[cfarm-users] Future of cfarm186/cfarm187/cfarm188 at OSUOSL

[Olly Betts]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2025 at 01:09:05PM +0100, Baptiste Jonglez via cfarm-users wrote:
> - option 1: one much bigger machine, bare metal.  Which (single) OS
> makes the most sense?
> 
> - option 2: several virtual machines.

I'd prefer option 2.  My complefarm use is for testing on platforms I
don't otherwise have easy access to - either to periodically check for
new portability problems or to reproduce problems reported by users so I
can investigate more easily.

I could install VMs locally for some of them, but either I have to
install each time I want one, or it ties up a chunk of local disk space
and then the VM is often rather out of date when I want to test
something anyway.

> Which (multiple) OS would be useful?

We don't seem to have Fedora or Gentoo installs currently.

Otherwise, I don't have an explicit wishlist but if there are operating
systems which FOSS projects should care about portability to, it'd be
great to see them available.

(It looks like there are rough equivalents to the current 186, 187 and
188 on other existing cfarm machines.  I would have said NetBSD, but the
existing host has come back online this week.)

Cheers,
    Olly