Linux From ScratchThis Forum is for the discussion of LFS.
LFS is a project that provides you with the steps necessary to build your own custom Linux system.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Distribution: Linux Mint 9 x64, Linux From Scratch
Posts: 46
Rep:
Compiling over internet?
I have a really slow computer at home, and I got permission to SSH into my university's Linux servers (they have Intel Xeons, which will compile a bit faster than my AMD Athlon). The only problem is I don't have root access. They don't care if I hog their CPU (as they have like 100 of these monsters) either
Would it be possible for me to compile programs via SSH and send the compiled files back to my machine, assuming I have no root privileges on the SSH box? I'm not sure how it would work, but I'm wondering if it is even feasible, since I would love to be able to use my home computer while I'm performing an ALFS build...
In general, compiling software requires no special privileges. Installing software, on the other hand, usually requires root privileges as you're typically writing to parts of the system which are read-only for ordinary users.
I don't have any experience with LFS, but my understanding is you chroot into a particular directory and use that to build your system. However, chrooting requires root permissions, so you might be out of luck there.
Distribution: Linux Mint 9 x64, Linux From Scratch
Posts: 46
Original Poster
Rep:
I tried chrooting before, but no luck. They don't want me running chroot-jails on their computers...
Would the program that I compile via their server be any different than the one I compile locally (assuming I override their compiler flags with my machine's native flags)? I have no problem with scripting it to transfer folders to and from to get it done... I'm guessing it will take just as long to transfer all of the stuff to/from as it would for me to compile it on my rig.
I tried chrooting before, but no luck. They don't want me running chroot-jails on their computers...
That is understandable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blender3D
Would the program that I compile via their server be any different than the one I compile locally (assuming I override their compiler flags with my machine's native flags)?
As far as I understand it, the resultant code is essentially hardware independent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blender3D
I have no problem with scripting it to transfer folders to and from to get it done... I'm guessing it will take just as long to transfer all of the stuff to/from as it would for me to compile it on my rig.
If those machines are connected to the internet, then you can use their (presumably faster) net connection to download the necessary files directly from their original source, rather than you uploading them from your machine. This would save you time uploading source files. The compiled binaries should be relatively small, certainly in comparison to the decompressed source code. I wouldn't have thought you'd lose out overall by having to download from their servers back to your computer. However, I don't know what kind of a connection you have.
Distribution: Linux Mint 9 x64, Linux From Scratch
Posts: 46
Original Poster
Rep:
Oh yes, they have a 50mb/s connection (I downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 x32 and x64 simultaneously in less than 1 minute). LFS packages should finish in about 20 seconds
Wow, that must compile really fast, if you use something like make -j100
I "only" have six cores, and on my machine, using -j8, I have a SBU of 37 seconds.
I'm using Gentoo on three of my computers. Also I use distcc to distribute compilingjobs over my network. This works very well since two of my machines have the same architecture (AMD K8). If you have different machines you'll have to build a toolchain on the other machine in order to enable the building of code for your machine. Building a toolchain will need rootpermssions. Another point is that distcc is running as a daemon on the "server". To start this daemon you'll also need rootpermissions. So my answer to your question is that it will be not possible to compile your code on the Universitymachines.
Otherwise distributed compiling is very fast (Kernel for my netbook in 3 minutes (after "make mrproper")), maybe it is possible for you to gain a second machine for this purpose.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.