Linuxgram reports that IBM to make avialable for general release its AIX 5L operating system May 4. “Blue has had an early issue out since, oh, maybe October, but the widgetry that went to limited non-production
distribution didn’t have all the bells and whistles that the general release is supposed to carry. It didn’t, for instance,
have the precedent-breaking Linux Affinity capability that gives AIX 5L its name. Well, at least the ‘L.’

AIX 5L … is
supposed to run Linux applications after they’re recompiled. “

From a Linuxgram story: “Start-up server house Egenera has appropriated the name PAN for the new kind of architecture it’s designed for its
so-called BladeFrame box. The fledgling says PAN means Processing Area Network architecture. The design is supposed to integrate the
processing, networking, management and high-availability functionality currently dispersed across server
hardware, operating systems and data networks and create a new approach to deploying and managing processing
capacity.”

From LWN.net: The HylaFax program hfaxd(8c) implements the server part of the
HylaFax package. It is started either by inetd(8) or runs in
standalone mode. hfaxd(8c) offers three different protocols to
process fax jobs.
When hfaxd(8c) tries to change to it’s queue directory and fails,
it prints an error message via syslog by directly passing user
supplied data as format string. As long as hfaxd(8c) is installed
setuid root, this behavior could be exploited to gain root access
locally.

ZDNet’s AnchorDesk reviews two recent ZD stories, one on Samba and the other on Gnome and KDE. Says the dudes at AnchorDesk: “Linux is shaping up, day by day, as the best hope yet in challenging Microsoft’s hegemony.” The growth of Linux also “underscores the growing effectiveness and validity of the open-source movement …”

From the people at O’Reilly: “Apache’s Jakarta-Tomcat server is an open source Java-based Web
Application container that was created to run Servlet and JavaServer
Page (JSP) web applications. In O’Reilly Network’s ‘Using Tomcat’
series, author James Goodwill previously has explained how to install
and configure Tomcat. His latest article provides in-depth information
about how to deploy it, and I thought you might be interested.” The story’s at OnJava.com.

Aaron Rogers, the webmaster for the TuxBox project, writes to tell us: “I just wanted to let you know that we launched a new website for the
TuxBox
Project: http://www.tuxboxproject.com/.”

Posted at LWN.net: Colin Phipps and Daniel Kobras discovered and fixed several serious
bugs in the saft daemon `sendfiled’ which caused it to drop privileges
incorrectly. Exploiting this a local user can easily make it execute
arbitrary code under root privileges.

InfoWorld has more information about Transmeta’s quarterly report.The chip-maker reported a first-quarter loss of $13.2 million, but beat Wall Street earnings estimates by a penny a share. If you want the news straight from Transmeta, here’s a press release on Businesswire.

LWN.net interviews Scott Draeker of Loki Entertainment Software, who’s said elsewhere that rumors of the company’s demise are greatly exaggerated. He repeated that to LWN: “We’re in this for the long haul. We
want to build a Linux gaming industry. That takes time and plenty of sweat and cash. And
no, we are not profitable. But we aren’t going anywhere either.”

From a commentary on LinuxPlanet: “When Nat Friedman of Ximian popped up in LinuxToday’s talkbacks recently, in fact, to briefly lay to rest the
sense that his recent retirement from the CEO business (he’s becoming the VP of Product Management at the
company) was some sort of coup, he addressed that very issue by saying Ximian won’t be catering to ‘the freshmeat
crowd.’

I don’t think that means ‘people who visit freshmeat.’ I think it means ravening software fanatics who expected Ximian
would have everything nicely packaged up for them the day after GNOME 1.4’s release.” (Freshmeat, the site, not the crowd, is a member of OSDN, as is NewsForge.)