Re: current status of alpha in squeeze - Next Steps

[Robert Garron <Robert.Garron@access3000.net>]

Craig,

Hi - see below ------------>

On Mon March 28 2011 10:34:01 Craig Prescott wrote:
> Robert Garron wrote:
> > All I need is direction as to what to do, when to do (now), and who to
> > contact (our growing list - but who in Debian land to contact).  I do
> > appreciate your provided list of contacts - I hope they all respond to
> > our call to have Alpha Squeeze...
>
> I want to thank you for starting this thread.  I'm catching up a little
> bit, but I think you are asking about what would be required to
> recertify Alpha as a release architecture in Debian.  Is that correct?
Yes, that was the initial question... 

>
> I do not know what would be involved in the recertification of Alpha as
> a release architecture for Debian.  I'd be very interested to find out
> the answer.
Me too.

>
> I do not know who in Debian to contact regarding the status of official
> or semi-offical support for the Alpha architecture in Debian.
> Presumably, there is a forum within the Debian community for discussion
> of a port's health, viability, etc.  The debian-alpha list was part of
> the discussion back in 2009 re: Squeeze, but I'm not sure what other
> forums were involved.
I guess I have some research to perform...
As I did not follow the "systems side of Debian" as I am a systems integrator 
and was more interested in all of the various components (packages available 
and updated to the latest releases).   Thus I was totally unaware from the 
forums that posted that Alpha was being dropped... someone sent us a page 
that was available in 2009 to this effect, but I obviously missed that one...

>
> It may be useful to contact Steve Langasek, who was the Port Maintainter
> and a heavy lifter for the Lenny release on Alpha.  He may be able to
> point us in the right direction for contacts.
This is what Bill Parke stated also - so I will try this tomorrow.

>
> FWIW, though, I don't think we're going to get far asking Debian
> leadership about a *Squeeze* release on Alpha.  I think that ship sailed
> in 2009.  Is that really what you meant?  IMO, if there really is
> interest and resources that can be committed to official or
> semi-official support of Debian on Alpha, it would be better to look
> beyond Squeeze.
OK -- from my note directly to you -- if that is what we should do, then we 
should look that way -- as it is estimated that the project can take about 6 
months?

>
> > Anyway, What should our next steps be?
> >
> > What my group has to offer a Debian Alpha group is:
> > Three (3) almost fully loaded working 4100's with HSC's and fully loaded
> > bays. Five (5) 2100's and one (1) DS20 (older model, unfortunately the
> > motherboard has an issue that has not been fixed yet - Joel's company can
> > fix this -- we just have not done it yet)
> > and another ~10 Alpha's of various sorts.  The above are the real working
> > units.
> >
> > Plan - I guess we need to finalize the list of people who can help,
> > exchange contacts, setup systems to perform the work, and ask Debian if
> > they can provided all of the past tools they have used to create a
> > release... Maybe Debian can provide a CD with a HowTo to setup a distro
> > creation environment? We can mount that so our new group can have full
> > access.  I guess we should also setup git or subversion for source code
> > control etc... I am probably getting ahead of myself here as the group
> > should decide how to proceed upon its formation...
>
> I think these are good starting thoughts.  I also have resources which I
> can contribute, if they are useful
> (http://www.alphalinux.org/wiki/index.php/User:Prescott is still about
> right).
>
> I'll make a few notes/thoughts below that may be of some use.
>
> I never created installation media for my own build of Squeeze packages
> on alpha.  It was on my list, but I haven't gotten around to figuring
> out the "Debian way" to do it (that was a goal of mine).
>
> To build Debian packages for the alpha architecture - in the full-blown
> Debian way - a wanna-build server, buildd machine(s), and an apt
> repository will be needed.  
As the world seems to be moving to git -- to replace subversion, I guess that 
would be the source control system of choice to setup ?

> One or more humans will be needed to 
> digitally sign the debian packages and review the logs of failed builds
> (and do something about them).  
This is the time consuming stuff - and this is where a well run team needs to 
be assembled for such work.

> When the human(s) sign the packages, 
> they can be uploaded to the apt repository.  In Debian-speak, I believe
> the humans in the above are referred to as "buildd-admins".  Those
> humans would need to be identified.
OK - a job yet to be done ....

>
> The wanna-build server need not be an alpha, but the buildd machines
> would need to be (obviously).
I would want to use an Alpha because it seems that less work would be required 
to release?  And with limited resources of all areas (time, man power, 
systems etc... ) it would make sense to start with a plan that looks at 
stream lining work loads...

>
> Information regarding how to set up a wanna-build and buildd is on the
> net.  FWIW, I tried to document the setup I used to build squeeze for
> alpha here:
>
> http://www.ekkaia.net/~cpp/blog/?p=9

I will read this tomorrow and get back to you shortly.


>
> After processing the enormous backlog of packages (14,000 or so, I
> think), I hovered around 97 or 98 percent of packages in the distro
> built and uploaded.  There were always some which gave trouble, that I
> didn't care about (think mono-related packages and the like).
I think we will have to make decisions as to what is built and debugged.
It is simple as that -- 

>
> For the building of squeeze packages, I did not find the operation of
> the buildd machines to be terribly time consuming (at most I used three
> buildds - 2x CS20 and a UP1100, but I was starting from scratch and in
> no hurry).  I usually signed and uploaded blobs of packages once or
> twice a day.  On occasion I worked up patches or incorporated existing
> ones into Debian packages - but this was fairly rare, and mostly related
> to installation-media-only packages (and I never produced installation
> media).  I'm sure the lack of problems I experienced was greatly helped
> by the alpha maintainers and Debian developers who kept the Alpha
> version of unstable going strong.  For the buildd machines, I found it
> was better to have machines with drives larger than 9GB (system+chroot
> space) - I could get into trouble space-wise if I did not upload often
> enough.
This is why I called Joel about disks -- we have an HSC system with 30/40 36 
gig drives and we are going to upgrade to 300's OR if Joel can make the tera 
byte drives work -- well then we have alot of storage to get all of this to 
work... 

>
> As I understand, the Debian-speak for the role of the humans who kept
> the active versions of packages working on a particular architecture is
> "porter".   I think it is not a problem for a "buildd-admin" and a
> "porter" can be the same human.  But from Debian's perspective, I don't
> see how a one-man port can be viable long term.
Absolutely -- this is why I am trying to find the last die-hards like myself 
to help.  My feeling is that Alphas were made to last, and in some cases 
(application level) I have had Alphas beat out newer Dell/Intel and IBM 
systems for a particular app... why -- overall architecture - end to end 
design -- yes the processors of new are faster, but the I/O, memory, buses 
etc sometimes are slower... And of course I am nostalgic to the Alphas...

>
> For the apt repository, I used reprepro.  IIRC, this is not what the
> official repositories use, though.  But after living with it for a
> while, it seems very nice, and documentation is ubiquitous.  There
> should be a backup for the apt repository.  I used an md mirror for my
> main repository and backed it up to another machine (also with an md
> mirror).  If uploading into official Debian repos, this is probably all
> taken care of, I'd guess(?).  The size of my apt repository for alpha
> squeeze packages is about 30GB.

OK - well with all of the initial volunteers we are off to a good start -- 
Now we simply need to get organized, and start to make a project plan with 
assignments -- this will all happen in the next two weeks?

>
> Cheers,
> Craig