Alien Pastures

In order to match the recent Oracle security update for its Java platform, Java 7u17, the IcedTea developers have released version 2.3.8 of the IcedTea “build harness”, with which a fresh OpenJDK 7u17 can be built. This 17th update to Java7 addresses several vulnerabilities, the same as Oracle’s update.

It may be worth noting that security experts advise you to disable the Java plugin of your web browser unless you absolutely need it, and in such a case, set the Java Applet security to “high” so that you will be prompted when a Java applet attempts to load in your browser. See for instance the US-CERT statement about these vulnerabilities.

Nevertheless, I think that Java is an important piece of software which a lot of people use and need. After all, the whole world has been complaining for decennia about the vulnerabilities in Sendmail… And that is still widely used, because its vulnerability depends entirely upon the careless administrator (and I still prefer Sendmail over Postfix). Therefore it is only logical that you will get new packages from my repository for the latest OpenJDK.

Anyway.

Here is the list (taken from the mailing list this time because Andrew has not yet updated his blog) of the vulnerabilities which are being addressed by this update, and their CVE numbers:

• S8007014, CVE-2013-0809: Improve image handling
• S8007675, CVE-2013-1493: Improve color conversion

If you wait a little, you will be able to read all about it on Andrew John Hughes‘s blog. GNU/Andrew is the release manager for IcedTea.

Apart from these critical vulnerabilities (of which one was already actively exploited) there are some other bug fixes which are explicitly mentioned:

• PR1303: Correct #ifdef to #if
• PR1340: Simplify the rhino class rewriter to avoid use of concurrency
• Revert 7017193 and add the missing free call, until a better fix is ready.

Packages for OpenJDK 7u17, compiled on Slackware 13.37 (and useable on 13.37 as well as 14.0 and -current!), can be found at the usual locations. Here are a few:

• http://alien.slackbook.org/slackbuilds/openjdk/ , the primary location (bandwidth-capped)
• http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/openjdk/ , my own fast mirror

Further packages that are recommended/required:

• Optional: If you want a Java browser-plugin you must install icedtea-web (OpenJDK itself does not contain such a plugin).
• Required: The rhino package is a dependency of the openjdk/openjre package. It contains the JavaScript engine for OpenJDK.

Eric

 I have written down how I configured my Half-Life Dedicated Server (HLDS) in a new Slackware Documentation article. You can find the article here: http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:software:halflife_dedicated_server

The reason why I felt compelled to write this, was that the information you can find using Google, and the information on Valve’s own developer Wiki, is not 100% accurate or even outdated.

Writing an article also allowed me to add some tips, like starting the game server in “screen”, and explaining how you can auto-start the game server when your Slackware server boots, and keep the game files updated using a daily cron job.

I hope that the new SlackDocs article will trigger fellow Slackers to create their own HLDS server, and invite each other for some fragging. Hint: you can use the Slackware SteamCommunity group to schedule events like these.

Next on the TODO list is documenting how I created the “minimal Slackware” 32-bits virtual machine (less than 500 MB of Slackware installation footprint) which I use to run my own HLDS at home.

And after that, I still have to document how I setup a TeamSpeak server on the same virtual machine, which can be used for quality in-game voice chat. Lots left to do when I get bored again…

Cheers, Eric

LibreOffice 4.0.1

There is a new LibreOffice 4.0.1 release.This is a bugfix and stability improvement release, with the remark that “for enterprise adoptions, though, The Document Foundation suggests the more solid and stable LibreOffice 3.6.5, backed by certified level 3 support engineers“. I have LibreOffice 3.6.5 packages still in my repository – check out the 13.37 package directory.

Still, there are a few interesting things to mention about the 4.0.1 release:

• LibreOffice Impress Remote (an Android app) is now available on Google Play. Instructions on how to use this are available on the LibreOffice wiki.
• The Documentation team has released an electronic guide “Getting Started with LibreOffice 4.0″, which is available in PDF and ODF formats.

You can download the new packages from my package repository . The LibreOffice 4.0.1 packages have been built on Slackware 14.0 which makes them unfit for Slackware 13.37 (you can stick with LibreOffice 3.6.5 on that platform). Of course the new packages work with slackware-current!

• http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ (my own mirror)
• http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-libreoffice/
• http://alien.slackbook.org/slackbuilds/libreoffice/

Remember, you can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

KDE 4.10.1

Now that Slackware-current has an official set of KDE 4.10.1 packages, provided by Patrick Volkerding, I have rebuilt my own KDE packages (which I had built for slackware-current at first), but this second time I did it on Slackware 14.0. Users of this stable Slackware release can now enjoy the KDE upgrade as well.

