[5413] in Release_7.7_team
8 February 2006 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Feb 8 15:27:53 2006
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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 15:28:22 -0500
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 8 February 2006
Submitted by: Bill Cattey
Team URL: http://web.mit.edu/teamhtml/Athena/
Release URL: http://web.mit.edu/release/www/
Accomplishments past period:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
Last Month's goals:
DELAYED: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation. (Disconnected
operation has been recognized as important again.)
DELAYED: For Athena disconnected operation, craft fixes for issues
raised in testing and retest.
DELAYED: Investigate RPM issue that is resulting in deleted system
files as
a result of interrupted updates. (Still awaiting news from Red Hat.)
PROGRESS: Discuss project plans for long term Athena work.
DELAYED: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for Athena 9.4
release.(Still awaiting server upgrade.)
DELAYED: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather than
as an update from 9.3.
DELAYED: Investigate update to OpenSSH to comply with gssapi-with-mic
which would interoperate with the RHEL 4 and MacOSX code base.
(Issues: backward compatibility with older gssapi OpenSSH clients, and
getting resources to do the work.)
DELAYED: Update remote connections document in OLH.
DONE: Explore/prototype Athena release for Linux that uses native GNOME
packages.
PROGRESS: Explore/prototype migration from locally developed login
framework to using PAM.
DONE: Discuss Solaris transition strategy.
DONE: Investigate automated work-around for AFS cache partitions
occasionally needing a manual fsck on Linux. (New occurrence of this
has elevated its priority.)
DONE: IAP Patch release including updates to Solaris 10 and RHEL 4 and
kerberos-enabled version of gaim.
PROGRESS: Investigate changing Athena Linux installer to use Red Hat
Network.
PROGRESS: Target for June: Integrate Firefox 1.5 for possible
deployment in a Summer patch release.
Community Milestones Met:
IAP patch release.
Other Accomplishments:
* Developed framework for locally modifying stock Red Hat RPMs.
(Enables keeping required customizations while obviating need to build
huge subsystems.)
* Cleaned up the W92 test cluster. Made sure all machines were
working, and running the current version of Athena.
* Investigated a pine issue that caused partially composed messages to
be lost when network connection severed. We now understand the issue:
Attempt is made to save the message in the AFS home directory, and
there is no logic to deal with the case of remote homedir going away.
* Evaluated/prototyped reversion from GNOME and Athena Login to
configuring stock Solaris to interoperate with Kerberos and AFS
employing user lookup via LDAP.
* Evaluated use of stock GNOME session manager for login sequence.
Next month's goals:
ONGOING: Testing and bug fixing of current Athena release.
OLD: Develop Disconnected Athena documentation. (Disconnected
operation has been recognized as important again.)
OLD: For Athena disconnected operation, craft fixes for issues
raised in testing and retest.
OLD: Investigate RPM issue that is resulting in deleted system files as
a result of interrupted updates. (Still awaiting news from Red Hat.)
OLD: Discuss project plans for long term Athena work.
OLD: Finish Solaris 10 installer integration for summer's Athena full
release.(Still awaiting server upgrade.)
OLD: Tweak Linux Athena install to install 9.4 directly rather than as
an update from 9.3.
OLD: Investigate update to OpenSSH to comply with gssapi-with-mic which
would interoperate with the RHEL 4 and MacOSX code base. Issues:
backward compatibility with older gssapi OpenSSH clients, and getting
resources to do the work.)
OLD: Update remote connections document in OLH.
OLD: Explore/prototype migration from locally developed login framework
to using PAM.
CHANGED: Investigate changing Athena Linux installer to use Red Hat
Network.
OLD: Target for June: Integrate Firefox 1.5 for possible deployment in
a Summer patch release.
NEW: Investigate using stock Firefox 1.5 for Athena 9.4. (Under both
Linux and Solaris, though the source for Firefox would be different for
each platform.)
NEW: Explore prototype Linux Athena release using stock Kerberos.
NEW: (Big) Develop prototype Athena 9.5 release incorporating what has
been learned about reverting to stock software to improve readiness for
deploying lower cost Athena Release model.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Possible patch release to deploy new OpenAFS client if it is determined
that it will remedy problems.
Issues:
December, with all the holidays, is often a month where less gets
accomplished.
Our concern about AFS robustness has shifted. Linux seems to be
getting better, but the Solaris dialups are having problems that seem
AFS related. We are tracking and frequently taking OpenAFS updates,
and actively involved in further testing and debugging. Progress
2/8/06: Received a reliable test case for Solaris file corruption
problem. Now evaluating updated client that seems to fix the problem.
We are crafting a patch to remedy the timeout problem with AFS in
disconnected operation. (If you start AFS when you're off-net you hang
for a long time.)
Key learnings:
Additional comments:
Athena Monthly machine counts:
Method: On install, machines get a unique ID. Each day every system
reports its existence to a central syslog. This method over-counts
systems installed multiple times. Systems running Athena than 9.0 or
earlier are not counted.
Summary: We see a downward trend on Athena systems, but it is unclear
if those systems are re-emerging as RHN systems or simply going
offline.
SYSTYPE 08/2005 09/2005 10/2005 11/2005 12/2005 01/2006 Delta
LINUX 798 793 768 769 744 759 +15
SUN 644 513 503 483 478 476 -2
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 08/05 09/05 10/05 11/05 12/05 01/06 Delta
Total 670 723 779 841 872 983 +111
Inactive 180 205 243 291 316 369 +53
Active 490 518 536 550 556 614 +58
Monthly Athena Login counts:
Method: By reviewing of the logs of the service that makes
personalized notifications to users at login time, we are able to count
the number of unique Athena logins. Here we display the total number of
logins over a four week period, the number of logins by unique user ID
and the median number of logins per unique user ID.
Date: 08/05 09/05 10/05 11/05 12/05 01/06
Total: 211108 316832 300252 271574 225346 203385
Unique: 9890 11608 11081 10592 10094 9450
Median: 5 10 10 9 7 5
