Have you had the unfortunate need of having to contact the Request Tracker (rt@ubuntu.com)? If you have, you probably know what I mean when I say it can be a very frustrating thing to do.

When I started the ubuntu-cell mailing list, it took about 2 months to get a reply (not get it done, just a reply). Now, with the need of hosting for the PS3 Port, I’m pretty sure it won’t take any less time. 1 month and 6 days … And counting!

Seriously, does anyone else besides me thinks this is absurd?

1. Write docs.
2. Qa.
3. Design.
4. Tell people about Ubuntu.

This is smply script to backup your server and reposrted via email, but i think my script is very simply. please correct me

Today I found this wonderfully useful feature in the Evolution version shipped with Hardy. Saves me some extra steps! Thanks to whoever made that possible!

Wikipedia offers the following definition of etiquette (emphasis mine): Etiquette, one aspect of decorum, is a code that governs the expectations of social behavior, according to the contemporary conventional norm within a society, social class, or group. Usually unwritten, it may be codified in written form.

The Ubuntu Code of Conduct is our etiquette, codified in written form; it is also universal. It covers: "behaviour as a member of the Ubuntu Community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, install-fest, public meeting or private correspondence"

Written in the affirmative, it offers several adjectives relevant to how Ubuntu development should be done. This universality means making rules and interpretations for Planet Ubuntu based on the CoC might reasonably apply elsewhere. Jono Bacon, member of the Ubuntu Community Council and Canonical's appointed Ubuntu Community Manager once stated he felt excited to work at a place where he didn't have to turn off who he was during work hours or separate what he liked from what he did, and we may shortly discover how Jono feels about diminishing that. Despite the clear wording of universality, Fabián Rodríguez has suggested that the Planet needs more formalized rules than the ones inherited from Debian (English only and "don't be annoying") and the CoC. His position appears to be that including objectionable words and phrases, and objectionable ideas are not respectful, and therefore violate the CoC. I respectfully disagree.

Fabián Rodríguez writes: I don’t expect anyone to change their “WTF” and “STFU” attitude, just leave it outside this project. Setting up a category to carry only Planet Ubuntu posts may help. And clarifies in a comment: Although I am brining up the CoC because we have one, I think it is such common sense I am a bit surprised I even got comments on IRC asking what is wrong with WTF’ing here and there or A**holing now and then. Nothing really. But take it elsewhere. And I’ll gladly meet you there, but it won’t be under my @ubuntu.com hat.

It should be obvious that sending harassing, demeaning or confrontational email to Ubuntu or Debian or any other developers isn't suddenly okay if you didn't use @ubuntu.com as the From address. Similarly, it shouldn't matter whether you tag a post with "ubuntu"; if you act or write from a position within the community, and the audience associates you with Ubuntu, you should follow the guidelines as an ambassador of Ubuntu to the larger Linux community, or at least make a note that you are not acting or writing as a member of the Ubuntu community in cases where it might not be clear. At any rate, if you are an Ubuntu Member, then, you should be worried when someone tries to redefine the Conduct you agreed to follow.

The logical conclusion of Fabián's position is that to be respectful nothing that sets off anyone's triggers may pass through Planet Ubuntu's gates. This is a dangerous place to be: one can think of dozens actions that might be considered offensive to some. As Jordan Mantha eloquently put it: trying to legislate morality is both undesirable and incredibly difficult for the Community Council to do. They are trying to represent a community made up of people from nations and cultures all over the world, and it’s essentially impossible to satisfy both the moral sensibilities and personal liberties of everybody at the same time. I’m also fairly sure it is neither their right nor their charter to tell people what is and is not offensive.

There exist a number of social, religious and political taboos that various cultures may find offensive. It feels weird being an American (land of assimilation) calling a Canadian (home of multiculturalism) on this. If Ubuntu, "Linux for human beings," demands that writing obey one viewpoint, it potentially offends another one as censorship. For example, most of us may see a Tibetan language translation of Ubuntu as progress in bringing Free Software to people who need it, but to a few the act may suggest an anti-China political statement, akin to adding a Confederate flag to the distribution. The Code of Conduct is fortunate to say nothing about such dry powderkegs. As long as we can hold beliefs, disagree and still obey they Code of Conduct's demands for consideration, respect, collaboration, and consultation, there should be room in Ubuntu for all of us. Chilling effects

Attitude is one thing; I think RTFM or STFU are rarely productive statements. But what's appeared goes far beyond that. Fabián prefers that people who don't agree with his flexible interpretation of "respect" go away. I know at least one guy who does. He still contributes to the development of Ubuntu, but what he has to say is less often heard because despite his reputation, he's quite willing to implicitly comply with the infantilization of the Planet and rarely tags posts our way. It's fortunate that it's easy to include individual RSS feeds in Liferea directly, but if I don't know there's an amount of self censorship going on first, I simply lose that insight, no matter how germane it is to Ubuntu, Free Software or the communities that surround them.

