Re: Where do the mac68k packages on ftp.netbsd.org come from?

[David Riley <fraveydank%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Mar 27, 2013, at 10:02 PM, Karsten Kruse wrote:

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> On 27.03.2013 17:51, David Riley wrote:
> 
>> Given how long my Power Mac 9500/180 takes to just "make clean" on 
>> pkgsrc (more than 24 hours),
> 
> Maybe try this in /etc/mk.conf:
> 
> WRKOBJDIR=      /usr/pkgsrc_tmp
> 
> Then, when you want to get rid of it, just use rm.

Well, sure.  That would fix *that* problem, but it wouldn't
solve the overall problem of system slowness.

> I also have my own scripts for make fetch, make fetch-list and make
> checksum. These targets are incredibly slow too. I guess slowness is
> the price you have to pay for portability ;).

In a sense.  I think slowness is the price we're paying for
the fact that all the utilities used in the build chain are
now written for multi-GHz machines with GB of RAM, where the
little inefficiencies don't matter so much.  Perhaps that's
what you were saying. :-)

>> Disk access time may be a big factor in that, though, in which case
>> a nice fast NFS server might actually improve things quite a bit.
> 
> That's what i am thinking. But i have to make measurements. Maybe a
> local disk is still faster? It is for sure for continuous file
> transfers. But for random access of small files a SSD-backed fast NFS
> server could be faster.

Or even an NFS server backed by a nice, fast, modern disk.
Even Western Digital's cheapest disks can handle much more
random throughput than an ancient SCSI drive, because of
improved queueing and huge caches.

One of these days I'll do some measurement.  iostat is the
quick way to do it, certainly, but should be pretty
effective.

>> That said, one of my pet "back burner" projects is to make a cheap 
>> rackmount case for LC motherboards (all the "pizza-box" style ones 
>> have the same basic outline, so it should work for all of them), 
>> since they make OK DNS/mail servers.
> 
> Well, i think it might be a waste of energy.

True.  But we don't run old computers because they're a
better use of energy. :-)

> I use two Thinkpad X61 laptops at home for servers. They run Debian
> and everything else i can wish for in KVM. C2D with 2x1.8GHz and 4 GB
> Ram. Gigabit ethernet and builtin UPS, 64bit, Intel-VT. 14 watts idle.
> And really, really cheap. Nearly for free if you can get one with a
> broken screen or cracked case.

Sure.  Raspberry Pis are cheap as well, and much lower
energy than that (probably not as much performance per
watt, though).

>> If anyone knows a good way to do that, let me know (Protocase is
>> nice for a lot of projects, but sadly not this one because it's not
>> super-cheap and doesn't do bends the way I'd need).
> 
> Don't waste time on fancy casings. I would just use a wood frame to
> get a prototype running. If it runs, one can think about making it pretty.

The whole idea is to get it looking nice in my rack.
I have a running LC475, that's not the problem; I'd
just like to put it in my rack instead of piling it
on top of my SE that I use as a serial console.  I
never made the claim that it was particularly
practical. :-)


- Dave