[4204] in Release_7.7_team
4 February 2004 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Cattey)
Wed Feb 4 14:32:34 2004
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 14:32:39 -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: 4 February 2004
Submitted by: Bill Cattey
Team URL: http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/
Release URL: http://web.mit.edu/release/www/
Accomplishments past period:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.2.
Last Month's goals:
PROGRESS: Review, revise and publish document, "Differences between
Athena
Linux and stock Red Hat Linux".
DELAYED: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.
PROGRESS: Integrate into the Athena release, the developed friendly way
to
go on/off net or switch interfaces with ifplugd.
CHANGED: 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.
DONE: Develop some simple command-line tools for manipulating mail in
IMAP. (Existing ways of doing seemingly simple things are rather
baroque.)
DELAYED: Test Athena disconnected operation.
PROGRESS: Decide which Linux platform for next Athena release.
DONE: Draft target feature set for next Athena release.
DELAYED: Investigate new 'Captive NTFS' driver for access to NT
partitions from Linux.
DONE: Investigate SuSE as a replacement for Red Hat if negotiations
fail.
Community Milestones Met:
Deployed patch release with new Mozilla.
Other Accomplishments:
* Major update of dotfiles documentation.
* Stand-alone Linux OpenAFS installer shipped on time on 22 January.
* Many bug fixes.
* Continued negotiations with Red Hat.
* Continued discussions with hardware vendors in preparation for
qualifying new Athena hardware recommendations.
* Initiated review of Athena Rules of Use.
* Initiated review and rewrite of public documentation of "How to get
Athena (hardware and software)."
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 additional simple command-line tools for manipulating mail
in
IMAP. (Existing ways of doing seemingly simple things are rather
baroque.)
OLD: Test Athena disconnected operation.
OLD: Decide which Linux platform for next Athena release.
OLD: Investigate new 'Captive NTFS' driver for access to NT partitions
from Linux.
NEW: Upgrade of Athena third party software subsystems.
NEW: Update LaTeX documentation
Next Community Milestone(s):
Bugfix patch release when next needed.
(Internal actually) Athena Crash and Burn 9.3 Release scheduled for 1
March 2004.
Issues:
Going to the new Solaris Athena install architecture will be better for
new users.
Some customers holding onto hardware past its documented 4 year
lifespan will either stay
at the old release, or will need to perform a system re-install, or
replace hardware with currently supported configurations. The affected
systems have been counted, began at some 195 systems, and currently
affects no more than 77 systems.
We definitively need to know as soon as possible either that we can
build Athena upon Red Hat Enterprise 3, or that we need to go to
another platform. Not knowing this before March 1 will have
significant impact, possibly meaning customers will have a less
reliable Athena release than they expect.
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 9/2003 10/2003 11/2003 12/2003 1/2004 Delta
LINUX 869 827 815 783 768 -15
SUN 768 741 750 724 750 +26
Summary Analysis: About the same as last month.
