Re: Status of the AArch* builders (was: Re: [PATCH v2 02/10] Add Aarch64 SVE Linux headers)

[Alan Hayward <Alan dot Hayward at arm dot com>]

> On 20 Sep 2018, at 22:15, Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> On Friday, June 15 2018, Alan Hayward wrote:
> 
>>> On 15 Jun 2018, at 10:45, Ramana Radhakrishnan <ramana.radhakrishnan@foss.arm.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 12/06/2018 21:29, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, June 12 2018, Alan Hayward wrote:
>>>>>> On 12 Jun 2018, at 17:34, Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Tuesday, June 12 2018, Simon Marchi wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 2018-06-12 10:37, Alan Hayward wrote:
>>>>>>>> Sorry, I did miss this one (I think I sent my reply to the previous
>>>>>>>> one more or less the same time you sent this).
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> If I commit this, (I think) this is going to cause buildbot to break
>>>>>>>> for the aarch64 builds.
>>>>>>>> (Out of interest - I’ve heard people say they tested on buildbot. Are
>>>>>>>> there some instructions for doing that? I can try it out.)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Hmm you're right.  Though maybe we can have additional
>>>>>>> commands/configure options specific to the aarch64 builders?  They
>>>>>>> could download a kernel tarball, install the headers somewhere (that
>>>>>>> doesn't take long, no need to build the kernel) and point to them.
>>>>>>> Sergio, would that be possible/a good idea?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm not sure.  For starters, the Aarch64 builders have kinda been
>>>>>> forgotten since Yao stopped contributing regularly to GDB (he is the
>>>>>> maintainer of the machines behind the builders).  So the very first
>>>>>> thing we'd need to do is to put the builders in a good shape again
>>>>>> (they're currently with 273 pending builds in the queue!).  This is
>>>>>> something that's been on my TODO list for a while now, and I was going
>>>>>> to ask Alan (or anyone from ARM) if they're not interested in taking
>>>>>> over the maintenance of these machines.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Looking after the aarch64 boxes does sound like a job for an Arm person.
>>>>> I guess it’ll be fairly important to get those queues cleared _before_
>>>>> 8.2 is released. I can certainly take a look at the pending builds in
>>>>> the next few weeks.
>>>> Yeah, what I do in these cases is cancel all of the pending builds,
>>>> i.e., start fresh.
>>>> I'm glad you're interested in taking care of the machines.  TBH, I was
>>>> even considering disabling them for now, since at least one machine has
>>>> been offline for a long time, and the other has this giant queue.  I'm
>>>> not sure if you're going to use the same machines as Yao was using
>>>> (IIRC, he was using machines from the GCC Compile Farm).
>>>>>> Then, I think the best approach for the SVE builds would be to manually
>>>>>> download a Linux kernel, put the sources somewhere, and then I could
>>>>>> configure a specific builder to build GDB with the SVE headers.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Given the current queues, I suspect we’d not get this done before the 8.2
>>>>> branch.
>>>> I wouldn't count on that.
>>>>> I’m thinking configure check of Pedro’s sounds the first step, then once
>>>>> the aarch64 build queues have been cleared, get some sve builds added.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The SVE headers are in Ubuntu 18.04 - so “all” that’s needed is to do a
>>>>> dist upgrade on them (I suspect there are probably lots of reasons why
>>>>> that can’t be done!)
>>>> Yeah, I honestly don't know :-/.  If you're planning to continue using
>>>> the GCC Farm machine, then I think the best option would be to contact
>>>> the admins and ask them.
>>> 
>>> So I arranged for those machines in the compile farm and I believe I
>>> have super user privileges on them. Updating to 18.04 may be an
>>> option but something I don't want to do remotely and in a rush.
>>> 
>>> Alan, please reach out to me if you need any help on the compile farm machines, I can help out.
>>> 
>> 
>> Oh that’s good news (I thought they had come from Linaro).
>> 
>> If the headers get added to the gdb build then there’s no urgency to
>> update the boxes to ubuntu 18.04. However, 18.04 is the latest LTS, so
>> it’s possibly worth doing eventually (but not right now).
> 
> Hi guys,
> 
> Just a ping to see if you have progressed on this.  I've left the AArch*
> builders there, and now they're *really* behind (more than 1000 builds
> in the queue), and at least one of the buildslaves is offline.
> 
> I will temporarily remove the builders now, but it would be really nice
> to keep having AArch* builders in our BuildBot.
> 
> Thanks a lot,


Ramana has got some aarch64 machines up on packet.net for use in buildbot instead
of the existing machines. I think a few things just need finalising before they can
be handed over.

Once that’s done I can get buildbot set up on them. Are there some simple instructions
for getting this going?


Alan.