2024-01-24 - coreboot Leadership Meeting Minutes

# 2024-01-24 - coreboot Leadership Meeting 



## Attendees
Martin Roth, Felix Singer, Julius Werner, Arthur Heymans, David Hendricks, Jonathan Hall, Matt
DeVillier, Felix Held, Patrick Georgi, Werner Zeh, Mina Asante, Nicholas Chin, Subrata Banik, Nico
Huber, Marshall Dawson, Maximilian Brune.



## Open Action Items

  * 2024-01-10
    * [Open] Werner: Push patch based on https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/522
      * Nico: https://review.coreboot.org/q/topic:enforce_region_api
    * [Open] Daniel: Look at how we want to localize (non console) strings for coreboot. Long term
project.
  * 2023-11-01
    * [Started] Martin: Shallow submodules - document & test, then update submodules if testing goes
well. Additionally look at whether the .branch option helps.
      * We can save over 900MB by using shallow submodules.
      * [Projects & RFCs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15H2m4swdESSgGaIuINOePkyst8b39Y7LulNPxkRbtHY/edit#heading=h.11uxm1f5pto5).
      * Making progress - see email thread.
  * 2023-10-4
    * Martin: Write a tutorial for gerrit - Feel free to
help.[Started](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z8igNdgBG5_Qlr4kKRtlbpKaZo9RUghRqZjHUNUOags/edit).
    * [Open] OSFF: Look into making a video about using gerrit.
      * Discussed with Christian who felt this was a good plan.
      * Look at next year.
    * [Open] Martin: Write a document about vendorcode submodules.




## Minutes


### [Martin] [Review corebootprojects](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15H2m4swdESSgGaIuINOePkyst8b39Y7LulNPxkRbtHY/edit#headig=h.v8f7vy7yzy2r).
* See coreboot projects document

### [Martin] Review coreboot RFCs in gerrit
  * https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/57861
    * Abandon
  * https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/62015
    * Please review.

### [Martin & Felix]: coreboot infra discussion:
  - Is there any reason to consider moving to external services like gerrithub & github?
    - No?
    - coreboot.org hosts some private repos. Some cloud services claim ownership over everything.
    - Hidden costs?
  - Move Jenkins to a separate server
    - Can we use a build server, or is that too much of a security risk?
    - Some maintenance tasks are co-hosted.
    - What’s the problem if jenkins gets hacked?
    - Patches get marked as verified.
    - Can we reduce the saved logs that are no longer needed and only keep the ones that are important?
      - Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to do that. Jenkins doesn’t have separate controls
for even passed & failed builds, let alone builds that have been superseded by newer builds.

* Decision: Rent a dedicated server with ECC memory and hard drives for storage. Start looking at
moving jenkins over. We can look at moving the other services in the future.

## Hetzner servers
“Ideal” machine for coreboot services
  * 8 cores with SMT
  * 64 GiB ECC Memory
  * 2x 512 GB NVMe drives RAID 1
  * 2x 12 TB HDDs RAID1
    * 12TB because 6TB drives are €17/month, 12 TB drives are €23. This can be used for backups & Jenkins logs/artifacts.
    * We could probably get away without a 2nd drive & RAID, but it seems more professional to have the
redundancy.

### Hetzner AMD servers

|[SX134] Mid-range Client CPU|[AX52] Mid-range Client CPU|[AX102] High-End Client CPU|[AX161] Server CPU|
|:-------------------------- |:--------------------------|:--------------------------|:---------------- |
| € 260.37 Germany           | € 128.04 Germany          | € 176.83 Germany          | €240 Germany     |
| € 247.28 Finland           | € 122.09 Finland          | € 170.88 Finland          | €227 Finland     |
|                            |                           |                           |                  | 
| AMD Ryzen 7 3700X          | AMD Ryzen 7 7700          | AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D       | AMD EPYC7502P    | 
| 8 Cores                    | 8 Cores                   | 16 Cores                  | 32 Cores         | 
|                            |                           |                           |                  | 
| 128 GiB DDR4 ECC           | 64 GiB DDR5 ECC           | 128 GiB DDR5 ECC          | 128 GiB DDR4 ECC |
|                            |                           |                           |                  | 
| 2x 960 GB NVMe             | 2x 1 TB NVMe              | 2x 1.9 TB NVMe            | 2x 1 TB NVMe     | 
|                            |                           |                           |                  |
| 10x 16 TB SATA HDD         | 2x 12 TB SATA HDD         | 2x 12 TB SATA HDD         | 2x 12 TB SATAHDD |                                                     |                            |                           |                           |                  |
  * Here are relevant links to Hetzner AMD servers:
    - [SX134](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/sx134/configurator#)
    - [AX52](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax52/configurator#)
    - [AX102](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax102/configurator#)
    - [AX161](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax161/configurator#)

### Hetzner Intel Servers

| [EX44] Mid-range Client CPU | [EX101] High-end Client CPU | [EX130-R] Server CPU |
|:----------------------------|:----------------------------|:---------------------|
| € 99.48 Germany             | € 153.03 Germany            | € 212.53 Germany     |
| € 93.53 Finland             | € 147.08 Finland            | € 206.58 Finland     |
|                             |                             |                      |
| Intel® Core™ i5-13500       | Intel® Core™ i9-13900       | Intel Xeon Gold 5412U|
| 6 P-cores 8 E-cores         | 8 P-cores 16 E-cores        | 24-cores             |
|                             |                             |                      |
| 64 GiB DDR4 non-ECC         | 64 GiB DDR5 ECC             | 256 GiB DDR5 ECC     |
|                             |                             |                      |
| 2 x 512 GB (Gen4)           | 2 x 1.92 TB (Gen4)          | 2 x 1.9 TB (Gen4)    |
|                             |                             |                      | 
| 2x 12 TB SATA HDD           | 2x 12 TB SATA HDD           | 2x 12 TB SATA HDD    |
|                             |                             |                      |
  * Here are relevant links to Hetzner Intel Servers:
    - [EX44](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex44/configurator#)
    - [EX101](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex101/configurator#)
    - [EX130-R](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ex130-r/configurator#)

### [SimonG] (cannot attend this week, so will skip Coreboot Control Block)



# Next meeting
  * February 7, 2024.
    * [Meeting link](https://meet.google.com/pyt-newq-rbb)
    * [coreboot Calendar](https://coreboot.org/calendar.html)




# Notice
  * Decisions shown here are not necessarily final, and are based
on the current information available. If there are questions or comments
about decisions made, or additional information to present, please put
it on the leadership meeting agenda and show up if possible to discuss
it.
Of course items may also be discussed on the mailing list, but as it's
difficult to interpret tone over email, controversial topics frequently
do not have good progress in those discussions. For particularly
difficult issues, it may be best to try to schedule another meeting.




# coreboot leadership meeting minutes
  * [2024-01-24](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NRXqXcLBp5pFkHiJbrLdv3Spqh1Hu086HYkKrgKjeDQ/edit?pl=1).
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