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.
Contents
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 $oldcname. 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 $oldcname. 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: someone@example.com CC: debian-derivatives@lists.debian.org Subject: ExampleDerivative: 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
Bug links on the wiki
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