But even if we were to agree that some topics are a bridge too far, specific words and phrases found offensive by some have no clear relation with respect, and already are within contemporary conventional norms when used in moderation. In fact, this entire enlightened discussion would have come across as condescending rather than conversational if the language were to be sanitized; by using that language the author communicates that the audience is a peer, which is central to the point. Self-censored writing feels inauthentic. In that thread, the author comments: I haven't been particularly active in the Ubuntu community (my first introduction to the open source world), largely because everyone is so damned polite all the time, and as a result the discussions seem fairly dry and limited to technical topics.

This is a disappointing failure to integrate, especially since Rhythmbox needs a lot of lovin', and I'd be happy to see Ubuntu play a foundational role in making that happen. Doing something constructive about it

One thing that can be done is to offer editorial advice ahead of publication. I've often wished to have a few trustworthy people preview my work on this blog and offer suggestions the way kuro5hin does before going public with a writing. It's a bit sad that the advent of blogging software led to the downfall of community driven writing like k5. Stephan's writing comes across as a bit... "stream of thought," and perhaps a round of editorial review can create something more effective at communicating his ideas and getting people to agree with him. I suspect such offers will be treated as censorship, though a good editor offers only advice, not orders.

Since people are seeking, among other remedies, the removal of Stephan's blog from the Planet, I thought I'd do them a favor. As far as I can tell, the current Planet software doesn't implement filtering (the Venus branch might, but will it support queries?), but the entire Planet software is easy to duplicate, and it's output is easy to manipulate. Here's what the Planet looks like without Stephan Hermann. And for comparison, without Fabián's blog. You can find the construction of this relatively simple construction here. If that doesn't float your boat, I've also constructed a simple dirty words filter. Feel free to customize, the defaults come from the expert on the subject. I've also considered running an alternative, unofficial planet similar to Dave Airlied's, but I'm not sure it's possible without coming across as arrogant or causing hurt feelings.

Finally, the Community Council has this topic on their agenda, and if it doesn't get tabled for lack of time, will be heard at the next meeting. If you can't attend, there are logs available for all such meetings on irclogs.ubuntu.com. In the spirit of being collaborative, it seems relevant to invite Emma Hogbin's opinion, as it seems the language of her lecture that started the mess Fabián and Stephan find themselves in now. As an invited speaker to the now canceled Ubuntu Live! event, decisions rendered would clearly affect her future participation with the Ubuntu community.

If you take one thing away from this essay let it be this: Booting members from the project is in no way, shape, or form "collaborative", and should be taken only when all reasonable measures have failed.

I am pleased (?) to annunce that BIND9 exploit is out (CVE-2008-1447).

This exploit targets a fairly ubiquitous flaw in DNS implementations which allow the insertion of malicious DNS records into the cache of the target nameserver.
This exploit caches a single malicious host entry into the target nameserver.
By causing the target nameserver to query for random hostnames at the target domain, the attacker can spoof a response to the target server including an answer for the query, an authority server record, and an additional record for that server, causing target nameserver to insert the additional record into the cache.

This issue was fixed in ubuntu via USN-622-1 but more ISP are now vulnerable.

emgent@amnistia:~$ sudo su root
[sudo] password for emgent:
root@amnistia:/home/emgent# echo “nameserver 208.67.222.222” > /etc/resolv.conf
root@amnistia:/home/emgent# echo “nameserver 208.67.220.220” >> /etc/resolv.conf
root@amnistia:/home/emgent# exit
exit
emgent@amnistia:~$

Background on #ubuntu-quality:
[SNIP]
(04:36) ( emgent) hello
(04:37) ( LaserJock) hi emgent
(04:37) ( emgent) I’m plased to annunce that BIND9 exploit is now pubblic.
(04:37) ( emgent) s/plased/pleased/
(04:38) ( persia) It the solution also public, and distributed?
(04:38) ( emgent) sure. fixed some week ago in ubuntu.
(04:38)  * LaserJock wonders if he should clap or not
(04:39) ( emgent) but more ISP are vulnerale now..
(04:40) ( emgent) persia: you can check your dns on http://www.doxpara.com/ (right menu)
(04:42) ( emgent) s/vulnerale/vulnerable/
(04:44) ( Hobbsee) oh good!  telstra isn’t.
(04:45) ( emgent) nice, Telecom Italia now is vuln.
(04:45) ( persia) NTT is vulnerable, but that is bot unsurprising and unlikely to cause issues.
(04:45) ( emgent) I use Open DNS
(04:47) ( LaserJock) mine is vulnerable it says
(04:47) ( emgent) switch to open dns
(04:49) ( emgent) exploit was pubblished some hours ago.. and there is a big problem.. now all people can hack vuln DNS and redirect google.com to sarcazzo.com for example.
(04:50) ( emgent) i go to write a post in planet.
(04:50) ( LaserJock) interesting
[SNIP]

happy defending!

