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Debian selected for the Google Summer of Code 2010

cj2003 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:29:39 +0000

Debian has been selected as a mentor organization for the Google Summer of Code 2010. More here

Bits from the New Maintainer process

cj2003 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:28:39 +0000

Hello, Some time has passed since the last news from the New Maintainer process[1]. Several DD accounts are about to become 6 months old, which qualifies for becoming Application Managers should one wish to do so. Older accounts are also accepted.

Thank you Wouter
—————-

Wouter Verhelst recently resigned[2] from his Front Desk position.
We are all grateful to Wouter for his help in these years and wish him
good luck with the busy rest of his Debian activities.

New AM tutorial
—————

Patrick Ouellette pointed out that we were missing a tutorial for new
Application Managers, so now we drafted one:

http://wiki.debian.org/FrontDesk/AMTutorial

Inactive AMs
————

Recently we are seeing a number of AMs becoming MIA. It is not a problem
if one does not have anymore free time for AMing, as a new AM can always
take over the application; however, it IS a problem if one disappears
silently. That usually gives quite a bad time to the applicant, and
causes some trouble to Front Desk people when trying to investigate the
situation, with week-long delays while one waits to give busy people a
chance to reply.

So, if circumstances change and you cannot anymore be as responsive as
you wish to be, please contact Front Desk to have some or all of your
NMs reassigned. It is perfectly ok to do so: AMs should have the freedom
to be busy and we have procedures ready to cope with it.

Support in the NM process
————————-

If you are in the NM process and you suspect that it is getting stalled,
please do not wait for months before contacting Front Desk at
new-maintainer@debian.org

If you are an AM and feel awkward with an applicant, or if you feel like
there are some part of the NM process that make no sense, or waste you
too much time, by all means get in touch.

Given that we are dealing with people, not packages, there are many
contact addresses so that you can get the right audience according to
the level of confidentiality that you require:

– debian-newmaint@lists.debian.org
public list, publicly archived, good for sharing doubts and tips

– NM Committee
private list of all AMs who had at least one applicant approved in
the last 6 months. Good to discuss problems with your NM.

– Front Desk
private list of those people listed under “Front Desk” at [3], good
to discuss problems with an AM.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/11/msg00005.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2010/03/msg00014.html
[3] http://www.debian.org/intro/organization

Ciao,

Enrico

– GPG key: 4096R/E7AD5568 2009-05-08 Enrico Zini

ipv6 with debian

cj2003 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:17:55 +0000

ipv6 is about ten years old, and it is well and largely supported by most operating systems. So, coming back to Debian, if you want to enable ipv6 in your machines, here’s how to…More here

You will need:

•an editor (a real one, like vi)
•ifconfig’s output
•ipv6calc (exists as a debian package)
•two ipv6 enable machines

Edge CouchDB on Debian

cj2003 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:16:55 +0000

Last night, I got through the process of creating a base Debian image in VirtualBox. The process does not take too long, but long enough that I would be quite happy to skip it in the future. More here

RFH: DebConf 10 Travel Sponsorship Team

cj2003 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:11:24 +0000

In the spirit of openness, the DebConf 10 Organizers are soliciting
volunteers for the DebConf 10 Travel Sponsorship team.

In an ideal world, anyone who requested DebConf travel sponsorship would receive
it. Unfortunately, we do not have the unlimited budget required to make
that possible. The travel sponsorship team is tasked with the difficult
decision of determining where to allocate travel sponsorship funds
as they become available. Sponsorship requests are typically assessed
on criteria such as:

* Involvement in Debian (and/or DebConf organization)
* Amount of sponsorship requested relative to other requests from
similar geographic locations

We’d like to make the travel sponsorship selection process as fair as
possible. As such, we’re soliciting volunteers from the broader Debian
community rather than filling the team with DebConf organizers.

Ideal candidates for the team have both available time and are well
connected in the Debian web of trust — while not essential, high
connectivity in the web of trust probably indicates familiarity with
a broader range of potential DebConf attendees.

