Foresight Linux Newsletter Volume 1, Issue 2 (April 2007)
Welcome to the second issue of the Foresight Linux Newsletter! Within each edition we will bring you a report about what's happening with Foresight Linux, including release news, security updates, tips and tricks you may not have known, Foresight in the press, and highlight one package in detail. The newsletter is written by users and developers just like you, and if you're interested in helping contribute, we'd love to have you and more information is available at the end of the newsletter.
In this issue:
- Foresight Linux 1.2.1 released
- GNOME 2.18.1 Live Media
- Installation and Package updates
- Documentation Updates
- List of packages updated in April with security updates
- Keep up to date with Foresight security notices via email
- Japanese Localisation
- Brazilian Newsletter translation
- Xorg 1.3 (aka Xorg 7.3)
- HAL 0.5.9
- PAM-Keyring
- Developer resources
- GNOME 2.18.2 updates
- Linux.com: GNOME 2.18 Live Media
- Digitalgrafis: Foresight background and theme
- German press
- Searching for packages
- Adding a build environment to compile your own software
- Brasero Disc Burning application
Foresight Linux News
Foresight Linux 1.2 Released April 11th
Foresight Linux saw a major release 1.2, released April 11th, and a minor release, 1.2.1 on April 24th. Foresight Linux 1.2 saw the inclusion of GNOME 2.18.1, released the same day. 1.2.1 included the removal of firstboot to make it easier to install, mentioned below in Installation & Package Updates.
Foresight Linux 1.2 is available for download on 1 DVD, 2 CDs, or through a number of different virtualization images. Visit the download page for more information.
GNOME 2.18.1 Live Media
Using the toolset behind the creation of Foresight Linux, rBuilder and Conary, Foresight developers were able to develop and release GNOME Live Media day and date with the GNOME 2.18.1 release. Making it simple for users who want to test the latest GNOME release, four images are available for testing GNOME without having to install it directly on your hard drive. These images include a LiveCD, VMWare image, and a Parallels / QEMU image. GNOME Live Media is available for download at http://torrent.gnome.org.
Installation & Package Updates
Installation Updates
- Firstboot replacement: Firstboot has been replaced in the installation process. Firstboot has been replaced with a modified version of autoconfig from Knoppix to configure Xorg, and creating the first user is done by firsturn, custom developed by the Foresight development team. A special thank you to jtate for leading the firstrun development. Replacing firstboot will make it even easier to install Foresight, with some users reporting installation hanging because of firstboot.
- For the first time release notes were available in the Anaconda installer, allowing users to read the installation notes during an install.
After the Foresight Linux 1.2 release on April 11th, the following major packages have been updated and bugs fixed:
- Issue FL-247: Updated udev and bug fix to allow PTP cameras to work with Foresight Linux and F-Spot
Documentation Updates
Getting Started with Foresight Linux
The documentation team is pleased to announce the release of the Getting Started with Foresight Linux user guide. The User Guide is a great resource for users new to Linux or Foresight, and even experienced Linux users may learn something new. The User Guide covers:
- Installing Foresight Linux
- Post Installation Configuration
- Using Applications
- Updating Foresight / Adding & Removing software
- Getting Help
- Get Involved with Foresight
Developer documentation
Documentation for developers is being added to regularly on the Foresight Linux wiki. A new space on the wiki called the Foresight Packages Kitchen has been created for sharing resources among developers to for cooking packages. If you are interested in becoming a developer, check out the following wiki pages:
- [Developer space] on the Foresight Linux wiki
- [Developer HOWTOs]
- [Foresight Packages Kitchen space]
Make your desktop beautiful
James Olds has contributed a HOWTO on adding Avant-Window-Navigator and Affinity to a desktop running Compiz. AWN replaces your bottom GNOME panel with a composite-enabled dock for launching applications and also showing an icon of which applications are open on your desktop. Affinity is a 3D enabled (via OpenGL) start menu and search tool for a Compiz enabled desktop.
