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This HTML is auto-generated. DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE! If you are writing a new |
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<meta name="generator" content="Docutils 0.3.0: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/" /> |
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<title>GLEP 12 -- Gentoo.org Finger Daemon</title> |
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="tools/glep.css" type="text/css" /> |
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width="100%" border="0"> |
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<tr><td class="navicon" width="150" height="35"> |
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<a href="http://www.gentoo.org/" title="Gentoo Linux Home Page"> |
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<img src="http://www.gentoo.org/images/gentoo-new.gif" alt="[Gentoo]" |
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border="0" width="150" height="35" /></a></td> |
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<td class="textlinks" align="left"> |
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[<b><a href="http://www.gentoo.org/">Gentoo Linux Home</a></b>] |
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[<b><a href="http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep">GLEP Index</a></b>] |
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[<b><a href="http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0012.txt">GLEP Source</a></b>] |
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</td></tr></table> |
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<div class="document"> |
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<table class="rfc2822 field-list" frame="void" rules="none"> |
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<col class="field-name" /> |
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<col class="field-body" /> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">GLEP:</th><td class="field-body">12</td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Title:</th><td class="field-body">Gentoo.org Finger Daemon</td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Version:</th><td class="field-body">1.1</td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Last-Modified:</th><td class="field-body"><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/xml/htdocs/proj/en/glep/glep-0012.txt?cvsroot=gentoo">2003/08/11 14:32:44</a></td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Author:</th><td class="field-body">Tavis Ormandy <taviso at gentoo.org></td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Status:</th><td class="field-body">Draft</td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Type:</th><td class="field-body">Standards Track</td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Created:</th><td class="field-body">10-Aug-2003</td> |
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</tr> |
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<tr class="field"><th class="field-name">Post-History:</th><td class="field-body">11-Aug-2003</td> |
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</tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<hr /> |
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<div class="contents topic" id="contents"> |
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<p class="topic-title"><a name="contents">Contents</a></p> |
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<ul class="simple"> |
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<li><a class="reference" href="#abstract" id="id21" name="id21">Abstract</a></li> |
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<li><a class="reference" href="#motivation" id="id22" name="id22">Motivation</a></li> |
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<li><a class="reference" href="#rationale" id="id23" name="id23">Rationale</a></li> |
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<li><a class="reference" href="#implementation-and-security" id="id24" name="id24">Implementation and Security</a></li> |
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<li><a class="reference" href="#example-query" id="id25" name="id25">Example Query</a></li> |
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<li><a class="reference" href="#references" id="id26" name="id26">References</a></li> |
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<li><a class="reference" href="#copyright" id="id27" name="id27">Copyright</a></li> |
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</ul> |
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</div> |
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<div class="section" id="abstract"> |
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id21" name="abstract">Abstract</a></h1> |
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<p>The finger protocol is documented in rfc742 <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id11" id="id1" name="id1">[1]</a> and rfc1196 <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id12" id="id2" name="id2">[2]</a>, a simple |
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protocol that returns a human readable report about a particular user |
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of the system. Typically, the information returned will be details such as |
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full name, location, etc. These details are entirely optional and are obtained |
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from the system passwd file, which of course can be edited or removed with the |
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standard chfn(1) <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id13" id="id3" name="id3">[3]</a> command.</p> |
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<p>The finger daemon will also return the contents of three files from the users home |
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directory, should they exist and be readable.</p> |
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<blockquote> |
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<ul class="simple"> |
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<li>~/.project - which should contain information about the project currently being worked on.</li> |
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<li>~/.plan - which might contain work being done or a TODO style list.</li> |
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<li>~/.pgpkey - which would contain a PGP/GnuPG <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id14" id="id4" name="id4">[4]</a> public key block.</li> |
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</ul> |
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</blockquote> |
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<p>The finger protocol is mature, secure and widely used in the UNIX community. |
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There are clients available for all major operating systems, and web-based |
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clients for those that dont.</p> |
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</div> |
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<div class="section" id="motivation"> |
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id22" name="motivation">Motivation</a></h1> |
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<p>Gentoo developers are already aware of the importance of User Relations <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id19" id="id5" name="id5">[9]</a> .</p> |
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<p>It is essential to keep the community up to date with current goals, status |
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updates, and information from the development team. Currently it is suggested |
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users track mailing lists, monitor the Gentoo bugzilla, developer IRC |
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channels and cvs commits.</p> |
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<p>While the resources to track developer progress and activity are made |
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available to users, they are not in a form usable to many people. Keeping |
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track of development is a tedious challenge, even for developers. For |
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non-technical users wishing to track the progress of a developer, using |
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mailing lists and bugzilla may not be a practical option.</p> |
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<p>Developers may also need a way to quickly find out the progress or activity of |
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other developers, different time zones sometimes makes it difficult for |
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developers to catch each other on IRC, and making already high-volume mailing |
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lists even more cluttered with status updates is not desirable.</p> |
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<p>A method that would allow individual developers to keep a log of their |
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activities and plans that were instantly accesible to anyone who was |
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interested would be desirable, I propose running a finger daemon on |
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gentoo.org, or dev.gentoo.org and forwarding requests there from gentoo.org.</p> |
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<p>Running a developer finger daemon would improve inter developer communication, |
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user communication and relations, and reduce workload on developers who have to |
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respond to queries from users on project status updates.</p> |
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<p>In the future, it is foreseen that portage will require a cryptographically |
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secure means of verifying ebuilds aquired from an rsync mirror are identical |
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to those checked into the portage tree by a developer <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id20" id="id6" name="id6">[10]</a> . Making developer keys |
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available to users for manually checking the integrity of files, or patches |
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sent to them is important. It has long been known that encouraging the |
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use of gpg among developers is desirable <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id15" id="id7" name="id7">[5]</a> .</p> |
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<p>Should a security vulnerability of a serious nature ever be reported, |
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standard procedure <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id16" id="id8" name="id8">[6]</a> is to inform vendors before releasing the information |
