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[sheflug] Free remote access to Linux on POWER resources
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(Apologies for this being sent in English only, translators are
welcome and appreciated, I'll try to do better next time!)
I'm trying to reach out to the various Linux communities to offer free
remote access to POWER hardware and other development resources. This
is not spam, so if you're interested, please read on!
There's a lot of interesting projects going on with the various Linux
on POWER and OpenPower initiatives within IBM this year and on into
next year. But first, a brief introduction on myself..
My name is David A. Desrosiers (no, not THAT[1] David Desrosiers, make
sure you use the "A." in the middle if you Google me). I've been
working with Linux and Open Source since the early 90's back in the
days of Ygdrassil, comp.os.minix and downloading Linux onto floppies
to install it, and before that, I used AIX.
Several years ago, I used to work for a company called Linuxcare in
San Francisco in their Research group with some brilliant and very
well-known Open Source developers. Remember the original "Bootable
Business Card"? That was one of our projects. "The 1-800 Number for
Linux"? We were that too. The company rapidly collapsed on itself, and
all of the talent went to other companies, including myself.
Now, several years later, I work for IBM with the title of "Linux on
POWER Developer Program Manager". Basically I am one of the IBM
interfaces into the Open Source community to help them gain access to
hardware, documentation and other resources that they might need to
develop-on or port their applications to, the POWER platform. This
isn't a "sales" position so don't worry, I'm not collecting email
addresses or selling anything, I am here strictly to help promote
hardware and resources to Open Source developers.
I'm also a long-time Open Source developer, maintainer and tinkerer
myself and have been for over a decade with Linux. I'm the current
maintainer of a few projects you might know about. pilot-link[2] is
probably the most well-known one in this space. pilot-link is the glue
between your Palm OS handheld device and your Linux/Unix desktop and
PIM/calendaring data. Lots of OSS and commercial projects rely upon
the code in pilot-link to function, and we get zero assistance from
Palm themselves to maintain our efforts. I host dozens of projects and
contribute code, web space, mailing lists and other resources to help
these projects succeed. Feel free to ask me about my other involvement
in the Linux community if you're curious.
Developing in very constrained embedded Linux environments and PDAs
provides a stark contrast to developing on something as vast and
"virtual" as the POWER platform, so this is a slight learning curve
for me as well. I'm learning how to use it just as much as you are.
My main focus within IBM is to help bridge the gap between the Open
Source development community and the internal IBM development process,
to help developers and users grow to use and like the POWER platform.
Some of my tasks include helping to provide remote access to
POWER-based hardware for developers (and up-and-coming developers,
tinkerers, hackers and curious lookers-be) to use to learn, test,
debug and develop new or existing applications on the POWER platform.
There are some subtle differences between POWER and something like
Intel's x86 architecture. This makes having access to real hardware to
develop on, very important. I'll go into some detail on that a bit
later if you want.
If you're interested in checking out what these POWER systems actually
feel like under the hood, you can sign up and log in remotely to one
of the University systems we've set up at the University of Augsburg
and Peking University (its our intent to bring several other
universities online later this year as well). You'll get a shell
account, disk space and all of the tools and resources you'll need to
work with the hardware and software components on the systems.
http://openpowerproject.org/us/index.php
Create an account, pull over some source code from some of your
favorite projects and try building and testing it under the POWER
architecture. Each server offers its own configuration and options
with your remote (non-root) shell account.
Oregon State University Open Source Labs:
-------------------------------------------
http://wiki.osuosl.org/display/PPC64/Home
SourceForge.net compile farm, with OpenPower
-------------------------------------------
http://sourceforge.net/docs/compile_farm#cf_overview
University of Portland Linux on Power Portal
-------------------------------------------
http://egr.up.edu:8080/
University of Augsburg, in Augsburg Germany (Debian)
http://tuxppc.rz.uni-augsburg.de/doc/faq/
-------------------------------------------
Server........: OpenPower 720
Equipment.....: 4-Way POWER5
Memory........: 8GB
Installation..: Debian
Peking University, Peking China (SuSE)
http://ppclinux.pku.edu.cn/
-------------------------------------------
Server........: OpenPower 720
Equipment.....: 4-Way POWER5
Memory........: 16GB
Installation..: SuSE Enterprise 9
There's quite a few other things going on that I'll elaborate on
later. I'm doing my best to learn as much as I can about the POWER
architecture (its new to me too!), and splitting my duties between
being an interpretor for the Open Source community and for IBM as well
as my own Open Source responsibilities. Its all great fun stuff.
Feel free to comment or ask me any questions you might have about how
you can get involved, and I'll do what I can to get you the answer, or
point you to the right people who can get you the answer.
Interesting times are ahead..!
(don't forget to check out or Linux on POWER blogs too![3])
David A. Desrosiers
daviddes [at] us.ibm.com
Linux on POWER Developer Program Manager
[1] http://www.simpleplan.com/band.php
[2] http://www.pilot-link.org/
[3] http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog.jspa?roll=0&blog=752
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