From 1ae98204bc9954f2e6f0ef59993190ae6ae05482 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Ludovic=20Court=C3=A8s?= Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2016 23:09:37 +0100 Subject: website: news: Add post about the new machine. * website/posts/growing-our-build-farm.html, website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-back.jpg, website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-front.jpg, website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-interior.jpg, website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-closeup.jpg: New files. --- website/posts/growing-our-build-farm.html | 128 +++++++++++++++++++++ .../static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-back.jpg | Bin 0 -> 155663 bytes .../base/img/blog/20161110-server-closeup.jpg | Bin 0 -> 173785 bytes .../static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-front.jpg | Bin 0 -> 138235 bytes .../base/img/blog/20161110-server-interior.jpg | Bin 0 -> 159364 bytes 5 files changed, 128 insertions(+) create mode 100644 website/posts/growing-our-build-farm.html create mode 100644 website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-back.jpg create mode 100644 website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-closeup.jpg create mode 100644 website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-front.jpg create mode 100644 website/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-interior.jpg diff --git a/website/posts/growing-our-build-farm.html b/website/posts/growing-our-build-farm.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eaa69a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/website/posts/growing-our-build-farm.html @@ -0,0 +1,128 @@ +title: Growing Our Build Farm +date: 2016-11-10 11:30 +author: Andreas Enge +--- +
+

+ We have received our new server for continuous builds of the GNU Guix + system, and are putting the finishing touches on its installation. + The machine is intended as an eventual replacement + for hydra.gnu.org, a virtual + machine kindly hosted by + the FSF. + The new machine will drive + our + build farm, which continuously compiles the GNU system, and it + will feed the mirror + with binary + packages, so that end users who do not wish to compile packages by + themselves can easily keep up-to-date. Time to report on the + adventure! This first part covers the hardware. +

+

+ Buying the new machine has been made possible through a very generous + donation by Igalia + to Guix + Europe. Igalia is a free software consultancy well known for its + involvement in the development of the GNOME stack, GStreamer, the + JavaScript compilers of Web + browsers, and more, + promoting values + close to the GNU Guix project. It is heartening that the company is + helping us towards our goal of creating a free system that liberates + its users to take their computing and data processing needs into their + own hands! +

+

+ Of course, we wanted to buy the best for the money — but it turned out + the best did not exist yet! Our goal was a system that would be as + free as possible, starting from the BIOS, without backdoors + of one kind + or another; of course it + also needed to be powerful enough to pilot our build farm, which is + expected to grow with an ever increasing number of packages and maybe + new architectures. The Libreboot + project provides a free BIOS, which was in the process of being ported + to the ASUS KGPE-D16 mainboard. Timothy Pearson from + the Coreboot project (on which + Libreboot is based) worked hard to make the port a reality. We bought + the machine from Thomas Umbach, owner + of VIKINGS, a company selling + complete servers based on this board and planning to provide hosting + services on this platform. Thomas made us a very generous offer of + only billing the parts, so we are grateful to VIKINGS as a second + sponsor for this machine; independently, the close interaction with + Thomas and his fast and helpful replies to our questions meant a very + pleasant experience for a first-time buyer of a server machine! + Hopefully, this will not be the last time either. +

+

+ The machine arrived carefully packaged in styrofoam and cardboard + packaging with a power cable and the rails for mounting it in the rack + of the hosting facility (for the time being, however, it is still + sitting on a Moroccan pouffe in my living room, waiting for its + installation to be finished). It is 1U high to save hosting fees. At + the front, two USB + ports, a power and a reset button. At + the back, more USB + ports, Ethernet ports, a VGA and a serial port; apart from the latter, + it does not look more exotic than my laptop. +

+

+ Interior of the server. + + The interior looks very tidy to my untrained eyes. This is not only a + good sign for the vendor's professionalism, but according to Thomas + also a necessity for ensuring sufficient air flow in the 1U case! This + air flow is created by the array of five case fans on the right, in + their orange housing. At the left, one can distinguish the two + processors. We opted for the AMD Opteron 6262HE, which is free of + backdoors to the best of our knowledge and power saving. Each of the + processors has 16 cores, which should be amply enough for our needs + (remember that the compilation of packages will take place on the + build farm and not on this machine). Actually, only the processor fans + and their big copper heatpipes are visible. There are 16 slots for + memory, of which only four are used so far, each with a 16GB module + for 64GB of total RAM — I do not think we will need to make use of our + extension possibilities any time soon! Two hard disks of 4TB each are + hidden under + the metal cover to the right. +

+

+ So the hardware looks very neat, and in the next installment, we will + have a look at the installation of GuixSD on it. +

+

+ Thanks again to all who made this adventure possible through their + hard work and dedication, in + particular Igalia, Thomas + of VIKINGS, and Timothy of Coreboot + and Raptor + Engineering! +

+ +

About GNU Guix

+

+ GNU Guix is a + transactional package manager for the GNU system. The Guix System + Distribution or GuixSD is an advanced distribution of the GNU system + that relies on GNU Guix + and respects + the user's freedom.

In addition to standard package + management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and + roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and + garbage collection. Guix uses low-level mechanisms from the Nix + package manager, except that packages are defined as + native Guile modules, + using extensions to the Scheme + language. GuixSD offers a declarative approach to operating system + configuration management, and is highly customizable and + hackable.
+

+

+ GuixSD can be used on an i686 or x86_64 machine. It is also possible + to use Guix on top of an already installed GNU/Linux system, including + on mips64el and armv7. +

+
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