...
- GNOME Bonobo components from one login session will not be reused in another login session because they may not have access to the same tickets and tokens. There is similar isolation for gconfd-2 for the same reason.
- Users can log in simultaneously from multiple machines without running afoul of GNOME software locks in the home directory.
- If a user's home directory is unavailable upon login, a temporary homedir will be created on local disk and used instead.
- Users can log in with "ignore customizations" or in terminal mode to repair severely broken dotfiles.
- DONE User processes generated by Athena software components do not stick around after the user logs out. On cluster machines, user processes are forcibly killed after the user logs out.
- Athena machines have a screensaver which accepts a Kerberos password to unlock and which allows the user to be logged out after a set time.
- DONE GNOME won't display a dialog about changes in X keyboard settings from one login to another, since the same account is used on multiple machines.
- DOCUMENT Basic GNOME functions will work when the user's home directory is inaccessible (such as when the user's AFS tokens have expired) or is over quota.
- GNOME's trash handling has fixes for Athena home directories.
- Users receive warning dialogs when Kerberos tickets are about to expire.
- DONE Users receive warning dialogs at login time when their homedir or mail quotas are approaching full.
...
- Athena machines have filesystem-level access to AFS.
- Athena machines periodically clean up files in temporary areas to avoid slowly filling the disk.
- Athena machines automatically take updates when we put out new releases.
- Athena machines have a consistent set of native platform packages installed, which is a superset of the default package set.
- Athena machines can be flagged as "public", which implies that they have no persistent data or customizations and can engage in more aggressive cleanup activities.
- The default GNOME panel setup contains a menu of important Athena locker software (currently unmaintained). For performance reasons, the files representing this menu must be stored on local disk.
- DESUPPORT Some lockers containing frequently-used software are stored on local disk for performance reasons.
- Cluster machines perform some self-integrity checking to repair accidental and casual changes to their configurations.
- Athena machines may be part of a Hesiod "cluster" which can determine whether they take beta updates, whether they are cluster/quickstation machines, and what their default printers are.
- Particular aspects of Athena machines can be configured by editing /etc/athena/rc.conf.
- DESUPPORT Cluster machines use static IP addresses and have an easy procedure for changing IP addresses when they are moved to different subnets.
- DESUPPORT Cluster machines run a local name server and are configured to use it to cache name lookup results.
- DESUPPORT Admins can enable various nework services with the "mkserv" command; the most popular of these is "mkserv remote" to permanently enable remote access daemons.
- Athena machines almost always have the correct time as determined by time.mit.edu.
- DESUPPORT Athena machines automatically synchronize the hardware clock following Daylight Savings Time changes.
- DONE Athena users receive messages of the day prior to logging in (the gmotd) and upon logging in (the motd) and can also be sent personalized system messages upon logging in about things like impending account cancellations (lert).
- Users can submit bug reports to the appropriate channel using the sendbug command.
...