Like the rest of Debian, the derivatives census needs some QA. This page aims to document common issues and provide templates to be sent when these issues are detected. More specific issues may be found by searching the list archives for mails with "Debian derivatives census" in the subject.

Issues

General ping

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: ping

Hi all,

If you are receiving this email you either added your derivative
distribution to the census or volunteered to maintain its census page.

The first thing I would like to bring up is contact information. It is
preferred that you add the "Debian derivatives census maintainer:" line
and set it to the name, email address and OFTC IRC nick of a human being
rather than an email list or role alias. If the maintainer is an IRC
user it is recommended that they join the #debian-derivatives channel on
OFTC so Debian folks can easily ask them questions. You as maintainer
will hopefully be prepared to answer any questions that result from my
article. In addition you should subscribe to your census page and the
CensusTemplate, either via Moin's email notification feature or via the
RecentChanges RSS feed so that you are notified of any changes to your
distributions census page or any changes that are recommended for it.

Many of the pages are incomplete. Each page should have the following at
minimum unless there is a good reason to remove them. It is strongly
recommended to fill out as much of the CensusTemplate as exists.

      * an introductory blurb about the goals of your Debian derivative
      * a logo so your distro is easily recognisable on the page
      * a website so people can read more info if they want
      * a email contactable human maintainer so Debian folks can ask you
        questions about your distribution.
      * apt repositories (both deb and deb-src) so Debian folks can take
        a look at your work. Preferably with architecture information.

As you may or may not be aware we have drafted some guidelines for
Debian derivatives on our wiki. If you have any comments or suggestions
about the guidelines we suggest that you bring them up on the
debian-derivatives mailing list.

http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Guidelines

Activity ping

This mail is to be sent periodically to distros that are inactive or marked as active but with a date from ages ago.

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: activity ping

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

According to your census entry, your distribution is inactive or was last
active quite a while ago. If your distribution is now active, please mark
it as active and add today as the date your distribution was last active.

You may also want to use this opportunity to share your thoughts with
us; perhaps your plans for the coming year, plans for integrating your
work into Debian or issues you may have come across in collaborating
with Debian.

It would be great if you could bring your census page into sync with
the template[2] and please fill in as many of the fields as you have
data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

No source packages

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: potentially violating the GPL or LGPL due to lack of source code

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Please ensure that:

     1. You are not violating the GNU GPL or LGPL licences. This may be
        the case since you do not appear to be shipping the source code
        for GNU GPL or LGPL software but are definitely shipping
        binaries for such software.
     2. You are shipping Debian source packages alongside your Debian
        binary packages.
     3. Your Debian census entry has working deb-src lines in your apt
        sources.list snippet for each deb line.

In addition please make sure there is a contact point listed in the
maintainer field of your census page.

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields
from the template[2] as you have data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

General sources.list issues

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: apt sources.list snippet

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Please ensure that:

     1. Your entry contains a sources.list like the one shown in the
        census template[2].
     2. Your entry's sources.list contains deb-src lines for each deb
        line.
     3. Your entry's sources.list works when running apt-get update.
     4. Your APT repositories have SHA-1 hashes for every source and
        binary package so we can compare with old Debian packages.
     5. If you are using SHA-1 hashes in your APT repositories,
        please ensure that there is such a hash for every single
        file, especially for all the source package files.
     6. SHA-256 hashes are not and will not be used by the census, but
        Debian strongly encourages the use of hashes stronger than SHA-1.

In addition please make sure there is a contact point listed in the
maintainer field of your census page.

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields as
you have data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

Errors from apt-get update

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: errors from apt sources.list

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Please ensure that your entry's sources.list does not generate any
errors when someone runs apt-get/aptitude update on it. You can test it
locally using these commands and watching for any errors or warnings.
If you get any GPG warnings, that is fine since our scripts explicitly
ignore any such warnings since it is a very long-term project to establish
trust paths between Debian and our derivatives.

mkdir test
cd test
mkdir partial
edit sources.list # Paste your sources.list here
aptitude update -q=0 -y \
        -o "Dir::Etc::SourceList=`pwd`/sources.list" \
        -o "Dir::Etc::SourceParts=`pwd`" \
        -o "Dir::State::Lists=`pwd`" \
        -o "Debug::NoLocking=1" -o "Debug::pkgDPkgPM=1"

You can find an example of a correct sources.list file in the census
template wiki page[2].

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields as
you have data for.
Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

Modifying binary packages?

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: modifying binary packages?

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Your census page indicates that your distribution takes binary packages
from Debian and modifies them instead of just modifying the Debian
source package and rebuilding it to produce new binary packages. I
wonder if that is actually the case or if you actually practice that
strange way of doing things?

In addition please make sure there is a contact point listed in the
maintainer field of your census page.

