[985] in I/T Delivery
WinAthena Project Status Report as of 31 Dec, 2002
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas L. Thornton)
Thu Jan 2 17:41:41 2003
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 17:41:38 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <200301022241.RAA07687@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: 3 Jan Dec, 2003
Submitted by: Tom Thornton
URL: http://web.mit.edu/winathena
Accomplishments in December
--------------------------
For the first time in a half year the use of the WinAthena Domain
levels off, presumably because of few classes and users in December.
As of 3 January, we see about 85 active machines per day and 100
unique logins per day, averaged over the month. Although this
reflects a small decrease compared to December, there will be many new
users soon. In 37-312 eight IAP courses are scheduled in January,
then for second semester, February-May, nine courses will raise
significantly the number of student users:
16.21, Radovitzky
11.521, Ferreira
11.523, Ferreira
11.524, Ferreira
11.220, Davis
4.206, Sass
11.521 Lab, Ferreira
11.523 Lab, Ferreira
11.524 Lab, Ferreira
The team spends alot of time with Microsoft staff, explaining our
Domain topology and needs for MSIs, even for IIS6. We work well with
the Windows domains and servers team and the Desktop project.
As to Domain containers:
Building 37 - The cluster is a glowing success with its first class,
a fulltime week of 3.20 Materials at Equilibrium, by Larry Kaufman,
using his ThermoCalc package. Minor worries arise with installing
app icons in menus and slow 2-D video performance. Oliver and Chad
have fixed monitor resolution mismatches and will list the installed
3rd party apps for us. Elise Riordan continues publishing new
documents for users and container admins. See
http://mit.edu/is/athena/windows/cluster
PLC - Kyle has two client machines in the container with Service Pack
3, hotfixes, locally installed Virus Scan, Office XP and Netscape,
plus GP-assigned Netscape, Acrobat and FileZilla. They are under
test.
OSP - Steve Dowdy uses four machines, but awaits WinAthena under XP
for his department-wide deployment.
Treasurer's Office - Testing four machines, but TO also awaits
WinAthena under XP.
BioMicro - Patrick Paul uses another new container. He is a good
container admin and is a great advisor to newer customers.
There is not any news, good or bug, from owners of machines in DUSP,
SMA or NRL.
The team as a whole routinely reviews critical bugs. See:
http://web.mit.edu/pismere/projmgt/bugs/critical.html
Microsoft visits to discuss MSI and Visual Studio.
Dave performs LDAP tests under SP3. He has KPR (also known as KPRng)
working under W2K, but must do more work for SDKs and XP. He has a
NetShield installer under test.
Richard tests the RIPrep bug for PSS. He and makes an assignable
version of FileZilla. He and Joe design and populate data structures
for the StorCase disks. Richard and Tom diagnose and fix a TFTP bug
in the floppy install confined to W92.
Qing has a new web form for container admins to request container job
scheduling. The delete-machine and changepasswd web pages run on an
Ops server. She fixes an MMC bug found by Patrick and corresponds
with Oliver about the OSAM database.
Joe revises our printer installation script system, assigning printers
and drivers using GP according to a file. He deploys it, pushing
published printers. He fixes filename display in the AFS client and
sets domain machines to the explicit domain suffix of mit.edu.
Joe deploys SP3 and the enabled autohotfixer. He does domain
revisions on DFS and selfmaint, plus tests Perl 5.8.
Due to the machine room power failure, we postpone our monthly
Container Admins meeting.
Thanks to a final OK from Academic Computing, we get IBM ISNT test
domain servers.
Paul closes the PSS instloop bug.
Asanka and Paul approach a working installer with some more bug fixes
to OpenAFS on XP SP1.
We test and deploy the IE6 installer across pismere-* containers.
We uncover HP OSAM project notes, and will study using those features
in deploying packages.
Next Community Milestone
-----------------------
- Our top priority is now OSP and the Treasurer's Office - get them an
OpenAFS installer for XP.
- Deploy IE6 across the domain.
- Work with desktop-project to revise and add to the IS web presence.
Web pages will support script submission, sendbug and joining student
machines to the domain.
- Continue Container Admin meetings, presenting new web pages and
documents.
Goals for January
----------------
We will present two IAP courses.
We will install replacement ISNT test domain servers.
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 deploying user apps, ideally in AFS. Apps include Office and
IE6.
For Item 2, the new 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
----------------
- Danilo intends to write, someday:
Kerberos work, especially KfW 2.2
WinZephyr final
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 and HP to customize RIS.
Issues
-----
- We have another request to join the domain.
- 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. 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.
