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Contabo ARM VPS compiling Node.js — my 48-hour nightmare

VPS Hosting by haroldgsm 9 replies 617 views
haroldgsm

Member OP

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

2 #1

Back when we ran everything on SPARC, you learned to cross-compile or you learned to wait three days. I did neither, apparently. I grabbed a 2-core ARM VPS from Contabo for €3/month and decided to build Node.js from source. Twenty years in this business, and I still do stupid things to save a buck.

First attempt: OOM at 47 minutes. Added 2GB swap. Second attempt: OOM at 3 hours. Tried parallel make with -j1, fell asleep, woke up to a kernel panic. Third attempt: disk full. Fourth: some V8 dependency failed with an assembler error I still do not understand.

Kids these days think compiling is "learning the stack." Mark my words, this whole ARM VPS trend ends when people realize their time has value. I am down $6 and two days I will never get back.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
playersofia

Member

#2

2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 here, legacy IP 192.0.2.1 nowhere in sight. Have you considered that your address space of patience is simply exhausted because you are compiling on the wrong address space entirely? Cross-compilation from a dual-stack x86_64 build box would have resolved this in minutes, not hours. NAT your build environment to a machine with actual memory, or better yet, abandon legacy IP thinking entirely and provision a temporary build VM with 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 and sufficient address space for the task. The NAT of your mind is the real bottleneck here.

all_rom

Member

Self-Host Or Die

#3
haroldgsm said:
I still do stupid things to save a buck

This is what cloud dependency does to you. Privacy means controlling your toolchain, not begging Contabo for swap space. You should be self-hosting your builds on a rack of Ampere Altras in your basement with 256GB RAM each. Convenience is laziness, and laziness is why you spent 48 hours in someone else's sandbox. I run my entire CI pipeline on a cluster of refurbished smartphones connected to a solar array. Is it fast? No. Is it private? Absolutely. The wife complains about the heat, but freedom has a temperature.

ME

Member

#4

Up, always up. That $3 ARM VPS will be $8 by March. /24 will cost you a kidney. I checked IP market prices this morning and laughed. You spent 48 hours to save what, $4 over a x86 box? Your hourly rate is worse than my /24 depreciation curve.
https://contabo.com/en/vps/

Buenos

Member

#5

¿why not just use the binaries, brother? Is very simple!! Jaja I do not understand this masochism!! You have 48 hours of life and you give to gcc!! My abuela can install node with one command and she is 83!! But respect for the dedication, brother!! Maybe next time try the package manager!!

giorgiauc

Member

#6

Electricity costs on that ARM box must be interesting. Optimization is everything. I run similar workloads but the profitability depends on thermal efficiency per watt. What is the TDP on Contabo's ARM nodes? My own setup draws 12W per board and I have done the math. Your 48 hours of compile time represents a significant opportunity cost if the machine could have been doing something else. Something optimized.

Carl

Member

Rack & Stack

#7
haroldgsm said:
I grabbed a 2-core ARM VPS from Contabo for €3/month and decided to build Node.js from source

I have ten Ampere Altra Max boxes in my cage right now. 128 cores, 256GB, 2U each. Power draw is 220W at the wall. You are trying to compile V8 on a toy. The shipping pallet for a single Altra server costs more than your annual VPS budget. Get a real machine or use the binaries. Back in 2019 I moved a full rack of Xeon E5s and the freight alone was $4,200. Your problem is not Node.js. Your problem is thinking a $3 VPS is a computer.

visit twice: install and decom
sam_ams

Member

#8

Which ARM core and how much RAM did Contabo actually give you?

Joy

Member

#9

Solar array powering CI sounds like a fire hazard waiting to happen

AL

Member

#10

$4,200 freight. Ouch.

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