I am happy to announce a new release of GNU poke, version 1.4.

This is what expect to be the last bug fix release in the poke 1.x maintenance series.  We are working very hard in what will become poke 2.0, expected to be released in February 2022.

See the file NEWS in the released tarball for a detailed list of
changes in this release.

The tarball poke-1.4.tar.gz is now available at
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/poke/poke-1.4.tar.gz.

  GNU poke (http://www.jemarch.net/poke) is an interactive,
  extensible editor for binary data.  Not limited to editing
  basic entities such as bits and bytes, it provides a full-
  fledged procedural,interactive programming language designed
  to describe data structures and to operate on them.

Thanks to the people who contributed with code and/or documentation to this release.  In certain but no significant order they are:

  Mohammad-Reza Nabipoor <m.nabipoor@yahoo.com>
  Guillermo E. Martinez <guillermo.e.martinez@oracle.com>
  Fangrui Song <i@maskray.me>

As always, thank you all!

And this is all for now.
Happy poking!

--
Jose E. Marchesi
Frankfurt am Main
3 December 2021

GNU Parallel 20211122 ('Peng Shuai') [stable] has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

No new functionality was introduced so this is a good candidate for a stable release.

Quote of the month:

  GNU parallel 便利すぎ
    -- @butagannen@twitter 豚顔面

New in this release:

• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• Otimizando o seu Hacking com o GNU Parallel - Mateus Buogo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIpPPZXDKGU

• SMACK 12 - Do it faster! Simple ways to use all those cores (and GPUs) efficiently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXDGY7NvOYk

Get the book: GNU Parallel 2018 http://www.lulu.com/shop/ole-tange/gnu-parallel-2018/paperback/product-23558902.html

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep c82233e7da3166308632ac8c34f850c0
    12345678 c82233e7 da316630 8632ac8c 34f850c0
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep ae3d7aac5e15cf3dfc87046cfc5918d2
    ae3d7aac 5e15cf3d fc87046c fc5918d2
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep dfc00d823137271a6d96225cea9e89f533ff6c81f
    9c5198d5 31a3b755 b7910ece 3a42d206 c804694d fc00d823 137271a6 d96225ce
    a9e89f53 3ff6c81f f52b298b ef9fb613 2d3f9ccd 0e2c7bd3 c35978b5 79acb5ca
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

Guile-CV version 0.3.1 is released! (November 2021)

This is a maintenance release, which fixes a bug in the pre-inst-env script, which is used by Guile-CV at build time and may also be used to test and run an uninstalled Guile-CV instance.

Changes since the previous version

For a list of changes since the previous version, visit the  NEWS file. For a complete description, consult the git summary and git log.

The pre-inst-env.in script has been fixed and now adds a specific build time library location, so Guile 3.0 (>= 3.0.6) finds libguile-cv at build time.

Guile 3.0 (>= 3.0.6) does not use libltdl anymore, and although in guile (system foreign-library) module, both the comment and the definition of augment-ltdl-library-path seems to take care of finding .so files either aside .la or in a .libs/ subdir, it does not work.

Dear all

We're happy to announce that the documentation of Thalamus, the GNU Health Federation message and authentication server, resides now at the GH documentation portal!

https://www.gnuhealth.org/docs

In addition to the portal, we are migrating all the documentation to reStructuredText. Having the documentation in RST format makes it simpler for collaboration. The user will also be able to access it even without Internet connectivity.

MyGNUHealth (Personal Health Record) and Thalamus have been already migrated and translated to different languages (Spanish, German, French). The GH Hospital Management System component is in the process of migration. This requires quite a bit of work, updating the documentation and images from 40+ packages.

At the end we'll have a very nice, structured GNU Health documentation portal!

Happy and healthy hacking!
Luis

Guile-CV version 0.3.0 is released! (November 2021)

This is a maintenance release, which allows Guile-CV to work with Guile 3.0 (>= 3.0.7 to be specific). In addition, im-transpose performance has been improved.

The documentation has been restructured and follows the model we adopted for GNU G-Golf. The Configuring Guile's raised exception system section has been updated. Make sure you carefully read and apply the proposed changes.

Changes since the previous version

For a list of changes since the previous version, visit the NEWS file. For a complete description, consult the git summary and git log

We have published a video with an online session we made as an introduction of GNU poke internals for new developers.  We mainly covered the Poke compiler and the poke virtual machine (PVM) and how to extend them to implement new language constructions.

The video can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7hehlAeOqY

Thanks to Mohammad Reza-Nabipoor for editing the video!

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43015/likely-drone-attack-on-u-s-power-grid-revealed-in-new-intelligence-report

Hey everybody.

So last February now, I, in a fit of optimism, thought I'd take on the Guile Potluck duties for 2021: asking people to submit the fun stuff they were up to, and then I'd blog about it. That didn't happen, for which I humbly apologize. But I should know by now that every time I actually commit to something publicly visible in free software, reality intervenes. So from now on, I promise that I will never again commit to anything.

But life is getting better, my vision problems are improving. My back is all healed and I can actually sit in an office chair all day without pain.

So yeah.

Anyway, while I shy away from term commitment, I do have intention to make good on old promises.

In the meantime (and one of the reasons I'm actually talking about feelings on this backup blog right now instead of my standard repository of feelings) I do have to do something about my always-neglected primary website Lonely Cactus which apparently has gone to blog heaven.  A pity. There was some cool stuff on there.

My hope is to get Lonely Cactus up and running on a different set of technologies, as a learning exercise.  Maybe a GNU/Hurd VM. Maybe Guix.  Because if you're going to do something weird, might as well go all the way.

But in real life, if you're keeping score, I have returned to /dev/null. Single again, no kids in the house anymore, unfit, no church life to speak of. I still own this dilapidated, century-old house in Los Angeles, and have a day job, so I'm better off than billions of people. And I'm lucky in that comparatively few people I know have died during the plague year. 

Time for life v4.0, or v5.0. I'm not sure of my current revision number.

Images are available at https://trisquel.info/download or directly at https://cdimage.trisquel.info/ and its mirrors.

This minor update to the 9.x "Etiona" series is intended to provide an up to date set of ISO images, both for use as an installation medium and as a live environment with newer packages. This addresses two main security concerns in the 9.0 original ISO images:

•  An outdated Certificate Authority collection (package ca-certificates) included an expired root certificate for LetsEncrypt, resulting in blocked access to repositories for new packages or updates. https://letsencrypt.org/docs/dst-root-ca-x3-expiration-september-2021/
•  Overlooked binary blobs were found in versions of Linux-Libre prior to v5.14. Updated packages were added to the Trisquel repositores to correct the issue, and new ISO images were produced to include the fix. http://www.fsfla.org/pipermail/linux-libre/2021-August/003439.html

Along with those fixes, the release includes any other security update published upstream since we published Etiona, and the latest version of the Mozilla-based "Abrowser" (v93).

These updates will contribute to keep the v9.0 branch in good working order as it will continue to be actively maintained until April 2023.

In other news, the development of Trisquel 10 is ongoing at great pace, with initial ISO images being now available for testing at https://cdbuilds.trisquel.org/nabia/ Please note that these images are not yet   intended for production usage, so use them only for testing and development or (as it is true in any case) at your own risk.

There are times when what looked like the right design choice some years back comes out as an odd choice as time passes. The beloved guix environment tool is having that fate. Its command-line interface has become non-intuitive and annoying for the most common use cases. Since it could not be changed without breaking compatibility in fundamental ways, we devised a new command meant to progressively replace it; guix shell—that’s the name we unimaginatively ended up with—has just landed after a three-week review period, itself a followup to discussions and hesitations on the best course of action.

This post introduces guix shell, how it differs from guix environment, the choices we made, and why we hope you will like it.

The story of guix environment

The guix environment command started its life in 2014, when Guix was a two-year old baby and the whole community could fit in a small room. It had one purpose: “to assist hackers in creating reproducible development environments”. It was meant to be similar in spirit to VirtualEnv or Bundler, but universal—not limited to a single language. You would run:

guix environment inkscape

… and obtain an interactive shell with all the packages needed to hack on Inkscape; in that shell, the relevant environment variables—PATH, CPATH, PKG_CONFIG_PATH, and so on—would automatically point to a profile created on the fly and containing the compiler, libraries, and tools Inkscape depends on, but not Inkscape itself.

Only a year later did it become clear that there are cases where one would want to create an environment containing specific packages, rather than an environment containing the dependencies of packages. To address that, David Thompson proposed the --ad-hoc option:

guix environment --ad-hoc inkscape -- inkscape

… would create an environment containing only Inkscape, and would then launch the inkscape command in that environment. Many features were added over the years, such as the invaluable --container option, but these two modes, development and “ad hoc”, are the guts of it.

Fast forward six years: today, there’s consensus that the name --ad-hoc is confusing for newcomers and above all, that the “ad hoc” mode should be the default. This is the main problem that guix shell addresses.

Doing what you’d expect

Changing the default mode from “development environment” to “ad hoc” is technically easy, but how to do that without breaking compatibility is harder. This led to lengthy discussions, including proposals of mechanisms to choose between the new and old semantics.

In the end, keeping the guix environment name while allowing it to have different semantics was deemed dangerous. For one thing, there’s lots of material out there that demoes guix environment—blog posts, magazine articles, on-line courses—and it would have been impossible to determine whether they refer to the “new” or to the “old” semantics. We reached the conclusion that it would be easier to use a new command name and to eventually deprecate guix environment.

With guix shell, the default is to create an environment that contains the packages that appear on the command line; to launch Inkscape, run:

guix shell inkscape -- inkscape

The --ad-hoc option is gone! Likewise, to spawn an ephemeral development environment containing Python and a couple of libraries, run:

guix shell python python-numpy python-scipy -- python3

Now, if you want, say, the development environment of Inkscape, add the --development or -D option right before:

guix shell -D inkscape

You can add Git and GDB on top of it like so:

guix shell -D inkscape git gdb

(Note that -D only applies to the immediately following package, inkscape in this case.) It’s more concise and more natural than with guix environment. As can be seen in the manual, all the other options supported by guix environment remain available in guix shell.

