Gentoo General Compilation Tips & Tricks

[atatut]

Hi,

Do you have the feeling your computer could do much more when compiling?
Does the "top" then press "1" command show that your new CPU with lot of cores sleeps much of the time?

Here's a guideline to "boost" a bit your “emerge” process:

First edit your /etc/make.conf with the following:

MAKEOPTS="-j256"

Yes, this sounds crazy, 256 processes at the same time.
But have in mind that this setting will:
- not work on all of your packages, most of them will compile but some will fail stupidly. So take care to leave a commented MAKEOPTS="-jx" where “x” is depending on the number of cpus/cores +1. Even more, some won’t compile at all but with a safe MAKEOPTS="-j1" like gnome-panel. So have a /etc/make.conf like this:

#MAKEOPTS=”-j1” #FOR FRAGILE PACKAGES that won’t compile with some other MAKEOPTS
#MAKEOPTS=”-jx” #FOR PACKAGES that won’t compile with some crazy MAKEOPTS or when your system lacks the RAM it deserves
MAKEOPTS=”-j256” #Optimized MAKEOPTS for systems with lot of cores and RAM

- eat a lot of RAM as this setting will basically launch the maximum processes for compilation allowed by the package being emerged.
- Make your computer unable to compile fast and start using the swap if for example you’ve booted your system in XEN and allowed your DOMAIN0 to only use the standard 256M in your /boot/grub/grub.conf. So before you correct your configuration within your XEN kernel, just make sure you reboot your computer with your /boot/grub/grub.conf altered so that your DOMAIN0 has almost all the physical RAM available. Don’t worry, once you’re sure all your packages are configured and compiled with the good USE flags you’ll just have to revert the DOMAIN0 RAM to the standard 256M. But just take the time to perfectly prepare your XEN system before you start installing 2000 VM, leaving 512M of RAM available to be able to start your test DOMAINU should be enough.

You will notice that even with that “crazy” MAKEOPTS you won’t be able to use your cores to the max. With the latest Xeon I was just able to make each one of my 8 cores work at 27%, having all of my cores sleeping at 73%!!! Maybe some packages may be corrected to allow more processes to be launched at the same time during compilation. If your system if brand new, just make sure you have at least 4GB of RAM on your system and then your may use this MAKEOPTS with no fear.

As always, linux gurus are strongly invited to share their knowledge on this case, so that newbie’s have the whole picture in mind before they even start about thinking purchasing a new system.
_________________
“When I left you, I was but the learner, now I am the master.”

[azuriel]

Hate to be a downer, but is this actually faster? Creating 256 compile threads means there's a lot more overhead, which will increase your CPU load sure but probably not translate into a faster compile. Most packages can't benefit from compiling 256 things at once, probably not even 8 things at once. Check out the distcc website:

[NeddySeagoon]

atatut,

Please don't advise this.

First -j (with no number) means unlimited parallel makes.
Secondly, there is a limit which varies from package to package and machine to machine where performace gets worse with increasing MAKEOPS.

Its useful to start at -j[cores+1] and increase from there until things slow down, than back it off one.
ebuilds should protect you from parallel makes breaking builds. If you find that they don't, file a bug.

The slowdown is caused by swapping, which you can see in top and cache thrashing, which you can't see.
Cache thrashing happens when data in the CPU cache is displaced by a task switch, such as swapping between compiling one thing and another. The cache has to be reloaded when the original thread gets the CPU again.
Other than reducing the effectiveness of the cache (the number of cache misses increases) its harmless.

In short - everyone needs to test for themselves.

A word of warning ... in the limit, the system will use all of memory and swap. What happens next is not a pretty sight. The kernel will kill tasks so it can allocate memory for itself. You will probably want to reboot to ensure you have a sane state when that happens.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[atatut]

Well, honestly on my system I can see the change from -j9 to -j256, this allowed me to compile from liveCD to launching my VM inside Xen, in less than 12 hours. I don't know but having xorg-x11 compiled in a few seconds instead of hours is enough to make me think this -j256 does a good job. But maybe one of the gurus can set some benchmark test like trying to emerge the same harmless package on different hardware configurations so that we can start having a better idea on how to optimize everyone’s computer and kick badly some Vista ass and leave it far behind.

I'm sorry to be so bothering about looking to grab the max from my computer, even the last 0.0000000000000000001% of extra power it can give, but it’s Linux fault, not mine.
_________________
“When I left you, I was but the learner, now I am the master.”

[Ma3oxuct]

[ichbinsisyphos]

haha, sorry, not to offend anyone, but i had to read the thread twice to assure myself its not a joke

[Ma3oxuct]

[ichbinsisyphos]

to give you an idea, why it is funny, take a look here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-309752.html


that aside you are of course encouraged to do your own experiments and dont stick to the recommended settings all of the time, its also a good idea to share your thoughts on the forum.

i dont think you will achieve much, when you raise the number of compilation threads that high.
here, on my core duo T2500 (2GHz Yonah), every compile (if its not currently occupied with configuration, downloading of the sources etc) always uses at least 1 core at around 100%. thats why -j2 is necessary to utilize the second core on dual core systems, and maybe another one to fill the gap when one threads ends earlier. im too lazy to benchmark, so i just stick with -j3

if your compile doesnt use single cores at around max, theres a bottleneck somewhere else i guess.

[ichbinsisyphos]

if the harddisk is the bottleneck (i dont know if this is realistic) and you have a lot of ram to waste, you should try to mount /var/tmp/portage as a ramdisk. lets see, if this way you can make better use of your 8 cores.

[azuriel]

Benchmarking says that compiling in a ramdisk provides negligible speedups for most people, so do your own tests before committing to it.
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Adopt an unanswered post
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The folly of mistaking a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us. -Valery

[atatut]

What about deleting this thread and just keeping the title linked with this other thread?:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-309752.html

There's much more information to talk about.

Don't worry, there's no way to offend someone when talking about knowledge, except idiots. As you can see under my nickname, I'm a noob, noobs do ask stupid things until they are noobs no more.

The idea is not attach wings to my system in the hope it will go faster, but to have the best stable system using the system resources at best, in other words; the best balance between speed and stability. And to achieve that you need to ask those who have greater knowledge, even if it means "looking stupid", otherwise if no one ever asks something we'll all end up inserting a Redmond OS cd-rom in our computer and keep clicking the "next" button.
_________________
“When I left you, I was but the learner, now I am the master.”

[NeddySeagoon]

atatut,

You have missed the point of the word "optimise". It means "best compromise".
Whats best for one user, one one situation will not be best for others.

Worse (for everyone) as I've already said, there is no single optimum set up for any particular user.
Gentoo does give you lots of things to play with though.

Thread locked in favour of https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-309752.html
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.