[Dev] build server

[Dezponia Veil]

Hi everyone,

In light of M.E.W's offer here I feel i should make my intentions known
to the mailing list as well about a build server so as to avoid any
issues or confusion down the line.

I've been chatting a little bit on and off with Emulatorman in #parabola
on IRC about donating a build server virtual machine on a server I'm
building.

I've been running build servers for some other GNU/Linux distributions
for a while now, specifically KaOS GNU/Linux
(https://kaosx.us/about/sponsors/) and Chakra GNU/Linux. Its been my
intention to setup a VM for Parabola to use as well but my current
server has not had enough RAM to host more VM's so I've been working on
something new.

This is the parts of the specification of the new server I've been
working on and a status on where I'm at with getting this deployed for
everyone. There is more storage and such but that's not relevant to
Parabola so I'm leaving that off.


Motherboard: ASUS KGPE-D16 Libreboot with oprom loading disabled)
Processor: 2x AMD Opteron 6284 SE (32 cores)
RAM: 256GB DDR3 ECC 1600MHz CL11
VM Storage: 3x Intel 540s 1TB in encrypted RAID
Storage Interface: ASUS PIKE 2008 SAS/SATA card (Oproms erased)
Virtualization: KVM using libvirt
Host OS: Parabola GNU/Linux-libre (What can I say, i like updated stuff
even on my servers and you guys provide it :)


The current status is that I have the server up and running with
Parabola on a btrfs RAID1 on 2x Intel 730 240GB SSDs. I'm still waiting
for 2 of the VM storage drives (540s 1TB) but will get them as soon as
they're back in stock at the retailer I'm using (no current date though,
hoping soon). Currently the system is running with 32GB of RAM (2x16GB
sticks) but the full set of RAM is shipping to me right now and should
arrive before December.

Sourcing and putting together all this hardware has been an adventure in
and of itself so my plans of having this ready summer of 2016 was
completely missed. Provided I don't run into any more issues with the
remaining hardware I'm waiting for the Parabola VM could be up and
running in a day or two as soon as I get that hardware.

The VM would have access to 30 or so cores (leaving some for my own
small projects and the host) which it shares with the other build server
VM's running on the host. I will probably start it off with at least
32GB of RAM since I wont be short on RAM for quite a while.
Administration and maintenance of the build server will be left entirely
to Parabola, I don't intend to interfere with how you configure and
update it inside the VM. Choice of operating system is up to the
Parabola project but I suspect you'll be wanting Parabola
GNU/Linux-libre? :)

Obviously since I do this as a hobby I cant give guaranteed up-time
numbers or anything like that but I do take the precautions I can such
as running it on a pretty powerful UPS and surge protector for example.
Reboots will happen as I need to update things but usually I try to
clear this with involved projects/people on IRC at least. Critical
security updates will force reboots as is required though.

I hope that I, together with M.E.W, can both help Parabola
GNU/Linux-libre become an even better distribution in the future!

If anyone has any questions you can find me as Dezponia in #parabola on
freenode's IRC server and at dezponia at dezponia.se.

-- 
// Dezponia Veil

Den 2016-11-20 kl. 15:30, skrev M.E.W.:
> Hi,
> 
> i wanted to make a donation and saw that you need some build server for
> security and security sounds good, so i like to help. So for what do you
> need build server and what specs does a proper build server have? Is
> something like PCEngines APU with coreboot or the BeagleBoard-X15 enough
> for example. Just tell me more.
> 
> Bye for now!
> 
> P.S. and why are so many people here with google mail accounts. I know
> that is a complete other topic. But Google Inc. sucks...i mean literally
> all of your data(and sadly my mail adress, too). I do not need any
> answers for this i am just loud thinking its a free world and YOUR
> decision of course but in a libre community it feels just very bad placed.
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> Dev at lists.parabola.nu
> https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo/dev
>