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Contents

Mandriva Community

2Introducing Mandriva One and

Mandriva Kiosk

5The launch of Mandriva Brasil

Mandriva Development

8 Cooker Weekly News

Mandriva In Depth

10 Mandriva package sourcesexplained

10 Mandriva mailing lists

11 What to choose - Official orCommunity?

12 Mandriva Kiosk: behind thescenes

Mandriva Linux Inside ISSUE #2Editing, design & layout

Writers

Thanks to

Editor emeritus

Adam Williamson

Adam WilliamsonFlorent Villard (Warly)Eric AugFabrice Facorat

Rolf PedersenCliff WadeSinnerPWalt PenningtonWolfgang BornathWanderlei Cavassin

Gal Duval

Mandriva Linux Inside is published bythe Community department of Mandriva.It is a community effort and weencourage submissions from theMandriva user community. Please sendletters, ideas and article submissions to

[email protected].

Mandriva Linux Inside is published underthe Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5

Typeset in Bitstream Charter, DejaVu Sansand DejaVu Sans Mono using Scribus.

Editorial

Welcome to the second issue of Mandriva LinuxInside, the Mandriva e-magazine! Also, hello fromme, your new editor. With this new issue we've triedto expand and improve the magazine - we hope youlike the new format.

You'll see that the magazine has been split intoseveral sections, each with its own colour to make iteasy to tell the sections apart. The MandrivaCommunity section will include big news aboutMandriva and news, articles and interviews from andabout the wide community of Mandriva users. TheMandriva Development section will include CookerWeekly News and any other articles to do with thedevelopment of Mandriva Linux. Finally, Mandriva In

Depth will be the place to find detailed, sometimestechnical articles which will help the interestedreader to master Mandriva in more depth.

In future issues I hope we'll be able to expand themagazine even more, and include even more inputfrom the Mandriva community and you, the reader!Please do send all your feedback, comments andsuggestions to us at [email protected].

Adam Williamson

andriva Linux Inside #2

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Introducing Mandriva Oneand Mandriva Kiosk

THE NEW WAY TO USE MANDRIVA LINUX

BY ADAM WILLIAMSON

Mandriva One is the firstcomplete, free Mandriva Linuxsystem available on a single CD.It can run in live CD mode or beinstalled to the hard disk,making it simple to try, installand share. This sophisticated

new installation system allowsyou to install the running system with no need to reboot to adedicated installer, and could beused to install all Mandrivasystems in the future. Membersof the Mandriva Club have anexclusive special edition of Oneavailable with additionalcommercial software and driversincluded.

When you first boot MandrivaOne, you will see a bootingprocess familiar to any user ofMandriva Linux 2006. Once thesystem has loaded, MandrivaOne will ask yousome simple

questions about your preferredlanguage,keyboard layoutand timezone, andthen you will see the KDE 3.4-based desktop and the Welcometo Mandriva screen. In thesystem tray you will see the KDEscreen resolution switching tool -handy if your monitor supports ahigher resolution than MandrivaOne uses as its universal, safedefault - the Mandriva networkmonitor and control applet, theKDE alarm applet and MandrivaOnline.In this mode, Mandriva One is afully functional live CD based onthe latest revision of MandrivaLinux 2006 which can be usedfor all the various purposes for

which Linux live CDs are oftenemployed: running yourfavourite operating system onanother computer, repairing amalfunctioning system, testing

Mandriva's hardwarecompatibility with a

new system, orshowing Mandrivaoff to a friend whodoes not yet use it.There is a carefully

chosen and streamlined range ofsoftware available, including theFirefox web browser, theOpenOffice.org office suite,Konqueror, the GIMP, Kmail,Kaffeine, AmaroK, kscd,Gnomemeeting, and in thespecial Mandriva Club edition,RealPlayer and Skype. On thedefault desktop, though, is anicon that allows you to installMandriva One to the system'shard disk. Double clicking thisicon brings up a simpleinstallation wizard in therunning live environment.

Mandriva One is a combined liveand install CD version of MandrivaLinux. Mandriva Kiosk is a newway to browse, investigate andinstall new software. Together,they make up a new way to install,expand and experience Mandriva.We take a look at each, and see

how they can work together.


