[5349] in Release_7.7_team
5 October 2005 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Oct 5 15:16:50 2005
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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 15:16:56 -0400
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date:5 October 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.
PROGRESS: 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. (No known Java3d distribution
utilizes the native vendor supported installers (pkgadd under Solaris,
and RPM on Linux.) We believe we now have time to create an
installation ourselves.)
PROGRESS: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena
full release.
(Awaiting an upgrade to the TKL install server to support WANBoot.)
PROGRESS: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather
than as an update from 9.3.
DELAYED: Update Linux Athena install to be based on RHEL 4 to handle
new hardware.
PROGRESS: Update Working on Athena doc.
PROGRESS: Investigate potential work-around of need to manually fsck
AFS partitions on restart of Linux systems.
DELAYED: 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.)
PROGRESS: Create Athena Linux 9.4 version page under IS&T RHEL PFD, and
Athena install doc.
Community Milestones Met:
Bugfix patch release with Linux Java update, fixes for ifplugd, new
version of OpenAFS and (hopefully) remedy to login hangups.
Other Accomplishments:
* Developed and tested a speed-up to turn off RPM verify at beginning
of an update that had been consuming a lot of time, gave no feedback on
progress, and was of little value.
* Deployed a fix for a usability issue that was confusing users when
they received a Mozilla or Firefox lock dialog.
* Fix for login hangs seems to have been successful.
* Deployed fixes to old sawfish window manager on Solaris.
* Developed fix for local menus framework to ensure that local copies
of panel menus are updated properly when taking a full release.
* Developed and deployed a fix for AFS instability under Solaris that
particularly affected users of exmh.
* Investigated a bug in gaim that makes it difficult to administer
jabber chatroom configuration. We know the bug, but don't yet know the
fix.
* Wrote some gaim stock answers, including how to configure gaim on
Athena.
* Rewrote the Athena Release web pages to be simpler, clearer, and
prettier.
* Mozilla/Firefox update with security fixes.
* Rewrote Athena source RPM update to work around Satellite Server's
inability to provide source updates.
* Experimented with with HP Laptops. Got wireless working. Found
problem with Athena X configuration rc script.
* Followed up with Sun on some bug reports
* Deployed Solaris security patch for DHCP vulnerability.
* Developed fix for gpdf bug in Solaris.
* Solaris source finally arrived! Work has begun on Dialup service.
* Made outreach to all known Athena KNFS sites. One affirms they no
longer use it (their DCM feed has been shut down.) Two others have no
problem with NOT porting to Solaris 10. The last two have not yet
replied.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
RESTART: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation. (Disconnected
operation has been recognized as important again.)
RESTART: 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.
OLD: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather than as
an update from 9.3.
OLD: Update Linux Athena install to be based on RHEL 4 to handle new
hardware.
OLD: Update Working on Athena doc.
OLD: Investigate potential work-around of need to manually fsck AFS
partitions on restart of Linux systems.
OLD: 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.)
OLD: Create Athena Linux 9.4 version page under IS&T RHEL PFD, and
Athena install doc.
NEW: As part of update of Athena Release web pages, update the Athena
Release Testing Order doc.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Patch release when needed.
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. As of October 5, this is
still an issue for us. TODO: Check in on whether systems still hang on
shutdown with latest AFS.
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 October 5.)
Issue of Solaris source is resolved for this year. We are converting
to WANBoot, making a very late start to Dialup work, and are now
actively sunsetting Athena KNFS.
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.
793 linux
7 sgi
513 sun4
SYSTYPE 04/2005 05/2005 06/2005 07/2005 08/2005 09/2005 Delta
LINUX 743 732 700 648 798 793 -5
SUN 627 617 608 620 644 513 -131
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 07/05 08/05 09/05
Total 599 670 723
Inactive 148 180 205
Active 451 490 518
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 09/05
Total: 308526 334070 300274 215206 219674 211108 316832
Unique: 10493 10492 10465 8659 8390 9890 11608
Median: 10 12 10 5 6 5 10
