Roundup of 2008

Well, it's the last day of this year, so i guess it would be good to write a small summary of what happened this year related to Slackware project. It's indeed an interesting year, since Slackware has released two version this year, 12.1 in May and 12.2 in December. This is an incremental update from previous 12.0 which was released last year. Even though it's an incremental update, there were several things that were interesting to check, mostly 12.2, the latest version up to the end of this year.

We are looking for 13.0 next year which i believe bring lots of major changes in the components itself. Even so, it still holds the KISS principle, so don't worry about that. Stability, Security, and Simplicity are still the main keys of Slackware development motivations.

There are no -Current activities on the surface (yet) as the -Stable 12.2 has just been released except for small update which really needs to be released, for example security updates and annoying bugs in mkinitrd. It will be started again on January or February, depends on the maintainer.

On the local Slackware community (we are talking about ID-Slackware), we continued what we had done last year with more improvements here and there.

CD Forum Linux 8.10 "Love"
Budi from Baliwae has released an update of CD Forum Linux 8.10 "Love" which is a LiveCD (Slackware based) which contains offline version of Indonesian Linux Forum. Check this post for more information about it.

Chat Room
We now have official Chat Room on freenode servers using ##id-slackware name. Please join with us to discuss about Slackware. Feel free to ask about troubleshooting, installation, configuration, and many more, as long as it's related to Slackware. It's still new, so don't expect huge member like the official ##slackware

Indonesian Planet Slackware
The Indonesian Planet Slackware is a blog aggregation service provided to list all blogs related to Slackware from Indonesian people. We have been running this for year and it's growing up. Please contact us to get your blog included on the list and show the world that you are a proud Slackware Users

Mailing List
The mailing list also got an improvements. We now have almost 400 members, growing almost doubled compared to last year, which is very positive. We didn't do too much promotion on this mailing list, except for mouth to mouth speaking, but it's quite effective after all.

Well, this might be all for this year, and we are hoping for more improvements next year. Happy New Year for all of you

Chat Room

We now have an official chat room at freenode. Just launch your IRC client application and pick irc.freenode.net as the server and join ##id-slackware for the official Indonesian Slackware Community Chat Room on IRC. Please note that there are two hash marks on the channel name.

Join with us and have fun on the room

Security Update: Seamonkey

One security update has been released just one day after the Christmas day: Seamonkey. It's very quiet week, but i think most people is happy with the long weekend and vacation

Here's the latest -Current changelog:

Fri Dec 26 22:45:51 CST 2008
xap/seamonkey-1.1.14-i486-1.tgz:
Upgraded to seamonkey-1.1.14.
This release fixes some more security vulnerabilities.
For more information, see:
http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/seamonkey11.html
(Security fix *)

Online With Smart Modem: Haier D1200P

Thanks to several authors who have wrote how to connect to the Internet using Smart as the provider and using Haier D1200P as the modem. I have just tried the solution and it worked. The problem i encountered is the same with others. The device must be connected in Windows first and then it will be able to connect in Linux. At first, i tried it directly in Linux, but it failed. So i re-read the article and found out that some people get connected to Windows and then the device is able to connect in Linux. It's a strange problem, but it just fixed the problem i encountered.

I will try it again tomorrow with Linux as the first. Let's hope it is not dependent to Windows

By the way, i used this resources:
- Supranov's Blog
- Maswawa's Blog

Ohh, finally, i forgot to mention that i am using Slackware on my laptop, so basically the article can be used for any Linux distributions.

Full-Featured Multimedia Slackware

In real world, there are only a small portion of operating system who can handle ALL multimedia formats. It's not impossible to do that, but they will end up with legal problem, which can bring them problem. So most maintainer doesn't include packages that would bring them problem.

Slackware is no exception. Full installation of Slackware will not be able to play *ALL* multimedia formats, but with some configuration and installing new packages, you will (hopely) have a full-featured multimedia Slackware which is ready for personal use (not a professional, but it can be configured to be like a professional if you like).

Darrell Anderson has wrote an interesting article called A Full-Featured Multimedia Slackware. In that article, he wrote his experience of turning Slackware into multimedia-ready . For you guys who wanted to have better multimedia support on your Slackware, check the article. Also give your feedback if you have better reason to include another application which can enrich the article. You can do so at LQ Forum.

Security Update: Mozilla Firefox

Welcome to the first update for Slackware 12.2 which is also stated the first update in -Current. Recently, the mechanism has been changed a bit. In the past, security update for stable releases were released only in -Stable branch and not in -Current. Only after *public* -Current development has been started again (usually few months after the -Stable has been released), then every changes to the -Stable will be synced with the -Current along with the package naming (in -Stable, they usually have _slackXX.YY.tgz to indicate that those packages are patches to Slackware version XX.YY, while in -Current there are no such names).

