• bunnie
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  • Registered: 2014-05-25
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Topic: bunniefoo now powered by Novena!

Fun fact: bunniefoo.com is now powered by Novena. bunniefoo.com hosts all the images and content on bunniestudios.com and kosagi.com, as well as the redmine bug track (bunniefoo.com/redmine) based on ruby, and a web2py interface for random silly foo. It was running on an x86 before, but we just ported all the content over to a Novena and plugged it into the router today.

http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title … food_Setup documents the configuration for the system.

Basically, Novena is plugged directly into the fiber line via the 100Mbit port (our fiber line is limited to 100Mbits down/up). The Gbit port links back to a hub that talks to a set of back-up servers and machines for off-loading content that has to run on x86 (we have a vague notion that perhaps we'll run Xilinx FPGA builds on a slave x86 instance driven by the Novena front end).

Also, the wifi card is configured as an AP, so you can connect directly to the system via wireless if you know the credentials.

The OS and primary content is stored on an SSD plugged into the SATA port, but we also run a local debian package mirror and those files are stored on a magnetic drive plugged in via USB. This helps accelerate local test installations.

This is sort of the ultimate burn-in test for Novena, as all the major data ports have something plugged into them and it's being exercised constantly.

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  • will
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  • Registered: 2014-06-05
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Re: bunniefoo now powered by Novena!

I'm interested to know how you are testing the boards. I work for the Linaro Toolchain team and we have found lots of development boards are pretty unstable once they start being heavily loaded as buildbots (basically building gcc and llvm 24/7).

Do you have soak tests you run to make sure the board is stable over long periods?

  • bunnie
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  • Registered: 2014-05-25
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Re: bunniefoo now powered by Novena!

There's a set of activities we do on the boards to check for long-term stability.

  • At the low-level, we run boards for 2-3 weeks at a time doing a memory test to confirm no bit errors on RAM

  • At the system level, we use the boards to compile their own kernels and other software, using -j 4 to exercise all cores. This tends to be one of the most stressful tasks and shakes out a lot of stability issues

  • As a catch-all, we use Novena every day as our laptops. This doesn't always stress the board's computational abilities, but it does force a number of corner cases, including physical robustness during travel.

  • And as another catch-all, Novena is running bunniefoo.com, which isn't a huge traffic site but it also has regular visitors. It runs python, ruby, and php web services.

  • Most of these tests are run in different environments to exercise thermal corners.

Currently, our systems run stably for weeks without any crashes that can be traced to hardware.

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  • will
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Re: bunniefoo now powered by Novena!

Thanks for the information. The boards look like they could be suitable for running buildbots (well tested, decent CPU, SATA, plenty of RAM) so if we don't have a solution by the time time Novena ships volume you may have a few more orders. ;-)