Six openSUSE Tumbleweed snapshots have been released since last Friday updating some GNOME applications, KDE’s Frameworks, the LLVM compiler and several other packages.

The rolling release updated several new and some older software packages.

GNOME webcam application cheese updated from version 43.0 to 44.0 in snapshot 20230412. The photo and video program updates translations and avoids creating duplicate camera devices, which was related to GStreamer emitting a call. GNOME’s widow manager Mutter 44 had some changes to make it more resilient and avoid a type of crash on gnome-shell. An update of the development library SDL2 2.26.5 fixed a crash on Linux Kernel if dbus can’t be initialized. It also added mapping for the DualSense Edge Wireless Controller on Linux. An update of apache2 2.4.57 and its subpackages fixed regressions introduced in the previous version. An updated version of yast2-storage-ng 4.6.5 adjusted detection of Dell BOSS devices. AV1 encoder rav1e 0.6.4+0 had the most changes of all the packages that arrived in the snapshot. The package enables AVX2 12-bit Inverse Transform x86 assembly as well as a new SSE4.1 HBD Inverse Transform x86 assembly.

An update of hxtools and Japanese Dictionary edict each had a matching 20230411 version, which also matched the 20230411 snapshot. While hxtools removed an option and changed an option behavior, edict had no changelog recorded. The lightweight directory access protocol 389-ds updated to a 2.3.2 version update. The package added tests for WebUI, fixed a memory leak and applied upstream fix for setuptools. An update of user-level packet capture package libpcap 1.10.4 fixed the name of the launch daemon service. An update of gnutls 3.8.0 took care of CVE-2023-0361. The vulnerability for the Transport Layer Security library could have allowed for a side-channel to be sufficient enough to recover the key encrypted RSA ciphertext. There was also an update of the keyring with https://gnutls.org/gnutls-release-keyring.gpg. Seven translation were updated with a newer version of yast2-trans and dracut removed a mkinitrd wrapper.

The 20230410 snapshot updated just two packages. GNOME personal photo manager application shotwell updated to version 0.31.90. The new version fixed issues with images that continuously shifted by a time zone offset and it fixed issues with unset exposure times. The photo manager also enabled face recognition. The other package to update was the video driver package xf86-video-savage; the 2.4.0 version had a small change that improves support for building with Xorg 1.19 and later.

KDE Frameworks 5.105.0 updated in snapshot 20230409. The 5.105.0 version that has addon libraries to Qt had some minor indentation fixes for the text editor KTextEditor. The Breeze Icons added some missing semi-transparency and a new breeze-dark representation for Redshift icons. Kirigami, which is used for computers, phones, TVs and other devices, fixed a header with invisible content that was taking up space and adjusted the default page categorized settings. An update of the audio- and video-handling package pipewire 0.3.68 adds a new Real-Time Transport Protocol session module and adds a new runtime debug property for streams and nodes to trigger a save of raw samples to a wav file. Music player amarok had a small adjustment and several translations were made with the manpages-l10n 4.18.0 update.

The compiler and toolchain package llvm16 had its first minor release of the version in snapshot 20230408. The 16.0.1 added a rebase patch and some bug fixes for the major release. An update of libreoffice 7.5.2.2 fixed seven bugs. One of those returned the heading style label that vanished in the Chinese, Japanese and Korean interfaces. Another heading navigator that caused Writer to crash was fixed. Other packages to update in the snapshot were ibus-table 1.17.0, yast2-packager 4.6.1 and yast2-ruby-bindings 4.6.2.

The snapshot from last Friday, 20230407, was small, but it updated systemd to version 253.3. Fixes that are not part of the stable release were merged for this snapshot release like a github workflow concerning release tags. The updated version also merged tag ‘v253.3’ into SUSE/v253 and had a continuous integration action related to mkosi dependencies. An update of libstorage-ng 4.5.95 disabled some NVMe detection and added a GitHub action using Fedora. GNU Compiler Collection 13 had some small enablements and added cross-bpf packages.

openSUSE.Asia Summit 2023: Call for Host

Photo by rania: https://raniaamina.id/opensuse-asia-summit-2019-we-re-asia/

Last offline opensuse Asia Summit is 2019 held at Information Technology Department, Faculty of Engineering, Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia, 3 years ago.

The openSUSE.Asia Summit is the largest annual openSUSE conference in Asia, attended by contributors and enthusiasts from all over Asia. The event focuses primarily on the openSUSE distribution, its applications for personal and enterprise use, and open source culture.

This year, we call for hosts to you who are interested in hosting the next openSUSE.Asia Summit.

