[5320] in Release_7.7_team
7 September 2005 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Sep 7 15:18:35 2005
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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 15:18:05 -0400
To: owls@MIT.EDU, ois@MIT.EDU
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 7 September 2005
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 current Athena release.
Last Month's goals:
ON-HOLD: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.
ON-HOLD: For Athena disconnected operation, craft fixes for issues
raised in testing and retest.
DELAYED: Investigate RPM issue that is resulting in deleted system
files as
a result of interrupted updates.
PROGRESS: Discuss project plans for long term Athena work.
DELAYED: Implement Java3d request.
DONE: Integrate gaim into release if decision is made to move forward.
PROGRESS: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena
full release.
CANCELLED: Prepare contingency Linux Athena 9.4 release based on RHEL 3.
PROGRESS: Implement strategy for migrating Athena bug reports from
discuss to new tool: Investigate Trac as a possible successor to GForge.
DONE: Deploy Athena 9.4 release the week of August 29th. If the AFS
problem is resolved by August 15, 9.4 will be based on RHEL 4,
otherwise it will be based on RHEL 3.
Community Milestones Met:
Athena Public Release deployed week of August 22nd (one week earlier
than revised target of week ofAugust 29).
Other Accomplishments:
* Release notes published.
* "dotfiles" document updated.
* Everyone got on track with their vacation consumption.
* Athena and Operating System Topic pages updated, and announcements
published via the RSS feed.
* We started playing with HP laptop hardware.
* Handled issue of ancient, unsupported Sun Ultra 5 and 10 systems
trying to take the update, and dying from Solaris 10's package system
requiring more memory.
* Updated "Guide to Locations of Clusters and Printers".
* Updated "Athena Pocket Reference Guide".
* We now believe we understand the kerberos ticket forwarding/GSSAPI
OpenSSH issue.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
ON-HOLD: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.
ON-HOLD: For Athena disconnected operation, craft fixes for issues
raised in testing and retest.
OLD: Investigate RPM issue that is resulting in deleted system files as
a result of interrupted updates.
OLD: Discuss project plans for long term Athena work.
OLD: Implement Java3d request.
OLD: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena full
release.
NEW: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather than as
an update from 9.3.
NEW: Update Linux Athena install to be based on RHEL 4 to handle new
hardware.
NEW: Update Working on Athena doc.
NEW: Investigate potential work-around of need to manually fsck AFS
partitions on restart of Linux systems.
NEW: Investigate update to OpenSSH to comply with gssapi-with-mic which
would interoperate with the RHEL 4 and MacOSX code base. Issues:
backward compatibility with older gssapi OpenSSH clients, and getting
resources to do the work.)
NEW: Create Athena Linux 9.4 version page under IS&T RHEL PFD, and
Athena install doc.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Bugfix patch release with Linux Java update, fixes for ifplugd, new
version of OpenAFS and (hopefully) remedy to login hangups.
Issues:
We are concerned that Linux AFS is not as robust as we'd ideally like.
We are tracking and frequently taking OpenAFS updates, and actively
involved in further testing and debugging.
A timeout problem with AFS in disconnected operation (If you start AFS
when you're off-net you hang for a long time.) was thought to be fixed
but is not. We consider this a show-stopper for graceful disconnected
operation, and have put other disconnected operation work on hold until
this issue is resolved. (We think we can resolve this issue by setting
AFS to
start on first network up event (like we do for zhm) instead of at boot
time. (Have not had time to try this as of September 7.)
Lack of certain long-ago requested Solaris Source modules is preventing
forward progress on a direct install of Solaris 10, on updating dialup
servers to Solaris 10, and porting knfs to Solaris 10. Dialup upgrades
are not yet urgent. We are investigating WANBoot instead of CNBoot.
We actively pursuing sunset of KNFS. Open Solaris was investigated and
unable to provide the necessary modules. MIT signed Solaris License on
10 August, but the license and required source files continue to be
mired in Sun process he11.
Key learnings:
Additional comments:
Athena Monthly machine counts:
Summary: Interesting observation: Through August 2005, the number of
Stand Alone Red Hat systems increased slightly (+39), Athena Logins
stayed at their summer lows, but the number of Linux Athena systems
significantly increased (150).
This increase in system counts is due to the counting both old and new
systems renewed in August.
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 03/2005 04/2005 05/2005 06/2005 07/2005 08/2005 Delta
LINUX 762 743 732 700 648 798 +150
SUN 627 627 617 608 620 644 +24
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 07/05 08/05
Total 599 670
Inactive 148 180
Active 451 490
Monthly Athena Login counts:
Method: By reviewing of the logs of the service that makes
personalized notifications to users at login time, we are able to count
the number of unique Athena logins. Here we display the total number of
logins over a four week period, the number of logins by unique user ID
and the median number of logins per unique user ID.
Date: 03/05 04/05 05/05 06/05 07/05 08/05
Total: 308526 334070 300274 215206 219674 211108
Unique: 10493 10492 10465 8659 8390 9890
Median: 10 12 10 5 6 5
