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My Debian Activities in November 2015

FTP assistant

This month I marked 352 packages for accept and rejected 61 of them. I had to send only 15 emails to maintainers.

I also started to work on #796095 and #796784, but my first patch was rejected. So expect more to come here …

Squeeze LTS

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

Due to Toshiba becoming the first platinum sponsor, I got a workload of 21.25h. This is a new and delightful record! Altogether I uploaded those DLAs:

  • [DLA 341-1] php5 security update
  • [DLA 343-1] libpng security update
  • [DLA 355-1] libxml2 security update
  • [DLA 356-1] libsndfile security update

I also started to work on two bugs that were filed against the pseudo-package ftp.debian.org, which are somehow related to the security team: #796095 and #796784 (see above). Moreover I started to work on the next php5 upload, which will happen at the end of December.

As more and more people work at the LTS frontdesk now, this month I could chill out a bit and let the others do the work.

Other stuff

As the Advent season started again I would also like to draw some attention to the Debian Med Advent Calendar. It was announced here and like the past years, the Debian Med team starts a bug squashing event from the December 1st to 24th. Every bug that is closed will be registered in the calendar. So instead of taking something from the calendar, this special one will be filled and at Christmas hopefully every Debian Med related bug is closed. Don’t hestitate, start to squash 🙂 .

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My Debian Activities in October 2015

FTP assistant

This month I marked 492 packages for accept and rejected 50 of them. I had to send only 11 emails to maintainers.

Up to now I accepted about 6000 packages, my first one was pexpect_3.0-1 on 20131211.

date package
1 20131211 pexpect_3.0-1
1111 20140506 dochelp_0.1
2121 20140825 cl-parse-number_1.3-1
2222 20140903 node-websocket-driver_0.3.5-1
3333 20150303 libparse-keyword-perl_0.08-1
4242 20150625 python-monotonic_0.2-1
4444 20150708 libmusicbrainz5_5.1.0+git20150707-1
5555 20150928 golang-github-yosssi-ace_0.0.4+git20150515.41.78e48a2-3

So, when do you expect accepted package number 6666, 7777, 8888 and 9999?

Squeeze LTS

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

This month I only got a workload of 13.25h. Altogether I uploaded those DLAs:

  • [DLA 327-1] freeimage security update
  • [DLA 331-1] polarssl security update
  • [DLA 334-1] libxml2 security update
  • [DLA 334-2] libxml2 regression update

While preparing the libxml2 upload, I mixed up things for the i386 build and so [DLA 334-2] had to follow shortly after [DLA 334-1].
I also prepared a new upload of PHP5 with nine CVEs fixed. I put the i386 and amd64 versions at people.d.o and invite everybody to test them and give positive or negative feedback. The real upload to the archive will happen next week.

This month I also had another term of doing frontdesk work and looked for CVEs that are important for Squeeze LTS or could be ignored.

Other stuff

This month I only polished some packages and uploaded:

I also manually closed #711329 and #352421. After adopting package chktex I inherited #352421, which was one of my oldest bugs. It was about emacs longlines-mode support and I could close it without actually fixing something. The longlines-mode vanished from emacs. So, sorry for that …

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My Debian Activities in September 2015

FTP assistant

Another month passed and another statistic arrives: This month I marked 341 packages for accept and rejected only 48 of them. Almost like last month I had to send 14 emails to maintainers.

Squeeze LTS

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

This month I only got a workload of 14.5h. I finally uploaded a new version of php5. Unfortunately in one library a parameter to a function call introduced new values. As a result all running processes that used the old version of that library produced an error message until they got restarted. As complaints showed up on all channels, I rechecked my patches again and again but could not find an error. I wonder whether this happened once before. At least the php package does not have a mechanism to restart something…
Altogether I uploaded those DLAs:

  • [DLA 307-1] php5 security update
  • [DLA 309-1] openldap security update
  • [DLA 311-1] rpcbind security update
  • [DLA 312-1] libtorrent-rasterbar security update

I also started to work on an upload of freeimage and the next upload of php5.

This month I also had another term of doing frontdesk work. So I answered questions on the IRC channel and looked for CVEs that are important for Squeeze LTS or could be ignored.

