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LWN.net
LWN.net is a comprehensive source of news and opinions from
and about the Linux community.
URL: http://lwn.net
Updated: 26 min 29 sec ago
Kernel prepatch 2.6.28-rc6
Another 2.6.28 rc is available with the release of 2.6.28-rc6. Most of
the fixes are to CIFS and the mips architecture, though there are some
other small fixes included. The long-format
changelog has all the details. Linus is hoping that while he is gone
for a week scuba diving, "you will all have tested it extensively and
sent me fixes
for any regressions found. Please don't disappoint me."
Categories: Libre
Stable kernel update 2.6.27.7
The 2.6.27.7 stable kernel
update has been released. It contains a long list of fixes including one
with a CVE number. As usual, "all users of the 2.6.27 kernel
series are strongly encouraged to upgrade".
Categories: Libre
Mandrake Linux Founder Back, Virtually (Internetnews.com)
Internetnews.com
talks to Gael Duval about the Ulteo enterprise Open Virtual
Desktop Solution.
"Whatever happened to the founder of Mandrake Linux? He's back on the scene with a new open source startup and looking to break some ground with its first offering called a Virtual Desktop solution.
Ulteo's new enterprise Open Virtual Desktop Solution is an attempt to break into the broader virtualization and remote desktop space. It's a market that is fiercely competitive with Citrix, VMware and Red Hat's Qumranet all angling for a piece of the market."
Categories: Libre
Novell, Microsoft ready management pack for SUSE Linux (TechTarget)
TechTarget
reports on plans for the release of
the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) by Microsoft and Novell.
"Microsoft and Novell Inc. said the two-year-old collaboration to better manage Windows and SUSE Linux will produce its first fruit in the first half of 2009.
Novell will make available the Advanced Management Pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 in the first half of 2009 to coincide with the release of Operations Manager 2007 R2. Novell has not yet set a price.
The management pack will supplement the monitoring assessment and deployment features in Operations Manager and let managers view information using one console, said Sanjay Sidhu, director of marketing and business development at Microsoft."
Categories: Libre
Thursday Security Updates
CentOS has updated
kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).
Debian has updated thunderbird (multiple vulnerabilities) and python (multiple vulnerabilities).
Mandriva has updated dovecot (multiple vulnerabilities) and kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).
Slackware has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).
Ubuntu has updated hplip (multiple vulnerabilities).
Categories: Libre
rPath Spurs Operating System Evolution with Ubuntu, CentOS Support
rPath has announced that its rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform will now support Ubuntu and CentOS, SUSE Linux is already
supported.
"rBuilder is the
category-defining build and release management system for creating virtual appliances and
application images. The rPath Lifecycle Management Platform extends rBuilder with a comprehensive
system for controlling the cost, complexity and risk of deploying, managing and maintaining
application images in virtualized and cloud-based environments.
The rPath approach assembles and binds application functionality with an operating system, creating
a self-contained application image that can be easily deployed, managed and maintained."
Categories: Libre
Linux Guru Reiser Seeks New Murder Trial (Wired)
Wired
covers the latest twist in the Hans Reiser murder trial.
"Hans Reiser wants a trial do-over.
Reiser is the Linux guru who in April was convicted of the first-degree murder of his estranged wife. He's the same defendant who, in exchange for a 15-to-life term instead of a 25-to-life term, brought authorities to the Oakland hills where he buried Nina Reiser's body.
He even apologized for killing her.
But in a handwritten appellate motion, he is appealing his conviction. Yet there's a glaring problem with this appeal, in which he claims he thought the deal would have only sent him away for three years, not 15-to-life."
Categories: Libre
LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 20, 2008
The LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 20, 2008 is available.
Categories: Libre
A Mozilla year-end report
Mitchell Baker reports on the state of Mozilla. Income continues to rise, and continues to come mostly from Google. Beyond that: "Our community remains healthy and vibrant. The percentage of code contributed to Firefox by people not employed by Mozilla remained steady at about 40% of the product we ship. This is true despite a significant amount of new employees in 2007."
Categories: Libre
Linux distros and Apple beat Microsoft's homepage uptime (Royal Pingdom)
The folks over at the Royal Pingdom blog have a comparison of uptimes and home page load times for the web sites of multiple Linux distributions along with Microsoft and Apple. Overall, the results of this month-long monitoring effort reflect quite well on Linux, but the authors are quick to caution that these numbers only reflect a particular point in time. Longer term monitoring is ongoing as well. "It is interesting to see that even with limited resources, many of the teams behind the various Linux distributions are managing a better homepage uptime and load time than Microsoft does, at least during this time period."
Categories: Libre
Security advisories for Wednesday
Fedora has updated geda-gnetlist (F8, F9: insecure tmp file usage), roundup (F8, F9: permissions bypass), cobbler (F8, F9: arbitrary code execution), libxml2 (F8, F9: multiple vulnerabilities), grip (F8, F9: arbitrary code execution), htop (F8, F9: process name sanitizing).
