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Notes on the semi-public Ephedra testing system

Motivation

Ephedra needs IBM's VisualAge C++ Version 4 with some extensions that IBM never released to the public or VisualAge C++ Version 5 which was only released for the AIX operating system and is now obsolete, too.

So it is pretty impossible to use Ephedra nowadays for a normal person. My initial plans were to spend (a lot of) time to modify Ephedra to use some other C/C++ parsing frontend, but I don't have that time. I therefore decided to acquire an IBM RS/6000 system running the AIX operating system as a testing and development platform for Ephedra.

Available hardware and conditions of use

This system, an IBM RS/6000 43P with 8GB hard drive space and 512MB RAM, is now up and running. I paid the hardware and software myself, but I don't have the resources to pay for the electricity needed to run the system, so I will have to charge whoever wants to use the system a small fee:
  • first month of non-exclusive usage is 20 Euros, every additional month is 15 Euros.
Payment is to be made to jmartin _at_ notamusica _dot_ com via paypal or to my bank account in Germany (info on request). The charge includes setup of an account on the system but no support. You should be sufficiently familiar with a Unix system in order to use Ephedra on this system. I promise to help when you run into trouble with Ephedra, but please do your own research before you ask trivial questions (what is ssh, how do I run make, etc).

If several people decide to pay for a week or month of usage, I will extend the period the system is running. So, if two people pay for a month each, they will both be able to use the system for two months. I don't think anybody really needs exclusive access to the system, so this scheme sounds reasonable to me. If you do need exclusive access, let me know.

The system runs behind a firewall on a medium-bandwidth DSL line (2MBit down, 256kBit up). The only way to connect to the system is by using the ssh protocol. Once you are on the system, you can use most common programs such as scp, ftp or wget to transfer files to and from the system.

I have installed a lot of GNU software on the system to make it more user-friendly. bash is the standard shell, vi and jed (an emacs clone) are available as editors. emacs is installed too but doesn't work - any AIX experts that want to help are welcome to contact me.

I don't tolerate hackers, so if I notice anybody hacking the system or the network, or using the system for any other unauthorised purpose , their account will be disabled at once. If you are in doubt whether what you intend to do is ok, contact me.

Compiler warnings

The IBM VisualAge compiler issues a warning as follows: 
1539-5096 (I) No licenses available. Contact your program supplier to add additional
1539-5097 (I) users.  Incorporation will proceed shortly.
I do have a license - if you are familar with IBM/AIX software please let me know how to get rid of this warning. It is safe to ignore - the compiler runs fine.

More info

Please use the Ovid/Ephedra mailing list for asking questions.