[CentOS-devel] Interested in IA64 build.

[James A. Peltier]

----- "Karanbir Singh" <mail-lists at karan.org> wrote:

| On 05/21/2010 11:05 AM, James A. Peltier wrote:
| > So what is it that you need?  Just for someone like me to actually
| run it?  What would be required if I wanted to maintain my own build
| and keep it up to date as an un-official copy?
| 
| Yes, when I did the bootstrap - I had interest from 3 people, 1 of
| whom 
| then changed jobs and his workplace dropped the ia64 cluster and moved
| 
| to x86_64, the second guy had 1 ia64 machine which developed a problem
| 
| and they didnt think its worth fixing it. I've not heard from the
| third 
| chap since. So not sure what is going on.

My machine is not under a support contract from SGI, but also it is in full working condition.  In its current state I would go through a graceful degradation if hardware were to fail and keep it running as long as I can.  I have lots of spare parts. ;)

| > I'm interested in getting involved and contributing back.  Of course
| I'm also not sure how much work is involved just yet.
| 
| There isn't really that much work involved - not nearly as much as 
| powerpc/powerpc64 effort. If you are going to put in the effort, it 
| might be worth doing something semi official - as long as we can
| retain 
| the general build and distro policy of / for CentOS and we can get to
| a 
| state were we track build packages from i386 / x86-64.
| 

Alright, I'm willing to commit some time, but before diving in, as a general rough overview, what type of timeframe are we looking at to maintain a port?  5-10 hours a day, week, month?

| There is a build machine hosted in the UK ( its a dell 2950 with 2
| ia64 
| 1.4Ghz - couple of gigs of ram and is on a fairly good network ). So
| we 
| would need to get together atleast another machine for testing
| purposes. 
| I'm guessing you already have some kit in place, which might be usable
| ?
| 

Yup, as described and fully operational.  I could get other hardware too.

| How much of time are you really going to put into this ? I dont mean
| to 
| sound patronising, but it would to be good to work with someone who
| has 
| some level of commitment. Given that I have no personal interest in 
| ia64, and no hardware of my own that is ia64, and that rhel6 isn't
| going 
| to have a ia64 tree[1]; We really dont want to be in a situation
| wherein 
| we put something out, and then struggle to keep things moving
| along.[2]
| 

I totally agree and I wouldn't want to put the project into that situation.  I have the hardware here running 4.8.  I would like to run 5.5 and keep these machines in production for as long as possible.  I don't mind work and I'd like to try.

| - KB
| 
| [1]: does'nt mean we cant do one
| 
| [2]: within reason. No one expects anyone to commit on contract, 10
| hrs 
| a week for 5 years. But it should not be a case of only putting this 
| effort in through the summer holidays, or a 'quiet phase at work'
| etc.

This is not at all my intention.  I want to keep it going as long as my hardware is running.

| PS: try not top posting

Sorry. ;)

--
James A. Peltier
Systems Analyst (FASNet), VIVARIUM Technical Director
Simon Fraser University - Burnaby Campus
Phone   : 778-782-6573
Fax     : 778-782-3045
E-Mail  : jpeltier at sfu.ca
Website : http://www.fas.sfu.ca | http://vivarium.cs.sfu.ca
MSN     : subatomic_spam at hotmail.com

Does your OS has a man 8 lart?
http://www.xinu.nl/unix/humour/asr-manpages/lart.html