Hi Jan,
Thanks for your reply.  I'm sure Connie is going to reply to this as well, but
I figured I'd give at least a quick reply.

Jan Iven wrote:
>>>>>>"Connie" == Connie Sieh <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>
>
>  Connie> Scientific Linux (SL) Release Candidate 2    May 3, 2004
>  Connie> This is only a summary of the changes made since the release of April 26,
>  Connie> 2004.
>
>  Connie> Release is expected next week.
>
> Connie, thanks for all your work and the nice documentation. I feel I
> owe you some comments, even if I haven't managed to convert our own
> distribution to SL (yet), lack of time but not of interest.
>
> * you are shipping a number of zz_* RPMS in the "base" SL distribution
>   - I understood that this prefix was actually used for Fermi-specific
>   customizations in the past, and I wonder whether these should appear
>   in the general release:
>
>   zz_desktop_tweeks-1.1-1
>   zz_inittab_change-1.0-4
>   zz_kernel_clean-1.0-2
>   zz_libg2c.a_change-3.2.3-1
>   zz_no_colorls-1.0-1
>   zz_sendmail_accept-1.0-2
>

The zz rpm's that are left in the base Scientific Linux are not fermi specific
at all.  They are merely functionality improvements if a person chooses to
install them.  Yes, they were written here at Fermi, but each was written to
make it easier for a user to fix a particular feature or bug found in the
RedHat release.

The zz rpm's that ARE fermi specific are in the sites/FNAL/Updates area.


> * You also seem to have a number of RedHat-compiled RPMs in the
>   distribution, which could be problematic because of the "update service
>   license" for Red Hat Enterprise. I haven't checked whether all of these
>   RPMs come directly from RHE3 (but at least some like xfig do, same timestamps):
>
> rpm -qp --nosignature --qf "%-30{NAME}\t%{VENDOR}\t%{BUILDHOST}\n" linux/scientific/30rolling/i386/SL/RPMS/*rpm | grep -i "redhat" | wc -l
>  300
>
> I suggest at least to check whether all of these are "legal" to ship
> (coming e.f from Fedora), and perhaps replace them with e.g. the
> CERN-recompiled ones from http://linuxsoft/cern/cel3/i386/RedHat/RPMS/
>
> Best regards
> jan

These rpm's HAVE been checked to make sure they are legal to ship.  These
rpm's mentioned are actually from RedHat 9.  In other words, RedHat themselves
didn't even bother to recompile the rpm's.

Just so you know, that 300 number is a bit high because there are several
rpm's with the name redhat in them.  If you do the above command and put a
'grep -v fnal' in it, you actually have 264.

But beyond the legalities, I think it would be great to have CERN's rpm's in.
  I just sorta wish you'd mentioned this before RC2.  I'm sure Connie will
want to talk to you more about this.

I suppose we do need to put a statement up somewhere stating where we got
these rpm's, and the source rpm's.  Here's just a sort statement.

All rpm's not recompiled were gotten from publically avilable places.
All source rpm's that were recompiled were also gotten from publically
available places.
All rpm's and srpm's that are from redhat can be downloaded from ftp.redhat.com.

Troy
--
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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/CSS  CSI Group
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