[rescue] Need Build Help

Stephen Conley cheetah at tanabi.org
Wed Jun 4 14:11:01 CDT 2014


Hi guys;

Thanks very much for all the replies.  I'm in contact with someone
who's offered a SPARC machine for cost of shipping, and my partner has
found a hosted AIX solution that will work for us, so between those
two things we're all set.


I appreciate all the help and feedback :)


Stephen


On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Laurence Brevard <brevard at 1or0.com> wrote:
>  I have a powered off SunFire V100 (UltraSPARC IIe/IIi) that runs Solaris
> 10.
>
> We used to build one of our products on that platform but quit bothering
> a few years back after all our customers ended up with Linux on x86_64.
>
> This is in my home office in San Jose, California, but I have a
> collocation facility up the road in Fremont where I could run it (at no
> extra charge to me).
>
> My electricity from PG&E costs $0.36/kWh in the punitive top "Tier 4"
> where over 2/3 of my consumption is. As a result, it's worth it to NOT
> run systems in the office whenever possible! Even so my PG&E bill is over
> $900/month.
>
> FWIW, a relative in Houston, TX, recently showed me his electric bill at
> $0.026/kWh - less than 10% of what I pay. I could have cried.
>
> At 07:21 AM 6/4/2014, Stephen Conley wrote:
>
>   Solaris 10 is actually still used by a number of enterprises, for
>   better or worse.  Haven't seen anything older than Solaris 10 in
>   awhile.  Sort of looking for least common denominator.
>
>   We'd be willing to pay a reasonable fee for a shell account we'll be
>   using a couple times a month maybe :)  We have an auto-builder that
>   downloads the code and does the build ... I suppose a trojan's
>   possible, but it would be a lot of work to be a jerk to a small
>   number
>   of machines.  We'd know exactly who was responsible for it, so sort
>   of
>   a high risk to low reward ratio IMO.
>
>   I've been on the list for a long time, even if I'm not an active
>   poster (though I've given out a few freebies, including an AIX
>   machine
>   that I could never get to work), and it seems like this isn't a
>   breeding ground for evil folks so I would take most folks here at
>   their word.  Call me naive / foolish / dumb if you like :D
>
>   Solaris I'm really less worried about -- various posters are right,
>   you can get a Solaris machine really cheaply and I'm personally
>   qualified to run a Solaris machine.  However, they're also common,
>   and
>   I figured someone here must have one kicking around that they
>   wouldn't
>   mind.
>
>   AIX is more of an issue.  The machines are more expensive and nobody
>   here really knows anything about it -- I had a massively hard time
>   getting a POWER5+ machine to work in the past (to the point where I
>   up
>   and gave up), so I'd rather use someone else's if it were available.
>
>   The problem is also, we're not expecting to make any money off these
>   ports.  Our software has a free version, and it's someone who wants
>   to
>   use the free version that wants the ports.  Just to be completely
>   honest here, if we were going to make money off this, we'd buy the
>   machines -- but for a startup, it's kind of a big outlay.
>
>   But if there's no takers, there's no takers.  Can't hurt to ask,
>   right?
>
>   Thanks guys,
>
>   Steve
>
>   On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org>
>   wrote:
>   >>> Sorry if this is the wrong forum to ask for this :)  But I'm the
>   CTO
>   >>> of a small company, and we have a need to build some C++ on Sun
>   >>> Solaris SPARC and AIX.
>   >
>   >>> We're targeting Solaris 10 and AIX 6.1 on POWER if possible.
>   >
>   > Does "Sun Solaris" even _exist_ any longer?  (Well, I'm sure the
>   blobs
>   > of bits still exist somewhere.  But I don't know the licensing; it
>   may
>   > be you'd have to buy right-to-run Oracle Solaris in order to be
>   allowed
>   > to run it.)
>   >
>   >>> The expense of purchasing hardware just to build is kind of
>   steep,
>   >>> so I was wondering if anyone out there might volunteer their
>   >>> machine?
>   >
>   > Well, at least you're being honest. :-/  While you're at it, do you
>   > perchance want to volunteer to pay me to do nothing in particular?
>   >
>   > Personally, I'd suggest emulation.  IIRC there are pretty good
>   SPARC
>   > emulators out there; it would surprise me if there weren't good
>   POWER
>   > emulators too.
>   >
>   >>> We'd be willing to pay some fee for continued access as well ...
>   >>> it's not so much that we don't want to pay, it's more we don't
>   want
>   >>> to pay several hundred bucks for a couple machines and then have
>   to
>   >>> set them up and maintain them just for this.
>   >
>   > Well, what's building this code worth to the company?  With a
>   > volunteer's build machine you'll get volunteer-quality sysadmin and
>   a
>   > volunteer-quality SLA, don't forget.  (With the right volunteer,
>   the
>   > sysadmin can be better than paying someone, but you can't count on
>   > that.  And even if it _is_ good it generally will be distinctly
>   second
>   > to the rest of the volunteer's life, including paying work - that's
>   > where the SLA comes in.)
>   >
>   > And to what extent can you trust the result?  This would be a
>   perfect
>   > opportunity to trojan the resulting binaries, after all.
>   >
>   > No, I'm not volunteering.  To get me to run a binary-only OS on my
>   own
>   > hardware, you'd have to pay me more than it would cost you to run
>   it
>   > yourself.
>   >
>   > /~\ The ASCII                             Mouse
>   > \ / Ribbon Campaign
>   >  X  Against HTML                mouse at rodents-montreal.org
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>   4B
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>
> LAURENCE C. BREVARD
> http://www.BrevardAndBrevard.com
> +1(408)824-5321: desk
> +1(408)627-1546: cell
> +1(408)929-5029: home
> +1(408)929-4826: fax
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