[6050] in Release_7.7_team
3 September 2008 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Sep 3 16:03:06 2008
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: Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:02:44 -0400
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 3 September 2008
Submitted by: Bill Cattey
Team URL: http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/
Release URL: http://web.mit.edu/release/www/
Discussion during meeting:
Checked in on Athena 10 status. We are on track. Preview is live.
Discussed Monitor power save issue. We discussed possible ways to give
the hotline team more useful status lacking a live monitor in the clusters.
wdc has action item to discuss this with Chris Lavallee.
Accomplishments past period:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
Last Month's goals:
PROGRESS: Develop Athena10 solutions for other items in project plan as
resources are available.
DELAYED: Decide what we want to do about possible Athena VMware image
offering.
DONE: Distribute updated version of Athena 9.4 installer.
DONE: Complete Athena 10 Preview Documentation.
DELAYED: Update Solaris mini-root to avoid use of stub .mit.edu zone so
that Solaris installs to continue to work if MIT name service stops
supporting TCP access.
PROGRESS: Implement feature items for IAP Cluster pilot deployment of
Athena 10.
Community Milestones Met:
1. Deployed new PXE image. This completes the Athena Installer Update Project.
2. Went live with Athena 10 preview. See athena10.mit.edu for how to do it.
3. Patch release containing improved DNS cache security, updates to Red Hat
OS, Firefox, JDK, and Solaris. Target August 11 deployment.
Other Accomplishments:
* Progress on updating Private Athena Workstation Owner Guide.
* Linux patch release to support configuring this year's Dell Monitors.
* Assisted Hotline with deployments to 10-250 and NW35 dealing with troubles
with PXE-based installs.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
OLD: Develop Athena10 solutions for other items in project plan as
resources are available.
OLD: Decide what we want to do about possible Athena VMware image
offering.
OLD: Update Solaris mini-root to avoid use of stub .mit.edu zone so that
Solaris installs to continue to work if MIT name service stops
supporting TCP access.
NEW: Complete update of Athena Private Workstation Owners Guide for
Athena 10 (and decide if Athena 10 gets a separate guide, or is
integrated into the existing guide.)
Next Community Milestone(s):
Patch release as needed.
Issues:
There seems to be a dearth of formal documentation of Install Lore.
Additional stock answers should be written. Resolved 9/3: We are
focusing on Athena 10 documentation, and considering the Athena 9
install documentation to be largely for internal consumption.
Lack of support for Kerberos 5 on the MIT PO servers is holding up
development of a solution for nmh and creates additional work for
Evolution and pine integration.
Ops has some concerns about a desktop-server platform split (Ubuntu
vs. RHEL 4). We need to keep in communication with them about that.
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.
Linux has standardized on the bash command shell, not the tcsh command
shell heretofore the Athena Standard. After much discussion and having
tested full support of bash, the default shell for newly created Athena
accounts should change from tcsh to bash starting on or about January 1,
2009. (Remmeber to notify athena-rcc of the change when it happens.)
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 03/08 04/08 05/08 6/08 07/08 08/08 Delta
LINUX 800 789 798 762 740 763 +23
SUN 235 231 229 222 210 213 +3
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 03/08 04/08 05/08 06/08 07/08 08/08 Delta
Total 1951 2052 2100 2136 2249 2295 +46
Inactive 1046 1185 1223 1276 1388 1419 +31
Active 905 867 877 860 861 876 +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.
Summary: We clearly see that people have left for the summer.
Date: 03/08 04/08 05/08 06/08 07/08 08/08
Total: 191221 201683 179262 116362 123397 117030
Unique: 9579 9557 9495 7598 6837 8604
Median: 8 8 7 4 4 3
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 Aug 30 04:56
117030 ( other 80398 quickstation 18385 cluster 18247 )
Unique logins for four week period:
8604 ( other 4990 quickstation 4473 cluster 3565 )
Median logins for four week period:
3 ( other 2 quickstation 2 cluster 2 )
