Poor Man’s Build Farm

Build farms are kinda cool, I deal with one at work. Unfortunately, it’s large, complicated, and very task specific. I did a quick google search, and didn’t find much in alternatives. I’d really like a system which:

• Has an HTTP interface for submitting jobs, getting results, etc
• Allows for any project to be built providing it has a makefile
• Automatic and dynamic resource management
• Relatively simple in implementation usage

The resource management is probably the most curious. Say I’m at a lab computer at school, and I want to use that as a build machine, I would like to be able to run a daemon, which given the right server address and password, will become avilable in the build menu when you submit a job.

There are security problems though. How do you prevent unauthorized users from submitting malicous code? You really can’t, unless you have trusted users. Big companies like SourceForge can afford to create build farms, and probably run the compile in a chrooted environment, but if the disk gets hosed, so what? Just reimage the disk and you’re good to go. Obviously with such distributed systems that really is more of a peer system, that isn’t possible. For example, my own personal laptop could become a build machine.

Of course, ultimately the other option is tarballing the source and emailing it around and getting people to test it on their machines, but that might not that be that easy.

Just a thought.

The Telecom Delemma

Currently, my cellphone provider is Bell, a national CDMA telecom business. Bell’s influence even reaches my corner of Canada, although under a different name. In Atlantic Canada, the big telecom business is Aliant, which is is pretty much Bell under a different name. You’d think that by essentially being the same company, that it’d be easy to switch between the two. This is not the case.

Last time I switched to Bell from Aliant, the customer representatives had no idea what was going on, and it took many hops between the two carriers to get my contact onto Bell. Normally that would be fine, but every 4 months I switch in and out of Aliant and Bells areas. In the fall, I just kept my bell number back in Ottawa, a mere 1,000km away, because I really don’t use my cellphone when I have a land line.

In an effort to try and stay with the same company, I wanted to try Telus, which is consistently available all through Canada, plus has the advantage of already being CDMA, which one would think would be easy to switch my Bell/Aliant phone to Telus. Once again, I am easily foiled, as today, they inform me that I have to get a new phone with them, as the two systems are incompatible. The hitch is that I wanted to go with Pay as you Go, as I really don’t use my phone that much, so lots of my minutes get wasted. This means that I would need to buy a $400 phone outright, which obviously, if you’re trying to save money, is no good.

Why not just switch between Aliant and Bell on Pay as you go? Because there’s the pesky $35 activation fee, and probably a cancellation fee. But wait, you say, what about GSM?

The only GSM provider in Canada, Rogers, is probably one of the worst companies to deal with. I completely flat out refuse to get a cellphone through them. I’ve heard bad stores about them, and even I have had issues dealing with them (about their internet).

I may end up just canceling my cellphone for the time being, and just using a land line until I get back in Ottawa, and then going with Pay as you Go for those 4 months, rinse and repeat.

Playing With Water

I’m moved back into Fredericton for school now, however, after being in Ottawa for their almost record breaking snowfall, it looks like I could be in Fredericton for their worst flood on record:

If you have me on facebook, you can see some of the pictures of the flooding. I’m going down to help out with the Emergency Measures Organization later on today, as there’s lots to do. They’ve turned off some of the power to downtown, and people are evacuating. Provided the power stays on, this webcam is a live image:

Last night University Avenue started to back up via the storm sewars, and the walking bridge underpass at University was dry, now both are closed today.
GNB Riverwatch
Fredericton Riverwatch
Road/Street Closures