On Mon, 11 Jun 2007, Troy Dawson wrote:

> Hello,
> I want to verify what was agreed upon at Hepix before sending it out to
> the general scientific-linux-users and -announce mailling lists.
>
> The overall goal is to prolong the lifetime of Scientific Linux 3.0.x, 
> while at the same time lowering the load on the developers.  Thus making 
> it possible for the developers to maintain Scientific Linux 3.0.x while 
> we create new releases, such as SL5 and SL6 along with their minor 
> releases.
>
> We will create one more version of Scientific Linux 3.0.x, it's number
> will be 3.0.9, with a codename of legacy.  It will be based on Update 9
> from The Upstream Vendor.
>
> SL 309 will not get anything more than the security updates provides by The 
> Upstream Vendor.  These security updates will continue until TUV stops 
> supporting Enterprise 3.  This is currently October 31, 2010.

Just to check -- do you mean that 309 will _not_ include bugfixes (etc) 
released <em>as part of TUV Update 9</em>, or that after 309 is released 
there won't be any updates apart from security ones?

I don't particularly mind either way (as we plan to _mostly_ upgrade to 
SL5 this summer anyway), but just want to check what you meant.

> We will have to take out or modify some of our value added packages due to
> their maintenance load.
>
> Two of those packages that we anticipate dropping are Firefox and 
> Thunderbird.  At some point in a year or so, TUV is going to switch from 
> Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 3, and we anticipate that we won't have the man hours 
> to make this transition.  We currently don't know exactly how we will 
> transition out firefox and thunderbird, but we will try to be nice about it.

Has TUV actually announced this somewhere public?  I've searched and 
failed to find any statement other than that they planned to stay with 
1.5.x for a while yet...

At least while they are shipping 1.5.x for SL4/5 I assume that the diffs 
from a previous SL3 version will probably mostly work ok... :-)

> We will also upgrade openafs to version 1.4.4 in SL 3.0.9.  This will keep it
> with the same codebase as SL 4 and SL5, and thus easier to maintain.
>
> We will go through the rest of the list and see what else needs to be dropped
> due to high maintenance loads.
>
> Troy
>

-- 
Jon Peatfield,  Computer Officer,  DAMTP,  University of Cambridge
Mail:  [log in to unmask]     Web:  http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/