Table of Contents

• Welcome
• Events
• Frugalware's developer are people too!
• Tips and tricks
• Focus on package(s)
• Bug fixes
• Security announcements
• About the newsletter

Welcome

The newsletter's aim is to keep you up to date with what's happened recently in the world of the Linux distribution 'Frugalware'.

Features of this issue include:

• Party time! Kalgan is released.
• (Another) memory donation - I'm sure about this one :)
• Money, money, money!
• Tip - Troubleshooting the launch of GUI appplications
• (Lots of) security announcements

Events

Here's a selection of events which have occurred since the previous newsletter:

• Party time! Kalgan is released.

  The release of Frugalware 0.8 - code-named "Kalgan" - was announced on 11 March 2008 by vmiklos. For full details of what this release brings, read his post. Just one of the many advances is the new tool 'FUN' - Frugalware Update Notifier. Now you'll know when you're having fun :)

• (Another) memory donation - I'm sure about this one :)

  IroNiQ donated 1 GB RAM which was installed in Genesis - the main server. Many thanks to IroNiQ for his kind donation.

• Money, money, money!

  Distrowatch recently donated US$340 to the Frugalware project with the text "Frugalware Linux is an independent distribution developed by Miklós Vajna and a small developer community. It was originally inspired by the simplicity of Slackware Linux, but the developers also included Pacman, the excellent package manager from Arch Linux. Pacman, and its graphical front-end, now form an integral part of Frugalware Linux. The project also prides itself on providing the very latest software packages in the repositories, on having a regular 6-month release cycle, and on providing complete security support for the distribution during its lifespan. Frugalware Linux might not be a particularly widely-used distro, but the dedication of the development team is exemplary and they continue to deliver improved releases every few months." Thank you to Distrowatch! Of course credit for a great distribution goes to all past and present Frugalware developers and contributors.

• VMiklos translates splashy

  It was noted in the release notes for splashy 0.3.9 that vmiklos provided a Hungarian translation. This is just one example where Frugalware developers contribute to projects which benefit Frugalware and other Linux distributions.

• Happy birthday to Frugalware-fr

  The web site of the French-language Frugalware community recently celebrated its first birthday. Congratulations to devil505 (its creator) all those who have contributed to its success. Frugalware aims to be accessible to everyone, regardless of the language they speak. The French-language Frugalware community helps in that effort.

• "Bouleetbil the Builder"

  Bouleetbil recently approached the development team and offered his help, particularly in maintaining packages. Since there are many packages whose maintainer has since left the Frugalware project, bouleetbil was asked to look first at these and see which packages he might like to update. He's already making great progress with the help of the developers, particularly crazy and vmiklos.

• It's all Greek to me :)

  Bill Tux recently approached the development team offering to provide Greek translation of the various Frugalware projects. As I mentioned above, making Frugalware available to people in their own language is welcome.

Frugalware's developers are people too!

This is a new feature of the newsletter in which various Frugalware developers reveal a little about themselves. The aim is to show that "Frugalware's developers are people too!" I thank the developers for taking the time to answer the questions. There will be one interview per newsletter (until we run out of developers).

hermier

This issue's interview is with hermier, whose roles in the Frugalware development team include: documentation, translation administrator and maintenance of the nvidia package. Please stand and hum the French national anthem while you read his interview.

What's your name?

Michel Hermier

What's your IRC nickname?

hermier

In what country do you live?

France

In what country were you born?

France

What do you like the most about where you live?

It's near the forest, mountains, beach, and most importantly - near my family.

What do you do for the Frugalware project?

I try to be the (infamous) documentation manager, translation administrator and (nvidia) package maintainer.

What motivates you to work on Frugalware?

In a few words: reactivity, speed of programs. If you only see read 3 words instead of 4, it's because reactivity counts twice here ;) Seriously, the team are quick to answer your problems, the number of people involved is quite low, and has a great level of knowledge. In addition, the fact that we have a low number of patch is a great thing for me.

What do you do when you're not working on Frugalware?

Chatting with my friends on computers, hacking on KDE, and attempting to have a social life. I also like to watch movies on TV and in a cinema.

What's the view from your front door?

Open the door and have a look.

Tips and tricks

Disclaimer - Be aware that the hints & tips provided here have NOT been tested and so come with no warranty.

• Troubleshooting the launch of GUI applications - by 'phayz'

  You may find that after clicking on the menu item of a GUI application you see the 'busy'cursor, but the application itself doesn't start. This can happen for several reasons: a library conflict, a missing library etc. The problem is that you don't see the error messages that occur. If this happens to you, the best thing to do when diagnosing the problem is to launch the application from a terminal window. You will then see the error messages that appear and they'll give you a starting point for further troubleshooting.

This section relies on your contributions! If have some tips and tricks that you would like to be shown in the newsletter, please post them on the forums in the Tips and Tricks section!

Focus On Package(s)

AbiWord

"AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks." While AbiWord may not have any many features as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Writer, it's advantage is that it's much lighter in terms of resources. This is great for those PCs - like mine - which are not as powerful as the latest PCs. Even if you do have a powerful PC, it still makes a great word processor if you're doing mainly basic tasks. Try it and see for yourself.

