New server... soon

[daniel at debian.org (Daniel Baumann)]

Hi again,

this mail is only for those who are interested in some details, nothing
important, just read it if have a bored moment...

Currently, the machine where live.debian.net is running on, is a
dedicated server with 2x 160GB in RAID1 configuration, 1GB RAM, 100MB/s
flatrate bandwith, running simple Debian etch/i386.

This has led to some problems..

  1. we can only autobuild i386 images, despite the fact that
     modern machine are capable of running the amd64 port and building
     images for both i386 and amd64 at the same time.

  2. we can only autobuild a few images and only keep snapshots for only
     a very limited time due to having way too small disks.

So, I orderered a new machine by the provider. Improvement is 2x 300GB
disks and 2GB RAM. Setting it up with etch/amd64 means, that problem one
is solved, and problem two too (the only disadvantage is, that it costs
more, but that will stay my problem).

With 2GB RAM, I'm going to setup different virtual servers with Xen.
Unfortunately, the server crashes when booting Xen, so that's what I try
to solve this afternoon with the provider.

So, when the new server will be working, everything will be better:

  * regular daily/weekly snapshots for i386 again as well as amd64
  * less limited archive of previous snapshots
  * new flavours that can be autobuild, such as the rescue flavour.

And there is one extremely interesting thing:

Once Xen etc. is working, I'll setup the absolutely marvelous scripts[0]
from Bendan to create video recordings of booting live images (as he has
done it for Morphix[1]). This will be really great for doing QA on the
images, so that we know before downloading if a latest-and-greatest sid
image is even booting/working correctly :)

Regards,
Daniel

[0]
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/debian-live/people/bmsleight/autotesting/?rev=0&sc=0
[1] http://www.morphix.org/autobuilds/video/

-- 
Address:        Daniel Baumann, Burgunderstrasse 3, CH-4562 Biberist
Email:          daniel.baumann at panthera-systems.net
Internet:       http://people.panthera-systems.net/~daniel-baumann/