Mandriva One is a

fully functionallive CD based onthe latest revisionof Mandriva Linux

Mandriva One features

. Full KDE desktop

. OpenOffice.org

. Firefox

. GIMP

. Kmail

. Four localised versionssupport over 70 languages

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Mandriva One (cont.)

First, it will let you choose whether to use existing freespace on the hard disk and letMandriva One automaticallychoose the partitioning schemeor bring up the partitioning

wizard to help you rearrange thedisk, free up space and createpartitions to install MandrivaOne. Once the partitioning iscomplete, the wizard will copyMandriva One onto the disk -including any documents youmay have created and savedduring the time Mandriva One

was running as a live CD. Oncecopying is complete, the wizard

will configure the bootloader -for most people, accepting thedefault options is all that'snecessary - and then instruct youto shut down and restart yourcomputer.

When you restart the system, you will once more see thefamiliar Mandriva bootloaderand startup sequence. Whenstartup is complete, a wizard will

allow you to configure yournetworking, set the root(administrator) password, and

create some regular users - justlike the standard Mandrivainstallation process. Finally, theMandriva First Time wizard willrun to allow you to enter yourMandriva account informationfor access to the Online, Cluband Expert services. If you have

an account with the appropriateaccess, the wizard willautomatically configure andenable Mandriva Online.However, due to a change in theserver layout, it will not correctlyconfigure the Club softwarerepositories; you can do thislater using the "Mirror finder"tool in the Mandriva Clubdownloads section, if you are aClub member. Finally, the loginscreen will display, and you canlog in to the system with yournewly created user.

Using Mandriva One

Now that Mandriva One isinstalled, it is just like aninstallation of Mandriva Linux2006 with the streamlinedpackage selection unique to

Mandriva One. You can use thesystem just like a regularMandriva Linux 2006 system,

and you can add any software

packages and software packagerepositories that are appropriateto Mandriva Linux 2006. Forexample, to add the 'main' and'contrib' Mandriva softwarerepositories which contain all theofficial Mandriva Linux 2006software packages, you can use

the software installerconfiguration tool. Simply go tothe star menu, then navigatethrough 'System', 'Configuration','Packaging' and click on SoftwareMedia Manager. Enter the rootpassword, click "Yes" and theSoftware Media Manager willopen. Here, you can add andremove software repositories

which the Mandriva softwarinstallation tools will use whenlooking for additional softwareto install. You can do thismanually, but it can alsoautomatically set up the officialMandriva software repositories.Click the "Add" button and select"Distribution sources". Theapplication will retrieve a list ofmirror sites from the Mandrivaservers, then give you a choice ofmirrors to use. Pick a site close

to where you live and click OK:the rest will be done for you, and

you will see the "Main" and"Contrib" repositories appear inthe list. Now you can exit theapplication and use the "Installsoftware" application from thesame menu to search, browseand install any software packageavailable in the official Mandrivapackage selection. You can usethis application to install any

additional software you needthat may have been left offMandriva One for reasons of size.

There's an even simpler way toadd and update software inMandriva One, though - the newMandriva service we'll becovering in the second part ofthis article...Mandriva Kiosk.

The Mandriva One installer, in progress

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Mandriva Kiosk

Mandriva Kiosk is a new servicefrom Mandriva which allows youto install software from a web-based catalog with a single click.This is a great boon forinexperienced Mandriva users as

well as the expert user in ahurry: it makes browsing andinstalling major applicationsmuch easier than with theexisting installation tools. Thefirst version of Mandriva Kiosk isknown as Mandriva Kiosk Lite,and will be available exclusivelyto Club members (at Standardlevel and above). In future, anexpanded version of Kiosk willbe available to all as asubscription service.

