My Debian Activities in September 2014

FTP assistant

Starting an article with self laudation might be bad style, but this month I was busy as a bee and could accept 312 packages, 75 packages more than last month. 34 times I contacted the maintainer to ask a question and 51 times I had to reject a package. These numbers remain constant.

The number of packages in NEW dropped to about 180. If you want your package included in Jessie, please double-check it and upload an improved version.

Squeeze LTS

This was my third month that I did some work for the Squeeze LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian.

All in all I got assigned a workload of 11h for September and I spent these hours to upload new versions of

• [DLA 43-1] eglibc security update
• [DLA 64-1] curl security update
• [DLA 67-1] php5 security update
• [DLA 68-1] fex security update

I further tried to upload a new version of python-django. Unfortunately I could not figure out why some of the internal tests of the package failed. So I fowarded the package to Raphael, who could resolve all issues.

The Squeeze version of PHP5 contains 140 patches. According to quilt 47 of them are identified to be already in 5.3.29 and 48 patches need to be revised. Some of them are really big, rather old and not really supported in the new 5.3.n version.
As nobody will talk about Squeeze LTS in a few months, I better better avoid the hassle of preparing a point release and concentrate only on security patches further on.

Other packages

This month I uploaded a new version of net-dns-fingerprint, which closes an RC bug. Unfortunately the package does not work with all DNS servers anymore. Patches or hints what happened are very welcome :-).

Support

If you would like to support my Debian work you could either be part of the Freexian initiative (see above) or consider to send some bitcoins to 1JHnNpbgzxkoNexeXsTUGS6qUp5P88vHej. Contact me at donation@alteholz.eu if you prefer another way to donate. Every kind of support is most appreciated.