[15] in Layered Athena
Final Requirements
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark Rosenstein)
Wed Mar 17 13:54:37 1993
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 93 13:54:17 -0500
From: Mark Rosenstein <mar@MIT.EDU>
To: layered-athena@Athena.MIT.EDU, tjm@Athena.MIT.EDU, jon@Athena.MIT.EDU
We held the second public review of the requirements for Layered
Athena yesterday. A copy of the document, edited based on comments
from the meeting is in /mit/mar/layer/reqs.{tex,ps,txt}. This is
being passed on to the managers for approval.
A brief summary of the meeting:
There were no comments on the current focus of the project, as
expounded in the first two pages of the requirements doc. Thanx to
Susan Jones for editing help with this text to make sure I got the
point across.
The requirements failed to list what documentation was required and
what the impact would be on Training. Besides the regular
documentation on how to use it, we need to describe what the different
subsets are and what policies concern their use. While no end-user
training will be necessary for installing/maintaining Layered Athena,
its use will generate more interest in regular Athena courses.
Also, we need to update the Athena Rules of Use to note what parts
apply to Athena on private workstations, and what really only applies
to IS-owned equipment.
The next discussion concerned tracking of use of Layered Athena. The
requirements describe/assume a central database of what's installed on
which workstations. This is unnecessary, and a possible privacy
violation. The requirement is that there be a way to record the
configuration of a machine for later re-install, and a way to clone a
configuration onto many workstations. And this requirement is useful,
but not important. We should encourage, but not require, registration
of users of Layered Athena. Likewise for the real-time monitoring
(SNMP), there must be a way to turn it off. Finally, there needs to
be an easy way to determine the configuration when you are logged in
to the workstation, and this information needs to be available to OLC
consultants answering questions.
Another discussion was about who can install Layered Athena on
workstations. I had suggested that we attempt to only let the "owner"
of a workstation change the configuration, not just anyone who can
become root. We decided to drop this idea. However, (while there was
some dissention,) we do like the idea of allowing a non-privileged
user to temporarily use some Athena software on a non-Athenized
workstation. Any process allowing this must be quick and simple to
setup and remove.
We also discussed the licensed software issue and whether we charge
for this service. It was decided to have another team look at the
policy issues around this. It is quite possible that this is just a
policy decision without any direct technical impact. In any case, any
possible technical solutions affect all of Athena and are not
specifically part of Layered Athena.
Next steps:
* Tim and Cec will drive the policy discussion about charging for
software and access to licensed software.
* Mark will form a team to move forward with Layered Athena.
* Mark will make one more edit of the requirements doc, and pass it on
to the managers for approval.
* We will assume that the requirements will remain largely unchanged
and begin the design phase of the project.
The meeting actually ended early!
-Mark
