Modernize Debian in CI

[targos]

Our Debian hosts are not in a very good shape:

• 2 x64 hosts with Debian 8 (EoL, offline for outdated Java)
• 2 x64 hosts with Debian 9 (EoL, offline for outdated Java)
• 2 x64 hosts and 3 armv7l containers with Debian 10 (EoL in 9 months, GCC 10 not available)

https://endoflife.date/debian

[targos]

My suggestions:

• Repurpose Debian 8 x64 to Debian 11
• Repurpose Debian 9 x64 to Debian 12
• Keep Debian 10 x64 for now, especially since it's one of the Docker distributions for Node.js 20.
• Skip Debian 10 for testing Node.js 21 and later

I don't know what to do about the container setup.

[richardlau]

I don't know what to do about the container setup.

We stopped testing on Debian 10 armv7l for Node.js 20 due to the available version of libstc++ (#3274, rvagg/rpi-newer-crosstools#2). At least for armv7l I'd be okay moving the Debian 10 container to Debian 11.

[targos]

Status:

• debian8 x64: migrated to debian11 and enabled in CI jobs
• debian9 x64: wip (help needed): ansible: replace DO debian9-x64-1 with debian12-x64-1 #3560
• debian10 x64: disabled on v21+
• debian10 armv7l: migrated to debian11

[richardlau]

It looks like the two builds so far on test-rackspace-debian11-x64-1 have failed, possibly due to running out of memory:
https://ci.nodejs.org/computer/test%2Drackspace%2Ddebian11%2Dx64%2D1/builds

[richardlau]

Looks like test-rackspace-debian11-x64-1 only has 2GB of memory:

$ ssh test-rackspace-debian11-x64-1 free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           1.9Gi       320Mi       1.5Gi       1.0Mi       134Mi       1.5Gi
Swap:             0B          0B          0B
$

[targos]

What's our relationship with Rackspace? Can I resize the VM without introducing issues with billing/credits?

[richardlau]

I don't know 😞.

[richardlau]

I'll try to add swap to the machine in the meantime. We have a lot of space:

$ ssh test-rackspace-debian11-x64-1 df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            972M     0  972M   0% /dev
tmpfs           198M  504K  198M   1% /run
/dev/xvda1       40G  4.4G   34G  12% /
tmpfs           988M     0  988M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           198M     0  198M   0% /run/user/0
$

Edit: adding swap (#3587) has allowed the builds to complete 🎉.

[targos]

I was going to reinstall test-softlayer-debian9-x64-1 but Debian 12 is not available on IBM Cloud:

[richardlau]

I was going to reinstall test-softlayer-debian9-x64-1 but Debian 12 is not available on IBM Cloud

Looks like it is there now:

I've started an OS reload to Debian 12 on test-softlayer-debian9-x64-1 (or test-softlayer-debian12-x64-1 as it appears to labelled in IBM Cloud) -- the UI claims this will take at least 94 mins.

[richardlau]

I've started an OS reload to Debian 12 on test-softlayer-debian9-x64-1 (or test-softlayer-debian12-x64-1 as it appears to labelled in IBM Cloud) -- the UI claims this will take at least 94 mins.

Despite that I've just got a confirmation email saying the reload is complete.

[targos]

@richardlau Thanks, I'm working on ansible changes in #3613