Jackass! 2005.1 Development [ ok ]

Bob P · Last edited by Bob P on Wed Sep 07, 2005 2:54 pm; edited 14 times in total

EDIT: Locked by author's request. --pjp

nixnut · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 7:20 pm Post subject:

Bob P · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 7:30 pm Post subject:

well, i know that you should be able to cross compile, but i just can't get too excited about compiling a tarball that i can't actually TEST before i pass it along to someone else for experimentation, you know what i mean? its not that i physically can't do it -- its just that i feel very uncomfortable about putting a totally untested package on a fileserver, having a bunch of people install it on their systems, borking them, and then trying to undertand what's wrong when some guy 2,000 miles away tries to describe the problem. even worse, then i have to blindly create a fix that i can't even test, and start the blind testing cycle all over again. my experience has been that even though the cross comple is conceptually feasible, building for and troubleshooting an arch that you don't actually have access to is a alot more difficult than it sounds, and turns out to be a total waste of time unless you're lucky enough to get the build 100% right the first time. there are much easier ways to accomplish the task, like using ssh to remotely build in a chroot on the actual architecture.
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BertsInn · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 7:45 pm Post subject: test boxes available

Depending on what you decide from you poll, I can test several of the arches listed.
If you go only P3 and above, I can offer only a lowly P3 Celeron and AthlonXP.
By the way, sorry to learn of Ryan's absence.
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Bob P · Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:03 pm Post subject:

i'm hoping that he's just playing hooky for the summer. he goes back to college soon (it not already) and he's probably just been having so much fun during the summer that he's forgotten about us!
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Dlareh · Advocate Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 2102

I've used the 2005.0 jackass for many installs, but one thing I don't understand is why you release livecds. I don't think I've ever bothered to boot one... I just mount -o loop and pull out the stage tarball, since that's really all that is useful.

Maybe it's because I always install from Knoppix...
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96140 · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Jan 2005 Posts: 1324

Heh.

*raises hand*

Slalomsk8er · Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2005 2:56 am Post subject:

I will look if I can get you a ssh/scp box up and running. It is a AthlonXP 1800+ with 512MB RAM if I am right. I have a Upstream Speed: 256 kbps
Downstream Speed: 1536 kbps no limit dynamic IP (slalomsk8er.ch) connection. You can do with it what you want (ftp usw). I post here if all is working.

morphal · Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2005 3:31 am Post subject:

I've got a 3m/512k connection for sure and a 5m/384k. I can make available either a Sempron 2200 with 1.1gb of ram or an AthlonXP 2500 with 1.0 gb of ram. There's a coppermine celeron 800mhz with 384mb sitting around as well but I don't think anyone needs that. I'm on a dynamic IP but ddclient is working wonders at keeping my domain pointed to the right spot.

I think both of the larger machines have 40Gb drives but storage can be added. I could probably arrange to have up to 160Gb ... maybe more, haven't done the math yet. I'd have to do some rearranging though. ... I could probably arrange to have 2Gb of ram in the Athlon machine as well ... or I could move the Sempron to that board and have 2Gb with it ... or keep it where it is and have 1.5Gb in it ... I hate options.

A small bit of money just came into my possession and I'm looking at investing into a pipe with 1mb up (or faster, depending on prices) but that's still a very tentative idea. The problem with that is it'd be symmetric instead of having the large downstream pipe.

I've been developing this really elaborate idea involving the use of the Celeron as a router/firewall, one of the larger machines for a Linux desktop, one as a web/mysql/ftp/mail server and my Windows machine for games. However, I can't even make my FTP server validate correctly and the mail has been even worse. If it's needed, I'm sure someone else can put it to better use than I can.

Bob P · Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2005 8:12 pm Post subject:

thanks everyone for the offers to help.

at this point i have identified the following objectives that need to be worked out:

1. Prototype Tarball Development -- developing the protocol for building the new Jackass! 2005.1 tarballs. right now i'm working on this.

2. Development Boxes. this involves obtaining access to a faster machine so that i can perform the builds more quickly. this could be as simple as obtaining SSH access to a fast box as root in a chroot jail (good), a hardware loan (better), or a hardware donation (best).

