[310] in athena10
Re: Sound configuration on cluster machines
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Tue Jul 8 12:21:17 2008
Cc: athena10@mit.edu
Message-Id: <6E76FCC4-FAD6-4664-B8FD-68635A3B3BE5@mit.edu>
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: Kenneth Arnold <kcarnold@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <48738F86.3090902@mit.edu>
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Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 12:20:32 -0400
On Jul 8, 2008, at 12:02 PM, Kenneth Arnold wrote:
> I suppose it's as good a time as any to note that cluster machines
> will need additional configuration beyond what debathena-workstation
> provides, or should provide. For example, the gdm config needs to
> disable shutdown and (design decision needed) switch user options.
> And of course disabling startup sounds (and/or just mute the mixer,
> or figure out how to turn off the internal speaker; headphone jack
> sound is good though).
Why do we want to disable shutdown and restart? I think it's useful
to have them as menu options. We tell people not to shutdown cluster
machines, but anyone who really wants to can log in as root and run
"poweroff". Or is that we lack an audit trail if someone uses the
"Shutdown" login option? Certainly the XDMCP option should probably
go away.
And yes, I'd favor a mixer-based solution to the sound problem. I
agree that given that we're not going to deploy in clusters anytime
this semester, we don't necessarily need a technical solution.
Probably just a FAQ of "How do I turn off sound?" will be fine, which
I can write.
In the general case, much of my testing so far has been done with
debathena-workstation, because my primary usage model of Athena is a
workstation with mostly cluster config. That's also our current
baseline support - setting PUBLIC to false immediately starts moving
the user into unsupported land. (For OLC, "unsupported" is defined as
"We will try our best to help you, but there may come a point at which
you're on your own"). However, it seems to me that's pretty much
going to be the opposite with Athena 10 - the vast majority of users
will be using the -standard or -login flavors. This may require
drastically rethinking how we currently support Athena and what we
currently support, but that's probably a conversation to have offline
with a small subset of this group.
-Jon
