Re: New POWER9 machines for the Guix build farm?

[dftxbs3e <dftxbs3e@free.fr>]

On 12/9/19 1:19 AM, Chris Marusich wrote:
> Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> writes:
>
>> Fellow Guix,
>>
>> The Guix sysadmins are considering buying shiny hardware for the
>> ci.guix.gnu.org build farm, and it would be awesome if that included
>> our first POWER9 machine(s)!
>>
>> However, few (if any) Guixers have any hands-on experience with this
>> architecture, let alone buying and installing whole systems. Some
>> remember a bad experience with a prominent vendor, and it would appear
>> that they're not alone[0].
>>
>> There's also some concern that getting these machines up and running
>> will take significant effort.
>>
>> So please, share your expertise and experience in this area! Ideally,
>> we need someone to volunteer to (help) set up any new POWER9 boxes and
>> later take care of them when needed.  It would certainly help justify
>> the multi-thousand-euro bill.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> T G-R
>>
>> PS: For the shorter term, I've applied for an 8-core POWER9 LE
>> instance (with 16 GiB of RAM) for Guix at OSUOSL[1].  Assuming that
>> it's accepted, it should be available within a week.
>>
>> [0]:
>> https://drewdevault.com/2019/09/23/RaptorCS-Blackbird-a-horror-story.html,
>> but read https://drewdevault.com/2019/10/10/RaptorCS-redemption.html
>> as well :-)
>> [1]: https://osuosl.org/services/powerdev/
> I think it's a great idea.  To test the waters, someone could try using
> one of these free VMs and see how Guix System does on them:
>
> https://openpowerfoundation.org/minicloud-free-openpower-cloud/
>
> First, bootstrap binaries have to be built for the hardware, anyway,
> right?  Maybe someone can do that work on one of those free VMs?
>
That work is already done!

See: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=38459

Current issue is gcc-cross-boot0 not building.

See build log at: https://gitlab.com/lle-bout/guix/-/jobs/372934160