Bug fixes

A list of bugs closed since the previous newsletter is available here.

Security announcements

Remember - According to the normal support arrangements for Frugalware, the release of Frugalware 0.8 ("Kalgan") means that support for the previous release has ended. This means that no further security or bug fixes will be released for Frugalware 0.7 ("Sayshell").

Here is a list of security issues which have been discovered and fixed in the 0.7 release since the previous newsletter.

• FSA393 - boost: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Boost, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). Please upgrade to boost-1.34.0-6sayshell1.
• FSA392 - bind: A vulnerability has been reported in ISC BIND, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or to potentially compromise a vulnerable system.. Please upgrade to bind-9.4.1-3sayshell1.
• FSA391 - wordpress: A vulnerability has been reported in WordPress, which can be exploited by malicious users to bypass certain security restrictions and to manipulate data. Please upgrade to wordpress-2.3.3-1sayshell1.
• FSA390 - opera: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Opera, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting attacks, disclose sensitive information, or to bypass certain security restrictions. Please upgrade to opera-9.26-1sayshell1.
• FSA389 - kdebase: A weakness has been reported in KDE, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). Please upgrade to kdebase-3.5.7-4sayshell1.
• FSA388 - wireshark: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Wireshark, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). Please upgrade to wireshark-0.99.8-1sayshell1.
• FSA387 - phpmyadmin: A vulnerability has been reported in phpMyAdmin, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct SQL injection attacks. Please upgrade to phpmyadmin-2.11.5-1sayshell1.
• FSA386 - rblibtorrent: A vulnerability has been reported in Rasterbar Software libtorrent, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). Please upgrade to rblibtorrent-0.12-6sayshell1.
• FSA385 - cacti: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Cacti, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct HTTP response splitting, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. Please upgrade to cacti-0.8.6j-4sayshell1.
• FSA384 - xine-lib: A vulnerability has been discovered in xine-lib, which can potentially be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. Please upgrade to xine-lib-1.1.10.1-1sayshell1.
• FSA383 - thunderbird: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Mozilla Thunderbird, which can be exploited by malicious people to disclose sensitive information, bypass certain security restrictions, or potentially to compromise a user's system. Please upgrade to thunderbird-2.0.0.12-1sayshell1.
• FSA382 - pcre: A vulnerability has been reported in PCRE, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or compromise an application using the library. Please upgrade to pcre-7.6-1sayshell1.
• FSA381 - lighttpd: A vulnerability has been reported in lighttpd, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service). Please upgrade to lighttpd-1.4.18-2sayshell1.
• FSA380 - cups: A vulnerability has been discovered in CUPS, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or to potentially compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to cups-1.3.6-1sayshell1.
• FSA379 - graphicsmagick: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in GraphicsMagick, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct DoS (Denial of Service) attacks or compromise a user's system. Please upgrade to graphicsmagick-1.1.11-1sayshell1.
• FSA378 - joomla: Hendrik-Jan Verheij has discovered a vulnerability in Joomla!, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to joomla-1.0.15-1sayshell1.
• FSA377 - dbus: A security issue has been reported in D-Bus, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to bypass certain security restrictions. Please upgrade to dbus-1.0.3-1sayshell1.
• FSA376 - clamav: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in ClamAV, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) or to potentially compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to clamav-0.92.1-1sayshell1.
• FSA375 - vlc: A vulnerability has been reported in VLC Media Player, which can potentially be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. Please upgrade to vlc-0.8.6-8sayshell2.
• FSA374 - seamonkey: Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Mozilla SeaMonkey, which can be exploited by malicious people to disclose sensitive information, bypass certain security restrictions, conduct spoofing attacks, or potentially to compromise a vulnerable system. Please upgrade to seamonkey-1.1.8-1sayshell1.
• FSA373 - firefox: Some vulnerabilities and weaknesses have been reported Mozilla Firefox, which can be exploited by malicious people to disclose sensitive information, bypass certain security restrictions, conduct spoofing attacks, or to compromise a user's system. Please upgrade to firefox-2.0.0.12-1sayshell1.
• FSA372 - kernel: A vulnerability have been reported in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to disclose potentially sensitive information or gain escalated privileges. Please upgrade to kernel-2.6.22-7sayshell6.

About the newsletter

Author

The Frugalware newsletter is written by Russell Dickenson (AKA phayz). Credit for the Frugalware distribution goes to the development team.

Translations

The newsletter is currently translated into French and Danish. The French translation is provided by the French Frugalware community. The Danish translation is provided by the Danish Frugalware community. Thanks to all those involved in providing and hosting these translations.

Release

To allow time for review and corrections, each newsletter is written ahead of its release date. Therefore it may not mention events which occured in the few days before its release - e.g. security fixes. To be sure that you've got the very latest information on these topics, go to the appropriate page of the Frugalware web site.

Feedback

If you have feedback about the Frugalware newsletter - whether good or bad - please provide it via the forums. Your feedback is valuable because we want the newsletter to meet the needs of Frugalware's users.