[5561] in Release_7.7_team
1 August 2006 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Aug 1 16:06:11 2006
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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 16:05:44 -0400
To: owls@MIT.EDU, "Wilson D'Souza" <wdsouza@MIT.EDU>, zips@MIT.EDU
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 1 August 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.
STALLED: Investigate RPM issue that is resulting in deleted system
files as
a result of interrupted updates. (Still awaiting news from Red Hat.)
DELAYED: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena
full release.(Still awaiting server upgrade.)
DONE: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather than as
an update from 9.3.
PROGRESS: 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.)
DELAYED: Investigate changing Athena Linux installer to use Red Hat
JumpStart.
DEFERRED: Investigate changing Athena Linux updater to use Red Hat
Network.
(Issue that all updates stop when RHN keys expire.)
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.
PROGRESS: Follow up on issue submitted to bugs about how queued email
gets high spam score. (A patch exists, and is awaiting review.)
Community Milestones Met:
Other Accomplishments:
* Deployed amendment to Athena Linux to install at 9.4 by default.
* Created new Athena install media with drivers to support new hardware
(especially the recommended Athena renewal hardware.)
* Debugged problems with Firefox startup and printing.
* Developed quota warning dialogs to replace obscure console messages.
* Recommended change in Linux hardware vendor from HP to Dell.
* Drafted bullet points for future of Athena Development.
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: 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: (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.
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.
OLD: Follow up on issue submitted to bugs about how queued email gets
high spam score.
NEW: Craft remedy for firefox "locked profile" startup problem reported
by users.
NEW: Integrate Firefox 1.5.0.5 into Athena release using native RedHat
RPM.
NEW: Develop change for Public Athena Workstation verification to
permit the exception list to be modified outside the release cycle.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Patch release including Firefox 1.5.0.5 (with fixes to startup and
printing problems), quota warning dialogs, Public Workstation
verification fixes, sendmail direct delivery change, and additional
MIME application configurations.
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: OpenAFS 1.4.1 has been working for the most part. We have an
issue with file locking that seems to affect Firefox startup. We are
investigating.
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 02/2006 03/2006 04/2006 05/2006 06/2006 07/2006 Delta
LINUX 773 752 755 770 742 763 +21
SUN 498 474 477 463 447 431 -16
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 02/06 03/06 04/06 05/06 06/06 07/06 Delta
Total 1034 1041 1089 1128 1185 1191 +6
Inactive 404 391 424 474 523 547 +24
Active 630 653 665 654 662 644 -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: 02/06 03/06 04/06 05/06 06/06 07/06
Total: 260397 257153 272762 241494 171323 174337
Unique: 10322 9872 10007 9949 7955 7642
Median: 9 9 10 8 5 5
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:
174337 ( other 31519 quickstation 13512 cluster 26511 dialup 102795 )
Unique logins for four week period:
7642 ( other 2060 quickstation 3506 cluster 2842 dialup 3857 )
Median logins for four week period:
5 ( other 3 quickstation 2 cluster 3 dialup 5 )
