[5356] in Release_7.7_team
2 November 2005 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Nov 2 14:17:22 2005
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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 14:16:54 -0500
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 2 November 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:
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. (Will restart when queue permits.)
PROGRESS: Investigate RPM issue that is resulting in deleted system
files as
a result of interrupted updates. (Red Hat has begun working our bug
report.)
PROGRESS: Discuss project plans for long term Athena work.
PROGRESS: Implement Java3d request.
DELAYED: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena
full release. (Awaiting upgrade of host TKL.mit.edu)
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.
DONE: Update Working on Athena doc.
CHANGED: Investigate potential work-around of need to manually fsck AFS
partitions on restart of Linux systems. (New version of AFS has caused
this to be much less of a problem. Now a low priority issue.)
ON-HOLD: Investigate update to OpenSSH to comply with gssapi-with-mic
which would interoperate with the RHEL 4 and MacOSX code base. Issue:
backward compatibility with older gssapi OpenSSH clients.(On hold
pending resources to do the work.)
DONE: Create Athena Linux 9.4 version page under IS&T RHEL PFD, and
Athena install doc.
PROGRESS: As part of update of Athena Release web pages, update the
Athena Release Testing Order doc.
Community Milestones Met:
Other Accomplishments:
* Investigated issue with how metacity window manager mis-stacks zephyr
windows. There upstream fixes we are investigating.
* Bill moved house.
* Integrated many Sun Solaris security patches.
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: 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: As part of update of Athena Release web pages, update the Athena
Release Testing Order doc.
NEW: Publish Athena Linux 9.4 version page under IS&T RHEL PFD, and
Athena install doc, and update relevant pages that should point to it.
NEW: Update remote connections document in OLH.
NEW: Identify and integrate upstream fixes for metacity for Zephyr
window stacking order problem.
NEW: Develop fixes for sound issues on cluster machines.
NEW: Determine if Java3d request is still desired.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Patch release containing sound fix for Linux, security fixes, security
updates to Mozilla and Firefox, fix for Zephyr window stacking order
issue, fix for Mozilla/Firefox file lock dialog box usability issue,
and if still needed by customer, Java3d. Target: before drop date.
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 November 2.)
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 05/2005 06/2005 07/2005 08/2005 09/2005 10/2005 Delta
LINUX 732 700 648 798 793 768 -25
SUN 617 608 620 644 513 503 -10
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 07/05 08/05 09/05 10/05 Delta
Total 599 670 723 779 +56
Inactive 148 180 205 243 +38
Active 451 490 518 536 +18
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: 04/05 05/05 06/05 07/05 08/05 09/05 10/05
Total: 334070 300274 215206 219674 211108 316832 300252
Unique: 10492 10465 8659 8390 9890 11608 11081
Median: 12 10 5 6 5 10 10