Using Mandriva Kiosk

Mandriva Kiosk is not yet opento the public. Mandriva Clubmembers at the Silver level andabove can join the beta test ofMandriva Kiosk - there is anarticle on the Mandriva Clubhome page explaining how to

join the test. When Kioskbecomes available, using it willbe easy. You first should makesure you have either MandrivaLinux 2006 or Mandriva One2006 installed and fully updated.Then you will visit the defaultMandriva home page, whereMandriva Kiosk Lite will bebased:

http://start.mandriva.com/

Both Firefox and Konquerorbrowsers are supported. Here

you can see the softwareavailable. The basic concept ofMandriva Kiosk is the 'bundle'. Abundle is a group of softwarepackages that together make upan application or a group ofapplications. Bundles availablein Mandriva Kiosk Lite are KDE

3.5.2, GNOME 2.12,OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 and theMozilla bundle, including Firefox1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5. Thebundle system makes installingcomplex package groups likethese simple. To install a bundle,

you first need to log in to the site

with your Mandriva Club emailaddress and password. Now eachbundle page will have an Installbutton below bundle description.When you click on this button,

you will be prompted for yourroot password, and then theinstallation will begin. Thesystem will download and installeach package in the bundle,keeping you informed ofprogress. When the InstallationComplete message appears,that's it: the bundle is installed!

Mandriva Kiosk andMandriva One

Mandriva Kiosk is the idealcompanion to Mandriva One.Mandriva One provides acomplete Mandriva distributionon a single CD with a simple and

fast installation process, andMandriva Kiosk is the easiest

way to bring it up to date with

the latest versions of Firefox,Thunderbird, OpenOffice.organd KDE, and to expand it: theKDE bundle adds moreapplications over those includedin Mandriva One, and theGNOME bundle adds a completeGNOME desktop. Also, when

you install a Mandriva Kiosbundle, the 'main' and 'contrib'package sources discussed in thefirst part of this article areautomatically configured, so assoon as you install a Kioskbundle you will find the fullrange of Mandriva Linux 2006packages available forinstallation via the graphicalsoftware installation tool, withno further configurationrequired.

Security

All the bundles provided bMandriva Kiosk come with fullsecurity support. If a securityissue affects a Mandriva Kioskbundle, updated packages willbe provided through the officialMandriva Update process (and,

of course, through MandrivaOnline if you are an Onlinesubscriber).

Mandriva Kiosk Lite in action

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The launch of Mandriva Brasil

HTTP://WWW.MANDRIVABRASIL.ORG - BRAZILIAN COMMUNITY SITE

How did you come to startusing Mandriva Linux?

Douglas Tabajara: I alreadyknew it when it was stillMandrake Linux, but I only usedit on a few desktops because Istill used Conectiva Linux more.

After the merge between thetwo, it became natural for me tomigrate to Mandriva - even if it

was more Mandrake thanConectiva, it served for me andhere I am! ;-)

Manoel Pinho: My first Linuxdistribution (after a quick use ofFreeBSD) was Slackware, at theend of 1996 and beginning of1997. After buying someCDROMs containing some Linuxdistributions, I discovered Red

Hat Linux and I found it muchmore friendly. I started to useConectiva Linux at version 1.0"Parolin", in October 1997.

About two and a half years ago Ihappened to become involved inthe project to migrate to freesoftware hundreds of computersat the university-level publicinstitution where I work as a

professor. The staff in thedepartment responsible did not

have enough knowledge for themigration, so I and some otherprofessors started to train thestaff of that department and toperform the first installations ofLinux and consultations toestablish open source policiesinternally and to develop newinternal systems. MandrakeLinux was the Linux distributionpreferred for desktop use bymost of the technicians we

trained because of the excellentautomatic hardware recognitionand the existence of graphicaltools for system configuration.

Although I still continued usingand preferring Conectiva Linux, I

wound up using Mandrake Linuxat work for standardization andbecause I liked several featuresof the distribution, especially thegreat amount of packages, muchbigger than the amount availablefor Conectiva Linux.

Where did the idea forMandriva Brasil come from?

