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The following timetable shows when we aim to upgrade DICE machines and services :-
Two computing labs, one at each of Kings Buildings and Appleton Tower, will be upgraded {\it after} the MSc project deadline.
Please note that we are {\it aiming to } upgrade ALL user machines to FC3 by the start of the academic session 2005/2006. This will involve considerable work by the CSOs over the summer and I ask that users assist us meet this schedule by not unduly delaying upgrades of their machines. The absolute deadline for upgrading machines is end December when the DICE Redhat9 platform is end-of-lifed (EOL).
Meanwhile, on the test FC3 desktops, users will see a separate FC3 home directory (/home/user); normal DICE home directories can be accessed via the path /nethome/user.
Users will be able to submit software packages in RPM format to a
central repository of "contributed" software, providing that the
packages conform to a number of restrictions; for example, files will
be restricted to a particular area of the filesystem (/usr/contrib))
and obvious security issues such as setuid programs
and pre/post-install scripts will not be permitted. Users of ordinary
"managed" DICE machines will then be able to subscribe to any of these
packages which will then be automatically installed, and updated on
their machines, along with the other standard software. Of course,
the responsibility for supporting this additional software and
ensuring that it remains compatible with DICE upgrades would remain
with the contributor.
Users who need more control over the configuration of their machines, will probably be currently managing and maintaining their configurations manually ("self-managed" machines). The new "DIY DICE" facility will provide the ability to use many of the underlying DICE tools to support automatic software updates, (re)installation, and configuration for such self-managed machines. This should combine the full flexibility of the self-managed machines, with the increased reliability, security, and lower maintenance cost of "managed" DICE machines.
The insecurity of the current NFS remote filesystem technology means that self-managed machines (including DIY machines) are not permitted to mount remote filesystems containing sensitive data (such as home directories). It is hoped that a pilot implementation of a new filesystem technology will be available shortly after the FC3 release. This means that selected remote filesystems will be made available to self-managed machines on a pilot basis. Paul Anderson
Over the Summer, but certainly before the end of the year, the web team managed web servers will also move from Apache 1.3 to Apache 2. Most users will not notice a difference, as web content will be unaffected, as will most CGI processing. However, users of PATH\_INFO may need to add an extra directive to their .htaccess files (see the Apache link later in this article). People who have .htaccess files may need to update the these files to use the new directives.
The list of web team managed web servers includes:
The Apache Software Foundation provide details of the differences between the two versions of Apache.
Generally we upgrade our RPMS to the most recent stable release and we also take the opportunity to replace applications where there are better featured, better supported or more widely used equivalents. An OS upgrade is also the main opportunity to remove RPMS which are no longer used, no longer actively maintained or which can't be ported to the new OS. This is usually a bigger problem for us than for Fedora because we are usually skipping several releases.
The biggest single factor in continuing to ship an RPM is whether the upstream application is being actively maintained. Where there is continuing development the effort involved in porting software is usually small. However, maintaining a local development fork of an application is an overhead which we are reluctant to take on unless there is significant demand. The same criteria generally apply to new software requests.
In the forthcoming DICE we are moving from RH9 (1402 RPMS) to FC3 (1653 RPMS) and we will be upgrading about 600 rpms built in house. The sheer number of changes in DICE make it impractical to give a full review of all the package changes so this article is intended as an overview of some of the highlights.
Major changes between the core operating systems can be seen on the Distrowatch website which tracks 144 core packages across a number of linux distributions.
A detailed list of updated and deprecated RPMS including locally built RPMS can be found in the Environment group's documentation section. For the moment this mainly consists of packages which have been dropped by Fedora.
| Package | Old Version | New Version |
|---|---|---|
| GCC | 3.2.2 | 3.4.2 |
| Glibc | 2.3.2 | 2.3.4 |
| XFree86 | 4.3.0 | Xorg 6.8.1 |
| libstdc++ | 3.2.2 | 3.4.2 |
| perl | 5.8.0 | 5.8.5 |
| KDE | 3.1 | 3.3.1 |
| Gnome | 2.2 | 2.8 |
| RH7 compatibilty libraries | 7.3 | 8.3 |
| openmotif | 2.2.2 | 2.2.3 |
| qt | 3.1.1 | 3.3.3 |
| tcl/tk | 8.3.5 | 8.4.7 |
| Tetex | 1.0.7 | 2.0.2 |
The mozilla suite will continue to be installed but support will be dropped to applying security updates. Mozilla will probably be dropped with the next upgrade. Users are encouraged to migrate to the new applications once their desktops have been upgraded to DICE FC3
Please check the updated version of this list for updates.
[beatty]: rpm -ql libstdc++
[beatty]: rpm -qf /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5
[beatty]: rpm -qi libstdc++
If you currently use VMWare and need to continue to do so and none of the alternatives are suitable then please contact us.
Tim Colles (for the Edinburgh Environment team)
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