Re: [Gnewsense-dev] Current Status (and Wiki Performance)

[Paul Boddie]

On Tuesday 30. August 2016 22.38.52 Sam Geeraerts wrote:
> Op Sun, 28 Aug 2016 19:03:29 +0200
> 
> schreef Paul Boddie <address@hidden>:
> > It seemed that there is now a certain amount of re-architecting going
> > on to make new gNewSense releases easier, but I don't see so much
> > progress on the more prominent sites associated with the project.
> 
> It's still in the planning phase. Also, I've been pushing the limits of
> what my own machines can do, so I think it's that time of the decade
> when I need to get some new(er) gear to do some real work.

I know the feeling!

> > I'm interested in trying to build a minimal gNewSense archive for
> > mipsel, but I'm not sure where to start and what future work might
> > need doing so that a recent Debian release can be transformed for
> > this purpose.
> 
> Do you have a particular mipsel platform in mind?

Well, to begin with, I'd target the Ben NanoNote, which is a fairly old system 
now with limited performance but which does run Debian. I did hope to 
experiment with the jz4775 computer card that looked as if it might be 
delivered in the EOMA68 campaign, but that's not looking likely as a near-term 
product.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop
http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/

We're talking about Ingenic SoCs here, with the Ben NanoNote already supported 
in the Linux kernel (QI_LB60). I built the 4.7.2 release and it actually ran 
on the Ben and my Debian installation worked with it, too. The people involved 
have done a great job keeping support for the Ben up to date.

I'm not necessarily planning to get one, but the MIPS Creator CI20 uses a 
jz4780 SoC and runs Debian. The GCW-Zero handheld games console (apparently 
somewhat difficult to obtain) uses the jz4770. Once upon a time, there was a 
mini-PC available with a variety of branding which uses the jz4730, but that 
SoC is severely under-documented, although I do plan to get recent software 
working on it some day.

> > Another thing I noticed was that the project wiki is very slow. On
> > that topic, I can perhaps offer some advice and maybe some assistance
> > if that is desirable.
> 
> Known issue. It's been suggested to run MoinMoin on nginx, but I
> couldn't get that running myself. Feel free to share your knowledge
> about that. On the other hand, I've spent so much time on this without
> progress that maybe I'd better just start from scratch with a fresh
> server setup.

I can easily check with various other Moin users to see which strategy works 
best. Sometimes, just using mod_wsgi seems to work out. Getting to know the 
nature of the load you're experiencing may be useful in improving the problem, 
though.

I'm no deployment expert, but I can offer some experience on configuring Moin 
to resist problematic and demanding usage.

Paul