SuSE 10.1 Deployment Plan

jimc, 2006-06-07

Several people tried to install SuSE 10.1, the post-beta public DVD image which was copied to Hollyfs, on various machines. Known attempts and status include:

Serval

Hung during post_jump

Elric

Disc blew up

Tempestsuse

Hung after phase 1 of post_jump

Thiele's laptop

Not sure; I think not satisfactory

We got the boxed set of SuSE 10.1 on 2006-06-02. Jimc immediately copied the DVD onto Hollyfs in the normal place. Over 06-03 .. 06-05 Jimc worked on a scheme for remote installation, following (but not exactly copying) instructions in various places on the web. Results so far:

Xena

Went through whole process up to final commit (at which point I aborted; this was from home)

Spruce

Hung during boot.

It is now Wed 06-07. My plans for today are:

• Do remote installation on Serval.
• Post_jump serval, find out what's horked and fix it.
• Find out what Spruce is complaining about and finish installation.
• Maybe: remote-install Xena (post_jump from home?)
• Maybe: Finish tempestsuse.

Academic Calendar:

06-09 Fri	End of 10th week
12 .. 16	Finals week
19 .. 23	EOQ (reboot machines)
26 .. whenever	Summer Session

Medium term plans. Likely there will be problems that prevent the schedule from being met exactly, but we need a framework like this so we can plan effort levels.

06-12 .. 06-16

All MCG machines converted to SuSE 10.1 and used. Evaluate desktop. Fix infelicities (continuing for considerable time).

06-19 .. 06-23

1. Install 10.1 on all low-impact machines such as holly01..04.
2. Check with Charlie about Bamboo; try to install on as many Bamboo nodes as possible. Make sure Sun Grid Engine continues to work.
3. This is EOQ. If previous results were good, install 10.1 on production machines excluding homedir servers. These will have to be done one at a time, checking carefully that the machine continues to function in its assigned role.

   Bamboo01	Sun Grid Engine master site
   Harlech	Security gateway
   Papyrus	Printing can of worms; webmail
   Arachne	Web server (Mathnet)
   Sumac	Mail exchanger
   Hollyfs	Installation server
   Sunset	Master site (Mathnet)
   Malibu	Master site (PIC)
   Laguna	PIC homedirs, let's use them as guinea pigs
   Zuma	Webserver (PIC)
   Testudo	Backup server
   Ulanda	Backup server
   [Spruce]	Converted in previous weeks

06-26 .. 06-30

Continue installing v10.1 on Bamboo and production machines listed above.

07-17

Sell v10.1 to early adopters

07-31

Convert homedir servers to v10.1

08-14

Any machine not converted yet, gets converted.

To be thought about later:

• The theme of this upgrade will be to reproduce our v9.2 setup as close as possible on v10.1. We need to make proper use of the latest features. This means we need to learn what those are. All during the upgrade process I expect that we'll be modernizing things incrementally.

• What aspects of our desktop environment need to be improved?

• What mathematical software do we need to add? To get rid of?