Re: [gentoo-user] Minimal Gentoo install

[Prabhat Gupta]

wow!!

Looks like I will get some improvement. I have a 2.4G HP laptop with 
gentoo installed.
So what I will do now it to omit the localhost form

DISTCC_HOSTS

What should be my "-j" value for this senario? 2??

Where will I set -j option? Is it in make.conf?

Thanks

Rob Snow wrote:

Well, from what I'm seeing..it's close to linear speed up minus about 
10-15% overhead.  So if you have 2x boxes you should see around 
1.6-1.8 speedup.  I'm using a 3 box compile 'farm' of 2 gentoo boxes 
(AthlonXP) and a XP (P4) and I'm seeing <2.5min kernel compiles 
from a make clean -> time make -j[5 or 6] bzImage.  I'd consider that 
pretty substantial.  Remeber that some packages don't handle the 
-j[n] option well and even though you put the FEATURE="distcc" in 
they won't use it...xfree comes to mind, it uses distcc, but only at -j2.  
Again, you can set your DISTCC_HOSTS to actually do the compiles 
'off-site' by leaving your slow machine out of the list of hosts.  That way 
even with a linear build you will be doing the grunt work 'off-site' and 
just linking, etc. onsite. 

This is the way I'm going to build my new firewall/router.  I'll leverage 
all my fast boxes to build the system and leave it completely out of the 
DISTCC_HOSTS line...it's only a 200MHz and I've got 2.0, 2.4, 1.8, 
1.6GHz to throw at the real work. 

-Rob 

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:35:11 -0400, Prabhat Gupta wrote 
 

Hi Rob, 

Thanks. 

So after bootstrapping can I emerge distcc and compile the kernel , 
X and kde-base with distcc? 

Is it going to make a lot of difference in compile time?  Jason  
indicated that It will not make  a lot difference. 

Bootstrapping is still going far last 12 hours. It is a  P166, 80M.  
1.6G for for gentoo (excluding swap). 

Regards 
Prabhat 

Rob Snow wrote: 

   

DISTCC: http://distcc.samba.org  

It's quite simple to use and I would recommend building all your  
portage that way, it takes all of 1min to setup and the payoff is 
     

large.  
 

(about 75-85% performance increase for each host added)  

Basically for portage you just emerge distcc and add distcc in your  
FEATURES line.  The downside is that not all of portage does not  
support make -j(n) so some packages will not take advantage of it.  

Another option is to compile on a different box, you can set your  
DISTCC_HOSTS to not include the local machine, which will 
     

cause  
 

most actual compiling to take place somewhere else.  

ie. DISTCC_HOSTS="thisbox fastbox" will split the compiles 
     

across  
 

thisbox and fastbox, however, DISTCC_HOSTS="fastbox" will 
     

make  
 

all the compiles take place on fastbox...handy for that 166 when  
fastbox is a 2.0GHz.  

Additionally, you can use DISTCC with the Cygwin cross-compiler 
     

to  
 

use a XP (or set of XP) box as a compile host.  This is what I do, do 
     

a  
 

minimal install of Cygwin (~5min?) and then follow the excellent  
HOWTO at:  

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=66930  

or grab my cross-linux-3.2.3.tar.bz2 at:   

ftp://ftp.dympna.com/cross-linux-3.2.3.tar.bz2 (23.3MB)  

and untar into /usr/local and do /usr/local/bin/distccd.sh (~5min?) 
     

and  
 

add that xp box into your DISTCC_HOSTS line:  
DISTCC_HOSTS="thisbox fastbox xpbox"  I've even included a 
     

script  
 

to make DISTCC run as an NT service (/usr/local/bin/mkservice) 
     

so it  
 

has no visible effect on XP/NT...just runs in the background.   
Downside is that it's a 23.3MB download, but you only need it once  
per toolchain change. (currently it's at gcc-3.2.3 / glibc-2.3.2 /  
binuntils-2.14.(forgot) / distcc-2.8) which is the current stable build  
environment.  

-Rob  

On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 01:11:29 +0900, Jason Stubbs wrote  
 

     

On Saturday 26 July 2003 01:00, Prabhat Gupta wrote:  
   

       

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:  
     

         

Prabhat Gupta wrote:  
       

           

I am looking for ideas to reduce the space requirment and 
             

also  
 

compile time. I have only 24 hrs left for this :(  
         

             

Consider using distcc to speed up compile time. I've never 
           

used  
 

       

           

it  
 

     

myself, but I've heard good things about it. Better yet, do the  
compiling on an insanely overspecced server and cp the  
       

           

filesystem onto  
 

     

your laptop afterwards :)  

Condiser NFS/iSCSI/whatever for /var/tmp/portage and  
       

           

/usr/portage .  
 

     

You should only need those when installing things, so it might  
       

           

be okay  
 

     

to put them on a different box...  

Don't emerge kde. Emerge kde-base and whatever else you  
       

           

need.  
 

     

HTH,  
       

           

Thanks,  

Any ideas, how to use distcc? I am currently doing 
         

bootstrapping.  
 

Also I do have a fast machine with gentoo installed but I don't  
     

         

know how  
 

     

to setup NFS and use it for installation?  

Any pointers?  
     

         

As I said before I haven't used distcc before, but I suggest not   
using in conjuction with your "slow" laptops. You will end up 
       

having   
 

the fast machine wait for the laptops to finish compiling 
       

something   
 

it could have done quicker by itself. If you can use the fast   
machine to do the compiling, do like I said before but use the -B   
flag to emerge rather than adding "buildpkg" to FEATURES; that 
       

will   
 

build the packages without installing them. NFS I believe to be   
fairly easy to set up. Do a man mount and if that doesn't help just   
search for "nfs howto" with google and you should be right.  

Jason  

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