fedora.us QA, Vendor, Packager and more
by Patrice Dumas
Hi,
I have some questions about spec files.
What to put for
Packager:
and
Vendor:
when doing a spec file from scratch and when reusing a spec file ?
I think this should be explained in the QA.
What to put in the %changelog ?
Especially when reusing a spec file, should the entries be kept ?
It also seems to me that some guidelines could be given about that.
On the completly different subject I would like to package a pam module,
but it should install in
/lib/security
There is no macro for this directory, nor for /lib. Is it on purpose ?
There seems to be the same for /bin. Of course it is still possible to use the
paths but maybe a macro could be usefull there ?
Pat
20 years, 2 months
Self-introduction: Per Bjornsson
by Per Bjornsson
Hello,
I'd like to help out, probably mostly with QA of packages I find useful
to begin with. Dutifully copied from the fedora.us wiki, so I can start
building some trust...
1. Full legal name: Per Bjornsson
2. Country, City: Palo Alto, CA, U.S.A.
3. Profession or Student status: Student
4. Company or School: Stanford University
5. Your goals in the Fedora Project
* Which packages do you want to see published? Mostly
interested in desktop-style packages, but whatever I
happen to find useful...
* Do you want to do QA? Sure. That's pretty much my main
intent to begin with anyways. I'll probably take on
some packaging further on if I can find the time.
* Anything else special? Not for now.
6. Historical qualifications
* What other projects have you worked on in the past?
Nothing you'd know of I'm afraid... Most of my code has
been written for research purposes (mostly computational
stuff.)
* What computer languages and other skills do you know?
I've hacked some C and Ada (CS classes...), and know my
way around Linux systems pretty well.
* Why should we trust you? <--- too blunt? (Note that the
"too blunt?" comment is in the wiki...) Yes, that really
is rather blunt. For now, you have little reason I
guess. I hope that will improve with time. I'm a good
guy, I promise! ;)
7. GPG KEYID and fingerprint
pub 1024D/7201315D 2003-11-14 Per Bjornsson <perbj(a)stanford.edu>
Key fingerprint = 160D 83E5 3DF0 7F9B ABC8 C827 C4D9 0030 7201 315D
sub 1024g/528C507C 2003-11-14
Unfortunately that key doesn't score much in the way of trust points
just yet.
Cheers,
Per
20 years, 2 months
Re: fedora-devel-list digest, Vol 1 #475 - 13 msgs
by Stuart Cheshire
>I think one of the problems is that there are hardly any devices that
>support Zeroconf presently that there is not much demand for its
>implementation on Linux or pretty much any PC.
This is one reason why progress in networking is so hard:
Printer vendor: "Why should I adopt this new thing when there are no
clients for it?"
Client vendor: "Why should I adopt this new thing when there are no
printers that support it?"
If we want to make progress in networking, someone has to be willing to
go first, and deploy something even though they reap no immediate benefit
from it.
Apple was willing to make that first move, two years ago. Apple was
willing to ship client software that used mDNS-SD to browse for printers,
even though there were ZERO network printers at that time that would
answer those queries. Imagine how hard it was to sell management on the
value of implementing a feature that offered absolutely NO immediate
benefit to users.
What happened after this is that Brother said, "Hey, this is cool. If we
put this Darwin mDNSResponder code in our printer, it magically shows up
in the print dialogs." Brother shipped their first products doing this in
January 2003, swiftly followed by Epson, Canon, Lexmark, HP, and every
other printer vendor I can think of.
I don't know a single network printer on sale today that doesn't ship
with mDNS-SD, and ship with it turned on by default, so you just plug it
in, turn it on, and it shows up in your Mac's print dialogs.
The question I'm asking now is whether Fedora wants to provide the same
out-of-the-box printer experience, or not?
>Most of the peripherals used by a home user are USB or Firewire based.
And why is that? If you could buy a $50 Ethernet printer that was as easy
to use as a $50 USB printer, which would you pick? One of my goals in
creating Zeroconf was to help accelerate the trend away from locally
tethered devices to networked devices. Especially when you have 802.11
wireless on your laptop and you can use it sitting on the couch, do you
want to have to plug in USB cables every time you want to print, or scan,
etc.?
