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title: Growing Our Build Farm
date: 2016-11-10 11:30
author: Andreas Enge
---
<div> <!-- needed to placate Haunt's 'html-reader' -->
<p>
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 <a href="https://hydra.gnu.org/">hydra.gnu.org</a>, a virtual
machine kindly hosted by
the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">FSF</a>.
The new machine will drive
<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/donate/#hardware-donors">our
build farm</a>, which continuously compiles the GNU system, and it
will feed the mirror
with <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Substitutes.html">binary
packages</a>, 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.
</p>
<p>
Buying the new machine has been made possible through a very generous
donation by <a href="https://www.igalia.com/">Igalia</a>
to <a href="http://enge.fr/blog/2016/03/foundation-of-guix-europe/">Guix
Europe</a>. 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, <a href="https://www.igalia.com/areas/">and more</a>,
promoting <a href="https://www.igalia.com/nc/about-us/">values</a>
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!
</p>
<p>
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 <a href="https://libreboot.org/faq/#intel">one kind</a>
or <a href="https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd">another</a>; 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 <a href="https://libreboot.org/">Libreboot</a>
project provides a free BIOS, which was in the process of being ported
to the ASUS KGPE-D16 mainboard. Timothy Pearson from
the <a href="https://www.coreboot.org/">Coreboot</a> project (on which
Libreboot is based) worked hard to make the port a reality. We bought
the machine from Thomas Umbach, owner
of <a href="https://vikings.net/">VIKINGS</a>, 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.
</p>
<p>
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 <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-front.jpg">front</a>, two USB
ports, a power and a reset button. At
the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-back.jpg">back</a>, more USB
ports, Ethernet ports, a VGA and a serial port; apart from the latter,
it does not look more exotic than my laptop.
</p>
<p>
<img src="https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-interior.jpg"
alt="Interior of the server."
class="inline-image" />
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 <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/static/base/img/blog/20161110-server-closeup.jpg">under
the metal cover to the right</a>.
</p>
<p>
So the hardware looks very neat, and in the next installment, we will
have a look at the installation of GuixSD on it.
</p>
<p>
Thanks again to all who made this adventure possible through their
hard work and dedication, in
particular <a href="https://www.igalia.com/">Igalia</a>, Thomas
of <a href="https://vikings.net/">VIKINGS</a>, and Timothy of Coreboot
and <a href="https://www.raptorengineering.com/">Raptor
Engineering</a>!
</p>
<h4>About GNU Guix</h4>
<p>
<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guix">GNU Guix</a> 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 <a href="https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html">respects
the user's freedom</a>.<br /></p><p>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 <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/guile">Guile</a> modules,
using extensions to the <a href="http://schemers.org">Scheme</a>
language. GuixSD offers a declarative approach to operating system
configuration management, and is highly customizable and
hackable.<br />
</p>
<p>
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.
</p>
</div>
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