3. Test Group Volunteers. This would be the group of people who perform test installs on all of the tarballs. technical restrictions at my end presently require that testers have static IP addresses.

4. Temporary File Host. during the development stage we need to have a private FTP or HTTP server that supports passworded logons. if somebody would be willing to set-up and administer a temporary file server, that would eliminate my static IP requirement for the testers. from a practical standpoint, i just don't have the time to do this part of the project while i'm doing 2005.1 tarball development and maintaining the 2005.0 website.

If anyone can help with tasks 2, 3 and 4 please let me know.

EDIT: Static IP requirement for testers has been eliminated.
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bigmatt · n00b Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

i have a p4 box that i could let you use for ssh if nobody has offered you a p4 box to work on yet, the upload is kind of slow its about 18-20 KB, download gets about 150 KB, it has 512 ram, 2.8 ghz 1 mb cache, if you have any questions or are interested just let me know i'll try to help in any way i possibly can also the ip is dynamic but there are ways of getting around that problem well let me know if you're interested and also if you'd like to message me instead please do so, i believe i have my usernames in my profile.

EDIT: can no longer offer due to private reasons.

Bob P · Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:37 pm Post subject:

for those of you who have offered me a working environment: if you're going to set-up a custom chroot working environment for me that comes from unpacking a tarball, then please do me a favor and extract a Jackass! 2005.0 tarball that's appropriate for your architecture, and NOT a Gentoo 2005.1 tarball. the Gentoo 2005.1 tarballs are broken and don't constitute a suitable working environment. its not worth the effort for me to SSH into a b0rken system only to have to try to fix it before i can start to do development work. :oops:

similarly, if you're just going to pop a Live CD into a machine and boot it up for me, make it a Jackass! 2005.0 Live CD. at least I'll know what i'm dealing with and i'll be comfortable that it isn't full of errors.

thanks!
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Bob P · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 3:36 am Post subject:

Update:

1. THANKS.
thanks to @/dev/random and @slalomsk8er for providing me with SSH access to their boxes to perform some additional tarball builds. now that i've got more CPU cycles to work with, building the tarballs is taking alot less time. all of the preliminary builds are done except P4.

2. P4 SSH NEEDED.
i still need a P4 that i can access by SSH to build the P4 tarball.

3. CALL FOR TESTERS.
we're ready to test some of the tarballs. if you'd be interested in volunteering to perform Jackass! test installs on your system, please let me know via a post to this thread. i'll probably be setting up another FTP server in the near future to host tarballs during the testing phase.

4. BITTORRENT HELP NEEDED.
i'm thinking about using bittorrent for distribution of the 2005.1 tarballs, rather than using download mirrors. this is primarily because its been difficult to find enough people to volunteer as mirrors to host the project, and one or two people have had to do all of the heavy lifting. i'd prefer to use a distributed download model so that one or two people don't have to pay for all of the project's bandwidth requirements.

we're going to need help with bittorrent on two fronts:

1. seeders. we'll need to have a number of peope act as file seeds when the updated files are released, and

2. trackers. i haven't set-up a bittorrent tracker before, so i'd like some help in this regard. if you have experience in setting up a private tracker, i'd like to know what kind of hardware is required to perform this task effectively. i'd also like a point in the right direction for a detailed HOWTO. the one on the gentoo wiki seems somewhat abbreviated.

thanks!
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StringCheesian · l33t Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 887

I volunteer to do test installs. I have an Athlon XP.

sypher · n00b Joined: 14 Aug 2005 Posts: 26

I as well would like to test the Athlon-XP tarball.
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R4miu5 · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 2:10 pm Post subject:

I can't really help at the moment (in 3 weeks i could test, maybe) but i wanted to ask you if you could possibly make a stage for centrino? this would be fine and i promise, when i get my notebook i'll test it :twisted:

Dlareh · Advocate Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 2102

ritebayou · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 2:45 pm Post subject:

Is there any interest/desire in Mac Mini's? I'm plain crazy about running Gentoo on one of my Mac Mini's and even the Vidalinux team released a PPC 1.2 version recently that was expressly designed for the Mini and works flawlessly.