The other aspect of this discussion is that mDNS-SD is not just
for computer-to-device communication. It's also for peer-to-peer
communication, as used by iChat, iTunes, iPhoto, SubEthaEdit,
VNC remote screen viewing, games, databases, as well as such mundane
workaday protocols as telnet, ssh, ftp, etc. You can see the list of
registered mDNS-SD protocols at <http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html>.
Any Linux application that currently has a text box in its UI where the
user is expected to type in an IP address or host name, could be enhanced
by putting a little popup menu next to that text box where the user can
click to select from a list of valid choices on the local network.
For an example, see the Transmit 2.6 ftp client from Panic Inc:
<http://www.panic.com/transmit/>
>I think you understand more of it than you give credit for.
>It's not like you haven't contributed kernel driver code 8)
It's true I wrote Linux kernel code back around 1995, but that doesn't
change this fact:
The mdnsd daemon for Linux is written, tested, debugged, and ready to go,
yet it's not in any of the standard distributions. What we keep hearing
from application developers (like people working on CUPS) is, "We'd love
to use mdnsd, but it's not in any of the standard Linux distributions."
What we keep hearing from the people working on the distributions is, "We
don't know any Linux applications today that use mdnsd, so that must mean
there's no demand for it."
There are four files: A library, a header, a daemon, and a script to
start it at boot time. You put those four files in, and CUPS can start
using it. Support of link-local addressing is not necessary for CUPS to
start using this, and neither is the "dot-local" gethostbyname() name
lookup support.
I stand by my original statement: I don't understand what more I need to
do to convince the Linux community of the benefit of this. It runs on OS
X, OS 9, Windows, VxWorks, FreeBSD, etc. It runs on Pocket PC devices
like the HP iPaq 5555, and PalmSource is working on adding it to Palm OS
6. It runs on every current network printer and an increasing list of
other devices, like TiVos, Roku HD1000s, etc. Why isn't it already in
standard Linux distributions so things like CUPS can start using it?
Stuart Cheshire <cheshire(a)apple.com>
* Wizard Without Portfolio, Apple Computer, Inc.
* www.stuartcheshire.org
20 years, 2 months
Bad rpm in gtk2-2.3.5?
by Trever L. Adams
I have been seeing this every time I try to install the latest gtk2. I
do not know if anyone else is seeing it. Is anyone?
1:gtk2 ###########################################
[ 50%]
g_module_open() failed for /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.2.0/loaders/svg_loader.
so: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: pango_find_base_dir
/var/tmp/rpm-tmp.96457: line 4: 2992 Segmentation fault /usr/bin/
gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders >/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders
error: %post(gtk2-2.3.5-1) scriptlet failed, exit status 139
Also, it leaves the previous gtk2 in, but even if I remove it, gnome
won't start right, images don't load, etc.
Trever
--
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be
properly armed." -- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188
20 years, 2 months
rawhide report: 20040308 changes
by Build System
Updated Packages:
qt-3.3.1-0.5
------------
* Sun Mar 07 2004 Than Ngo <than(a)redhat.com> 1:3.3.1-0.5
- disable smpflags
rpmdb-fedora-1.90-0.20040308
----------------------------
20 years, 2 months
Test1
by Gavin Henry
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi all,
I have just finished upgrading via apt (http://fedoranews.org/ghenry/apt-fc2/)
Will be finishing that off, once I get these little gotchas documented.
Well, my external network connection is gone. I can ping and resolve domains,
but no traffic will come in. I can't browse the net, or use xchat etc.
Very strange.
The internal lan works as I can send to my mailserver, as you can tell.
What gives?
'service network restart' is fine.
'ping www.oreilly.com' works,
/etc/resolv.conf is fine
route -n is fine.
/etc/hosts also.
Anyone had similar?
Pointing my browser to 127.0.0.1 to my webserver does work though.
Could anyone see if they can hit my domains:
http://www.suretecsystems.com
http://www.magicfx.co.uk
????
- --
Kind Regards,
Gavin Henry.
Director.
Open Source. Open Solutions.
http://www.suretecsystems.com/contact
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20 years, 3 months
initscripts
by Josep Puigdemont
Hi!
A few days ago I was asking something in i18n list, but unfortunately
the mail was so poorly written that no one answered. Let me try again =)
I CC to fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com because I think they might also be
interested.
