[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: arm build hardware

On 10/03/13 11:00, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:

On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 11:56 AM, David Pottage <david@chrestomanci.org> wrote:

On 08/03/13 19:11, peter green wrote:

I run a debian derivative called raspbian and i'm looking into a new build
cluster both to give more power for the jessie campaign and to migrate the
cluster out of mike's basement. I had been looking egarly at the openbrix
zero but it looks like that project has been abandoned . I've thought
through a list of requirements and nice to have's and am currently looking
at two boards the nitrogen6x (with 2GB ram option) and the arndaleboard.


(Re-posting to the list, I replied only to Peter before.)

Have you come across the cubieboard <http://cubieboard.org/>. It only has
1Gb of RAM,

  ... which is an immediate problem for any build system, to be taken
seriously.  i've posted on this previously (4 months ago, 5 months ago
and 8 months ago approximately), as well as there being an independent
post by someone who noted that modifications to one package required,
if memory serves correctly (which it usually doesn't) *six gigabytes*
of swap space in order to effect a link.

  to repeat again: the example that i give is the one that i know well
- webkit, which requires at least 1.4gb *resident* RAM in order to
complete the link phase in a reasonable time frame.  15 minutes is not
unreasonable on a 2ghz dual-core XEON... *as long as* you do not
require debug information.  if you require debug information (dbg deb
packages) then you're looking at around an hour.

  if however you only have 1gb of RAM then that 15 minutes turns into
90 minutes, and christ knows what the debug build link time is, i
never bothered to find out because i have better things to do. and
that's with dual-core XEONs.

  the debian ARM build systems which previously had only 1gb of RAM i
believe they were looking at 2 days for the link phase on some of
these larger packages.

  so, yeah - word of advice from experience: *DO NOT* get a system with
1gb of RAM for building of distro packages, if you want to have a life
:)


OK then, what about ODROID-U2 ?
Quad Core Cortex A9 @ 1.7 GHz, 2Gb RAM, no SATA connectivity.

http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G135341370451
I know you have said that some USB mass storage controllers are unreliable but is it really that bad for all of them? Is there a list of known good controllers or ones to avoid?
I have been investigating ARM dev boards for an unrelated project of my own, and discovered that thought there are plenty to choose from, a SATA port appears to be a rare feature that increases the price considerably, which got me thinking that the raw speed of USB2 should be adequate so long as it is reliable and does not add too much latency.
Could that work for the Rasberian build Farm? I would have thought that for building packages, higher latency storage could be tolerated much more than for other workloads as most data transfers would be large, so RAM and CPU performance would be more important. 

--
David Pottage
Reply to: