[5443] in Release_7.7_team
12 April 2006 Athena Release Team Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Apr 12 15:02:02 2006
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From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 15:03:16 -0400
To: owls@MIT.EDU, isda@MIT.EDU, ois@MIT.EDU
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Team Name: Athena Release Team
Report Date: 12 April 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.)
PROGRESS: 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 summer's Athena
full release.(Still awaiting server upgrade.)
PROGRESS: 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. (Waiting for
SecureFX and SecureCRT updates.)
CHANGED: Investigate changing Athena Linux installer to use Red Hat
Network. (Now two tasks: Update via RHN, install via RH KickStart.)
PROGRESS: Target for June: Integrate Firefox 1.5 for deployment in a
Summer patch release possibly using stock build.
DONE: Explore prototype Linux Athena release using stock Kerberos.
PROGRESS: (Big) Develop prototype Athena 9.9 release incorporating what
has been learned about reverting to stock software to improve readiness
for deploying lower cost Athena Release model.
Community Milestones Met:
Patch release to deploy new OpenAFS client. It is doesremedy problems.
(Patch release also included other fixes, for example Matlab printing.)
Other Accomplishments:
* Crafted many fixes for jwgc, and deployed them in a patch release.
* Bill attended Linux World.
* Many people moved offices.
* Transferred most of the developers to the ISDA Directorate.
* Deployed security fix to sendmail as part of Spring Break patch
release.
* Crafted a patch to fix bash dot files.
* Developed and deployed Linux change to automatically rebuild corrupt
AFS cache partitions at boot time.
* Set up local AFS mirror for Fedora Core 5.
* Took a preliminary look at the GNU Mailutils (as a possible drop-in
replacement for mh that is IMAP compliant.)
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.
CHANGED: Investigate changing Athena Linux installer to use Red Hat
JumpStart.
CHANGED: Investigate changing Athena Linux updater to use Red Hat
Network.
OLD: Target for June: Integrate Firefox 1.5 for deployment in a Summer
patch release possibly using stock build.
OLD: (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.
NEW: Qualify new hardware recommendation. Target May 1.
NEW: Look into using the GNU Mailutils as an IMAP and Kerberos 5
compliant drop-in replacement for mh.
Next Community Milestone(s):
Possible patch release if necessary. (We're not planning to do one
till June.)
Issues:
We would have done this report last week, but other conflicting
meetings, particularly Linux World, necessitated a delay.
Kerberos 4 mail clients like mh, xmh, and exmh are going to die when
Kerberos 4 is shut down. We need to think about how we will move users
to working clients. We probably need to announce these clients are
de-supported.
Our concern about AFS robustness has shifted. We are tracking and
frequently taking OpenAFS updates, and actively involved in further
testing and debugging. Update 4/12/06: For the moment we have
standardized on OpenAFS 1.4.1 Release Candidate 10.
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.) Update 3/1/06: We are planning to incorporate this
into a patch release soon.
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 10/2005 11/2005 12/2005 01/2006 02/2006 03/2006 Delta
LINUX 768 769 744 759 773 752 -21
SUN 503 483 478 476 498 474 -24
Count of systems registered for RHN (Non Athena update):
Date 10/05 11/05 12/05 01/06 02/06 03/06 Delta
Total 779 841 872 983 1034 1041 +7
Inactive 243 291 316 369 404 391 -13
Active 536 550 556 614 630 653 +23
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: 10/05 11/05 12/05 01/06 02/06 03/06
Total: 300252 271574 225346 203385 260397 257153
Unique: 11081 10592 10094 9450 10322 9872
Median: 10 9 7 5 9 9
