2004.02_Projects-Free Software and Its Makers.pdf

COMMUNITY

Free Software Projects

Projects on the Move

Free software covers such a diverse

players should be able to control their

cars quite accurately. And if you want to

monitor your prowess on video, you can

record a race using Racer’s recording

facilities. By default, videos are placed in

temporary storage, but there is a menu

item that allows you to store them on

disk. To do so, simply press the [F2] key

while playing.

Admittedly, Racer does have one

or two weak points. The controls are

slightly frantic at high speeds. The crash

scenes are poor: If a player runs into a

wall, the car flips onto its roof, and dis-

appears from the screen, freezing the

game in the process. You need to restart

to get the game going again.

Having said that, Racer is a neat racing

simulator that has helped me while away

many a boring afternoon. The bugs are

rarely intrusive, and many hours of

untroubled gaming are guaranteed.

range of utilities, applications and

other assorted projects, that it can be

hard to find the perfect tool from all

that programming effort. As the

range increases so rapidly, you occa-

sionally need a little help to make

your choice. We pick the best of the

bunch for you.

BY MARTIN LOSCHWITZ

focusing on Racer, a racing game for

automobile fans, and then move on to

using Linux as a Wireless Access Point.

We continue with a look at OpenBSD

3.4; also Debian, teamwork and a

change in the Constitution.

The homepage provides a number of

binary downloads, although only SuSE

Linux 7.3 and nVidia cards are sup-

ported. In most cases, you will need to

compile the game from the sources. And

this is no trivial matter, as is evidenced

by the unofficial FAQ at [2] and the trou-

bleshooting page [3]. Racer requires a

video adaptor with hardware accele-

ration support.

After launching the program, players

can choose between timed laps in single-

player mode, and a networked team

game. In team mode, players can opt to

join an existing team, or start up their

own.

On of Racer’s special features is the

fact that it is extensible by adding

themes. The Racer Xtreme group’s web-

site at [4] provides a number of new

racing cars and tracks. After download-

ing a theme, players can select their

favorites using the Select Track and Select

Car menu items. The Ferrari Enzo and

the Opel/Vauxhall Speedster are just

some of the highlights. There are also

one or two Formula 1 tracks, such as

Monaco and Silverstone.

The game is mouse controlled. This is

unusual and takes some getting used to,

but after a short learning curve, most

Host AP

Wireless LAN is a convenient way of

linking up two computers. All you need

are two cards that can communicate in

ad hoc mode. But to link up multiple

computers to a WLAN, it is preferable to

use an access point (AP).

There are any number of access points

on the market at present, but most of

them have fixed antennas that cannot be

replaced if damaged. Some are plagued

by unstable firmware, one notable excep-

tion being Linksys, who run Linux on

their APs. Enter the Host AP driver for

Linux [5] that allows you to run a PC as

an access point. The only requirement is

a WLAN card with a Prism 2, Prism 2.5,

or Prism 3 chipset.

Host AP comprises multiple com-

ponents: the device drivers for PCMCIA

and PCI cards ( hostap_cs and hostap_

pci ) basically perform the same tasks as

the drivers in the PCMCIA CS [6] or

Linux WLAN NG packets [7], but they

have been optimized for Host AP. The

second component is the hostap driver.

The optional hostap _wep module pro-

vides WEP encryption for the system.

Racer

The racing simulation game, Racer [1], is

something special. There are two rea-

sons for this. For one thing, the game

runs both on Windows and on Linux.

For another, Racer is the first free simula-

tion of this type for Linux. Sadly, the

author has not adopted free licensing for

the application; although the source

code can be downloaded from the

author’s website, there is an explicit note

to the effect that Racer is not an Open

Source project. The wording of the

license is unclear; anyone interested in

modifying the source code would do well

to contact the author beforehand.

Martin Loschwitz is from a small Ger-

man town called Niederkrüchten and

a developer for Debian GNU/Linux.

Martin’s leisure time is mainly pre-

occupied with activities in the Debian

or GNU community.

February 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

An Up-to-date Overview of Free Software and its Makers

I n this month’s issue we begin by

Free Software Projects

COMMUNITY

After loading the modules, you

simply enable the hostap trans-

fer mode.

The Host AP driver works

with both the PCMCIA CS suite

and the internal kernel-based

PCMCIA structure. The latter

method has the advantage of

allowing you to patch Host AP

into the kernel; the patches for

the current version are available

in the CVS branch of the pro-

ject, along with the drivers.

