Fedora Project Insider

User who follows Life: Infinity, Freedom and Voice.

Article by Peter Czanik, from Fedora Community Hungary.

Source page: https://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/2012/11/security-spin-preview-as-syslog-ng-3-3-7-is-part-of-the-upcoming-fedora-18/

The beta of Fedora 18 was supposed to be released earlier… sadly it was postponed again by two weeks, but as there are some great news regarding Fedora and syslog-ng, so I did not wait for the official release. I rather downloaded a nightly build to check it out. I did not research why the release was postponed, but personally I ran only some minor cosmetic problem during installation

As I tested in a virtual machine, the regular Fedora release was not really optimal for me, as it uses Gnome3 and needs 3D acceleration. As I don’t have 3D support, don’t like Gnome3 and I’m interested in security anyway, I downloaded the so called “security spin”. This raises two questions for those not familiar with Fedora, for which I quote the security spin website:

What is a spin? “Fedora Spins are alternate version of Fedora, tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets and other customizations.”

What is the security spin? “The Fedora Security Lab provides a safe test environment to work on security auditing, forensics, system rescue and teaching security testing methodologies in universities and other organizations.”

Luckily for me, the security spin is equipped with LXDE, which is a light weight Desktop Environment. It does not need 3D or much system resources and it runs very fast. All of the tools are collected under the “Security Lab” menu, which is further divided based on point of interest, ranging from code analysis to wireless network security. Some of these are graphical tools, many of them console based, but even these are easily available from the menus and a console window is started for them. Most of my favorite tools are available: nmap for port scanning, nwipe for securely wiping partitions, iptraf & co for looking at network traffic and many more.

The current look and feel of the security spin is now quite boring. Just a simple blue background with some stripes on it. But it will be changed in the next few weeks, as one of the guys from the Hungarian Fedora team (which invited me to FUDcon Paris) did a very nice new artwork. It will be worth to try the security spin just for this

Now back to the reason why I originally downloaded the Fedora installer: syslog-ng. The good news is that syslog-ng 3.3.7 is now part of the release. I installed it and gave it a quick try and everything worked as expected. A big thanks goes to JPO (José Pedro Oliveira) and Mrunge (Matthias Runge), who maintain the package inside Fedora!

This story might also become part of my FOSDEM presentation next February about upstream – downstream relations: syslog-ng 3.3 used a forked version of the ivykis library instead of upstream. The syslog-ng package could not be updated to 3.3.X in Fedora until this problem was resolved and upstream ivykis worked instead of the bundled forked version. This needed a lot of work both on the syslog-ng and the ivykis side, but version 3.3.6 solved this problem and 3.3.7 entered Fedora last week.

If you want to see why to upgrade to this latest version, see the announcement blog at http://bazsi.blogs.balabit.com/2011/10/syslog-ng-3-3-1-released/

Looking forward to the next Fedora release – in my opinion will be awesome.

Dear Fedorians!

The Insight team is looking for help, aid, we would like to grab more people for the development of the project called Fedora Insight[1].
But what is that Insight? Those who don’t know this project here is an short description:

Fedora Insight is a Drupal-based website that serves as a place to publish and share news, articles related to Fedora and Fedora marketing materials in various formats. Insight makes it easy for users, developers, and journalists — people who aren’t yet a part of the Fedora contributor community — to keep up with recent highlights without following a dozen different blogs and mailing lists.

We believe you can help us in Insight development. Currently we are looking for the following people:

1. Theme creator

Knows the combination of HTML, CSS and a little bit of PHP. To this you need only some Drupal theme docs [2][3] and you could successfully contribute, to be available an Drupal 7 theme for Insight. If you are interested, you’ll find our wiki [3] how can you make contact with us, and where you could find the Drupal theme (sample) files.

2. PHP (+Drupal) developer

If you know PHP, but would like to learn Drupal either, then you’re our perfect candidate.
Currently we have an actively maintained FAS auth module [4] for Drupal 6, what we would like to update to Drupal 7. Also we could provide an documentation [5] for this, what is available on drupal.org. We use the Feature module, what makes easy the development flow. More about this – check at [6] here.

