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10 May 2006 Athena Release Team Status Report

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed May 10 15:06:54 2006

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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 15:06:41 -0400
To: owls@MIT.EDU, wdsouza@MIT.EDU, sdit@MIT.EDU
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 10 May 2006

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:

DELAYED: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.  (Disconnected 
operation has been recognized as important again.)
DELAYED: 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. (Still awaiting news from Red Hat.)
DONE: Discuss project plans for long term Athena work. (We now have a 
plan.)
DELAYED: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena 
full release.(Still awaiting server upgrade.)
PROGRESS: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather 
than as an update from 9.3.
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.)
DONE: Update remote connections document in OLH.
PROGRESS: Investigate changing Athena Linux installer to use Red Hat 
KickStart.
PROGRESS: Investigate changing Athena Linux updater to use Red Hat 
Network.
PROGRESS: Target for June: Integrate Firefox 1.5 for deployment in a 
Summer patch release possibly using stock build.
PROGRESS: (Big) Develop prototype Athena 9.9 release incorporating what 
has been learned about reverting to stock software to improve readiness 
for deploying lower cost Athena Release model.
PROGRESS: Qualify new hardware recommendation. Target May 1.
DELAYED: Look into using the GNU Mailutils as an IMAP and Kerberos 5 
compliant drop-in replacement for mh.

Community Milestones Met:

Other Accomplishments:

* Reviewed Athena Topic pages in preparation for updating ISDA pages to 
the IS&T look and feel.

Next month's goals:

ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.

OLD: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation.  (Disconnected 
operation has been recognized as important again.)
OLD: 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. (Still awaiting news from Red Hat.)
OLD: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena full 
release.(Still awaiting server upgrade.)
OLD: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather than as 
an update from 9.3.
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: Investigate changing Athena Linux installer to use Red Hat 
JumpStart.
OLD: Investigate changing Athena Linux updater to use Red Hat Network.
OLD: Target for June: Integrate Firefox 1.5 for deployment in a Summer 
patch release possibly using stock build.
OLD: (Big) Develop prototype Athena 9.5 release incorporating what has 
been learned about reverting to stock software to improve readiness for 
deploying lower cost Athena Release model.
OLD: Qualify new hardware recommendation. Target May 1.
OLD: Look into using the GNU Mailutils as an IMAP and Kerberos 5 
compliant drop-in replacement for mh.

NEW: Develop patch release for June including Firefox 1.5, OpenAFS 
1.4.1, Solaris security patches, and miscellaneous bug fixes.

Next Community Milestone(s):

Possible patch release if necessary.  (We're not planning to do one 
till June.)

Issues:

Kerberos 4 mail clients like mh, xmh, and exmh are going to die when 
Kerberos 4 is shut down.  Our plan is to investigate the Gnu Mailutils 
as a way to offer the same functionality with Kerberos 5.

OpenAFS:  We are tracking and frequently taking OpenAFS updates, and 
actively involved in further testing and debugging. Update 5/10/06:   
OpenAFS 1.4.1 has been officially released.  We expect it is very 
similar to the OpenAFS 1.4.1 Release Candidate 10 we have been running. 
  There is no urgency to updating.  The update is scheduled after 
classes and finals are over.

We are crafting a patch to remedy the  timeout problem with AFS in 
disconnected operation. (If you start AFS when you're off-net you hang 
for a long time.)  Update 3/1/06: We are planning to incorporate this 
into a patch release soon.

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.

Summary: We see a downward trend on Athena systems, but it is unclear 
if those systems are re-emerging as RHN systems or simply going 
offline.

SYSTYPE 11/2005 12/2005 01/2006 02/2006 03/2006 04/2006   Delta
LINUX      769    744    759    773    752    755   +3
SUN        483    478    476    498    474    477    +3

Count of systems registered for RHN  (Non Athena update):

Date     11/05  12/05  01/06   02/06   03/06  04/06  Delta
Total     841   872   983   1034   1041   1089    +48
Inactive  291   316   369    404    391    424   +33
Active    550   556   614    630    653    665   +12

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:   10/05   11/05   12/05   01/06   02/06   03/06   04/06
Total:  300252  271574  225346  203385  260397  257153  272762
Unique:  11081   10592  10094    9450   10322    9872   10007
Median:    10       9       7       5       9       9      10

Breakdown for current month:
(Total of unique logins will be less than the sum of the sources, since 
each source login only gets counted once.)

Total logins for four week period:
   272762 ( other 44290 quickstation 32834 cluster 60318 dialup 135320 )
Unique logins for four week period:
    10007 ( other 3453 quickstation 6290 cluster 5512 dialup 4649 )
Median logins for four week period:
       10 ( other 3 quickstation 3 cluster 6 dialup 6 )



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