Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

DisposaBoy · 2013-08-17 10:50:53

karol wrote:

By 'all files' do you mean the packages from 2013 too?

Yes, all hosted accounts will be deleted in the next 10 hours at most.

karol · 2013-08-17 10:56:13

Do you plan recreating A.R.M. somewhere else or is it the end?

DisposaBoy · 2013-08-17 11:01:33

I guess it's the end. I don't have any space to move the data which is 600g+ in total or 100g+ in /2013/. I don't use Arch anymore so I'm very much out of the loops with what's going on and how things work these day so it probably doesn't make too much sense to start it again

karol · 2013-08-17 11:04:27

Many thanks for a great service you provided all those years.

DisposaBoy · 2013-08-17 11:05:41

karol wrote:

Many thanks for a great service you provided all those years.

yw

Unia · 2013-08-17 12:41:50

Sad to hear this. I too have found the project extremely helpful on some occasions. Thanks for your work!

ANOKNUSA · 2013-08-17 14:06:24

I'd also just like to add my thanks. While the ARM was a good project/tool while it lasted, I can also understand that the cost and effort to maintain it can easily outstrip the benefits. Best of luck to you, whatever you end up doing.

HalosGhost · 2013-08-17 14:12:15

I, like others here, would also like to throw in my thanks. There have been several occasions where a rollback was necessary, and I didn't have the necessary package file; your service really saved me. I am sorry to hear that it will be going down, but thank you again for your having supported it for so long!

All the best,

-HG

Scimmia · 2013-08-17 15:39:47

Very sad to see this go, it has saved numerous people in tough situations.

I understand the need to let it go and thank you for doing this for as long as you did, DisposaBoy. It was a great service to the Arch community.

I wish I was in a position to continue it, but I'm not.

sant527 · 2013-08-17 16:16:39

Thank you. Very much. It was very useful for me because i dont update regularly, still i get the packages from arm. I maintian a constant package database. (sync folder)

clfarron4 · 2013-08-17 18:02:54

The Rollback Machine has saved me more than a few times when I have foolishly upgraded and then cleared my pacman cache. Thank you for keeping it running as long as you did. It will be sadly missed :'(

-Claire-

Last edited by clfarron4 (2013-08-17 18:03:05)

mrman · 2013-08-17 20:45:04

Thanks for all the hard work on this project. If anyone wants to work on a decentralized solution, I would gladly devote hard drive space to maintain a cache of old arch packages.

fukawi2 · 2013-08-18 02:08:03

Perhaps we could create a Bittorrent Sync shared folder?

Allan · 2013-08-18 02:42:08

Looking at the numbers given above, if we wanted to create a new rollback machine and only wanted to keep ~1 year of packages, we would need about 200GB of storage. I'm guessing nothing spectacular would be needed for CPU or RAM to set this up. I'm guessing bandwidth would be in the 100's of GB per month.

What would that cost us to get such a server running?

steve___ · 2013-08-18 02:56:43

I used a bare metal server (ovh.co.uk). It was $25/month for 1TB of
space and they offer Arch. Currently I'm using a server in their
Canadian colo (ovh.ca) and it's $40/month for 2TB of space. Tranfer
speed is 100/100mbps with a 5TB cap. Once they cap is hit it drops to
10/10mbps for the remainder of that billing cycle.

olive · 2013-08-18 06:45:12

Allan wrote:

Looking at the numbers given above, if we wanted to create a new rollback machine and only wanted to keep ~1 year of packages, we would need about 200GB of storage. I'm guessing nothing spectacular would be needed for CPU or RAM to set this up. I'm guessing bandwidth would be in the 100's of GB per month.
What would that cost us to get such a server running?

Is it not imaginable to have a bandwidth limited official server and to encourage public servers to mirror it like it is done for the distribution? Probably some mirrors would not be interested in hosting that but they are more than 150 public mirror in mirrorlist, if only a small percentage accept to mirror the ARM, it would be enough.

I heavily relied on ARM, I would be very very sad to see it go.

Last edited by olive (2013-08-18 06:49:38)

steve___ · 2013-08-18 16:47:39

olive wrote:

I heavily relied on ARM, I would be very very sad to see it go.

With disk space so cheap, why not set up your own local ARM?

karol · 2013-08-18 16:52:09

steve___ wrote:

olive wrote:
I heavily relied on ARM, I would be very very sad to see it go.
With disk space so cheap, why not set up your own local ARM?

