[3681] in Release_7.7_team
8 January 2003 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Fri Jan 10 18:47:02 2003
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: delivery@mit.edu, owls@mit.edu
Cc: release-team@mit.edu
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Date: 10 Jan 2003 18:47:00 -0500
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Team Name: Athena UNIX Platform Team
Team Leader: Bill Cattey
Report Date: 8 January 2003
Submitted by: Bill Cattey
Team URL: http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/
Release URL: http://web.mit.edu/release/www/
Accomplishments past period:
Last Month's goals:
ONGOING: Further testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.1.
PROGRESS: Work on Athena Solaris RPM stuff.
DELAYED: Updated email documentation with Mozilla mail configuration.
DONE: Finish development of Disconnected Operation framework.
DONE: Deploy Athena installer that does not delete partitions
willy-nilly.
PROGRESS: Make demonstrable progress on Mozilla update. Deploy it if
possible.
DONE: Prepare and test IAP patch release containing local lockers
framework, disconnected operation framework for linux.
DONE: Import GNOME-2 and Evolution upgrades to Athena source tree.
DONE: Import Open AFS upgrade to Athena source tree.
Community Milestone Met:
DONE. Deploy new Athena Linux install media to support new hardware.
Other Accomplishments:
* First cut at Solaris9-based update and install is done.
* Build script crafted for Mozilla and used to build version 1.2.1 on
all platforms.
* New Linux Athena install media deployed that enables install on many
new configs.
* Extensive testing of X on the IBM to understand issues.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Further testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.1.
OLD: Work on Athena Solaris RPM stuff.
OLD: Updated email documentation with Mozilla mail configuration.
NEW: Evaluate disconnected operation deployment and identify what still
needs to be done.
NEW: Deploy IAP patch release with local lockers framework, disconnected
operation framework, OpenAFS upgrade, Solaris security and kernel
fixes, and Evolution startup fix.
NEW: Complete integration of GNOME 2 and Evolution upgrades.
[The GNOME 2 part will probably take more than one month. It's of
comparable magnitude to the GNOME 1.x integration work.]
NEW: Produce document, "Differences between Athena Linux and stock Red
Hat Linux".
NEW: Put Mozilla 1.2.1 for Solaris, and Linux with MIT configuration
into the infoagents locker for testing. Optional: add SGI version.
NEW: Codify X server understandings into plans for Athena release,
announced level of laptop functionality, and recommendations
to IBM.
Next Community Milestone(s):
1. Testing of Mozilla 1.2.1, and setting it as default.
Target: Mozilla 1.2.1 as Athena infoagents default for
4 February 2003 first day of class.
2. Deploy IAP patch release.
Issues:
Understanding how Mozilla fits into the MIT environment balancing
functionality, reliability, and responsive updating is turning out to be
tricky.
Key learnings:
We got a lot of experience with Mozilla. Plans to update to 1.0.1 were
abandoned when it was shown that 1.0.1 had more flakiness than 1.1. We
reviewed mozilla.org's stated vision for the different versions (1.0.1,
1.1, 1.2 1.2.1), tested them in-house, and concluded that it is best to
pursue an upgrade to Mozilla 1.2.1 which though advertised as a feature
release, is the most functionally stable of the available versions.
Additional comments:
Athena Monthly machine counts:
Summary: About the same as last month.
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.
December November Delta
735 linux 746 linux -11
65 sgi 65 sgi 0
791 sun 780 sun +11
Old method:
Summary:
1035 Solaris down 21
1233 Linux down 14
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: Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
This: 821 847 825 753 772 467
Sum: 1062 1066 1070 1067 1056 1035
Linux:
Month: Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
This: 588 658 647 599 527 374
Sum: 1073 1160 1205 1232 1233 1219
