A month in the archive – a view from the Ubuntu Server Team

The release of Intrepid Alpha1 closes a busy month with an archive teeming with merges and other syncs from Debian’s unstable repository. Here are some highlights from the Ubuntu Server Team:

amavisd-new brought to version 2.6.0

The main new feature is DKIM signing and verification. Further integration of DKIM within Ubuntu is being planned for Intrepid. Check out the specification to track progress and help out testing this new feature.

apache2 updated to 2.2.9

There were some bug reports about the worker and event mpm stability under high load. These issues should be fixed now. This new upload includes also a rewrite of the a2{en,dis}{mod,site} utilities used to manage the modules and sites that are enabled: support for wildcards in modules and site names as well as customization via environment variables have been added.

krb5 1.6 synced from Debian

The LDAP plugin for the MIT KDC has been packaged. An LDAP server can now be used to store the KDC database. That opens up interesting options used in combination with openldap syncrepl infrastructure.

libapache2-mod-perl2 and perl 5.10

Version 2.0.4 of libapache2-mod-perl2 brings support for perl 5.10. Just in time now that perl 5.10 is the default version in Intrepid.

libnss-ldap new upstream release

Beside a bug-fix release, the upload came with this interesting note:

An odd, but important, note from your maintainer…
Please look at the libnss-ldapd package, and if it fits your needs,
consider using it – it is much easier on you ldap server, but is still
missing a few items, which may make it still unusable for you.

On a related note, browsing through the openldap cvs shows a new overlay committed at the beginning of June in the slapd-module contrib directory: nssov. This code is based on the libnss-ldapd mentioned above. One of the goal for Intrepid is to package this new work. Your testing skills will be put to great benefits when this new feature lands in the archive.

sybase support in php5 re-enabled

It went away during the move to 5.2.6 – oops… It’s back now.

Stable Release Updates in hardy

openldap has been updated to version 2.4.9 in hardy. This version fixes a number of bugs including syncrepl issues, assertion errors, and segmentation faults found in previous versions of openldap. In a word: more reliable and replication that works well.

postgresql released a new bug-fix-only version: dapper (8.1.13), feisty (8.2.9), gutsy (8.2.9), hardy (8.3.3) and intrepid (8.3.3) have all been updated.

Mail server improvements for the Intrepid Ibex

Scott Kitterman, one of the Ubuntu Server mail experts, discussed during last UDS a couple of improvements that could be made in the mail server area during this release cycle. The outcome has been turned into blueprints so that we can track their progress through out the cycle.

DKIM support to amavisd-new by default

This blueprint aims at providing Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) verification and From based white listing support in the default amavisd-new configuration. It requires a small change in the default amavisd-new configuration and writing a couple of Main Inclusion Reports for the following packages:

• libdigest-sha-perl

• libnet-dns-perl

• libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl

• libmail-dkim-perl

Support Clamav and Spamassassin in Main

Anti-virus scanning and spam detection are two important components in a mail server. For that we have clamav and spamassassin . This specification describes the steps needed to get these two packages moved into the main repository. One aspect deals with some changes required in the packaging of clamav. The other is to write a number of Main Inclusion Reports for various packages.

Want to help ?

An important part of the work described above involves writing Main Inclusion Reports. The process is described in the Ubuntu developer wiki and centers around writing a Main Inclusion Report about the package outlining security history, bug status and standard compliance.

Interested ? Then grab a package from the list mentionned in the specifications above and write up its Main Inclusion Report. And by october you’ll be able to say that you’ve contributed in shaping an intrepid mail server.

Ressources

• List of MIR needed for amavisd-dkim

• List of MIR needed for clamav-spamassassin-in-main

• Main Inclusion Process description

Server Team 20080624 meeting minutes

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

Ebox and augeas

mathiaz started a thread on the ebox-devel mailing list about using augeas in the backend code. Response has been positive so far and upstream developers will look into it.

