lodging
8.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon_Berlin_and_LinuxTag_2009_talks

=== Upcoming Events ===

March 23-29: LUGM OpenWeek [1] in Manipal, India.

March 25: Document Freedom Day in Kolkata, India.

March 25: Document Freedom Day in Opera, Italy.

March 26: Infotech Niagara Beta Awards[2] in Buffalo, New York, USA.

March 26: Ithaca College EdTech Day[3] in Ithaca, New York, USA.

March 27-29: PyCon[4] in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

March 31-April 2: Linux Solutions[5] in Paris, France.

April 1-2: OpenExpo[6] in Bern, Switzerland.

1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/LUGMopenweek
2. http://www.infotechniagara.org/events/?id=193
3. http://www.ithaca.edu/edtechday/
4. http://us.pycon.org/2009/about/
5.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/SolutionsLinux/SolutionsLinux2009
6.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/OpenExpo/OpenExpo2009_Berne

== Planet Fedora ==

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

http://planet.fedoraproject.org

Contributing Writer: Adam Batkin

=== General ===

Rangeen Basu Roy Chowdhury explained[1] how to build a Live USB stick
from a Live CD image. Another option, suggested in the comments, is to
use the liveusb-creator[2].

Paul W. Frields described[3] some of the preparations that the Fedora
Marketing team has been making for Fedora 11, including in-depth
articles on some of the new features.

Richard Hughes showed off[4] an updated Gnome PackageKit update viewer.

Rob Tiller, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, IP at Red Hat
responded[5] to concerns within the community about Red Hat's patenting
efforts and the Red Hat Patent Policy[6]. Paul W. Frields wrote[7] about
the response, and a lively discussion in the comments ensued.

David Woodhouse posted[8] about some documentation he had written to
support Greylisting and the exim-greylist package shipped with Fedora.

Jef Spaleta wrote[9] his "most important Fedora blog post ever" which
revolves around the "NSF sponsored workshop on Sustainable
Cyberinfrastructure"[10]. The workshop is important "for people who
believe in either the function of basic science research as a catalyst
for technical and social progress or people who believe strongly in open
development methodologies as a catalyst for deeper and more impactful
collaborations. Even more so if you happen to be in the union of those
groups and a US citizen and care about how the NSF as a Federal agency
goes about funding research and education."

As an interesting aside, Dave Jones mentioned[11] that it takes two days
and twenty minutes to run badblocks on his new 1TB hard drives.

Richard W.M. Jones worked[12] on building a minimal Fedora installation
and managed to get an installed system down to 225MB. He later
responded[13] to a comment about why it makes sense to minimize Fedora
as opposed to building a custom minimal distribution. And then he
managed[14] to get the minimal distribution down to 15.9MB.

Amit Shah benchmarked[15] various filesystems (including ext4) to find
out how well they handled pre-allocation of disk space and the new Linux
fallocate support.

1. http://sherry151.blogspot.com/2009/03/live-usb-magic.html
2. https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/
3. http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1437
4. http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/03/17/the-next-update-viewer/
5.
http://www.press.redhat.com/2009/03/17/discouraging-software-patent-lawsuits/
6. http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html
7. http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=1536
8. http://www.advogato.org/person/dwmw2/diary.html?start=201
9. http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/37433.html
10. http://cisoftwaresustainability.iu-pti.org/
11. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk/2009/03/19/badblocks-1tb-drive/
12. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/why-minimal-is-225-mb/
13.
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/why-not-use-a-minimal-distribution/
14.
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/febootstrap-minimal-now-159-mb/
15.
http://www.amitshah.net/2009/03/comparison-of-file-systems-and-speeding.html

== Ambassadors ==

In this section, we cover Fedora Ambassadors Project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors

Contributing Writer: Larry Cafiero

=== RIT Pitches in on OLPC Project ===

(This item corrects a report on this topic filed in FWN Number 166)

The Fedora OLPC project seems to have found a friend at Rochester
Institute of Technology[1]. Fedora Ambassador Karlie Robinson met RIT
professor Stephen Jacobs at an OLPC Grassroots meeting on January 22 and
learned of Jacobs' interest in doing a class around the XO.

Days later, David Nalley announced the Fedora Ambassador Developers
Project and Karlie brought Professor Jacobs up to speed on what Fedora
is doing around the XO,[2] where Fedora is providing XOs to those who
will do development work. The deal revolved around getting XOs for
Jacobs classroom in exchange for the RIT students working on Greg
DeKoenigsberg's 4th Grade Math project[1].

1. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rochester,_NY
2.
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2009-February/msg00033.html

=== Got Ambassador News? ===

Any Ambassador news tips from around the Fedora community can be
submitted to me by e-mailing lcafiero-AT-fedoraproject-DOT-org and I'd
be glad to put it in this weekly report.

== QualityAssurance ==

In this section, we cover the activities of the QA team[1].

Contributing Writer: Adam Williamson

1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA

=== Test Days ===

This week we had two test days, far more exciting than the boring
regular one! The first[1] was on DeviceKit[2], which will replace HAL
for disk and power management in Fedora 11. Turnout was not the highest,
but those who came along were able to find several issues which are
being addressed with the help of some of the developers involved,
including David Zeuthen and Matthias Clasen. The second test day[3] was
on Xfce[4], which is being updated to a major new release (4.6) in
Fedora 11. A group of enthusiastic Xfce users showed up and were able to
do some productive testing and refining of the Xfce environment together
with the lead packager for Fedora, Kevin Fenzi.

Next week's test day[5] will be on Nouveau[6], the new default video
driver for NVIDIA cards for Fedora 11. This is a very important event,
as NVIDIA graphics cards are the most popular type, and the new driver
is a fairly big change, so we need testing on a wide range of hardware
to make sure it's ready. A live CD will be available for the day so
you'll be able to test without a Rawhide installation. It will be held
on Thursday (2009-03-26) in the #fedora-qa channel on Freenode IRC. If
you have an NVIDIA graphics card, please make sure to come along, or -
if you can't make it on the day - do the tests and fill out your results
on the page another day.

1. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-17
2. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/DeviceKit
3. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-19
4. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Xfce
5. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/Test_Days/2009-03-26
6. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NouveauAsDefault

=== Weekly Meetings ===

The QA group weekly meeting[1] was held on 2009-03-18. The full log is
available[2]. James Laska reported good progress in his work on the
Semantic test result reporting extension for mediawiki. Packaging is
complete and he is next planning to put up a test instance of mediawiki
with the plugin enabled.

Adam Williamson reported that the Intel graphics adapter test day had
been a success, and a follow-up event was in the works. He also reported
that a Radeon test day had not yet been planned and promised to follow
that up with the appropriate developers.

Jesse Keating was asked to report on the status of the beta release. He
said that current Rawhide and particularly Anaconda was still too
unstable and said he expected the beta release would slip if he could
not get a Rawhide tree with a good Anaconda soon. He requested further
testing of Rawhide installation from the QA group, and some help from
the main QA group and the Bugzappers group on organizing and checking
existing bug reports against Anaconda.

Adam Williamson reported that the Xfce test day was fully planned, and
Kevin Fenzi reported that he had successfully generated some live CD
images for the test day. Adam asked if someone could make sure these
images would be available for download.

The Bugzappers group weekly meeting[3] was held on 2009-03-17. The full
log is available[4]. John Poelstra asked for feedback on the draft
Standard Operating Procedure for new memberships which he had sent to