[Tails-dev] Tails report for February, 2013

Author: Tails folks
Date:
To: The Tails public development discussion list, tor-reports
Subject: [Tails-dev] Tails report for February, 2013

Releases
========

Tails 0.17 was released on February 25th [1].

1: https://tails.boum.org/news/version_0.17/

Metrics
=======

  - 99 275 connections of Tails to the Tor network. This makes a boot
    every 24 seconds on average (this number is an approximation from
    the requests made to the security announcements feed. The later is
    retrieved by Tails after being connected to Tor to eventually
    encourage users to update.)

- 63 reports were received through WhisperBack.

- 924 comments were posted on the forum, with 161 signed by Tails.

Code
====

  - Some progress has been done on a persistence feature to
    packages installed with APT [2].

  - A workaround has been proposed to temper a bug on APM handling of
    some hard disks [3] that could damage them. See Debian bug #684241
    [4].

  - Two features that are known to be flawed in Pidin, MXit and
    Sametime, have been disabled [5]. See CVE-2013-0273, CVE-2013-0272
    and CVE-2013-0271.

  - Shutdown and reboot launchers have been added to the menu to fix the
    lack of a shutdown helper applet in camouflage mode [6].

- Some progress was made on Tails based on Wheezy [7].

  - The firmware loader for Qualcomm Gobi USB chipsets [8] was added to
    Tails 0.17.

  - Some work has been done on getting the Tails web browser (now
    based on Iceweasel 17 ESR + Torbrowser patches) ready for Tails
    0.17 [9].

- I2P was updated to 0.9.4 [10].

  - We have tested Yama and AppArmor LSB stacking [11] on Linux 3.7.8,
    and now plan to have Yama enabled by default in the Debian kernel.

  - The documentation on administration password was improved to be more
    clear about opening a root terminal [12].

- A branch was started to clean up the content of the forum [13].

  - The /bugs and /todo sections of the website will no longer be
    shipped in the ISO images [14].

  - A link to check.torproject.org was added to the new default
    browser homepage [15], to reassure users landing on it.

  - The documentation on MAC Changer has been corrected [16] to mention
    the fact that MAC addresses are sometimes sent over the Internet.

- Some more browser fingerprinting issues [17] where documented.

- Our income statement for 2012 [18] was published.

- The browser homepage [19] was lightened a bit.

  - The design documentation [20] for set wireless devices state [21]
    was written.

12:
http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/doc%2Fadministration%5Fpassword
13:
http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/doc%2Fsort%5Fthe%5Fforum
14:
http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=commit;h=4332f98d370dfa2ca9e9e312823a56009e2ab0ca
15: https://tails.boum.org/news/index.en.html
16:
http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=commit;h=0d9718dad2f9ef577015b26194e81053402a459e
17:
http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=commit;h=3e13999b6923ebfb3b25d7329ce0ce3d495ae63b%20where%20documented
18: https://tails.boum.org/doc/about/finances/index.en.html#index3h1
19: https://tails.boum.org/news/index.en.html
20:
http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature%2Fset%2Dwireless%2Ddevices%2Dstate
21: https://tails.boum.org/todo/set_wireless_devices_state/

On-going discussions
====================

  - We have been debating on a keyboard shortcut overlap [22] between
    ALT+SHIFT+TAB that should change the window backward and ALT+SHIFT
    which is the usual shortcut for switching between keyboard layouts.
    That's particularly important for people switching between Latin and
    non-Latin keyboards.

  - There is now a dedicated mailing list [23] for the development of
    the Metadata Anonymization Toolkit (MAT).

  - Runa's report on "Training Journalists in Istanbul" resulted in a
    few discussion threads regarding, among others:

    - Autostarting Iceweasel [24]
    - The browser homepage [25]
    - Having an applet that informs about the version number of Tails
      and hiding the download button on the News page [26]
    - Disabling all Pidgin accounts by default [27]

22: https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-February/002610.html
23: https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/mat-dev
24: https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-February/002652.html
25: https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-February/002651.html
26: https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-February/002653.html
27: https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-February/002654.html

Infrastructure
==============

Quite some work was done on a new dedicated server of ours, called
lizard:

- Various stuff that's customary for a virtualization host, like
a local APT proxy and a Puppet master, was setup.
- Our APT repository was migrated to lizard [28]. Our primary
(private) rsync server, too [29].
- We now run a BitTorrent seed on lizard [30].
- We now run another WhisperBack relay on lizard [31].
- We now run bitcoind [32] on lizard.
- Our Puppet modules are now hosted on lizard. Some are already
publicly available [33], but there's a bit of boring
work left to publish the others [34]. We're happy to share with nice
people [35] the development and maintenance of most of the modules we
use.
- A VM was setup to run Jenkins, that should some day be an important
part of automated_builds_and_tests [36].

28: https://tails.boum.org/todo/migrate_APT_repository_to_lizard/
29: https://tails.boum.org/todo/migrate_primary_rsync_server_to_lizard/
30: https://tails.boum.org/todo/run_a_BitTorrent_seed_on_lizard/
31: https://tails.boum.org/todo/run_another_WhisperBack_relay_on_lizard/
32: http://packages.debian.org/bitcoind
33: https://tails.boum.org/contribute/git/
34: https://tails.boum.org/todo/publish_our_Puppet_modules/
35: https://labs.riseup.net/code/projects/sharedpuppetmodules
36: https://tails.boum.org/todo/automated_builds_and_tests/

Funding
=======

We have been working on starting our bounties program.

--
Tails folks

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