On a related note, nxvl packaged augeas. He uploaded it to revu and is looking for comments.

text browser on the server cd

mathiaz sent a reply to the w3m thread on ubuntu-devel to announce the position of the ubuntu-server team. The thread is still active on the ubuntu-server mailing list but has drifted to the topic of server flavors.

Relocation of web pages from /var/www/ to /srv/www/

lukehasnoname put out a proposal for moving the default location of the RootDir in apache2 from /var/www to /srv/www. The main reason is to be compliant with the FHS. Objections were raised: increased delta with Debian, common knowledge about the location of the root directory, FHS doesn’t require any structure in /srv. It was suggested to take this proposal to the Debian maintainers and discuss it with them.

Intrepid Spec status

ScottK asked about the state of approval for specs. dendrobates answered it was working on them now and the list should be ready in the next few days. ScottK also ask for feedback on his server flavor spec.

Iso testing for 8.04.1

mathiaz reminded that the iso testing tracker has 8.04.1 candidates for the ubuntu-server isos. Testing is more than welcome in that area. He also added that isos for 8.10-alpha1 are being worked on, but nothing is ready for testing yet. Those interested in helping in iso-testing should register with the iso testing tracker.

MIR for Recommends

ScottK asked whether MIR for Recommends should be created. Starting from Intrepid, apt installs Recommends by default. However if packages are not available it won’t fail. The question is whether packages in main can recommend packages in universe. mathiaz suggested to send an email to ubuntu-devel to raise this issue as there wasn’t a clear answer given in the discussion.

Agree on next meeting date and time

Next meeting will be on Tuesday, July 1st at 15:00 UTC in #ubuntu-meeting.

Getting your own list of fine merges

For those of you that wonder how I’ve put up the list of fine merges from the Ubuntu Server team, I’ll shed some light on the process I’ve followed. I’m not going through the list of hundreds of merges. Instead I’m reading the Ubuntu Server merge report which includes only packages relevant to the Ubuntu Server team.

This page is generated by a small python script that narrows down the list of merges to a set of packages related to the ubuntu-server team in launchpad. Moreover each merge has more details than the report pages generated by Merge-O-Matic: changelog entries from Ubuntu and Debian, diff statistics from the generated patches.

How-to get started

The script and the necessary bits are available in bzr.

To get started, you need to install the python-mako and python-magic packages:

sudo apt-get install python-mako python-magic

Then checkout the bzr branch:

bzr branch lp:~mathiaz/+junk/get-merges

Change your directory to the get-merges branch just created and generate your report:

cd get-merges/
./get_merges.py lp-id

After some minutes you should find a file named lp-id.html with a list of merges relevant to the LP id.

The list of packages relevant to the team is gathered from the LP id package report page (example: the ubuntu-server page). An additional list of package can be added via a local file named lp_id.list (there is an example file (ubuntu-server.list)  in the script directory). Files related to the merge (.patch and .diff.gz files) are downloaded from Merge-O-Matic and cached locally in the merges/ directory. The mako template engine is used to generate the final report. Have look at the style.css and get_merges.mako files in order to customize the output.

Hopefully this script will help the merging effort that the Ubuntu Developer team is currently doing. You can create your personal merge list and filter out packages you’re not interested in. And if you ever get down to an empty list, you can always ask Merge-O-Matic for more !

8 outstanding merges

As pointed out by Colin Watson in an email to ubuntu-devel-announce the Debian Import Freeze is coming soon. In particular he stated that:

all packages should have been merged from Debian at least once by this time. After 26 June, merging a package from Debian that hasn’t been merged since Hardy will require a freeze exception

Following last week post about merges related to the Ubuntu Server Team I’ve dived into the list of outstanding merges and come out with the following suggestions about merges that should be easy to do:

• libservlet2.4-java
• nfs-utils
• heimdal
• libapache2-mod-xmlrpc2
• mysql-gui-tools
• strongswan
• cyrus-imapd-2.2
• phpldapadmin

The Ubuntu Server Team roadmap has been updated and I’ve noticed that more than half of the suggested merges last week had been done – well done fellow Ubuntu developers !