Here is the date you need take notes:

• April. 30: Deadline of application
• May. 15: Announcement of the next host

How to Submit ?

Please send an email which contains an introduction of your team/community and proposal to both opensuse-summit@opensuse.org and opensuseasia-summit@googlegroups.com. Proposal should contain minimum of:

• Venue and capacity (we prefer using campus building, but any alternative can be discuss later)
• How to reach your city and venue
• Budget Estimation
  • Conference Venue
  • Tea break, Lunch, Dinner
  • Accommodation: location and price
• How to reach your community

Please help to spread the words and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Further information about openSUSE.Asia Summit is available at: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Asia_Summit

After implementing the feature that allows the users to comment on specific lines in the changes of a request, we also introduced the possibility to notify about them. However, there was a corner case which caused the notifications to fail, so our reference server did not send any web notifications or emails during the Easter holidays (from 6th to 11th April). Impact Our reference server did not send any notifications (web or email) for round...

As I have been enjoying this well-built, hand held computer / gaming console, I have had to do some problem solving to get things to work. I am building a resource that, I hope will be beneficial to more than just me. it is something I do refer back to from time to time but […]

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

Despite some people celebrating Easter, and a typical tradition is to hide stuff around, we don’t do that to you: we publish the 7 snapshots this week all at the same place – exactly where you know how to find them.

The 7 snapshots were numbered 0330…0405 and contained these changes:

• Mesa-demo 9.0.0
• Ruby 3.2.2
• Coreutils 9.2
• Linux kernel 6.2.9
• Samba 4.18.1
• libnvme 1.4 / nvme-cli 2.4
• Mozilla Firefox 111.0.1
• KDE Plasma 5.27.4
• Qt 6.5.0
• TeXLive 2023
• systemd-rpm-macros: Drop support for -n/-f options in %service_del_postun
• python-setuptools 67.6.0

Despite the long weekend ahead, I’ll try to keep OBS and openQA busy (assuming there are submit requests in the queue). In any case, the following things are already in the queue and are being worked on:

• Poppler 23.04.0
• Libvirt 9.2.0
• systemd 253.3
• LLVM 16.0.1
• Zypper 1.14.60 / libzypp 17.31.9
• openSSL 3.1
• gnutls 3.8.0

Snapshots of openSUSE Tumbleweed are continuously rolling forward.

Several medium sized snapshots this week provided an array of system component updates for rolling release users.

Snapshot 20230404 provided an update of systemd 253.2; this update moved the file system checker logic systemd-fsck items to a udev userspace sub-package. The spec file also added files coredump. Mozilla Firefox squashed 13 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. One of those was CVE-2023-28176 that has important severity and was described as a memory safety bug. The Web Service Discovery host daemon updated to version 0.7.1. This wsdd new version fixes regression due to changed Application Programming Interfaces in Python 3.10 and it also makes a point to force the use of this Python version for openSUSE Leap. The hardware identification and configuration data package hwdata updates Peripheral Component Interconnect, USB and vendor identities in its 0.369 version.The yast2-storage-ng 4.6.4 version exports thin Logical Volume Manage volumes when being cloned. A few more YaST packages had updates in the snapshot.

Snapshot 20230403 had just a few packages update. The aaa_base package added back a conditional glibc requirement and made it a fixed requirement. The libcap 2.68 update forced some internal functions to be hidden outside the library. The package also cleaned up and added support for documentation and manpages respectively. A major version update of systemd-rpm-macros 20 deprecated some support options and makes sure to restart services if /etc/sysconfig/service is not present.

The command line interface utility for NVMe storage was updated in snapshot 20230402. The nvme-cli 2.4 version added a smart cloud log plugin, and enabled a few options to include --tls_key and --tls. Another NVMe related package to update in the snapshot was libnvme 1.4, which added define for Direct Media Interface (DMI) sysinfo and filters out invalid UUIDs from DMI. CVE-2023-1393 was fixed with the xwayland 23.1.1 and xorg-x11-server 21.1.8; it could have lead to an escalation of local privileges. Brazilian Portuguese translations were made with the libstorage-ng 4.5.92 andyast2-storage-ng 4.6.3 updates.

