Notices by Alan Coopersmith (alanc@fosstodon.org), page 5

The packages for the cx_Oracle Python module have been marked obsolete and will be removed on upgrade to #OracleSolaris 11.4.66.

Maintainers of python code that use this API to access Oracle databases need to ensure their code is updated to use the replacement oracledb Python module instead, as provided in the Solaris package library/python/oracledb. See https://blogs.oracle.com/opal/post/open-source-python-thin-driver-for-oracle-database for more information on the differences and links to information on how to update Python code to use the new module.

In #OracleSolaris 11.4.66, the kldd utility, which shows the linker dependency chains for kernel modules, had some additions to help find the dependencies. We extended the -S option to accept a colon-separated path of directories, added the -P option to specify platform directories to search, and added support for finding dependencies specified via the deprecated _depends_on mechanism.

Apache Tomcat 9 has been added alongside the existing Tomcat 8.5 in #OracleSolaris 11.4.66 so that sites can start transitioning since upstream's EOL of 8.5 is fast approaching: https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-85-eol.html

Inspired by the equivalent features in the DNS resolvers in BSD & GNU libc, the #OracleSolaris 11.4.66 DNS client SMF configuration now accepts the "usevc" or "use-vc" options to make DNS queries default to TCP instead of UDP. See the resolv.conf(5) man page on an 11.4.66 system for more information.

As @darrenmoffat noted one of the big changes in #OracleSolaris 11.4.66 is migrating almost everything that was still using OpenSSL 1.0.2 to use 3.0 instead: https://mastodon.social/@darrenmoffat/111981921304236610

Today we've released #OracleSolaris 11.4.66, our quarterly feature update. The announcement is at https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/post/announcing-oracle-solaris-114-sru66 and details on new features and other changes are at https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/post/whats-new-in-oracle-solaris-114-sru-66

The GCC 10 packages were also flagged for removal on upgrade to #OracleSolaris 11.4.66 (we already ship GCC versions 11, 12, & 13 to replace them).

Users of the gccgo compiler need to note that the removal of GCC 10 packages will also remove the libgo.so.16 library used by Go programs compiled with GCC 10, and that they thus will need to recompile any such programs with a newer version of gccgo before upgrading to SRU 66.

@federicomena @xogium Sun’s contribution to GNOME accessibility was not just on the development side either, but in things like applying for & managing EU grant money, testing against US Sec 508 standards, and serving on the various accessibility standards committees to ensure the standards gave free desktops a chance to meet US & EU purchasing requirements.

@deirdres or like messing with pollsters by giving answers they find amusing.

I also released a new version of the venerable makedepend tool this weekend, and wrote this warning about its lack of support for C23's new pre-processor features:
https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-announce/2024-February/003458.html

C23 is almost officially here, so amongst this weekend's new X.Org module releases (https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-announce/2024-February/thread.html) I've included an update to xprop to make it build with "gcc -std=gnu2x", which no longer allows using "true" as a variable name:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/app/xprop/-/commit/0d2837162ef0e54647485eee2ba4b88012fbb1b4

@unixben I do still have this GNOME hat from when Sun first announced it was bringing GNOME to Solaris…

@ssharwood technically it's not a separate team any more, but a subset of folks in the Solaris FOSS package maintainers team who take care of the GNOME & X11 packages for Solaris. Much smaller than the days when we were developing our own stuff and not just passing through third party packages.

A Sun old-timer posted this ancient relic for sale on Facebook - tempting to get a reprint done for the current Solaris desktop team:

Announcing that the new release of imake might be Y2038 safe on 32-bit platforms, though "we sincerely hope that no one will actually still be using imake 14 years from now." Already betting that someone still will be though, despite us telling them to move off since 2005.

https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-announce/2024-January/003440.html

Saw my first CVE-2024-XXXX assignments this week. I was not ready for that…

@Conan_Kudo @whot I believe the /usr/bin/X symlink predates both Xorg and XFree86 and goes back to the versions from the 80’s, before loadable modules, when you’d link to the Xserver with the right DDX for your workstation (Xsun, Xdec, Xhp, etc)

My personal contributions to this SRU cycle included the legacy network client/server package split mentioned above; the removals of aalib, Caribou, libxklavier, libmusicbrainz, libsass and sassc; fixing getpwnam(NULL) not to return an uninitialized pointer, and fixing gdm not to call getpwnam(NULL); an editing pass over the section 7 man pages; and making the killall(8) man page describe what the command actually does and to stop claiming that shutdown(8) calls it directly.

These FOSS packages were removed from the #OracleSolaris package repository in the 11.4.63 SRU:

aalib
Caribou
libxklavier
libmusicbrainz
libsass and sassc
wxWidgets 3.0
Python py
Python extras
pidgin, pidgin-otr, libotr and pidgin-gnome-keyring
gtkspell

New additions to the EOF list for future 11.4 SRU's are:

gnu-gs-fonts-std
gnu-gs-fonts-other
Python boto
Yasm

The full list can always be found at
https://www.oracle.com/solaris/technologies/end-of-feature-notices-solaris11.html

#ZFS retention has two new properties to offer new configuration choices in #OracleSolaris 11.4.63.

The new "retention.policy.onexpiry" property allows specifying what happens at the end of the retention period - automatic deletion, continued hold, or being left to allow manual deletion.

The new "retention.policy.changeacl" allows changing non-write permissions/ACLs on retained files, for sites who need to be able to change who can read the file during the retention period.