<gchristensen>
its simulating a mass rebuild, now!
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<sphalerite>
whoooooa
<samrose>
if I am seeing little boot partitions appear on my emmc device like mmcblk2boot0 179:64 0 4M 1 disk I am thinking those are generations of nixos rebuilds?
<samueldr>
nope
<samueldr>
those are generally unused, but a type of partitions for emmc devices, which could be used by the platform to hold e.g. the bootloader
<samueldr>
/boot is annoying to use as it can fill up quickly
<samrose>
so you probably disable that boot before you nixos-rebuild eh?
<samueldr>
last times I think I forgot and did it the first moment I was forced to :)
<samrose>
if you disable boot, do you typically need to copy over components to the remaining parition to achieve booting?
<samueldr>
uh, no, at rebuild stuff will work (IIRC)
<samrose>
ok, that makes sense
<samrose>
also, if I actually build may own sd image, I can just leave out /boot
<samrose>
(as I have done in my x86 ISO)
<samueldr>
probably, as long as u-boot can read from the partition flagged as bootable
<samrose>
cool I'll try that down the road
<samueldr>
eventually, I'd look at defaulting to still having a FAT32 partition, but used exclusively for the raspberry pi files
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<samrose>
is there any reasonable way to build OS image and channels with hydra for aarch64? Should the hydra instance itself run on ARM64
<gchristensen>
do you have hydra?
<samrose>
gchristensen: I have a hydra server running on x86 hardware (on aws)
<gchristensen>
ah
<samrose>
it works great for building channels and ISO for that variant of the OS
<gchristensen>
so the hydra server doesn't need to be ARM but it does need an ARM hardware
<gchristensen>
as a build machine
<samrose>
ah, so I could do an agent
<samrose>
hydra agent
<samrose>
that is arm
<gchristensen>
right
<gchristensen>
Nix and Hydra call them build machines :)
<samrose>
heh, yes build machines
<samrose>
maybe I could get that going on packet.net?
<gchristensen>
you could, yeah, there is some c1.large.arm capacity in NRT1 and SJC1
<samrose>
or I could get a local arm dev machine with more resources and wire it up to be a build machine for hydra
<gchristensen>
not sure you'll be able to (easily) get a local arm dev machine with more resources than c1.large.arm, but yeah
<samrose>
because I am not sure if I can even use the full capacity of that c1.large.arm
<samueldr>
it's uh, got all the beef
<samrose>
I suppose I could use their api, spin up, do my thing, and power off
<gchristensen>
sure
<gchristensen>
you'd have to fully deprovision it, not just power off
<gchristensen>
you can also use their spot pricing to get it for cheap
<samrose>
might just do it. Seems less ridiculous than trying to maintain my own local hardware
<samrose>
(for me)
<gchristensen>
I also don't like to admin fiddly, expensive, and weird hw
<gchristensen>
:P
<samrose>
if it wasn't running all the time, the costs would be negligible
<samrose>
(if packet.net wasn't running all the time)
<samrose>
"Imagine that you could take advantage of 96 cores for just $.50/hr? What would you do?"
<samrose>
lol
<sphalerite>
samrose: unless a raspi is enough for your purposes, in which case maintaining your own local hardware is fine ;)
<gchristensen>
the ~$70 of raspi equip buys a substantial amount of build time at $0.50/hr :)
<samrose>
sphalerite: yessir, that's what I've been doing to date (although with bananapi as the target instead raspi because my company already went all in on this hardware sadly. But at least I can actually now run the damn OS on it thanks to you all)
<gchristensen>
tbh I'm a fanboi so
<gchristensen>
take everything I say with sufficient salt
<samrose>
yeah, it might be reasonable to just set up raspi machines locally too. it seems an option worth considering anyway.
<samueldr>
but your fancy packet server can't do hdmi and audio things locally :3
<samrose>
true there is no way to test HDMI (we don't need audio, but do at least need HDMI)
<samrose>
we actually will require to have the exact bpim64 hardware set up as a test hardware phase prior to rollout
<gchristensen>
what're you making?
<samueldr>
sounds fun :) must be nice having an actual goal other than "make the damn thing work"
<samrose>
gchristensen: we have machines that will act as nodes for a distributed hosting system, where hosting is limited to specific kinds of apps https://holo.host/
<samrose>
there are intel x86 boxes, and these bananapi m64 boxes
<samrose>
we are running an overlay over Nixos on both
<samrose>
the machines will auto-update, auto-garbage collect
<samrose>
autoupgrade based on channels from our hydra server, and we are merging nixos channels upstream
<gchristensen>
neat
<sphalerite>
samrose: oh neat, didn't you work with mayflower also?
<samrose>
sphalerite: I came into it not really knowing much of anything about NixOS months ago, but I started crash coursing myself on it because I was convinced it would be a much better pathway than the alternatives for an autoupdating linux distribution. I made a lot of progress, and mayflower helped me udnerstand how to do the overlay, and did some of the work etc
<samrose>
they were a big help
<sphalerite>
samrose: I recently joined mayflower :D
<samrose>
ah cool
<samrose>
seems like lots of people in EU are into NixOS, and people over here in the states haven't really caught on yet
<gchristensen>
some day
<gchristensen>
I hope to have a nixcon: graham's backyard
<sphalerite>
not so sure about the not really caught on yet bit, but yeah it does seem to be quite Europe-centric
<samrose>
well yes, anyone who understands it, and becomes aware of it seems to become really into it
<sphalerite>
I mean, one of the major US retailers is using it :D
<samrose>
wow, I did not know that
<sphalerite>
What does Target actually use it for? Is that publicly available information?
<gchristensen>
uhhh
<gchristensen>
building ... software...? :)
<gchristensen>
data science and optimisation team uses it
<gchristensen>
I hope Intel is scared and pulling out some stops
<gchristensen>
ARM CPUS is getting fast, and quickly: 32 cores at 3.3GHz(turbo) in a single socket? 1TB RAM? crazy pants
<gchristensen>
only 125W too
<sphalerite>
gchristensen: well the frequency isn't really very telling. A current 3.0GHz CPU from Intel and a 3.0GHz Pentium with the same amount of cores will still perform very differently. And that's with the same basic instruction set!
<gchristensen>
true enough
<gchristensen>
however
<gchristensen>
I think the direction here should cause Intel serious concern
<gchristensen>
we're watching innovator's dilemma unfold in real time
<sphalerite>
innovator's dilemma?
<gchristensen>
basically a massive, successful industry leader is killed by a cheaper, smaller company going after the low end
<gchristensen>
and that eventually the quality of the product of the low end becomes high enough to take the leader's business, meanwhile the leader already lost the low end