Well, here are those two updates for -Current and also for -Stable (the changelog here is taken from -Current changelog):

Thu Dec 18 12:38:20 CST 2008
a/mkinitrd-1.3.3-i486-1.tgz:
Fixed a few bugs in the previous mkinitrd package:
If a kernel version is requested with the -k option and modules are needed to build the initrd, exit with an error if no matching /lib/modules/ tree is present. Usually an incorrect kernel version was supplied.
Thanks to Eric Hameleers.
When adding kernel modules to the initrd, be more verbose showing success and failure copying each module. Thanks to Ellington Santos.
With some newer kernels, "/dev/root" might be returned by mount as the root device, but this will not work as an initrd root device. If mount returns /dev/root, look at the /dev/root symlink to determine the actual root device and use that so that the root device does not need to be supplied with -r.
In the call to /sbin/modprobe used to determine module dependencies, use the option --ignore-install to avoid catching "install" lines under /etc/modprobe.d/ when modules that use these are added to the initrd. This prevents /sbin/modprobe from being copied over busybox, breaking the initrd.
Thanks to Ken Milmore.

xap/mozilla-firefox-3.0.5-i686-1.tgz:
Upgraded to firefox-3.0.5.
This fixes some security issues:
For more information, see:
http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox30.html
(* Security fix *)

Upgrading to 12.2 HowTo

If you have been using previous Slackware installation prior to 12.2 and wishing to upgrade it now, you can now check a very good and detailed post about HowTo: Upgrade to Slackware 12.2 from LQ's member (shadowsnipes). You can also see previous HowTo to upgrade to 12.1. This article will give you hints when to get the source, how to smoothen your upgrade process and tips when you had problem prior or after upgrading to the latest version of Slackware.

And remember, don't panic when everything worked out of the box because people out there had been shouting like this

For those who haven't tried Slackware before, it may be the best time to try out Slackware. Maybe you will be addicted to Slackware once you tried it out.

Don't forget to give your donations to the Slackware Project via Slackware Store

Indonesian Mirror for Slackware 12.2

For those who are located in Indonesia, you can now download Slackware 12.2 ISOs from this location:
- UGM
- Slackware VIP
- Indonesian Slackware Community
- Kebon Binatang
- Unhas
- FOSS-ID
- Kambing (FTP)
- Kambing (HTTP)
- Kavalinux
- More to come ....

Please note that each mirror might contain different file list (some only has DVD version and other might have both CD/DVD).

Even though you can download this ISO for free, please consider to give donation to Slackware or buy items from Slackware Store. We (some of Indonesian Slackware Community members) are planning to buy some items from Slackware Store. If you want to buy it also, please join our mailing list.

Slackware 12.2 Released

Well, actually i'm quite surprised to see Slackware 12.2 gets released after the first RC, but when The Main said so, then let it be. SLACKWARE 12.2 IS OFFICIALLY RELEASED. I found the release on Facebook, because PV put it on his Status Update. Here's some features on Slackware 12.2:
- Running on Linux Kernel 2.6.27.7
- GLIBC 2.7
- Modular X11
- GCC-4.2.4 compiler
- Support for fully encrypted network connections with OpenSSL, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, and GnuPG.
- Apache (httpd) 2.2.10 web server with Dynamic Shared Object support, SSL, and PHP 5.2.8.
- PCMCIA, CardBus, USB, IEE1394 (FireWire) and ACPI support. This makes Slackware a great operating system for your laptop.
- The udev dynamic device management system for Linux 2.6.x.
- Perl 5.10.0, Python 2.5.2, Ruby 1.8.7-p72, Subversion 1.5.4, git-1.6.0.3, mercurial-1.0.2
- Updated versions of the Slackware package management tools and also slackpkg inclusion to the main repository
- Web browsers galore! (Konqueror 3.5.10, SeaMonkey 1.1.13, Firefox 3.0.4) and Thunderbird 2.0.0.18
- KDE 3.5.10, including KOffice, KDevelop, Amarok, K3B, and Konqueror
- GTK+ based applications (pidgin-2.5.2, gimp-2.4.7, gkrellm-2.3.2, gxine-0.5.903, xchat-2.8.6, xsane-0.996, and pan-0.133)

Please note that not all of the packages here are the latest version available on the upstream repository. It's the latest stable version tested by the Slackware team. That means there will be no KDE 4 (on /testing), GIMP 2.6, GLIBC 2.9, GCC 4.3, and many more. Those packages will have to wait until Slackware 13.0 comes up in the future as it will be a major upgrade compared to a version bump from .1 into .2.