The 20230401 snapshot starting off the month updated the Linux Kernel; kernel-source 6.2.9 disabled hibernation mode of Atheros’ 4th generation AR8031. Multiple fixes related to arm architectures were resolved. A few GNOME packages were updated in the snapshot. Both gnome-shell 44.0+42 and gnome-control-center 44.0+20 updated. The latter fixed a Network Time Protocol switch that was out of sync. GNOME’s wayland display server and window manager mutter 44.0+18 cleaned up the spec file and makes use of a more interoperable path for bash. Xen had an update to 4.17.0_06. There were multiple patches for the virtualization package related to GNU Compiler Collection 13 issues. Text editor vim 9.0.1392, xfce4-panel 4.18.3, coreutils 9.2 and several other packages updated in the snapshot.

Both snapshot 20230331 and 20230330 has a smaller amount of packages to update in the snapshot. Some of the key packages to update in it were ImageMagick 7.1.1.5, which eliminated a memory leak when writing the JPS image format, and ruby3.2 3.2.2, which took care of two CVEs. CVE-2023-28755 fixed the URI parser that mishandles invalid URLs and CVE-2023-28756 fixed the time parser that mishandled invalid strings. Graphics library gegl 0.4.44 fixed a crash unmasked by glib 2.75.3 and yast2 4.6.2 replaced modules calls to mkinitrd with dracut.

Last year, one of the returning questions I received was how to learn syslog-ng. My answer was that read the first few chapters of the documentation, read my blogs related to your use case, and then read a few relevant parts from the rest of the documentation. Our documentation is praised by users, but it is still a reference documentation. I was asked if a less detailed, more to the point, preferably video tutorial is available.

Your request was heard. In the past couple of months, I published a tutorial series in blog and video format, which brings you from basic logging concepts to using syslog-ng to collect, parse, enrich log messages and store them to Elasticsearch. Of course, these 5-10 minute videos are not enough to learn anything in depth, but they introduce you to all major syslog-ng functionalities.

Even if you are a seasoned syslog-ng user, there is a good chance that you will learn something new from this introductory tutorial series: the “if” statement, in-line configuration elements, the inlist() filter or the JSON template function, just to name a few.

If you have roughly 1.5 hours, then I recommend going through all the videos from the beginning to the end. You can reach the play list on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoBNbOHNb0i5Pags2JY6-6wH2noLaSiTb

If you would rather pick only a few topics from the tutorial series, here is a table of contents, with short summaries, pointers to the blog and video versions and the related parts from the documentation. Unfortunately, the documentation for the latest version is not available yet, pointers are included to the web version of the syslog-ng version 3.37 documentation.

Of course, once you read/watched my syslog-ng tutorials, reading the blogs and relevant parts of the documentation is still highly recommended.

Introduction

The introduction gives you an overview of the tutorial series and defines what syslog-ng is.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-1-introduction

• Video: https://youtu.be/CVxeYE5t9iE

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/3#TOPIC-1828912

Basic concepts

In this part, we cover some of the basic concepts behind syslog-ng. We talk about why central log collection is important, and then discuss the four major roles of syslog-ng: log collection, processing, filtering and finally storage. We conclude this part with a short introduction to various message formats.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-2-basic-concepts

• Video: https://youtu.be/unXX69XUtnE

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/4#TOPIC-1828914 (this tutorial covers content from many parts of the documentation without going into the details)

Syslog-ng editions, and where to get them from

In this part we cover the various syslog-ng editions (open source, commercial and appliance), and where to get them from. The focus of this tutorial series is the Open Source Edition (OSE), but to avoid confusion, I also briefly introduce the other two.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-3-syslog-ng-editions-and-where-to-get-them-from

• Video: https://youtu.be/_BXp4Y5PNKk

• The syslog-ng product summary page: https://www.syslog-ng.com/products/

Configuration and testing

This is the first practical part of the tutorial series. It introduces you to the syslog-ng configuration, shows you how to stop and start syslog-ng, and how to send a test message.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-4-configuration-and-testing

• Video: https://youtu.be/nd4rpeW2e_Y

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/13#TOPIC-1828950 (the documentation goes more into the details than what we cover in this tutorial)

Sources

In this part we learn about syslog-ng source definitions and how to check the syslog-ng version and its enabled features. The tutorial shows you the source syntax and lists some of the more popular source drivers. The documentation lists all the sources and all their parameters.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-5-sources

• Video: https://youtu.be/6P9PIrKYRKE

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/17#TOPIC-1828967

Destinations and log path

In this part we learn about syslog-ng destinations and the log path. At the end of the session, we will also perform a quick syntax check. As usual, the tutorial shows you the destination and log path syntax and lists some of the more popular destination drivers. The documentation lists all the destinations and all their parameters. The part about the log path also includes many concepts that we only talk about in later parts of the tutorial.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-6-destinations-and-log-path

