[707] in I/T Delivery
Pismere Project Status Report as of 31 Jan 2001
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas L. Thornton)
Wed Feb 13 16:04:56 2002
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 16:04:53 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <200202132104.QAA24949@the-rim.mit.edu>
From: "Thomas L. Thornton" <tomt@MIT.EDU>
To: delivery@mit.edu, integration-ptl@mit.edu, dennis@mit.edu,
ganderson@mit.edu, rar@mit.edu, vkumar@mit.edu
Cc: pismere-team@mit.edu
Project Name: WinAthena Delivery, Integration
Team Members: Danilo Almeida, Joe Calzaretta, Qing Dong (on leave),
Paul Hill, Wael Hishmeh, Dave Tanner, Tom Thornton
Report Date: 13 Feb, 2002
Submitted by: Tom Thornton
URL: http://web.mit.edu/pismere
Accomplishments in January
--------------------------
We present the state of the product to Service and Support.
We have a new student staffperson, Robert Pilwa.
We expect resumes for the ASO position to start appearing soon.
Team members participate in two new Discovery projects - Paul
and Danilo for the PDA one and Joe for XP.
The team attends MS .Net presentations.
The team decides that since we are in a stable state of deployed
machines, we will not update the distribution until the end of the
Spring term.
Danilo builds new Kerberos 1.2.3 and 4.
Danilo and Paul debug our build, which broke on Visual Studio 6,
Service Pack 5, using the new SDK.
Danilo delivers a new WinZephyr beta with the command-line zctl and
works on HTML Help.
JJV rebuilds Project Central server.
Wael replaces the machine populator with one of the newer, bigger and
faster GX150s, with services installed by Joe.
DUSP, with help from Wael, Paul, Joe and Tom, repairs and reinstalls
one machine and renames another. This requires much support effort.
Tom adds that documentation to the RIS FAQ, as well as instructions to
add a user as a local admin using cross-realm trust.
Wael and Danilo get ntb to complete a backup.
Wael continues to noodge Dell, until they send RMAs for the doa server
and box of disks. He sends the machines out, and we expect a credit
for them. Wael looks for a new backup server and plain-box-of-disks,
and tests new backup software on the hot spare.
Since our monitor in the machine room rack costs us $1000 a year, Wael
should instead label and use both LCDs. This involves Wael asking Tom
to hook up the second console.
Dave extends the AD schema in the test domain, ISNT.
Dave works on getting machines into moira lists and AD groups.
Dave builds LPR using static libraries. LPRng 3.6.1, using Kerberos
5, statically, is ready for Joe to push out to a container.
Dave builds and tests the version of LPRng from lprng.org.
Dave works on redmon, a redirector for GhostScript printing. The
print monitor uses \WINNT\Temp, causing directory permissions problems
for LPR, which runs under the user's context and cannot access it.
Dave writes security routines for the "hidden" field in moira lists
and hopes to get the team to review it. He will test it on ISNT.
Joe documents container administrator group policies. He is in
frequent contact with Tom Grayson of DUSP, Chad of the SMA cluster,
Kyle of Bldg 37 and Jay Copeland of CCR.
Joe changes ADContmgr, meets with Garry about moira, keeping Tom C and
Jeff informed.
Joe sets GP to install the pismere-laptop Pismere MSI to all
containers.
Joe and Danilo get MSDN onto ntb.
Joe packages spnfixd and writes a final explanatory document.
Joe has a new printer proposal document.
Qing runs the new dcm from ttsp on a plain machine, documenting it.
Qing installs a script populating the DB works - see the graphs at
http:/web/winathena-stat, and writes a script guide.
Qing's DNS comparison service is running and Chris M is examining
them.
Qing performs an independent delivery:
Isabel May Tate
Jan 14, 2002 12:23 pm
7 lbs 12 ounces and 20 inches long
Ian has MiKTeX LaTeX working, with some major changes to get it to run
under pismere. It will not work with UNIXAthena files, so occupies
70Mb on windows-pack.
Ian finds netpbm is not allowed into the graphics locker, so he
requests windows-graphics. The rationale is this: When apps share the
same source base, they will share a locker. He writes instructions to
use the Cygwin man in a README file in the locker.
Paul works at problems from SMA tests. They need a new printer
driver, which he coordinates with Joe. They have Netscape misbehavior.
Finally, certs are broken for, mysteriously, one user.
Paul helps Marek with ArcView.
Paul gives a todo list to Robert.
Tom hears that the ATIC lab is preparing for an install.
Tom looks into Wise for Windows 4 product cost, and Mohammad examines
features.
Tom hears that the ILP Office has forwarded our equipment grant
proposal to Intel.
Goals for February
------------------
As last month, we still have three top priorities:
1. Install user apps;
2. Maintain and account for DC sysadmin;
3. Transition to Service teams.
Item 1. includes supporting DUSP, SMA, Building 37 and CCR, hoping to
get help building user apps in AFS. Apps include ArcView, MatLab,
ProEngineer.
For Item 2, we make progress in documenting administration, but need
to work on source code tagging and automated event log processing. We
expect to build new utilities to scan a machine for local integrity.
Item 3 requires follow-up on our initial meetings with ASO and
support. An ASO position resumes should begin to appear soon.
Additionally we want to:
- Sync our AFS code with OpenAFS via CMU.
- Contact OSP as a possible admin Pismere site.
- Send the package spnfixd to a couple other schools.
Longer Term Goals
-----------------
- Get help from Garry and TomC to put non-null Kerberos instances into
Moira.
- Generic ftp packaging.
- Generic logging library proposal - package NT syslogger for other
schools, and get tech pubs help from here or a requesting school.
- We need to do further work to populate AD attributes, such as white
pages info, from the MIT data warehouses.
- Continue planning post-pilot work.
- Work with MS and HP to customize RIS.
Issues
------
- Providing a collection of enduser apps will be the primary
difficulty in making Pismere machines useful.
- Support and Service staffing plans are finally underway, yet
indefinite.
- When does the AUI Dash & gnome require Pismere revision?
- Paul and Tom expect to allocate half their time to the new HP
project through April, so may need help with team efforts.
- In trying to test RIS on W89 machines, Wael finds PXE turned off on
that subnet.
- We have had significant trouble getting a bleeding-edge server to
work with plain disks and backup software. We expect to spec simpler
servers from Dell and Compaq.
