Gripes about SIPB and Linux

Don't know what SIPB is? Check out the SIPB home page for more information.

The MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) maintains its own version of the Linux operating system. I personally happen to like Linux. The computer that this pages is on is donut.mit.edu, my personal computer at home. donut runs Linux.

Many MIT students apparently also run Linux. Those that need help turn to SIPB, which maintains a linux-help mailing list. I read linux-help, though I generally do not actively respond. In listening to the problems that people have, I have found several disturbing things about the SIPB attitude towards Linux:

SIPB tends to be very stubborn about what sort of Linux exactly it is that you are running. People might run Debian Linux, a standard Red Hat installation, or (like myself) a badly hacked-up Slackware version. SIPB tends to refuse to answer your questions unless you are running Red Hat. It can't just be any Red Hat Linux, though; it must be Red Hat/Athena. And it can't be Red Hat/Athena 3.0.3, which was current a week before this was written. It must be the absolutely most current version, Red Hat/Athena 4.0. This effectively puts help out of reach of those with established Linux systems that don't want to start from scratch just to run Athena services.
The SIPB-recommended Linux installation has somewhat serious problems. I have heard of problems with the system password file (/etc/passwd), various network problems with mainstream 3Com cards, and general X-windows problems. To not want to deal with X issues is understandable. But when the "we detect everything under the sun" installation program can't detect a 3C509B, undoubtedly one of the more common network cards in existence, the installation program needs to be fixed.
"The Instructions" encourage people who aren't quite sure about what they're doing to do what essentially works out to stupid things. For example, they suggest that local logins -- accounts actually present on the system -- be placed in an /etc/passwd.local file. One request on linux-help asked how he could obtain superuser access. This user had constructed an /etc/passwd.local file containing the information for a personal account, something certainly reasonable to do. What the documentation apparently doesn't mention is that everything else that normally lives in /etc/passwd also has to be in /etc/passwd.local. He then couldn't do things like repair /etc/passwd, shut down the computer, ...
Bugs in the Athena software get essentially ignored. My personal complaints focus mostly on the Xlogin package, which allows users with Athena accounts to log in on a Linux machine. This has its problems though. Among these are a strange bug which insists that a line reading
```
mit::101:
```
be present in /etc/group, but not be the last line in this file. Another strange bug prevents anyone with a local account from logging in. I admit that I haven't researched this thoroughly; it may be related to groups (again, since I'm not a member of group mit) or perhaps is a deeper bug. I responded to one person's description of the initial problems with a longer list of related symptoms; nobody from SIPB hinted at being able or willing to fix the actual bug.

SIPB is perhaps one of the least respected groups at MIT. There is a social stigma automatically associated with the name, "SIPB", essentially branding SIPB members as "computer geeks with no relation to reality". Unless SIPB tries to offer help to all Linux users, not just the Red Hat/Athena users, and it tries to fix the problems that it can, this image is sure to persist.

Part II: SIPB admits it won't help just any Linux users

I got an e-mail from a SIPB rep concerning my Xlogin problems. The mail read as follows:

From warlord@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Tue Oct 15 23:06:09 1996
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 12:18:07 EDT
From: Derek Atkins <warlord@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: David Z Maze <dmaze@donut.mit.edu>
Cc: linux-help@MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: Xlogin: gee, thanks! 

> Can these problems be fixed?  Is a functional non-RedHat Athena system
> possible?

I dont know how old your system is.  I dont know how old the
Linux-Athena software you are running is, either. (1) Right now,
Redhat-Athena is the only supported system.  That doesn't mean you
couldnt load the Athena software on something else; it only means that
it isn't supported and hasn't been tested, and bug reports may fall on
deaf ears. (2)

Just remember that Slackware is no longer supported, and the Slackware
installation server has been removed.  There has been some interest in
supporting Debian Linux in addition to Redhat, but there has been no
progress in that direction.

-derek

The footnotes (mine) are as follows:

(1) The software I'm running was installed out of the sipb-athena locker on Athena. What this means is that it is the source code the SIPB people use (so I am led to believe) to build their Athena stuff.

(2) So they don't really care whether the stuff they keep online is right or not; it's just there. Whatever problems I have with it are therefor my fault.

Admittedly, I'm not using the Official Supported Version of Linux for Athena Systems. I don't want to; I really want to run David's Personal Linux. (Once upon a time, I dreamed of building a system entirely from source code.) But SIPB's "we'll give you this stuff, but we don't care whether or not it actually works" attitude bothers me more than anything else I've heard about SIPB.

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