Ubuntu Traffic #4 For 2004/09/17

By Benjamin Mako Hill

Table Of Contents

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Introduction
Mailing List Stats For This Week

Threads Covered

1.	2004/09/02 - 2004/09/10	(17 posts)	Dealing with sbin
2.	2004/09/10 - 2004/09/1	(6 posts)	Modutils
3.	2004/09/10 - 2004/09/12	(5 posts)	New Warty Live CD
4.	2004/09/12 - 2004/09/13	(18 posts)	Outoing Mail
5.	2004/09/13 - 2004/09/14	(10 posts)	Prelease Festivities
6.	2004/09/13 - 2004/09/17	(37 posts)	nVidia Drivers
7.	2004/09/15	(1 post)	Ubuntu 4.10 Preview Released
8.	2004/09/15 - 2004/09/17	(9 posts)	KDE in Warty

Introduction

Welcome to the fourth edition of Ubuntu Traffic. This issue covers the week of September 11 - 17 in 2004. Ubuntu Traffic summarizes the most important mailing list and IRC discussions involving the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.

The big news of course, was that Ubuntu 4.10 Preview -- our first release -- made it out the door: shiny and on time. We saw what should have been a predictable results: a slashdotting, a screaming web server, an explosion in traffic. I think its safe to say that the result and the feedback we've had so far has been overwhelming both in the amount and in the nature of the feedback we've recieved.

With the announcement came the first real Ubuntu community. We've got a handful of new lists as well that are being summarized in traffic. These include:

ubuntu-announce: ultra low traffic announce only mailing list
ubuntu-users: list for Ubuntu users to ask question to each other and to the Ubuntu community
ubuntu-devel: list for online discussion of Ubuntu development issues

You can sign up for any of those lists at http://lists.ubuntu.com. Please join in!

Bits and pieces that didn't get a full story but are worth mentioning include:

James Troup asked the group for mirrors saying: "I'm in the process of setting up mirrors for the archive. If you know of anyone who runs a big mirror that can deal with a large archive(23GB, currently, but with hoary in the mix, that could easily rise to 30-40GB) and lots of bandwidth usage and who you think would be interested in mirroring us, please send me their details."
Markus Kolb probed the list to see who it was that was involved in Ubuntu. Mathew Lambie suggested that Mark Shuttleworth might be behind the project. Mark confessed: "More underneath than behind, given that much of Canonical's first London office is in my living room :-)"
Joshua King asked: "When a new release is issued, will upgrade via apt be an option? Or will it require downloading and installing the new version?" Jeff Waugh explained that we will always support upgrades between stable releases.
Julien Olivier gave a specific problem and asked about where he could file bugs. Since it is obviously not obvious, the place to go for your bug-filing and fixing needs is http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com

Mailing List Stats For This Week

We looked at 671 posts in 2986K.

There were 115 different contributors. 66 posted more than once. 36 posted last week too.

The top posters of the week were:

102 posts in 416K by Matt Zimmerman
76 posts in 350K by John
41 posts in 158K by Jeff Waugh
37 posts in 145K by Colin Watson
36 posts in 153K by Fabio Massimo Di Nitto
Full Stats

1. Dealing with sbin
2004/09/02 - 2004/09/10 (17 posts) Subject: "sbin and PATH"
People: Matt Zimmerman

In the solving-problems-that-have-been-bugging-me-forever department, Matt Zimmerman raised the issue of sbin and the fact that it is not in the default path saying:

One of the things that bothers me when settling into a new system, often the first thing which triggers me to pull in my customized shell configuration, is the absence of the sbin directories in my PATH.

Yes, I know the distinction between bin and sbin, and in a vague sort of way it has the potential to be useful. However, I have never seen a Linux distribution, Debian included, which actually implements this distinction correctly. Honestly.

/sbin and /usr/sbin are full of programs which are useful to normal users, and which I expect to be able to use

The primary options, as I see them, are:

Add {,/usr{,/local}}/sbin to the default PATH and be done with it

Move the misplaced binaries into their proper places

Get rid of */sbin entirely, symlink it and ignore the distinction

Let the suffering continue

#3 is not very appealing, considering the FHS blessing of sbin. #2 involves a lot of intrusive divergence in packaging, and probably some arguments as well. #4 makes me crazy. Guess which option I prefer.

Jeff Waugh also liked option 1 as well for the moment and Clint Adams suggested that we not write off the second options altogether -- it might make a decent long term goal.

2. Modutils
2004/09/10 - 2004/09/1 (6 posts) Subject: "Shipping modutils"
People: Martin Pitt, Matt Zimmerman

Martin Pitt asked, "Do we still need to ship modutils in base? Are there any supported platforms that still need kernel 2.4? If not, then maybe it could be shifted to supported?"

