[5884] in Release_7.7_team
4 December 2007 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Dec 4 14:57:42 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, 04 Dec 2007 14:56:46 -0500
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 4 December 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:
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.
DONE: Modify the way Athena machines process cluster information so
that machines with no cluster act like machines in the public cluster
in all cases.
CHANGED: Create build scripts for creating Ubuntu Athena packages from
the new repository.
PROGRESS: Create new Linux installer based on a more current RHEL 4
Kernel that includes necessary drivers for Dell Optiplex 755.
Community Milestones Met:
Patch release went live Monday 9 November 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.
Other Accomplishments:
* Integrated numpy into the Athena Release.
* Produced cluster statistics for benefit of OEIT in determining the
future direction of Athena clusters.
* Imported OpenAFS 1.4.5 into source tree and applied patches for use on
Ops AFS servers.
* Met with Debathena developers to discuss collaboration opportunities
for the Athena 10 project.
* Created Athena10 mailing list to discuss details of the
debathena/Athena10 collaboration.
* Began investigation of Debian tools as background for collaboration.
* Engaged in some MacAthena brainstorming.
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: Create new Linux installer based on a more current RHEL 4
Kernel that includes necessary drivers for Dell Optiplex 755.
CHANGED: Crystalize details of Athena10/Debathena collaboration to
determine what the build scripts and source control will look like.
NEW: Deal with build fallout from OpenAFS import (blocks virtualization
of Linux 9.4 build host).
Next Community Milestone(s):
Patch release containing fix for numpy package on Solaris, Firefox
2.0.0.11, RHEL 4.6 quarterly update, OpenAFS 1.4.5 if deemed
appropriate, 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.
820 linux
259 sun4
SYSTYPE 06/07 07/07 08/07 09/07 10/07 11/07 Delta
LINUX 792 779 815 849 856 820 -36
SUN 314 303 299 278 270 259 -11
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 06/07 07/07 08/07 09/07 10/07 11/07 Delta
Total 1824 1765 1845 1970 2034 2102 +68
Inactive 969 926 993 1073 1122 1183 +61
Active 855 839 852 897 912 919 +7
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: 06/07 07/07 08/07 09/07 10/07 11/07
Total: 143980 153036 147026 254619 231773 213877
Unique: 7907 7212 9286 10981 10411 10158
Median: 4 5 4 9 9 6
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 Dec 1 04:59:
213877 ( other 122488 quickstation 33933 cluster 57456 )
Unique logins for four week period:
10158 ( other 6261 quickstation 6248 cluster 5700 )
Median logins for four week period:
8 ( other 4 quickstation 3 cluster 6 )