Other stuff

Some time ago someone mentioned pump.io and that it would be nice to have it in Debian. I found a Wiki page listing dependencies, with lots of stuff already done and just a few holes. It didn’t look like much work todo until I realized that this page showed only the surface and the shoals are hidden below. Anyway, I started to work on it and up to now

  • node-boolbase
  • node-domelementtype
  • node-eventsource
  • node-querystringify
  • node-rai
  • node-requires-port
  • node-url-parse
  • node-wrappy
  • node-xoauth2

are uploaded and

  • node-schlock
  • node-array-parallel
  • node-css-what
  • node-bufferjs
  • node-exit

are still in NEW. Luckily most of them could be handled by npm2deb, so it was mainly routine piece of work. So, expect more to come …

I also polished some smaller packages and could even close some bugs:

  • dict-elements
  • rplay -> #741567 #597152
  • setserial -> #786976 #761951 #761951
  • siggen -> #772364
  • texify
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My Debian Activities in August 2015

FTP assistant

Another month passed and another statistic arrives: This month I marked 408 packages for accept and rejected only 32 of them. Almost like last month I had to send 14 emails to maintainers.

Squeeze LTS

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

As anybody else visited Debconf15, I got assigned a workload of 17h this month. I spent some time to prepare an upload of php5, which I did to people.d.o to let others do some tests with the package. I also uploaded some DLAs

  • [DLA 290-1] xmltooling security update Thorsten Alteholz
  • [DLA 290-2] opensaml2 security update Thorsten Alteholz
  • [DLA 292-1] libstruts1.2-java security update Thorsten Alteholz
  • [DLA 296-1] extplorer security update Thorsten Alteholz
  • [DLA 297-1] wesnoth-1.8 security update Thorsten Alteholz
  • [DLA 298-1] roundup security update Thorsten Alteholz

The patch for [DLA 290-1] was prepared by Ferenc Wagner. As opensaml2 needed a rebuild with the new version of xmltooling, that upload got [DLA-290-2] instead of an own DLA-number.

This month I also had another term of doing frontdesk work. So I answered questions on the IRC channel and looked for CVEs that are important for Squeeze LTS or could be ignored.

Other stuff

As $WORK needed some time this month, my other activities had been almost nil. But expect more to come in September :-).

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My Debian Activities in July 2015

FTP assistant

This month I marked 485 packages for accept, rejected 87 of them and had to send 18 emails to maintainers. The NEW-queue is below 100 again, but you hardworking fellows don’t make a break, but start the GCC5 transition. This is so much fun :-).

Squeeze LTS

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

This month I got assigned a workload of 15h and I spent again most of it to work on a new upload of php5. I finally prepared the patches for the CVEs and realized only then that the number of failed tests drastically increased. So return to beginning and checking why everything is broken now :-(.

  • [DLA 269-1] linux-ftpd-ssl security update
  • [DLA 271-1] libunwind security update
  • [DLA 280-1] ghostscript security update
  • [DLA 281-1] expat security update

The patch for [DLA 269-1] was prepared by Mats Erik Andersson.

This month I also had another term of doing frontdesk work. So I answered questions on the IRC channel and looked for CVEs that are important for Squeeze LTS or could be ignored.

Other stuff

This month I could finally finish the harminv transition and all affected packages migrated to testing meanwhile.

I also uploaded a new version for pipexec.

Donations

Again, thanks alot to all donors. I really appreciate this and hope that everybody is pleased with my commitment. Don’t hesitate to make suggestions for improvements.

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My Debian Activities in June 2015

FTP assistant

This month I marked 539 packages for accept, rejected 61 of them and had to send 24 emails to maintainers. This is a new personal record. Even in the month before the Jessie freeze I accepted only 407 packages. So, very well done (self-laudation has to happen from time to time :-)).

Another record was broken as well. After 19 month of doing this kind of work, I got my first insulting email. I would prefer to wait another 19 month before I get the next one …

Squeeze LTS

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

This month I got assigned a workload of only 14.5h and I spent most of it to work on a new upload of php5. Unfortunately there have been so many CVEs comming in, that I didn’t do an upload yet.