Matt Zimmerman replied saying, "I know people who will be using 2.4 on Warty for various reasons, and compiling their own kernel, so they would be surprised to have to install modutils. Also, lvm-common depends on it (though that is probably a minor bug). Is it causing any harm?" Martin replied to say that it wasn't but he just wanted to try and keep a clean kitchen. For the moment, it looks like it can probably just stay in.

3. New Warty Live CD
2004/09/10 - 2004/09/12 (5 posts) Subject: "New WartyLive uploaded"
People: Alex de Landgraaf, Matt Zimmerman

Alex de Landgraaf posted an announcement about the release of another Morphix based LiveCD for Warty:

Just wanted to drop a note that WartyLive v2 has been uploaded. Give it a spin, submit a few bugs and they'll be fixed before the next build. At least, that's the general idea. The packages are the same as Sounder 8, so it should give a good impression of an install. In theory :)

You can get the new crack from: http://ftp.no-name-yet.com/cdimage/morphix/20040910/

For details: http://wiki.no-name-yet.com/WartyWarthog/LiveCD

Matt Zimmerman replied with a list of two problems:

Evolution is missing from the top panel; in Warty, there are icons for firefox/evolution/help.

My network interface (e1000), which works fine under Warty proper, doesn't get configured, so I have no network available. It is detected fine and the driver loaded, but /etc/network/interfaces is empty, dhclient is not running and shows no sign of having been run in the logs, so it has no IP address configured.

Both issues were debugged in the follow-up.

4. Outoing Mail
2004/09/12 - 2004/09/13 (18 posts) Subject: "Mail configuration"
People: David Miller, John, Jeff Waugh

David Miller announced that he was working on having either reportbug or bug-buddy work with our system but, due to our simplified mail system, was having trouble finding out how we would always be able to send mail (a prerequisit to both system): "I've been working the last couple days on getting bug-buddy and reportbug to work with our Bugzilla, and ran into an interesting situation. Both of them submit the bug report via email, and Warty's email system is not configured well enough to be able to send mail out of the box from probably 80% of the households in the US (and possibly elsewhere, but I'm only familiar with around here ;)"

John replied to say, "The script has a better chance than unconfigured postfix. First time I ran reportbug it asked questions such as any MUA would. If mail.no-name-yet.com accepts mail from anyone, that's all it needs. If it can't send right now, then maybe store in a bugs-to-go folder."

Jeff Waugh suggested that it "might be worth double-checking the status of the XML-RPC stuff for b-b. With that, we won't need SMTP at all. I ask fer. :-)"

5. Prelease Festivities
2004/09/13 - 2004/09/14 (10 posts) Subject: "PreviewFreeze in effect!"
People: jdub

In preparation for the release, release manager extroardinaire Jeff Waugh announced the start of the preview release freeze:

We've had pretty loose release requirements so far, which is appropriate for bootstrapping a long term release process... but it's time to start reducing the churn, and focus on high impact bug fixes only. It's FREEZE TIME! :-) Here's the process for the PreviewFreeze:

Matt and I will prioritise bugs to fix before the Preview release as 'Critical' or 'Blocker' severity. If you think a particular bug needs to be on this list, please raise its severity to 'Major' - Matt or I will check and raise these if appropriate.

Uploads are frozen, and MUST have an associated 'Critical' or 'Blocker' bug AND email confirmation from Matt or I (you might want to Cc bugs to us to make this easier).

Please check your bug list regularly (see the 'My Bugs' query), and focus on fixing the red 'Critical' and 'Blocker' bugs first.

The only exceptions during this freeze are new GNOME version releases from Seb (because we're in the final straight of 2.8 tarballs from upstream).

If you have any questions about the freeze, please reply on the list.

Keep in mind that we have a month to find and fix major bugs between Preview and Final (support-only mode), so we'll be well prepared to leap back into the feature development fray for HoaryHedgehog!

Rock'n'roll!

In a separate thread Jeff sent out a form invitation for current sounders to invite friends and acquaintances onto the list in the days before the release went out to the public.

6. nVidia Drivers
2004/09/13 - 2004/09/17 (37 posts) Subject: "What package(s) are needed to install nvidia support ?"
People: Sivan Green, Matt Zimmerman, dieman, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto

This is a thread with a new FAQ entry practically in the title. Sivan Green asked what is already a frequently asked question:

I would like to know which binary packages are needed in order to enable support for nvidia based display cards, i'd like to test that.

Is the same method of installing the driver together with manually editing X config applies? if not, what would be the best practice for this in warty?

Matt Zimmerman replied that that on a warty system, "If you use the stock kernel, you don't need to build anything; just make sure that the 'restricted' component is in your sources.list, and apt-get install linux-restricted-modules and nvidia-glx. :-)" Scott Dier gave more information on the process saying, "I'm fairly sure dexconf can deal with 'nvidia', so it should show up in the 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86' menus."

