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While this page is no longer updated, it serves as a useful reference. |
Contents
- ZEST:Introduction
- ZEST:Goals
- ZEST:Release Deliverables
- ZEST:Development Infrastructure
- ZEST:Milestones
- ZEST:Release Features List
- Design Plans For Release Features
- Desupported and Changed Features
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Release Features List
Applications
- DONE ZEST:Users can connect to the mainframe with the x3270 terminal emulator.
- DONE ZEST:Users can send and receive Zephyr messages.
- DONE ZEST:Users can browse the web with Firefox, which is preconfigured with the MIT CA, a local filesystem path for its disk cache, and the Java and Flash plugins.
- DONE ZEST:Users can easily connect to the MIT Chat service with Gaim, and in addition can use the gaim-encryption plugin for end-to-end message encryption.
- DONE ZEST:Users can easily read MIT mail using Evolution or Pine.
- DONE ZEST:Users can read archives in Discuss.
- DONE ZEST:Users have access to a rich C development environment as well as basic installations of Perl, Python, and Java.
- DONE ZEST:Users have access to a variety of non-standard utilities (jot, lam, saferm, etc.).
- DONE ZEST:Users can print to Athena network printers with the lpr command and from applications which support printing.
- DONE ZEST:Users have access to the enscript command to format text documents into postscript for printing.
- DONE ZEST:Users can run emacs with Athena site customizations.
- DONE ZEST:Users can conduct single sign-on logins to other Athena machines (provided they have a keytab and are configured for remote access) or compatible non-Athena machines via kerberized ssh, telnet, rlogin, or ftp.
- DONE ZEST:Users can query and manipulate IMAP mail stores with the mailquota, mailusage, from, and mitmail* commands.
- DONE ZEST:Users can access and run software from AFS lockers through /mit paths via "attach", "add", "setup", and related commands. Home directories are also treated as lockers.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Users can use a network-enabled replacement for "write" between machines.
- DONE ZEST:Users can query Athena hesiod information with the hesinfo command.
- DONE ZEST:Users can spell-check documents using the ispell command.
- DONE ZEST:Users can pull down MIT mail with the emacs movemail command (currently uses kpop).
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines have a selection of international fonts installed.
- DONE ZEST:Users can talk to serial devices using kermit.
- DONE ZEST:Users can process TeX and LaTeX documents.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines can access Windows file shares using a Kerberos-enabled smbclient.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Athena machines can serve file shares to SMB clients, using a Kerberos-enabled Samba server which is pre-configured for the win.mit.edu realm.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines have attach-and-run scripts in the default path for various bits of locker software such as the Moira tools.
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Legacy Features
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Athena users can run an old desktop interface based on dash and mwm instead of GNOME if they have opted to do so.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Athena users can elect to run Sawfish (an outdated GNOME window manager) instead of Metacity.
- DONE ZEST:Users can read mail with the nmh command suite (currently uses kpop).
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Users can browse the web with Mozilla instead of Firefox. Mozilla can also be used to read mail and edit HTML files.
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Serial Reusability
- DONE ZEST:Any MIT user can log into cluster machines using their Kerberos passwords and their AFS home directories.
- DONE ZEST:Root logins on cluster machines are not permitted, but users can su to root once they log in as themselves.
- DONE ZEST:Users can change their Kerberos passwords with the passwd command.
- DONE ZEST:Private machine admins can configure who can log into machines remotely and locally with the /etc/athena/access file. They can also tag accounts as "local" and not part of the Hesiod/AFS namespace.
- ZEST:DELAY Athena machines tagged as quickstations display a timer and nagging warnings to log out after a set period of time.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Users can temporarily enable and disable remote access daemons on Athena machines with the access_on and access_off commands, if the machine is configured to allow this.
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Changes For Shared Network Home Directories
- DESUPPORT ZEST: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.