Short-hands for development environments

A convention that’s become quite common is for developers to provide a guix.scm at the top of their project source tree, so that others can start a development environment right away:

guix environment -l guix.scm

The guix.scm file would contain a package definition for the project at hand, as in this example. This option is known as -f in guix shell, for consistency with other commands, and the equivalent command is:

guix shell -D -f guix.scm

Since all Guix commands accept a “manifest” with -m, another option is to provide a manifest.scm file and to run:

guix shell -m manifest.scm

“Wouldn’t it be nice if guix shell would automatically follow these conventions when not given any argument?”, some suggested. As in the case of Bundler, direnv, or typical build tools from Meson to Make, having a default file name can save typing and contribute to a good user experience for frequently-used commands. In this spirit, guix shell automatically loads guix.scm or manifest.scm, from the current directory or an ancestor thereof, such that entering a project to hack on it is as simple as:

cd ~/my/project/src
guix shell

Worry not: guix shell loads guix.scm or manifest.scm if and only if you have first added its directory to ~/.config/guix/shell-authorized-directories. Otherwise guix shell warns you and prints a hint that you can copy/paste if you want to authorize the directory.

Caching environments

With that in place, guix shell can pretty much fill the same role as direnv and similar tools, with one difference though: speed. When all the packages are already in store, guix shell can take one to a few seconds to run, depending on the package set, on whether you’re using a solid state device (SSD) or a “spinning” hard disk, and so on. It’s acceptable but prohibitively slow for direnv-like use cases.

To address that, guix shell maintains a profile cache for the -D -f guix.scm and -m manifest.scm cases. On a hot cache, it runs in 0.1 second. All it has to do is fork a shell with the right environment variable definitions; it does not talk to guix-daemon, and it does not even read guix.scm or manifest.scm (it’s possible to forcefully update the cache with --rebuild-cache).

That makes guix shell usable even for short-lived commands like make:

guix shell -- make

Hopefully it’ll change the way we use the tool!

The shell doctor

While revamping this command-line interface, the idea of a “shell doctor” came up. In interactive use, guix shell sets environment variables and spawns a shell, but it’s not uncommon for the shell to mess up with the whole environment. Why? Because, contrary to documented practice, it’s quite common for users to define or override environment variables in the startup files of non-login shells, ~/.bashrc for Bash, ~/.zshrc for Zsh. Instead, environment variable definitions should go to the startup file of login shells—~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, or similar. But let’s face it: it’s a subtle distinction that few of us know or care about.

As a result, users of Guix, especially on distros other than Guix System, would often be disappointed when running guix environment --pure and yet find that PATH contains non-Guix entries, that there’s a bogus LD_LIBRARY_PATH definition, and whatnot. Now, they can call the doctor, so to speak, to obtain a diagnosis of the health of their shell by adding the --check flag:

guix shell --check python python-numpy

The command creates an environment containing Python and NumPy, spawns an interactive shell, checks the environment variables as seen by the shell, and prints a warning if PATH or PYTHONPATH in this case have been overridden. It does not tell users where the problem comes from—it cannot guess—but it tells them if something’s wrong, which is a first step.

Of course, the best way to sidestep these problems is to pass --container, which gives a fresh, isolated environment that does not contain those startup files. That’s not always an option though, for instance on systems lacking support for unprivileged user namespaces, so --check comes in handy there.

Try it!

Just run guix pull to get this shiny new guix shell thingie!

If you don’t feel ready yet, that’s OK: guix environment won’t disappear overnight. We have a written commitment to keep it around until May, 1st 2023. Though overall, we hope you’ll find the guix shell interface easier to use and compelling enough that you’ll be willing to switch overnight!

About GNU Guix

GNU Guix is a transactional package manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user freedom. Guix can be used on top of any system running the Hurd or the Linux kernel, or it can be used as a standalone operating system distribution for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, AArch64 and POWER9 machines.

In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a standalone GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative, stateless approach to operating system configuration management. Guix is highly customizable and hackable through Guile programming interfaces and extensions to the Scheme language.

GNU Parallel 20211022 ('Sinclair') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

  GNU parallel is a severely underrated tool for just spawning a
  shitload of tasks. I use it every day and fucking love it.
    -- Jane @serialexpjane@twitter

New in this release:

• Don't postpone output until $jobslots jobs have been started.
• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• How to Install GNU Parallel using Anaconda | Linux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwDNVP-L0qA
• Install GNU Parallel from source code | Linux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIyJH4ben5o
• Compiling GNU Parallel on CentOS-7 https://thelinuxcluster.com/2021/10/19/compiling-gnu-parallel-on-centos-7/

Get the book: GNU Parallel 2018 http://www.lulu.com/shop/ole-tange/gnu-parallel-2018/paperback/product-23558902.html

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep c82233e7da3166308632ac8c34f850c0
    12345678 c82233e7 da316630 8632ac8c 34f850c0
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep ae3d7aac5e15cf3dfc87046cfc5918d2
    ae3d7aac 5e15cf3d fc87046c fc5918d2
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep dfc00d823137271a6d96225cea9e89f533ff6c81f
    9c5198d5 31a3b755 b7910ece 3a42d206 c804694d fc00d823 137271a6 d96225ce
    a9e89f53 3ff6c81f f52b298b ef9fb613 2d3f9ccd 0e2c7bd3 c35978b5 79acb5ca
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

Version 1.22 is available for download.  This version includes several bugfixes and improves the documentation.  The list of bugfixes follows:

• Fix file header validation

• Fix key verification in sequential access

• Fix testing with DejaGNU 1.6.3

• Fix stack overflow in print_usage

• Fix a leak of avail entry on pushing a new avail block

• Calls to gdbm_recover preserve crash tolerance settings

Dear community

We are very happy to announce MyGNUHealth 1.0.5, the libre, privacy-oriented, Personal Health Record from GNU Health.

This maintenance release contains bug fixes and three new languages for the documentation:

• French
• German
• Spanish

The source English documentation has been revised.

The main package resides at GNU.org, and contains both the source and all the documentation languages.

To save download time and disk space, the packages at the Python Package Index (PyPi) contain only the source English language. You can always download your language(s) pack from GNU.org or read it online at the GNU Health documentation portal (https://www.gnuhealth.org/docs).

Thank you to all contributors, and we hope you enjoy MyGNUHealth as much as we do developing it :)

Happy and healthy hacking
Luis

About GNU Health

GNU Health is a Libre, community driven project from GNU Solidario (https://www.gnusolidario.org), a non-profit humanitarian organization focused on Social Medicine. Our project has been adopted by hospitals, laboratories, multilateral organizations and national public health systems around the world.

The GNU Health project provides the tools for individuals, health professionals, institutions and governments to proactively assess and improve the underlying determinants of health, from the socioeconomic agents to the molecular basis of disease. From primary health care to precision medicine.

The main components of the GNU Health digital health ecosystem are:

• Hospital Management
• Laboratory Management and bioinformatics
• Personal Health Record (MyGNUHealth)
• Thalamus (the GNU Health Federation message server)
• Health Information System (reporting / epidemiology)

GNU Health is an official GNU project, licensed under GPL v3+

https://www.wsj.com/articles/corrections-amplifications-11633728902

The editor of the Wall Street Journal has retracted their article about the new Google Nest Thermostat feature by issuing a public correction announcement.

Version 5.5 brought the option --minibar, for a minimized user interface, and version 5.6 brought the spotlighting of a search match, in black on yellow by default.  Subsequent versions added a few minor things and fixed some bugs.

This is to announce automake-1.16.5, a stable release.

Thanks to Karl for doing all the real work.
See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

There have been 18 commits by 6 people in the 10 weeks since 1.16.4.

See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Akim Demaille (1)
  Dimitri Papadopoulos (1)
  Jan Engelhardt (1)
  Jim Meyering (6)
  Karl Berry (8)
  Nick Bowler (1)

Jim [on behalf of the automake maintainers]
==================================================================

Here is the GNU automake home page:
    http://gnu.org/s/automake/

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.16.5.tar.xz (1.6MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.16.5.tar.gz (2.3MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.16.5.tar.xz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.16.5.tar.gz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/automake/automake-1.16.5.tar.xz
  https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/automake/automake-1.16.5.tar.gz

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

8B1YzW2dd/vcqetLvV6tGYgij9tz1veiAfX41rEYtGk  automake-1.16.5.tar.xz
B70krQimS8FyUM4J7FbpIdY0OQOUPpnM9ju/BwXjRgU  automake-1.16.5.tar.gz

Each SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify automake-1.16.5.tar.xz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

Please report bugs and problems to <bug-automake@gnu.org>,
and send general comments and feedback to <automake@gnu.org>.

==================================================================
NEWS

* Bugs fixed

  - PYTHON_PREFIX and PYTHON_EXEC_PREFIX are now set according to
    Python's sys.* values only if the new configure option
    --with-python-sys-prefix is specified. Otherwise, GNU default values
    are used, as in the past. (The change in 1.16.3 was too incompatible.)

  - consistently depend on install-libLTLIBRARIES.

* Distribution

  - use const for yyerror declaration in bison/yacc tests.

This is to announce coreutils-9.0, a stable release.

This is a new major release, with these significant changes:
  - cp has changed how it handles data
    - enables CoW by default (through FICLONE ioctl),
    - uses copy offload where available (through copy_file_range),
    - detects holes differently (though SEEK_HOLE)
    - This also applies to mv and install.