Security Updates
Security updates are published on the Foresight Security mailing list. This month's security updates include:
| FLEA-2007-0013-1 |
xine-lib |
2007-04-23 |
Xine was vulnerable to a buffer overflow that could execute malicious code on a user's machine when opening a specific file.
|
| FLEA-2007-0012-1 |
madwifi |
2007-04-22 |
Previous versions of the madwifi package were vulnerable to a number of Denial-of-Service issues, at least two of which can be exploited to cause a system crash (kernel oops). In addition, previous versions could be made to send unencrypted information before authentication finishes when using WPA, an
information leak. |
| FLEA-2007-0011-1 |
lighttpd |
2007-04-20 |
Previous versions of the lighttpd package are vulnerable to two denial of service attacks. One is a remote denial of service that can cause lighttpd to consume all available CPU time and stop serving requests, and the other is a denial of service attack which generally requires a local user to create a file with an mtime of 0; the lighttpd daemon will crash when attempting to serve that file. Once lighttpd has been crashed or made to stop serving requests, subsequent updates using the Foresight System Manager
(rAA) will not occur. |
| FLEA-2007-0008-1 |
dist |
2007-04-05 |
Previous versions of the krb5 package are vulnerable to three attacks that can be triggered remotely, one of which is known to provide unauthenticated unrestricted shell access to any system running the krb5 telnet daemon. |
| FLEA-2007-0009-1 |
xorg-server, libX11, libXfont |
2007-04-05 |
The freetype and xorg-x11 packages are vulnerable to several attacks in which a program run by an authenticated user can easily crash
the X server (Denial of Service) and possibly also cause the X server to execute arbitrary malicious code as the root user. |
| FLEA-2007-0010-1 |
evolution |
2007-04-05 |
Evolution was vulnerable to a format string vulnerability which could allow arbitrary code execution at the
permission level of the user running evolution (usually non-root) via a specially crafted shared memo. |
| FLEA-2007-0006-1 |
ImageMagick |
2007-04-03 |
ImageMagick was vulnerable to buffer overflows in the code which parses DCM and XWD files, which could
allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. |
| FLEA-2007-0006-2 |
ImageMagick |
2007-04-03 |
ImageMagick was vulnerable to buffer overflows in the code which parses DCM and XWD files, which could
allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. |
| FLEA-2007-0007-1 |
nas |
2007-04-03 |
The nas package was vulnerable to a number of buffer overflows, NULL and invalid pointers, and an int overflow. |
Translation and Localisation
- With the Foresight Linux 1.2 release, Foresight now has support for Japanese fonts and keyboard support.
- The Foresight Linux Newsletter is now available in Portugese, translated by Foresight's Brazilian translation team. Visit the Newsletter wiki space for more information.
Development News
The next release for Foresight Linux, 1.3, will be released on May 30th, the same day as the GNOME 2.18.2 release. Currently in development for this release are:
- Xorg updates: Released to testing is the latest testing version of X.org, 1.3, also known as 7.3. The major news with Xorg 1.3 is the removal of the xorg.conf file, Xorg 1.3 now installs your hardware dynamically.
- HAL was updated to 0.5.9. HAL, the Hardware Abstraction Layer, has updates for a number of devices. Fior more information see this emailon the HAL mailing list.
- PAM-Keyring: PAM-Keyring is a pam module that launches the gnome-keyring-daemon and then unlocks a keyring using your login password.
- Developer documentation is being updated daily. See the Documentation section above in the newsletter for more information.
- A [foresight-documentation] (version 1.3) package to distribute documentation, start with the Frequently Asked Questions from the wiki.
- GNOME 2.18.2 is scheduled for release on May 30th. GNOME 2.18.2 updates will be added to Foresight Linux on the same release schedule as GNOME.
Foresight in the press
GNOME 2.18 Live Media, based on Foresight Linux, was featured on Linux.com April 3rd in the article GNOME 2.18 shows incremental improvement.
One of the most popular questions in the Foresight IRC channel is regarding the default Foresight background and theme. The Digitalgrafis blog provides a storyon the background and theme in Foresight.
German media continues to feature stories on Foresight Linux. April stories include:
Tips & Tricks
This month's Tips & Tricks focuses on searching for packages, and adding a build environment.
Searching for packages
If you don't know the name of the package you want to install, the easiest way to search to see if the package is available for installation, is to search via Foresight's repository on rpath.org: http://www.rpath.org/rbuilder/repos/foresight/browse. To search from the Foresight repository using the command line (you will need to know the exact package name) type:
This will tell you the package name to install using the directions in the next session.
The last way to search for packages is using the Foresight System Manager. After logging in, on the left hand menu, click on "Package Search" and enter the name of the software package in the search box. If available, the name of similar packages will show in the "Package" column, and the available repository the package is located in and the version available in the "Version" column.
The following screenshot shows the result of searching for "avant". "Avant-window-navigator" is the package available, in the Foresight contrib repository, and the version number available is 0.1.1.r173-1-1.
