From tjrc at sanger.ac.uk Mon Apr 2 10:45:27 2012 From: tjrc at sanger.ac.uk (Tim Cutts) Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 10:45:27 +0100 Subject: [Debian-uk] Ex-Debian AlphaServers looking for a new home Message-ID: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> Hi chaps, Last week, the debian sysadmins decommissioned the two Alpha servers that we were hosting for them, and they're now sitting idle in our data centre. There are actually three machines, two that were the live machines and a third we kept for spares. If you want these machines (and have the space, power and cooling for them!), please let me know, reasonably promptly. Specs: Machine goetz albeniz spare =================================================================== Model ES45 model 2 ES45 model 3B ES45 model ? CPUS 4xEV68 1GHz 4xEV68 1.25GHz ? 8MB cache each 16MB cache each ? RAM 4x4GB 4x2GB ? Disks 2x18GB, 4x72GB 4x18GB None CD-ROM Yes Yes Yes PCI cards DEGPA-TA GigE DEGPA-TA GigE DEGPA-TA GigE DE602 100 MbitE DE602 100 MBitE DE602 100 MBitE FibreChannel HBA Each machine seems to have some sort of external SCSI connectivity too, although I couldn't identify precisely what from the SRM output. The spare machine has no internal disks, but does appear to still have a fibre channel HBA in it. God knows what sort. The gigabit ethernet card is an Alteon, and we haven't been using it with Linux since licence issues caused that driver to be dropped from the Debian kernel a couple of years back. If you build a kernel.org kernel, you can get it to work though. CPU #3 on albeniz is currently masked out, so presumably we found it to be faulty at some point. I tried reenabling it, and it didn't immediately fall over, so who knows. Caveat emptor. I've spoken to our Head of IT, and he's happy to pay to ship them within the UK, but not beyond. Obviously we'd rather ship all three machines in one go. Any serious offers to take them on, before we hawk them to the VMS community? Regards, Tim -- The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is operated by Genome Research Limited, a charity registered in England with number 1021457 and a company registered in England with number 2742969, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE. From ben at decadent.org.uk Mon Apr 2 16:11:40 2012 From: ben at decadent.org.uk (Ben Hutchings) Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:11:40 +0100 Subject: [Debian-uk] Ex-Debian AlphaServers looking for a new home In-Reply-To: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> References: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> Message-ID: <1333379500.443.23.camel@deadeye> On Mon, 2012-04-02 at 10:45 +0100, Tim Cutts wrote: [...] > The gigabit ethernet card is an Alteon, and we haven't been using it > with Linux since licence issues caused that driver to be dropped from > the Debian kernel a couple of years back. If you build a kernel.org > kernel, you can get it to work though. [...] The Alteon (acenic) driver was reenabled some time back, using external firmware. The firmware still isn't packaged due to the weird licence, though there is some hope of fixing that (#643952). But you can still install that unpackaged. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 828 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From tjrc at sanger.ac.uk Mon Apr 2 16:15:01 2012 From: tjrc at sanger.ac.uk (Tim Cutts) Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 16:15:01 +0100 Subject: [Debian-uk] Ex-Debian AlphaServers looking for a new home In-Reply-To: <1333379500.443.23.camel@deadeye> References: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> <1333379500.443.23.camel@deadeye> Message-ID: <87E86133-3F64-4EC6-B4CD-2A8E6C8C7323@sanger.ac.uk> On 2 Apr 2012, at 16:11, Ben Hutchings wrote: > On Mon, 2012-04-02 at 10:45 +0100, Tim Cutts wrote: > [...] >> The gigabit ethernet card is an Alteon, and we haven't been using it >> with Linux since licence issues caused that driver to be dropped from >> the Debian kernel a couple of years back. If you build a kernel.org >> kernel, you can get it to work though. > [...] > > The Alteon (acenic) driver was reenabled some time back, using external > firmware. The firmware still isn't packaged due to the weird licence, > though there is some hope of fixing that (#643952). But you can still > install that unpackaged. Thanks for correcting me. Given what the machines were doing, there wasn't much need to go back to gigabit, so I never looked. :-) Tim -- The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is operated by Genome Research Limited, a charity registered in England with number 1021457 and a company registered in England with number 2742969, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE. From wnelson at geeksoc.org Wed Apr 4 00:22:00 2012 From: wnelson at geeksoc.org (William Nelson) Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:22:00 +0100 Subject: [Debian-uk] Ex-Debian AlphaServers looking for a new home In-Reply-To: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> References: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> Message-ID: <4F7B8618.1000804@geeksoc.org> Hi there, If they're still available, I'd like to put in a request for the AlphaServers. I'm from GeekSoc, a student Society at Strathclyde University that's involved in computing, and we could put the machines to some interesting uses I think, as well as using them as a learning experience around the alpha architecture. This year we've been moving away from our beige boxes of pentium IIs and IIIs and these sounds like quite an interesting platform to try some new services for our members and the wider community on. With Regards, Will Nelson GeekSoc Admin Group From wnelson at geeksoc.org Wed Apr 4 00:13:51 2012 From: wnelson at geeksoc.org (William Nelson) Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:13:51 +0100 Subject: [Debian-uk] Ex-Debian AlphaServers looking for a new home In-Reply-To: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> References: <19AC03D8-09AF-49F3-A06A-845BECF93CD1@sanger.ac.uk> Message-ID: <4F7B842F.6030009@geeksoc.org> Hi there, If they're still available, I'd like to put in a request for the AlphaServers. I'm from GeekSoc, a student Society at Strathclyde University that's involved in computing, and we could put the machines to some interesting uses I think, as well as using them as a learning experience around the alpha architecture. This year we've been moving away from our beige boxes of pentium IIs and IIIs and these sounds like quite an interesting platform to try some new services for our members and the wider community on. With Regards, Will Nelson GeekSoc Admin Group