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The Dice Project


DICE Meeting 2002-03-05

BP, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 11am-1pm.

Agenda

  1. Corrections to minutes
  2. Actions Arising from minutes of meeting of 2002-02-19
  3. Coping with reports
  4. XDM
  5. Calendars
  6. Review of Reports
Apologies: Simon

Decisions

  1. Applications: the legacy applications tasks reports will move to be sub-parts of single Applications task and include applications that need attention for DICE (eg VMware).
  2. Goals/Milestones: there is now a single page for these which everyone will edit. It will also include all actions related to a task. Reports should still have a Recent Changes section.

Actions

NB: this section is now not a summary of all actions. Instead it includes:
  1. Actions Arising: CEG to discuss machine purchase mechanism. (noted 2002-02-19) Carried forward
    [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
  2. Actions Arising: List of modules to be published. (noted 2002-02-19) Carried forward
    [Gordon]
  3. Actions Arising: Resources for om: published but further information needed about command-line interface
    [Simon]
  4. Primary/Secondary groups: decide which secondary groups are needed. (noted 2002-02-19) Carried forward (not discussed on 2002-03-05)
    [Neil]
  5. Reports/AMT: supply Tim with detail of LDAP data to be held (noted 2002-02-19) Carried forward (not discussed on 2002-03-05)
    [Neil]
  6. Reports/LCFG technology: All maintainers of LCFG components should do a minimum conversion. ]
    [All component maintainers]
  7. Further investigation needed to extract report changes and list of changed reports
    [Jeremy/Neil]
  8. Provide revised report layout and any special HTNL format requirements
    [Jeremy]
  9. Finish Goals/Milestones page
    [Jeremy]
  10. Create Applications report page
    [Jeremy]
  11. Further investigation needed to extract report changes and list of changed reports
    [Jeremy/Neil]
  12. Use of XDM and issues of speeding up deployment of DICE.
    [CEG]
  13. Use of calendars to be investigated, especially central pilot scheme.
    [Jeremy]
  14. Progress/Authorisation: account disabling flags to be clarified
    [Neil]
  15. Deployment tasks need to notify Alison what types of documents they will be producing
    [All deployment tasks 'owners']
  16. Clarify situation over users' whose login names will be changing under DICE
    [Alastair]
  17. Finalise source for generating hosts lists for SSH public keys.
    [George]

Minutes

  1. Corrections to Minutes: No corrections noted initially but Neil noted that his actions from the Primary /Secondary Groups discussion and Reports/AMT had not in fact migrated up into the overall Actions list. These now appear as items 18 and 19 of minutes of last meeting.

  2. Actions arising from minutes of last meeting (2002-02-19)
    1. Actions Arising: Toby to tag the cvs versions of the reports that date from Monday evening 2002-02-18.
      Done
    2. Actions Arising: CEG to discuss machine purchase mechanism. [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
      Ongoing
    3. Actions Arising: Toby and Simon to look into printing requirements for the authorisation model. [Toby/Simon]
      Done
    4. Actions Arising: Morna to investigate potential problems with the EUCS mail service. [Morna] Only KB seems to be suffering from this and as soon as Neil started debugging the problem stopped appearing. Procedures are in place to monitor it if necessary
      Done
    5. Reports/Documentation: How DICE and LCFG components/documentation are split. Carried forward. [Alison] Test page has been put up and Alison will act on feedback received.
      Done
    6. Reports/Common home directories: Add notes about firewall/netgroup issues wrt to filesystem exporting. Carried forward. [George]
      Done
    7. Reports/Common home directories: Need to sort out lists of trusted machines for exporting to. Carried forward. [George]
      Done
    8. Reports/Filesystem Maps: Need a way to pick up RPMs; access to mirror servers required. Alastair to mail Bill. Carried forward. [Alastair]
      Done
    9. Ordering Linux 7.1 PCs: Anybody who will need a Linux 7.1 PC in the next few weeks should mail Alastair to let him know as he is about to order a batch of these. [All] Machines have been ordered. If there are any shortages before they arrive Beowulf hardware can be allocated.
      Done
    10. Reports/Misc: Report writers should aim to have reports ready by 09:00 on the Monday immediately preceeding the DICE Deployment meeting. [All] Jeremy to send reminders
      Done
    11. Reports/Misc: Jeremy should publish to the web a PDF version of the composite report on a daily basis so that others can read most of the updates well before the DICE Deployment meetings [Jeremy] Neil has put in place CGI script that will generate list on-the-fly
      Done
    12. Reports/Misc: Anybody wishing to comment on the reports should inform cos@informatics on the Monday morning preceeding the DICE Deployment meeting.[All] Jeremy to remind
      Done
      <
    13. Reports/Applications at Forrest Hill/South Bridge: Gordon will carry out a survey of MSc module software requirements. [Gordon] Approx 30 modules identified so far but some will be in use at other sites so can be shared. List will be published.
      Ongoing
    14. Reports/Authorisation: Simon is to publish which resources om requires. [Simon] Done but further information needed about command-line interface
      Ongoing
    15. Reports/Beowulf: Iain should rewrite the report to describe a minimum Beowulf service and a full Beowulf service. [Iain]
      Done
    16. Reports/LCFG technology: All maintainers of LCFG components should do a minimum conversion. [All]
      Ongoing
    17. Reports/Mail issues: The Mail Issues and Common Home Directories teams need to coordinate/synchronise the mail server system redirects from secondary sites to primary sites. [Roger/Jeremy/Neil/Craig] This isn't a current action as there are other stages to be completed first; it will reappear at a later stage
      Deferred (will reappear)
    18. Primary/Secondary groups: decide which secondary groups are needed.
      [Neil] (not discussed)
    19. Reports/AMT: supply Tim with detail of LDAP data to be held
      [Neil] (not discussed)
  3. Coping with reports:

    Chris flagged problems with keeping reports up-to-date as there is uncertainty about the official layout and in some instances the format of HTML (eg for actions). Jeremy will provide an updated recommendation or layout.
    [ACTION: Jeremy]
    It is also still too difficult to see what has changed in a report and too time-consuming to keep up-to-date by reading everything. Jeremy/Neil will look further again at extracting changes and printing them out.
    [ACTION: Jeremy/Neil]

    Jeremy presented a first draft (incomplete) of a Stage 1 Progress page with goals/milestones for every task that will be used from now to record progress and will provide an overview of current status.

