[2053] in NetBSD-Development
Re: Prototype desupport announcement
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Mon May 28 12:34:51 2001
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 12:34:48 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200105281634.MAA28811@multics.mit.edu>
To: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@MIT.EDU>
CC: netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: "[2051] in NetBSD-Development"
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
Hi, Richard. Sorry for the delay.
> SIPB NetBSD-Athena 8.2, based on NetBSD 1.3.3, is being officially
> desupported by SIPB. This means that locker software may no longer be
> built for NetBSD, and that patch releases of NetBSD-Athena will no
> longer be made.
I would stress: "Future security holes and known vulnerabilities will
not be fixed, nor will announcements of them be made."
I'd scope the NetBSD 1.3.3 release to give an idea of how old it was,
perhaps by adding "(23 Dec 1998)" after it; that's the date that 1.3.3
was relased. 8.2.3 for NetBSD was released by Nathan on 26 Jan 1999. Either
of these dates would be good to have there.
I think we should also make it clear what happens to the system packs.
I would say, "We expect to maintain the system packs in afs
(/afs/sipb.mit.edu/system/i386_nbsd1/) for the forseeable future."
I'm tempted to include verbiage like "including the coming decade," but
that might be excessive and "forseeable future" probably covers it.
In between this paragraph and the next one, I would include some
justification; as it reads now, I must say that the question arises
is "Why?".
"We are desupporting SIPB NetBSD-Athena as a formal step to
acknowledging that no work has been done the project recently, and the
age of the software installed is sufficiently old as to be not
conducive to productivity."
OK, that sounds dumb and stilted. But I think the sentiment is important.
I leave it to your discretion ;-)
> At the present time SIPB does not have an updated release of
> NetBSD-Athena, though there are plans for a future release based on a
> more current version of Athena and NetBSD. When the new release is
> available, mail will be sent to netbsd-announce.
I thought about suggesting a time-frame be here for clarity,
but the time-frame intended is "Summer" at this point, and so that
would only serve to commit without adding anything.
I also thought about making a comment about how I expect this version
will be more dependant on Linux emulation for locker software, but
again I think it's easier to omit that.
> We suggest that current NetBSD-Athena users install Linux-Athena 8.4.
> Linux-Athena, based on Redhat 6.2 Linux, is an up to date and
s/up to date/up-to-date/
> Information Systems supported version of Athena. It is the same
Is that really true, though? Oh, it's up-to-date Athena, not
up-to-date Linux ;-) I'd s/Information Systems/MIT &/.
> version of Athena running on the Dell machines in the clusters. SIPB
> has made available an installer for Linux-Athena which will work on a
> wide variety of hardware configurations. Before installing, any data
> stored on the local NetBSD-Athena machine should be backed up. If data
> is not backed up, extreme care should be taken when partitioning the
> disk for Linux-Athena. For more information and instructions on
> installing Linux-Athena, see <URL COMING FOR HERE>
>
> We hope that your experience with NetBSD-Athena has been a good one.
> If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact SIPB at
> x3-7788 or sipb@mit.edu or netbsd-help@mit.edu
I think ti's a bad idea to give multiple undifferentiated contact
email addresses; also netbsd-help is for user questions directed at
develoeprs and users, but not really good as an implied private
contact address for developers. Since the phone tends to generate
clueless people unable to answer specific issues, I would rephrase to:
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact the
SIPB NetBSD development group as <netbsd-dev@mit.edu>, or the SIPB
more generally at <sipb@mit.edu> or x3-7788.
--jhawk
