[5874] in Release_7.7_team
6 November 2007 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Nov 6 14:55:58 2007
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: zips@mit.edu, owls@mit.edu, "Wilson D'Souza" <wdsouza@mit.edu>
Cc: release-team@mit.edu
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Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:55:10 -0500
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 6 November 2007
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:
CHANGED: Create new Linux installer based on a more current RHEL 4
Kernel that includes necessary drivers for Dell Optiplex 755.
DONE: Develop plans for full release targeted for next summer.
DONE: Obtain Optiplex 755 (745's replacement) and begin hardware
qualification on that.
PROGRESS: Transfer the Linux 9.4 build machine to a virtual image.
DELAYED: Retire the off-cycle Solaris build machine since we're not
planning on doing another Solaris full release.
PROGRESS: Modify the way Athena machines process cluster information so
that machines with no cluster act like machines in the public cluster
in all cases.
DONE: Set up Athena Subversion repository and create basic structure
for Athena 10 work.
PROGRESS: Create build scripts for creating Ubuntu Athena packages from
the
new repository.
Other Accomplishments:
* rbasch developed a change to stop building gnome-keyboard-properties
on Solaris because it does not work there.
* Integrated a Sun security patch for next Athena Patch Release.
* Integrated Firefox 2.0.0.9 for next Athena Patch Release.
* Investigated an update to JDK 1.5 for next Athena Patch Release.
* Migrated legacy RHEL 3 update engine from a physical machine to a
virtual guest.
* Began working issue of Dell 755 Intel e1000 driver need with Red Hat:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=364791
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
OLD: Transfer the Linux 9.4 build machine to a virtual image.
OLD: Retire the off-cycle Solaris build machine since we're not
planning on doing another Solaris ful release.
OLD: Modify the way Athena machines process cluster information so
that machines with no cluster act like machines in the public cluster
in all cases.
OLD: Create build scripts for creating Ubuntu Athena packages from the
new repository.
CHANGED: Create new Linux installer based on a more current RHEL 4
Kernel that includes necessary drivers for Dell Optiplex 755.
NEW:
Next Community Milestone(s):
Patch release containing /opt/mono symlink requested by Alex Prengel,
JDK 1.5 update, Firefox 2.0.0.9 update, new cluster info behavior,
addition of numpy package, better support for wide screen cluster
monitors and other minor fixes.
Issues:
Ops has some concerns about a desktop-server platform split (Ubuntu
vs. RHEL 4). We need to keep in communication with them about that.
We switched to using native Flash plugin packages (previously we used
the infoagents locker); unfortunately, this has meant that it is
harder for us to provide a Flash 9 plugin on Solaris because no native
package has been released. Since we have received no complaints or
requests for this upgrade, we are going to do nothing until a native
package is released.
Kerberos 4 mail clients like mh, xmh, and exmh are going to die when
Kerberos 4 is shut down. Our plan is to investigate amending inc to
support Kerberos 5 as soon as the mail servers get Kerberos 5 support.
JDK 1.6 appears to interact poorly with AFS home directories under
Solaris, taking several minutes to start.
Sidney-Pacific (the graduate dorm) bought four Dimension 9200s to
upgrade their Athena cluster and found that they were unable to
install them. They are waiting on us for a new rev of the installer.
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: Here we see the effect of cluster renewal beginning to
replace Suns with Linux systems.
SYSTYPE 05/07 06/07 07/07 08/07 09/07 10/07 Delta
LINUX 774 792 779 815 849 856 +7
SUN 308 314 303 299 278 270 -8
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 05/07 06/07 07/07 08/07 09/07 10/07 Delta
Total 1840 1824 1765 1845 1970 2034 +64
Inactive 987 969 926 993 1073 1122 +49
Active 853 855 839 852 897 912 +15
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: 05/07 06/07 07/07 08/07 09/07 10/07
Total: 217514 143980 153036 147026 254619 231773
Unique: 9730 7907 7212 9286 10981 10411
Median: 8 4 5 4 9 9
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: Ending Sat, 3 Nov 2007
231773 ( other 131845 quickstation 37662 cluster 62266 )
Unique logins for four week period:
10411 ( other 6519 quickstation 6495 cluster 5913 )
Median logins for four week period:
9 ( other 4 quickstation 3 cluster 6 )