  - utilities are more tuned to the hardware available
    - wc uses avx2 instructions to count lines
    - cksum uses pclmul instructions for --algorithm=crc

  - More amalgamation of utilities
    - cksum now supports the -a option to select any digest.
    - This is the preferred interface, rather than sha*sum etc.
    - This is similar to the amalgamation of encoding utilities
      introduced in the basenc command in v8.31.
See the NEWS below for more details.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
There have been 257 commits by 25 people in the 81 weeks since 8.32
  Andreas Schwab (1)              KOBAYASHI Takashi (2)
  Arman Absalan (1)               Kamil Dudka (4)
  Assaf Gordon (1)                Kristoffer Brånemyr (3)
  Ben Pfaff (1)                   Nikolay Nechaev (1)
  Benno Schulenberg (1)           Nishant Nayan (1)
  Bernhard Voelker (17)           Paul Eggert (97)
  Carl Edquist (2)                Pádraig Brady (110)
  Emanuele Giacomelli (1)         Tianjia Zhang (1)
  Erik Auerswald (1)              Tim Gates (1)
  Grigorii Sokolik (2)            Tobias Stoeckmann (1)
  Jason Kim (1)                   Zorro Lang (1)
  Jim Meyering (7)                nl6720 (1)
  Justin Tracey (1)

Pádraig [on behalf of the coreutils maintainers]

==================================================================

Here is the GNU coreutils home page:
   https://gnu.org/software/coreutils/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
   https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v9.0
or run this command from a git-cloned coreutils directory:
   git shortlog v8.32..v9.0

To summarize the 1615 gnulib-related changes, run these commands
from a git-cloned coreutils directory:
   git checkout v9.0
   git submodule summary v8.32

==================================================================


Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.gz   (14MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.xz   (5.4MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.gz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.0.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

027a318930f295cb5bbc0dd06fb47a3b8552fc80  coreutils-9.0.tar.gz
b9TriKUVAEl3/HLX9HtAYgQJzEHfrwBBn90b4XZjxDQ  coreutils-9.0.tar.gz
e2623469f37259d4a89ced5f91af5eaf0ab8792d  coreutils-9.0.tar.xz
zjCs30pBvFuzDdlV6eqnX6IWtOPesIiJ7TJDPHs7l84  coreutils-9.0.tar.xz

The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify coreutils-9.0.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys DF6FD971306037D9

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.71
  Automake 1.16.4
  Gnulib v0.1-4937-g9aca7b673
  Bison 3.7.4

==================================================================

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 9.0 (2021-09-24) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  chmod -v no longer misreports modes of dangling symlinks.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]

  cp -a --attributes-only now never removes destination files,
  even if the destination files are hardlinked, or the source
  is a non regular file.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]

  csplit --suppress-matched now elides the last matched line
  when a specific number of pattern matches are performed.
  [bug introduced with the --suppress-matched feature in coreutils-8.22]

  df no longer outputs duplicate remote mounts in the presence of bind mounts.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.26]

  df no longer mishandles command-line args that it pre-mounts
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.29]

  du no longer crashes on XFS file systems when the directory hierarchy is
  heavily changed during the run.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.25]

  env -S no longer crashes when given unusual whitespace characters
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.30]

  expr no longer mishandles unmatched \(...\) in regular expressions.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]

  ls no longer crashes when printing the SELinux context for unstatable files.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.91]

  mkdir -m no longer mishandles modes more generous than the umask.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.22]

  nl now handles single character --section-delimiter arguments,
  by assuming a second ':' character has been specified, as specified by POSIX.
  [This bug was present in "the beginning".]

  pr again adjusts tabs in input, to maintain alignment in multi column output.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]

  rm no longer skips an extra file when the removal of an empty directory fails.
  [bug introduced by the rewrite to use fts in coreutils-8.0]

  split --number=K/N will again correctly split chunk K of N to stdout.
  Previously a chunk starting after 128KiB, output the wrong part of the file.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.26]

  tail -f no longer overruns a stack buffer when given too many files
  to follow and ulimit -n exceeds 1024.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]

  tr no longer crashes when using --complement with certain
  invalid combinations of case character classes.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]

  basenc --base64 --decode no longer silently discards decoded characters
  on (1024*5) buffer boundaries
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.31]

** Changes in behavior

  cp and install now default to copy-on-write (COW) if available.

  cp, install and mv now use the copy_file_range syscall if available.
  Also, they use lseek+SEEK_HOLE rather than ioctl+FS_IOC_FIEMAP on sparse
  files, as lseek is simpler and more portable.

  On GNU/Linux systems, ls no longer issues an error message on a
  directory merely because it was removed.  This reverts a change
  that was made in release 8.32.

  ptx -T no longer attempts to substitute old-fashioned TeX escapes
  for 8-bit non-ASCII alphabetic characters.  TeX indexes should
  instead use '\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}' or equivalent.

  stat will use decomposed (major,minor) device numbers in its default format.
  This is less ambiguous, and more consistent with ls.

  sum [-r] will output a file name, even if only a single name is passed.
  This is consistent with sum -s, cksum, and other sum(1) implementations.

** New Features

  cksum now supports the -a (--algorithm) option to select any
  of the existing sum, md5sum, b2sum, sha*sum implementations etc.
  cksum now subsumes all of these programs, and coreutils
  will introduce no future standalone checksum utility.

  cksum -a now supports the 'sm3' argument, to use the SM3 digest algorithm.

  cksum --check now supports auto detecting the digest type to use,
  when verifying tagged format checksums.

  expr and factor now support bignums on all platforms.

  ls --classify now supports the "always", "auto", or "never" flags,
  to support only outputting classifier characters if connected to a tty.

  ls now accepts the --sort=width option, to sort by file name width.
  This is useful to more compactly organize the default vertical column output.

  ls now accepts the --zero option, to terminate each output line with
  NUL instead of newline.

  nl --line-increment can now take a negative number to decrement the count.

  stat supports more formats for representing decomposed device numbers.
  %Hd,%Ld and %Hr,%Lr will output major,minor device numbers and device types
  respectively.  %d corresponds to st_dev and %r to std_rdev.

** Improvements

  cat --show-ends will now show \r\n as ^M$.  Previously the \r was taken
  literally, thus overwriting the first character in the line with '$'.

  cksum [-a crc] is now up to 4 times faster by using a slice by 8 algorithm,
  and at least 8 times faster where pclmul instructions are supported.
  A new --debug option will indicate if pclmul is being used.

  md5sum --check now supports checksum files with CRLF line endings.
  This also applies to cksum, sha*sum, and b2sum.

  df now recognizes these file systems as remote:
  acfs, coda, fhgfs, gpfs, ibrix, ocfs2, and vxfs.

  rmdir now clarifies the error if a symlink_to_dir/ has not been traversed.
  This is the case on GNU/Linux systems, where the trailing slash is ignored.

  stat and tail now know about the "devmem", "exfat", "secretmem", "vboxsf",
  and "zonefs" file system types.  stat -f -c%T now reports the file system
  type, and tail -f uses polling for "vboxsf" and inotify for the others.

  timeout now supports sub-second timeouts on macOS.

  wc is up to 5 times faster when counting only new line characters,
  where avx2 instructions are supported.
  A new --debug option will indicate if avx2 is being used.

GNU Parallel 20210922 ('Vindelev') [stable] has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

No new functionality was introduced so this is a good candidate for a
stable release.

Quote of the month:

  Take a look at GNU Parallel. It’s magnificent.
    -- Siira@ycombinator.com

New in this release:

• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• 3 Programs that will Level Up your Bash Game https://medium.com/codex/3-programs-that-will-level-up-your-bash-game-bf14e17e2291
• I Summarized 100+ Command-Line Tools for Data Scientists in 15 Minutes https://towardsdatascience.com/i-summarized-100-command-line-tools-for-data-scientists-in-15-minutes-976def544ffe
• Speed up Your Builds by Parallelizing https://www.incredibuild.com/blog/speed-up-your-builds-by-parallelizing
• Bash: GNU Parallel with Curl https://gist.github.com/dinh/93b936a55de9a331199d6582bc2921d2

Get the book: GNU Parallel 2018 http://www.lulu.com/shop/ole-tange/gnu-parallel-2018/paperback/product-23558902.html

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep c82233e7da3166308632ac8c34f850c0
    12345678 c82233e7 da316630 8632ac8c 34f850c0
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep ae3d7aac5e15cf3dfc87046cfc5918d2
    ae3d7aac 5e15cf3d fc87046c fc5918d2
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep dfc00d823137271a6d96225cea9e89f533ff6c81f
    9c5198d5 31a3b755 b7910ece 3a42d206 c804694d fc00d823 137271a6 d96225ce
    a9e89f53 3ff6c81f f52b298b ef9fb613 2d3f9ccd 0e2c7bd3 c35978b5 79acb5ca
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

Happy Software Freedom Day! Today we're pleased to announce the release of MediaGoblin 0.12.0. See the release notes for full details and upgrading instructions.

This release resolves two significant issues in the Celery backend media processing. The first was causing processed media to be marked as failed and the second was inhibiting useful error messages. We've also resolved installation issues caused by deprecated upstream code in the Werkzeug and jsonschema libraries.

We've added provisional gmg serve and gmg celery commands to simplify deployment. These commands may change in the future and are not yet recommended in the deployment documentation. If your deployment is already running smoothly, there's no reason to switch at this stage.

Thanks to Rodrigo Martins, Marco Pessotto and Jgart for their contributions in this release. Thanks again to Charlotte for allowing us to feature her artwork.

To join us and help improve MediaGoblin, please visit our getting involved page.

14 September 2021 Unifont 14.0.01 is now available.  This adds glyphs for all new ranges in Unicode 14.0.0 Plane 0 and Plane 1.  See http://unifoundry.com/unifont/ for further details.

Download this release from GNU server mirrors at:

     https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/unifont/unifont-14.0.01/

or if that fails,

     https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-14.0.01/

or, as a last resort,

     ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-14.0.01/

These files are also available on the unifoundry.com website:

     https://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-14.0.01/

Font files are in the subdirectory

     https://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-14.0.01/font-builds/

I'm very pleased to announce the release of Bison 3.8(.1), whose main
novelty is the D backend for deterministic parsers, contributed by
Adela Vais.  It supports all the bells and whistles of Bison's other
deterministic parsers, which include: pull/push interfaces, verbose
and custom error messages, lookahead correction, LALR(1), IELR(1),
canonical LR(1), token constructors, internationalization, locations,
printers, token and symbol prefixes, and more.

