[175] in DeathTongue Changes
RE: DeathTongue Stuff
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Danilo Almeida)
Fri Oct 15 14:18:56 1999
From: "Danilo Almeida" <dalmeida@MIT.EDU>
To: "David Wang" <d_wang@MIT.EDU>
Cc: <licks@MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:18:38 -0400
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19991015130619.00779a84@po9.mit.edu>
> I realize that most things on NTOP are not directly useful for Athena at
> all. However, they do make DeathTongue a more useful machine... And I do
> have a question about DT's role. What's it for, exactly??
Ah, the real question.
My understanding is that SIPB could use it for development of
pismere-related stuff. What does that mean? Well, pismere is a W2k-only
environment with no legacy NT4 support. So, DT should be running Win2k. As
far as I am concerned (as a Pismere developer), NT4 on that machine should
only be used if someone comes into the office and needs to do some NT4 thing
(nothing comes to mind).
> I realize that right now there's very little for DT to do. We have no
> file-server farm with applications being shared out and stuff
> like that. We don't have login scripts and such related automation
> tools for administration and such. We don't have roaming NT profiles
> enabled (so your desktop/customizations are stuck to the local machine
> instead of being available to you on any NT workstation at MIT), etc.
> Heck, we don't even bother customizing IE with its admin kit to create
> a common IE installation or even have a one CD to "setup" a PC for MIT.
> I've always wondered why the last two items don't exist to be handed out
> to anyone starting at MIT with a PC.
Hmm...it dt configured as its own domain? (Is an NT4 domain a service we
want to provide? I don't think so....)
And as far as the Pismere team is concerned, we're not going to have any of
that with NT4. There is an install CD for NT4, btw. It does not set up an
"MIT" NT4 PC. Heck, having a CD to do that is silly because you'd really
like to have an "MIT" config be installed from the net rather than updating
a CD whenever something changes.
> Perhaps there are administrative/technological issues here that is
> non-obvious. Maybe Pismere would have a better idea about these issues?
No, they're pretty obvious. MIT is not planning to run an NT4 domain
infrastructure because it's a waste of time. Win2k will ahve far better
integration capabilities with Athena than NT4 can ever have, and it is silly
to spend a tremendous effort to create this level of support for NT4 when
Win2k is rught around the corner.
> There are a couple of useful things I can immediately think of on the
NTOP:
I know what the option pack is. My question of why is still largely
unanswered. The only useful things in there are wsh and MMC. I don't see
why the rest should get installed. And in any case, we should be running
w2k.
The question then becomes Professional or Server?
-------------------
Now, for something more immediately useful. Last time I checked,
HostExplorer sucked. SecrureCRT let's you do ssh. That's why it's good to
have it. Personally, I use TeraTerm Pro with the ttssh 1.5 extension. It's
free software with source. It has good terminal emulation. That would be a
good program for someone to extend with kerberized telnet support (as well
as kerberized ssh...and even rlogin, if possible).
----------------
Finally, what the heck are people using dt for these days? AFAIK, it serves
no purpose except to have stuff installed on it once in a while. If that is
indeed the case, I'd like to become some kind of czar of dt operations and
make the machine into a standalone w2k development workstation where people
can do pismere-releated work.
We install the pismere development environment and I check out some pismere
sources on there and tell people some of the things that need to be worked
on and coordinate that effort. Any thoughts?
- Danilo
