Dear LWP Users,

a new version of the LWP, 01.02.00 has been promoted to 'production'.
This is the version you get when you reinstall the LWP from the boot
menu. You will not get any new version just from rebooting.

Please note that a few things that were present in the previous version
are LACKING in this new version, most notably:
- There is no virtual UWP available.
- The program 'emergent' (used at Fac. of Arts) is still missing.
- 'mayavi', 'iceape' and 'kdevelop' are not present.
- It is _necessary_ after reinstall to leave the freshly booted PC on
for five minutes, then reboot it before loggin in.
- There are some annoyances when logging in, locking the
screen and the like that have to do with the quick switch to NFS we made
last week. (See note I.)

But 01.02.00 does have NFSv4 as a network filesystem for your home
directories, and it is based on the newer Ubuntu version 'Lucid'.
This means that you will have newer software, the CIFS-related problems
like strange directory listings and unremovable locks will be over, and
you will be able to share (parts of) your home directories if you put
the proper permissions or ACLs on them.


If you are unsure whether you have the new LWP or an older one, please
run the command
cat /etc/lwp/version
If it says '01.02.00', then you have the new version already.

The reasons we decided to release prematurely are that we think the NFS
makes this version work better than the CIFS-based old version already,
and users themselves can install 'production' from the boot menu without
Service Desk intervention.
We will work to repair the above defects as quickly as possible, but
this is a matter of weeks. In the meantime, we expect to get the JBI up
and running faster this way. And users who don't want the new version
can just keep working on their machines unharmed. They just shouldn't
reinstall.

For those who haven't reinstalled their PC's before: a reinstall should
leave your /mnt/D intact. (But see note II. for users at fac. of Arts.)
You will lose your printers, root rights if you had any, and your
/etc/users_allowed_ssh.



WARNING for those who had 'smbpasswd.py' error messages during login:
It is likely that you have or have had data stored on the local disk.
Please run this command from a shell:
mount|grep ${USER}
If that shows no output, then you _are_ having your data stored on the
local disk, and you MUST NOT reinstall. Please contact me or Heiko
([log in to unmask]) after logging out but just before reinstalling,
and we will rescue your data. Our scripts indicate that this is at least
the case for a user at ceres.let.rug.nl at the moment.


This mail was sent to you because of the issues the newly released LWP
version still has. Usually, new LWP versions are not advertised through
mail.


Kind Regards,
Jurjen




Note I. When trying tho log in with the wrong password, the system will
respond 'critical error' instead of the more descriptive
'username/password unknown'. When trying to unlock the screen (at least
in the KDE), an error message will pop up even if the password *is*
correct, and only when the pop-up message is clicked quickly enough will
unlocking succeed. I have also seen one case where logging in on the
desktop, then logging in on the same machine from another using SSH,
then logging out from the desktop made the homedirectory unavailable
from the SSH session as well. There may be more annoyances of this kind.


Note II. Although a reinstall leaves /mnt/D intact, the default
partitioning for the LWP has changed since the oldest machines at the
Fac. of Arts were installed:
In these old installations, even though there is no Windows installed on
the disk, a space of 40GB is left available to Windows, and thus
unusable by the LWP. In the new 01.02.00 installation, the size of this
reserved partition is reduced to 40MB, so the amount of disk available
to the user under /mnt/D will grow by 39.96GB from repartitioning.
But repartitioning (as opposed to a mere reinstall) *does* require
Service Desk intervention (to wipe the partition table), and *does*
require you to store the data that are on /mnt/D elsewhere temporarily,
as everything on the harddisk will be lost.
You can probably store that data in your LWP homedir temporarily, as
there is still 1.6TB free on the LWP fileserver, and we can add another
4TB within hours if needed.