DT: It appeared first fromManoel Pinho, but really it camebecause Brazilian users needinformation and help, but forseveral reasons (amongst whichthe main one is the lack of an

international credit card) manycannot join the Mandriva Club.These people felt like "orphans"of Mandriva, so Manoel and Iinitiated the community tosupport them. Originally the idea

was published in the Cooker-BRdevelopment mailing list forBrazilians.MP: The reasons were published(in Portuguese) in the Mandriva

Brasil debut news item. Tosummarize, I noticed the

following problems:

1: There was no community siteespecially for the MandrivaLinux distribution in Brazil or inthe Portuguese language, only inother languages such as Englishand Dutch. However, severalother Linux distributions hadcommunity sites for Brazilianusers.

2: Mandriva Club membershipcosts money, requires aninternational credit card forregistration (which excludeseven more people) and theinformation available in thePortuguese language is stillminimal. Many Brazilians also donot understand that muchinformation is accessible fromthe Club site even for non-members of the Mandriva Club,and there is no Portugueselanguage forum in the MandrivaClub.

Mandriva Brasil isthe new communitywebsite founded byManoel Pinho andDouglas Tabajara. Inan exclusiveinterview, we askedthem about the site,about Mandriva, andabout the Brazilian

user community.

Douglas Tabajara

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3: There was a general lack ofinformation in Brazil about theMandriva Linux distribution. Theformer users of Mandrake Linuxin Brazil also had neverorganized themselves incommunities of users and Ithought that it was necessary to

try to bring together the formerMandrake Linux users and theformer users of Conectiva Linux

who had decided to useMandriva Linux 2006 into asingle community of users. I alsothought that the new users ofMandriva Linux (who are alsonew to Linux in general) pre-installed on the computerssupplied by the "Computadorpara Todos" ("Computers for

All") governmental program would need much help andMandriva specific information inBrazilian Portuguese.

What are your favourite partsof Mandriva Brasil? What are

your aims for the site in thefuture?

DT: My preferred area is the

Forum since it is mostly therethat I can help those who havedifficulties or are just startingout in the Linux world. For thefuture I would like the site to beas big and well publicised asothers that exist in Brazil, likethe sites of the Debian orSlackware communities, with abig number of users and manymembers!

MP: The site is still beginningbut I believe that the mostimportant parts are the forumand the articles section. In mypersonal experience, beginningusers like more to use forumsthan discussion mailing lists andthey like very much completearticles about the topics mostimportant to them. Therefore westarted with a long and complete

article about package installationin Mandriva Linux. There wasmuch ignorance and doubtamong Brazilian users on the useof urpmi and the existing mediasfor Mandriva Linux.

How big and active is theMandriva community in Brazil?

MP: Sincerely I don't know. Evenparticipating in several forumsand mailing lists related toLinux, I never came acrossorganized communities ofMandrake Linux Brazilian users,

who could give an idea of thenumber of users. As a great partof the Mandrake Linux Brazilianusers were novice users, exactlybecause of the easiness ofinstallation and configuration of

the distribution - and these usersusually do not participateactively in discussion mailinglists on the internet due to lackof knowledge - it is difficult toknow the number of users. Thecommunity of Conectiva Linuxusers and former users is not

very big but several of them arevery active in the Brazilian Linux world. However, we still don't

know what percentage of themmigrated to Mandriva Linux2006.

How was the merger betweenConectiva and Mandrakesoftreceived by Brazilian users ofMandrakelinux and Conectiva?

MP: I saw heated discussions infavor of and against the merger.The pessimists saw the mergeras a foreign company trying todestroy the national market ofLinux distributions, eliminatingthe first and biggest nationalLinux commercial distributionand the possibility of Braziliansto work on the development ofthe distribution. Optimists, likeme, saw the merger as a way topreserve the excellent team that

worked on Conectiva due to thefinancial viability of the resultantcompany. Mandrakesoft also hadan incentive to invest in Brazil inthe increasing and active freesoftware market, with concretegovernmental initiatives aimedat promoting the practical use offree software, in comparison

with the inertia that exists inother more developed nations.

The Mandriva Brasil homepage

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Are there good links betweenthe Brazilian user communityand the Mandriva offices inBrazil and Paris?