Mandriva has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).
Red Hat has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).
rPath has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).
Ubuntu has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).
Categories: Libre
The Green Penguin - Where Does Your E-Waste Go? (Linux Journal)
Linux Journal takes a look at the E-Stewards certification program for electronic waste recyclers. "That old CRT monitor the size of a small fridge. The original Apple Newton that kicked the bucket and never woke up. The early-vintage musty VA Linux box - what happens to all of this e-junk after it, if ever, leaves your basement? Ideally e-junk lands at a reputable e-recycler with the equipment to safely recycle and/or dispose of these items that are very difficult to process. What happens frequently is that a less-than-reputable outfit will pack your e-junk onto a container and ship it off to a developing country with lax environmental and labor laws, where it will wreak havoc on the environment and poor people."
Categories: Libre
MinGW and why Linux users should care
The Minimalist GNU for Windows (MinGW) project is a way to get GCC and
tools like binutils working to build software for the Windows
environment—something that might not sound very interesting to Linux
users or developers. But there are a number of advantages to porting and
regularly testing free software on Windows, as Red Hat's Richard Jones and
Dan Berrange explain. Richard and Dan also describe Red Hat's involvement,
how developers can participate, as well as how it all helps the free
software cause. Click below, subscribers only, for the interview.
Categories: Libre
Mandriva reports its 3rd Quarter results
Mandriva has reported its financial and operating results for the 3rd
quarter 2008. "Turnover for the quarter is 0.83 million Euros,
trading revenue is 1.04 million Euros, costs are 1.67 million Euros and the
operating loss is 0.64 million Euros. Turnover and operating results,
compared with the 3rd quarter 2007, were 29 per cent down, costs fell by 5
per cent."
Categories: Libre
Cray CX1 Taps Clustercorp's Rocks+ for Linux
Cray has announced
the availability of the Cray CX1 deskside supercomputer preloaded with
Rocks+ 5, the commercial version of the Rocks Cluster Distribution for
Linux users. "Rocks+ is the commercial version of the Rocks Cluster
Distribution -- an end-to-end HPCC software stack, which includes the
operating system, cluster management middleware, libraries, and compilers;
with enterprise class commercial support from Clustercorp, which was
founded by the leaders in the Rocks community. Available Rocks+Rolls
include the Intel(R) Roll, PGI(R) Roll, OFED Roll, TotalView(R) Roll and
Moab(R) Roll (Rocks+MOAB). Clustercorp also supports open source Rolls
including the Torque Roll and SGE (Sun Grid Engine) Roll."
Categories: Libre
Security advisories for Tuesday
Ubuntu has updated mysql (denial of
service), firefox and xulrunner (multiple
vulnerabilities), clamav (arbitrary code
execution).
rPath has updated gnutls (man in the middle attacks).
Mandriva has updated gnutls (man in the middle attacks), firefox (multiple vulnerabilities).
Debian has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).
CentOS has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).
Categories: Libre
The Microsoft-Novell Linux deal: Two years later (InfoWorld)
InfoWorld takes
a look the Novell-Microsoft deal. "Whatever the implications for
the greater Linux and open source worlds, Novell says the Microsoft deal
has been good for its Suse Linux and for IT shops that use both Suse and
Windows. Customers wanted a "bridge between Microsoft Windows and Linux,"
says Microsoft's Hauser. Customers also wanted peace of mind over potential
intellectual property disputes, since those can take products off the
market or result in additional licensing fees. About 100 customers are
covered by the Novell-Microsoft agreement, she notes."
Categories: Libre
kerneloops.org records its 100,000th oops
Arjan van de Ven reports that kerneloops.org has recorded oops #100,000, just shy of its first birthday. The site gathers the output of kernel oops messages, which are the crash signatures from the kernel. The intent is to find out which are the most common in order to find and fix the underlying bugs. "Other than the top 2 items, which have patches, we've done a pretty good job of fixing
the high occurrence bugs (excluding the binary drivers which we obviously cannot fix)" Click below for his full report.
Categories: Libre
Give 1 Get 1 2008 Started in Europe and USA! (OLPC News)
The folks over at One Laptop Per Child News have information on this year's edition of the Give One Get One program. For $399, one can get an XO for some lucky child as well as donate one to a child in the developing world. This year, Amazon is handling the fulfillment which will hopefully alleviate many of the problems seen last year. Interested people should visit Amazon's XO site.
Categories: Libre
Monday's security updates
CentOS has updated firefox (multiple vulnerabilities).
Gentoo has updated php (multiple vulnerabilities).
Mandriva has updated clamav (arbitrary code execution).
Red Hat has updated libxml2 (multiple vulnerabilities).
rPath has updated enscript (multiple vulnerabilities).
Slackware has updated gnutls (identity spoofing), net-snmp (denial of service), firefox (multiple vulnerabilities), seamonkey (multiple vulnerabilities).
Categories: Libre
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