Leitner had published [10].

Felix had tested OpenBSD,

FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux

with regard to the scalability of

typical server operations, such

as socket() , bind() , and fork() .

OpenBSD underperformed in

nearly every discipline.

OpenBSD developer, Ted

Unangst, attempted to explain

the poor results by emphasizing

the fact that the OpenBSD

developers are more interested

in the security of the system

than its scalability. Despite this,

several patches have been intro-

duced to the tree to remedy

performance deficits.

Shortly after the release of version 3.4,

a message from a French user caused a

stir. He stated that a bookshop where he

had been able to purchase OpenBSD 3.3,

had told him that they were not permit-

ted to sell version 3.4. The reason for

this is a new French law that outlaws the

selling of software without French docu-

mentation in France.

Despite OpenBSD’s extremely poor

benchmark performance, the system is

favored by many users and program-

mers, and it does provide protection for

security critical applications.

New OpenBSD Release

The latest version of the

OpenBSD operating system

(version 3.5) was published on

the FTP Servers at [9] on November 1

[8]. The OpenBSD project aims to pro-

vide as secure an operating system as

possible. The new version now uses the

ELF binary format by default on x86

machines. ELF thus replaces a.out ,

which is now considered obsolete and

troublesome.

This critical enhancement also brings

W^X functionality to x86 PCs (Writable

xor eXecute support), and should help

prevent buffer overflows at kernel level.

It ensures that memory addresses tagged

as writeable, cannot be executed at the

same time. This protects the system,

even if it is running programs that are

susceptible to buffer overflow attacks.

OpenBSD’s standard compiler also has

routines that check for typical program-

ming errors in memory handling

routines.

OpenBSD 3.4 can read NTFS

partitions, although it does not

currently support write access.

The developers face the same

problem as the Linux commu-

nity: Microsoft simply refuses to

release the specifications for the

NTFS file system. Although

write support is available for

Linux, it is still officially classi-

fied as DANGEROUS . In a worst

case scenario, a write operation

could actually destroy your

whole file system.

There have been a number of

enhancements that include sup-

port for privilege separation in

syslogd and the X server. The

GNU tools, such as diff , grep

Figure 1: The Ferrari Enzo is one of many racing cars available with

Racer, the first free racing simulation for Linux. You can add cars and

tracks to enhance the game. A large selection is available from [4]

and gzip , have been replaced by equi-

valent BSD tools, and there have been

major enhancements to the pf packet

filter. Growfs is a newcomer to OpenBSD

and allows users to expand hard disk par-

titions. Additionally, the developers have

put a lot of work into updating man-

pages.

There have also been notable

advances in hardware support. These

include ATA 100 support for Apple

Powerbooks, experimental support for

serial ATA, and the USB system has been

brought in line with NetBSD. In addition,

OpenBSD can now handle more SCSI

controllers and NICs.

A few weeks before OpenBSD 3.4 was

released, the project’s misc mailing list

was hit by a flamewar that arose con-

cerning a benchmark that Felix von

Debian Constitution Changed

For quite a few years now, Debian devel-

opers have continually requested that

the non-free part of Debian GNU/Linux

be removed from the distribution.

The Debian Social Contract [11]

has prevented this so far, as it

stipulates non-free as a manda-

tory component of the project.

Removing non-free would thus

mean changing the Social Con-

tract. And according to nu-

merous developers, the Debian

Constitution [12] did not allow

that, until recently.

Paragraph 4.1.5 of the Debian

Constitution states that “non-

technical” documentation can

be changed. The developers

were unable to agree on

whether the section concerning

the non-free branch in the

Social Contract was “technical”

or “non-technical”. This ambi-

guity has now been removed

Figure 3: OpenBSD developers released version 3.4 on November 1.

Unfortunately, they do not provide ISO image downloads. If you need

OpenBSD on CD, you will have to contact your local dealer

www.linux-magazine.com

February 2004

COMMUNITY

Free Software Projects

from the offending paragraph. The

Debian developers voted to re-phrase the

paragraph to allow modifications both to

the Social Contract and the Debian Free

Software Guidelines (DFSG [13]) with a

three-quarters majority. The whole

process of changing the Constitution

took only one month.

