Jan,

On Tue, 4 May 2004, 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.
>

Thanks.

> * 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:
>

All of the zz's that we included are of a "general" nature.  Most fix bugs
that any audience will need.  Also most are NOT installed by default.
Letting the end user decide.

The zz prefix was used for all the "fixes" that we did.  The original
reason for zz was that the installer on the "old" releases did not have
enough of a "requires,prereq" function and in alot of cases we needed
these to be installed after "something".  The installer installed things
that is did not have any special ordering in alphabetical order.  And
"zz" is very far down the alphabet.  And if they all have the same naming
covention it is easy to find them.  Some RPMS we fix by fixing the
"original" rpm.  I do not like this way as much as they "fixit" rpms
mostly because "the original was changed" and many seem to have a problem
with that.  You also have to keep up with the change when errata come out.
With the "fixit" rpms  the change is very contained.

>   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
>
> * 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

These did NOT come from RHE3 they came from RedHat 9.  Same exact rpm as
shown by diff.  If you look at the date of the rpm you will see that they
are from the RedHat 9 time frame.  RedHat did NOT recompile them for
RHE3 they got them from RedHat 9.  Since RedHat 9 is freely distributatble
then I can put them in and so I did.

 >
> 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/

I was hoping that you would provide us with the AMD-64 and maybe itanium
rpms as we are kind of short of development hardware in these
areas.

>
> Best regards
> jan
>

-Connie Sieh