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields
from the template[2] as you have data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

Blogs

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: blogs

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Please ensure that:

     1. If your derivative has a blog or news page, it is listed in your
        census entry.
     2. If your derivative's developers have blogs, you have a feed
        aggregator for them or have listed the blogs separately in your
        census entry.
     3. All of the blog URLs you add have RSS/Atom feeds that are
        discoverable using the RSS/Atom autodiscovery mechanisms[5].
        Almost every wiki, blog and CMS out there supports feeds and
        feed autodiscovery mechanisms so you might already have this,
        please double check though.
     4. Your blogs have some content and that you intend to add more.
     5. If possible, please list the English versions of your blogs.
     6. Your logo image is available over plain HTTP and is not too big.

If your derivative doesn't have a blog you might consider starting one
to help promote your derivative, announce new releases and inform users
about any important changes made during development.

Any blogs that have discoverable RSS feeds will be added to the new
Planet Debian derivatives[6].

In addition please make sure there is a contact point listed in the
maintainer field of your census page.

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields
from the template[2] as you have data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives
     5. http://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
     6. http://planet.debian.org/deriv/

Description issues

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: description issues

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Please ensure that:

     1. Your entry has a description of your Debian derivative
     2. Your derivative's description is accurate and useful to members
        and users of Debian members. Don't use your standard marketing
        language, describe the value that you add to Debian.

In addition please make sure there is a contact point listed in the
maintainer field of your census page.

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields as
you have data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

Logo issues

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: logo broken or missing

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Please ensure that:

     1. Your entry has a logo
     2. The logo URL is downloadable
     3. The logo URL returns an image, not HTML or anything else

In addition please make sure there is a contact point listed in the
maintainer field of your census page.

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields as
you have data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

dpkg vendor issues

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: dpkg vendor issues

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that your entry has an issue.

Please ensure that:

     1. Your entry has a dpkg vendor field
     2. The dpkg vendor field is the output of dpkg --query Vendor
     3. The dpkg vendor field is not empty and not Debian

The dpkg vendor field is derived from the default dpkg origins file.
The default dpkg origins file should be a symlink to your origins file.
You can either patch base-files to add these files or add them separately.

/etc/dpkg/origins/default -> example
/etc/dpkg/origins/example

Vendor: Example
Vendor-URL: http://www.example.org/
Bugs: debbugs://bugs.example.org
Parent: Debian

When you are patching base-files, please leave the dpkg origins file for
Debian in place. Your dpkg origins file should contain "Parent: Debian",
not have Parent be missing, empty or have some other value. The default
origin in your distribution should be a symlink to your origins file,
change VENDORFILE in base-files debian/rules to ensure that. Please
ensure that these commands work and produce the right results:

if ! dpkg-vendor --derives-from Debian ; then echo error error ; fi
dpkg-vendor --vendor Debian --query Vendor

In addition please make sure there is a contact point listed in the
maintainer field of your census page.

While you are editing your page, please fill in as much of the fields as
you have data for.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusTemplate
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

oldstable is now EOL

Subject: Debian derivatives census: Debian $v ($cname) security support terminated

Hi all,

I note that some Debian derivatives are based on Debian $v ($cname). The
Debian security team have recently warned about[1] and then announced[2]
the termination of security support for Debian $v ($cname).

This means that you will need to provide your own security support for
your users or transition your distribution (and users) to a newer
version of Debian such as $v2 ($cname2), which still receives security
updates. If you have already switched to $cname2 and stopped supporting
$cname-based releases, please update your census page to reflect that.

Those of you who are or will be providing security updates for
oldstable-based distributions might want to consider pooling your
financial and engineering resources in order to provide longer term
support for superseded Debian releases. If your distribution is
interested in participating in such a project, please take a look at
the minutes[3] and announcement[4] from Debian security team meeting
where this was discussed and perhaps the also the messages[5][6][7][8]
from the security team in a thread discussing the topic[8]. Should your
distribution or your distribution's sponsors be willing to help, please
contact the Debian security team[9].

Please direct any other questions you have to the derivatives list[10] or
IRC channel[11]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2011/msg00238.html
     2. http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120209
     3. http://wiki.debian.org/DebianSecurity/Meetings/2011-01-14
     4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/01/msg00006.html
     5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2011/10/msg00029.html
     6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2011/10/msg00030.html
     7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2011/10/msg00033.html
     8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security/2011/10/threads.html#00001
     9. http://www.debian.org/security/#contact
    10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
    11. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

testing is now frozen

Subject: Debian derivatives census: Debian $v ($cname) frozen

Hi all,

I note that some Debian derivatives are based on Debian stable. The
Debian release team have recently declared[1] that testing is frozen in
preparation for the upcoming release of Debian $v ($cname).

