[4178] in Release_7.7_team
7 January 2004 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Cattey)
Wed Jan 7 14:03:06 2004
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 13:58:23 -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: 7 January 2004
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.
PROGRESS: Review, revise and publish document, "Differences between
Athena
Linux and stock Red Hat Linux".
DELAYED: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.
CHANGED: Integrate into the Athena release, the developed friendly way
to
go on/off net or switch interfaces. (Needed to use different
infrastructure component -- ifplugd.)
PROGRESS: Implement prototype for installing Athena software on Solaris
with
Solaris package tools.
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.)
DONE: Deploy 9.2-based Solaris miniroot.
DELAYED: Test Athena disconnected operation.
CHANGED/DONE: If Mozilla 1.6 comes out in a timely manner, integrate it
for an
Athena update. Mozilla 1.6 didn't make the cut. We integrated version
1.5 with local configuration changes to do authenticated SMTP.
Community Milestones Met:
Other Accomplishments:
* Supplied information regarding shutting off Athena systems during
Institute shutdown.
* Submitted copy for IS Insider article on Linux support.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
OLD: Review, revise and publish 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 with ifplugd.
OLD: Implement prototype for 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.)
OLD: Test Athena disconnected operation.
NEW: Decide which Linux platform for next Athena release.
NEW: Draft target feature set for next Athena release.
NEW: Investigate new 'Captive NTFS' driver for access to NT partitions
from Linux.
NEW: Investigate SuSE as a replacement for Red Hat if negotiations fail.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Deploy patch release with new Mozilla.
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. UPDATE: We have asked many questions of Red
Hat to compare Fedora and Enterprise. From a technology standpoint
Enterprise looks like an improvement over the old Red Hat Linux for
Athena. Pricing and licensing is an open and possibly problematic
issue.
Key learnings:
Additional comments:
Athena Monthly machine counts:
Method: On install, machines get a unique ID. Each day every system
reports its existence to a central syslog. This method over-counts
systems installed multiple times. Systems running Athena than 9.0 or
earlier are not counted.
SYSTYPE 8/2003 9/2003 10/2003 11/2003 12/2003 Delta
LINUX 821 869 827 815 783 -32
SUN 788 768 741 750 724 -26
Summary Analysis: About the same as last month.
