[788] in I/T Delivery
Pismere Project Status Report as of 30 Apr 2002
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas L. Thornton)
Mon May 13 09:34:55 2002
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 09:34:52 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200205131334.JAA20643@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: 12 Mar, 2002
Submitted by: Tom Thornton
URL: http://web.mit.edu/pismere
Accomplishments in April
------------------------
To review non-IS WinAthena deployments:
DUSP - no problems, all is well with Tom Grayson.
SMA - New installers. Paul chases two bugs, that need work.
CCR - Patrick Paul, the new cluster admin, meets with Joe.
37 - We will expect Chad Dupuis to deploy.
CEE - no news.
We prepare to deploy a new Pismere MSI. It includes add/attach,
WinZephyr, SelfMaint and the AFS shell extension, disabling the
security Properties tab.
We use Group Policy to deploy ArcView 3.2 and Crystal Reports, discuss
ArcView 8 with Tom Grayson and await help from DUSP to test them.
The final FileZilla, a generic authenticating ftp GUI, is released by
SWRT.
A new WinZephyr beta is released by SWRT. A configuration file bug
requires another binary.
We send spnfixd to a couple other schools, preparing to send the
packages whodat, and syslog.
Working through the list of SMA problems, Robert has installers for
Quicktime, AcroRead and works on Real Player. Paul works on printer
drivers and Netscape.
Tom and Paul meet with Intel. We interview several student employee
candidates, and offer one a summer position.
Wael removes Retrospect from servers. He studies hotfixes, and maybe
local Windows Update. He works with Mohammad preparing to test
servers for the discovery effort.
Dave puts oucheckd into incremental. He has group security working
fine on brown26. Verifies LPRNG works with the new Krb.
Danilo cleans up the RIS screen so machine names can be limited to
fifteen characters. He releases a new Krb5 beta, assigns himself some
transition documentation and moves on to Redmond.
Joe meets with Pat Paul, the new BMC sysadmin. He tests his machine
container in Moira, and Garry deploys it to the production server.
Next Community Milestone
------------------------
- For the worldwide community, we will allow download of the packages
whodat and syslog. Whodat is a service that monitors the event log,
configurable so that when it sees a specific event, such as a failed
logon attempt, it will dive into the TCP stack and gather useful
security information like the connecting IP address and DNS name. The
Event Syslogger service reports Windows events over the network to a
syslog daemon (syslogd) server.
- For MIT users, we hope to have a final WinZephyr binary ready for
packaging by SWRT. When group security on Moira is deployed, users
will have LDAP-invisible lists.
- For domain members, we should make MSIs for Real Player and bug
fixes to printer drivers and Netscape. Should we overcome machine ACL
problems, people may be able to join an XP machine to the domain.
Goals for May
-------------
As last month, we still have three top 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 DUSP, SMA, Building 37 and CCR, hoping to
get help building user apps in AFS. Apps include MatLab, ProEngineer.
For Item 2, we make little progress in documenting administration,
source code tagging and automated event log processing. In the short
run we will be interviewing candidates. Later, We expect to build new
utilities to scan a machine for local integrity.
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.
Specifically, in May we want to:
- Deploy another Pismere MSI.
- Test libsasl. Although there is a libsasl.dll in the current image,
it is not fully functional.
- Test ArcView 3.2 and 8.
- Get another WinZephyr binary.
- Send the packages whodat and syslog to a couple other schools.
- Work through the remaining SMA problems. Robert works on Real
Player. Paul works on printer drivers and Netscape.
- Danilo intends to write:
Kerberos work, especially KfW 2.2
WinZephyr final
DHCP & RIS
Build
- Test XP in the domain.
- Test group security on Moira.
- Expand LPRNG to work with the spooler.
Longer Term Goals
-----------------
- Continue to design a web page allowing student machines to join the
domain.
- Sync our AFS code with OpenAFS via CMU.
- Get help from Garry and TomC to put non-null Kerberos instances into
Moira.
- 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, especially in Service and
Support.
- Work with MS and HP to customize RIS.
Issues
------
- Providing a collection of licensed enduser apps will be the primary
difficulty in making Pismere machines useful.
- When does the AUI Dash & gnome require Pismere revision?
- Paul and Tom expect to allocate half their time to the new HP
project even after May, so may need help with team efforts.