DT: In general, yes, because wealways see the Mandriva staffparticipating in the mailing lists

and many of the staff atConectiva as was participated ina community that we had here. Ibelieve that with time they will

join even more with the usersnow that there is anothermeeting point in Mandriva Brasil!

How was Mandriva Linux 2006received by Brazilian users?How are Mandriva One andMandriva Kiosk being received?

MP: We published the notice onthe Mandriva One launch and Ialso already downloaded andquickly tested it with success. Weintend to print a review of theproduct soon. We still don't havediscussions about it on the site, Ithink because few Brazilians yethave access to the file as it isonly available via download, for

Mandriva Club members. LiveCDs are still the easiest way tointroduce people to Linux andmany Brazilian users know Linuxthrough Kurumin, a local distrobased on Knoppix. It would bean excellent idea for Mandriva todistribute Mandriva One CDs toschools and as a magazine insert,

and to mail out CDs by request.On Mandriva Kiosk, I only know

what was said in the MandrivaClub news section but I think theidea is very good and it willincrease the advantages of beinga Mandriva Club member.

What are your most favouriteand least favourite thingsabout Mandriva Linux?

DT: Apart from the stability, Imost like the appearance! I alsofind the installer very easy andintuitive. What I don't like is thatpackage selection duringinstallation is not so cohesive asit was in Conectiva Linux. In theinstaller the same packagesappear in many placesunnecessarily. Another thing isthat Mandriva Control Center'stext interface is not completelyequivalent to its graphicalinterface, unlike SUSE's Yast.This would be very good as mostadministrators access theirservers using SSH.

MP: What I like most in

Mandriva Linux is the installer,the Mandriva Control Center andhow easy it is to have a desktop

with MP3 support, video,proprietary drivers, etc. What Ilike least is the included GNOME(even though I personally useand prefer KDE), the standardthemes, wallpapers and screensavers (they were improved inMandriva 2006 but some ofthem still look like childish

pictures and Conectiva Linux was excellent) and the excessivenumber of daemons enabled bydefault, which increases RAMconsumption.

What do you hope to see in thefuture from Mandriva?

DT: I hope for more integrationof the technologies and

philosophy of Conectiva becausesome very good ideas have not

yet been included in MandrivaLinux and this would help thedistribution become even better.

MP: I hope there will be more ofthe good ideas and technologies

created by Conectiva andcompeting distributions, fewerbugs at the launch of a new

version, more advantages andbenefits for Mandriva Clubsubscription (especially forBrazilians) and a bigger numberof public FTP/HTTP mirrors inBrazil (ideally in the mainBrazilian universities, whichhave very fast internet links, asalready happens with otherLinux distributions). In the next

year it will be vital that the X.orgincluded with the distributionhas support for at least one ofthe desktop OpenGL accelerationtechnologies (AIGLX and/or

XGL), because of Windows Vistalaunching with similar features.

And finally, if Brazil and Francemeet in the final of the World

Cup, who will win?

DT: In 1998 France played athome and this meant they had anatural advantage, but as this

year will be in neutral territorythe chances for Brazil are veryhigh! And, moreover, we havethe best players in the world!Good luck! You will need it!

MP: Brazil, obviously...we have

the best soccer in the world andwe will not let France win easilylike in 1998.

Thanks to Douglas and

Manoel. This interview was

edited for length. You can see

the complete text at:

http://ipoo.org/9dmnManoel Pinho

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Cooker Weekly News MARCH - APRIL 2006The latest news from the Mandriva development distribution,where we work on the next release of Mandriva Linux.

BY WARLY AND FABRICE FACORAT

Ideas for Mandriva Linux 2007

Vincent Panel made a request for contributors and developers to commenton the list of suggestions for Mandriva Linux 2007.

http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/cooker/2006-03/msg01518.php

Net_applet for Mandriva Linux 2007

Fabrice Facorat made some proposals for improvements to net_applet, thenetwork monitoring panel applet.


x86_64 build machine problems

Emmanuel Andry noted that the system for building x86_64 Cookerpackages was undergoing problems at the start of March. Warlyacknowledged the problems and promised they would be fixed soon.


