The Go project is planning on releasing binary builds of Golang for 64-bit ARM servers (ARMv8) from Go 1.9 and onwards - but they need our help to test it out.
If you're new to Go or still learning - try my Golang fundamentals blog series.
Why do we need this?
We started off with official Golang builds for vanilla architectures like 32-bit and 64-bit Intel systems but have now gained a growing list of pre-built binaries available. This even covers the Raspberry Pi.
Having an up-to-date binary package available for ARMv8 will make Go and dependent projects like Docker, Kubernetes and Prometheus easier to work with and maintain.
Which devices can I test on?
You can test on 64-bit ARM SoCs or cloud instances, here are a few:
SoC
- Pine64
- ODroid-C2
- Raspberry Pi 3 (with 64-bit OS)
Cloud providers
- Equinix Metal's Type2A bare-metal machine with 2x Cavium ThunderX
Equinix Metal (aka Packet) provides a telco-grade 64-bit ARM machine with 120GB RAM, 96 Cores and 340GB of SSD included.
- Scaleway - ARM64 virtual SSD servers
Scaleway offers virtual SSD servers with between 2 and 8 cores and 2 and 8GB of RAM.
These are two very different machines, but for a few hours usage neither will cost very much.
Get Go the quick way
Let's show how to provision a machine on Packet and then install the (unstable) Golang binary for 1.9.
Sign up for a Packet account and then create your server as follows:
You can pick the nearest datacenter to you. The Type2A can be very popular - so if one is not available near-by you can select one of the other facilities.
You can click the Manage button to enter any additional SSH keys you need and to setup your cloud-init script. The cloud init can do things like install Docker, monitoring tools or a development environment - so that they are ready when you first log in.
The provisioning takes a few minutes - unlike AWS or Azure we're actually provisioning a bare-metal machine which means there are no CPU credits, no firewalls and no restrictions. It's all on you.
We're provisioning a vanilla Ubuntu installation - but Packet also supports booting up custom images over iPXE meaning you can run practically any OS you like.
Logging in
By default you need to login as the root account using your ssh key. If you need it you can also find out what the password is - but only for the first 24-hours. So if you need that make sure you change it or memorize it right away.
$ ssh root@147.75.74.62
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-77-generic aarch64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage
The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.
root@go-for-it:~#
Download the latest Golang build for ARM64 - at the moment this means clicking on the Unstable set of releases:
Let's pull down the archive, make a new directory and extract the Go binary:
root@go-for-it:~# wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.9beta1.linux-arm64.tar.gz
root@go-for-it:~# mkdir -p /usr/local/go
root@go-for-it:~# tar -xvf go1.9beta1.linux-arm64.tar.gz --strip-components=1 -C /usr/local/go
We have to setup some paths:
root@go-for-it:~# go
-bash: go: command not found
root@go-for-it:~# /usr/local/go/bin/go version
go version go1.9beta1 linux/arm64
Edit your /root/.bashrc file and add the following. Then log out and in again.
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
export GOROOT=/usr/local/go
export GOPATH=/root/go
You can alter the GOPATH to the home directory of another user if you decide to drop root access for trying out Go.
Get a project to build
Before you can download projects using go get you should install git:
root@go-for-it:~# apt-get update && apt-get install git -qy
Now let's download a test web-server that generates hashes of input strings and build it.
root@go-for-it:~# go get -u github.com/alexellis/hash-browns
/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_arm64/link: running gcc failed: exec: "gcc": executable file not found in $PATH
Looks like we need gcc available - so go ahead and add the build-essential package and try again:
root@go-for-it:~# apt-get install build-essential -qy
Git clone / build:
root@go-for-it:~# go get -u github.com/alexellis/hash-browns
root@go-for-it:~# cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/alexellis/hash-browns
root@go-for-it:~/go/src/github.com/alexellis/hash-browns# go build
root@go-for-it:~/go/src/github.com/alexellis/hash-browns# ./hash-browns &
[1] 14030
Try the Golang binary like this:
curl localhost:8080/hash -d "hi there" -4
"hi there"
9b96a1fe1d548cbbc960cc6a0286668fd74a763667b06366fb2324269fcabaa4
It also has metrics built-in which you can see via:
root@go-for-it:~# curl 127.0.0.1:8080/metrics |grep hash
hash_seconds_sum{code="200"} 0.000102143
hash_seconds_count{code="200"} 1
Wrapping up
For more on learning and using Golang checkout my fundamentals blog series:
If you run into any problems please raise an issue on Github on the Go project - http://github.com/golang/go/issues