[6119] in Release_7.7_team
10 December 2008 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Fri Dec 12 14:05:08 2008
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: dsps@mit.edu, owls@mit.edu, "Wilson D'Souza" <wdsouza@mit.edu>
Cc: release-team@mit.edu
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Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:04:52 -0500
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 10 December 2008
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 new and current Athena releases.
Last Month's goals:
DELAYED: Decide what we want to do about possible Athena VMware image
offering.
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.
DONE: Complete update of Athena Private Workstation Owners Guide for
Athena 10 (Decision: Athena 10 gets a separate guide.) Also to resolve
https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/ATN-2
CHANGED: amb will complete the nmh support for Athena 10 at medium
priority. NMH With KPOP is currently working. Kerberos 5 migration is
a different project for later.
PROGRESS: amb will develop the comprehensive Cluster Installer for Athena 10
at medium priority.
DELAYED: amb will complete the Emacs Movemail feature in Athena 10 at low
priority.
DELAYED: wdc will shepherd geofft's implementing the quickstation bugme
feature in Athena 10 at high priority.
DONE: rbasch will make sure lynx is in athena-cluster-software and
configure the infoagents locker properly for Athena 10, and thereby
resolve https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/ATN-6
PROGRESS: wdc will research new names for session types, working to resolve
https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/ATN-1
DONE: rbasch will investigate setting volume to 0 on cluster machnes and
resolve https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/ATN-3
DONE: rbasch will investigate logging of root commands on cluster
machines and thereby resolve https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/ATN-7
DONE: alexp will investigate if we can de-support setup in Athena 10.
Community Milestones Met:
Athena Patch release containing: Linux ATI driver update, Firefox
update, Sun security patches, keyboard preference handling fix, and some
misc Red Hat OS updates.
Other Accomplishments:
* amb got build server running that replaces the one that failed.
* wdc has been working the issues related to Athena 10 sessions, dot
files, and semantics of attach/detach.
* wdc learned about how CUPS works.
* jdreed has introduced the consultants to Athena 10.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of new and current Athena releases.
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.
OLD: amb will complete the nmh support for Athena 10 at medium priority.
OLD: amb will develop the comprehensive Cluster Installer for Athena 10
at medium priority.
OLD: amb will complete the Emacs Movemail feature in Athena 10 at low
priority.
CHANGED: wdc will shepherd geofft's implementing the quickstation bugme
feature in Athena 10 at high priority.
OLD: wdc will research new names for session types, working to resolve
https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/ATN-1
NEW: rbasch will check-in Athena 10 code to set volume to 0 on cluster
machines and resolve https://jira.mit.edu/jira/browse/ATN-3
NEW: wdc will investigate that it's ok policy to offer Firefox in an
Athena cluster pre-login mode.
NEW: If wdc determines its ok, rbasch will investigate a pre-login
option to offer Firefox in a kiosk mode.
NEW: jweiss or jdreed will talk to zacheiss about getting the Athena
Register account functioning as a fallback for no "Register for an
Athena Account" in Athena 10.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Athena Patch release targeted for IAP containing: Video power save
patch, Firefox 3.
Patch release as needed.
Issues:
The procedure for adding another suite to Athena 10 is "rarely
performed, and the infrastructure for it is imperfect."
ops is now taking delivery of Sun hardware that cannot install at Athena
9.3. If these machines are to be installed as Athena systems, there is
some work to do to get the previously abandoned WANBoot-based Solaris
10/Athena 9.4 installer running. wdc will follow up with ops to find out
the need level and timing of such work. Resolved 12/10: We will not
put new Solaris install into production. We will just keep the
prototype on Sunburn available.
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.
System counts are high this month because of renewal.
Old and new systems are counted this month. Linux count will drop next
month.
819 linux
155 sun4
SYSTYPE 6/08 07/08 08/08 09/08 10/08 11/08 Delta
LINUX 762 740 763 827 842 819 -23
SUN 222 210 213 193 167 155 -12
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 05/08 06/08 07/08 08/08 09/08 10/08 Delta
Total 2100 2136 2249 2295 2360 2452 +92
Inactive 1223 1276 1388 1419 1469 1613 +144
Active 877 860 861 876 891 839 -52
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 returned to campus.
Date: 06/08 07/08 08/08 09/08 10/08 11/08
Total: 116362 123397 117030 214085 196933 191877
Unique: 7598 6837 8604 10764 10006 9961
Median: 4 4 3 8 8 8
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 the period 10/18 - 11/15:
191877 ( quickstation 31496 cluster 53884 other 106497 )
Unique logins for four week period:
9961 ( quickstation 5763 cluster 5691 other 6475 )
Median logins for four week period:
8 ( quickstation 3 cluster 5 other 3 )