Suggestion for improving use of mirrors

Oden Eriksson suggested the distribution could use the same technologythat clamav uses to determine the closest mirror (geoip and some ISC BINDhacks). This could provide a simpler way for the newbie to add mirrors, andimprove functionality by avoiding hardcoding the mirrors for urpmi orOnline to use. Olivier Thauvin reminded us that the mirror-list should beproperly managed by Mandriva, as is done for Easy URPMI by itsmaintainers.


The Blogspot spammer

Gertz Raphal prompted a discussion about the spammer who subscribesblogspot.com addresses to Mandriva mailing lists. People contributing to themailing list are not happy that e-mail addresses are published on the web tobe harvested by spambots. Nicolas Chipaux stated that the blogger.com andblogspot.com domains are blocked by the mailing list server.


What's Cooker?

Cooker is the unstable

development version

of Mandriva Linux.

Cooker is a complete

Mandriva distribution

that's been in progress

ever since the firstrelease. It's found in

the /devel/cooker tree

on the Mandriva mirror

sites. When a package

is updated, the new

package is sent to

Cooker. When it's time

to release a new

Mandriva, Cooker goes

into a period of bug

fixing, and when all

the packages are

working well enough

for a stable release, a

'frozen' copy of Cooker

is made to form the

basis for all editions of

the new release. A

group of testers helps

us to improve

Mandriva by runningCooker and reporting

bugs they encounter,

but by its nature,

Cooker is volatile and

unstable. You should

not run it on your main

computer, or use its

packages with stable

versions of Mandriva.

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Questions and answers about %mkrel

Oliver Lahaye asked for a guide to using the %mkrel macro (which automatically sets the release tag for thepackage). Buchan Milne and Rafael Garcia-Suarez provided some help and information on future plans.


http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/DistroSpecificReleaseTag

Documentation for mkcd

Frederik Himpe asked for some help with mkcd, the Mandriva CD/DVD image generation tool. AntoineGinies provided a link to some documentation he wrote.


Newly introduced

The new major versions of GNOME (2.14.1) and KDE (3.5.2) have been introduced byFrederic Crozat andLaurent Montel, and Mono has been moved from contrib to main. The new maintainer Gustavo PichorimBoiko has provided experimental packages for X.org 7.0 for testing prior to their introduction to Cooker.





Power management support

Austin Acton started a thread about power management and laptop support in Mandriva. This developedinto a summary of the present situation and what could be done to improve it, thanks notably to Olivier Blin.


SSH attacks and the Interactive Firewall

Z's SSH server underwent a brute force attack, and he wondered whether the Interactive Firewall wasintended to detect this kind of threat. Olivier Blin confirmed that this was an intended feature and promisedto work on implementing it.


Versioning packages based on Subversion snapshots

Zeb asked if there was a convention for versioning packages based on code from SVN checkouts, like the'checkout date' convention for CVS-based packages. Several proposals were made but no consensus reached.


Development wiki reorganisation

Guillaume Rousse suggested a reorganisation of the development wiki. The discussion also prompted aproposal to switch from TWiki to MediaWiki.


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MANDRIVA IN DEPTH

There are several official sources of Mandrivapackages - commonly referred to as "urpmi media" -that you might come across. In case you're not sure

what they all are, here's an explanation.

main is the repository for packages that areofficially supported by Mandriva. All the corecomponents of the distribution are in main: theMandriva tools, the Linux kernel and so forth.

contrib contains packages provided by Mandriva,and built on the Mandriva building machine toguarantee that they match the version of Mandriva

you are running, but which are not officiallysupported by Mandriva. This means that packages

in contrib do not get official security updates, evenif a vulnerability is discovered in them. You shouldnot use contrib in security critical situations.

jpackage contains open source software which iswritten in the Java language and requires the non-free Sun Java to run. Jpackage is not run by

Mandriva, but we include the jpackage repositoryon our official mirror sites.

updates contains the official updates for thesoftware in main, as provided by the Mandrivasecurity team.

In addition to these media which are on the publicmirrors and available to anyone, there are someavailable to Mandriva Club members only.