As cheap as the Mini's are, and as powerful* as they are, I'd love to see more Gentoo work going into them. Not to mention the fact they are so tightly integrated with standardized components the rollout of a Mini-centric stage1/3 would benefit ALL Mini owners as a whole with virtually no borking like happens with the infinite array of PC rigs.

* Powerful as in - I play Unreal Tournament 2004 on a Mac Mini 1.25 GHz, 40 Gig HD, 512 Megs RAM and it runs very well - well enough I play online daily and never have a problem.
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R4miu5 · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 2:50 pm Post subject:

96140 · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Jan 2005 Posts: 1324

Bob P · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 8:16 pm Post subject:

OTHER ARCHES

Nope. Jackass! is an x86 only project. The fact that anyone would ask that question suggests that they haven't looked at the historical aspects of this proejct or the portability issues related to CPU flags. :oops:

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Bob P · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 8:18 pm Post subject:

PENTIUM-M

We did not build a Pentium-M version of Jackass! 2005.0 for reasons that are well documented. Given that I'm doing ALL of the 2005.1 tarballs by myself, I'm going to take the idea for a P-M tarball under advisement. Rebuilding the existing arches that are already supported will have to take priority over adding new arches to the project.

If I have enough time to add new architectures to the project, they'll have to be added after the existing arches in the project have been completed. Practically speaking, this means that new arches will be the last arches developed in this phase of the project. I'll only consider adding new arches if support shows that there's sufficient demand for them.

In the interim, if anyone can't live without P-M, my recommendation would be to use the Pentium-3 tarball, change the -march setting, and recompile your system -- just like you'd have to do with a Gentoo 2005.x tarball. That's what I'd have to do, and you've got a fast enough PC to do it while I'm working on more pressing issues.

Part of the reason that I have not already added new arches to the build list is that support for the project has been abysmal. Even though tens of thousands of people are downlaoding and using the tarballs, only 6 people have bothered to support the project in some way. That doesn't provide alot of incentive to expand the project, now does it?

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Bob P · Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 8:19 pm Post subject:

TESTING

Just to put the testing of things into perspective: We start out testing the slow arches first and work our way up the ladder. This helps to prevent tester attrition. Experience has shown that testers without high postcounts and good forum track records tend to disappear once they get the optimal tarball for their system.

So if anyone's ready to start testing that's great. We'll be starting off with the pentium tarballs and testing them first.

If you're willing to be a tester, please send me a PM. Tell me what type of CPU you have. Optimally, I'd like for you to have a static IP address, not a dynamic IP address, but I guess we could find ways to work around that. In being a tester, it will be important for you to test as many arches as your box will accomodate.

A GENTOO COMMUNITY PROJECT

I appreciate the help that the CPU cycle donors have made to the project. So far, preliminary testing has been done by @nightmorph and @bertsinn. I have built all of the tarballs by myself, with the exception of P4 because we're still working out some SSH logon kinks on the P4 development box. Right now we desperately need volunteers for testing and we don't have enough of them.

From a logistical standpoint, its not feasible for one to three people to do all of the work on this project. We need alpha test volunteers to verify that the system works before releasing the tarballs to the Gentoo Community. If we can't get enough volunteers to act as testers, we won't be able to release of a group of untested tarballs.

Now would be a good time for Gentoo Community members to volunteer! :!:

This is especially true if you have a request for an architecture that is not currently on the build list. :wink:

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Bob P · Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 10:29 pm Post subject: Re: p4 box

Bob P · Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 9:22 am Post subject:

ATTENTION TESTERS:

1. STATIC IP ADDRESS REQUIREMENT ELIMINATED.

The Static IP Address requirement for testers has been ELIMINATED. The Jackass! Development server now requires users to log-on using a pre-assigned user:password combination.

If you're already on-line as a tester, you've been sent a Personal Message that contains your unique username and password.

If anyone is interested in becoming a tester but has not been able to volunteer because of the Static IP Address requirement, now is your chance to get on-board. :wink:

2. PENTIUM & PENTIUM-MMX TARBALLS READY FOR TESTING.

The pentium and pentium-mmx tarballs are on the FTP server and ready for testing. Please report back in this thread.

Have Fun!

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