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  Hi Jan,

  The following is a general comment not specifically related to 
Rene's questions.

On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 11:08:55AM +0200, Jan Iven wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-08 at 09:41, Rene Brun wrote:
> One primary goal of SLC3 is to stay binary compatible with SL3 and with

  I would actually hope that it is possible to converge on _one_ single
distribution rather than two (SL3 _and_ SLC3). Having two >very< similar, but
not identical, SL flavors (in addition to RHEL3) is already and will 
continue to be a source of confusion in the computing centers, some of which
are running one and some the other.

  Given the strong participation of FNAL in CMS (and thus LHC computing), I 
would hope that we would be able to converge on some mechanism whereby a 
single distribution (and its updates) can serve the needs of (at least) most 
of the HEP community. This goal seems _much_ closer than in the past, but we 
are not quite there. Am I missing something fundamental which prevents us
from aiming for that?

                                 thanks,
                                   Pete

> REd Hat Enterprise 3. We have no chance of persuading Red Hat to upgrade
> versions in a "stable" release like RHE3 without "heavy" arguments, so
> moving everybody forward is very unlikely. If we simply upgrade on SLC3
> (and assuming we stay somehow backward compatible, e.g. with "compat-.."
> libraries), we still risk that code compiled at CERN will not run
> anywhere else, a major pain for LCG software. So we would need to "hide"
> the add-on package in a non-default path, accessible only after a
> conscious choice against this RHE3/SL3-compatibility has been taken. But
> this is very close to what the LCG SPI installation is (they use AFS, we
> could provide RPMs, but the actual result would be the same)...
> 
> This leaves "pestering" Red Hat with bug reports, until they realize
> that moving forward is a viable alternative. Which means we would need
> each individual problem is a format that can be passed on to Red Hat
> (reproducible, clear indication of the circumstances -- 'proper' bug
> reports in other words). And initially at least Red Hat would probably
> be fixing these via backported patches (but perhaps at a slow pace..).
> But at least the whole RHE3/SL3/SLC3 community would benefit from such
> fixes.
> 
> >  -It looks like XFree86-devel-4.3.0-68.EL.i386.rpm is not installed
> > by default. This creates a lot of headaches for many users who were
> > used to a default and solid installation of the X11 suite.
> > You can find a typical example of complaint at the ROOT Forum;
> > http://root.cern.ch/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1823
> 
> >From what I see, it should get installed by default, at least on SLC3:
> 
> XFree86-devel gets installed if the "CERN Recommended Setup"
> installation is chosen (this is the default for interactive
> installations), or if any of the following package groups is picked (e.g
> for kickstart installs):
>  X Software Development
>  GNOME Software Development
>  KDE Software Development
>  Development (whole category)
> 
> I tried searching the ROOT forum for XFree86-devel OR x11-devel OR
> libX11, but most of the problems seem to be for other distributions
> (Mandrake/RH8/RH9/Windows :-). If you have pointers for other cases,
> please let me have a look at them - maybe this is more a problem with
> SL(not-C)3.
> 
> Regards
> Jan
> 



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Peter Elmer     E-mail: [log in to unmask]      Phone: +41 (22) 767-4644
Address: CERN Division PPE, Bat. 32 2C-14, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
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