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to full disclosure security discussion lists. Making the relevant maintainer's |
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key easily obtainable will allow reporters to encrypt their reports.</p> |
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</div> |
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<div class="section" id="rationale"> |
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id23" name="rationale">Rationale</a></h1> |
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<p>Providing a finger daemon will allow users to instantly access information on |
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developers, and all details of that developers current projects that they decide |
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to share.</p> |
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<p>GPG keys for all developers will be instantly availble, and the output of the |
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finger <a class="reference" href="mailto:devname@gentoo.org">devname@gentoo.org</a> command can be piped into gpg --import to instantly |
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add it to the users keyring.</p> |
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<p>The following projects use finger for user-developer communications,:</p> |
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<pre class="literal-block"> |
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Latest kernel releases, and developer information. |
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$ finger @kernel.org |
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Developers and organisers are encouraged to keep .plans about their |
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activity. |
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$ finger nugget@distributed.net |
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Latest NASA news, and information from engineers. |
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$ finger nasanews@space.mit.edu |
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Slackware developers. |
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$ finger volkerdi@slackware.com |
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FreeBSD developers. |
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$ finger nakai@freebsd.org |
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</pre> |
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</div> |
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<div class="section" id="implementation-and-security"> |
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id24" name="implementation-and-security">Implementation and Security</a></h1> |
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<p>Some admins are concerned about the security of running a finger daemon on their |
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machines, the class of security issues involved with the finger protocol are |
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commonly referred to as "information leaks" <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id17" id="id9" name="id9">[7]</a>.</p> |
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<p>This means an attacker may be able to use a finger daemon to identify valid |
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accounts on their target, which they would then try to obtain access to.</p> |
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<p>This scenario does not apply to this implementation, as the gentoo developer |
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names are already well publicised. <a class="footnote-reference" href="#id18" id="id10" name="id10">[8]</a></p> |
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<p>No security issues have ever been reported with the fingerd available in gentoo |
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portage. Finger is used worldwide by universities, unix systems, and development |
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projects.</p> |
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<p>Adding dummy users, will be trivial and allow projects such as gentoo-docs, |
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gentoo-alpha, gentoo-ppc, etc to maintain .plans and .projects. This will allow |
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the projects to maintain more technical details or status updates not suitable |
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for their project webpages.</p> |
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<p>Adding data to a plan is a lot simpler than updating webpages.</p> |
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</div> |
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<div class="section" id="example-query"> |
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id25" name="example-query">Example Query</a></h1> |
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<p>Should a user want information about the author, this might be the output of |
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a finger query:</p> |
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<pre class="literal-block"> |
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$ finger taviso@gentoo.org |
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Login: taviso Name: Tavis Ormandy |
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Directory: /home/taviso Shell: /bin/bash |
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Last login: dd-mmm-yyyy |
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Mail last read dd-mmm-yyy |
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Project: |
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Currently working on implementing XXX, and porting XXX to XXX. |
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Plan: |
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dd-mmm-yyyy |
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Investigating bug #12345, testing patch provided in #12236 |
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Write documentation for new features in XXX. |
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dd-mmm-yyyy |
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Contact acmesoft regarding license for xxx in portage. |
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PGP Key: |
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-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- |
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (Linux) |
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(...) |
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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- |
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</pre> |
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</div> |
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<div class="section" id="references"> |
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id26" name="references">References</a></h1> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id11" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id1" name="id11">[1]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0742.txt">http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0742.txt</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id12" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id2" name="id12">[2]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1196.txt">http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1196.txt</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id13" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id3" name="id13">[3]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/pkgs/sys-apps/shadow.xml">http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/pkgs/sys-apps/shadow.xml</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id14" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id4" name="id14">[4]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.gnupg.org">http://www.gnupg.org</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id15" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id7" name="id15">[5]</a></td><td><<a class="reference" href="mailto:20030629040521.4316b135.seemant@gentoo.org">20030629040521.4316b135.seemant@gentoo.org</a>></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id16" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id8" name="id16">[6]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.oisafety.org/process.html">http://www.oisafety.org/process.html</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id17" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id9" name="id17">[7]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://search.linuxsecurity.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?words=information%20leak">http://search.linuxsecurity.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?words=information%20leak</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id18" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id10" name="id18">[8]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/devlist.xml">http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/devlist.xml</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id19" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id5" name="id19">[9]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/user-relations.xml">http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/user-relations.xml</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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<table class="footnote" frame="void" id="id20" rules="none"> |
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup> |
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<tbody valign="top"> |
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id6" name="id20">[10]</a></td><td><a class="reference" href="http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030407-newsletter.xml">http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030407-newsletter.xml</a></td></tr> |
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</tbody> |
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</table> |
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</div> |
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<div class="section" id="copyright"> |
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<h1><a class="toc-backref" href="#id27" name="copyright">Copyright</a></h1> |
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<p>This document is released under the Open Publications License.</p> |
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<hr class="footer"/> |
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<a class="reference" href="glep-0012.txt">View document source</a>. |
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Generated on: 2003-08-11 14:32 UTC. |
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Generated by <a class="reference" href="http://docutils.sourceforge.net/">Docutils</a> from <a class="reference" href="http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html">reStructuredText</a> source. |
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