[1736] in Release_7.7_team
notes, 3/30
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Barker)
Tue Mar 30 22:50:46 1999
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 22:07:20 -0500
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
From: Mike Barker <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Attending: Bill Cattey, Greg Hudson, Abby Fox, Thomas Bushnell, Bob Basch,
Heather Anne, Mike Barker, Dan Winship, Miki Lusztig
Action Item: If there is a problem with moving the release team meetings to
Wednesday afternoons from 2:30 to 4, please let the release team know
quickly. Otherwise, we will plan on meeting on Wednesdays from now on.
1. 8.2.19 -- it's out.
2. 8.3 -- testing, coming along well. Should begin Alpha on schedule.
3. Mtools -- new version can be built to use vold instead of raw device.
This avoids use of setuid. It does require that a line in /etc/vold.conf be
uncommented -- Abby and greg will make this happen. There are reports that
there may be some problems if vold isn't running -- Abby will verify. If
necessary, we may add a check to make sure vold is running, although this
adds some complexity.
4. xss -- the new screen saver. One question is how to tell people about
this. The "default" operating method is for it to run in the background and
notice when the user is inactive, at which point it blanks the screen. We
have added xssbutton which allows the user to click the button to lock the
screen.
Another suggestion is to provide a dash menu option that locks the screen,
however this is not as easy as it sounds.
There has been some question raised about whether IS does not like the SIPB
screen saver or whether we thought there was some problem with it. The
sense of the release team is that there was no problem with the SIPB screen
saver. Mostly, we thought it was appropriate that the release have a screen
saver that matched the rules of use, and we went with another code base to
provide an alternative. The SIPB screen saver is considered a successful
and very useful screen saver.
5. Some code in the Athena tree has an MIT SIPB copyright notice. There is
some question as to whether this is the right legal protection. No one is
too excited about trying to check this with the lawyers, though.
6. Miki ask whether we could re-schedule the release team meetings. A
quick poll of standing meetings from those present suggested that Wednesday
afternoon from 2:30 to 4 clock may be a better time.
Mike will be out-of-town for the next two weeks. Heather will be
out-of-town next week.