3. Testers, Use case testers

It’s important, that we must test it out every piece of code, an we do it as we could. Sadly, sometimes some bugs are appearing when it’s unwanted, or it’s stays hidden, or we haven’t met. Therefore we appreciate anybody who could help to discover and report bugs. Tester can be anybody from the community, no need any special knowledge. We need also people who help to test out the mentioned FAS auth and Drupal 7 Mediawiki modules, the calendar module, and the site itself. All this can be done on our testing site [7]. But here pre-registration is required, because the FAS module has been temporarily disabled.

To be able help our work, please send an mail to our mailing list [8], with an short introduction that includes FAS, and the job that would like to help us. After this you’ll receive the necessary access rights, if the work needs that. (eg. like you would like to make an theme).

Also, you as a future important contributor of the project, we awaiting you – and everyone else online at Fudcon Blacksburg 2012, where we’ll put great emphasis to the calendar module [9], and we ask you to share any kind of idea, critics around it, or just contact with us through the IRC – at fedora-mktg channel. We gladly help your first steps.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Insight
[2] http://drupal.org/update/themes/6/7
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_work_on_the_Insight_theme
[4] http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=drupal6-authfas.git;a=summary
[5] http://drupal.org/update/modules/6/7
[6] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Insight_development_using_Features_module
[7] https://insight02.dev.fedoraproject.org
[8] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/logistics
[9] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Insight_use_cases_for_calendar

Greetings Fedora Users and Developers,

We are working heavily to bring something awesome for us forward that what we call Fedora Insight[1]. Fedora Insight in long term is not just an RSS feed as it’s right now, else we plan an events module, a calendar[2] module for scheduling and better coordination, microblogging, FWN and many-many more – an integrated system that improves our community.

But, Fedora Insight is nothing more yet, just an series of drupal modules, and a series of ideas[2][3] that will aid us in long term within Fedora, and will improve our community life as we do improvements. We have high hopes before this devel site, so – that’s why we start here, where you could see improvements, articles about how we work, live with the content, and as we do flaws. Of course, if you are interested you could easily join to the Fedora Insight team, and play around with our newest toys. Just check it on the right of the page, drupal lists for you already few of them. We gladly accept anybody who wants to even just make a test run or write a review to us, or curse out that something not really works so as it’s expected . You know, we die for hear your voice, because we do it for YOU.

Rock’n'roll guys and girls!

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Insight
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Insight_use_cases_for_calendar
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Insight_use_cases_for_status_and_microblogging

“…or the world how small can be.” – as I could add this as sub-title for this blogpost. I know that I have not much time to blog – but after this Fedora Round Table BUD – was an truly awesome event – something has happen with me and I would like to share the story:

After my train hasn’t arrived in time, I had to buy an another ticket to Railjet that heads to my home city, Győr. But it seems, that was my fortune – because when I have stepped on the train, never expected that I’ll meet someone who want keep in touch and work with me. Here is how begun:
The man and his wife, came from Vienna to Hungary to visit some of their (business) friends (as I heard this from their english conversation) – and his wife asked in English help to type an reply sms in Hungarian back to their HU friends. It was really hard, because I never liked Blackberry, with my huge thick fingers always hated to type anything on shrinked tiny keyboard – and I have told this concern to the women.

