MPU Meeting Tuesday 13th March 2007

LCFG website

Solaris packages (/repository) now live on pezenas for new-headers Suns, so Stephen can now do some work on adding Solaris support to the LCFG website. Old-headers Suns still use the /repository on phoenix so Chris will add some sort of regular rsync to keep the two sets of packages identical.

Solaris Improvement Project

Chris and Craig agreed that as soon as Chris has done some XML profile comparisons and proved that there are no major differences between old- and new-header profiles, Craig will convert ouroboros and salamander to the new headers. He'll then leave them for a couple of weeks to bed down and show up problems, before converting the other Suns.

Craig also established that the Kerberos settings on the new-header Suns work properly, and worked out what needs to be added to make AFS work as it does on old-header machines (one package and a handful of resources) and where (dice/options/afs-client.h). The Services Unit will make the necessary changes to the header. This needn't hold up progress as the necessary incantations can easily be added to individual profiles in the meantime.

FC5 Upgrade

Nothing to report this week.

FC6 Project

The project's going well and it's ahead of schedule. It's been installed on various machines. We have both PXE and CD install methods. It also now works on the Dell Optiplex 745 (the current SelectPC), so we'll soon be able to buy new machines once more (hooray!). Most basic porting is done. Documentation is needed: we need the LCFG wiki. Most DICE stuff has been auto-built. We're almost at the point of being able to use the dice-level headers. We're hoping to be able to announce an Alpha release soon. The web site currently holds the FC6 stuff, but it's not yet being linked to from the front page. Richard is happy to do FC6 release testing from April as well as FC5; he doesn't think it'll be a problem at all.

Operational

New kernel and AFS

Last week's new kernel had to be withdrawn because of a problem with OpenAFS. Simon attempted a patch but the code base had changed. We'll need OpenAFS 1.4.3. Alastair and Stephen will tackle the problem this week.

The MPU CSO

Carol will be with us for some months, and will have about an hour and a half per week for MPU work. Unfortunately timing clashes mean that it'll be difficult for her to attend MPU meetings; nor would it necessarily be the best use of her 1½ hours! We'll talk about this more next week.

More Headers

Kenny is sending Stephen a steady supply of new LCFG headers.

Upcoming

There'll be an LCFG community meeting on Thursday afternoon. Next week is the UKUUG Spring Conference.

Dual Head Support

We had hoped to improve the dual head support in FC5 but with the immiment arrival of FC6 DICE there seems little point. Instead we're going to explore the state of dual head support in FC6.

Header Metadata

Stephen is going to try this out, for example to help sort out the unused FC5 headers.

Renaming /disk/rpms

We had planned to rename this to /disk/sw but there seems little point now as everything will change soon with the new rpmsubmit.

This Week

Chris will:

• LCFG tutorial workshop; we need to fix the date this week.
• Make and install releases.
• Do XML profile comparisons.
• Look at the LCFG manual generator.

Stephen will:

• Carry on with the FC6 project.
• Work on his UKUUG talk.
• Mail COs about services on achilles

Alastair will:

• Chase George and Craig about achilles.
• Talk to Craig and Simon about the AFS problem.
• Look at the LCFG wiki with Chris.
• Create a quick MPU diary in the wiki.
• Speak to Carol about RH9.

-- ChrisCooke - 13 Mar 2007