I deleted the “current/4.10.1” package directory and added the rebuilt packages in “14.0/4.10.1“. Note that if you already had my KDE 4.10.0 packages installed on Slackware 14.0 and want to upgrade to 4.10.1, there are no new/updated dependencies. One notable change compared to the previous packages is the upgrade of Calligra to 2.6.1, just like Patrick did for Slackware-current.
The README has all the instructions you will need for an upgrade.

Enjoy! Eric

Here it is, KDE Software Compilation 4.10.1. A few weeks ago, KDE 4.10.0 was added to Slackware-current, along with all its updated dependencies. Essentially that was the same set of packages which I had made available on my ‘ktown‘ repository earlier, Pat Volkerding simply recompiled them using the provided KDE.SlackBuild framework.

Being the first improvement release in the 4.10 series, I expect that you will have a smooth transition and less bugs than with KDE 4.10.0. If you are interested in the bugs which have been fixed, you can query the KDE bugtracker for the KDE 4.10.1 fix set.

The addition of KDE 4.10.0 to the ‘-current’ branch made me reconsider my packaging strategy. I have been compiling KDE packages on Slackware 14.0 since its release, to achieve maximal coverage (the packages could be used on -current as well as on 14.0). I feared that this time, it would cause too much confusion if I built the new KDE 4.10.1 on Slackware 14.0, because the rather large set of “deps” packages would have to be installed on Slackware 14.0 but not on Slackware-current (since ‘-current’ is already uptodate).

So, I have decided to move on and start compiling KDE packages for Slackware-current exclusively. This has always been my “ktown” strategy prior to the release of Slackware 14.0. Those of you who are running Slackware 14.0 can either stick with my KDE 4.10.0 packages or compile the new KDE 4.10.1 yourself – that is a straight-forward task, it’s just time-consuming. If there is a gap in my evening hours sometime soon, I will try to compile KDE 4.10.1 on Slackware 14.0 myself and upload them.

How to upgrade to KDE 4.10.1?

It’s really easy this time because there are no updated dependencies, and no new or abandoned KDE packages (if you are running slackware-current of course). As usual you will find all the installation/upgrade instructions that you need in the accompanying README file. That README also contains basic information for KDE recompilation using the provided SlackBuild script.

You are strongly advised to read and follow these installation/upgrade instructions!

Download locations (using a mirror is preferred:

• http://alien.slackbook.org/ktown/ (the master repository), rsync URI: rsync://alien.slackbook.org/alien/ktown/
• http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/ (my fast mirror), rsync URI: rsync://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/alien-kde/
• http://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/ (willysr’s Indonesian mirror), rsync URI: rsync://repo.ukdw.ac.id/alien-kde/

Have fun! Eric

Valve published their monthly statistics on the Steam gaming platform.The February 2013 Hardware & Software survey results show that the adoption of Linux has doubled in the past month (click on the “OS Version” stats to see all Operating Systems, not just Windows).

While Ubuntu is obviously taking the largest part of the Linux pie, the total percentage of Linux Steam gamers is now somewhere between 2 and 3 (Slackware being hidden in the “Other” platforms). This means Linux as a gaming platform is about to overtake Apple’s OS (at least, for Steam). Who said that Linux users are freeloaders, not interested in anything that is not open source and gratis?

How are we doing as Slackware community? If you look at the Slackware Group page on the SteamCommunity site, you will see that we are about to pass the 100 members mark. I think that one month ago, that number was 13. So, the group is expanding fast, and it is good to see that Slackers are die-hard gamers too

I updated my steamclient package to the latest officially released version 1.0.0.35 yesterday.

It’s still a 32-bit Steam client of course, and all Steam games are 32-bit, so either you have to run 32-bit Slackware, or install my multilib package set on top of your 64-bit Slackware  (multilib installation instructions here). The good news is that you do not have to install anything else to use the Steam client and play games. All the dependencies that I used to add to the steamclient directory are no longer needed. The necessary libraries are now all part of the “steam-runtime” included with the steamclient package.

It is highly recommended to have a NVIDIA/ATI powered graphics card inside your computer and use the proprietary binary graphics drivers for these cards!

Only if you want to be able to watch the game demo-video and promotional content in the Steam Store (inside the Steam client), you need to have the flashplayer-plugin installed. For 64-bit multilib systems that means, grab the 32-bit flash player plugin package, and use convertpkg-compat32 (part of my compat32-tools) to convert that package into a “compat32″ package which can be used on a multilib Slackware64. Note that Adobe releases regular security updates for the Flashplayer, so be sure to check for updates to my package. You can keep an eye on the repository RSS feed if you don’t want to miss out.

Want to try? Install the steamclient, get Team Fortress 2 for free and start playing this adrenaline-powered multiplayer online game. And become the newest member of the Steam Slackware Group!

Have fun, Eric