Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Day: January 22, 2015

Java update: openjdk 7u75 available

January 22, 2015 / / 5 Comments

icedtea A new release of IcedTea  is available. Version 2.5.4 of the “Java build framework” will create OpenJDK 7 “Update 75 Build 13” (resulting in a Slackware package openjdk-7u75_b13).

The release announcement can be found on the distro-pkg-dev mailing list. It has a long long list of improvements and bugfixes – probably caused by the large hiatus between this and the previous release.

A list of  CVE’s is associated with the new release. Here is the skinny – all security fixes mentioned in the post:

  - S8046656: Update protocol support
  - S8047125, CVE-2015-0395: (ref) More phantom object references
  - S8047130: Fewer escapes from escape analysis
  - S8048035, CVE-2015-0400: Ensure proper proxy protocols
  - S8049253: Better GC validation
  - S8050807, CVE-2015-0383: Better performing performance data handling
  - S8054367, CVE-2015-0412: More references for endpoints
  - S8055304, CVE-2015-0407: More boxing for DirectoryComboBoxModel
  - S8055309, CVE-2015-0408: RMI needs better transportation considerations
  - S8055479: TLAB stability
  - S8055489, CVE-2014-6585: Better substitution formats
  - S8056264, CVE-2014-6587: Multicast support improvements
  - S8056276, CVE-2014-6591: Fontmanager feature improvements
  - S8057555, CVE-2014-6593: Less cryptic cipher suite management
  - S8058982, CVE-2014-6601: Better verification of an exceptional invokespecial
  - S8059485, CVE-2015-0410: Resolve parsing ambiguity
  - S8061210, CVE-2014-3566: Issues in TLS

 

The new Java is properly detected by Oracle’s Java version tester at http://java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp :

slackware_java_7u75

Note about usage:

Remember that I release packages for the JRE (runtime) and the JDK (development kit) simultaneously, but you only need to install one of the two. The JRE is sufficient if you only want to run Java programs (including Java web plugins). Only in case where you’d want to develop Java programs and need a Java compiler, you are in need of the JDK package. Get them here.

The Java package (openjre as well as openjdk) has one dependency: rhino provides JavaScript support for OpenJDK.

Optionally: If you want to use Java in a web browser (which supports NPAPI plugins – this excludes Chrome & Chromium but you’ll be OK with all Mozilla [-compatible] browsers) then you’ll have to install my icedtea-web package too. While Oracle’s JDK contains a browser plugin, that one is closed-source and therefore Icedtea offers an open source variant which does a decent job.

If you want to compile this OpenJDK package yourself, you need to install apache-ant additionally. Note that the previous requirements of xalan & xerces packages have been dropped; ant will provide all required build functionality on its own now.

Have fun! Eric

Updates for chromium, widevine, flash

January 22, 2015 / / 6 Comments

Chromium and Widevine:

chromium_iconChrome  Stable Channel saw version 40 of the browser being released yesterday (to be precise, version 40.0.2214.91). Apart from this being a major upgrade (39 to 40), lots of bugs were fixed, many of those being security fixes (62 in total). See the blog page for all details.I have not looked at the new version extensively but Chrome/Chromium 40 comes with an improved bookmarks manager which lets you search your bookmarks, not only by URL or title, but also by page content.

The new Chrome contains a new Flash Player too, more about that further down on this page.

And a new Chrome browser means, the Chromium source code for the same version is being made available. I built new packages for my chromium and chromium-widevine-plugin packages, both have version 40.0.2214.91.

Note that the Widevine plugin reports itself as version “1.4.6.738” in chrome://plugins – I decided to use the matching chromium version and not the actual widevine version when creating the plugin package. For newcomers: Widevine is a Content Decryption Module (CDM) used by Netflix to stream video to your computer in a Chromium browser window. With my chromium and chromium-widevine-plugin packages you no longer need Chrome, or Firefox with Pipelight, to watch Netflix.

Also note (to the purists among you): even though support for Widevine CDM plugin has been built into my chromium package, that package is still built from Open Source software only. As long as you do not install the chromium-widevine-plugin package, your system will not be tainted by closed-source code.

Flash browser plugins:

adobe_flash_8s600x600_2 I have packaged the new Flash from Adobe. a security fix, as plugins for chromium (PPAPI) and for mozilla-compatible browsers (NPAPI).

The new Slackware package for chromium-pepperflash-plugin has version 16.0.0.291. This version is newer than what the Adobe page lists as their most recent version for Chrome (16.0.0.287)… I guess Google did a surprise release of version 40 instead of another 39.x.x.x and Adobe did not notice. But it is the real thing.

The new Slackware package for flashplayer-plugin has version 11.2.202.438.

For my pipelight package, you can easily update the Windows plugins it installed for you earlier (including the Windows Flash player if you use that) by running (as root) the script:

# pipelight-plugin --update

Let me remind you again of some mirror sites across the globe:

Eric

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