[7916] in testers
Re: sun-java6-plugin missing in debathena beta
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anders Kaseorg)
Thu Mar 12 15:59:12 2009
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:58:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Anders Kaseorg <andersk@MIT.EDU>
To: Geza Kovacs <gkovacs@mit.edu>
cc: Evan Broder <broder@mit.edu>, testers@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <1236887132.6991.5.camel@m12-182-2.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0903121548170.15595@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 12 Mar 2009, Geza Kovacs wrote:
> No java plugin is preinstalled on the workstations as of now, I'll
> presume you haven't deployed the update yet.
Right, that update is still undergoing internal testing.
> I also noticed that the command "java" points to gij and "javac" uses
> the Eclipse java compiler; presumably you'll wish to change these to the
> OpenJDK variants with update-alternatives.
This will not be necessary because the OpenJDK packages automatically set
their alternatives priority higher than any other Java packages.
> Also, I noticed that sudoer priveledges are enabled
> by default - as convenient as this might be for me, is this really safe
> (I presume activity done as root is getting logged somewhere)?
The cluster machines put you into your own temporary chroot when you log
in (using LVM snapshots). To a limited extent, this should make it hard
for you to mess up the system accidentally. Fundamentally, though, we
cannot stop you from doing whatever you want when you have physical access
to the machine. So, Athena has always given cluster users root access and
trusted them to be responsible with it.
Anders
SIPB Debathena team
