Lazy to recompile kernel

raska · 03-01-2006, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jomen

I always thought that P4 is playing in the same leaguge as a Pentium M
and what would matter then is just the frequency at which it is running - so I really expected a P4 @ 1.7GHz to be faster than this.

No sir, a Pentium M processor (P3 coppermine based) running at 2.0 GHz outperforms a Pentium 4 running at 3 GHz

jomen · 03-01-2006, 04:50 PM

Thank you!
It clearly does

now I like my notebook even more...

ledow · 03-02-2006, 06:25 AM

I think it's funny, all these people comparing how long it takes to compile a kernel. I don't think I've ever known how long a kernel compile takes on my machines.

Have none of you heard of nice, & or screen? You don't even need to know that the computer is compiling a kernel in the background at all and can carry on working. If you're that pressed for time, start it before you go to bed, or when you go out in the morning.

I have a 1GHz 512Mb linux desktop and it's more than happy sitting compiling a kernel in the background while I do all my work (using things like DreamWeaver and Word via Wine, CD and DVD burning and conversion etc.etc.). The schools I work in have thrown away more powerful machines than that without even bothering to try to sell them because it's so "worthless". For Windows XP, that may be so.

Or are you all running Linux in dual-boot and are desperate to get back into Windows as quickly as possible?

This is the part I love about Linux as a whole - the machine is doing so much in one small box and yet is still perfectly useable and responsive. I can compile a kernel and play a DVD using *software* decoding without a single glitch (I used to have a RealMagic Hollywood+ card back when I only had a 233MHz). A single old computer can be firewall, router, file server, print server, mail gatherer, spam filter, SSH/VNC server, updating it's own software, running a desktop GUI, "emulating" large Windows programs, burning a CD, compiling a new kernel, playing MPEG video and everything just works and responds.

My computer spends most of it's time doing stuff in the background, overnight or just between my keystrokes. The actual percentage of clock cycles and RAM that it needs to give me to make me happy when I click a button is puny compared to what it's doing all the time, all day, every day.

In Slackware, a few nice's inserted into the cron scripts etc. means that even if I work through to the times when my computer would normally be indexing my filesystem or archiving my files, it's still perfectly responsive. It's so greedy of me to make it do all this stuff and then expect it to stop everything, recognise I've clicked a button and load my program before I get bored but IT DOES IT.

I go to work and the same computer is accessed from there and used as a proxy bypass for all my browsing and downloading from work (I work in primary schools, so everything's filtered), as a remote desktop, as a file store, compiling and downloading whatever software I need to (about one item per day, everything from OpenTTD or some obscure utility to a new kernel) so that I don't flood the connection that I'm on but instead letting it download those 4Gb ISO's from home while I'm at work. It seeds Bittorrents of those same ISO's at times (though that kills my outbound connections).

It filters my girlfriend's XP computer's mail, web, and general packet scrubbing, it runs and controls my wireless (it actually acts as a wireless AP), it runs my shared drives and printers and even keeps my PHP/MySQL present wishlist accessible to all my family over SSL HTTP just in case they suddenly decide they need to buy me a present. It's constantly connected to AIM, MSN, ICQ, YIM, Jabber and IRC so that I just log into THAT one computer to see my messages with complete history logs rather than having to log out and log in somewhere else. It even runs my bloody CCTV camera via a WinTV card, detecting motion and emailing me a snapshot or MPEG file whenever someone walks past my front door (though that can be very CPU intensive so it's only on when I'm not at the computer itself as it needs to respond realtime).

All that and I start compiling stuff before I go to work or remotely and it just does it constantly all the time in the background. New 2.6.15.5 stable release? It's downloading and compiling almost the second it's released, done within an hour or two (I wouldn't know or care... so long as it's done before I get home and want to play with it). I even edit the lilo.conf file remotely and initiate reboots to get it loading the new kernel before I even manage to get home (but I don't like rebooting mainly because it means I have to restart all these background downloads etc.).

A modern PC takes about 20 minutes to compile a kernel. My old obsolete junk can do it in a couple of hours but it's not like I need to TOUCH anything to get it to do that. I don't spend hours deciding shall I have this module or not... just throw them all in, save yourself an hour of messing about for the cost of a tiny bit of diskspace by modern standards (I compile virtually an all-modules config and my primary Slack drive is 10Gb and that contains EVERY bit of software I use so don't tell me that modules use a lot of space... my actual data is about 250Gb on various other drives).

