[tor-reports] Tails report for October, 2012

Fri Nov 2 09:08:15 UTC 2012

October 2012 has seen the highest activity on Tails development
mailing-list since it is publicly archived (September 2010). This
reflects how much work is done to slowly make Tails better and better.
More details follow.

Releases
========

Tails 0.14 is on its way. A first release candidate was released on the
12th with pretty good reactions so far. This new version will catch up
with long awaited, unspectacular but important features, and fix an
impressive amount of small bugs.

While testing the first release candidate, we found I2P unable to work
properly. The source of the problem was ultimately determined to a
random bit flip:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001829.html>

What should have been an easy update to the next "Entreprise Stable
Release" of Iceweasel (Debian unbranded Firefox) left us cold with a
half-working Torbutton. This required us to hurry on fixing this
standing problem: we now have our own APT repository and a custom
Iceweasel package which includes TorBrowser patches for anonymity.

This got included in the second release candidate, released on the 30th,
together with translation updates. Unless a major issue shows up, Tails
0.14 should be released on November, 6th.

People
======

Tails has been started and successfully connected to the Tor network
around 80.420 times in September. That makes a boot every 33 seconds on
average. This number is an approximation from the requests made for the
security announcements feed. The later is retrieved by Tails after being
connected to Tor to eventually encourage users to update.

50 reports were received through WhisperBack.

The forum activity is still really intense: 1542 messages, 161 signed by
Tails.

Code
====

The bug that sometimes made Iceweasel open PDF with Gimp or MP3 with
Audacity has been fixed.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/open_mp3_with_totem_instead_of_audacity/>

Whisperback 1.6.1 fixed the inability to resend a bug after a network
problem and some other minor issues.
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=whisperback.git;a=blobdiff;f=ChangeLog;hb=dbd977a33b;hpb=610dec83f>

Network Manager connections can now persist across sessions.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/persistence_preset_-_NM_connections/>

Default to use ftp.us.debian.org as a Debian mirror in the Vagrant build
system.
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=commit;h=5944fe4e8dc>

Finally got to nail the issue with the current memory wipe system.
<https://tails.boum.org/bugs/sdmem_does_not_clear_all_memory/>

Meanwhile, a new solution was proposed using the `hugetlbfs` kernel
mechanism.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001810.html>

Finally implemented support for multiple kernels meaning proper support
for multiple CPUs and cores and more than 3 GB of memory.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/nx_bit/>
This also required a new version of liveusb-creator to fix some
concurrency issues.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001791.html>

Support for public key encryption in gpgApplet has been merged, finally!
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/gpgapplet:_public_key_support/>

Yelp does not crash on internal links anymore.
<https://tails.boum.org/bugs/yelp_crash_with_inline_links/>

Persistence for browser bookmarks is ready for Tails 0.15.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001884.html>

Add and get good reports for a Japanese input method, will be included
in Tails 0.14.
<https://tails.boum.org/forum/Japanese_support/>

Add an input system for Korean, should be included in Tails 0.15.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/korean_input_system/>

`tordate` was broken with Tor 0.2.3. A fix has quickly been found.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001881.html>

Display "Unsafe browser" instead of "Iceweasel" in the Unsafe browser.
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/unsafe_browser_name>

Preliminary support for obfsproxy bridges.
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/obfsproxy>

Quite some work happened on setting up our own APT repository (Puppet
modules hacking and documentation, among others).
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/APT_repository/>

Add our custom APT repository in Tails.
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/apt-repository>

Get our own Iceweasel packages with TorBrowser patches.
<git://labs.riseup.net/tails_iceweasel.git> and
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/torbrowser>

Get more test results for OpenPGP smartcards support.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/support_OpenPGP_smartcards/>

Add vendor-specific dpkg origin information.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/custom_dpkg_origin> and
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/dpkg-origin>

Do not use pdnsd anymore.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/replace_or_drop_pdnsd__63__/> and
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/remove-pdnsd>

New progress has been made on Tails automated test suite.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/automated_builds_and_tests/cucumber/>
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/automated_tests/cucumber>

Documentation and website
=========================

Document the upcoming Network Manager persistence.

Document the new support for public key encryption in the OpenPGP
applet, and generally improve this part of the documentation along the
way.

Fix links to the Universal USB Installer.

Consistently use long GnuPG key ID format in our examples.

Many improvements to French and Portuguese translations.

Documented more of Tails current development process.
<https://tails.boum.org/contribute/working_together/> and
<https://tails.boum.org/contribute/release_schedule/>

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

Our own APT repository `deb.tails.boum.org` has gone live on the 24th.
This already enables us to use big custom packages (Iceweasel). In the
mid-term, we will be able to remove binary packages from our main Git
repository. And on the long run, this will enable more control over our
freezes, as well as proper source distribution.

In order to get commit announcements back on IRC, we have setup an
instance of GitBot on `#tails-dev`. Unfortunately, this did not work as
expected, and `repo.or.cz` admins explained us that they do not support
commit notifications for mirror projects. Next steps are left to be
determined.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/find_another_irc_commit_bot/>

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

Is there any advantage in faking user agent in tordate?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001732.html>

How about authenticated NTP?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001743.html>

Mockups for a revamped Tails Greeter, resulting in several comments.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001781.html>

Alan should be taking over maintainance of the Metadata Anonymization
Toolkit.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001789.html>

Is Tails interested in some boot scripts from Whonix?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001803.html>

Tails website license?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001805.html>

Which Pidgin protocols should be considered "safe"?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001830.html>

Dependencies between persistence options.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001887.html>

Block/unblock wireless devices at boot time?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001753.html>

Disable FireWire et al. at boot time?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001847.html>

Tests of two-layered virtualized systems.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-October/001950.html>

Funding
=======

Unfortunately, sponsor Bravo is not able to fund as much as promised
earlier. There might still be funds for some hardware. We'll see how it
goes.

-- 
Tails folks