The NTPsec project maintains a test farm of machines dedicated to testing and benchmarking NTPsec.
Test farm access
Access is available to devteam members and serious contributors. Tests can be run from shell accounts on thyrsus.com, which has ssh access to the farm machines over fast local Ethernet. Because it might move in the future, the rest of this document refers to thyrsus.com as the farmhouse.
For access to the farmhouse, mail a preferred username and an ssh public key to esr@ntpsec.org. Plain-text login to that machine is not supported.
Each farm machine has a setup account that is a sudoer; you will get the name and password for that account when you are granted access. You should use it to create your own account and install public keys.
Test farm hardware
The test farm machines in the current inventory are as follows:
| Hostname | Machine type | Daughterboard | On-board GPS |
|---|---|---|---|
au.local |
Raspberry Pi 2 |
SKU 424254 |
ublox 6 |
cu.local |
Raspberry Pi 2 |
Uputronics HAT |
ublox 8 |
co.local |
Raspberry Pi 3 |
Adafruit HAT |
MTK3339 |
fe.local |
Raspberry Pi 3 |
Adafruit HAT |
MTK3339 |
na.local |
Raspberry Pi 3 |
Adafruit HAT |
MTK3339 |
nd.local |
Raspberry Pi 3 |
Adafruit HAT |
MTK3339 |
ne.local |
Raspberry Pi 3 |
Adafruit HAT |
MTK3339 |
These all have a full Raspbian Linux development environment, all NTPsec and GPSD prerequisites, and git - but no X support, they’re configured to run headless. If there are additional tools you need, that is easily arranged.
The farm machines are sited on the Official Windowsill of Mad Science in a mid-latitude suburban house with a good skyview. GPS outages are rare, normally occurring only after a machine has been power-cycled.
Additional farm nodes will be installed if there’s demand. Don’t be shy about requesting this if you think you need to, as a new node costs less than $100. Be aware however that costs go up at 8 and 12-unit multiples due to power-distribution and network-switch costs. Also, without heroic measures the Official Windowsill of Mad Science is probably limited to supporting 16 machines.
The farm nodes are named after chemical elements because that was a handy source of two-letter abbreviations, which are about all that will fit on an Avery 5412 gummed label, which will just fit on the non-electrode surface of a micro-SD.
Coordination
Your logins and logouts on these machines will cause notifications to the #ntpsec IRC channel; this is to alert other developers that, e.g., changes to /etc/ntp.conf could get stepped on. Please coordinate tests and config changes via #ntpsec. We don’t have any more formal mutual-exclusion system and are hoping not to have to develop one.