When we have strings to translate which are part of a script (I believe
in bash) like this one:
#: /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions:441
msgid "Start service $1 (Y)es/(N)o/(C)ontinue? [Y] "
how should be proceed in respect to the answers expected by the script?
It seems that the script would expect either 'Y', 'N' or 'C'.
Translating the string using as proposed answers the initial letters in
our language for each word might break the script.
I looked at the script and, unless I'm mistaken, it confirms that it is
not prepared for localization:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
# Confirm whether we really want to run this service
confirm() {
[ -x /usr/bin/rhgb-client ] && /usr/bin/rhgb-client --details=yes
while : ; do
echo -n $"Start service $1 (Y)es/(N)o/(C)ontinue? [Y] "
read answer
if strstr $"yY" "$answer" || [ "$answer" = "" ] ; then
return 0
elif strstr $"cC" "$answer" ; then
rm -f /var/run/confirm
[ -x /usr/bin/rhgb-client ] && /usr/bin/rhgb-client
--details=no
return 2
elif strstr $"nN" "$answer" ; then
return 1
fi
done
}
--------------------------------------------------------------------
note: strstr is a function in that script that "returns OK if $1
contains $2".
Would it be a good suggestion to make a translatable string called
something like $YES that would hold the possible answers for Yes ("Yy")?
(and same for No and Continue)
I checked with other languages and all translate the string using that
language's initial letters as possible answers. I'm a little bit puzzled
since I think those translations will break the script, but I might be
wrong, any ideas?
Thanks!
/Josep
20 years, 3 months
rawhide report: 20040307 changes
by Build System
Updated Packages:
kernel-2.6.3-2.1.242
--------------------
* Sat Mar 06 2004 Arjan van de Ven <arjanv(a)redhat.com>
- fix reiserfs
- set HZ to 1000 again for some tests
rpmdb-fedora-1.90-0.20040307
----------------------------
20 years, 3 months
Re: In the service of Aunt Tillie -- Zero-configuration networking
by Stuart Cheshire
Sorry for the delay replying. My first attempt to send this mail did not
go though because I was not subscribed to the list. Now I've subscribed
and I'll try again.
There seem to be some misunderstandings about Zeroconf, which I will try
to correct. It would be a pity if red herrings impeded the spread of a
good technology that has the potential to make people's lives a lot
easier. Actually, I should clarify that. It's more than just "potential".
Zeroconf has been making Mac users' lives easier for a couple of years
now. Now that HP is shipping Apple software like iTunes preinstalled on
its Windows PCs, Zeroconf is making Windows users' lives easier too.
Products like TiVo use Zeroconf, so users of consumer electronics
customers are also benefiting. I'd like to bring these benefits to the
broader Linux community too, but... it seems to be an uphill struggle
sometimes.
There seem to be two concerns, the trade mark law suit, and the patent.
1. Trade Mark Law Suit
The Darwin mDNSResponder project existed long before Apple's marketing
people even thought of the word "Rendezvous". "Rendezvous" really doesn't
have a rigorously defined narrow meaning. "Rendezvous" is Apple's
marketing term for the broad idea that "computers should suck less".
Technologies like self-assigned addressing, IPv6, mDNS, DNS-SD, etc., are
all contributing components towards that broader goal.
The CVS project is called "mDNSResponder", not "Rendezvous". The word
"Rendezvous" does not appear in any header file names, variable names,
function names, or library names. In fact there are only TWO occurrences
of the word "Rendezvous" in the mDNSPosix directory, and both are in the
ReadMe file:
>Apple uses the brand name "Rendezvous" to describe our implementation of
>zeroconf technologies. This sample is designed to show how easy it is
>to make a device "Rendezvous compatible".
I should point out that other trade mark names like "Solaris" also appear
in the ReadMe file, and in fact Microsoft's registered trade mark
"Windows" appears more times in the source code than the word
"Rendezvous" does, in the form of checkin comments like "2003/08/06
21:33:39 Fix compiler warnings on PocketPC 2003 (Windows CE)", and so on.
Is the mention of trade mark names in the ReadMe file and checkin
comments really a valid reason to reject a technology? I think not.
2. The Patent
Eric Raymond wrote, "This stuff was invented by Stuart Cheshire".
