fedora-infrastructure – Sick Gaming

Posted on February 17, 2026 by — Leave a comment

Mrhbaan Syria! Fedora now available in Syria

Mrhbaan, Fedora community! I am happy to share that as of 10 February 2026, Fedora is now available in Syria. Last week, the Fedora Infrastructure Team lifted the IP range block on IP addresses in Syria. This action restores download access to Fedora Linux deliverables, such as ISOs. It also restores access from Syria to Fedora Linux RPM repositories, the Fedora Account System, and Fedora build systems. Users can now access the various applications and services that make up the Fedora Project. This change follows a recent update to the Fedora Export Control Policy. Today, anyone connecting to the public Internet from Syria should once again be able to access Fedora.

This article explains why this is happening now. It also covers the work behind the scenes to make this change happen.

Why Syria, why now?

You might wonder: what happened? Why is this happening now? I cannot answer everything in this post. However, the story begins in December 2024 with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. A new government took control of the country. This began a new era of foreign policy in Syrian international relations.

Fast-forward to 18 December 2025. The United States signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 into law. This law repealed the 2019 Caesar Act sanctions. This action removed Syria from the list of OFAC embargoed countries. The U.S. Department of the Treasury maintains this list.

This may seem like a small change. Yet, it is significant for Syrians. Some U.S. Commerce Department regulations remain in place. However, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s policy change now allows open source software availability in Syria. The Fedora Project updated its stance to welcome Syrians back into the Fedora community. This matches actions taken by other major platforms for open source software, such as Microsoft’s GitHub.

Syria & Fedora, behind the scenes

Opening the firewall to Syria took seconds. However, months of conversations and hidden work occurred behind the scenes to make this happen. The story begins with a ticket. Zaid Ballour (@devzaid) opened Ticket #541 to the Fedora Council on 1 September 2025. This escalated the issue to the Fedora Council. It prompted a closer look at the changing political situation in Syria.

Jef Spaleta and I dug deeper into the issue. We wanted to understand the overall context. The United States repealed the 2019 Caesar Act sanctions in December 2025. This indicated that the Fedora Export Policy Control might be outdated.

During this time, Jef and I spoke with legal experts at Red Hat and IBM. We reviewed the situation in Syria. This review process took time. We had to ensure compliance with all United States federal laws and sanctions. The situation for Fedora differs from other open source communities. Much of our development happens within infrastructure that we control. Additionally, Linux serves as digital infrastructure. This context differs from a random open source library on GitHub.

However, the path forward became clear after the repeal of the 2019 Caesar Act. After several months, we received approval. Fedora is accessible to Syrians once again.

Opening the door to Syria

Some folks may have noticed the Fedora Infrastructure ticket last week. It requested the removal of the firewall block. We also submitted a Fedora Legal Docs Merge Request to change the Fedora Export Control Policy.

We wanted to share this exciting announcement now. It aligns with our commitment to the Fedora Project vision:

“The Fedora Project envisions a world where everyone benefits from free and open source software built by inclusive, welcoming, and open-minded communities.“

We look forward to welcoming Syrians back into the Fedora community and the wider open source community at large. Mrhbaan!

Posted on November 20, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Set up single sign-on for Fedora Project services

In addition to an operating system, the Fedora Project provides services for users and developers. Services such as Ask Fedora, the Fedora Project wiki and the Fedora Project mailing lists help users learn how to best take advantage of Fedora. For developers of Fedora, there are many other services such as dist-git, Pagure, Bodhi, COPR and Bugzilla for the packaging and release process.

These services are available with a free account from the Fedora Accounts System (FAS). This account is the passport to all things Fedora! This article covers how to get set up with an account and configure Fedora Workstation for browser single sign-on.

Signing up for a Fedora account

To create a FAS account, browse to the account creation page. Here, you will fill out your basic identity data:

Once you enter your data, the account system sends an email to the address you provided, with a temporary password. Pick a strong password and use it.

Next, the account details page appears. If you want to contribute to the Fedora Project, you should complete the Contributor Agreement now. Otherwise, you are done and you can use your account to log into the various Fedora services.

