[3236] in Release_7.7_team
[Fwd: April 2002 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Apr 9 17:51:46 2002
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu, owls@mit.edu, delivery-council@mit.edu
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Date: 09 Apr 2002 17:51:43 -0400
Message-Id: <1018389103.26395.1.camel@tokata.mit.edu>
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I am concerned that this mesage did not get sent out.
Please forgive the duplicate if you get a dupe.
-wdc
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@mit.edu>
To: release-team@mit.edu, owls@mit.edu, delivery-council@mit.edu
Subject: April 2002 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
Date: 03 Apr 2002 17:40:41 -0500
Team Name: Athena UNIX Platform Team
Team Leader: Bill Cattey
Report Date: 3 April 2002
Submitted by: Bill Cattey
Team URL: http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/
Release URL: http://web.mit.edu/release/www/
Accomplishments past period:
>From goals:
Work on the Athena 9.1 Alpha goal was delayed by work on the GX150 ethernet
problem, and by some challenges getting certain subsystems to build.
DONE: Identify tasks for Nautilus integration.
Nautilus will be installed in the release, but turned OFF by default.
(This will enable us to do more testing, and to allow the Documentation
folks to focus on the Email changes this year. The expectation is that
next year, Nautilus will be robust enough to turn on by default.)
DONE: Work on modifications to Linux Athena install to support wide
diversity of Ethernet cards.
DONE: Deploy patch release:
For Linux: with work-around for GX150 ethernet lossage and with
latest ATI graphics card support so that GX240's can be installed.
For Sun (if judged to be of reasonable scope) Solaris patches to
support Java 1.4 and Netscape 6.2.
PROGRESS:Deploy Athena 9.1 Alpha release.
(See http://web.mit.edu/release/www/explain.html for what is in
the Alpha release, and where it fits into the release cycle.)
Solaris: Update is crafted and under test.
Linux: Update is crafted and ready for test.
SGI: was blocked on an Emacs build problem that is now resolved.
PROGRESS: Deploy usable test version of Netscape 6.2.1 for Linux and Sun in
infoagents locker. The Sun patches are in, but creating a multi-user
install and doing the other integration tweaks has proven a real
challenge.
PROGRESS: Finish Evolution integration work.
Other Accomplishments:
* Athena Install and Update is crafted for the new Solaris 8 update release
from Sun. This has been tested on the Cluster hardware types and will be tested
on Server hardware types next month.
* In response to RedHat shifting from the lilo to the grub boot loader, we
have developed support for grub. grub will be the default for new installs.
lilo will continue to be supported on Athena. Converting from lilo to grub
sometimes involves hand-tooling so the plan is to NOT convert existing
installations to grub.
* Evaluated candidate hardware for the Athena Cluster renewal.
* Renewed the hardware for the Sun build machines, and increased
disk capacity on the Linux and Sun build machines. Next month the Linux
hardware will be renewed.
Goals for the coming period:
OLD: Deploy Athena 9.1 Alpha release.
(See http://web.mit.edu/release/www/explain.html for what is in
the Alpha release, and where it fits into the release cycle.)
OLD: Deploy usable test version of Netscape 6.2.1 for Linux and Sun in
infoagents locker.
OLD: Finish Evolution integration work.
NEW: Lots of testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.1 Alpha.
NEW: Deploy new Athena Linux installer.
NEW: Prepare drafts of System and User Release notes for Athena 9.1.
NEW: Renew Linux build machine hardware.
NEW: Test new Athena Solaris install/update on Server hardware.
Issues:
We are finding bugs in Evolution. We are making sure that the ones
that affect mainstream users get fixed.
We are having a challenge getting everything in the Athena Release
to build correctly. This is work, but we're confident we'll get it all
sorted out in time.
We are entering the hot spot in the Athena Release develop/deploy cycle.
We are making many decisions about prioritization of features and fixes.
We are confident that what eventually gets released will have the right
balance.
Key learnings:
Team dynamics:
Additional comments:
Perhaps here is where the Athena Monthly Machine counts should go?
Count Platform Comments
1065 Sun Systems that have not rebooted since 12/2001
are still responding to "athinfo <host> version"
with valid Athena versions. They're ACTIVE.
1000 Linux athinfo queries of systems only seen 1, or 4 months
ago yield mixed results: some positive, some silent,
some indicative of running another OS.
While I have HIGH confidence of the number of Suns, my confidence in the
Linux numbers is only about 75%. They could be dual boot systems that happen
to be running Windows right now. They could be systems that tried Linux
and never came back. I continue to ponder how to make this count more accurate.
