[1740] in Release_7.7_team
Athena 8.3 alpha test for IRIX
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Fri Apr 2 15:15:03 1999
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 15:14:54 -0500
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: athena-rcc@MIT.EDU, f_l@MIT.EDU, rbasch@MIT.EDU, mbarker@MIT.EDU,
ted@MIT.EDU, danw@MIT.EDU, zacheiss@MIT.EDU
Cc: release-team@MIT.EDU
The Athena 8.3 alpha test phase begins tonight for the IRIX platform.
The Athena 8.3 release uses IRIX 6.5. The update will a long time
(about three hours on an Indy). Some new things in this release:
* IRIX systems use shadow passwd files now.
* A bunch of upgrade to externally maintained software. emacs
20.3, some tex-related upgrades, a BIND upgrade, some other
stuff.
* A glitzy new screensaver program, installed as xss.
* A new printing system, LPRng.
... and the usual pile of small changes and bug fixes. See
/afs/dev.mit.edu/project/relnotes/rel83.tex for a draft of the system
release notes. A select few items in there aren't actually reflected
on the packs just yet because they were committed in the last few days
(or in the case of international fonts, aren't getting installed
because tb still has to fix the build system).
Even if your machine is configured with AUTOUPDATE true, it will not
take the 8.3 alpha release automatically. To take the release
manually, do a console login as root (type Control-p at the xlogin
window and log in as root using the text login display) and run:
detach -O -a
attach -O dev-sgisys-83
/srvd/update_ws
# Watch, or go do something else for five minutes or so.
shutdown -y -i6 -g0
Alpha test is only appropriate for machines which can be reinstalled
without nonrecoverable damage. During this phase of testing, the
release may eat your machine, although I hope it won't. Also, not all
changes to the system packs will be reflected in update version
scripts, so during the testing period you could wind up with a machine
slightly inconsistent with how it should be. The system packs can and
hopefully will be completely rebuilt every few days, which can cause
long-running processes like emacs and rlogin to dump core.
A few known bugs going into alpha:
* Sometimes when you try to log in (maybe only with an account
with no hesiod group list), an X error appears in the
console window and the xlogin system restarts. It works if
you try to log in a second time, though.
* access_on and access_off will give an error about being
unable to find sshd.pid on machines where SSHD is set to
false.
* The BIND 8.2 named returns a SERVFAIL result on class HS
queries.
Here is a list of alpha SGI machines and their contacts:
Machine name Contact
------------ -------
andrew f_l
baloo athena-rcc,zacheiss
cheshire-cat athena-rcc,zacheiss
horton rbasch
megara mbarker
sans ted
antharia danw