I'll respectfully decline that honour. The algorithm for self-assigned
link-local addressing is as follows:
Pick an address; if someone is already using it, pick a different one
To claim to have invented that would be some kind of hubris. MacTCP did
that in 1990; AppleTalk did it in 1985, probably many things did it
before that too, and every five-year old child finding a place to sit in
the classroom uses the same algorithm.
Nonetheless, Microsoft applied for, and in August 2000 was granted,
United States Patent 6,101,499 "Method and computer program product for
automatically generating an internet protocol (IP) address". I'm not sure
whether it should have been granted, and I don't know that it would stand
up in court. Even ignoring the other prior art, at the time Microsoft
applied for this, version 6 of IP already had self-assigned link-local
addresses, and nowhere in the patent claims does it restrict the scope of
the invention specifically to an older version of IP. The claims describe
the patent as applying generically to "IP" as a whole, yet at the time of
the application, "IP" as a whole already had self-assigned link-local
addresses, as specified in Standards Track RFC 1971, August 1996 (and
published in Internet Draft form long before that). Furthermore, UPnP,
which claims to be some kind of semi-open standard, also requires IPv4LL
(see <http://upnp.org/resources/specifications.asp>).
If we all scurry away in fear any time Microsoft files a patent
application, no matter how valid or otherwise it may be, then we're
handing victory to them on a plate.
Regardless, even supposing this patent is sufficient reason to scurry
away in fear, it doesn't make much difference. If we're afraid of
Microsoft's patent, then:
(a) don't do self-assigned addresses at all. The interesting part of this
is, after all, mDNS and DNS-SD. If you have a DHCP server on the network
(as most Linux users do) then you have a working IP address anyway,
without self-assigned addresses. The part that's still missing is mDNS
(for local naming without a DNS server) and DNS-SD (for browsing to find
what's out there). That's what's provided by Apple's Darwin mDNSResponder
code.
(b) or, implement a local DHCP server on Linux which listens for its own
DHCP DISCOVERs, and then, if they're not answered by some other server
within 5 seconds or so, sends back a DHCP OFFER containing a 169.254/16
address. The DHCP client will do its usual ARP probe (as required by RFC
2131, March 1997) and send back a DHCP DECLINE if it finds the address
already in use. Can Microsoft's patent prevent us from implementing an
RFC 2131-compliant DHCP server?
(c) or, do self-assigned addresses, but only IPv6 self-assigned addresses
(RFC 1971), not IPv4 self-assigned addresses. Back in 1998, IPv4 was
still very important. Today it is becoming less so, as more and more
systems gain IPv6 capability. The fact that most ISPs don't provide IPv6
service is not a problem here. Remember that the main focus of Zeroconf
today is on the small home network, the local link. Regardless of how
much or how little IPv6 support your ISP may provide, you can *always*
use IPv6 on your local link, using self-assigned link-local addresses,
and indeed this is exactly what OS X does today. Even with absolutely no
other working infrastructure, you can *always* use IPv6 with Multicast
DNS ("dot-local") names on the local link. I believe that IPv6+mDNS may
actually be one of the catalysts that helps jump-start adoption of IPv6,
by making IPv6 begin to be something that suddently starts to be useful
to everyone, everywhere, instead of having to wait for everyone's ISPs to
start offering IPv6 support.
Eric Raymond wrote, "The inventor of zeroconf, Stuart Cheshire, tells me
... he doesn't understand the politics of ... the Linux community".
It's true. I don't. I've worked hard to make a technology that makes
people's lives easier, and I've worked hard to get my employer to make
that technology available to everyone on the most liberal terms I could
possibly manage. If someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong, I'm happy
to listen.
Stuart Cheshire <cheshire(a)apple.com>
* Wizard Without Portfolio, Apple Computer, Inc.
* www.stuartcheshire.org
20 years, 3 months
Using bit torrent to retrieve RPMs for updates
by Jonathan Gardner
Has anyone given serious thought to changing Yum so that it uses the
bittorrent protocol to retrieve RPMs? Especially in the case of updates,
when everyone and their grandmother needs to get the RPMs right away, this
would make a lot of sense. Yum could manage a repository of RPMs and
constantly serve those up so other can download parts of them via
bittorrent, all with permission, of course.
--
Jonathan Gardner
jgardner(a)jonathangardner.net
20 years, 3 months