[distcc] A way to validate the distcc setup?

Oscar Fudd ofudd at speed-test.net
Sun May 25 06:45:42 GMT 2003


Hi!

Just downloaded and installed distcc, and I like it a lot, thanks!

Now I'm curious about testing.  What I want to do is compile my linux
kernel, using various machines that I administer over the net.

  1. I want to see if I'm successfully connecting to the distccd
programs.
  -- by this I mean, if I've accidentally added a machine that's halfway
around the world, at the end of a serial cable, down a well, it's going
to be a veeeerrrrrrry slow connection.  If my compile is going to hang
waiting for something from this server, I'm going to be annoyed (at
myself).

  2. I want to see if the compilers on the various machines are working
right.
  -- The servers may not be all running the same version of gcc.  I'd
like to compile the same code on all the servers and compare them to
what my local machine produces.  This would detect bad cross-compiler
setups too.
  -- I recall that the SETI at HOME project sends the same blocks to
several different computers, and compares the results that come back
before saving the results.  This guards against accidental (or
malicious) introduction of bad data by a single source.  I'd like to do
that here too, if only to guard against bad versions of gcc or bad
memory.
  -- It may be beneficial to have this compiler 'self-test' only at the
beginning of a big compile, and periodically every 5 minutes after
that.  This would catch misconfigurations and (some) memory errors while
retaining most of the speed.

  3. Is the distccd program always necessary?
  -- It'd be neat to have distcc just do:
    tar c inputfile.i | ssh user at host 'tar x; gcc inputfile.i -c
inputfile.o; tar c inputfile.o ; rm inputfile.i inputfile.o' | tar x
    It skips a lot of steps, at a cost of 25% of the speed, if I read
right.

(I'm not on the list; could you Cc me?  Thanks!)
-- 
Oscar Fudd <ofudd at speed-test.net>




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