[3697] in Release_7.7_team
Minutes of 2002-01-15 release team meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Wed Jan 15 15:54:38 2003
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 15:54:35 -0500
Message-Id: <200301152054.PAA17524@equal-rites.mit.edu>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
Attending: ghudson wdc zacheiss amb aurora rbasch jweiss othomas miki
1. XFree86
We discussed the possibiltiy of getting a 4.2.99 or 4.3 server in the
release to be used only on new hardware which needs it (the Dell
Latitude C840; the IBM T30 problem is not solved by current XFree86
code). It sounds like this would be too much work to do before
classes start. We can consider it for a later patch release.
2. Disconnected Athena
[A lot of content here comes from a post-meeting discussion including
wdc, ghudson, warlord, and amb.]
mitch reported that it doesn't work. It turns out that he was testing
with a static IP address, and Derek's code assumes that you're using
DHCP--you are assumed to be on the net if you have an interface up,
regardless of whether it has link or connectivity.
We identified the following action items for disconnected operation:
* Fast AFS timeouts. Garry will test this and integrate it into the
source tree, so that it can hopefully go into a patch release
soon.
* Fast DNS timeouts. Derek will look into modifying named to time
out quickly. Barring that, we can look into modifying resolv.conf
or nsswitch.conf while off the net.
* GUI interface to bring interfaces up and down (to handle user
operations like "I want to go off the net" and "I want to switch
between wired and wireless"). Greg will work on specifying how
this will work, and (as currently planned) Derek will write the
code.
[On reflection, a command-line interface is probably also
desirable. And may be good enough.]
* Safe updates (copying RPMs local). This is mostly implemented and
just needs to be integrated into a patch release.
* Documentation. This needs to say that for graceful disconnected
operation, you have to:
- Set DISCONNECTABLE=true in /etc/athena/rc.conf
- Be using DHCP, if you want to be able to boot without network
- Set up a local account, if you want to be able to log in
without network
Local accounts should be marked "L" in /etc/athena/access so that
xlogin doesn't try to do Hesiod and Kerberos stuff with them.
Creating a local account with the right amount of Athena-like
behavior may be egregiously difficult right now, depending on how
quickly things like "from -t -n" time out.
Some possible future action items:
* There is a program called miid which will bring an interface up or
down depending on whether it has link. This would let you
disconnect by unplugging a network cable (it wouldn't help in the
wireless case). Unfortunately, on at least one machine (an IBM
laptop) it appears to interfere with warm booting--that may be a
hardware defect, but we really need warm booting to work.
* If we do have a GUI or CLI interface with an "I want to go off the
net" feature, we can add a net event to allow graceful
disconnection (get rid of zephyr subs, maybe someday do
disconnected AFS stuff, etc.). Of course, that means there has to
be a separate feature in the GUI/CLI for "I'm off the net, dammit"
which brings down the interface without blocking on the network.
3. Projects for Athena 9.2
GNOME 2 - Packages are imported. They need to be made to build
(mostly a matter of writing spec files) and then our local mods need
to be propagated to the new packages.
Other upgrades - perl, bash, openssl done. We will probably punt on
emacs since we wouldn't get much out of it. openssh needs to be done
and will be a pain. Andrew will deal with a tetex upgrade (with the
option of putting it in a locker if that seems best).
Solaris 9 - we can install.
Red Hat 8.1 - currently in beta, though we can use 8.0 for initial
work.
4. Mozilla
Bob is now our infoagents locker maintainer. We build mozilla from
source now. Mozilla 1.2.1 is available for testing; running it from
AFS seems unacceptably slow on some Sun hardware, but it seems like
local mirroring may solve that problem. (Exercise for someone to try:
add "infoagents" to /etc/athena/local-lockers.conf on a dev cell
Ultra, run /etc/athena/local-lockers and verify that infoagents is
mirrored local, and see if mozilla-1.2.1 is still too slow.)
Bob will decide whether or not to put mozilla in the release for 9.2
(pro: more regular maintenance, stays on local disk with less
hackery, ability to integrate mozilla components into other release
software; con: can't support multiple versions at once, user gets
mozilla version depending on Athena version).
5. MathML
It looks like we need to install some fonts in order to get MathML to
work well. They can probably go in the infoagents locker or in the
release. No firm action plan for now.
6. Multi-partition Suns
We have 70-100 machines to worry about. We can probably use symlinks
to make an RPM-based release work on multi-partition Suns as long as
they have enough space free in /var, but Bill will still try to
encourage machine owners to reinstall if possible.
If we didn't have multi-partition Suns to worry about, we would be
able to install all Solaris packages locally, which would further
improve performance and would simplify the process of applying
patches.
