Really good plans have happy consequences one didn't foresee. But also complicating ones.
Mark encouraged me to work on the Microserver HOWTO as a recruitment device for future time-service experts and, implicitly, so I would learn more about how NTP works from the outside. Those were good reasons. Now it's growing another use that Mark may not have foreseen - benchmarking different ntp.conf setups and measuring comparative offsets and jitter. For these purposes, having several co-located machines with identical hardware/software configurations and the same Internet connectivity is ideal. However, this also creates an implicit bottleneck. Hal wants me to set up a machine with both a HAT and a GR701W and use it to measure offsets. It's a an excellent idea, but I can't do it in any predictable amount of time - I'm working as hard as I can just keeping the project-related backlog in my mailbox from overwhelming me. More generally, Eric as the only person who can use the test farm is not going to scale well. Accordingly, I'll make logins on the thyrsus.com bastion host available to project developers. The test farm is accessible from there. I'll make myself available to plug and unplug hardware on request. Current test farm inventory: au.local - Pi 2 with blue-wired SKU 424254 cu.local - Pi 2 with Uputronics HAT fe.local - Pi 3 with Adafruit HAT All three have skyview good enough that they pretty much always have lock except just after power-cycling. GR601-W or GR-701 USB GPSes can be plugged into any of these on request. Soon to arrive: * an Odroid C2 (ordered) * 8-port Netgear switch because my existing one is run out of ports - going to dedicate this one to the lab. POE capable because that's part of the plan for the BeagleBone variant (ordered) * an Anker 10-port powered USB hub, because Mark turned out to be unsurpringly right that el cheapo unpowered hubs aren't stable enough (ordered) * two more Pi 3/Adafruit HAT combinations and a HAT for the Odroid (not yet ordered, but I know I have to for the ntp.conf comparisons) Currently planning for a maximum of 10 test machines and an actual complement of 7 - 2 Pi2s, 3 Pi3s, an Odroid C2, and a Beaglebone Black. Sigh. I've spent years avoiding learning enough about network management to run a server farm this size. No longer, it seems. Funniest possibility: If I need a rack for these systems, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq5nrHz9I94 A functional rack made of legos. That's worth some geekery points right there. -- >>esr>> _______________________________________________ devel mailing list devel@ntpsec.org http://lists.ntpsec.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
