[plug] Recompilation fo the whole box and fluffy dice...

[John Summerfield]

> EverythingLinux has a pack for RH6.1 including BIN(i386), SRC, and Updates
> (including ISDN, Freshmeat, SSH, and other security updates)
> I'd like to recompile every package for i686 (naturally). Has anyone here
> had experience compiling each package one by one, from source?
> I've also got the Mandrake 6.1 BIN i586 CD and it is noticably faster so the
> optimizations do work (that and the hard disk speed up as described on this
> list - thanks :-)


I've not tried to recompile a whole distribution, but I have tried to 
rebuild a lot of rpms. Many are broken; I suspect Red Hat builds 
everything as root, which I do not wish to do.

I have found rpms that try to update the running system when one runs
	rpm --rebuild
That's probably okay in Red Hat Software's environment, it's not here 
where building a package does NOT mean I want it installed on the build 
system.


There's at least one bug in rpm (on RHL 6.1) where it can, in some 
circumstances, package from the running system's libraries having built 
correctly into another location.


Even if all goes well, it will take days. There is no prospect of you 
recovering the time between now and the next major RHL release.

If you actually need any improvement compiling to your target CPU would 
give you, go buy a faster CPU. It's quicker, and if you value your time, 
cheaper.

Take this system as an example. It's getting a pretty fair flogging, and 
I'm considering my upgrade options. Notice that it's running over 30% CPU 
usage, day & night, for over 48 days.

[summer at emu 1999_11]$ procinfo
Linux 2.2.12 (root at emu.os2.ami.com.au) (gcc 2.7.2.3) #2 Sat Oct 2 21:20:39 
WST 1999 [emu.os2.ami.com.au]

Memory:      Total        Used        Free      Shared     Buffers      
Cached
Mem:         63124       44288       18836        8140        6240       
20288
Swap:       131064       29476      101588

Bootup: Mon Oct 18 16:22:10 1999    Load average: 1.07 1.03 1.12 2/83 29478

user  :  11d 17:31:02.70  24.1%  page in :178378455  disk 1:  5058952r 
6943668w
nice  :       4:38:37.77   0.4%  page out:112378754  disk 2:  2929546r 
2931772w
system:   3d  2:40:00.17   6.4%  swap in : 14430232  disk 3: 
10767188r14099899w
idle  :  33d 14:56:01.86  69.1%  swap out:  2216506  disk 4:   228374r     
  0w
uptime:  48d 15:45:42.49         context :546135030

irq  0: 420394250 timer                 irq  7: 112012201 parport0         

irq  1:     94217 keyboard              irq  9:  12220892 SMC EPIC/100     

irq  2:         0 cascade [4]           irq 10:   6503495 eth0             

irq  3:   1802844 serial                irq 13:         0 fpu              

irq  4: 337297601                       irq 14:  30709436 ide0             

irq  5:         1 soundblaster          irq 15:  56702958 ide1             

irq  6:         3                      

[summer at emu 1999_11]$ 


If I recompiled all my software for that CPU (a P133) (or more likely, the 
most important 2-3 packages) and gained as much as ten percent 
improvement, what would be the real benefit? I drop CPU usage from around 
30% to 27%. Whoopee.

-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.