[rescue] Need Build Help

[Laurence Brevard]

 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.
  >
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LAURENCE C. BREVARD
http://www.BrevardAndBrevard.com
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