It’s coming up, the Global Bug Jam.  Are you ready?

Have no fear, your friendly Michigan LoCo team will be hosting a GBJ event in Southeast Michigan where you can come learn the trade of triaging and have a great time doing so.  I know from experience that their Bug Jams are great events.  They even filled a room at Penguicon on the topic thanks to Wolfger.

Come one, come all to the Global Bug Jam, no experience required, only a desire to have fun and contribute.

The Important Information:

Where: Clinton Macomb Public Library (map)
When: 1pm to 6pm on Saturday August 9th
Who: The Michigan LoCo Team and You!

(See THIS PAGE for the latest information)

The third of a 13-part series created by Tony Whitmore detailing how to mix a podcast in Ardour on Ubuntu. It was created initially so that members of the Ubuntu UK LoCo team could take part in the Ubuntu UK Podcast. However it was decided to release them because they may be useful to other podcasters, or those wishing to learn more about mixing in Ardour.

In part 3

• Podcast running order
• Aligning multiple tracks
• Fading music down and up with the "draw gain automation" tool

Note: This screencast was originally recorded at a resolution of 2560 by 1024, so is in a very wide screen format. If you have a small screen we recommend you view the lower resolution versions of the video.

Duration 8m33s.

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We’re rolling out an update to Launchpad at 22.00 UTC today (23rd July). Launchpad will be offline for a few minutes, however we’re allowing a one hour window.

This down-time is part of our roll-out of Launchpad 2.0 release.

Offline at: 22.00 UTC 23rd July
Expected back before: 23.00 UTC 23rd July

Surely if you have administered a Linux server, you have used the scripts in /etc/init.d/ to start, stop, and restart system services. What about the status action to determine if a given service is up and running?

The Ubuntu Server team has initiated a concentrated effort to add status actions to the most commonly used init scripts. We’re recruiting current and aspiring Ubuntu developers to help patch these init scripts. Some Unix shell programming and basic Debian packaging skills are all that is required.

Basically, you need to do:

1. grab the source
2. add two lines to the service’s init script
3. add a dependency in the control file
4. create a changelog entry
5. post a debdiff to a Launchpad bug.

There is detailed step-by-step checklist for creating and submitting such packages on the wiki page.

The Linux Standard Base 3.1 has a specification for init scripts actions. A simple function has been added to the LSB base library /lib/lsb/init-functions. This shell function, status_of_proc(), can be used in most init scripts to report status.

The list of init scripts that need work is also maintained in the wiki page. Join us in IRC at #ubuntu-server if you are interested in helping!

Here are the minutes of the meeting. They can also be found online
with the irc logs here.

kirkland generated a list of init scripts that could have a status action added to them. The wiki page also outlines how to add a status action and file a bug in LP to ask for inclusion in the relevant package.

Anyone interested in helping out should head to the wiki page.

ScottK reminded that there are a couple of MIRs that still need to be written before clamav and spamassassin can be included into main. The wiki page tracks all the remaining packages that should have a MIR written for. ScottK can be contacted to get an initial review of the MIR. ivoks and sommer volunteered to write some of the MIRs.

tacone gave an overview of the rapache project emgent and him started after UDS. Rapache is an Apache configurator gui. The goal is to lower the entry barrier for former windows system administrators used to configure IIS with a GUI.

sommer reported that he almost finished a new section about Kerberos. He also asked for a review of the Samba section.

soren is still working on the rewrite in python of ubuntu-vm-builder. He is currently adding Xen support. mathiaz asked if there was some documentation available. soren said there wasn’t any - any help in this area is welcomed.

ACTION: soren to write a short README file to help people get started with the new ubuntu-vm-builder.

mathiaz spent most of his time last week on implementing cn=config support to the openldap package. Both new installs and upgrades are supported. He sent a patch to the Debian maintainers and is waiting for their feedback.

He also plans to look into FreeIPA once the cn=config migration is completed.

kirkland has some working code in his ppa. More testing of the mdadm package is welcome.