Configuring Fedora Workstation for single sign-On

Now that you have your account, you can sign into any of the Fedora Project services. Most of these services support single sign-on (SSO), so you can sign in without re-entering your username and password.

Fedora Workstation provides an easy workflow to add your Fedora credentials. The GNOME Online Accounts tool helps you quickly set up your system to access many popular services. To access it, go to the Settings menu.

Click on the option labeled Fedora. A prompt opens for you to provide your username and password for your Fedora Account.

GNOME Online Accounts stores your password in GNOME Keyring and automatically acquires your single-sign-on credentials for you when you log in.

Single sign-on with a web browser

Today, Fedora Workstation supports three web browsers out of the box with support for single sign-on with the Fedora Project services. These are Mozilla Firefox, GNOME Web, and Google Chrome.

Due to a bug in Chromium, single sign-on doesn’t work currently if you have more than one set of Kerberos (SSO) credentials active on your session. As a result, Fedora doesn’t enable this function out of the box for Chromium in Fedora.

To sign on to a service, browse to it and select the login option for that service. For most Fedora services, this is all you need to do; the browser handles the rest. Some services such as the Fedora mailing lists and Bugzilla support multiple login types. For them, select the Fedora or Fedora Account System login type.

That’s it! You can now log into any of the Fedora Project services without re-entering your password.

Special consideration for Google Chrome

To enable single sign-on out of the box for Google Chrome, Fedora takes advantage of certain features in Chrome that are intended for use in “managed” environments. A managed environment is traditionally a corporate or other organization that sets certain security and/or monitoring requirements on the browser.

Recently, Google Chrome changed its behavior and it now reports Managed by your organization or possibly Managed by fedoraproject.org under the ⋮ menu in Google Chrome. That link leads to a page that says, “If your Chrome browser is managed, your administrator can set up or restrict certain features, install extensions, monitor activity, and control how you use Chrome.” However, Fedora will never monitor your browser activity or restrict your actions.

Enter chrome://policy in the address bar to see exactly what settings Fedora has enabled in the browser. The AuthNegotiateDelegateWhitelist and AuthServerWhitelist options will be set to *.fedoraproject.org. These are the only changes Fedora makes.

Posted on November 15, 2019 by — Leave a comment

Fedora pastebin and fpaste updates

Fedora and EPEL users who use fpaste to paste and share snippets of text might have noticed some changes recently. Recently, an update went out which sends pastes made by fpaste to the CentOS Pastebin instead of the Modern Paste instance that Fedora was running. Don’t fear — this was an intentional change, and is part of the effort to lower the workload within the Fedora Infrastructure and Community Platform Engineering teams. Keep reading to learn more about what’s happening with pastebin and your pastes.

About the service

A pastebin lets you save text on a website for a length of time. This helps you exchange data easily with other users. For example, you can post error messages for help with a bug or other issue.

The CentOS Pastebin is a community-maintained service that keeps pastes around for up to 24 hours. It also offers syntax highlighting for a large number of programming and markup languages.

As before, you can paste files:

$ fpaste sql/010.add_owner_ip_index.sql Uploading (0.1KiB)...
https://paste.centos.org/view/6ee941cc

…or command output…

$ rpm -ql python3 | fpaste
Uploading (0.7KiB)...
https://paste.centos.org/view/44945a99

…or system information:

$ fpaste --sysinfo Gathering system info .............Uploading (8.1KiB)...
https://paste.centos.org/view/8d5bb827

What to expect from Pastebin

On December 1st, 2019, Fedora Infrastructure will turn off its Modern Paste servers. It will then redirect fpaste.org, www.fpaste.org, and paste.fedoraproject.org to paste.centos.org.

If you notice any issues with fpaste, first try updating your fpaste package. On Fedora use this command:

$ dnf update fpaste

Or, on machines that use the EPEL repository, use this command:

$ yum update fpaste

If you still run into issues, please file a bug on the fpaste issue tracker, and please be as detailed as possible. Happy pasting!

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.