Adding a build environment
Conary is a powerful package manager, and you should always check to see if a package is available in one of the repositories before trying to compile it yourself. To keep installation size down and your desktop as stable as possible, development tools are not included in a default Foresight installation.
To compile software on Foresight Linux, you will need to add development tools, such as gcc and make. To install a full suite of development tools, from a command line type:
sudo conary update group-devel
Once this has downloaded and installed via conary, you will be able to compile and install your custom software.
Package of the month: Brasero Disc Burning
Brasero is a full featured disc burning application. Using Brasero, you can create an audio CD from your digital music files, back up your data to CD or DVD, copy a disc, or burn an image, such as an ISO image of Foresight for installation.
To start using Brasero, choose it from the GNOME Menu (Applications - Sound and Video - Brasero Disc Burning Application.
From the main Brasero menu that starts, choose which project you would like to start.
To create an traditional audio CD from your digital music files, choose Audio project. In the bottom left hand corner of Brasero, click on the Audio CD icon and choose the size of the CD you inserted, such as 74 minutes or 80 minutes. On the right sideof Brasero, is the file browser. Browse your home directory and find the location of the audio files such as OGG, FLAC or MP3 you wish to create an audio CD from. To add a file, double click the audio file, or drag and drop from the file browser on the right to the Audio project on the left hand side of Brasero. Brasero will automatically calculate how much time each song is in the bottom bar along the Audio Project. If Brasero displays "Oversized", you have added more songs than will actually fit on the CD. To remove a song, highlight the song and right click your mouse and click remove, or use the delete key on your keyboard.
You can also back up data directly to CD or DVD. To add data to your disc, drag and drop files from the Nautilus File Browser in to Brasero, or from the File Browser on the right hand side of Brasero to the Data Project on the left hand side. When you have added all the files you wish to add to CD or DVD, click the Burn button, and Brasero will backup your data.
Brasero also features the ability to make an exact copy of a CD or DVD, and the ability to burn images to disc, such as ISO of Foresight Linux.
To learn more about Brasero, visit the Brasero page in the Getting Started with Foresight Linux user guide.
Contributing to Foresight Linux
Contribute to Foresight Linux
Join the security team! The security team is looking for more members to keep Foresight secure from the latest threats and exploits. Helping patch packages with the latest security fixes is a great way to learn Conary and packaing on Foresight Linux. Join the #foresight-security IRC channel on the Freenode network and speak with smithj to learn more.
For other oportunities to contribute to Foresight Linux, visit the Getting Involved page on the Getting Started with Foresight Linux user guide.
Contribute to the Foresight Linux Newsletter
Have a package or piece of software you want to share in the monthly newsletter? Send it in! We are always looking for more writers or contributors, and building the newsletter is a collaborative process using the Foresight Linux Newsletter wiki. We are also looking for volunteers to interview people in the Foresight and GNOME communities, links to news articles on the web or in print regarding Foresight Linux, and all the other content that makes up the newsletter.
Contributors to Issue #2: Paul Cutler (editor), Ken Vandine, Thilo Pfennig, Jonathan Smith, António Meireles
Downloading and Getting Help with Foresight Linux
Download and install Foresight Linux:
Live Media, including Live CD, VMWare image, and QEMU and Parallels images
Help is available in many forms, and you can choose what you're most comfortable with.
- IRC: Visit the Foresight IRC channel, #foresight on Freenode, and ask questions. We have one of the most friendly IRC channels you'll come across with everyone from users to developers reaching out to help answer questions.
- Forums: Our forums continue to grow, and are a good source of information to check if a specific problem or question has come up before.
- Wiki: Documentation on the wiki is growing on a daily basis, with updates often to the Frequently Asked Questions and other how-to's to get you going with Foresight Linux.
- Mailing Lists:
- General List: General discussion around Foresight Linux
- Commits list (high traffic): All package commits are emailed to this list
- Packagers List: Discuss packaging applications for Foresight using Conary and rBuilder
- Developers List: Discuss topics related to Foresight development projects
Foresight Linux Information
Learn more about Foresight Linux at Foresight's homepage, http://www.foresightlinux.org.
Read what the developers are working on via their blogs, aggregated at Planet Foresight, http://www.foresightlinux.org/planet/ or subscribe via RSS at http://web.foresightlinux.org/planet/feed/rss/.
Subscribe to the newsletter via RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/foresightnewsletter.
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