There are several other notable changes.  Please see the detailed NEWS
below for more details.

Cheers!

==================================================================

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.8.1.tar.gz   (6.1MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.8.1.tar.lz   (3.1MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.8.1.tar.xz   (3.1MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.8.1.tar.gz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.8.1.tar.lz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.8.1.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

79e97c868475c0e20286d62021f2a7cfd20610f7  bison-3.8.1.tar.gz
zjGKRxlhVft8JpErUTEC89DhR1fC5JXjRgh1e2EznFw  bison-3.8.1.tar.gz
e7fe4142c22ac5353ec4416652a56e9da951ffa5  bison-3.8.1.tar.lz
AJ2nWoBj4aO9IVRrN+UkISBWiR/CySr6EanzlphoIbg  bison-3.8.1.tar.lz
9772ea3130d6cbddaefe29a659698775a5701394  bison-3.8.1.tar.xz
MfxgJIiq1r3s8MzFVuD8cvxXzcWVz5I5jwIODPSYDxU  bison-3.8.1.tar.xz

The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify bison-3.8.1.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 0DDCAA3278D5264E

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.71
  Automake 1.16b
  Flex 2.6.4
  Gettext 0.20.1.153-6c39c
  Gnulib v0.1-4853-g964ce0a92

==================================================================

GNU Bison is a general-purpose parser generator that converts an annotated
context-free grammar into a deterministic LR or generalized LR (GLR) parser
employing LALR(1) parser tables.  Bison can also generate IELR(1) or
canonical LR(1) parser tables.  Once you are proficient with Bison, you can
use it to develop a wide range of language parsers, from those used in
simple desk calculators to complex programming languages.

Bison is upward compatible with Yacc: all properly-written Yacc grammars
work with Bison with no change.  Anyone familiar with Yacc should be able to
use Bison with little trouble.  You need to be fluent in C, C++, D or Java
programming in order to use Bison.

Bison and the parsers it generates are portable, they do not require any
specific compilers.

GNU Bison's home page is https://gnu.org/software/bison/.

==================================================================

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 3.8.1 (2021-09-11) [stable]

  The generation of prototypes for yylex and yyerror in Yacc mode is
  breaking existing grammar files.  To avoid breaking too many grammars, the
  prototypes are now generated when `-y/--yacc` is used *and* the
  `POSIXLY_CORRECT` environment variable is defined.

  Avoid using `-y`/`--yacc` simply to comply with Yacc's file name
  conventions, rather, use `-o y.tab.c`.  Autoconf's AC_PROG_YACC macro uses
  `-y`.  Avoid it if possible, for instance by using gnulib's gl_PROG_BISON.


* Noteworthy changes in release 3.8 (2021-09-07) [stable]

** Backward incompatible changes

  In conformance with the recommendations of the Graphviz team
  (https://marc.info/?l=graphviz-devel&m=129418103126092), `-g`/`--graph`
  now generates a *.gv file by default, instead of *.dot.  A transition
  started in Bison 3.4.

  To comply with the latest POSIX standard, in Yacc compatibility mode
  (options `-y`/`--yacc`) Bison now generates prototypes for yyerror and
  yylex.  In some situations, this is breaking compatibility: if the user
  has already declared these functions but with some differences (e.g., to
  declare them as static, or to use specific attributes), the generated
  parser will fail to compile.  To disable these prototypes, #define yyerror
  (to `yyerror`), and likewise for yylex.

** Deprecated features

  Support for the YYPRINT macro is removed. It worked only with yacc.c and
  only for tokens.  It was obsoleted by %printer, introduced in Bison 1.50
  (November 2002).

  It has always been recommended to prefer `%define api.value.type foo` to
  `#define YYSTYPE foo`.  The latter is supported in C for compatibility
  with Yacc, but not in C++.  Warnings are now issued if `#define YYSTYPE`
  is used in C++, and eventually support will be removed.

  In C++ code, prefer value_type to semantic_type to denote the semantic
  value type, which is specified by the `api.value.type` %define variable.

** New features

*** A skeleton for the D programming language

  The "lalr1.d" skeleton is now officially part of Bison.

  It was originally contributed by Oliver Mangold, based on Paolo Bonzini's
  lalr1.java, and was improved by H. S. Teoh.  Adela Vais then took over
  maintenance and invested a lot of efforts to complete, test and document
  it.

  It now supports all the bells and whistles of the other deterministic
  parsers, which include: pull/push interfaces, verbose and custom error
  messages, lookahead correction, token constructors, internationalization,
  locations, printers, token and symbol prefixes, etc.

  Two examples demonstrate the D parsers: a basic one (examples/d/simple),
  and an advanced one (examples/d/calc).

*** Option -H, --header and directive %header

  The option `-H`/`--header` supersedes the option `--defines`, and the
  directive %header supersedes %defines.  Both `--defines` and `%defines`
  are, of course, maintained for backward compatibility.

*** Option --html

  Since version 2.4 Bison can be used to generate HTML reports.  However it
  was a two-step process: first bison must be invoked with option `--xml`,
  and then xsltproc must be run to the convert the XML reports into HTML.

  The new option `--html` combines these steps.  The xsltproc program must
  be available.

*** A C++ native GLR parser

  A new version of the C++ GLR parser was added: "glr2.cc".  It generates
  "true C++11", instead of a C++ wrapper around a C parser as does the
  existing "glr.cc" parser.  As a first significant consequence, it supports
  `%define api.value.type variant`, contrary to glr.cc.

  It should be upward compatible in terms of interface, feature and
  performance to "glr.cc". To try it out, simply use

  %skeleton "glr2.cc"

  It will eventually replace "glr.cc".  However we need user feedback on
  this skeleton.  _Please_ report your results and comments about it.

*** Counterexamples

  Counterexamples now show the rule numbers, and always show ε for rules
  with an empty right-hand side.  For instance

    exp
    ↳ 1: e1       e2     "a"
         ↳ 3: ε • ↳ 1: ε

  instead of

    exp
    ↳ e1  e2  "a"
      ↳ • ↳ ε

*** Lookahead correction in Java

  The Java skeleton (lalr1.java) now supports LAC, via the `parse.lac`
  %define variable.

*** Abort parsing for memory exhaustion (C)

  User actions may now use `YYNOMEM` (similar to `YYACCEPT` and `YYABORT`)
  to abort the current parse with memory exhaustion.

*** Printing locations in debug traces (C)

  The `YYLOCATION_PRINT(File, Loc)` macro prints a location.  It is defined
  when (i) locations are enabled, (ii) the default type for locations is
  used, (iii) debug traces are enabled, and (iv) `YYLOCATION_PRINT` is not
  already defined.

  Users may define `YYLOCATION_PRINT` to cover other cases.

*** GLR traces

  There were no debug traces for deferred calls to user actions.  They are
  logged now.

This is to announce gzip-1.11, a stable release.

There have been 43 commits by 5 people in the 2.7(!) years since 1.10.

See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Bjarni Ingi Gislason (1)
  Dmitry V. Levin (1)
  Ilya Leoshkevich (8)
  Jim Meyering (20)
  Paul Eggert (13)

Jim [on behalf of the gzip maintainers]
==================================================================

Here is the GNU gzip home page:
    http://gnu.org/s/gzip/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gzip.git;a=shortlog;h=v1.11
or run this command from a git-cloned gzip directory:
  git shortlog v1.10..v1.11

To summarize the 2581 gnulib-related changes, run these commands
from a git-cloned gzip directory:
  git checkout v1.11
  git submodule summary v1.10

==================================================================
Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.11.tar.gz   (1.2MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.11.tar.xz   (788KB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.11.tar.gz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gzip/gzip-1.11.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:
  ee2d3f44d8b370db7090b4c3250132cd62b38ec6  gzip-1.11.tar.gz
  PooODEW60wCTQdzhfXFTbExlXZMTA5AhznVUomzVDtk  gzip-1.11.tar.gz
  adf4964893a45a211a888f8943c939f2794d86d4  gzip-1.11.tar.xz
  m5qV1o/cuTaEmk1vrai/hobN31i5smycQontDJKneQc  gzip-1.11.tar.xz

The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify gzip-1.11.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.71
  Automake 1.16d
  Gnulib v0.1-4886-g93280a4bd

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 1.11 (2021-09-03) [stable]

** Performance improvements

  IBM Z platforms now support hardware-accelerated deflation.

Version 1.21 is available for download.  This version introduces an important new feature: Crash tolerance, brought to gdbm by Terence Kelly.

Dear community

I am pleased to announce the maintanance release 1.0.4 from MyGNUHealth, the GNUHealth Personal Health Record.

It fixes plotting issues when matplotlib uses unsorted records or dup batch inputs.

You can see the Changelog at GNU Savannah mercurial server.

The package is at GNU.org, the Python Package Index (PyPi) and different GNU/Linux distributions.

