From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andreas Enge Subject: Re: An inquiry into the possibility of donating a beaglebone black. Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2016 21:58:28 +0100 Message-ID: <20160127205828.GA4366@debian> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:42279) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aOXAj-00061i-VP for help-guix@gnu.org; Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:58:38 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aOXAf-0003ID-Oh for help-guix@gnu.org; Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:58:37 -0500 Received: from mailrelay7.public.one.com ([91.198.169.215]:45146) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aOXAf-0003I3-EO for help-guix@gnu.org; Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:58:33 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-guix-bounces+gcggh-help-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: help-guix-bounces+gcggh-help-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Zachary Storer Cc: help-guix@gnu.org Hello, Zachary! On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 04:44:02PM -0700, Zachary Storer wrote: > Hello, I have an extra beaglebone black with the case and everything, > (power cable / sim card, everything). If I donate this board to the > GuixSD project would it be utilized? That is a nice suggestion, thank you very much! As pointed out on IRC, it is not clear whether we could put the machine into use now. 512 MB of memory is not enough for some of our packages, and we have currently no way of specifying memory requirements for single packages. In any case, we would need to wait a few months until the hydra replacement has been bought and installed; right now, our central server cannot handle more build machines. The same centralised approach also means that it would be easier to handle a few rather powerful build machines instead of many less powerful ones - and the Beagle board has only one core instead of the four on our current Novenas. Packages are built by sending all input packages not yet available there to a build machine; and then the package gets built and the output sent back. I think this will more or less lead to the central server sending out the complete distribution to all of the build machines, which will only be sustainable for a very limited number of builders. There are a number of approaches how this could be improved. For instance, instead of having the inputs sent by the central hydra server, the build machines could fetch them from the nginx cache behind the web interface. (I wonder if this could not be implemented quickly in the current setting already. When build machines are just told to run "guix build ..." and they do not have the necessary inputs, they will fetch them, assuming that substitutes are enabled.) Ultimately, we could dream of a fully decentralised approach, where every- thing is stored in gnunet, and the build machines could look for buildable, but not yet built packages, reserve them in some way and fed the result into gnunet (or maybe not reserve them, and duplicate packages could be used for checking build determinism or to thwart malicious attacks). Actually, that gives me an idea: You could try to rebuild packages on your machine and challenge hydra if the output is the same to check for non- reproducibility in our packages. But in a first step, this would probably be easier with a more powerful x86 machine. Andreas