Club open source applications (youmay see this referred to as "club.club") containsupdated versions of major open source applicationsexclusively available to Club members. For instance,for Mandriva Linux 2006, this media currentlycontains GNOME 2.12, Mozilla Firefox 1.5, andOpenOffice.org 2.0.2.

Club proprietary applications (you maysee this referred to as "club.commercial") containsall the non-free software that we make available toClub members and through the commercial editionsof Mandriva.

Mandriva mailing lists

Mailing lists are often used by open source projectsfor organisation, discussion and support, andMandriva is no different. There are several mailinglists available for Mandriva users.

Newbie and Expert are the two lists where youcan get support and assistance from other Mandrivausers and some Mandriva staff. To sign up, visit:

For all the other lists, to subscribe, email

[email protected] with the email subjectset to subscribe name_of_list - for example,subscribe security-announce.

security-announce is the mailing list wherenew security advisories are released. Subscribing

will keep you up to date on all the security updatesreleased for Mandriva products.

security-discuss is the list where securityupdates or security in general can be discussed.

cooker is the main mailing list for discussion ofCooker, the Mandriva Linux developmentdistribution. There are some separate lists forspecific areas of development: cooker-amd64,cooker-server, cooker-i18n and cooker-urpm.

changelog is the list where announcements aresent for new packages in Cooker and Communityreleases. announcements include the package name,description and changelog.

kernel-discuss is the list for the discussion ofMandriva kernel development, both in Cooker andin stable releases.

mdv-distro-tools is the list for discussing various auxiliary tools used to aid Mandrivdevelopment, including the build system, uploadmechanism, the CD creation tools (mkcd anddraklive), the mirroring process, and the variousdevelopment related bots and checker scripts.

Mandriva package sourcesexplained

http://ipoo.org/39on

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MANDRIVA PACKAGE TREES EXPLAINED

What to choose: Official orCommunity?

Most readers will know that togain access to the widest possiblerange of packages for Mandriva

Linux, you can use an Internetserver as a package source (an'urpmi media' in Mandriva

jargon). There are several websites and applications whichhelp you to set up urpmi media.In some of them, you may see achoice between "Official" and"Community" media.

The choice reflects the fact that,

on the Mandriva mirror sites,there are actually two different versions of each distributionsince Mandriva Linux 10.0. Onthe Mandriva mirrors, beneaththe top level MandrivaLinuxdirectory, there are directoriesnamed "official" and "devel".Each of these contains a tree foreach Mandriva release since10.0. The tree for eachdistribution in the /devel

directory is the "Community" version of that distribution. Thetree in the /official directory isthe "Official" version. The"Official" version of eachdistribution is the reference

version. It is the exact state ofthe distribution at the momentthe official discs for that version

were made. At that point, theOfficial version is frozen, and it

never changes. You will noticethe /official directory alsocontains a /updates sub-directory. This is where theofficial updates for eachdistribution, produced andsigned by the security team, arestored. When you run MandrivaUpdate or Mandriva Online, theylook for updates in this area. If

you run a copy of Mandriva

Linux 2006 installed from theofficial CDs and you keep it up todate by running MandrivaUpdate and Mandriva Online,

you can say you run the "Official"version of Mandriva Linux 2006.

Unlike the "Official" tree, the"Community" tree for each

version of Mandriva is notfrozen. It starts off the same as

the Official tree, but from thatpoint on, updated packages canbe added to it. All the updatesproduced by the security teamare also copied into the"Community" tree. However, the"Community" tree also gets otherupdates - small, non-securityrelated updates and fixes whichdid not need to be issued as full"official" updates. "Community"also includes updates for some

packages from the "contrib"directory, which containspackages which the securityteam does not officially support.So the "Community" tree is amore dynamic, up-to-date treethan "Official". The "Community"tree is used as the base forupdated versions of eachMandriva Linux release. Forinstance, the special winter

edition of Mandriva Linux 2006for the Mandriva Club was basedon the Mandriva Linux 2006"Community" tree of December2005, and Mandriva Linux One2006 is based on the"Community" tree of March2006. This means that if youinstall one of these updated

versions of Mandriva Linux, or if you install from the official CDs

then use the "Community" treeas a source of packages, you arerunning the "Community"

version of Mandriva Linux.