Happy and healthy hacking!
Luis

--
Dr. Luis Falcon, MD, MSc
President, GNU Solidario
Advancing Social Medicine
http://www.gnuhealth.org

GNU Parallel 20210822 ('Kabul') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

  Safe to say, @GnuParallel was a life changer during my PhD! It helped
  me optimise so many of my tasks and analyses.
    -- Parice Brandies @PariceBrandies@twitter

New in this release:

• --ctag/--ctagstring colors the tag in different colors for each job.
• You can use unit prefixes (k, m, g, etc) with -n -N -L.
• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• Parallelising jobs with GNU parallel https://blog.ronin.cloud/gnu-parallel/
• Use multiple CPU Cores with your Linux commands - awk, sed, bzip2, grep, wc, etc. https://cdmana.com/2021/07/20210728132344693t.html
• How to execute commands in parallel in Linux https://net2.com/how-to-execute-commands-in-parallel-in-linux/

Get the book: GNU Parallel 2018 http://www.lulu.com/shop/ole-tange/gnu-parallel-2018/paperback/product-23558902.html

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep c82233e7da3166308632ac8c34f850c0
    12345678 c82233e7 da316630 8632ac8c 34f850c0
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep ae3d7aac5e15cf3dfc87046cfc5918d2
    ae3d7aac 5e15cf3d fc87046c fc5918d2
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep dfc00d823137271a6d96225cea9e89f533ff6c81f
    9c5198d5 31a3b755 b7910ece 3a42d206 c804694d fc00d823 137271a6 d96225ce
    a9e89f53 3ff6c81f f52b298b ef9fb613 2d3f9ccd 0e2c7bd3 c35978b5 79acb5ca
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

Yesterday, yet another devastating earthquake hit the southern area of Haiti.

Immediately knowing about the earthquake, we contacted our representative in Haiti, Pierre Michel Augustin, and started an emergency humanitarian response in coordination with our team in the country .

Haiti suffers from recurrent natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes). In the last years, Haiti has also been a victim of structural poverty and civil unrest. Haitians are strong, resilient, noble people. Haiti is the land of the free and the brave (see my post “My trip to Haiti, the land of the Free and the Brave” ), yet it seems like the world has forgotten about Haiti.

GNU Solidario emergency response campaign in Haiti: https://www.gnusolidario.org/haiti.html

We need emergency response now, but we also need to work on Social Medicine, and tackle the socioeconomic determinants that are the root cause of the structural poverty in Haiti. Only then, our Haitians brothers and sisters will be able to recover the dignity that they deserve, and grow in prosperity. We need to create the conditions, working the local community in the country to strengthen the public health and education system. GNU Health is part of this program.

Our local representative, engineer Pierre Michel Augustin, has been working in the localization of GNU Health, and by the end of 2021, we will have the GNU Health node fully operational in Limbé. The Haiti GNU Health office will provide training and support to the local and regional health professionals and institutions.

Natural disasters have a profound impact in the short, medium and long period in any nation. The situation gets much worse when they hit impoverished nations. So, in the short term, we will put all the effort to tackle this emergency and save lives. For the medium and long term, we will continue the GNU Health node in Haiti and building the GNU Health Federation in the country, in cooperation with the local team, academic and health institutions.

Creating local capacity is key to make the project sustainable. Resources will be dedicated to build the infrastructure (hardware, network..), but the main focus and effort will be on building local capacity, and training the local team to make them independent and build a sustainable and ethical model.

In the end, technology is just a medium, and GNU Health is a social project that uses really cool Free/Libre technology and open science, for the betterment of our societies.

Please consider helping GNU Solidario humanitarian campaign in Haiti, by visiting the following link:

https://www.gnusolidario.org/haiti.html

About GNU Solidario:

GNU Solidario is a non-profit humanitarian organization focused on Social Medicine. We have missions around the globe, and our projects has been adopted by health institutions, multilateral organizations and national public health systems around the world.

GNU Solidario is the organization behind GNU Health, the award winning Free / Libre digital health ecosystem, that provides a Hospital Management System, a Lab Information System, a Personal Health Record and a distributed, Federated health network.

GNU Health is a GNU official project ( see www.gnu.org), licensed under the GNU General Public License, GPL v3+

This is to announce grep-3.7, a stable release.

There have been 33 commits by 6 people in the 40 weeks since 3.6.

See the NEWS below for a brief summary.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Helge Kreutzmann (1)
  Jim Meyering (15)
  Kevin Locke (2)
  Marek Suppa (1)
  Mateusz Okulus (1)
  Paul Eggert (13)

There were also 855 changes via the gnulib submodule.
==================================================================
Here is the GNU grep home page:
    http://gnu.org/s/grep/

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.7.tar.gz   (2.6MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.7.tar.xz   (1.6MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures[*]:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.7.tar.gz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grep/grep-3.7.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

5359ea0105cedfa21a63c89b22e0d7b41b016a40  grep-3.7.tar.gz
wisM8tT2u+WZyQI4foBYmQ4e7pmu8zOiA4KeX9Pbs0I  grep-3.7.tar.gz
4d56da85e468e4012c81533a22052014a4c98b17  grep-3.7.tar.xz
XBDaMSRgrschmE1dgyRtJFIOxDjdSNerWgXbwNbWgjw  grep-3.7.tar.xz

The SHA256 checksum is base64 encoded, instead of the
hexadecimal encoding that most checksum tools default to.

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify grep-3.7.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.71
  Automake 1.16d
  Gnulib v0.1-4847-g1cb09be022

===============================
NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 3.7 (2021-08-14) [stable]

** Changes in behavior

  Use of the --unix-byte-offsets (-u) option now evokes a warning.
  Since 3.1, this Windows-only option has had no effect.

** Bug fixes

  Preprocessing N patterns would take at least O(N^2) time when too many
  patterns hashed to too few buckets. This now takes seconds, not days:
  : | grep -Ff <(seq 6400000 | tr 0-9 A-J)
  [Bug#44754 introduced in grep 3.5]

Last year Arch integrated the features from the TalkingArch project into archiso and some months ago they added an installer into their installation medium. As a result, and with some delay, TalkingParabola was deprecated and we added these features to our ISOs too. They are available in out download page as well.

Note that although the OpenRC LXDE ISO has the speech boot option, this only works for CLI. Screen reader support will be added in the future for the GUI and the current installer will be replaced with one based in Zen Installer.

Version 3.13 of GNU mailutils is [https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mailutils/mailutils-3.13.tar.gz available for download.

New in this version:

• Improved mailbox locking.
• Changes in the 'locking' configuration statement.
• Important changes in mail utility.

It was one of these days where some of us on IRC were rehashing that old problem—that application startup in Guix causes a “stat storm”—and lamenting the lack of a solution when suddenly, Ricardo proposes what, in hindsight, looks like an obvious solution: “maybe we could use a per-application ld cache?”. A moment where collective thinking exceeds the sum of our individual thoughts. The result is one of the many features that made it in the core-updates branch, slated to be merged in the coming weeks, one that reduces application startup time.

ELF files and their dependencies

Before going into detail, let’s look at what those “stat storms” look like and where they come from. Loading an ELF executable involves loading the shared libraries (the .so files, for “shared objects”) it depends on, recursively. This is the job of the loader (or dynamic linker), ld.so, which is part of the GNU C Library (glibc) package. What shared libraries an executable like that of Emacs depends on? The ldd command answers that question:

$ ldd $(type -P .emacs-27.2-real)
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff565bb000)
        libtiff.so.5 => /gnu/store/l1wwr5c34593gqxvp34qbwdkaf7xhdbd-libtiff-4.2.0/lib/libtiff.so.5 (0x00007fd5aa2b1000)
        libjpeg.so.62 => /gnu/store/5khkwz9g6vza1n4z8xlmdrwhazz7m8wp-libjpeg-turbo-2.0.5/lib/libjpeg.so.62 (0x00007fd5aa219000)
        libpng16.so.16 => /gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/libpng16.so.16 (0x00007fd5aa1e4000)
        libz.so.1 => /gnu/store/rykm237xkmq7rl1p0nwass01p090p88x-zlib-1.2.11/lib/libz.so.1 (0x00007fd5aa1c2000)
        libgif.so.7 => /gnu/store/bpw826hypzlnl4gr6d0v8m63dd0k8waw-giflib-5.2.1/lib/libgif.so.7 (0x00007fd5aa1b8000)
        libXpm.so.4 => /gnu/store/jgdsl6whyimkz4hxsp2vrl77338kpl0i-libxpm-3.5.13/lib/libXpm.so.4 (0x00007fd5aa1a4000)
[…]
$ ldd $(type -P .emacs-27.2-real) | wc -l
89

(If you’re wondering why we’re looking at .emacs-27.2-real rather than emacs-27.2, it’s because in Guix the latter is a tiny shell wrapper around the former.)

To load a graphical program like Emacs, the loader needs to load more than 80 shared libraries! Each is in its own /gnu/store sub-directory in Guix, one directory per package.

But how does ld.so know where to find these libraries in the first place? In Guix, during the link phase that produces an ELF file (executable or shared library), we tell the linker to populate the RUNPATH entry of the ELF file with the list of directories where its dependencies may be found. This is done by passing -rpath options to the linker, which Guix’s “linker wrapper” takes care of. The RUNPATH is the run-time library search path: it’s a colon-separated list of directories where ld.so will look for shared libraries when it loads an ELF file. We can look at the RUNPATH of our Emacs executable like this:

$ objdump -x $(type -P .emacs-27.2-real) | grep RUNPATH
  RUNPATH              /gnu/store/fa6wj5bxkj5ll1d7292a70knmyl7a0cr-glibc-2.31/lib:/gnu/store/01b4w3m6mp55y531kyi1g8shh722kwqm-gcc-7.5.0-lib/lib:/gnu/store/l1wwr5c34593gqxvp34qbwdkaf7xhdbd-libtiff-4.2.0/lib:/gnu/store/5khkwz9g6vza1n4z8xlmdrwhazz7m8wp-libjpeg-turbo-2.0.5/lib:[…]

This RUNPATH has 39 entries, which roughly corresponds to the number of direct dependencies of the executable—dependencies are listed as NEEDED entries in the ELF file:

$ objdump -x $(type -P .emacs-27.2-real) | grep NEED | head
  NEEDED               libtiff.so.5
  NEEDED               libjpeg.so.62
  NEEDED               libpng16.so.16
  NEEDED               libz.so.1
  NEEDED               libgif.so.7
  NEEDED               libXpm.so.4
  NEEDED               libgtk-3.so.0
  NEEDED               libgdk-3.so.0
  NEEDED               libpangocairo-1.0.so.0
  NEEDED               libpango-1.0.so.0
$ objdump -x $(type -P .emacs-27.2-real) | grep NEED | wc -l
52

(Some of these .so files live in the same directory, which is why there are more NEEDED entries than directories in the RUNPATH.)

