[distcc] Distcc over internet

[Matias D'Ambrosio]

On Wednesday 27 February 2008 06:43:40 JJDaNiMoTh wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Me and my friends are trying to set up a compiling cluster over
> internet ( all with ADSL 4 Mbit/256Kbit ) with distcc. The first big
> problem is the timeout of connection; some people aren't connected same
> time, and distcc try to senf them jobs, and it wait 5 minutes before
> handling down the connection; In the man page I see that timeout isn't
> coded, but in this mailing list I see many patch ( from 2003 ). Any
> news about this point?
>
> What is the best configuration set to compile over internet? We're
> reached this point: distccd executed with very low priority ( nice
> 19 ), DISTCC_HOSTS with localhost first and then other machine, with
> lzo compression enabled and {number of CPU} limit for each machine.
> With 3 machines, the most powerful system loose 9 seconds and the
> smallest gain 5 seconds. Do you think that these number will increased
> if more machines will be added ( We want to improve time compilation,
> not to loose :D )? The best -j[NUMBER] in this case is
> number_of_total_cpu * 2 or something else?
>
 The -jNUMBER is hard to get right in a situation like yours, since it depends 
on a number of factors.
 I have made a modification of distcc to add bzip2 support, I have been 
meaning to send the patches for a while. It might be of use to you depending 
on the speed of your internet connection.
 As a quick fix for the problem of some computers not being online, you might 
run a script to generate the hosts list before each compilation that simply 
pings each server.