[SUMMARY] Old machine cluster for GCC compile/testing

[Laurent GUERBY <laurent at guerby dot net>]

Thanks to all who proposed projects and volunteered, I've informed FSF
France that the project has enough volunteers to move ahead.

I'll write a summary in the GCC wiki this week-end, feel free
to add more projects then.

The machines should appear online at the beginning of september,
script volunteers and developpers who currently do not have access to
better hardware for GCC work will get a user account with ssh access.

I haven't discussed yet of the opensolaris-x86 issue with FSF France, if
someone really volunteer to guide me for the install process and
maintain useful scripts on the machine then I'll ask.

I'm also all open to non Linux OS like the *BSD family, also subject
to volunteer effective availability (no issue with FSF France for
*BSD :).

Sincerely,

Laurent

On Mon, 2005-08-08 at 23:21 +0200, Laurent GUERBY wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> FSF France has received in donation 9 Dell poweredge 1550 bi processor
> 1U machines with one 18GB SCSI disk and 1GB RAM, processors total 19.5
> GHz distributed as follows:
> 
> - 3 bi pentium III 1.25 GHz
> - 6 bi pentium III 1.00 GHz
> 
> The machines are about four years old, so of course there may be
> hardware problems in the coming years, but we might also be able
> to get cheap parts on the used market (or from other donations).
> 
> An offer has been made for hosting those 9 1U machines in Paris provided
> low use of external bandwidth, so this would be useable for a GCC
> compile farm.
> 
> FSF France has to say yes or no to the hosting offer by friday 12Aug2005
> 17:00 UTC (end of this week), if we do not set up some
> compile/compute-farm like project FSF France will allocate these
> machines to other tasks. FYI 31 other machines of this type were also
> donated and have been allocated to various projects.
> 
> So I'm asking for project proposals, that is to say people that think
> that their volunteer time to work on these old machine (scripts,
> compiling, ... under the limit of minimal external bandwidth use) is of
> some significant benefit to some free software project. 
> 
> Project participants would get ssh access to the machines at
> the beginning of september 2005.
> 
> The machines are currently installed with ubuntu 5.04, but this could
> change if needed (and expertise provided).
> 
> Feel free to pass this offer to projects that are related to GCC, like
> free software compiled with GCC that come with a useful test suite and
> where volunteer are willing to help.
> 
> Discussions are welcome on this list.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Laurent
> 
> PS: sorry for the short notice, I wasn't aware until recently that
> there was a time limit on the hosting offer. We might be able
> to get another hosting offer, but I prefer not count on it.
> 
> 
>