[4743] in Release_7.7_team
4 August 2004 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Cattey)
Wed Aug 4 14:02:10 2004
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 13:59:00 -0400
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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 August 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 9.3.
Last Month's goals:
DELAYED: Review, revise and publish document, "Differences between
Athena
Linux and stock Red Hat Linux".
DELAYED: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.
DELAYED: Test Athena disconnected operation.
DELAYED: Investigate new 'Captive NTFS' driver for access to NT
partitions from Linux.
PROGRESS: Produce new Athena installer with better SCSI support.
DELAYED: Produce mkserv SAMBA so that Athena systems can be SAMBA
servers.
PROGRESS: Get updated Solaris 9 source.
DONE: Deploy new Solaris Athena 9.3 install and integrity checker.
DELAYED: Improve Linux Athena installer documentation.
DONE: Publish stock answer for using SAMBA.
Community Milestones Met:
Athena 9.3 Public release re-targeted for July 12 on Solaris, and July
13 for Linux shipped on time.
Other Accomplishments:
* Developed patch release containing:
anti-aliased font support and better MathML support for Mozilla,
groundwork for changing from sawfish to metacity window manager
(metacity is what RedHat and mainsream GNOME users now employ as
standard. We're behind.),
fix for subtle bug that caused initial xterm to come up in wrong font,
improved Tk support in Python,
new remote tracking of system cleanup,
various other bug fixes.
* Sped up Linux system verify by a factor of 5.
* Both Linux and Sun now install 9.3 by default instead of installing
new systems at 9.2 and upgrading.
* Update to Athena 9.3 User Release notes.
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: Test Athena disconnected operation.
OLD: Investigate new 'Captive NTFS' driver for access to NT partitions
from Linux.
OLD: Produce new Athena installer with better SCSI support.
OLD: Produce mkserv SAMBA so that Athena systems can be SAMBA servers.
OLD: Get updated Solaris 9 source.
OLD: Improve Linux Athena installer documentation.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Deploly Athena 9.3 Patch Release that was described in "Other
Accomplishments" section above.
Bugfix patch release when next needed.
Issues:
Sun doesn't understand the value we (and they) get from source that
matches binaries.
IBM doesn't understand how to keep hardware constant for reliable Linux
deploys.
It is becoming more difficult to fit Linux install onto a single floppy
because of the proliferation of Ethernet drivers.
Key learnings:
Additional comments:
Lots of work was done in the past couple months on non-Athena Linux by
many of the same people who do Athena Linux work.
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 3/2004 4/2004 5/2004 6/2004 7/2004 Delta
LINUX 807 787 802 742 726 -16
SUN 752 724 722 681 706 +25
Summary Analysis: We expect the decrease in Linux systems is because
systems are offline for summer vacation. For example student-owned
systems, and systems shut down for clusters taken offline for renewal.
