Re: crosstool-NG: server status

["Yann E. MORIN" <yann dot morin dot 1998 at anciens dot enib dot fr>]

Thomas,
All,

On Thursday 06 August 2009 23:49:06 Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> What about hosting crosstool-ng on some free software forge, like
> Savannah, Gna, or something else ? This way, you wouldn't have to spend
> time on system/network administration-related issues.

Well, that's part of the experiment! :-P
And a challenging part, to say the least!

I'd like to be able to be self-hosted, and delegate as less as possible.
Currently, only DNS records are external (on dyndns), and will almost
certainly stay that way for a long time... Andof course I need an ISP.

The most obvious advantages are:
- most important: I learn.
- I'm dependent upon a very few external entities (only ISP and DNS)
- I can customise/update the system at will (software versions...)
- I can grant/veto access at will
- I can run any server I wish (eg. VPN...)

The most obvious drawbacks are:
- availability, but I'm working on that:
  - I have at least two physical machines able to host a copy of the server
    in a virtual machine, should the real server has a fatal HW failure (as
    is the case curently); starting a VM-server is a matter of seconds
  - the server is backed up by a UPS that can sustain a two-hour power
    outtage
  - the machine has one 80GiB disk for the system, and two 500GiB disks,
    one for storing live data, the other one will be acting as a /mirror/
    that gets rsynced every hour, to serve as level-1 backups; both disks
    use a file system different from one to the other
  - OTOH, hot-swap HW is too expensive, so fixing the server would require
    some downtime
- backups, that's being worked on:
  - I have an NSLU2 that I'll setup to do nightly backups onto a dedicated
    500GiB HDD that will serve as level-2 backups
  - I also have a tape drive to store long-term, level-3 backups
- bandwidth: being behind a DSL line limits my uploads to about 1Mibps,
  but that's bearable, crosstool-NG is not that big, and the hg protocol
  is quite efficient
- it's expensive and time-consuming, but I enjoyed it so far! :-)

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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