Other stuff I uploaded was

  • [DLA 258-1] jqueryui security update
  • [DLA 262-1] libcrypto++ security update

This month I also had my first one and a half weeks of doing frontdesk work. As introduced in this email, every member of the LTS team should do some LTS CVE triage. Up to now it was mainly done by Raphael and he wants to share this task with everybody else. So I answered questions on the IRC channel, on the LTS list and looked for CVEs that are important for Squeeze LTS or could be ignored.

Other stuff

This month I also uploaded a new version of harminv and wondered why the package didn’t move to testing. Of course there is a document how to do a transition of a library properly. But hey, it is me, I know everything better and of course I can use a shortcut. Oh boy, I was wrong. So I also uploaded new versions of meep, meep-lam4, meep-openmpi, meep-mpi-default and meep-mpich2.

And the moral of the story: If you don’t understand why something should be done in a specific way, you shouldn’t try to do it different.

Donations

Again, thanks alot to all donors. I really appreciate this and hope that everybody is pleased with my commitment. Don’t hesitate to make suggestions for improvements.

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My Debian Activities in May 2015

FTP assistant

This month I marked 235 packages for accept and rejected 44 of them. I know, the NEW-queue is rather large, but the numbers are showing a downward trend again.

In the light of recent events I would like to cite two things. The US Copyright Office Circular 14 says about derivative work:

A typical example of a derivative work received for registration in the Copyright Office is one that is primarily a new work but incorporates some previously published material. This previously published material makes the work a derivative work under the copyright law. To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a “new work” or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes. The new material must be original and copyrightable in itself. Titles, short phrases, and format, for example, are not copyrightable.

Title 17 of the United States Code says in §103:

The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.

Squeeze LTS

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

This month I got assigned a workload of only 10.25h and I spent most of it to prepare a new upload of ruby1.9.1. The other stuff I uploaded was

  • [DLA 222-1] commons-httpclient security update
  • [DLA 226-1] ntfs-3g security update
  • [DLA 226-2] ntfs-3g regression update
  • [DLA 235-1] ruby1.9.1 security update

[DLA 222-1 has been “only” a sponsored upload, where Markus Koschany prepared the patches. [DLA-226] needed two uploads as the first patch turned out to be incomplete. I also marked CVEs in the security tracker as for Squeeze or added notes for future processing.
The next big adventure in June will be another upload of PHP5.

Other stuff

This month I also uploaded feynmf to take care of the new TDS tree (#766287).

Donations

Again, thanks alot to all donors. I really appreciate this and hope that everybody is pleased with my commitment. Don’t hesitate to make suggestions for improvements.

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My Debian Activities in April 2015

FTP assistant

Another month, another statistic. This month I marked 90 packages for accept and rejected 20 of them.

Squeeze LTS

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

For some reasons this month I got assigned an exceptional high workload of 26.5h and I spent these hours to upload new versions of:

  • [DLA 188-1] arj security update
  • [DLA 189-1] libgd2 security update
  • [DLA 190-1] libgcrypt11 security update
  • [DLA 191-1] checkpw security update
  • [DLA 193-1] chrony security update
  • [DLA 195-1] libtasn1-3 security update
  • [DLA 200-1] ruby1.9.1 security update
  • [DLA 205-1] ppp security update
  • [DLA 211-1] curl security update
  • [DLA 212-1] php5 security update

[DLA 191-1] and [DLA 193-1] have been “only” sponsored uploads, where Markus Koschany and Joachim Wiedorn prepared the patches.
Due to the large number of hours I was able to make a php5 upload which resolves several issues that have been marked as no-dsa before. At this point I would like to thank Jan Ingvoldstad for his thorough tests of the package before I did the final upload.
The next big adventure will be ruby1.9.1. Unfortunately my workload in May is (hopefully) exceptional low, so I am not sure whether I can finish this by the end of that month.

I also uploaded [DLA 206-1] python-django-markupfield security update although no LTS sponsor indicated any interest in this package.

Other stuff

While searching for another bug, I stumbled upon #128818. It is a whishlist bug for apt to support rsync while downloading package metadata. It might not be useful for the entire Packages-file. But wouldn’t it make sense if each package gets its own file and one has to download only stuff that has really changed?