In terms of longer term solutions, there was talk about Python scripts used by Fedora to have it all just work with a single apt-get command. Fabio Massimo Di Nitto replied to discussion of this saying, "I will check it, but these are hacks that mangle the configuration files. We need to have something fully integrated with Ubuntu/Debian and debconf otherwise users will lose the option to reconfigure X in the dpkg way. I will be able to test the nvidia side, but not the ATI. Also AFAIK the ATI just replaces the driver shipped by xserver, so there is no need of any magic in it."

This brought up some discussion about the pros and cons of using the free versus the proprietary drivers.

In a slightly related set of threads, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto posted two testing version of a new "nv" driver ported from X.org to our XFree86 tree.

7. Ubuntu 4.10 Preview Released
2004/09/15 (1 post) People: Benjamin Mako Hill

Benjamin Mako Hill sent out the announcement to the team and to the community: Ubuntu 4.10 Preview is out! Since it's big enough news and happens infrequently enough, I've attached a slightly edited version of the release announcement here:

Announcing Ubuntu 4.10 Preview

Ubuntu is a new Linux distribution that brings together the breadth of Debian with a focused selection of packages, regular releases (every six months) and a commitment to security updates with 18 months of security and technical support for every release.

This message is to announce Ubuntu's first public release: Ubuntu 4.10 Preview (codenamed the Warty Warthog -- or just "warty")

If you know all about this and just want to get the software, you can find out everything you need to know about getting it here (read on though, as there's some other good information in this mail including information on getting Ubuntu CDs shipped to you free of charge): http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/

For more information, you can turn to any of the following resources:

Ubuntu Website: http://www.ubuntulinux.org

The website contains basic background on Ubuntu, an overview of the project, information on how to get it, and some documentation on the software.

Ubuntu Wiki: http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org

The wiki contains most of the information and documentation on Ubuntu that the team has written thus far as they've worked up until now. You are welcome to edit and add to the wiki although you will need to log in first. You log in by clicking on UserPreferences in the top right hand corner of the page.

Ubuntu IRC Channel: #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net

Anyone is welcome to join the Ubuntu IRC channel for help and discussion about Ubuntu and the Warty Warthog release. We aim to keep the signal-to-noise ratio as high as possible on that channel and on any mailing lists in the project.

Ubuntu Mailing Lists:

Follow any of these URLs to subscribe to the list, view archives, or to change subscription options if you are already subscribed.

Ubuntu Announcement List (Ultra-Low Traffic): http://lists.ubuntulinux.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce

Ubuntu User List: http://lists.ubuntulinux.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users

Ubuntu Development List: http://lists.ubuntulinux.org/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel

Last but not least, we will gladly ship you a few CDs of Ubuntu at no cost when Warty Warthog is released -- we expect that by the end of October. To receive a complimentary copy of the Warty Warthog release on CD -- or a handful to give to your friends or LUG -- register online at: http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org/

8. KDE in Warty
2004/09/15 - 2004/09/17 (9 posts) Subject: "K3B"
People: raveril, Eugenia Loli-Queru, Matt Zimmerman, LaMont Jones

A few people asked about KDE in Warty. Raveril spoke up to say: "Ubuntu sounds interesting, but in order for me to seriously try it, it would have to offer --at least to start with-- the /kde/ libraries so I can use the indispensable apps... /konqueror/, /kate/, /k3b/, etc. To not provide these would greatly limit the appeal of this potentionally good distro. After all, survey after survey show that more people use /kde/ than /gnome/. I hope my opinion is worth something to someone in the Ubuntu lists. Thanks for your attention, and keep the good work!"

In another thread, Eugenia Loli-Queru pointed out that, "I can't install K3B via the default repositories on Synaptic. It tells me that some KDE packages are not installable because some packages are missing. Could you have a look at that? K3B is really needed..."

Matt Zimmerman replied explaining the situation saying, "There was a bug in kdebase which caused it to fail to build. Because it is not part of our supported set, this was not a priority to fix for the preview release. However, it is being fixed now, and this should allow a number of other packages to now build, and make KDE software installable again." LaMont Jones gave the update on the status with the KDE problem saying:

k3b is now installable on i386. Powerpc has other problems (kdelibs segv's during its build - that's beyond the scope of what I can do between now and warty release. I expect it will be there for hoary.).

That is to say, kdebase is now in the i386 archive, and should propagate to the mirrors over the course of the next 12+ hours. There were a few packages that were blocked from building (dep-wait) on kdebase-bin and/or kdebase-data. Those are building now, and will arrive in the archive shortly after they finish, assuming they build successfully.

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