[4059] in Release_7.7_team
5 November 2003 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Cattey)
Wed Nov 5 14:07:30 2003
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 14:02:46 -0500
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From: William Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
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Team Name: Athena UNIX Platform Team
Team Leader: Bill Cattey
Report Date: 5 November 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: Testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.2.
DONE: Develop 9.2-based Solaris miniroot.
DELAYED: Produce document, "Differences between Athena Linux and stock
Red
Hat Linux".
DELAYED: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.
DELAYED: Integrate into the Athena release, the developed friendly way
to
go on/off net or switch interfaces.
DONE: Publish Athena laptop hardware recommendations.
DELAYED: Investigate installing Athena software on Solaris with Solaris
package tools.
DONE: Investigate upgrading to Red Hat Enterprise Edition (scope,
timeframe, value, yes/no decision).
PROGRESS: Work on resizing of Windows partition as part of Linux Athena
install.
PROGRESS: Develop some simple command-line tools for manipulating mail
in IMAP. (Existing ways of doing seemingly simple things are rather
baroque.)
Community Milestone Met:
Other Accomplishments:
* Much time spent testing and refining SMTP authentication.
* Prepared but not yet deployed patch release with SMTP
authentication, bug fixes, and the offlinehome script for disconnected
operation.
* Produced drafts of new Linux web pages making support clearer, and
better differentiating Athena and stand-alone Linux.
* Took plan for maintaining TeX to owls for review.
* Wrote new draft of the Private Athena Workstation Owners Guide, and
circulated to Release Team for review.
* Surveyed and reviewed Linux distributions.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
OLD: Produce document, "Differences between Athena Linux and stock Red
Hat Linux".
OLD: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.
OLD: Integrate into the Athena release, the developed friendly way to
go on/off net or switch interfaces.
OLD: Investigate installing Athena software on Solaris with Solaris
package tools.
OLD: Work on resizing of Windows partition as part of Linux Athena
install.
OLD: Develop some simple command-line tools for manipulating mail in
IMAP. (Existing ways of doing seemingly simple things are rather
baroque.)
NEW: Test and deploy 9.2-based Solaris miniroot.
NEW: Test Athena disconnected operation.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Deploy patch release with SMTP authentication and offlinehome script.
Deploy new PWOG.
Deploy updated Linux web pages.
Bugfix patch release when next needed.
Issues:
With the changes announced by Red Hat, it is unclear what distribution
of Linux is appropriate for Athena. There are many conversations going
on with Red Hat to understand the new offerings, and make an
appropriate selection.
Key learnings:
Additional comments:
Athena Monthly machine counts:
Method: On install, machines get a unique ID. Each day every system
reports its existance to a central syslog. This method over-counts
systems installed multiple times. Systems running Athena than 9.0 or
earlier are not counted.
systype 6/2003 7/2003 8/2003 9/2003 10/2003 Delta
linux 744 766 821 869 827 -42
sun 784 842 788 768 741 -27
Summary Analysis: Fewer redundant installs are being logged as unique
machines.