Donations

Again, thanks alot to all donors. I really appreciate this and hope that everybody is pleased with my commitment. Don’t hesitate to make suggestions for improvements.

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My Debian Activities in March 2015

FTP assistant

Recently the NEW queue grew due to lots of uploads of new KDE software and several smaller node-packages. The KDE-stuff will be processed one after another, but the node-stuff seems to be rather strange. After the last discussion I was told that all those small packages can be accumulated into bigger chunks. I hope this discussion doesn’t need to be repeated again …

Anyway, this month I marked 117 packages for accept and rejected 51 packages.

Squeeze LTS

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

This month I got assigned a workload of 15.25h and I spent these hours to upload new versions of:

  • [DLA 163-1] bind9 security update
  • [DLA 166-1] libarchive security update
  • [DLA 167-1] redcloth security update
  • [DLA 170-1] mod-gnutls security update
  • [DLA 171-1] libssh2 security update
  • [DLA 181-1] xerces-c security update
  • [DLA 182-1] batik security update
  • [DLA 183-1] libxfont security update
  • [DLA 184-1] binutils security update

Finally I was also able to upload the binutils package. Up to now, I got no complaints that something is not working anymore, so yeah, I seem to make it. The next big adventure will be a new upload of PHP. I already started with some patches, but it is still a good piece of work.

I also uploaded update for DLA 164-1] unace security update, [DLA 168-1] konversation security update and [DLA 172-1] libextlib-ruby security update although no LTS sponsor indicated any interest.

Other packages

This month the severity of one bug in greylistd had been raised from normal to severe and such I had to upload a new version. Thanks to Andreas Beckmann for raising and for providing a patch.

I also uploaded a new version of dict-elements and closed a bug related to reproducible builds.

As I am the maintainer of libkeepalive, I got an email from Andreas Florath. He wanted to persuade me to create a package for his library libdontdie, which is rather similar to libkeepalive but has some improvements. As I promised to do some more packaging work, he didn’t have to argue much and voila, there now is a new package libdontdie available. As the cooperation with him is really pleasant, I also created a package for his other project: pipexec.

Donations

Thanks alot to all donors, this month I got 30€ in total. I really appreciate this and hope that everybody is pleased with my commitment. Don’t hesitate to make suggestions for improvements.

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My Debian Activities in February 2015

FTP assistant

Processing the new queue got off the ground again. This month I marked 154 packages for accept and rejected 20 packages.

Some emails I got were rather funny and people are very creative when trying to interpret the license of upstream. But hey, most of the time upstream has a reason to choose a specific wording. You can try to interpret those words, but don’t waste your time. Better ask upstream about their intention and whether this fits into the world of Debian. It only sounds strange when upstream publishes their stuff under licenseA and wants to distribute their files under licenseB but insists on keeping the wording of licenseA. That’s life!

Squeeze LTS

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

This month I got assigned a workload of 14.5h and I spent these hours to upload new versions of:

  • [DLA-145-2] php5 regression update
  • [DLA 146-1] krb5 security update
  • [DLA 150-1] unzip security update
  • [DLA 151-1] libxml2 security update
  • [DLA 162-1] e2fsprogs security update

For whatever reason, the DLA-145-2 didn’t reach debian-lts-announce. As the listmaster didn’t find any reason for this (at least the other emails all appeared), I think there has been some extraterrestrial influence (“The Truth Is Out There”).

Anyway, I also worked on an upload for binutils, but one patch is a real 100kB-beast. Meanwhile I am down to only one regression in one source file, so I hope that there will be an upload in March.

I also uploaded one DLA for libgtk2-perl ([DLA 161-1] libgtk2-perl security update although no LTS sponsor indicated any interest.

Other packages

I didn’t do any work on other packages, but looking at the bug count, the number of bugs has increased. So, sorry, if you sent in a bug report and I didn’t answer. It is not forgotten.

Donations

After adding some micro payment buttons to my blog in January, I already got a donation of 20€ in February. I really appreciate this and I feel vindicated that my contributions to Debian are still useful.