[6486] in Release_7.7_team
Fwd: Ask SIPB column about Debathena
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Fri Oct 30 12:10:48 2009
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From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: "release-team@mit.edu" <release-team@mit.edu>
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Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:10:33 -0400
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Mitch makes a good point that "Debathena" != "Debathena cluster
machines", so I made a few corrections noted below.
-Jon
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
> Date: October 29, 2009 9:17:27 PM EDT
> To: Mitchell E Berger <mitchb@MIT.EDU>
> Cc: asksipb@MIT.EDU
> Subject: Re: Ask SIPB column about Debathena
>
>
> On Oct 29, 2009, at 8:19 PM, Mitchell E Berger wrote:
>
>> One of the central themes in this article seems to be the claim
>> that Debathena is based on Ubuntu 9.04,
>
> Point. I think everyone involved had "Debathena in the cluster" in
> mind when writing this, so it's good to ensure it's not
> misinterpreted. I've attached a second draft below. I've removed
> the inaccurate information or clarified "in the clusters" where
> appropriate. This column should ideally focus on the clusters, so I
> don't really want to get into "Can I install Debathena on my laptop
> running Hardy?", as there's probably enough material there for a
> second column.
>
> Q: What's up with all these Debathena machines around campus?
>
> A: This past summer, IS&T upgraded all the public Athena machines
> around campus from Athena 9 to Debathena. Debathena, a SIPB project
> that is now a collaboration with IS&T, is the newest version of
> Athena. While Debathena packages are available for any current
> Debian-based distribution, IS&T selected Ubuntu for the public
> workstations.
> The current version -- Ubuntu 9.04 -- allows us to incorporate
> software as recent as 2009, and it adds some long-requested features
> to Athena and makes some programs much faster.
>
> Q: How does Debathena improve over Athena 9.4?
>
> A: Ubuntu 9.04, on which the Debathena cluster deployment is based,
> is a much more recent
> operating system, especially compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4,
> on which Athena 9.4 is based. Support for USB devices and CD-ROMs
> has been vastly improved -- removable devices now appear on your
> Desktop, with no need to become root or use the _attach-usb_ program.
> Users are now able to install software packages automatically, even on
> cluster machines (a feature requested for many years). Debathena
> workstations in the clusters include many more locally installed
> applications, such as OpenOffice.org and the GIMP, a powerful photo
> editor
> similar to Photoshop. Having these applications installed locally
> should provide a noticeable speed increase.
>
> Q: My login takes longer on Debathena cluster machines than on
> Athena 9.4. Are you
> doing something about that?
>
> A: Yes. Right now the login process is noticeably slower on public
> Debathena machines (private machines are unaffected), and we are
> working
> to resolve this issue as soon as possible.
>
> The primary cause of the slowness is the login chroots or "sandboxes",
> which provide users with the ability to install any software they like
> for the duration of their login session. The ability to do this has
> been requested many times, and we're pleased to be able to offer it
> now. We don't accept the slowness in the present implementation
> as a trade-off--we're trying a number of different solutions to
> address the speed issue and we hope to have a fix released to the
> clusters soon.
>
> For quickstations, we recently changed the configuration to remove the
> login chroots and deny root access, which brought login times back
> down into the 5-10 second range. That lets us keep quickstations
> quick while we work on a complete solution for both quickstations and
> the clusters.
>
> Q: Why couldn't we have just continued using Athena 9.4 in the
> clusters?
>
> A: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, on which Athena 9.4 is based, is four
> years old and will stop receiving bugfixes this fall. In another two
> years, even security fixes will end. Moving to Ubuntu with Debathena
> delivers newer software with improved features, and because Debathena
> is designed to be easy to upgrade to new upstream releases -- it's
> handled eight of them and counting -- it ensures we can continue to
> receive security updates and other important bugfixes, as well as take
> advantage of the latest features and newest software, for the future.
>
> For more information on Debathena, please visit http://debathena.mit.edu
