ARK release 20020721; status; book plug

Folks, I have just done a full release of all the Arusha
Project stuff I could get my hands on (teams: ARK, arksf1,
glasli1, sample1, sidai, simple1, verilab2).  The release
notes I sent to freshmeat are something like those below :-)

The main development, as reflected on the freshly-dusted web
pages at http://ark.sourceforge.net/, is that much of the
ARK content for team 'verilab2' (my day job) is now
available.  It is a Sidai-style team, so not wildly
different from `glasli1', which has been available from the
beginning.

Arusha Project status: alive and well.  It is a
scratch-those-itches project, and the present set of itches
are comparatively undramatic.

I am quite happy with the present ARK design, but am
reasonably sure a new revision (ARK2? ARK3?) will happen --
no time soon, however.  There continues to be interesting
work going on in how to describe infrastructures in useful
ways (including the PAN and "Environmental Acquisition"
papers at this year's LISA conference ... be there, by the
way :-), and I am not inclined to spring forward with ARK<N>
unless we know it will be a qualitative leap forward.

If any of you need help exploring or thinking about Arusha
Project stuff, or have "it would be great if..." ideas,
please speak up or get in touch.

Will

PS: I heartily commend the Limoncelli/Hogan book, "The
Practice of System and Network Administration" (TPOSANA)
[http://www.sysadminfocus.com/] to you all.  It is a
*companion* to, not a replacement for, the more how-to
books, such as the "Unix System Administration Handbook" or
Frisch's O'Reilly book.  TPOSANA is a whys, wherefores, and
accumulated-wisdom book.  It is (surprise!)
Arusha-compatible in its general outlook.  (Disclaimer: I
have no personal interest in whether you buy or read this
book.)

== release notes =======================================

The ARK engine provides more precise control over the user and group
that it runs as.  It works better in the context of down or pending
hosts.  ARK methods may be marked as 'dangerous' (e.g. applying OS
patches).  The standard `deploy' and `reveal' methods now work from
the manifest file.  The --force-reveal flag is gone.  The normalDate
module (by Jeff Bauer) updated to version 1.2.

In the Sidai team, a `verify-source' method was added to the standard
package flow.  `Disk chunks' have been reworked to allow multiple
replicas.  New packages supported include: abiword, accent,
averant-solidify, chkrootkit, cyrus-imapd, cyrus-sasl, exmh, expect,
hugs98, ipfilter, john-the-ripper, nessus, openoffice-bin, php-config,
roundup-config, squirrelmail, texinfo, and valgrind.  Plus many minor
improvements and bug fixes.



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