• Video: https://youtu.be/mqIQqeSm4W4

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/32#TOPIC-1829027 and https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/59#TOPIC-1829137

Networking

In this part we learn about syslog-ng network logging, and why relays are important in a logging infrastructure. At the end of the session, we will send test messages to a syslog-ng network source.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-7-networking

• Video: https://youtu.be/Tp6bnUx7uH4

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/22#TOPIC-1828986

Macros and templates

In this part we learn about syslog-ng macros and templates. At the end of the session, we will know how to do a simple log rotation using macros.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-8-macros-and-templates

• Video: https://youtu.be/Dfktsh7C5fU

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/74#TOPIC-1829195

Filters

In this part we learn about syslog-ng filters. At the end of the session, we will see a more complex filter using an “if” statement and a template function.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-9-filters

• Video: https://youtu.be/2JZNuRbZc_8

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/65#TOPIC-1829159

Parsing

In this part we learn about message parsing using syslog-ng. We only scratch the surface, so reading the documentation is recommended, especially if you want to try PatternDB.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-10-parsing

• Video: https://youtu.be/xZwYqUrvdqw

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/82#TOPIC-1829229

Enriching log messages

In this part we learn about enriching log messages. Enriching in this case means that you can create additional name-value pairs based on message content. There are several ways how you can enrich log messages using syslog-ng.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-11-enriching-log-messages

• Video: https://youtu.be/tFHyvLgiSyI

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/100#TOPIC-1829301

Elasticsearch (and Opensearch, Zinc, Humio, etc.)

In this part we learn about how to send log messages to Elasticsearch. Note that while I keep referring to the driver as “Elasticsearch destination”, you can use it with several other software utilizing the Elasticsearch API, such as Opensearch, Zinc, Humio and probably more. This part shows you not only how to send log messages to Elasticsearch, but also combines many of the previously learned syslog-ng features into a single configuration.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-12-elasticsearch-and-opensearch-zinc-humio-etc

• Video: https://youtu.be/44rFCmSdb6M

• Documentation: https://www.syslog-ng.com/technical-documents/doc/syslog-ng-open-source-edition/3.37/administration-guide/35#TOPIC-1829041

Updating syslog-ng, syslog-ng 4

In this part we learn about updating syslog-ng, and some of the new features of syslog-ng 4.

• Blog: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-101-part-13-updating-syslog-ng-syslog-ng-4

• Video: https://youtu.be/205eMGS51XU

• Documentation for syslog-ng 4 is not yet available. You can find more information about what is new in the release notes at https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/releases/tag/syslog-ng-4.0.1 and about Python-related changes at https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/tree/master/modules/python-modules

We are back to working on the request page redesign. This time we have focused on improving comments on lines in the Changes tab, enhancing the requests with multiple actions and supporting requests that intend to delete projects/packages and to change the development package of a package. The request redesign is part of the beta program. We started the redesign of the request workflow in August 2022. Then, in September 2022, we focused on the...

I could have given it the title ‘Old Man’s Ranting,’ but even though it would have been more honest, it wouldn’t be very catchy.

Why I decided to write this up?

I knew something was in the air when my favorite fishmonger, an incredibly friendly and always super-helpful fellow, asked me what I thought about that Chat.GPT thingy. That doesn’t happen often. Like our neighbor, who was a fantastic craftsman, didn’t stop me in the ’90s to ask me what I thought about object-oriented programming. Neither did the ladies in our university’s canteen ask us how POSIX threads would impact software engineering. Sure, the significance of these examples is arguable. Still, my point is that a massive paradigm shift in our beloved profession rarely breaks through to the general public.

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

This week we are fully back on track with 7 published snapshots. One significant change to mention again is:

RPMs for i586 (intel 32bit systems) are no longer part of the regular Tumbleweed snapshots. This has been moved into a legacyx86 port in OBS and is published separately on download.opensuse.org. See also this announcement on the factory mailing list.

Other than that, the 7 snapshots published (0322, 0324…0329) contained these changes:

• GNOME 44.0 (Snapshot 0324)
• cURL 8.0.1
• Linux kernel 6.2.8
• LibreOffice 7.5.2.1
• Samba 4.18.0
• LLVM 16
• Mesa 23.0.1
• cmake 3.26.0 & 3.26.1

Staging projects keep on being filled, at the moment these changes are being tested:

• systemd-rpm-macros: Drop support for -n/-f options in %service_del_postun
• python-setuptools 67.6.0
• Linux kernel 6.2.9
• openSSL 3.1
• GNU coreutils 9.2
• TeXLive 2023