machine for master building of ports and other tid bits

[Garrett Cooper]

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 11:33 PM, Andrew <awd at awdcomp.net> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> We have a number of boxes running anything from PIII 733's to AMD64
> Athlon/Opterons.
> We are looking to have a machine or 2 dedicated to building all the ports
> and other bits and pieces and then pkg them or what have you so that the
> production boxes just install the packages or what have you with the least
> amount of down time.
>
> My questions are this:
> What sort of box should I use for the 'master' builder box, ie a PIII or any
> other box ie say an amd64 5000+ running an i386 version.

I don't suggest ancient hardware, like P3's (see my following comment
for more details).

> Also I assume we'll need a separate box for the machines running amd64
> kernel, would that be correct?

Unless you had 1) cross-compilation setup properly or 2) jails within
an AMD64 machine, yes, this assumption is true. However, doing 2) is
considerably easy for admins and allows you to build packages for
multiple OS revisions as well and test, and if you have beefy enough
compile servers, then yes you can run with a series of AMD64 based
machines and can avoid wasting power on dedicated x86 boxes.

> TIA for your replies :)
>
> Cheers
> cya
> Andrew

HTH,
-Garrett