[2746] in Release_7.7_team
Minutes of 2001-05-16 release team meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Wed May 16 15:22:53 2001
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 15:22:48 -0400
Message-Id: <200105161922.PAA32014@equal-rites.mit.edu>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu
Attending: ghudson ajfox othomas rbasch zacheiss kcr aurora wdc miki jweiss
1. Beta release
Should happen tonight. There are still a fair number of known bugs in
the GNOME stuff, but no known bugs which should hurt people's machines
or keep people from getting work done.
We don't have KNFS yet. Garry will make sure there's no
services/9.0/knfs.add in the mkserv locker so that we don't break
anyone's KNFS server.
The global motd should be changed.
2. Solaris 8 update
Sun would like us to use Solaris 8 update 4 (we have update 2), and
will make it easier for us to get source for that version. But it's
too late in the game for that, especially since miki is somewhat tied
up with lottery server work. We mostly already have the sources we
need, and for the remainder of the work it's okay to get sources for
something newer than the binaries we currently have.
3. Release notes
User release notes should be ready in a couple of days.
It might be nice to have something for owners of sun4m machines which
are probably too slow to reasonably run aui. Unfortunately, a
person's dotfiles can't conditionalize aui vs. dash based on the
hostname (since we use the presence of a dotfile in the homedir
instead of a variable in .environment). Not sure of resolution here.
4. Sunblades
We have a new installer which works for sunblades and other sun4u
machines. It does not work for sun4m machines because we can't
currently build a floppy which works with it. This may pose an issue
for ops by requiring a third production install server. (We can
install 9.0 on both types of machines, just not using the same
miniroot.)
5. Hiring a contractor
Bill will go ahead and pursue hiring a short-term contractor to do
troubleshooting; people who have candidates in mind should tell him.
6. Whither AUI
We talked a bit about the issues raised by ghudson in recent mail. We
remain unsure which direction IS is going as far as resource
commitment for Athena. Currently we have about as much staff
commitment to barely keep things running, with little or no margin to
respond to medium-sized user needs (on the level of qualifying a new
mail reader) or to tolerate turnover or attrition. Without AUI, we
would have that margin with the current staff level, although IS might
just harvest that margin for new projects.
The point of no return for AUI is roughly June 7 (which would give us
one week to turn off AUI before making the early release if we decide
to do so). For the moment we will assume we are going ahead with AUI,
and will reevaluate in three weeks.
7. Small stuff
We can nuke the GNOME help browser from the menus, but it also comes
up in other contexts. Needs work.
The menus still rely on renew.sh in the aui locker; need an equivalent
in the release.
Changing the logout icon in the panel main menu will require code
hacks.