The team will utilize a rating system within Pentabarf to each rank
sponsorship applicants based on criteria decided by the team. Once these
ratings have been completed, a meeting will be held on IRC to
agree on the list of people who will initially be offered travel sponsorship
(dependent on the availability of funds). An overview of the process from
previous years is available [1].

If you’d like to volunteer for the team, please e-mail
debconf-team@lists.debconf.org now to express your interest. We’re looking
for 10 team members to start work soon.

Michael Schultheiss
For the DebConf Travel Sponsorship Team and Organizers

[1]

http://lists.debconf.org/lurker/message/20100318.142508.b3c22092.en.html

Base Debian Install on VirtualBox

cj2003 — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:56:47 +0000

I am determined to try out CouchDB 0.11. Since I don’t want to muck with the nice dev environment that I have going I will install that onto a VM. So I fire up VirtualBox and create a new VM: More here

A Debian first: female candidate in running for leader

cj2003 — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:56:00 +0000

For the first time in its 16-year history, the Debian GNU/Linux project has a woman in the running to become leader of the project when voting for the post takes place between April 2 and April 15. More here

Margarita Manterola, a software developer from Argentina, mostly Python, teaches programming at a university. She has been involved with Debian since 2003, became a developer in 2005 and has been part of the Debian Women project since it kicked off in 2004.

Debian Project Pleased with Ten Times Faster Build Server

cj2003 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:42:20 +0000

The Debian project was given a new server from Thomas Krenn AG, Intel and Adaptec for its image building. With the Dual-Xeon computer the build process was reduced from 20 to two hours. More here

New in Debian’s infrastructure is the SC846 server with a 4-unit height and two Intel Xeon E5540 processors. While the previous five-year-old system took 20 hours for a build, the new one took less than two hours, according to the project and its benefactor, Thomas Krenn AG, in a joint press release.

Debian Project Leader Elections 2010: Candidates

cj2003 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:36:40 +0000

Hi, We’re now a few days into the campaigning period. The candidates
are….
- Stefano Zacchiroli
- Wouter Verhelst
- Charles Plessy
- Margarita Manterola

The page at http://www.debian.org/vote/2010/vote_001 have been
updated. The platforms for the candidates are now also
available.

Kurt Roeckx
Debian Project Secretary

Bits from the Release Team: What should go into squeeze?

cj2003 — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:29:36 +0000

Dear fellow developers, we all want to get out squeeze as soon as possible. Currently we are still at 400 bugs concerning the next stable release, with 300 of them not yet fixed in unstable.

We would like to know what needs attention, what bugs still need to be
fixed in your package before squeeze is released, which features or new
upstream versions you want to see in squeeze which are not ready yet.
Furthermore we would like to get an overview of the remaining transitions
that need to be done.

It would be great if every team on track could send us a short mail to
debian-release@lists.debian.org and if every team that still faces work
could write up a corresponding bug report filed against release.debian.org,
preferably with proper blocked by[1] annotations if bugs are filed for the
issues at hand. Like this our progress is publically trackable, maybe
even motivating besides the high RC bug count. Please file the bugs at
normal severity, the Release Team will prioritise them afterwards.

If you think that your package is not ready for squeeze yet, please
document that in a RC bug against your package and file a bug for removal
from testing against release.debian.org. Of course it will trickle in by
itself as soon as all RC bugs are closed and we are not in freeze yet.

Some documentation about filing bugs against release.debian.org[2],
especially about the usertags used on that pseudo-package could be found
on [3]. If in doubt just file the bug and we will tag it accordingly.

Core components
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From a current point of view squeeze will release with kernel 2.6.32,
eglibc 2.11, Python 2.6, X11R7.5, Gnome 2.30, qt 4.6 and KDE 4.4.

Transitions we already know about
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* eglibc 2.11 needs uploading to unstable.
* The python, liblo, opencv and imagemagick transitions are currently
worked on.
* The mpi-defaults, directfb, parted, boost and qt4.6 transitions
are queued up afterwards.
* Migration of the graphical installer from directfb to Xorg.

Kind regards and thanks for your attention,
Philipp Kern
for the Debian Release Team

[1] http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control#block
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/release.debian.org
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2009/09/msg00005.html