From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jonathan Brielmaier Subject: Re: New POWER9 machines for the Guix build farm? Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2019 11:57:19 +0100 Message-ID: <06cd201c-0cf1-1e7c-998b-c876eed59a29@web.de> References: <871rtsakoq.fsf@nckx> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:56544) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1iaHUL-00042M-66 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 28 Nov 2019 05:57:34 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1iaHUJ-0002S7-MV for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 28 Nov 2019 05:57:32 -0500 Received: from mout.web.de ([217.72.192.78]:45387) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1iaHUI-0002Lt-8M for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 28 Nov 2019 05:57:30 -0500 In-Reply-To: <871rtsakoq.fsf@nckx> Content-Language: en-US List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice , Guix Devel On 28.11.19 01:50, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote: > 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)! This would be very neat. > 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.=C2=A0 It would certainly help justi= fy > the multi-thousand-euro bill. I own now a RaptorCS Blackbird[0] with an 8 core CPU and 32GiB RAM for half a year. I use it as my daily desktop driver. It runs openSUSE Tumblweed[1]. Setup was quite easy if you only want to use it as server without an GPU. You only need a long enough (ca 15cm) 4mm hex key to screw the fan on to the CPU. I could borrow mine. The rest of the installation and setup process wasn't that different from installing a x86 server. The nice thing is the openBMC chip, so remote management is quite nice :) All in all the biggest pain point for me, was getting the machine through the customs. But I heard from people in the EU who had a pretty smooth experience with that. I offer my help in the whole process (ordering, customs, setup, installation, maintenance). ~Jonathan P.S: It might be worth to ask RaptorCS and IBM, if they could give us some discounts. [0] https://raptorcs.com/content/BK1B02/intro.html [1] https://software.opensuse.org/distributions/tumbleweed