[Mageia-sysadm] Arm, meeting, etc

[Michael Scherer]

Hi,

as said before, here is the long over due report of the discussion we
had with rtp when I seen him. Being sick and busy with job interview, I
was unable to finish it sooner.

on 24th June, I went to Paris to give the pandaboard ( a arm motherboard
)
donated by TI for zarb.org to arnaud patard (rtp) in order to prepare it
for integration with the rest of the infrastructure.

While on it, we discussed various technical issue, along with Damien
(dams ), so here is the summary of the meeting.

People present :
_ michael scherer
- arnaud patard
- damien lallemand
- nicolas vigier

First, the pandaboard would be hosted at Lost Oasis, without surprise.
Since the pandaboard alone is just a mother board,
we need to more hardware to make it usable.
After discussion, here is the list of hardware that would be needed :
 - usb cable, to power it ( we have a limited supply of plug )
 - serial cable, for the bootloader
 - usb to serial adapter, to plug on a server as we are not sure that
our servers have working serial
 - a SD card, of 4 g, for storing kernel, and maybe a rescue FS
 - a sata harddrive + external enclosure, for the main system
 - a box for the board

First step is to see how much it cost, and what/where to buy. Action
assigned to rtp, in 2 weeks. Dams will also check if a mini-itx box
would do the trick, should check on monday. Rtp also said he would check
for a external power supply.

In order to find needed length, we will try to get some estimation on
the available space in our rack, and the required cable, and do some
simulation.

On the sysadmin side, the proposal is the following :
 - the board will serve as a rebuilder for arm, which is not in sync
with others arch for the moment
 - we will need to adujst various part of the system for arm ( bugzilla,
mirrors , etc )

Among others, Arnaud spoke of using common flags instead of using %
ifarch. The goal would be to be able to say "I do compile without java"
by setting 1 file, instead of adding %ifnarch arm everywhere.
But he promised me to send a more structured proposal on the -dev.

In order to discuss details in a more open fashion , a meeting have been
planed for 6 juillet, in the afternoon around 13h UTC ( paris time,  15h
). We will use #mageia-meeting, and the goal is :
1) see who is interested by arm ( if you are but cannot be there, please
say it on irc )
2) see if the task decided for the previous IRL meeting have been caried


-- 
Michael Scherer