[Lancaster] Unicamp in Brazil joins the Linux OpenPower project

[David A. Desrosiers]

Hello again! Its been a few months since the last email I've sent... 

Since my last email, we've added another University server to the
growing list of universities now hosting POWER5 servers and hardware for
everyone to use for free. Developers, system administrators, tinkerers,
the curious and anyone else who wants to give them a try.

The new Gentoo and Debian PPC partitions on the UNICAMP server need your
help! Find out what's missing, load test it, put it through its paces
and let them know what can be done to improve things for everyone. 

Wait, did he just say for free? 

Yes, free shell access to POWER5 servers with plenty of disk, memory and
other capabilities. We've launched quite a few of these in the past at
other universities (details below).

UNICAMP, the University of Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil is hosting a
POWER5 server that we've recently deployed there. This server is a bit
unique, because it will be hosting several different Linux distributions
on separate LPARs of the same physical machine, concurrently. Right now
there are two live partitions; Gentoo and Debian, and there are plans to
add Slackware and Fedora LPAR very shortly. 

But we need your help to load test this server (without breaking it, of
course ;). 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 own remote shell account.
 
We're going to be the first of these PowerPC universities hosting this
many distributions at one time, and the first university hosting a
Slackware/PPC64 partition. When those other distrbutions come online,
you should automatically be able to log into them and continue to work
in your shell with the same account you use on the other partitions. 

Here are the servers currently online: 

    ***  UNICAMP - Universidade Estadual de Campinas
         http://power.ic.unicamp.br
         --------------------------------------------------------
         Server........: Open Power 720
         Equipment.....: 4-way POWER5
         Memory........: 8GB
         Installation..: Gentoo, Slackware, Debian, Fedora 

             Gentoo....: 143.106.24.152
             Debian....: 143.106.24.153
             Fedora....: To be announced
             Slackware.: To be announced


         Oregon State University Open Source Labs:
         http://powerdev.osuosl.org/
         --------------------------------------------------------
         Server........: Apple PowerMac G5
         Equipment.....: 2-Way 2.5Ghz
         Memory........: 4GB
         Installation..: Gentoo Linux


         SourceForge.net compile farm, with OpenPower
         http://sourceforge.net/docs/compile_farm#cf_overview
         --------------------------------------------------------
         Server........: OpenPower 720
         Installation..: SuSE Enterprise Linux 9


         Australia National University
         http://clug.anu.edu.au/
         --------------------------------------------------------
         Server........: OpenPower 720
         Equipment.....: 4-Way POWER5
         Memory........: 2GB
         Installation..: Debian


         University of Augsburg, in Augsburg Germany (Debian)
         http://tuxppc.rz.uni-augsburg.de/
         --------------------------------------------------------
         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

Take a few moments and check out what these POWER systems actually feel
like under the hood. Sign up and log in remotely to one of the
University systems we've set up and take them for a test drive. 

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/openpower/

If you need any help or have any questions, just let us know!


-- 
David A. Desrosiers
daviddes at us.ibm.com
Linux on POWER Developer Program Manager
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/openpower/