[tor-reports] Tails report for September, 2012

[Tails folks]

September, 2012 has been pretty busy for Tails. Here is a report of what
happened.

Releases
========

Tails 0.13 was released on September 18th. See the announcement for more
details: <https://tails.boum.org/news/version_0.13/>

The release came out one week late compared to the initial schedule.
This is due to an unexpected late arrival of the updated Iceweasel ESR
backported packages.

The next release, labeled 0.14, should be released by the end of
October. A first release candidate should be available for testing on
the 9th.

People
======

Tails has been started and successfully connected to the Tor network
around 71.000 times in September. That makes a boot every 36 seconds on
average. This number is an approximation from the requests made for the
security announcements feed. The later is retrieved by Tails after being
connected to Tor to eventually encourage users to update.

47 reports were received through WhisperBack.

The forum activity went pretty crazy with 1038 new messages, 156 of them
signed by "Tails". Not the highest signal/noise ratio in history,
though.

Code
====

A fix was merged for the slow browsing experience of the documentation
available inside Tails systems.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/faster_offline_documentation_browsing/>

Some progress was made on the front of supporting multiple kernels,
that should lead a future version of Tails to use multiple cores and
more than 3GB of memory eventually, as well as fixing most of the
dreaded "not all memory is wiped at shutdown" bug.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/nx_bit/>

A first attempt to tackle persistent connections in Network Manager is
available for reviews.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/persistence_preset_-_NM_connections/>

'Old style' PC speaker is now disabled to prevent loud, unexpected
beeps.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/disable_pc_speaker/>

The Unsafe Web browser now disables all Iceweasel extensions.
<http://git.immerda.ch/?p=amnesia.git;a=commit;h=64da202>

The firewall is now configured using `ferm`.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/ferm/>

The build process is now more likely to fail instead of letting errors
slip when hooks fail.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001634.html>

Tails (`devel` Git branch) is now using Tor 0.2.3.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/Tor_0.2.3/>

One of the new feature of Tor 0.2.3 is network stream isolation.
Subsequent anonymity enhancements have been implemented and will be
available in Tails 0.14.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/separate_Tor_streams/>

The readahead breakage resulting in a noticeable pause during startup
has been fixed.
<https://tails.boum.org/todo/fix_background_readahead/>

The Vagrant-based build system was optimized.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001594.html>

Some more work has been done in improving handling of init scripts.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001643.html>

The bug that made the default search engine for some languages fallback
on Google has been fixed.
<http://tails.boum.org/bugs/languages_without_a_localized_Startpage_get_Google_by_default/>

Some more build system optimization related to package installation.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001718.html>

An input method for Japanese has been added and will be in Tails 0.14.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001719.html>

Programs used by default to open downloaded files were often
sub-optimal. The issue is now fixed.
<http://tails.boum.org/todo/open_mp3_with_totem_instead_of_audacity/>

A bug resulting in whisperback reporting an inexistent error during the
send process has been fixed.
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001621.html>

On the OpenPGP smartcards support front, some backports were prepared
and are being tested.

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

Two contributors interested in working on Tails server showed up:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001559.html>

Some feedback and comments about the 'uwt' script shipped in Whonix:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001575.html>

Experiments on backporting Iceweasel:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001600.html>

What should be done with the system date when it's off any reasonable
limit?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001637.html>

Schedule for the upcoming 0.14 release:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001647.html>

Block/unblock wireless devices?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001648.html>

Researching best way to implement persistent browser bookmarks, with
some first patches from Alessandro Grassi:
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001644.html>

Should Tails ship a "download manager"?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001670.html>

Should PCMCIA / ExpressCard / Firewall be deactivated?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001671.html>

What should be the default web browser homepage?
<https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2012-September/001672.html>

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

The documentation has received several small improvements in the
following areas:

 * List what can be done when Tails does not start.
 * Better phrasing of the disclaimer about TrueCrypt.
 * Adjust TrueCrypt documentation for the current boot menu.
 * Specify what happens to the persistent volume when using
   the clone option of the installer.
 * Be more explicit of what should be done after installing
   Tails.
 * Link more appropriately the Torrent OpenPGP signature.

An important amount of (still invisible) work has been done to replace
the forum with a Q&A-style (like StackOverflow) web application that
would suit our needs (and possibly the Tor project's ones -- we'll see).

Translations
============

The French translations has received a sturdy stream of updates.

The website is currently at:

 * FR: 79% translated, 1% fuzzy
 * PT: 50% translated, 1% fuzzy
 * ES: 28% translated, 3% fuzzy
 * DE: 13% translated, 1% fuzzy

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

The `tails::whisperback::relay` Puppet class was brought into working
state. This allowed us to setup additional WhisperBack relays:
fail-over should now ensure bug reporting is possible most of
the time. See Git repository at:
<git://webmasters.boum.org/tails-puppet-module-tails>

The server that will be dedicated to Tails development needs was
delivered and plugged in the SeaCCP colocation. Many thanks to our
friends at Riseup, who helped a lot through the whole process, and to
the Tor project, who supports us once again by funding the
server hosting! Debian Wheezy was installed.

A Redmine install was setup at Riseup Labs to allow us to evaluate it.
Thanks a lot, again!

Funding
=======

The discussions with sponsor Bravo are going well. It's likely that
around 20 days of work for two developers will be funded by
the end of November.

--
Tails folks