It would be a bit wasteful to grab all these packages form a mirror and not even share them with anyone.

You can obviously use btrfs snapshots or just plain pacman cache in case you need an old version of a package you once used.

steve___ · 2013-08-18 17:00:09

I agree but he said "I heavily relied on ARM".

NewWorld · 2013-08-18 19:01:38

I think it would be enough to just archive the PKGBUILD, foo.install, etc. files for each package version, so that users can very easily build any past package version themselves. Am I wrong? This archive would be much smaller in comparsion, too.

Like others, thank you Disposa for the service you provided for so long.

olive · 2013-08-18 19:28:49

NewWorld wrote:

I think it would be enough to just archive the PKGBUILD, foo.install, etc. files for each package version, so that users can very easily build any past package version themselves. Am I wrong? This archive would be much smaller in comparsion, too.
Like others, thank you Disposa for the service you provided for so long.

See:

https://www.archlinux.org/svn/

karol · 2013-08-18 20:06:11

NewWorld wrote:

I think it would be enough to just archive the PKGBUILD, foo.install, etc. files for each package version, so that users can very easily build any past package version themselves. Am I wrong?

Depends on the definition of 'very easy'.

NewWorld wrote:

This archive would be much smaller in comparsion, too.

But downgrading would take much much longer.

olive · 2013-08-18 20:22:40

Contrarily to all people here, I had a slightly different use of the ARM. It can happen that I need my PC and that it just must not break (I use arch as my primary system). In this situation I putted a fixed date repository in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist , so that I can still install a package without having to upgrade anything. I also had configured my mother PC this way, so that package are easily installable and the probability to break something is virtually zero. I found arch very stable with this configuration. I am very sad to see the ARM go.

Last edited by olive (2013-08-18 20:23:57)

WonderWoofy · 2013-08-18 20:35:09

olive wrote:

Contrarily to all people here, I had a slightly different use of the ARM. It can happen that I need my PC and that it just must not break (I use arch as my primary system). In this situation I putted a fixed date repository in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist , so that I can still install a package without having to upgrade anything. I also had configured my mother PC this way, so that package are easily installable and the probability to break something is virtually zero. I found arch very stable with this configuration. I am very sad to see the ARM go.

The problem I see with this method is that you are also ignoring any security fixes that might come along with a package update. If you want a stable system a fixed intervals, I think you might want to look elsewhere if security is of any significance to you.

I find Arch to be quite stable as it is. So long as you don't use [testing] I think that things should really not break too often at all. This is especially true since you seem to be a regular fixture around here and are likely to see any potential front page news, as well as problems with [testing] that people are seeing.

Having said all that, I do understand what you were trying to achieve. But packages without backported security updates just seems like a really bad idea IMO.

Edit: BTW, I too would like to thank DisposaBoy for this amazing service. It was fantastic while it lasted.

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2013-08-18 20:36:56)

Xyne · 2013-08-18 22:01:03

NewWorld wrote:

I think it would be enough to just archive the PKGBUILD, foo.install, etc. files for each package version, so that users can very easily build any past package version themselves. Am I wrong? This archive would be much smaller in comparsion, too.

Compilation requires more working tools than simple package installation, which can be done in the worst case scenario by untarring with busybox. Sources may disappear as well.

Arch Linux

#176 2013-08-17 10:50:53

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#177 2013-08-17 10:56:13

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#178 2013-08-17 11:01:33

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#179 2013-08-17 11:04:27

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#180 2013-08-17 11:05:41

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#181 2013-08-17 12:41:50

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#182 2013-08-17 14:06:24

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#183 2013-08-17 14:12:15

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#184 2013-08-17 15:39:47

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#185 2013-08-17 16:16:39

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#186 2013-08-17 18:02:54

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#187 2013-08-17 20:45:04

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#188 2013-08-18 02:08:03

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#189 2013-08-18 02:42:08

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#190 2013-08-18 02:56:43

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#191 2013-08-18 06:45:12

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#192 2013-08-18 16:47:39

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#193 2013-08-18 16:52:09

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#194 2013-08-18 17:00:09

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#195 2013-08-18 19:01:38

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#196 2013-08-18 19:28:49

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#197 2013-08-18 20:06:11

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#198 2013-08-18 20:22:40

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#199 2013-08-18 20:35:09

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

#200 2013-08-18 22:01:03

Re: Project ARM :: Arch Rollback Machine

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