During my work on the RISC-V 64-bit architecture port of Fedora, I created several pull requests to Fedora packages. And some were stalled…
Non-responsive maintainer process
Fedora project has a process called ‘non-responsive maintainer’. You check is maintainer on vacation, check latest activity and open a bug asking for action.
The problem was that it linked to fedora_active_user.py script
which does not work since Fedora 41. During cycle of that release the
python-fedora package got retired and no one updated the script.
Let me look
As my actions brought some complains (and some discussions) I decided to take a look at the script and make it work with current Fedora releases. Created pull request, mailed original author etc.
There was no answer of any kind so I decided to take over maintaining the
script. Rewrote it to be Python 3 only, moved from urllib to requests,
refactored some repeated code into functions etc.
Then started checking service by service how to get things working better. Turned out that script had several assumptions which not always apply.
FAS has separate email for Bugzilla
Fedora Accounts Service (FAS) has a separate field for the Bugzilla email. I did
not had to look for testing accounts for this because that’s my case — I use
‘short’ Red Hat email in Bugzilla due to Single Sign-On (SSO) service we use and
my ‘long’ one for the rest. So fedora-active-user script grabs user
information from FAS and checks for separate Bugzilla email and use it if present.
FAS query requires Kerberos
To query FAS you need Kerberos ticket. Both urllib and requests packages
have a way to use it for authentication — one extra package is needed to make
it work.
Lack of valid ticket is caught and info is provided to the user.
Bugzilla is tricky
Querying Bugzilla service is the trickiest part. You can request data but there is no warranty that you get the latest one. Sure, there is the ‘order’ field for a query but it feels like a mere suggestion. It is nothing strange to get 2008 entries next to 2023 ones.
Wanna help?
For now, I am hosting fedora-active-user on GitHub. Will move it to Fedora Forge later this year. Feel free to open issues, send pull requests if you have suggestions or changes.
Current version is not the best one. It is a bit better than it was two weeks ago.
At the moment package is present in Fedora rawhide. I am waiting for branches for stable releases and updates will follow.
Example output
$ fedora-active-user --user hrw
Last action on koji:
2026-05-04 built fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45
2024-09-12 built python-system-calls-6.11.0-1.fc42
2024-01-08 built python-system-calls-6.7.0-1.fc40
2023-09-18 built python-system-calls-6.6.0-1.fc40
2023-05-08 built python-system-calls-6.4.0-2.fc39
2022-08-06 built python-system-calls-5.19.0-2.fc37
2022-07-25 built python-system-calls-5.19.0-1.fc36
2022-07-25 built python-system-calls-5.19.0-1.fc37
2022-01-10 built python-system-calls-5.16.2-1.fc36
2021-11-15 built python-system-calls-5.16.0-1.fc35
Last package updates on bodhi:
2026-05-04 fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45
2024-09-12 python-system-calls-6.11.0-1.fc42
2024-01-08 python-system-calls-6.7.0-1.fc40
2023-09-18 python-system-calls-6.6.0-1.fc40
2023-05-08 python-system-calls-6.4.0-2.fc39
2022-08-06 python-system-calls-5.19.0-2.fc37
2022-07-25 python-system-calls-5.19.0-1.fc36
2022-07-25 python-system-calls-5.19.0-1.fc37
2022-01-10 python-system-calls-5.16.2-1.fc36
2021-11-15 python-system-calls-5.16.0-1.fc35
2021-11-15 python-system-calls-5.16.0-1.fc36
2021-09-21 python-system-calls-5.15.5-1.fc36
Last actions performed according to fedmsg:
2026-05-04 hrw commented on the pull-request rpms/prusa-slicer#67
2026-05-04 hrw's Badges rank changed from 272 to 260
2026-05-04 hrw was awarded the badge `Missed the Train`
2026-05-04 hrw commented on update fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45 (karma: 0)
2026-05-04 fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45 was tagged into f45 by bodhi
2026-05-04 fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45 was untagged from f45-updates-candid
2026-05-04 hrw's fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45 bodhi update has met stable te
2026-05-04 fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45 was untagged from f45-updates-testin
2026-05-04 fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45 was tagged into f45-updates-testing-
2026-05-04 fedora-active-user-26.05.04-1.fc45 was untagged from f45-signing-pendin
Last emails on Fedora mailing lists:
2026-04-29 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
2026-04-17 mjuszkiewicz@redhat.com as Marcin Juszkiewicz mailed devel@lists.fedora
Bugzilla activity (may not be the latest):
No activity found on Bugzilla
Looks like I still need to work on querying Bugzilla ;D