[1083] in I/T Delivery
WinAthena Project Status Report as of 28 Feb, 2003
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas L. Thornton)
Tue Mar 18 13:47:14 2003
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:47:04 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <200303181847.NAA00545@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: Joe Calzaretta, Qing Dong, Paul Hill, Wael Hishmeh,
Dave Tanner, Tom Thornton
Report Date: 18 Mar, 2003
Submitted by: Tom Thornton
URL: http://web.mit.edu/winathena
Accomplishments in February
--------------------------
The use of the win.mit.edu Domain increases to 115 active machines and
180 unique logins per day.
Domain containers:
Building 37 - The cluster is reserved much of every day, except
Saturdays, for the rest of the semester. A revised add/attach
version is hand-deployed. New FAQs, 3PS licenses, a file share,
bug-reporting and printing features are installed. See:
http://mit.edu/windows/cluster
PLC - There are two containers and eight machines and one member
server. Staff are using the machines with productivity software and
working around Domain printing problems by using their server as a
print share. Kerem and Wael meet with Robin, who does not see any
big critical problems. Wael makes a list of discrete tests that Tom
C will try. For the standalone Domain test, Kerem reports that MIT
Legal has OK'd the MS/Dell consulting contract.
OSP - Steve Dowdy now uses two dozen machines, almost finished
moving all his users into the Domain, and hand-tests XP.
Treasurer's Office - Testing three machines, no servers. Also
hand-testing XP. Several OpenAFS and profile issues remain, which
we reproduce, as Paul meets with Doug Olander.
BioMicro - Patrick Paul uses his win experiences to create a
standalone Domain.
Nuclear Reactor Lab - Ed Block joins four machines.
MCC joins a machine.
There is not any news, good or bad, from owners of machines in DUSP or
SMA. CEE, MechE, Economics and Campus Police may be considering the
Domain. Facilities will probably run their own; Scott Ehrlich at AI
Lab will, too. Theresa mentions that Sarah Brady and Dave Turnquist
from the Budget Office may want to join. We also know OCW will buy a
MS content management system to be on a Domain hosted at Sapient.
For critical bugs, see:
http://web.mit.edu/pismere/projmgt/bugs/critical.html
Container-admins meet 28 February. Paul MCs, reporting on testing GP
as well as Win2k SP3, SP4 beta and Windows Server 2003 RC2. He builds
several test installers for OpenAFS, that are tested on a dozen
machines and may be run by hand. Tom and Paul rework the Casetracker
categories while inquiring into MSI and AFS consultants.
Wael announces that the Intensive Computing discovery group will not
explore Windows. He continues to help the DART team plan to enact
analysis processes. He reproduces several Treasurer's Office bugs,
redoing many OpenAFS tests under SP4 beta, looking at Yahoo Toolbar,
Messenger, Visual Studio and MSDN.
In addition to team member Wael, Paul and Richard will consult with
the W2K Servers team. Elise oversees docs there, and this team will
have access. See the web site:
http://web.mit.edu/windows-delivery
Joe installs GPMC Beta2 and advises how to make settings. He assigns
FileZilla to the whole Domain, already having removed the "plop"
feature from the next pismere.msi, and puts the installer under the
control of Atticus of SWRT. He indexes a new MSDN. He turns on
auditing of failures and successful deletes on all levels of the DFS
hierarchy. He writes Chad a path-append script. He sets all machines
in the Domain to trust \\win.mit.edu. He reworks instloop.
Joe removes the "Delete cached copies of roaming profiles" workaround,
which may help with OpenAFS. He puts the OpenAFS installer in the
build tree. He deals with several Ed Block bugs, with Paul. He
studies auto-logoff by a container admin, a request from Chad. He has
a new script to install LPNG printers with new binaries looking for M:
and U:. Lastly, he announces the IE6 installer is available to
Container Admins to deploy across a container. This IE works with
personal certificates.
Richard builds the short-term test Domain, didnt, using new IBM
servers. Dave and Qing populate it and we begin to extend its schema.
Richard continues to train ASO on Windows. He looks at file
replication across DFS on isnt. He studies policies on isnt to make
it look like win. He works with Kevin on documenting GPOs to set on
member servers. He diagnoses and acts on a bdin stoppage. He writes
up a GP outline and studies a winlogger project, defining work for
Cana.
Dave works on the KPR MSI installer, renamed to LPNG. He debugs
registry problems, the temp file location and a get_event error. He
is in contact with the U of Florida test site.
Qing fixes sendbug and makes the help files. She delivers two more
web services, including getting a RIS container. She creates and
presents a data model at an OSAM meeting with Oliver, and we agree to
call the design effort "strack." She looks into FileZilla Server, examining
the work needed to include GSS support.
Tom meets with sponsors to define all IS Windows work. He builds a
WinZephyr final candidate and delivers it to SWRT. He tests OpenAFS
on Windows Server 2003 RC2. Paul and Tom list the set of existing
locker apps on a what-runs-where page at:
http://web.mit.edu/pismere/support/for-users/what-runs-where.html
Kevin sets up machines and studies GP. He goes through all win
settings and will list the applications involved. He documents isnt
changes and settings, testing with NTLM level 2. He writes up
detailed docs, first on anonymous connections to servers and NTLM
authentication levels.
Next Community Milestone
-----------------------
- Our top priority is now OSP and the Treasurer's Office - debug the
OpenAFS installer for XP.
- Work with desktop-project and the Windows Domains and Servers team
to revise and add to the IS web presence. Web pages will support
script submission and joining student machines to the domain.
- Continue Container Admin meetings, presenting new apps, web pages
and documents.
Goals for March
--------------
As last month, we still have three other priorities:
1. Install user apps;
2. Maintain and account for DC sysadmin;
3. Deploy with transition to Support and Service teams.
Item 1 includes supporting current customers, hoping to get help
deploying user apps, ideally in AFS. Apps include Office and new
MSIs.
For Item 2, the Windows Domains and Servers team will assist in
documenting administration and automated event log processing.
Item 3 relates to discussions with Support and ITLT, defining the
user-visible products we shall deliver and focusing on how best to
deploy them. Here we concentrate on Bldg 37.
Specifically we want to:
- Debug BMC's NetApp server.
- Work through the remaining SMA problems on Netscape.
- Get schema OID from Tom C.
Longer Term Goals
----------------
- We need to take over what Danilo intended to write, someday:
Kerberos work, especially KfW 2.2
DHCP & RIS
Build
- Continue to develop web pages allowing container maintenance.
- Sync our AFS code with OpenAFS via CMU.
- Get help from Garry and TomC to put non-null Kerberos instances into
Moira.
- Do further work to populate AD attributes, such as white pages info,
from the MIT data warehouses.
- Work with MS to customize RIS.
Issues
-----
- With no Windows system programmer, we stretch Joe awfully thin.
- Providing a collection of licensed enduser apps will be the primary
difficulty in making WinAthena machines useful.
- Cluster administration takes too much from our developers and
admins, especially debugging joined, not RISed, machines. We hope to
make this easier and get help from the Windows Delivery team and
Service and Support processes.
- Win2K domain questions and PSS bugs take much of Paul's time.
