Hi!

can i get some info how to make the kernel for another machine? The both computers have identical Slack's, one is just so week that there is no reason to install the devel tools on it.

What are the two processors?

I do this all the time, there is really nothing to it.

Find out what modules you need on the slower machine (using lsmod, lspci, etc), setup the kernel on the faster machine (probably want to backup your existing .config), compile, and then move it over.

Now, for the modules, you have a slight problem, as doing "make modules_install" would overwrite your existing modules (assuming the faster machine is running the same kernel that you are trying to compile.

The easiest thing to do would be to temporarily rename the current module directory to something else, do "make modules_install" tar up the newly created directory, and then put the old module directory back to it's proper name.

But if the other machine is really that slow, you might as well just not do any modules in the first place, and compile everything static into the kernel.

What about distcc?

I have experimented with distcc for kernel compiles before, and found it does little to help the situation.

Depending on the speed of the slower machine, the faster machine spends most of the time waiting for the slower machine to finish it's current task and send it a new one.

For instance, when trying it between a 133 Mhz machine and a 450 Mhz machine, the 133 Mhz machine was pounding way, while the 450 Mhz machine sat idle about 70% of the time.

The problem seems to be that the kernel is made up of many small files, rather than a few large files. So the faster machine can compile a single file almost at the same instant it arrives, while the slower machine has to grind through the one it is working on, copy the file back, and start all over again.

It also appeared that the faster machine was actually compiling files in less time than it took to actually send the file back and forth over the network.

All in all, using distcc to compile the kernel on the 133 Mhz machine took only slightly less time then it would have normally, so I just took the easy route, and compiled it on the faster machine in the first place.