Happy Slacking and Huge thanks to Patrick Volkerding and all of the Slackware Crew

Intel Fix

One package from Xorg related to Intel has been patched to fix BIOS parsing on -Current. While the kernel gets a missing filesystem and the image has been added a mising option for samba. Here's the latest -Current changelog:

Mon Dec 8 22:31:55 CST 2008
x/xf86-video-intel-2.4.3-i486-2.tgz: Patched to fix BIOS parsing code and fix some Intel and i830 video chipsets.

kernels/speakup.s/: Fixed missing filesystem drivers.

isolinux/initrd.img: Added missing mount.nfs.
Added INSSMB, an installer script to use a Samba source.
Thanks to Eric Hameleers.

usb-and-pxe-installers/: Added missing mount.nfs.
Added INSSMB, an installer script to use a Samba source.
Thanks to Eric Hameleers.

Removed PHP Package

Due to bug affecting the magic_quotes_gpc, the 5.2.7 release has been dropped and a substitute (5.2.8) will be released as soon as possible, but Slackware-Current seems to have found the source and build it in -Current. Meanwhile, the main PHP site recommends the use of PHP 5.2.6 until the official 5.2.8 has been released.

Update (9 Desember 2008): PHP 5.2.8 has been officially released with only one patch to fix the settings with magic_quotes_gpc.

More Updates

Sorry for being late about the latest changing in -Current. I was out of town attending my cousin's wedding party, so things got stucked while i'm out of Internet access and my busy schedule there. Here's the latest -Current changelog which is getting interesting:

Sun Dec 7 23:14:42 CST 2008
n/network-scripts-12.2-noarch-4.tgz: Patched rc.inet1 to filter output from "modprobe -c" that begins with #, preventing spurious error messages.
Thanks to Darrell Anderson.

Sun Dec 7 20:51:39 CST 2008
kde/kdeadmin-3.5.10-i486-4.tgz: Updated the knetworkconf patch to handle the domain name better, and to retain the correct permissions on rc.samba.
Thanks to Niels Horn for the improvements.

l/dbus-1.2.6-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to dbus-1.2.6.

l/dbus-glib-0.78-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to dbus-glib-0.78.

l/hal-0.5.11-i486-3.tgz: Modified hal.conf to use the plugdev group correctly.

l/libgphoto2-2.4.3-i486-3.tgz: Added README.jl2005a. Although the driver for this proprietary chipset is not built by default, the README is useful to let people know why that is (and perhaps as a warning to steer clear of these cameras unless you happen to be an expert in reverse engineering compression formats).

Sun Dec 7 01:37:48 CST 2008
a/hdparm-9.3-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to hdparm-9.3.

ap/man-pages-3.15-noarch-1.tgz: Upgraded to man-pages-3.15.

kde/kdeadmin-3.5.10-i486-3.tgz: Patched knetworkconf (KDE Control Center Network Settings) to be able to configure network interfaces. Previously, knetworkconf would say that the system was not supported and refuse to work since it considered only up to Slackware 10.2 supported. By simply adding Slackware 11.0, 12.0, 12.1, and 12.2 to the supported version list, this utility works again. However, it can strip commented out options from the rc.inet1.conf config file, and can put options into the file in a confusing order, so it is still not the optimal way to configure a network. Still, it's better to have this working. Thanks to Niels Horn for writing the patch, and Darrell Anderson for letting me know about it.

l/libgphoto2-2.4.3-i486-2.tgz: Restore README files for camera libraries that were not previously included. A pointer to the API documentation has also been added to the docs directory. Thanks to Theodore Kilgore for pointing out the usefulness of these documentation files to end users.

n/network-scripts-12.2-noarch-3.tgz: Allow rc.inet1.conf to override MAXNICS value in rc.inet1. Thanks to Eric Hameleers.
Added rc.inet1.8 and rc.inet1.conf.5 manpages. Thanks to Eric Hameleers.
Removed duplicated code in rc.inet1 default case. Thanks to Collin Baillie.

xap/pidgin-2.5.2-i486-3.tgz: Patched to accept certificates signed with rsa-md5. Other SSL libraries accept this, so GnuTLS should as well.

extra/wicd/wicd-1.5.6-noarch-2.tgz: Change usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55wicd to chmod 644 by default to avoid interference with suspend.

