Hi fellow NetBSD / rumpkernel folks, I have to say I haven’t been as excited for a long time - NetBSD was my “entry drug” into the world of unix more than ten years ago and I’m very thankful for the projects’ existence.
In my opinion seeing NetBSD get more of the attention it deserves through the rumpkernel project is also very valuable in terms of passing on old-school “unix culture” to all kinds of aspiring computer wizards. I’m still pointing beginners regularly towards installing NetBSD, advising them to go offline and work through the system with “apropos" and “man” only - it’s how I learned unix and I’ve been benefiting in many ways from that kind of start ever since. So, fine rumpkernel people I’ve got some questions - mostly about synthesizing trending (and IMHO tremendously exciting) topics: # Raspberry Pi (Zero) - a $5(!) to $25 computer that has more memory and is faster than the workstation I first compiled the NetBSD kernel on! - can we run it? - can we run it efficiently (IIRC there were quite some driver tweaks - how and on what can enthusiastic and willing contributors work on to get there? I also don’t know (yet) how far we are in terms of availability / theoretical performance of hypervisors like xen on the raspberry pi? 512 MB RAM is not much but likely enough for providing a local database container and a handful of very small app containers. Raspberry Pi Clusters with Lego chassis (if you haven’t seen it, it’s fun!): http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/07/17/raspberry-pi/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C44quUX-AoE # Kubernetes - can we run a kubernetes cluster of bare-metal rumpkernels already (or by solely having to pick a few low-hanging fruits)? - if not, do we need more work towards rumpkernel containerization here? (I think docker has won, at least from a marketing perspective) - how does the work ahead look like? how can we help most effectively? - what options are there for software defined switching for a cluster (and how to integrate with kubernetes/container-solution-x)? Unfortunately I’m part of the grumpy jails/zones/openvz crowd myself so I’m still only slowly dipping myself into all the innovation surrounding containers (docker, rkt, etc.) as well as the “immutable” infrastructure. If anybody with more experience of building google/facebook grade systems (of any size) has something to say I’d be happy to learn about it! I honestly think this is the right time for e.g. a bunch of independent consultants to *join forces*, creating an old-school open source project (and not necessarily another startup with it *per se*). It would be very cool to be able to pay industrial designers to do “homebrew” data-center chassis for e.g. the raspberry pi zero and potential open hardware / software defined switches (again, preferably integrated with kubernetes?). If any of you are interested let’s help each other out here (I believe many of us might even be located very close to each other geographically - IRL gatherings very much welcome). I’m really thinking, why not? We tend to lose ourselves into lots of rabbit-holes all the time (alone) but with most of the hard work already done by so many great people - let’s tackle the remaining last 20% towards decentralised, heterogenous bliss together? Let’s create a movement! I’m happy to go all-in myself here, in any way I can! Love & Peace from Vienna, EU Oskar ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? "The Year We All Went Homebrew Cluster Computing" - or - “How I learned to See a Less Pessimistic Future for the Internet of Things” ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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