On September 30, the Project Secre-

tary, Manoj Srivastava, published three

new drafts of the paragraphs for review

in the debian-devel-announce mailing list

[14]. The first draft was by Srivastava

himself, and introduced a document

class called “Foundation Documents”

that included both the Social Contract

and the Constitution. Developers would

need a three-quarters majority to change

Foundation Documents.

The second draft was from Branden

Robinson. He proposed clarifying the

ambiguous definition of non-technical

documents in the Constitution, thus

allowing modification of the Social Con-

tract. The third draft was again from

Branden Robinson. It was the same as

Srivastava’s, except for the fact that he

proposed to shift only the Social Contract

to the Foundation Documents class, and

not the DFSG.

The developer community was asked

to vote between October 15 and 29. It

turned out that more than 75 percent of

all voters were in favor of the first draft.

Thus, the foundations have now been

laid for removing the non-free branch

from the project.

Many Debian developers only main-

tain one or two packages. Provided these

packages are small enough, this does not

mean too much effort on their parts.

Unfortunately, there some developers

who have to maintain whole program

suites, such as Gnome or KDE, which in

turn comprise some 25 or 30 different

packages, as Debian developers tend to

split larger suites up into as many small

packages as possible.

INFO

[1] Racer, race simulator website:

http://www.racer.nl/

[2] Unofficial Racer FAQ: http://www.

schuerkamp.de/zope/hoover/racing/

racer_linux_faq

[3] Racer Troubleshooting:

http://www.racer.nl/trouble.htm

[4] Cars and tracks for Racer:

http://www.racer-xtreme.com/

[5] Using Linux as a Wireless AP with Host

AP: http://hostap.epitest.fi/

[6] PCMCIA CS website:

http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/

[7] Linux WLAN NG website:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/

[8] Posting by Ted Unangst:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/

?l=openbsd-misc&m= 106755679117371

[9] OpenBSD 3.4:

ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.4/

[10] Felix von Leitners Benchmark:

http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/

[11] Debian Social Contract:

http://www.debian.org/social_contract

[12] Debian Project Constitution: http://www.

debian.org/devel/constitution

[13] Debian Free Software Guidelines:

http://www.debian.org/social_contract.

html#guidelines

[14] Posting by Manoj Srivastava: http://lists.

debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/

debian-devel-announce-200309/

msg00014.html

[15] Tips and suggestions:

projects@linux-magazine.com

Debian Teamwork

A single developer would be hard-

pressed to cope with the work involved;

just maintaining the “Bug Tracking Sys-

tem” entries would take up most of their

time. Also, developers are expected to

watch out for bugs on various hardware

architectures – after all, Debian does

support eleven hardware platforms. The

work involved in creating packages is

itself non-trivial. And a new release

means updating every single package.

Although Debian specific changes can

sometimes be gleaned from previous ver-

sions, this is typically impossible for

larger program packages. The solution is

simple: major program packages should

not be maintained by a single person,

but by a group of developers.

This approach was adopted by several

major Debian projects quite a while

back. When Ben Collins quit as the

maintainer of the GNU Glibc package,

his mantle was taken up by a developer

group. The GCC is maintained by the

Debian GCC Maintainer group, and now

the KDE and Gnome packages have also

been adopted by maintainer groups.

Chris Cheney, who had been responsible

for maintaining all

the KDE base pack-

ages thus far, passed

the maintainership to

the Debian QT/KDE

maintainer group.

The Debian Gnome

maintainer group has

taken over at least

some Gnome pack-

ages.

The Debian project

provides its devel-

oper groups with the

necessary infrastruc-

ture at alioth.debian.

org , the Debian equi-

valent of Sourceforge.

Groups can leverage

the CVS source code management, Sub-

version, and access control mechanisms,

mailing lists, and project homepage

facilities the site provides. Group main-

tainership of major program packages is

extremely important for the Debian pro-

ject as it is the only real solution to

resolving issues and managing bug

reports.

It is to be hoped that more maintainers

of major packages will agree to group

maintainership in future, if they note

that the workload is over their heads.

Figure 4: The Debian Social Contract is one of the Debian project’s most

important documents. Developers recently laid down the foundations for

modifying the Contract

That’s all folks…

… for this issue, but we do have one

request before we go: If you can recom-

mend a program that you would like to

see featured in Projects on the Move , why

not mail me with your suggestion [15]? I

look forward to your comments!

■

February 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

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