Patches

Another series of patches has been added to the -Current packages, including gutenprint and ghostcript. There are two other packages which were upgraded, pm-utils and gftp. Here's the changelog of -Current:

Fri Dec 5 20:58:39 CST 2008
ap/ghostscript-8.63-i486-2.tgz: Patched to remove a dependency on the experimental cairo output driver, which brings in dependencies on many X libraries. Thanks to Marin Glibic for the bug report and link to the upstream patch.

ap/gutenprint-5.2.2-i486-3.tgz: Edited setup.06.gutenprint, which still had the old path to the PPD files. Thanks to Markus Kanet.

ap/pm-utils-1.2.3-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to pm-utils-1.2.3.

xap/gftp-2.0.19-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to gftp-2.0.19.

isolinux/initrd.img: Added probe for e1000e and r8169 network chipsets.

usb-and-pxe-installers/: Added probe for e1000e and r8169 network chipsets.

Security Update: PHP

A new version of PHP has been released and Patrick has done quick update on this one and release it as security update, because it's not only contains improvements, but also security updates as well. Along with PHP update, there are also JRE and JDK updates and also slackpkg and wicd. Here's the latest -Current changelog which is getting closer to the final Slackware 12.2

Thu Dec 4 23:01:59 CST 2008
ap/slackpkg-2.70.5-noarch-1.tgz: Upgraded to slackpkg-2.70.5-noarch-1.
Thanks to Piter Punk.

l/jre-6u11-i586-1.tgz: Upgraded to Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition Runtime Environment Version 6.0 update 11.

n/php-5.2.7-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to php-5.2.7.
In addition to improvements and bug fixes, this new version of PHP also addresses several security issues, including:
Fixed a crash inside gd with invalid fonts (Fixes CVE-2008-3658).
Fixed a possible overflow inside memnstr (Fixes CVE-2008-3659).
Fixed security issues detailed in CVE-2008-2665 and CVE-2008-2666.
Crash with URI/file..php (filename contains 2 dots). (Fixes CVE-2008-3660).
rfc822.c legacy routine buffer overflow. (Fixes CVE-2008-2829).
Fixed extraction of zip files or directories when the entry name is a relative path: http://www.sektioneins.de/advisories/SE-2008-06.txt
These are the URLs to get more information:
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-2665
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-2666
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-2829
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-3658
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-3659
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-3660
http://www.sektioneins.de/advisories/SE-2008-06.txt
(* Security fix *)

extra/jdk-6/jdk-6u11-i586-1.tgz: Upgraded to Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition Development Kit Version 6.0 update 11.

extra/wicd/wicd-1.5.6-noarch-1.tgz: Upgraded to wicd-1.5.6.

Network Manager in Slackware 12.2

The next Slackware release (12.2) will have a network manager like in other Linux distribution. This package is called wicd and it's not yet put on the main directories, so you will have to install it via /extra directory. Please read the README.SLACKWARE if you want to install it on your machine as you *may* need to tweak some configuration in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf.

Here's some feature in the wicd packages (taken from the original website):
1. No Gnome dependencies (although it does require GTK), so it is easy to use in XFCE, Fluxbox, Openbox, Enlightenment, etc.
2. Ability to connect to wired and wireless networks
3. Profiles for each wireless network and wired network
4. Many encryption schemes, some of which include WEP/WPA/WPA2 (and you can add your own)
5. Remains compatible with wireless-tools
6. Tray icon showing network activity and signal strength

Slackware 12.2 RC 1

Surprise guys.... Slackware 12.2 RC 1 has been declared by the latest -Current changelog. While there is still no exact date of when will the final 12.2 release, it's still a good news and hopefully in new year, we shall see the final version. It will use 2.6.27.7 kernel because the kernel and XOrg has been frozen to make things doesn't change too often. As you probably aware, Slackware 12.2 WILL NOT use KDE 4.1.x as the default, but they are still reserved in /testing directory as an alternative for other desktop manager.

Here's the -Current Changelog:

Tue Dec 2 23:34:03 CST 2008
While there are still some docs that need updating and probably a few more tweaks and updates here and there, everything is mostly in place for the next stable release, Slackware 12.2. The versions of major components like X and the kernel can be considered frozen. Anything major that we haven't done yet will probably wait for the release after this next one. As Slackware 12.2 is only a 0.1 version bump, we're trying to focus on making it better without causing instability or losing compatibility with Slackware 12.1 wherever possible. Invasive changes like the new X (that will require changes to xorg.conf) and merging KDE4 should probably wait for Slackware 13.0.
We will call this batch Slackware 12.2 release candidate one. :-)
a/aaa_base-12.2.0-noarch-1.tgz: Bumped /etc/slackware-version version number in preparation for a stable release, and updated the initial emails.