This means that if you have not already started, you will need to start
the migration of your stable release to be based on Debian $v ($cname)
instead the current base of Debian stable. Once you have switched to
$cname, please update your census page to reflect that if needed.

Those of you who are willing to help finalise the release of $cname are
encouraged to commit developer time to fixing the release critical bugs[2][3],
organise bug squashing parties[4] and to test upgrades from Debian stable
in order to find more issues that might need to be fixed. At this time
the release team are accepting non-RC fixes where appropriate, based on
their policy for freeze exceptions[5].

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[6] or IRC
channel[7]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/06/msg00009.html
     2. http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/other/testing.html
     3. http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi
     4. http://wiki.debian.org/BSP
     5. http://release.debian.org/testing/freeze_policy.html
     6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     7. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

new stable is released

Subject: Debian derivatives census: Debian $v ($cname) released!

Hi all,

I note that some Debian derivatives are based on Debian stable. The
Debian release team have recently released[1] Debian $v ($cname).

This means that if you have not already started, you will need to start
the migration of your stable release to be based on Debian $v ($cname)
instead the current base of Debian stable. Once you have switched to
$cname, please update your census page to reflect that if needed.

Debian releases receive security updates for one year[1] after the release
of the next version so you have some time to migrate your users before you
will need to provide your own security support.

If you have already migrated your distribution to the new version, now is
a great time to start work on integrating your changes back into Debian.
If your team does not include any Debian developers, please take a look
at the mentors[2] and bug reporting[3] web pages.

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[4] or IRC
channel[5]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/05/msg00003.html
     2. http://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers
     3. http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting
     4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     5. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

Opportunities

Invitation to

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: invitation to join the Debian derivatives census 

Hi,

I note that you are producing a software distribution based on Debian[1]. I would like to invite you to join the Debian derivatives census[2], which attempts to gather detailed information about Debian derivatives that is useful to Debian, for integration[3] of that information into Debian infrastructure and for the development of relationships between Debian and our derivatives. In addition we will be doing some QA[4] on the data that you enter into the census. 

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[5] or IRC
channel[6]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://www.debian.org/
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     3. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Integration
     4. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusQA
     5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     6. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: bug links on the Debian wiki

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that there is an opportunity for
greater integration[2] with Debian infrastructure.

The Debian wiki has some JavaScript that checks the status of Debian
bugs and changes the CSS to indicate if the bug was closed or not and
give the bug a mouse-over title indicating bug title, fixed versions and
so on.

We would like to extend this support to the bug trackers of Debian
derivatives where possible. Your Debian derivatives census entry seems
to contain a bug tracker link for your derivative. If you are using the
Debian wiki, linking from it to your bug tracker and your bug tracker
has some sort of machine-readable API, you might want us to work on
adding support for it to the Debian wiki. If you don't want that, please
ignore this email and sorry for the noise. If you do want that and have
a machine-readable API for your bug tracker, please reply to this email
and we will attempt to add support for it. If you don't have a
machine-readable API then we are also happy to add support for short
interwiki links to your bug pages, check out[5] if so and then edit [6]
and you may also want to get your InterWiki shortcuts into the MoinMoin
master list at [7].

Please direct any questions you have to the derivatives list[3] or IRC
channel[4]. We strongly encourage you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Integration
     3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     4. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives
     5. http://wiki.debian.org/InterWiki
     6. http://wiki.debian.org/InterWikiMap
     7. http://master.moinmo.in/InterWikiMap

The annual Debian conference

To: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian derivatives census: the annual Debian conference

Hi all,

If you are receiving this mail that means you are participating in the
Debian derivatives census[1] and that there is an opportunity for
greater participation within the Debian project.

This year the annual Debian conference[2] (DebConf) is to be held in
<country> from <start> to <end> and as usual is to be preceded by a
week of collaborative development work (DebCamp) from <start> to <end>.

DebConf is only possible with the help of our generous sponsors, so if
your business or your corporate or government sponsors are able to contribute
funds, we encourage them to review the sponsorship information[3] for
this year and contact the DebConf sponsors team.

We also encourage you to send one or more developers to <country>
to participate in DebConf and or DebCamp. If you plan to send your
developers, there is also the possibility of supporting the conference
financially by paying the "corporate" rate. Of course sponsorship and
donations by non-profit organisations and individuals are also most welcome.

Attendees have the opportunity to interact with Debian participants, find
out about the latest developments in Debian and work on Debian-related
projects. We also encourage your developers to participate in any
derivatives-related events that might be organised during DebConf.

Please direct any other questions you have to the derivatives list[4] or
IRC channel[5]. We strongly recommend you to join both of these.

     1. http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
     2. http://debconfN.debconf.org/
     3. http://debconfN.debconf.org/become-sponsor.xhtml
     4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-derivatives
     5. irc://irc.oftc.net/debian-derivatives