[877] in I/T Delivery
Pismere Project Status Report as of 31 August, 2002
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas L. Thornton)
Tue Sep 10 16:30:04 2002
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:29:59 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200209102029.QAA20272@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: 10 Sep, 2002
Submitted by: Tom Thornton
URL: http://web.mit.edu/pismere
Accomplishments in August
------------------------
The number of containers, machines, users and prospective containers
begins to grow quickly. As of 1 September, we have these clusters
outside IS:
DUSP
CCR (also called BioMicro Center)
SMA (Podium)
Building 37
FSS (testing)
Bldg 89 (W2K Server pilot)
OSP (W2K Server pilot)
W79 (Simmons)
Additional containers exist for development and N42 intra-IS projects:
Also as of 1 September, we see 48 active machines per day and 75
unique logins per day, averaged over August.
We have new rounds of resumes for a (partial at best) Danilo
replacement.
We begin a Win domain container admins list and conduct an inaugural
meeting. This will be an ongoing educational effort. Paul helps
conduct an IT Partners meeting on Win and W2K Server. The W2K Server
Discovery team report recommends we do a web page to set the domain
password, debug XP, and study exchange.
Paul plans W89 pilots in meetings with Theresa Regan, Robin Carleton,
Steve Goldman, John Fothergill, Steve Dowdy and Kyle Pope. There will
be two pilots, the first for about six admin users in W89 and E19, the
second for COEUS developers, part of OSP, in E19 and N42. Kyle will
perform the installs.
DUSP - Phil Thomson will contact us with any questions.
BioMicro - seem happy, but we do not know whether Patrick's Netapp
server is working, or if he has a working DFS device.
37 - We place order through Intel for granted machines as the first
Support-ready high-performance cluster in Bldg 37. Chad starts the
installation work.
We hear reports of requested clusters in Simmons and Sidney-Pacific,
wondering about the support implications.
We continue specing and pricing test domain servers, as similar as
possible to the existing production servers. HP comes in to describe
Compaq server hardware and submits a quote. We chase IBM contacts.
PSS provides us info on hidden lists, the dsHeuristics property for
changing the domain list object access mode. Joe tests and finds it
works, provided we refresh all groups using a new bulk load. Dave has
groups refreshing security settings using a bulk re-ACL. Qing, Dave
and Joe work on the Moira server privacy flag and its use by
incremental update, DCM, the the Moira snapin and bulk loads. Joe
finds other issues with non-self member-of visibility in strings,
kerberos and containers. A new bulkload for all new groups and OUs
needs more of Dave's work.
Wael and Richard obtain new Veritas licenses and tackle several backup
issues. Richard gets, arduously, an updated license for Veritas
BackupExec under Advanced Server. He specs tapes and builds a plan
for a tape rotation schedule with offsite storage. Joe, Qing and Dave
verify that a populator server restore works. Richard writes docs for
departmental use of Veritas backups using a container.
Wael looks for the ordered StorCase box - he finds that GovConnection
dropped the ball. He will keep on them. He updates the machine
inventory. He works on a High-performance Discovery team, and studies
W2K rollouts for Theresa.
Asanka continues building and testing OpenAFS. He has the OpenAFS
timestamp bug fixed on the client. He works with byte-range locking.
As an XP test platform, he can use syn-flood. In testing the OpenAFS
client on XP, Richard finds that the service does not start, so he
will help Asanka test.
Qing writes a password-reset web page using Apache and Tomcat,
authenticating using the machine principal, sharing Athena validation
code. She documents it.
Paul and Joe fix graft.pl, which has a Krb branch bug.
Joe indexes a new August MSDN.
Joe works on an automatic application of hot fixes, and repairs a
right-click bug under XP.
Regarding use of SP3, we believe it affects existing clients who have
joined the domain. Richard sees some SP3 issues on DCs. An SP2
client cannot connect to AD tools using an SP3 DC.
Paul works on the web form to allow container admins to request a
container.
Next Community Milestone
-----------------------
- For MIT users, we have a final WinZephyr binary ready for packaging
by SWRT. When group security on Moira is deployed, users will have
LDAP-invisible lists.
Goals for September
------------------
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, Bldg 37 and CCR, hoping to get
help building user apps in AFS. Apps include ArcGIS, Maya, MatLab and
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. Here we concentrate on Bldg 37.
Specifically we want to:
- Test ArcView 3.2 and 8.
- Work through the remaining SMA problems. 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.
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.
- Cluster administration takes too much from our developers and
admins. We hope to make this easier in order to get help from the
Service and Support processes.
- We await HP project reports, and could really use those features in
deploying packages.
- Win2K domain questions and PSS bugs take much of Paul's time. He
expects many meetings and consultations to come.
- When does the AUI Dash & gnome require Pismere revision?
