Speeding up compile time?
 

It seems like I keep recompiling kernels because of new features (kvm, timer changes) that come come out, or bugs I run into (nvidia + paravirt_ops, libata vs old ata system), so I'm on my 5th kernel compile in about 4 weeks. Needless to say we all know they're slow. I haven't timed mine but I'd say its about 45 minutes?

What are my options for speeding that up? I have a Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, so 2 x 2.4ghz. On my most recent one I've stripped out a lot of the drivers I'm sure I will never need which should help a lot. But my main question is there a way for it to use both processors in parallel - or is it doing that already? My other machine is a Pentium 4 2.4ghz and it didn't seem to take any less time for that one to compile which makes me think it doesn't use both processors.

I currently use the kpkg way of doing it since I'm using Debian Etch, but I used to use the standard make bzImage when I used Slackware so either way can work for me if its an option, I just want to speed it up because I like tweaking the kernel but I don't get much free time anymore, much less enough to wait an hour while it compiles and I'm not accomplishing anything.

Count the number of processors your kernel sees (I suspect two), and add a -jN option to your make commands. Where N is the number of processors plus one. Almost halves the compile time of kernels on my AMD64 Turion X2.

Regards,

Alunduil

Sidenote: On a Sun E6500 with 19 Blackbirds and -j20 I can compile a clean kernel in under 5 minutes.