[3586] in Release_7.7_team
6 November 2002 Athena UNIX Platform Team Monthly Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Nov 6 13:57:40 2002
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 13:59:34 -0500
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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU, owls@MIT.EDU, delivery@MIT.EDU
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Team Name: Athena UNIX Platform Team
Team Leader: Bill Cattey
Report Date: 6 November 2002
Last month was a big month; this month was a small month (because of
when progress reports were made).
Submitted by: Bill Cattey
Team URL: http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/
Release URL: http://web.mit.edu/release/www/
Accomplishments past period:
Last Month's goals:
DONE: Work on prototype for Athena disconnected operation. TODO:
Integrate into release and complete development of framework.
DONE: Get nautilus working for concurrent login sessions. TODO: Deploy
fixes.
PROGRESS: Work on Athena Solaris RPM stuff.
DEFERRED: Work with IBM on de-kludging video
DEFERRED: Updated email documentation with Mozilla mail configuration.
DEFERRED: Further updates to Working on Athena doc.
DONE: Work on getting Athena installer graceful for auto-partion dual
boot on laptops.
DONE: Further testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.1.
DONE: Deploy patch release with support for SunBlade 150 and XVR-500.
PROGRESS: Deploy Mozilla 1.0.1 update.
DONE: Publish Disconnected Operation Project Notebook.
Community Milestone Met:
Patch release that adds support for SunBlade 150 with the new XVR-500
video card, and a fix for Solaris and IRIX Evolution printing.
Other Accomplishments:
Implemented framework for bringing lockers local. TODO: Resolve a few
details and and deploy for relevant subsets of the 'acro' and possibly
'soffice' lockers.
PWOG updates have been drafted. TODO: Review for technical accuracy and
publish.
Produced more Linux Athena install CD's and handed them to SIPB,
Consulting office, and Help Desk for handout to users.
Presented at IT Partners.
Worked on yet another refinement to dual boot Linux Athena
partitioning: Don't delete partitions willy-nilly.
Updated recommended configuration pages to reflect newly available
hardware, and end of life of other hardware.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Further testing and bug fixing of Athena 9.1.
OLD: Work on Athena Solaris RPM stuff.
OLD: Updated email documentation with Mozilla mail configuration.
OLD: Further updates to Working on Athena doc.
NEW: Finish development of Disconnected Operation framework.
NEW: Deploy gconf modifications to allow nautilus to work for concurrent
login sessions.
NEW: Deploy Athena installer that does not delete partitions willy-nilly.
NEW: Deploy maintenance patch release with various fixes, if and only if
it can be deployed before Drop Date.
NEW: Make demonstrable progress on Mozilla update. Deploy it if
possible.
NEW: Review and possibly publish updated PWOG.
NEW: Flesh out Disconnected Operation Project Notebook.
Next Community Milestone:
Maintenance patch release with various fixes, if and only if it can be
deployed before Drop Date.
Issues:
IBM Wireless Lan Card initialization question.
We need to understand the IBM and MIT positions on video and see if
there really is work to be done.
Setting policy, and obtaining appropriate binaries for a Mozilla update
is a challenge. Nobody seems to supply binaries for all our platforms
for the same version we want to run. We may end up building our own
Mozilla binaries as the way to make this process reliable and quick in
the future.
Key learnings:
Team dynamics:
Additional comments:
Athena Monthly machine counts:
New method: Have systems get themselves a unique id every time they
install, and report every day they are up. This is new with Athena
9.1. Systems that did not update will not report in this way.
October September Delta
771 linux 746 linux +25 (high? Some install testing)
71 sgi 72 sgi -1
801 sun4 801 sun4 0
Old method:
Summary:
1067 Solaris down 3
1232 Linux up 27
How we do it: Every time an Athena system reboots, the event is logged
centrally. We count the unique host names over a period of months.
This is an imperfect count, but it's the best guess we currently have.
Next month we will switch to Athena systems explicitly syslogging their
existance, but that will not count systems that fail to update.)
Here are the number of reboots we saw:
Solaris:
Month: May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
This: 857 487 821 847 825 753
Sum: 1094 1109 1062 1066 1070 1067
Linux:
Month: May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
This: 437 524 588 658 647 599
Sum: 960 984 1073 1160 1205 1232
