[gNewSense-users] Package update: encryption disabled in Berkeley DB

[Sam Geeraerts]

Hi,

To solve a release critical bug [1] in gNewSense 3.0 I had to disable
encryption in Berkeley DB (a.k.a. libdb4.6, libdb4.7, libdb4.8). That
means that encryption as well as decryption of Berkeley database files
will no longer be available.

As far as I can tell, this feature is seldomly used by packages in our
repository. Only slapd uses it directly (but not by default). Python,
Ruby, Perl and CLisp have bindings for this feature, but it's hard to
see if it's actually used by any program. I don't know of a guaranteed
way to check if you are affected by this. If you suspect that a program
you use stores information in Berkeley DB format, check if you can
disable the encryption before you update your system, so that you won't
lose access to your data.

gNewSense 2 suffers from the same problem, so it will be disabled there
as well.

Sorry for the inconvenience, especially at a time when technology that
protects our privacy is more important than ever. I'm working to get
this feature included again in the near future.

[1] https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/index.php?29840

Regards,
Sam Geeraerts