- DONE ZEST:Users can log in simultaneously from multiple machines without running afoul of GNOME software locks in the home directory.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:If a user's home directory is unavailable upon login, a temporary homedir will be created on local disk and used instead.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Users can log in with "ignore customizations" or in terminal mode to repair severely broken dotfiles.
- DONE ZEST: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.
- DONE ZEST: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 ZEST: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 ZEST: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.
- DONE ZEST:GNOME's trash handling has fixes for Athena home directories.
- DONE ZEST:Users receive warning dialogs when Kerberos tickets are about to expire.
- DONE ZEST:Users receive warning dialogs at login time when their homedir or mail quotas are approaching full.
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Monitoring
- DONE ZEST:Athena Athena machines can be queried via athinfo for various bits of information.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Athena machines record a history of their patch release numbers and dates of each update.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines forward some syslog notices to a central host for monitoring purposes.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines send information about whether they are in use to a "larvnetd" daemon on a central host which can be queried using the cview and xcluster commands.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines report centrally about their existence, machine type, and version so that they can be counted.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Athena machines respond to requests on the "time" and "daytime" ports with their idea of the current time.
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Self-maintenance
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines have filesystem-level access to AFS.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines periodically clean up files in temporary areas to avoid slowly filling the disk.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines automatically take updates when we put out new releases.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines have a consistent set of native platform packages installed, which is a superset of the default package set.
- DESUPPORT ZEST: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.
- DONE ZEST: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 ZEST:Some lockers containing frequently-used software are stored on local disk for performance reasons.
- DONE ZEST:Cluster machines perform some self-integrity checking to repair accidental and casual changes to their configurations.
- DONE ZEST: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.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Particular aspects of Athena machines can be configured by editing /etc/athena/rc.conf.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Cluster machines use static IP addresses and have an easy procedure for changing IP addresses when they are moved to different subnets.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Cluster machines run a local name server and are configured to use it to cache name lookup results.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Admins can enable various nework services with the "mkserv" command; the most popular of these is "mkserv remote" to permanently enable remote access daemons.
- DONE ZEST:Athena machines almost always have the correct time as determined by time.mit.edu.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Athena machines automatically synchronize the hardware clock following Daylight Savings Time changes.
- DONE ZEST: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).
- DONE ZEST:Users can submit bug reports to the appropriate channel using the sendbug command.
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- DONE /usr/sbin/sendmail is configured to inject mail through outgoing.mit.edu and to use Kerberos authentication if the user has valid tickets. The sendmail queue is flushed once an hour in case mail has to be queued locally.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Users can see system messages in the "console".
- DESUPPORT ZEST:GNOME is configured to use applications available on Athena to open certain document types.
- DESUPPORT ZEST:Athena machines can have either a krb5 keytab or a krb4 srvtab and Kerberos daemons will use either one, preferring the keytab.
- DONE ZEST:Athena login sessions follow a complicated set of rules regarding user dotfiles.
- DONE ZEST:Users can query basic machine characteristics with the machtype command.
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Planned solution: Instead of being invoked from athena-dotfiles, the debathena-bugme package will include an xsession script which wraps script. If the hostname is found on the list of quickstations the script will wrap the session with the bugme program, otherwise it will do nothing. The bugme program will may need to be tested for interference with gnome-session; there is already a bug report filed against it for interference with the screensaver in bugs 27097.. Athena bugs 27097 lists a problem but has been un-verified. The tricky part is to advance the code to deal with current window manager conventions: don't decorate, font properly, keep on top, even in the face of compositing.
Getting these issues right is reasonable, but should not block roll-out to general clusters. We will do this work after Early relese, but it will need to be finished when Athena 10 displaces Athena 9 as the standard release on all systems.
Milestone: Follow-on mini-projectMilestone: Cluster (one day).
Status: Not Done.
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Feature: Users can temporarily enable and disable remote access daemons on Athena machines with the access_on and access_off commands, if the machine is configured to allow this.
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