Re: Oldworld PPC install (gentoo newbie)

[email protected] wrote:

> There are several possible changes to the documentation and kernel noted
> in the attached document.

 Minus 10 points for attaching a MS Word document, but it seems to open OK
in OpenOffice.  ;)  I'm assuming you were making notes from your Windows
box as the install proceeded.  I do not have access to Word here, so I'm
going to paste any comments I may have back into this reply, for the
benefit of others.
 
> There are some questions concerning use of distcc in the compilation
> process using three PPC's without Gentoo installed. If anyone has some
> input it would be appreciated.

[The following quotes are excerpts from the Word file Dave attached.]

>  Was the use if {ipaddr3}/2 on the Performa 4400/200 instead of 
>  localhost/2 a mistake?

 No, as I understand it, because you cannot do a netmask on a name.

>  I am seeing considerably less messages all on the Performa 
> 4400/200 {ipaddr3} machine and cannot observe the use of the other 
> boxes at this time (little network activity and no noticable head 
> movement on the drives (by finger touch) ) however the process is 
> reasonably quick.

 I believe there's a text-mode tool called distccmon (try tab-completion on
"distcc") that will show you what distcc is doing at the moment.  I'm not
sure which machine it needs to be run on, though; check your documentation
for distcc.

>  make && make modules_install
>  cp arch/(i386/ppc?)/boot/bzImage /boot; cp System.map /boot

> Are any files to be copied to the Linux Kernels folder in the Mac 
> System Folder?

 Yes!  You'll need to copy over the kernel image (named to something
appropriate) and if using an initial RAMdisk you'll need to copy the
"initrd" as well.  As I recall, I just copied anything that went into /boot
into the Kernels folder as well.  If it never got used, oh well -- better
than *not* having something you need!  I cannot remember which ones I
needed before; maybe someone with more current experience can help here.

 Since I see "i386" up there, here's a dumb question:  Are you following the
PPC version of the handbook?  :)  The distcc installation guide may be a
bit x86-specific.  It also looks like it may be a bit 2.4-specific; note
that with 2.6, "vmlinux" lands in the working directory but all compressed
images go into /usr/src/linux/arch/ppc/boot/images/ .  If you use "make all
&& make modules_install", you should also have zImage and bzImage available
in there if it turns out you need them.

[End excerpts from Word file.]

> There is also a cloning process for the output of the machine to the
> others to prevent repeating the process three times.  Any indications of
> potential success or suggestions as to the proper cloning process would be
> appreciated.

 I did read through that, and it looks like it should work.  I'm not sure
what is gained by this, though, since you've done the base install on them
already.  (Did I mis-read that?)

 Since the machines are all the same architecture and all being freshly
installed with Gentoo, they should all have the same compiler version, so
sharing tarballs between them would make sense.  From what I've read, the
usual method for this sort of thing is to make one of the machines an NFS
server (probably the one with the most HD space to spare), and
share /usr/portage/packages from it.  Mount that share from your other
boxes and point $PKGDIR to it, then build packages on all machines using
"emerge -bk" (--buildpkg and --usepkg).  This way, when any machine builds
a package, the binary tarball will be saved in the share, and the next one
that needs it will not have to bother compiling it.

 To further save space, you can share /usr/portage/distfiles in a similar
way.  Any box that downloads sources will place them in the shared
directory for use by all.  (I have done the NFS install only once, to get
Gentoo onto an ancient laptop with about 4 GB *total* hard drive space.)

 Now, I'd say the most effective use of your resources would be to have the
machine with the fastest/most processor(s) do the complete install and use
the other boxes purely as extra processors for distcc.  When it finishes,
then have the other boxes complete their installs using the binaries it has
built.

 (Recent experience with spending about two weeks doing "emerge -bkev world"
has shown me that you can install a heavily-loaded -- 560 packages --
system in a matter of a few hours from binaries.  So, since many packages
will be shared between these machines, this method could save you a lot of
time.)

 An alternative to NFS would be to build all the binaries as above, but burn
them to CD when finished, then carry the CD to the other machines and let
them install from that.  (Some people have trouble with NFS for various
reasons; I know it took me several tries and I almost gave up!)

Good luck!

-- 
// Carl Hudkins :: PGP 50238D9E
//
//               ==]  What would Jeeves do?  [==
//


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