Posted at LWN.net: kdesu created a world-readable temporary file to exchange authentication
information and delete it shortly after. This can be abused by a local
user to gain access to the X server and can result in a compromise of the
account kdesu accesses.

This update also fixes memory leaks in Konqueror (khtml) and KDebug, as
well as some minor bugs.

kdelibs 2.2alpha1 includes those fixes, as well; if you’re using the
experimental package from rawhide or ftp.kde.org, you don’t need to
downgrade to the errata package for security reasons.

From Enterprise Linux Today: “IBM has announced that it now supports Linux on its eServer iSeries models 270, 830, and 840. According to the
company, Linux now runs on all IBM platforms. The iSeries machines are designed for mid-size businesses.

A single iSeries server can support up to 31 separate Linux partitions. Each Linux partition can share processors,
disk, tape, LAN and other resources with other applications running on the iSeries server. Initially, Linux
distributions from Red Hat and SuSe will be deployed on the new iSeries models.”

Alan Cox announces the availability of Linux 2.4.4-ac1. It’s available at ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

From Cox: “This release is mostly meant for further eyes to check for merge
errors. It
boots but thats about all I’d guarantee. I plan to do just the fixups
for
2.4.4 bugs and then back out some of the existing changes that don’t
help
much – notably some of the VM tuning isnt gaining us anything but
multiple
bad implementations.”

2.4.4-ac1
o Merge with Linus 2.4.4
| This wasnt entirely trivial so this is the only
| stuff in this patch
| The following stuff has been switched to the Linus branch
| in the merge: uhci, dcache atomicity, raw I/O

2.4.3-ac14
o Merge read-only vxfs reading support (Christoph Hellwig)
o Fix missing return in broken_apm_power (Alex Riesen)
o Remove bogus rwsem hacks from usbdevice_fs.h (Alex Riesen)
o Fix umount/sync_inodes race (Al Viro)
o Make new xircom driver report when promisc used (Arjan van de Ven)
o Fix acenic PCI flag set up (Phil Copeland)
o Make nfs smart about passing max file sizes (Trond Myklebust)
o Add initrd support to User Mode Linux (Jeff Dike)
o Fix timer irq race in User Mode Linux (Jeff Dike)
o Fix UML for semaphore changes (Jeff Dike)
o Update thw W9966 parallel port camera driver (Jakob Kemi)
o Further dmfe SMP fixups (Tobias Ringstrom)
o Kernel manual pages in man9 (Tim Waugh)
o Work around BIOSes that implement E801 sizing
but don’t implement the CX/DX values part (Michael Miller)
o Fix atp driver build (Arjan van de Ven)
o Fix irda poll handling (Dag Brattli)
o Remove unused buggy pdc202xx code (Arjan van de Ven)
o Clean up iphase ATM (Arnaldo Carvalho
de Melo)
o Setup slave PDC20265 controller on fasttrak (Arjan van de Ven)
as normal IDE
o Add __init/__initdata to most net driver (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz)
version info
o SDDR09 config entry was missing (Phil Stracchino)
o Configure.help NFS updates (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz)
o Netfilter updates (Rusty Russell and co)
o Update 2.4 ipconfig to support dhcp (Eric Biederman)
o es1371 setup updates/error check/pci bits (Marcus Meissner)
o Fix buzzing ymfpci (Nick Brown)
o Update nm256 audio driver (Marcus Meissner)
o Blacklist updates (Arjan van de Ven)

From EET.com: “Providing some of the first third-party tool
support for the OpenVera hardware verification language, SynaptiCAD
Inc. has rolled out TestBencher Pro version 7.4, which generates
OpenVera testbenches from timing diagrams. The language-independent
tool also supports Verilog, VHDL and SystemC.

When Synopsys Inc. announced the open-source OpenVera language in
early April, SynaptiCAD was among some 20 third-party endorsers — and
one of two companies cited by Synopsys as having announced product
plans. The other is Denali Software, which supports OpenVera with its
Memory Modeler product.”

A column at BSDToday tries to answer this question: “OK, We finally got “bit” by the named crash bug… I looked thru the archives and never found a post on how to CORRECT the problem.”

From MSNBC: “Aimster, the software company that hopes to ride
Instant Messaging and Napster-like file-sharing to fame and
fortune, has embarked on a new strategy for success. Her name
is Aimee Deep. She’s 16, looks good in a swimsuit, and isn’t just
an Aimster user – she’s also the boss’s daughter.”

LWN.net has this announcement: “This is the first release of the ROCK Linux 1.4 stable tree …
ROCK Linux 1.4.0 is _intended_ for production usage, but given that
it’s a dot ohh!? (.0) release, you might proceed with care while we
hold tight to the brown paper bags.”

ZDNet has a short item on Sun Microsystems offering to clean up IBM’s Linux sidewalk ads in Chicago and San Francisco.

TechWeb has a short feature on Google, which had 10.9 million unique visitors in March, ranking it in the top 25 most visited Web sites. “Google is one of the biggest enterprises using the
increasingly popular server farm approach to scalability.
As the prices and size of Intel-architecture servers shrink,
enterprises scale by using large numbers of cheap,
low-powered servers.

Google, like many other companies using this approach,
runs Linux.”

It’s at Seul.org, and among the questions asked is this one: Does anyone know of a Linux app that can make use of the many encyclopedias available on CD-Rom?