Debian Weekly News - email
Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 12:35:19 +0200 From: Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl> To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org Subject: First Test Cycle starts today The first official Test Cycle has started today. It's not entirely my doing, but such things gather momentum :-) The next few days will be dedicated to getting test-ready boot-floppies and CD images. I will only make changes to frozen that are necessary for getting those ready. After that, the distribution will be tested for about 10 days, during which it will not change at all. After testing comes an evaluation period, during which we either release potato as-is, or install any fixes necessary (which one hopes will be available in Incoming already; is not, there will be an extra delay), and start a new Test Cycle. I've made my last run of Incoming this morning. I'll install no more packages in frozen until after the Test Cycle. If you have an upload that really must go in, then you can try to get me to do it before I leave work today; that's about four hours from now. Richard Braakman
Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 12:26:51 +0200 From: Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl> To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org Subject: Packages removed from frozen I have removed these packages from the frozen distribution today. They are still available in unstable (except for xemacs20). Richard Braakman Package: dconfig (debian/main). Maintainer: Michael Bramer <grisu@debian.org> 62578 dconfig: /etc/menu-methods/dconfig has wrong permissions Package: dlocate (debian/main). Maintainer: Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> 61789 dlocate: significant breakage, does not function as per man page at all [FIX] Patch included (MS, Apr9) 61790 dlocate: cron job apparently doesn't run? 62023 dlocate: Error: can't open file at /usr/sbin/update-dlocatedb line 19, upon install Package: arla (non-US/main). Maintainer: Gregory S. Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> 61706 arla packages are horribly outdated Package: gnome-think (debian/main). Maintainer: Peter Teichman <pat@debian.org> 61608 gnome-think won't save files Package: glimpse (debian/non-free). Maintainer: Marco Budde <Budde@tu-harburg.de> 60852 glimpse: full of temp races [WAITING] Maintainer has been contacted on April 11. (MH) Package: gap4-doc-html (debian/non-free). Maintainer: Markus Hetzmannseder <hetzi@hetzi.at> 60703 gap4-doc-html depends on nonexistent package Package: midentd (debian/main). Maintainer: Turbo Fredriksson <turbo@debian.org> [REMOVE] This package can be removed if it is not fixed. [HELP] Maintainer requested help solving byte-swapping (big/little endian) problems. (Apr11MH) 60271 midentd: Default installation, improper permissions on logfile. daemon != identd user. Package: ftape (debian/main). Maintainer: Christian Meder <meder@isr.uni-stuttgart.de> 59502 raw ftape devices wrong [took out ftape-doc, ftape-module-*] Package: scalapack (debian/main). Maintainer: Philipp Frauenfelder <pfrauenf@debian.org> 58386 scalapack_1.6-12(frozen): build error (undefined symbols) [STRATEGY] Upload recompiled blacs-mpi and blacs-pvm. (Apr19MH) Package: scalapack-lam-test (debian/main). Maintainer: Philipp Frauenfelder <pfrauenf@debian.org> 63339 scalapack-lam-test: Unsatisified Dependancy Package: scalapack-mpich-test (debian/main). Maintainer: Philipp Frauenfelder <pfrauenf@debian.org> 63370 scalapack-mpich-test: Unsatisified Dependancy Package: scalapack-pvm-test (debian/main). Maintainer: Philipp Frauenfelder <pfrauenf@debian.org> 63344 scalapack-pvm-test: Unsatisified Dependancy Package: xemacs20 (debian/main). Maintainer: James LewisMoss <dres@debian.org> 55278 xemacs20: can't build from source [STRATEGY] dres requested removal of xemacs20 from unstable (#61494); perhaps it should be removed from frozen, too? [Moved to project/orphaned, since it was already gone from woody] Package: clisp (debian/main). Maintainer: Kevin Dalley <kevind@rahul.net> 62533 Clisp crashes when it looks for lisp.run in the wrong place. [Maintainer won't be able to fix it in time, and nobody else was interested] Package: epic4 (debian/main). Maintainer: Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> 63266 Loading irc script crashes epic
To: debian-doc@lists.debian.org, debian-legal@lists.debian.org Subject: Help: Microsoft patent covers package download and upgrade Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 22:04:32 +0300 Hi all, Microsoft was recently granted a patent that covers a core part of Debian, and probably Red Hat too. (If you have contacts in RH you can forward this, their contact page seemed a bit slow in retrieval.) (If you forward this to public place, any other than debian-doc and debian-legal, please drop my name and company from mail body and headers.) The project I'm working in has some interest in automatic SW upgrade, so I _might_ be able to persuade Nokia to take interest in this patent. To do it I need some historical data that shows that the invention was known art at that time. Below is some data on the patent and some historical data I dug out from Debian web site. It seems to show that some time between -95 and -97 dselect supported upgrading from internet. If 0.93R6 already did it I'd be happy. In any case I'd appreciate a man page or dselect-beginner.txt or something similar from first release supporting ftp access method, with release date. (If rpm did it before Nov 97 that would also be nice to know.) MS patent seems to be somewhat limited by not having any info on versions, dependencies, conflicts etc. but that is to be expected, I suppose. [signature omitted at author's request] ----- Filed Nov 14. 1997, granted Oct 26, 1999 US5974454: Method and system for installing and updating program module components Abstract Installing and updating a software program module component. A determination is made whether the current date is on or after a date stored in a registry key on a computer. If the current date is on or after the date stored in the registry key, then a computer transmits a database query via the Internet to a database server. At the database server, a determination is made whether an upgrade package for the software program module component is available, such as by performing a database lookup. If an upgrade package for the software program module component is available, then an upgrade package message is sent from the database server to the computer. At the computer, a determination is made whether the user wants to download the upgrade package. If so, then an upgrade package query is sent by the computer via the Internet to a package server. At the package server, in response to receiving the upgrade package query, the upgrade package is retrieved and sent over the Internet to the computer. The upgrade package is then installed on the computer to update the software program module component. Claim 1. A computer-implemented method for updating a software program module component stored on a computer, the method comprising the steps of: a) determining whether the current date is on or after a date stored at the computer; b) if the current date is on or after the date stored at the computer, then sending a database query from the computer to a database server; c) responsive to the database query, determining at the database server whether an upgrade package for the software program module component is available; d) if an upgrade package for the software program module component is available, then sending an upgrade package message from the database server to the computer; e) responsive to the upgrade package message, sending an upgrade package query from the computer to a package server; and f) in response to receiving the upgrade package query, retrieving the upgrade package at the package server and sending the upgrade package to the computer. Further claims cover e.g. doing the upgrade and updating the registry (=dpkg database). ----- Here are the results of a quick search in history: Debian 0.93R6 (November 1995): dselect appears. This will be the last a.out Debian release; there are now about 60 developers. Debian 1.1 Buzz (June 1996): This appears to be the first Debian release with a code name (taken, like all others, from the movie Toy Story); this is probably because it was also the first release made after Bruce Perens took over leadership of the Project from Ian Murdock. This release was fully ELF, used Linux kernel 2.0, and contained 474 packages. (Debian 1.3.1?) Dselect is used to select just which packages (from ~1100) you wish to install. It will be run for you during the install and as it is a very powerful and somewhat complex thing, some knowledge of it before hand will not go astray. It will step you through the package installation process as follows: Choose the access method to use. Update list of available packages, if possible. Request which packages you want on your system. Install and upgrade wanted packages. Configure any packages that are unconfigured. Remove unwanted software.
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This issue of Debian Weekly News was edited by Joey Hess.