[801] in I/T Delivery
Pismere Project Status Report as of 31 May 2002
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas L. Thornton)
Tue Jun 11 15:36:39 2002
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 15:36:36 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200206111936.PAA18409@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 (on leave),
Paul Hill, Wael Hishmeh, Dave Tanner, Tom Thornton
Report Date: 11 Jun, 2002
Submitted by: Tom Thornton
URL: http://web.mit.edu/pismere
Accomplishments in May
------------------------
To review non-IS WinAthena deployments:
DUSP - transition from Tom Grayson to Phil Thompson
SMA - No news, Paul still chases two bugs.
CCR - Patrick Paul stays in contact with Joe.
37 - We rescope plans in order to build a high-performance cluster.
CEE - Yo-Ming Hsieh awaits a test machine.
We lose Danilo and advertise for a (partial at best) replacement. ASO
hires a WinAthena server admin, whom we expect in a couple weeks.
Students to be here for the summer are Davie, Robert and Asanka. Ian
will be in Cambridge.
For the worldwide community, we allow download of the packages
whodat and syslog.
For domain machines, we deploy a new Pismere MSI.
Make presentations at all-Delivery meeting and to Support.
Paul works on printer drivers and Netscape.
Tom prepares a Wise for Windows class in June. Paul and Tom attend
and review TechEd.
Paul, Joe and Wael plan and participate in the W2K Server Discovery
tests.
Paul and Tom make an HP trip to design a licensing database.
Dave has incremental using Moira machine groups as AD containers for
machines.
We agree with others in IS that the first Support-ready cluster will
be a high-performance room in Building 37. Details on this should
appear over the next couple months.
We obtain a desktop for Qing, new server disks and spec laptops.
Wael changes data-loss to W2K Server, installs Veritas backup server
and its remote agent, moves the tape unit to it and performs a
populator backup.
Dave has kpr installing and uninstalling a new port.
Joe fixes the selfmaint dialog, which stayed up too long in some
cases.
Joe repairs a privacy problem - killing Kerberos tickets left a
profile on the machine.
Thanks to Qing, the statistics page is again working.
Tom finds the IBM Intellistation needs a driver which is in, but needs
to be installed using RIS, which Wael investigates.
Dave readresses some stale source in addmenu and athrun, so the build
versions now work. Also, add removes paths.
Next Community Milestone
------------------------
- Thanks to Paul, Theresa and Rick Grady who worked out the Microsoft
Premier Support Service agreement, which will benefit IS and the MIT
Windows community.
- For MIT users, we again 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 MIT cluster admins, a Wise for Windows course in June.
Goals for June
--------------
Our top priority is replacing Danilo.
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 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 June we want to:
- 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.
- 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 some portion, but not half of, their
time to the HP project reports, even after June, so may need help with
team efforts.
