Re: Machine available for community use

Simon Riggs wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 08:50 -0700, Mark Wong wrote:
>> On 7/25/07, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>> "Gavin M. Roy" <gavinmroy(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>>> I'm currently in the process of having Gentoo linux reinstalled on the
>>>> box since that is what I am most comfortable administering from a
>>>> security perspective. If this will be a blocker for developers who
>>>> would actually work on it, please let me know.
>
> Gavin, I'd like access please. This sounds very cool. We'll be able to
> show each other directly what's going on, even log on together to
> inspect various aspects of runs.
>
> Will you run a booking system?
>
> Could you give us some details about myYearbook.com's application? I
> feel we should prioritise work slightly so that the contributor can see
> some benefit coming their way in the longer term.
>
>>> Personally I'd prefer almost any of the other Linux distros.
>>> Gentoo always leaves me wondering exactly what I'm running today,
>>> and I think reproducibility is an important attribute for a benchmarking
>>> machine.
>> Tom, have any specific ideas in mind for using the system? While I'm
>> used to having more disks it could be useful nonetheless for the tests
>> I used to run if there are no other ideas.
>
> Mark, If you're thinking TPC-E, so am I. Where are we with the TPC-E
> toolkit you guys were working on?
>
> Initially though, I'd like to do some tests on CVS HEAD with large
> shared_buffers settings, so the 32GB RAM will come in handy for that and
> no worries about disks.
>
>> Rats, I've always liked Gentoo. ;)
>
> I'd agree with Tom on that: we need a system that remains the same over
> longer periods, not simply a very fast one. I'm OK with Fedora.

fedora is probably not a prime example for "stays same over long period"
(which I think is important) since it has pretty short release cycles.
Maybe something like ubuntu LTS, Debian Etch or even CentOS would be
more appropriate (we have debian on a number of very similiar HP boxes
and HP is doing Debian Support now too).

Stefan