ACTION: kirkland to update the wiki page BootDegradedRaid with some testing instructions.

macd reported that mod_rails has been packaged and uploaded to REVU. mathiaz reviewed it and sent his feedback to Neil (the packager). Overall it looks good.

macd also mentioned the discussions he’s having with the Debian maintainers for ruby/rubygems that is taking place in bug 145267. There was some discussion about the issue which boils down to a PATH issue. The debian gems and the source installed gems don’t end up in the same place. Rails apps looks in a specific place and rails isn’t capable of looking in more than one place. soren, macd and persia discussed the path issue and deferred it to #ubuntu-server after the meeting.

ivoks prepared patches for a couple of packages to disable sslv2 in their configuration. He also sent an email on ubuntu-devel about disabling sslv2 directly in the openssl package. Discussion is ongoing, with a proposal to create an openssl-sslv2 package in universe that would be built with sslv2 enabled.

ACTION: ivoks to prepare a patch for the openssl package to disable sslv2.

Next meeting will be on Tuesday, July 29th at 15:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting.

Saturday 19th, 7pm at Engineering Faculty Jember universty we made basic training about ubuntu. we made class in the night because many student have another class in the morning. in this clas we have 2 mentors, me and Ashadebi (from Debian Indonesia).

We studied dual boot installation and make connection to repositories server. This class sponsored by Jerux (Jember Linux) and Engineering faculty. many students at engineering faculty have gigantic spirit to sudiying linux speciallu Ubuntu and Debian :D.

Next meeting in engineering faculty at 27th July 2008 at 7pm and will dicussing about installation and basic terminal

hey look’s at the picture! he is ashadebi

we have 15 participant at here.

If I have set up everything right this should be my first post to the planet.

I got my Ubuntu membership yesterday from the EMEA membership board. Approval process went smooth (tip to other hopeful applicants - links to pictures seem to be a hit, especially if most of your other documentation is in a non-English language). A big thanks goes to Martin and Søren for supporting my membership.

After the irc approval was over and done with I went for a few beers with (among others) my good friend Søren - not really to celebrate, but just because it is the holidays and we have these days off.

I wish I could end this blog post with a promise of all the Ubuntu specific stuff I’m going to do over the next couple of days, but unfortunately I think my school work comes first right now - or at least that is what I tell myself.

Ok, there has been a lot of noise (again) about what should be in ubuntu planet, last time i wasn’t a member so i didn’t comment on the topic, but being that now i am here are my thoughts on the topic:

• Planet ubuntu is and should be a window to the community: Some people read planet to be up to date on the technical news, but that’s what changelog stands for, and planet ubuntu (or our blogs) aren’t actually changelogs. So the idea of limiting the what should be posted or not doesn’t seem really fair to me
• Ubuntu member represent the ubuntu community: All of us, being part of this community, an being officially recognized as members of it, gives us the representation of this community and for the people we are not just a lot of single people, we are the ubuntu community as a whole, so everything you said is taken as if it comes from the community especially if it is on one of the community’s communication channel, like mailing lists or planet. So we need to thing 3 times after post something on them since it won’t be treated as our own and personal opinion, but as the community one.
• Respects saved Respects: Before doing something it will be a good idea to think “If someone do this to me, would i like it?” If not, please don’t, everyone of us have different opinions on different topic, but it doesn’t give us the right to challenge people and be unrespectful. And said that you can say whatever you want, just need to find the right way to do it and express your opinion, is better to say “i don’t think so, i think is better like this” than saying “What were you thinking? that’s wrong!”

I don’t want to create more discussion on it, i think planet ubuntu is fine as it is now, and nothing need to be changed but the attitude of ourselves.

Enough of this noise. Next time someone on planet offends you, go work on something:

Ubuntu-QA
Leonov
5-a-day
Harvest

Enough of this noise. Next time someone on planet offends you, go work on something:

Ubuntu-QA
Leonov
5-a-day
Harvest

I agree with “repurposing Planet” post of Jordan Mantha. I saw once a post suggesting to create the Universe Ubuntu, where all topics would be placed.

I’m not writing too much on my English blog, but I’ll follow what Jordan said. I’ll correct the tags of my posts and keep on Planet Ubuntu only the posts tagged as ubuntu.

The second of a 13-part series created by Tony Whitmore detailing how to mix a podcast in Ardour on Ubuntu. It was created initially so that members of the Ubuntu UK LoCo team could take part in the Ubuntu UK Podcast. However it was decided to release them because they may be useful to other podcasters, or those wishing to learn more about mixing in Ardour.

In part 2

• Some tips regarding jack and realtime kernels
• Sessions in Ardour
• Adding tracks
• Add audio files to tracks

Note: This screencast was originally recorded at a resolution of 2560 by 1024, so is in a very wide screen format. If you have a small screen we recommend you view the lower resolution versions of the video.

Duration 8m20s.

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(Video will play in a pop-up window)

Download
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.