“Oh, really? You don’t like Blackberry phones, then witch is your favourite? Mine is my iPhone, and my new iPad”…. Umm, well, my open source heart and soul has felt the pain, and I replied so:

“Indeed, the iPhone, and the iPad are nice devices – but I much more like sharing, open source hardwares, and softwares”. I think this was the point, where the man begun to pay attention to our talk – and joined to the conversation and asked me:

Man: “Really? Then what’s that I am using on my laptop?”
Me: “Well, of course an Linux operating system, called Fedora.”
Man: “Oh, I see – that’s why this text written on your blueish t-shirt: Fedora Ambassador, but what’s that Ambassador on it?”
Me: “We are the heart of our community, and keeping the contacts with contributors, with newbies, company CEO’s, and so on… we also fight for freedom.”
Man: “Really? That’s nice… Then I’m sure you have met with bunch of people already. Do you know the name Miguel de Icaza?”
Me: “Sure. The early Ximian and later Mono developer. Why are you asking?”
Man: “Because of he is my cousin. I’m just live here at Vienna, and lead my business. Let me introduce myself (handed over his hand to shake): my name is Ronan Le Bras from CTBTO, head of the International Datacenter Division from the International Centre Vienna.”
Me: “Unbelievable! That’s a surprise, nice to meet you!”
Man: “Do you have an business card?”
Me: “Of course.” – and we have exchanged the business cards….

After this we have begun to talk more deeply, passionately about linux, free softwares, and Red Hat as origin of Fedora, and he told me that he is also using in his business RH and Fedora sometimes either as client (but mostly as servers). I suggested to keep in contact, and if it’s possible – look for me if he want to meet with us, or need some help. Just in case I have given few freshly received F15 media too I have told about my job at Nokia, and he suggested that if I ever need help for arrange an meeting, just search him, and he will see what could I help for me (for us).

About an half an hour has passed quickly, but sadly I had to finish this conversation here, because the train has arrived to my home city. But we promised that we’ll keep the contact -
and I said farewell to them…

That was happened…. So, I think you could never know who sits down nearby to you, as on the internet – you never know who is on the opposite site of the line or inside the network…. I hold here his business card, and I hope that we will meet again. So it wasn’t a dream, and we have an another friend for Fedora. I think maybe we once again create such a great slogan, we should place FRIENDS to the first place. Without that we couldn’t create Freedom, Features, and every time – as First….

I have met today one of my HULUG mate, and he praised one of the software what he found. It’s called Sironta, what is an interesting P2P office, and distributed opensource solution what is free up to 2 Gigs. From the webpage: “Sironta connects two or more users without making any network changes to share files of any type and any size from anywhere in the world without violating the terms of confidentiality or the NDA that such documents may have.”

I think it’s worthy to check out:

http://www.sironta.com/features

PS: No need to compile, it runs by self.

I know, not usual thing about to write an new contributor arrival to our Fedora planet, but I feel that has real potential to must do it. I have earlier made successful contact an with an new contributor, who wants to be a part of our Design team. I have heard about her works, and tried to reach her – because she and their classmates are creating awesome patterns, graphics, and paintings. Not many times happens that a girl directly wants to contribute their designs to our disposal under CC-BY-SA license. When we first time met, we talked a lot, and tried to show our works around Fedora – and it seemed to me that she really likes it. Her name is Sylvia (on the left), and she is the first artist from our Western Hungarian University, Szombathely – Art & Design faculty with handcraft specialisation, as textile technician. She loves creating patterns (even as beloved hobby), and mainly dealing with silk screen techniques and their implementation at school. But she has also an degree as an qualified clothes technician. As she says:

“My life now revolves around patterns and textiles. This is a most serious hobby. In my free time I like painting, sewing, batik textiles. But of course, all this while I am open to many things. I like to challenge myself. I have already into signed FAS account, and Zoltan will lead through rest of the process as my time allows (and get acquainted with Fedora Design spin), and I hope that I gain more help from Fedora designers.”

We have agreed that I need to and must visit this university to have an talk about Fedora and our Design spin. By the way, I’m not a pro in design and graphics, but I really would like to have someone who makes talk here once if I gain more contacts and succeed, because I have asked that let us in into their classroom later on.

Oh, and here is one more thing what Sylvia has left to our community through me. Her first free wave of patterns. Yeah, and she promised that there will be more, what includes clothes designs too. Currently I have these files zipped at my fedora people FTP, so if you need such files – go grab it from here. So, I’m really happy to have her on our side – and I will be on it that to get more contributors as she is.