[2182] in Release_7.7_team
Minutes of 2000-03-29 meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Wed Mar 29 15:28:32 2000
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 15:28:22 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <200003292028.PAA15373@small-gods.mit.edu>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
Attending: ajfox rbasch zacheiss ghudson tb miki wdc jweiss
1. Solaris install/update
Cluster has some concerns about the install taking as long as 90
minutes on a sun4m. Our options:
* We can look at the install process for inefficiencies,
e.g. when pkgadd creates a lot of symlinks, maybe it's being
slow for some reason we can fix.
* We could go back to the old model, but we'd really rather
not do that.
* We could make directory symlinks instead of local
directories full of symlinks, but that turns out to have
some unexpected costs.
* We could combine packages with patch-packages; that would be
a lot of effort and probably wouldn't shave off much time.
* We could make disk images for some cluster machine disks and
use cloning, to speed up installs for specific cases. Then
the machine would have to take patch updates after it came
up. This is a high-maintenance solution but it might be
okay as a last resort.
* We might not have a real problem; 90 minutes is on a Sparc
5/110. A Sparc 5/170 might be noticeably faster. (Ultras
install in 50 minutes.)
We will revisit this issue next week with (hopefully) more data.
2. IRIX
IRIX may be the first platform to enter alpha; it actually has a
candidate set of packs.
We can into a problem yesterday with their new capabilities model;
rbasch will investigate. We probably need to hack our login programs
(login.krb5 and sshd).
3. Linux
Red Hat 6.2 is out. We'll use it if we can get AFS working on its
kernel.
tb is moving from 8.3 mode to 8.4 mode, but will try to fix most
medium-priority bugs for 8.3.
Some things slated for 8.4 which aren't done yet:
Verification
Some install improvements
mkserv
Abby asked if there would be an 8-bit login option. "Maybe."
Bill wants to raise the priority of the custom install project; Thomas
pointed out that you can Athenize a machine using the stock Red Hat
install.
Dell has changed hardware platforms on us; Bill and Thomas will
investigate (before next week) whether any of their new offerings can
run Linux.
There are some problems with the mainline source tree and the RPM
build system; Greg fixed most of those.
jweiss had raised the question of how we keep track of changes to Red
Hat RPMs; Thomas appears to have a reasonable system.
Manual updates from 8.3 to 8.4 will be a little tricky; Greg will work
something out.
We need to deal with changes to the private workstation guide (Thomas
will look at the current one and see what will need to be changed),
and minicourses.
We need to write documentation for layered installs and updates;
Thomas has a draft up on the als web page.
4. Other projects
tetex is imported and building.
gtk and glib are imported but not integrated yet.