Do the maths - spending an hour choosing which modules to compile is a million times more than that change will save you in terms of CPU cycles over the lifetime of that kernel on your machine.

If you are the sort of person who MUST have the latest kernel, set up some scripts which background-check and download new kernel releases (kernel.org's RSS is good for this), make a new dir, compile with the old config, even then wait for someone to change to it using screen and say yes to any config changes (wouldn't want to enable something that was dangerous!), then it could go back off and compile the kernel and modules, move them into the right places, archive the old ones, change the symlinks, edit lilo and just wait for a reboot.

Make your computer WORK for a living but do it in one OS so that you don't waste time chopping and changing and worrying about when your kernel will finish compiling so you can reboot into Windows and go play Counterstrike. People are throwing away 1GHz+ computers that are ideal for 99.99% of anything you'd ever want to do on a Linux machine.

win32sux · 03-02-2006, 06:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ledow

I think it's funny, all these people comparing how long it takes to compile a kernel. I don't think I've ever known how long a kernel compile takes on my machines.

Have none of you heard of nice, & or screen? You don't even need to know that the computer is compiling a kernel in the background at all and can carry on working. If you're that pressed for time, start it before you go to bed, or when you go out in the morning.

I have a 1GHz 512Mb linux desktop and it's more than happy sitting compiling a kernel in the background while I do all my work (using things like DreamWeaver and Word via Wine, CD and DVD burning and conversion etc.etc.). The schools I work in have thrown away more powerful machines than that without even bothering to try to sell them because it's so "worthless". For Windows XP, that may be so.

Or are you all running Linux in dual-boot and are desperate to get back into Windows as quickly as possible?

This is the part I love about Linux as a whole - the machine is doing so much in one small box and yet is still perfectly useable and responsive. I can compile a kernel and play a DVD using *software* decoding without a single glitch (I used to have a RealMagic Hollywood+ card back when I only had a 233MHz). A single old computer can be firewall, router, file server, print server, mail gatherer, spam filter, SSH/VNC server, updating it's own software, running a desktop GUI, "emulating" large Windows programs, burning a CD, compiling a new kernel, playing MPEG video and everything just works and responds.

My computer spends most of it's time doing stuff in the background, overnight or just between my keystrokes. The actual percentage of clock cycles and RAM that it needs to give me to make me happy when I click a button is puny compared to what it's doing all the time, all day, every day.

In Slackware, a few nice's inserted into the cron scripts etc. means that even if I work through to the times when my computer would normally be indexing my filesystem or archiving my files, it's still perfectly responsive. It's so greedy of me to make it do all this stuff and then expect it to stop everything, recognise I've clicked a button and load my program before I get bored but IT DOES IT.

I go to work and the same computer is accessed from there and used as a proxy bypass for all my browsing and downloading from work (I work in primary schools, so everything's filtered), as a remote desktop, as a file store, compiling and downloading whatever software I need to (about one item per day, everything from OpenTTD or some obscure utility to a new kernel) so that I don't flood the connection that I'm on but instead letting it download those 4Gb ISO's from home while I'm at work. It seeds Bittorrents of those same ISO's at times (though that kills my outbound connections).

It filters my girlfriend's XP computer's mail, web, and general packet scrubbing, it runs and controls my wireless (it actually acts as a wireless AP), it runs my shared drives and printers and even keeps my PHP/MySQL present wishlist accessible to all my family over SSL HTTP just in case they suddenly decide they need to buy me a present. It's constantly connected to AIM, MSN, ICQ, YIM, Jabber and IRC so that I just log into THAT one computer to see my messages with complete history logs rather than having to log out and log in somewhere else. It even runs my bloody CCTV camera via a WinTV card, detecting motion and emailing me a snapshot or MPEG file whenever someone walks past my front door (though that can be very CPU intensive so it's only on when I'm not at the computer itself as it needs to respond realtime).

All that and I start compiling stuff before I go to work or remotely and it just does it constantly all the time in the background. New 2.6.15.5 stable release? It's downloading and compiling almost the second it's released, done within an hour or two (I wouldn't know or care... so long as it's done before I get home and want to play with it). I even edit the lilo.conf file remotely and initiate reboots to get it loading the new kernel before I even manage to get home (but I don't like rebooting mainly because it means I have to restart all these background downloads etc.).