"Community" is a good way toaccess updates and fixes for yourMandriva Linux system whichmay not be available yet throughthe official security updatesmechanism. You can use the

community Easy URPMI websiteto help set up urpmi media. Justvisit

http://easyurpmi.zarb.org

and set your Mandriva version toCommunity, then follow theinstructions and run thecommands it generates. Once

you have your media set upthere's two ways you can quickly

update any packages you haveinstalled which have updates in"Community": using thegraphical package installer -rpmdrake - you can use the "Allpackages, by update availability"search filter, or using thecommand line installer - urpmi -

you can use this command:

urpmi --auto-select

Confused by the twoMandriva Linuxtrees? This articleexplains them both.

BY ADAM WILLIAMSON

8/6/2019 Inside 002

12/12

HOW MANDRIVA KIOSK REALLY WORKS

Mandriva Kiosk:behind the scenes

BY ADAM WILLIAMSON

We introduced you to MandrivaKiosk on page 5 of this issue.However, there's more to thesystem than what you see on thesurface. To use Kiosk, all youneed to know is how to visit a

web page and click the installbutton, but for those with an

interest, there's much moregoing on behind the scenes!

When you click on the 'install'button to install a MandrivaKiosk bundle, a special bundlefile is sent to the browser. In afully updated Mandriva Linux2006 or Mandriva One 2006, theKonqueror and Firefox browsersunderstand that this file formatshould be opened by the

'mdkupdate' command (thecommand line front end toMandriva Update and MandrivaOnline, which is used by variousMandriva utilities), and so this is

what is recommended to theuser. mdkupdate itself then readsthe bundle file and drives therest of the bundle installationprocess.

The first thing it does is to checkfor the presence of a workingMandriva Online account for therunning system. Mandriva Kioskis a separate service fromMandriva Online, but both arebased on the same platform anduse the same account system forconvenience. If no account isfound, a new one isautomatically registered with the

login details that were providedby the user on logging in to theMandriva Kiosk system. If theuser has the correct privileges touse Mandriva Online, a fullaccount is created; otherwise, alimited account is created which

will allow Mandriva Kiosk to

work, but will not allow accessto the features of MandrivaOnline.

Once an Online account is found,or created, the bundle file causesmdkupdate to set up some newurpmi media (softwarerepositories) via theurpmi.addmedia command. Theactual packages that make upeach Mandriva Kiosk bundle are

collected together in a dedicatedurpmi media hosted on aMandriva server which requiresauthentication to access. Theappropriate media for therequested bundle is added, withthe authentication generatedfrom the user's Mandriva Kioskaccount. In addition to this,media are added for 'main','contrib' and 'updates' - the three

official repositories (hosted onthe official public mirror sites) which contain all the opensource packages that make upthe bulk of Mandriva Linux itself.These media are added to ensurethat all possible dependencies forthe packages in the bundle areavailable.

Finally, mdkupdate calls gurpmi -

the graphical counterpart tourpmi - to actually install thebundle. The exact commandissued tells gurpmi to consideronly the main, contrib, updatesand bundle media. It theninstructs it to install the bundlemetapackage, which is a single

package present in each bundlemedia which contains no actualfiles, but depends on all theother packages that make up thebundle, so that installing this onepackage causes all the otherpackages to be installed. Itfurther instructs it to update anypackages that are currentlyinstalled of which newer versionsexist in the bundle media: this isto cover situations in which a

package required by the bundlemetapackage is installed,satisfying the dependency, butthe installed version is older thanan updated version available inthe bundle. When you seeMandriva Kiosk installing thehundreds of updated packagesthat make up the KDE orGNOME bundles, it is thiscommand that is running.

Most of the commands andprocesses that are run as part ofa typical Mandriva Kiosk sessionlog to the file /var/log/messagesso if you want to see all theseindividual stages at work, youcan trace them by readingthrough this log file. It will alsotell you exactly which packageshave been installed and removed.

There's more to this than meets the eye

Documents

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