Re: Debian mirror / developer machine
On Sat, Jun 12, 2021 at 08:20:11PM -0400, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > If you are talking about a separate repository to the existing
> > repository, that sounds like a Debian derivative. Personally I would
> > encourage people to contribute to Debian rather than starting new
> > derivatives, except for experiments that will be re-integrated into
> > Debian.
> >
> > https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives
> >
> No, I ain't talking about derivatives of Debian. I talking about a
> mirror by itself, like all the other one around (ftp.xx.debian.org).
>
A mirror by itself for Debian (all architectures) is approximately 1.4TB.
That's not much these days - but it does take a long time to complete if
your link is slow. [If you're starting it from scratch using ftpmirror,
allow for it to take anything up to a week depending on which mirror you're
syncing from].
The cdimage mirror which contains the CD/DVD images and the files to build
others via jigdo is 217G - so both will fit comfortably in a 2TB disk at the
moment. Daily change is usually of the order of tens to hundreds of gigabytes
- the change on release day is likely to be fairly extreme as links change
over.
OVH - like many hosting providers - already provide a full Debian mirror to
their customers on "local network" in the data centres, as it were so maybe
another mirror based on their infrstructure won't help others as much as it
might: also, I suspect that their bandwidth limit for "free unlimited
bandwidth" for a single user would soon be exhausted or they'd lose their
patience with large numbers of connections to a single host.
Contact the folks who set up their mirror and ask if there's anything you
can do appropriately. Sharing of expertise is always useful to the wider
project as is documentation, particularly if you can review/edit
documentation that is not in English or needs appropriate localisation.
There's a whole bunch of release testing with each point release: there's
a need for people to have experience with non amd64 architectures and
other porting and developing.
>
> >> Also, I could allow it's use for development purpose if some people need
> >> it. Some time we simply don't want to run a compilation run on our own
> >> computer because it create a lag and we don't have other computer to use.
> >
> > The existing options for building software on other people's computers
> > are documented here:
> >
> > https://wiki.debian.org/Hardware/Wanted#Available_hardware
> >
>
> I didn't know about this infrastructures. I'm more talking about
> allowing some people on a individual basis the use of the machine to do
> development.
>
> Example, developer named Joe would like to have his workspace available
> thru SSH and don't have the funds to have a server online (or don't want
> to bother).
>
Most Debian developers and some Debian maintainers have access to project
machines for some of this but sharing a powerful machine may be just what
you need if your only machine is a small laptop. What would _you_ want if
someone else offered you this facility - how much effort are you willing to put
in to provide that and keep the machine safe and secure?
> > In my opinion, the best way to give back is to be involved in
> > producing Debian; testing, packaging, bug fixing etc and there are
> > many ways to do that, some documented here:
> >
> > https://www.debian.org/intro/help
> I'll take a look at this.
>
> For now, I need to be able to do a complete re-installation of my Debian
> instance without using the automated installer offered by
> OVH/One-provider. This give me only one partition of 2 Tb in RAID-0
> (Mirror) 3x2 To.
>
> I need more than one partition and don't really need this level of RAID.
> Something like RAID-5 (parity) would work great to be fail safe.
>
> I'm good to do the installation and use debootstrap to build the server
> but there seem to be problem with either doing the setup for network
> upon reboot or else... I have some trouble shoot to do on how will it
> get to work. I don't have access to the machine via KVM so I need to
> work using the "rescue" mode. That is a network boot that give me access
> to a shell, partition the disk, format the partition, mount the
> partition, run debootstrap, setup grub, configure the network and... reboot.
>
> It's the first time I have to build a server without access to KVM...
>
Call in OVH tech support and explain what you're trying to do: it may be that
they will have other options / have seen someone else do similarly and can
help you.
All the very best, as ever,
Andy Cater
> Thanks ;-)
>
> >
>
> --
> Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside
> -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development
>
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