A system such as Debian that follows the file system hierarchy standard (FHS), where all libraries are in /lib or /usr/lib, does not have to bother with RUNPATH: all .so files are known to be found in one of these two “standard” locations. Anyway, let’s get back to our initial topic: the “stat storm”.

Walking search paths

As you can guess, when we run Emacs, the loader first needs to locate and load the 80+ shared libraries it depends on. That’s where things get pretty inefficient: the loader will search each .so file Emacs depends on in one of the 39 directories listed in its RUNPATH. Likewise, when it finally finds libgtk-3.so, it’ll look for its dependencies in each of the directories in its RUNPATH. We can see that at play by tracing system calls with the strace command:

$ strace -c emacs --version
GNU Emacs 27.2
Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of GNU Emacs
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.
% time     seconds  usecs/call     calls    errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
 55.46    0.006629           3      1851      1742 openat
 16.06    0.001919           4       422           mmap
 11.46    0.001370           2       501       477 stat
  4.79    0.000573           4       122           mprotect
  3.84    0.000459           4       111           read
  2.45    0.000293           2       109           fstat
  2.34    0.000280           2       111           close
[…]
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00    0.011952           3      3325      2227 total

For this simple emacs --version command, the loader and emacs probed for more than 2,200 files, with the openat and stat system calls, and most of these probes were unsuccessful (counted as “errors” here, meaning that the call returned an error). The fraction of “erroneous” system calls is no less than 67% (2,227 over 3,325). We can see the desperate search of .so files by looking at individual calls:

$ strace -e openat,stat emacs --version
[…]
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/fa6wj5bxkj5ll1d7292a70knmyl7a0cr-glibc-2.31/lib/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/01b4w3m6mp55y531kyi1g8shh722kwqm-gcc-7.5.0-lib/lib/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/l1wwr5c34593gqxvp34qbwdkaf7xhdbd-libtiff-4.2.0/lib/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/5khkwz9g6vza1n4z8xlmdrwhazz7m8wp-libjpeg-turbo-2.0.5/lib/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls/haswell/x86_64/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls/haswell/x86_64", 0x7ffe428a1c70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls/haswell/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls/haswell", 0x7ffe428a1c70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls/x86_64/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls/x86_64", 0x7ffe428a1c70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/tls", 0x7ffe428a1c70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/haswell/x86_64/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/haswell/x86_64", 0x7ffe428a1c70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/haswell/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/haswell", 0x7ffe428a1c70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/x86_64/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
stat("/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/x86_64", 0x7ffe428a1c70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/gnu/store/3x2kak8abb6z2klch72kfff2qxzv00pj-libpng-1.6.37/lib/libpng16.so.16", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
[…]

Above is the sequence where we see ld.so look for libpng16.so.16, searching in locations where we know it’s not going to find it. A bit ridiculous. How does this affect performance? The impact is small in the most favorable case—on a hot cache, with fast solid state device (SSD) storage. But it likely has a visible effect in other cases—on a cold cache, with a slower spinning hard disk drive (HDD), on a network file system (NFS).

Enter the per-package loader cache

The idea that Ricardo submitted, using a loader cache, makes a lot of sense: we know from the start that libpng.so may only be found in /gnu/store/…-libpng-1.6.37, no need to look elsewhere. In fact, it’s not new: glibc has had such a cache “forever”; it’s the /etc/ld.so.cache file you can see on FHS distros and which is typically created by running ldconfig when a package has been installed. Roughly, the cache maps library SONAMEs, such as libpng16.so.16, to their file name on disk, say /usr/lib/libpng16.so.16.

The problem is that this cache is inherently system-wide: it assumes that there is only one libpng16.so on the system; any binary that depends on libpng16.so will load it from its one and only location. This models perfectly matches the FHS, but it’s at odds with the flexibility offered by Guix, where several variants or versions of the library can coexist on the system, used by different applications. That’s the reason why Guix and other non-FHS distros such as NixOS or GoboLinux typically turn off that feature altogether… and pay the cost of those stat storms.

The insight we gained on that Tuesday evening IRC conversation is that we could adapt glibc’s loader cache to our setting: instead of a system-wide cache, we’d have a per-application loader cache. As one of the last package build phases, we’d run ldconfig to create etc/ld.so.cache within that package’s /gnu/store sub-directory. We then need to modify the loader so it would look for ${ORIGIN}/../etc/ld.so.cache instead of /etc/ld.so.cache, where ${ORIGIN} is the location of the ELF file being loaded. A discussion of these changes is in the issue tracker; you can see the glibc patch and the new make-dynamic-linker-cache build phase. In short, the make-dynamic-linker-cache phase computes the set of direct and indirect dependencies of an ELF file using the file-needed/recursive procedure and derives from that the library search path, creates a temporary ld.so.conf file containing this search path for use by ldconfig, and finally runs ldconfig to actually build the cache.

How does this play out in practice? Let’s try an emacs build that uses this new loader cache:

$ strace -c /gnu/store/ijgcbf790z4x2mkjx2ha893hhmqrj29j-emacs-27.2/bin/emacs --version
GNU Emacs 27.2
Copyright (C) 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of GNU Emacs
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.
% time     seconds  usecs/call     calls    errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
 28.68    0.002909          26       110        13 openat
 25.13    0.002549          26        96           read
 20.41    0.002070           4       418           mmap
  9.34    0.000947          10        90           pread64
  6.60    0.000669           5       123           mprotect
  4.12    0.000418           3       107         1 newfstatat
  2.19    0.000222           2        99           close
[…]
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00    0.010144           8      1128        24 total

Compared to what we have above, the total number of system calls has been divided by 3, and the fraction of erroneous system calls goes from 67% to 0.2%. Quite a difference! We count on you, dear users, to let us know how this impacts load time for you.

Flexibility without stat storms

With GNU Stow in the 1990s, and then Nix, Guix, and other distros, the benefits of flexible file layouts rather than the rigid Unix-inherited FHS have been demonstrated—nowadays I see it as an antidote to opaque and bloated application bundles à la Docker. Luckily, few of our system tools have FHS assumptions baked in, probably in large part thanks to GNU’s insistence on a rigorous installation directory categorization in the early days rather than hard-coded directory names. The loader cache is one of the few exceptions. Adapting it to a non-FHS context is fruitful for Guix and for the other distros and packaging tools in a similar situation; perhaps it could become an option in glibc proper?

This is not the end of stat storms, though. Interpreters and language run-time systems rely on search paths—GUILE_LOAD_PATH for Guile, PYTHONPATH for Python, OCAMLPATH for OCaml, etc.—and are equally prone to stormy application startups. Unlike ELF, they do not have a mechanism akin to RUNPATH, let alone a run-time search path cache. We have yet to find ways to address these.

About GNU Guix

GNU Guix is a transactional package manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user freedom. Guix can be used on top of any system running the Hurd or the Linux kernel, or it can be used as a standalone operating system distribution for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, AArch64 and POWER9 machines.

In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a standalone GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative, stateless approach to operating system configuration management. Guix is highly customizable and hackable through Guile programming interfaces and extensions to the Scheme language.

The GNU C Library
=================

The GNU C Library version 2.34 is now available.

The GNU C Library is used as the C library in the GNU system and
in GNU/Linux systems, as well as many other systems that use Linux
as the kernel.

The GNU C Library is primarily designed to be a portable
and high performance C library.  It follows all relevant
standards including ISO C11 and POSIX.1-2017.  It is also
internationalized and has one of the most complete
internationalization interfaces known.

The GNU C Library webpage is at http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/

Packages for the 2.34 release may be downloaded from:
        http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/libc/
        http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libc/

The mirror list is at http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

NEWS for version 2.34
=====================

Major new features:

• In order to support smoother in-place-upgrades and to simplify

  the implementation of the runtime all functionality formerly
  implemented in the libraries libpthread, libdl, libutil, libanl has
  been integrated into libc.  New applications do not need to link with
  -lpthread, -ldl, -lutil, -lanl anymore.  For backwards compatibility,
  empty static archives libpthread.a, libdl.a, libutil.a, libanl.a are
  provided, so that the linker options keep working.  Applications which
  have been linked against glibc 2.33 or earlier continue to load the
  corresponding shared objects (which are now empty).  The integration
  of those libraries into libc means that additional symbols become
  available by default.  This can cause applications that contain weak
  references to take unexpected code paths that would only have been
  used in previous glibc versions when e.g. preloading libpthread.so.0,
  potentially exposing application bugs.

• When _DYNAMIC_STACK_SIZE_SOURCE or _GNU_SOURCE are defined,

  PTHREAD_STACK_MIN is no longer constant and is redefined to
  sysconf(_SC_THREAD_STACK_MIN).  This supports dynamic sized register
  sets for modern architectural features like Arm SVE.

• Add _SC_MINSIGSTKSZ and _SC_SIGSTKSZ.  When _DYNAMIC_STACK_SIZE_SOURCE

  or _GNU_SOURCE are defined, MINSIGSTKSZ and SIGSTKSZ are no longer
  constant on Linux.  MINSIGSTKSZ is redefined to sysconf(_SC_MINSIGSTKSZ)
  and SIGSTKSZ is redefined to sysconf (_SC_SIGSTKSZ).  This supports
  dynamic sized register sets for modern architectural features like
  Arm SVE.

• The dynamic linker implements the --list-diagnostics option, printing

  a dump of information related to IFUNC resolver operation and
  glibc-hwcaps subdirectory selection.

• On Linux, the function execveat has been added.  It operates similar to

  execve and it is is already used to implement fexecve without requiring
  /proc to be mounted.  However, different than fexecve, if the syscall is not
  supported by the kernel an error is returned instead of trying a fallback.

• The ISO C2X function timespec_getres has been added.

• The feature test macro _STDC_WANT_IEC_60559_EXT_, from draft ISO

  C2X, is supported to enable declarations of functions defined in Annex F
  of C2X.  Those declarations are also enabled when
  _STDC_WANT_IEC_60559_BFP_EXT_, as specified in TS 18661-1, is
  defined, and when _GNU_SOURCE is defined.

• On powerpc64*, glibc can now be compiled without scv support using the

  --disable-scv configure option.

• Add support for 64-bit time_t on configurations like x86 where time_t

  is traditionally 32-bit.  Although time_t still defaults to 32-bit on
  these configurations, this default may change in future versions.
  This is enabled with the _TIME_BITS preprocessor macro set to 64 and is
  only supported when LFS (_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64) is also enabled.  It is
  only enabled for Linux and the full support requires a minimum kernel
  version of 5.1.

• The main gconv-modules file in glibc now contains only a small set of

  essential converter modules and the rest have been moved into a supplementary
  configuration file gconv-modules-extra.conf in the gconv-modules.d directory
  in the same GCONV_PATH.  Similarly, external converter modules directories
  may have supplementary configuration files in a gconv-modules.d directory
  with names ending with .conf to logically classify the converter modules in
  that directory.

• On Linux, a new tunable, glibc.pthread.stack_cache_size, can be used

  to configure the size of the thread stack cache.

• The function _Fork has been added as an async-signal-safe fork replacement

  since Austin Group issue 62 droped the async-signal-safe requirement for
  fork (and it will be included in the future POSIX standard).  The new _Fork
  function does not run any atfork function neither resets any internal state
  or lock (such as the malloc one), and only sets up a minimal state required
  to call async-signal-safe functions (such as raise or execve).  This function
  is currently a GNU extension.

• On Linux, the close_range function has been added.  It allows efficiently

  closing a range of file descriptors on recent kernels (version 5.9).

• The function closefrom has been added.  It closes all file descriptors

  greater than or equal to a given integer.  This function is a GNU extension,
  although it is also present in other systems.

• The posix_spawn_file_actions_addclosefrom_np function has been added,

  enabling posix_spawn and posix_spawnp to close all file descriptors greater
  than or equal to a given integer.  This function is a GNU extension,
  although Solaris also provides a similar function.

Deprecated and removed features, and other changes affecting compatibility:

• The function pthread_mutex_consistent_np has been deprecated; programs

  should use the equivalent standard function pthread_mutex_consistent
  instead.

• The function pthread_mutexattr_getrobust_np has been deprecated;

  programs should use the equivalent standard function
  pthread_mutexattr_getrobust instead.

• The function pthread_mutexattr_setrobust_np has been deprecated;

  programs should use the equivalent standard function
  pthread_mutexattr_setrobust instead.

• The function pthread_yield has been deprecated; programs should use

  the equivalent standard function sched_yield instead.

• The function inet_neta declared in <arpa/inet.h> has been deprecated.

• Various rarely-used functions declared in <resolv.h> and

  <arpa/nameser.h> have been deprecated.  Applications are encouraged to
  use dedicated DNS processing libraries if applicable.  For <resolv.h>,
  this affects the functions dn_count_labels, fp_nquery, fp_query,
  fp_resstat, hostalias, loc_aton, loc_ntoa, p_cdname, p_cdnname,
  p_class, p_fqname, p_fqnname, p_option, p_query, p_rcode, p_time,
  p_type, putlong, putshort, res_hostalias, res_isourserver,
  res_nameinquery, res_queriesmatch, res_randomid, sym_ntop, sym_ntos,
  sym_ston.  For <arpa/nameser.h>, the functions ns_datetosecs,
  ns_format_ttl, ns_makecanon, ns_parse_ttl, ns_samedomain, ns_samename,
  ns_sprintrr, ns_sprintrrf, ns_subdomain have been deprecated.

• Various symbols previously defined in libresolv have been moved to libc

  in order to prepare for libresolv moving entirely into libc (see earlier
  entry for merging libraries into libc).  The symbols __dn_comp,
  __dn_expand, __dn_skipname, __res_dnok, __res_hnok, __res_mailok,
  __res_mkquery, __res_nmkquery, __res_nquery, __res_nquerydomain,
  __res_nsearch, __res_nsend, __res_ownok, __res_query, __res_querydomain,
  __res_search, __res_send formerly in libresolv have been renamed and no
  longer have a __ prefix.  They are now available in libc.

• The pthread cancellation handler is now installed with SA_RESTART and

  pthread_cancel will always send the internal SIGCANCEL on a cancellation
  request.  It should not be visible to applications since the cancellation
  handler should either act upon cancellation (if asynchronous cancellation
  is enabled) or ignore the cancellation internal signal.  However there are
  buggy kernel interfaces (for instance some CIFS versions) that could still
  see a spurious EINTR error when cancellation interrupts a blocking syscall.

• Previously, glibc installed its various shared objects under versioned

  file names such as libc-2.33.so.  The ABI sonames (e.g., libc.so.6)
  were provided as symbolic links.  Starting with glibc 2.34, the shared
  objects are installed under their ABI sonames directly, without
  symbolic links.  This increases compatibility with distribution
  package managers that delete removed files late during the package
  upgrade or downgrade process.

• The symbols mallwatch and tr_break are now deprecated and no longer used in

  mtrace.  Similar functionality can be achieved by using conditional
  breakpoints within mtrace functions from within gdb.

• The __morecore and __after_morecore_hook malloc hooks and the default

  implementation __default_morecore have been removed from the API.  Existing
  applications will continue to link against these symbols but the interfaces
  no longer have any effect on malloc.

• Debugging features in malloc such as the MALLOC_CHECK_ environment variable

  (or the glibc.malloc.check tunable), mtrace() and mcheck() have now been
  disabled by default in the main C library.  Users looking to use these
  features now need to preload a new debugging DSO libc_malloc_debug.so to get
  this functionality back.

• The deprecated functions malloc_get_state and malloc_set_state have been

  moved from the core C library into libc_malloc_debug.so.  Legacy applications
  that still use these functions will now need to preload libc_malloc_debug.so
  in their environment using the LD_PRELOAD environment variable.

• The deprecated memory allocation hooks __malloc_hook, __realloc_hook,

  __memalign_hook and __free_hook are now removed from the API.  Compatibility
  symbols are present to support legacy programs but new applications can no
  longer link to these symbols.  These hooks no longer have any effect on glibc
  functionality.  The malloc debugging DSO libc_malloc_debug.so currently
  supports hooks and can be preloaded to get this functionality back for older
  programs.  However this is a transitional measure and may be removed in a
  future release of the GNU C Library.  Users may port away from these hooks by
  writing and preloading their own malloc interposition library.

Changes to build and runtime requirements:

• On Linux, the shm_open, sem_open, and related functions now expect the

  file shared memory file system to be mounted at /dev/shm.  These functions
  no longer search among the system's mount points for a suitable
  replacement if /dev/shm is not available.

Security related changes:

  CVE-2021-27645: The nameserver caching daemon (nscd), when processing
  a request for netgroup lookup, may crash due to a double-free,
  potentially resulting in degraded service or Denial of Service on the
  local system.  Reported by Chris Schanzle.

  CVE-2021-33574: The mq_notify function has a potential use-after-free
  issue when using a notification type of SIGEV_THREAD and a thread
  attribute with a non-default affinity mask.

  CVE-2021-35942: The wordexp function may overflow the positional
  parameter number when processing the expansion resulting in a crash.
  Reported by Philippe Antoine.

The following bugs are resolved with this release:

  [4737] libc: fork is not async-signal-safe
  [5781] math: Slow dbl-64 sin/cos/sincos for special values
  [10353] libc: Methods for deleting all file descriptors greater than
    given integer (closefrom)
  [14185] glob: fnmatch() fails when '*' wildcard is applied on the file
    name containing multi-byte character(s)
  [14469] math: Inaccurate j0f function
  [14470] math: Inaccurate j1f function
  [14471] math: Inaccurate y0f function
  [14472] math: Inaccurate y1f function
  [14744] nptl: kill -32 $pid or kill -33 $pid on a process cancels a
    random thread
  [15271] dynamic-link: dlmopen()ed shared library with LM_ID_NEWLM
    crashes if it fails dlsym() twice
  [15648] nptl: multiple definition of `__lll_lock_wait_private'
  [16063] nptl: Provide a pthread_once variant in libc directly
  [17144] libc: syslog is not thread-safe if NO_SIGPIPE is not defined
  [17145] libc: syslog with LOG_CONS leaks console file descriptor
  [17183] manual: description of ENTRY struct in <search.h> in glibc
    manual is incorrect
  [18435] nptl: pthread_once hangs when init routine throws an exception
  [18524] nptl: Missing calloc error checking in
    __cxa_thread_atexit_impl
  [19329] dynamic-link: dl-tls.c assert failure at concurrent
    pthread_create and dlopen
  [19366] nptl: returning from a thread should disable cancellation
  [19511] nptl: 8MB memory leak in pthread_create in case of failure
    when non-root user changes priority
  [20802] dynamic-link: getauxval NULL pointer dereference after static
    dlopen
  [20813] nptl: pthread_exit is inconsistent between libc and libpthread
  [22057] malloc: malloc_usable_size is broken with mcheck
  [22668] locale: LC_COLLATE: the last character of ellipsis is not
    ordered correctly
  [23323] libc: [RFE] CSU startup hardening.
  [23328] malloc: Remove malloc hooks and ensure related APIs return no
    data.
  [23462] dynamic-link: Static binary with dynamic string tokens ($LIB,
    $PLATFORM, $ORIGIN) crashes
  [23489] libc: "gcc -lmcheck" aborts on free when using posix_memalign
  [23554] nptl: pthread_getattr_np reports wrong stack size with
    MULTI_PAGE_ALIASING
  [24106] libc: Bash interpreter in ldd script is taken from host
  [24773] dynamic-link: dlerror in an secondary namespace does not use
    the right free implementation
  [25036] localedata: Update collation order for Swedish
  [25383] libc: where_is_shmfs/__shm_directory/SHM_GET_NAME may cause
    shm_open to pick wrong directory
  [25680] dynamic-link: ifuncmain9picstatic and ifuncmain9picstatic
    crash in IFUNC resolver due to stack canary (--enable-stack-
    protector=all)
  [26874] build: -Warray-bounds in _IO_wdefault_doallocate
  [26983] math: [x86_64] x86_64 tgamma has too large ULP error
  [27111] dynamic-link: pthread_create and tls access use link_map
    objects that may be concurrently freed by dlclose
  [27132] malloc: memusagestat is linked to system librt, leading to
    undefined symbols on major version upgrade
  [27136] dynamic-link: dtv setup at thread creation may leave an entry
    uninitialized
  [27249] libc: libSegFault.so does not output signal number properly
  [27304] nptl: pthread_cond_destroy does not pass private flag to futex
    system calls
  [27318] dynamic-link: glibc fails to load binaries when built with
    -march=sandybridge:  CPU ISA level is lower than required
  [27343] nss: initgroups() SIGSEGVs when called on a system without
    nsswich.conf (in a chroot)
  [27346] dynamic-link: x86: PTWRITE feature check is missing
  [27389] network: NSS chroot hardening causes regressions in chroot
    deployments
  [27403] dynamic-link: aarch64: tlsdesc htab is not freed on dlclose
  [27444] libc: sysconf reports unsupported option (-1) for
    _SC_LEVEL1_ICACHE_LINESIZE on X86 since v2.33
  [27462] nscd: double-free in nscd (CVE-2021-27645)
  [27468] malloc: aarch64: realloc crash with heap tagging: FAIL:
    malloc/tst-malloc-thread-fail
  [27498] dynamic-link: __dl_iterate_phdr lacks unwinding information
  [27511] libc: S390 memmove assumes Vector Facility when MIE Facility 3
    is present
  [27522] glob: glob, glob64 incorrectly marked as __THROW
  [27555] dynamic-link: Static tests fail with --enable-stack-
    protector=all
  [27559] libc: fstat(AT_FDCWD) succeeds (it shouldn't) and returns
    information for the current directory
  [27577] dynamic-link: elf/ld.so --help doesn't work
  [27605] libc: tunables can't control xsave/xsavec selection in
    dl_runtime_resolve_*
  [27623] libc: powerpc: Missing registers in sc[v] clobbers list
  [27645] libc: [linux] sysconf(_SC_NPROCESSOR...) breaks down on
    containers
  [27646] dynamic-link: Linker error for non-existing NSS symbols (e.g.
    _nss_files_getcanonname_r) from within a dlmopen namespace.
  [27648] libc: FAIL: misc/tst-select
  [27650] stdio: vfscanf returns too early if a match is longer than
    INT_MAX
  [27651] libc: Performance regression after updating to 2.33
  [27655] string: Wrong size calculation in string/test-strnlen.c
  [27706] libc: select fails to update timeout on error
  [27709] libc: arm: FAIL: debug/tst-longjmp_chk2
  [27721] dynamic-link: x86: ld_audit ignores bind now for TLSDESC and
    tries resolving them lazily
  [27744] nptl: Support different libpthread/ld.so load orders in
    libthread_db
  [27749] libc: Data race __run_exit_handlers
  [27761] libc: getconf: Segmentation fault when passing '-vq' as
    argument
  [27832] nss: makedb.c:797:7: error: 'writev' specified size 4294967295
    exceeds maximum object size 2147483647
  [27870] malloc: MALLOC_CHECK_ causes realloc(valid_ptr, TOO_LARGE) to
    not set ENOMEM
  [27872] build: Obsolete configure option --enable-stackguard-
    randomization
  [27873] build: tst-cpu-features-cpuinfo fail when building on AMD cpu
  [27882] localedata: Use U+00AF MACRON in more EBCDIC charsets
  [27892] libc: powerpc: scv ABI error handling fails to check
    IS_ERR_VALUE
  [27896] nptl: mq_notify does not handle separately allocated thread
    attributes (CVE-2021-33574)
  [27901] libc: TEST_STACK_ALIGN doesn't work
  [27902] libc: The x86-64 clone wrapper fails to align child stack
  [27914] nptl: Install SIGSETXID handler with SA_ONSTACK
  [27939] libc: aarch64: clone does not align the stack
  [27968] libc: s390x: clone does not align the stack
  [28011] libc: Wild read in wordexp (parse_param) (CVE-2021-35942)
  [28024] string: s390(31bit): Wrong result of memchr (MEMCHR_Z900_G5)
    with n >= 0x80000000
  [28028] malloc: malloc: tcache shutdown sequence does not work if the
    thread never allocated anything
  [28033] libc: Need to check RTM_ALWAYS_ABORT for RTM
  [28064] string: x86_64:wcslen implementation list has wcsnlen
  [28067] libc: FAIL: posix/tst-spawn5
  [28068] malloc: FAIL: malloc/tst-mallocalign1-mcheck
  [28071] time: clock_gettime, gettimeofday, time lost vDSO acceleration
    on older kernels
  [28075] nis: Out-of-bounds static buffer read in nis_local_domain
  [28089] build: tst-tls20 fails when linker defaults to --as-needed
  [28090] build: elf/tst-cpu-features-cpuinfo-static fails on certain
    AMD64 cpus
  [28091] network: ns_name_skip may return 0 for domain names without
    terminator

Release Notes
=============

https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Release/2.34

Contributors
============

This release was made possible by the contributions of many people.
The maintainers are grateful to everyone who has contributed
changes or bug reports.  These include:

Adhemerval Zanella
Alejandro Colomar \(man-pages\)
Alexandra Hájková
Alice Xu
Alyssa Ross
Andreas Roeseler
Andreas Schwab
Anton Blanchard
Arjun Shankar
Armin Brauns
Bruno Haible
Carlos O'Donell
Cooper Qu
DJ Delorie
Dan Raymond
Darius Rad
David Hughes
Fangrui Song
Florian Weimer
H.J. Lu
Hanataka Shinya
Hugo Gabriel Eyherabide
Jakub Jelinek
JeffyChen
John David Anglin
Joseph Myers
Khem Raj
Lirong Yuan
Lucas A. M. Magalhaes
Lukasz Majewski
Maninder Singh
Mark Harris
Martin Sebor
Matheus Castanho
Michal Nazarewicz
Mike Hommey
Naohiro Tamura
Nicholas Piggin
Noah Goldstein
Paul Eggert
Paul Zimmermann
Pedro Franco de Carvalho
Raoni Fassina Firmino
Raphael Moreira Zinsly
Romain GEISSLER
Sajan Karumanchi
Samuel Thibault
Sebastian Rasmussen
Sergei Trofimovich
Shen-Ta Hsieh
Siddhesh Poyarekar
Stafford Horne
Stefan Liebler
Sunil K Pandey
Szabolcs Nagy
Tulio Magno Quites Machado Filho
Vineet Gupta
Vitaly Buka
Vitaly Chikunov
Wilco Dijkstra
Xeonacid
Xiaoming Ni
Yang Xu
liuhongt
noah
Érico Nogueira

https://www.droid-life.com/2021/07/28/nest-outage-takes-out-most-services/

https://status.nest.com/history

Dear GNU community:

I am happy to announce that the release 1.0.3 of the GNU Health Personal Health Record (PHR) component, MyGNUHealth.

This release updates the medical genetics domain, with the latest human natural variant dataset based on UniProt Consortium (release 2021_03 of June 02 2021).

Statistics for single amino acid variants:

             Likely pathogenic or pathogenic (LP/P):  31398
             Likely benign or benign         (LB/B):  39584
             Uncertain significance            (US):   8763
                                             --------------
                                              Total:  79745

In addition, some minor changes / updates in the documentation and credits have been done.

This latest version is already available at Savannah, and the Python Package Index (PyPi). Shortly will also be in your favorite Libre operating system / distribution.

Again, thanks to all of you who collaborate and make GNU Health a reality!

Happy and healthy hacking!
Luis

GNU Parallel 20210722 ('Blue Unity') has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Please help spreading GNU Parallel by making a testimonial video like Juan Sierra Pons: http://www.elsotanillo.net/wp-content/uploads/GnuParallel_JuanSierraPons.mp4

It does not have to be as detailed as Juan's. It is perfectly fine if you just say your name, and what field you are using GNU Parallel for.

Quote of the month:

  We use gnu parallel now - and happier for it.
     -- Ben Davies @benjamindavies@twitter

New in this release:

• --results no longer prints the result to standard output (stdout) as voted in https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/parallel/2020-12/msg00003.html

• parset supports associative arrays in bash, ksh, zsh.

• Online HTML is now generated by Sphinx.

• Bug fixes and man page updates.

News about GNU Parallel:

• Cleaning Up Scanned Documents with Open Source Tools https://kaerumy.medium.com/cleaning-up-scanned-documents-with-open-source-tools-9d87e15305b

Get the book: GNU Parallel 2018 http://www.lulu.com/shop/ole-tange/gnu-parallel-2018/paperback/product-23558902.html

GNU Parallel - For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel --bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name '*.jpg' |
    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: - ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O - pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ || \
       fetch -o - http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh
    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep c82233e7da3166308632ac8c34f850c0
    12345678 c82233e7 da316630 8632ac8c 34f850c0
    $ md5sum install.sh | grep ae3d7aac5e15cf3dfc87046cfc5918d2
    ae3d7aac 5e15cf3d fc87046c fc5918d2
    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep dfc00d823137271a6d96225cea9e89f533ff6c81f
    9c5198d5 31a3b755 b7910ece 3a42d206 c804694d fc00d823 137271a6 d96225ce
    a9e89f53 3ff6c81f f52b298b ef9fb613 2d3f9ccd 0e2c7bd3 c35978b5 79acb5ca
    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use --citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases' command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database's interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL - A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.