[3423] in Release_7.7_team
1 August 2002 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Thu Aug 1 14:29:12 2002
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@mit.edu, owls@mit.edu, delivery@mit.edu
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Date: 01 Aug 2002 14:29:09 -0400
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Team Name: Athena UNIX Platform Team
Team Leader: Bill Cattey
Report Date: 1 August 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:
DELAYED: Deploy usable test version of Netscape 6.2.x for Linux and Sun
in infoagents locker. (This is becoming urgent. Bill has added
resources.)
PROGRESS: Begin testing of Netscape 6.2.x
DONE: Prepare drafts of User Release notes for Athena 9.1.
DELAYED: Craft, and test DOS floppy stand-alone remedy to etherboot
problem. (This is Bill's task and other more important stuff
often gets done first.)
DONE: Get andrew locker working on Linux
CHANGED: Work on bug fixes for Nautilus so that it will run on all
platforms. New goal: Get nautilus working for concurrent login
sessions.
PROGRESS: Work on prototype for Athena disconnected operation.
DONE: Deploy Athena 9.1 Public release. (Target date: July 15)
(See http://web.mit.edu/release/www/explain.html for what is in
the Early release, and where it fits into the release cycle.)
DONE: Lots of testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.1 Public Release.
DONE: 9.1.12 patch release, containing at least: Shipped as 9.1.13
w/open SSL
* Fix for sshd destroying krb4 tickets
* Remove or patch Solaris apache package REMOVED
* Various other small bug fixes
DONE: Deploy new method of counting machines that is more reliable and
explicit.
Other accomplishments:
* Incorporated SSL security fix into Athena patch release (by
delaying its roll-out by 1 day.)
* Preparatory work for 9.1.14 to move stuff local on solaris for
faster operation, and for the AFS file browser "fakestat"
performance enhancement, and other small changes.
* Test systems for all for freshman-recommended laptop configs
arrived.
* Qualified IBM Tower configuration, and flat panel configuration.
* Developed plan and did exploratory work for installing Athena via
RPM on Solaris instead of the kludgy track program heretofore used.
The purpose of this work is to: Improve install performance; put
more data on local disk for greater user-visible performance; Go
cross-platform with RPM; Eliminate use of hacked-up track program.
New Goals:
OLD: Deploy usable test version of Netscape 6.2.x for Linux and Sun in
infoagents locker. (URGENT) (Note: not caching in home dir is a vital
requirement to meet)
OLD: Begin testing of Netscape 6.2.x
OLD: Craft, and test DOS floppy stand-alone remedy to etherboot
problem.
OLD: Work on prototype for Athena disconnected operation.
NEW: Get nautilus working for concurrent login sessions.
NEW: Work with IBM on de-kludging video
NEW: Train Help Desk in the Athena Linux installer.
NEW: More testing and bug fixing for Athena 9.1
NEW: Work on Athena Solaris RPM stuff.
NEW: Test laptop systems to see if they work with Athena Linux
install. (Purpose of this work is: graceful dual boot install)
Next Community Milestone:
9.1.14 Athena patch release with performance enhancements.
Issues:
With the new method of counting systems, reinstalled machines will be
counted as a new machine for that month.
The "fakestat" AFS fix, though it improves performance with file
browsers makes timeouts take longer if you have multiple AFS cells in
your search path, and you're disconnected. For example: Software in the
SIPB Cell in addition to regular Athena cell software is common. AFS,
instead of timing out once for all of AFS, will time out on each cell.
We discussed ideas for what to suggest to the Open AFS developers as a
remedy.
The IBM Flat panel does not work in Digital mode. This is unfortunate
in that the Digital mode is supposed to be cleaner. But we can
certainly live with this state of affairs.
Key learnings:
Team dynamics:
Additional comments:
Getting lists of unanticipated issues is impossible. They'd be
anticipated then. :-)
Athena Monthly machine counts:
New method: Have systems get themselves a unique id every time they
install, and report every day they are up. This is new with Athena
9.1. Systems that did not update will not report in this way.
July
427 linux
96 sgi
769 sun4
This shows SGI which is new. It shows a majority of Sun systems updated
to 9.1.
Old method:
Summary:
1062 Solaris down 47
1073 Linux up 89
How we do it: Every time an Athena system reboots, the event is logged
centrally. We count the unique host names over a period of months.
This is an imperfect count, but it's the best guess we currently have.
Next month we will switch to Athena systems explicitly syslogging their
existance, but that will not count systems that fail to update.)
Here are the number of reboots we saw:
Solaris:
Month: Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
This: 568 899 535 857 487 821
Sum: 1010 1043 1068 1094 1109 1062
Linux:
Month: Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
This: 579 636 542 437 524 588
Sum: 789 872 916 960 984 1073