    The following was decided/agreed:

    The Goals/Milestones page needs to be finalised.
    [ACTION: Jeremy]
  4. XDM

    Jeremy wanted to check where the idea of using XDM to provide access to the DICE world was being looked at to make sure it wasn't forgetten. This would be used for those users with legacy machines that wanted to have access to the full DICE login environment (rather than just a remote connection). There have bneen requests from above to see what could be done about speeding up the transition to DICE from legacy. There are a number of reasons why we don't want to do this: three-yearly impact on budgets and write-down policy, sheer load during initial transition, allowing a little time for DICE to settle. This needs further discussion by CEG.

    [ACTION: CEG]
  5. Calendars

    Jeremy was also concerned about whether the issues of providign calendars under DICE were being looked at given their extensive use on some sites and that calendar file formats vary. The legacy tasks will be handling this officially, but Paul also noted the MIS pilot service with web access for the MS Windows-challenged. Jeremy to follow this up.

    [ACTION: Jeremy]
  6. Progress feedback from tasks

    The actions associated with reports were discussed. Brief summaries are below.

    Deployment Tasks

    Account management procedures
    The report is now basically static and implementation is dependent on the technology produced for AMT (see next report)
    Account management technology
    Coding has started and work is being done of the datasource modules.
    Authorisation
    There is an issue to be raised over account disabling flags for account management
    [ACTION: Neil]
    Beowulf
    "Trundling along."
    Default and group environments
    Craig's proposal about handling environments for pseudo-users has not been contested and therefore is accepted. Craig is just about to convert a PC to DICE and will be writing code once that happens
    Documentation
    The auto-generated test page has received feedback and comments will be incorporated
    [ACTION: Alison]
    Meta issue: deployment tasks need to notify Alison what types of documents they will be producing
    [ACTION: all deployment tasks 'owners']
    Faults/support
    The EUCS cmsweb s/w is to be evaluated. It would be interesting to know what other software was evaluated before EUCS chose to write their own in case it would be relevant to us.
    [ACTION: Chris]
    File-system issues
    Now that various policy issues are resolved users are being consulted about their usage of filessystems to make sure we know about all different options and how they will be dealt with under new system.
    [ACTION: Bill]
    File-system maps
    AMD needs some debugging. George is getting a test machine.
    [ACTION: George]

    The structure of maps has been pretty much finalised and needs to be checked to see if it covers all eventualities. There are some aspects of /yesterday still to be sorted out.
    Install/Configuration/Softdist servers
    Machines have been ordered. Alastair is starting to generate profiles annd will create master repository and slaves for KB
    Kerberos infrastructure
    New accounts are needed and a full set using EUCS unique usernames is being worked on. Although most of the milestones listed in the new progress pages are done this is for a test system; more needs to be done to make this a production system.
    [ACTION: Tim]
    This raised an associated concern that some users may still not know that their username will have to change under DICE. SOme sites intend to convert their legacy users. The situation needs to be clarified.
    [ACTION: Alastair]
    LCFG technology
    There are still lots of components that need converting, if only to to a minimal form at this stage, ASAP. The tables have been restructured so refer in particular to Table 3.
    [ACTION: All
    LDAP infrastructure
    Everything going fine
    Linux platform support
    Phase 1 is complete bar a few applications and work is now happening on Phase 2.
    Mail issues
    This has stalled due to waiting on response from EUCS on service levels/procedures. This has raised further questions related to deletion of entries from eddir and accounts from staffmail. A proposal is going forward to C&IT.
    Mail hub
    This has stalled in the context of with the Mail Issues task but will be progressed.
    Morna
    Network
    Work is being done on components and filters. The report is about to get a major re-write
    [ACTION: George]
    Printing (both client and server)
    The Kerberos bug willl be fixed in the next version of LCFGng due for release imminently
    Root mail collation
    No issues
    SSH public key distribution
    The source for generating hosts needs to be finalised (could be LCFG or 'network'). George will summarise the situation.
    [ACTION: George]
    Software management
    Has taken a lower priority as the install servers have been more important.
    Technology for editing configuration files
    The source configurations are moving to new servers.
    There is a possible bottleneck over rfe because of the load on Simon. Paul to discuss it with Simon
    [ACTION: Paul]
    User web space
    Neil needs comments on the URLs proposed for home webspace serving. He'll post to COs.
    [ACTION:Neil]

    Transition Tasks

    Applications at Buccleuch Place
    Not discussed but see Applications action
    Applications at Forrest Hill/South Bridge
    Not discussed but see Applications action
    Common home directories
    Choice of staff primary homedir will be done by guess in conjunction with consultation. Student primary homedir will be decided depending on natural academic home. Students who are split 50/50 between sites will be allocated primary homedir at supervisor's site initially but some consultation allowed. John Berry and Chris Cooke will be liaising for FH/SB and KB respectively.
    Legacy system issues: BP
    Not discussed
    Legacy system issues: FH/SB
    Not discussed
    Legacy system issues: KB
    Not discussed
    User account transitional arrangements
    Not discussed


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