a/aaa_elflibs-12.2.0-i486-1.tgz: Updated the initial "starter" library package to the latest versions in -current.
a/genpower-1.0.5-i486-2.tgz: Patched genpowerfail to halt the machine during a power failure rather than causing it to reboot over and over.
Thanks to Marin Mitov for the bug report.

a/ntfs-3g-1.5130-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to ntfs-3g-1.5130.

a/pciutils-2.2.10-i486-2.tgz: Updated pci.ids.

a/sysvinit-scripts-1.2-noarch-26.tgz: Patched rc.M to start rc.wicd and rc.snmpd if those scripts are executable, and removed the reference to the old rc.hplip script. Also, modifed rc.K to shut down acpid using rc.acpid.
Changed /proc/bus/usb mounting in rc.S to use the options from /etc/fstab if there is an entry for it there (thanks to Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi).

a/udev-135-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to udev-135.

a/usbutils-0.73-i486-3.tgz: Updated usb.ids.

ap/alsa-utils-1.0.17-i486-2.tgz: Patched rc.alsa to use [[:blank:]] instead of [[:space:]] with tr, since the latter removes vertical whitespace and causes everything to be incorrectly listed on one line.
Thanks to Ondrej Kubecka for the patch.

l/hal-info-20081127-noarch-1.tgz: Upgraded to hal-info-20081127.

n/ethtool-6-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to ethtool-6. Evidently this has been out for some time -- thanks to Jan Rafaj for the notice.

n/network-scripts-12.2-noarch-1.tgz: Removed the automatic DHCP timeout reduction in rc.inet1, since the kernel is not reliably returning correct information about that. If the default 30 second timeout is too long, it can be shortened in rc.inet1.conf.
Patched rc.ip_forward to reapply any non-default ipv4 parameters after turning ipv4 forwarding on or off, as doing that clears them. Thanks to Mark.

tcl/expect-5.44.1.11-i486-2.tgz: Recompiled.

tcl/tcl-8.5.5-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to tcl-8.5.5.

tcl/tk-8.5.5-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to tk-8.5.5.

xap/audacious-1.5.1-i486-2.tgz: Recompiled to make sure newer libraries will work as expected.

extra/brltty/brltty-3.10-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to brltty-3.10.

extra/inn/inn-2.4.5-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to inn-2.4.5.

extra/wicd/wicd-1.5.5-noarch-1.tgz: Added wicd-1.5.5. Thanks to Robby Workman.

isolinux/initrd.img: Rebuilt removing some unneeded kernel modules.
Thanks to Stuart Winter and Eric Hameleers.

usb-and-pxe-installers/: Rebuilt removing some unneeded kernel modules.

Small Glitch on Gutenprint

One quick update has been released to fix the PPD generation on gutenprint's install script and here's the Changelog of the latest -Current update:

Mon Dec 1 01:21:52 CST 2008
ap/gutenprint-5.2.2-i486-2.tgz: Fixed PPD generation in install script.
Thanks to Willy Sudiarto Raharjo.

Minor Cleanup

Several cleanup has been integrated with the latest -Current updates that were released today. This will make next Slackware release better as there are less trash codes in all the packages and also better handling in several condition. Also added several new packages on this batch of updates, so please look at it. Here's the latest -Current changelog:

Sun Nov 30 22:15:32 CST 2008
a/sysvinit-scripts-1.2-noarch-25.tgz: Edited rc.S to clear temporary files better. Edited rc.M, rc.6, and rc.K to not output additional information when running accton, as the new binary already does that.

a/udev-134-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to udev-134. Thanks to Piter Punk.
(Remove any obsolete /etc/modprobe.d/uhci-hci config file after upgrade)

ap/gutenprint-5.2.2-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to gutenprint-5.2.2.

ap/libx86-1.1-i486-1.tgz: Added libx86-1.1.

ap/man-pages-3.14-noarch-1.tgz: Upgraded to man-pages-3.14.

ap/pm-utils-1.2.2.1-i486-2.tgz: Rebuilt with a patch to properly reset acpi video flags after a resume.

ap/radeontool-1.5-i486-1.tgz: Added radeontool-1.5.

ap/vbetool-1.1-i486-1.tgz: Added vbetool-1.1.

l/jre-6u10-i586-2.tgz: Added /usr/bin/java/jre/bin directory since the profile scripts add it to the $PATH. Thanks to Phillip Warner.

n/wireless-tools-29-i486-4.tgz: Patched rc.wireless to take the interface down and retry if setting the mode fails. Thanks to Guan Xin.