A modern PC takes about 20 minutes to compile a kernel. My old obsolete junk can do it in a couple of hours but it's not like I need to TOUCH anything to get it to do that. I don't spend hours deciding shall I have this module or not... just throw them all in, save yourself an hour of messing about for the cost of a tiny bit of diskspace by modern standards (I compile virtually an all-modules config and my primary Slack drive is 10Gb and that contains EVERY bit of software I use so don't tell me that modules use a lot of space... my actual data is about 250Gb on various other drives).

Do the maths - spending an hour choosing which modules to compile is a million times more than that change will save you in terms of CPU cycles over the lifetime of that kernel on your machine.

If you are the sort of person who MUST have the latest kernel, set up some scripts which background-check and download new kernel releases (kernel.org's RSS is good for this), make a new dir, compile with the old config, even then wait for someone to change to it using screen and say yes to any config changes (wouldn't want to enable something that was dangerous!), then it could go back off and compile the kernel and modules, move them into the right places, archive the old ones, change the symlinks, edit lilo and just wait for a reboot.

Make your computer WORK for a living but do it in one OS so that you don't waste time chopping and changing and worrying about when your kernel will finish compiling so you can reboot into Windows and go play Counterstrike. People are throwing away 1GHz+ computers that are ideal for 99.99% of anything you'd ever want to do on a Linux machine.

is there a link where we can see a summary of your post??

jomen · 03-02-2006, 06:46 AM

It looked like we were comparing - but my point was to show the OP that it is not that bad /not that much time compared to looking for another solution for what he wanted - and I was commenting about a thing I did not know before.
A lot of assumtions in your post BTW - I know they where questions technically - but not to be perceived as such.
But thanks for sharing your opinion.

win32sux · 03-02-2006, 08:11 AM

i think i forgot to mention that i'm using linux 2.4 and not 2.6... specifically, i'm using 2.4.33-pre2... i assume 2.6 probably takes longer to compile, right??

i sometimes compile in an xterm but usually i just do it from runlevel 3... i also don't do anything else while i'm compiling, so that likely speeds things up...

the main thing which contributes to my relatively low compile time i think is the sort of stripped-down config i use... i try to disable all the stuff i don't use and hence less time is wasted...

lately, while upgrading to the latest prepatches i haven't really had to do much in menuconfig - oldconfig has been enough... but later i will likely decide to eliminate more stuff or tweak the config somewhat...

like i said before, the time it takes my kernel and modules to compile on my 1.2ghz CPU / 512MB RAM box is about the time it takes to smoke one cigarrete (aprox. 10 minutes - probably less)... next time i compile i'll take a more exact measurement...

basically i have a usb printer (hp deskjet 3420), a digital camera (fuji finepix 1300), a ps/2 keyboard and mouse, a c-media soundcard, an nvidia geforce4 (64mb) video card, a realtek 8139 nic, an sis900 nic, a 52x/32x/52x LG ide cd-rw, an AMD athlon 1.2ghz CPU, 512MB DDR266 ram, and a couple samsung 40gb ide drives (5400rpm)... i've disabled my parallel and serial ports as i don't ever use them...

the first thing i did when doing my config (i based myself on patrick's) was to disable the experimental options (CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL)... i mention this because doing this in itself eliminated quite a bit of configuration time, etc... slackware's kernels ship with this turned on cuz obviously a lot of people need some of the experimental features, but luckily i'm not one of them - my setup is quite primitive...

anyways, here's what my current config looks like (i've eliminated all the commented lines to save space) and what my hardware looks like also... i'm posting this in case anyone wants to compare and stuff...

Code:

cat /boot/config-2.4.33-pre2 | grep -v ^# | grep -v ^$
CONFIG_X86=y
CONFIG_UID16=y
CONFIG_MODULES=y
CONFIG_KMOD=y
CONFIG_M486=y
CONFIG_X86_WP_WORKS_OK=y
CONFIG_X86_INVLPG=y
CONFIG_X86_CMPXCHG=y
CONFIG_X86_XADD=y
CONFIG_X86_BSWAP=y
CONFIG_X86_POPAD_OK=y
CONFIG_RWSEM_XCHGADD_ALGORITHM=y
CONFIG_X86_L1_CACHE_SHIFT=4
CONFIG_X86_USE_STRING_486=y
CONFIG_X86_ALIGNMENT_16=y
CONFIG_X86_PPRO_FENCE=y
CONFIG_X86_MCE=y
CONFIG_NOHIGHMEM=y
CONFIG_MTRR=y
CONFIG_NET=y
CONFIG_PCI=y
CONFIG_PCI_GOANY=y
CONFIG_PCI_BIOS=y
CONFIG_PCI_DIRECT=y
CONFIG_ISA=y
CONFIG_PCI_NAMES=y
CONFIG_SYSVIPC=y
CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT=y
CONFIG_SYSCTL=y
CONFIG_KCORE_ELF=y
CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF=y
CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC=m
CONFIG_PM=y
CONFIG_APM=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM_SIZE=7777
CONFIG_PACKET=y
CONFIG_NETFILTER=y
CONFIG_UNIX=y
CONFIG_INET=y
CONFIG_SYN_COOKIES=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_CONNTRACK=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_FTP=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_AMANDA=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TFTP=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_IRC=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_IPTABLES=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_LIMIT=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MAC=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_PKTTYPE=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MARK=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MULTIPORT=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TOS=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_RECENT=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_ECN=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_DSCP=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_AH_ESP=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_LENGTH=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TTL=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TCPMSS=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_HELPER=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_STATE=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_CONNTRACK=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_FILTER=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REJECT=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_NEEDED=y
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MASQUERADE=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REDIRECT=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_AMANDA=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_IRC=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_FTP=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_TFTP=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_MANGLE=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_TOS=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_ECN=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_DSCP=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MARK=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_LOG=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_ULOG=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_TCPMSS=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_ARPTABLES=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_ARPFILTER=m
CONFIG_IP_NF_ARP_MANGLE=m
CONFIG_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDISK=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDECD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEPCI=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_GENERIC=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y
CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIS5513=y
CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y
CONFIG_SCSI=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=m
CONFIG_SD_EXTRA_DEVS=40
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SR=m
CONFIG_SR_EXTRA_DEVS=2
CONFIG_CHR_DEV_SG=m
CONFIG_SCSI_DEBUG_QUEUES=y
CONFIG_NETDEVICES=y
CONFIG_NET_ETHERNET=y
CONFIG_NET_PCI=y
CONFIG_8139TOO=m
CONFIG_SIS900=m
CONFIG_INPUT=m
CONFIG_INPUT_KEYBDEV=m
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV=m
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV_SCREEN_X=1024
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV_SCREEN_Y=768
CONFIG_VT=y
CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS=y
CONFIG_UNIX98_PTY_COUNT=512
CONFIG_MOUSE=y
CONFIG_PSMOUSE=y
CONFIG_AGP=m
CONFIG_AGP_SIS=y
CONFIG_REISERFS_FS=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS=m
CONFIG_JBD=m
CONFIG_FAT_FS=m
CONFIG_VFAT_FS=m
CONFIG_CRAMFS=m
CONFIG_TMPFS=y
CONFIG_RAMFS=y
CONFIG_ISO9660_FS=y
CONFIG_JOLIET=y
CONFIG_PROC_FS=y
CONFIG_DEVPTS_FS=y
CONFIG_EXT2_FS=m
CONFIG_MSDOS_PARTITION=y
CONFIG_NLS=y
CONFIG_NLS_DEFAULT="cp437"
CONFIG_NLS_CODEPAGE_437=y
CONFIG_NLS_ISO8859_1=m
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_VIDEO_SELECT=y
CONFIG_SOUND=m
CONFIG_SOUND_CMPCI=m
CONFIG_SOUND_CMPCI_CM8738=y
CONFIG_SOUND_CMPCI_SPEAKERS=2
CONFIG_USB=m
CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS=y
CONFIG_USB_OHCI=m
CONFIG_USB_STORAGE=m
CONFIG_USB_PRINTER=m
CONFIG_LOG_BUF_SHIFT=0
CONFIG_CRYPTO=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_HMAC=y
CONFIG_CRYPTO_NULL=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_MD4=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_MD5=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA1=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA256=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA512=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_WP512=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_DES=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_BLOWFISH=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_TWOFISH=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_SERPENT=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_AES=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_CAST5=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_CAST6=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_TEA=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_KHAZAD=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_ANUBIS=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_ARC4=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_DEFLATE=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_MICHAEL_MIC=m
CONFIG_CRYPTO_TEST=m
CONFIG_CRC32=m
CONFIG_ZLIB_INFLATE=m
CONFIG_ZLIB_DEFLATE=m

if anyone has any suggestions on how i can trim it down even more it would be greatly appreciated!!!

my current kernel image size is 744K:

Code:

bash-3.00$ du -h /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.33-pre2 
744K    /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.33-pre2

here's what my box looks like at this precise moment in the time-space continuum:

Code:

bash-3.00$ uname -r
2.4.33-pre2
bash-3.00$ /sbin/lspci 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 735 Host (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS85C503/5513 (LPC Bridge)
00:02.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 07)
00:02.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 07)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev d0)
00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 90)
00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0f.0 Multimedia audio controller: C-Media Electronics Inc CM8738 (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev a4)
bash-3.00$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 6
model           : 4
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 1194.931
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips        : 2385.51

bash-3.00$ /sbin/lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Tainted: P  
nvidia               3785196   6
ipt_LOG                 3448   1 (autoclean)
ipt_limit                856   1 (autoclean)
ipt_state                504   5 (autoclean)
iptable_mangle          2072   0 (autoclean) (unused)
iptable_nat            16998   0 (autoclean) (unused)
ip_conntrack           18564   0 (autoclean) [ipt_state iptable_nat]
iptable_filter          1644   1 (autoclean)
ip_tables              12000   8 [ipt_LOG ipt_limit ipt_state iptable_mangle iptable_nat iptable_filter]
ide-scsi                9392   0
scsi_mod               59288   1 [ide-scsi]
sis900                 12908   1
8139too                12904   1
mii                     2272   0 [8139too]
crc32                   2880   0 [sis900 8139too]
cmpci                  26832   0
soundcore               3396   2 [cmpci]
printer                 7648   0
usb-ohci               19400   0 (unused)
usbcore                58316   0 [printer usb-ohci]
agpgart                13256   3
apm                     9452   2

rkrishna · 03-03-2006, 02:44 AM

thnks for the grep command options and cpuinfo

Swift&Smart · 03-05-2006, 11:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tobyl

If you still have the kernel source dir, and a .config file there, then reconfigure with your new modules. So long as you dont change any 'compiled in' stuff, a make modules && make modules_install will simply add the new modules.
If you have qt installed, its make xconfig (my favourite anyhow), this loads you previous config, so you just add a module or two, save, and make modules && make modules_install.
This works for me anyway, and takes even less than 10 mins!
tobyl

toby,thanks for your reply first.
However,when I made modules and install last night,it seems to me the computer re-made my modules and install again.Why did I know this?It took quite some time when I just added few modules.

By the way,how can I speed up the compile time and make module time?
(I have excluded unnecessary module or build-in).

Thanks.

cwwilson721 · 03-06-2006, 12:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by win32sux

like i said before, the time it takes my kernel and modules to compile on my 1.2ghz CPU / 512MB RAM box is about the time it takes to smoke one cigarrete (aprox. 10 minutes - probably less)... next time i compile i'll take a more exact measurement...

Personally, I like that frame of reference....

But the modern day health nuts may not understand the time reference....

BTW... I'm using a 1.3ghz Intel Celeron w/256 MB RAM, takes about the same. Less if I just change one or two things in the config (Why start fresh every time if it's just a small tweak?). On my desktop, a 3Ghz Intel and 2G DDR2 ram, about 5-7 minutes...

tobyl · 03-06-2006, 01:26 PM

Hi Swift&Smart

Now you mention it, I have had times when it just seems to add the new modules, and others when it seems to renew all the modules. Even in the latter case it is still much faster than recompiling the whole kernel.
There is a way of just adding specific modules, I know this, because alsa modules can be added later by compiling from the alsa source instead of the kernel source. Nvidia and others do the same.

The linux kernel docs give info on how to do this, see /kernel_source_dir/linux-2.6.x.x/Documentation/kbuild/modules.txt
but it is a bit tricky to get your head around (for me anyway, though I have done it in the past), and it definitely takes longer than 10 mins!

tobyl

jomen · 03-06-2006, 01:57 PM

It is about the way "make" works - there are Makefiles... and make goes over them and checks if everything they reference is already up to date.
If it is, it will not compile again the source-code because it would be exactly the same as it already is.
If it is not up to date - as for instance, you added a module which was not compiled before - it will compile this modules code and everything (every bit of code) that this module depends on if it needs to be different in order for the module to work.
That was a rather incomplete and simplified version of how make and Makefiles work. Read about it in a boot about programming...

Alien_Hominid · 03-06-2006, 01:59 PM

ledow I agree with you, but messing with modules can teach you a lot about different parts of computer, and when smth is not working you must go and read why, search for solution and etc...