HOWTO: Use a Windows box as a distcc server for linux.

ylon · n00b Joined: 04 Jun 2003 Posts: 5

Well Kick, I'm not sure I'd be able to help at this moment as I've not gotten PowerFactor's steps to work thus far with newer apps in the current portage tree. Perhaps we can get those problems that we currently may see worked out and then get this rolling, as I think its much more convenient as well as reliable than following a document each time. Also, perhaps the gentoo on cygwin project would be of help:

http://www.toso-digitals.de/gentoo/

If we could get a joint e-build going there that would be great. For folks with access to bunches of systems it would be rather easy for them to deploy something like this in which they could run the ebuild on the linux side to get the files necessary, then tftp or ssh over to that linux box to pull necessary libs and get the cygwin ebuild running and then have some sort of menu built on the linux side that would easily walk you though popping in the distcc and make flags for the number of processors on your network (and when you upgrade to more boxen)... Anyways, I could see some neat things coming of this. It'd be easy for many linux machines, but this would be handy any way you look at it. Also, we can incorporate Mac OS X into the mix.

jago25_98 · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 180

Don't know about you but I find doing this stuff on Windows a bit of a pain; not what I have windows for.

A great big .exe or .zip that does it all would be a dream. Could it just be a case of combining:

into one place (.exe / .zip)?

Veto · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 83

I have created a new verstion of my my cross-linux toolkit dist for Cygwin. It is a complete toolchain and utilities for makign a Cygwin host a distcc host. It includes:

binutils-2.14.90.0.6
glibc-2.3.2
gcc-3.2.3 (from -r3)
distcc-2.11.1

This 27MB .tar.bz2 can be downloaded and untarred into /usr and it will create a local directory (or overlay your own). In /usr/local/bin you can find a script called 'mkservice' which will install distcc as a NT service (as long as you have cygrunsrv installed).

Once you've done this and started the distcc service (net start distccd) you should have a complete distcc host ready to run. I have tested it by compling the 2.4.22 kernel only on my Cygwin-Distcc hosts and it completes fine.

It can be found at ftp://ftp.dympna.com/pub

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Veto

jago25_98 · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 180

veto:

can't seem to connect to ftp://ftp.dympna.com/pub ...?

That new cross compiler sounds handy. How's about a small httpd server if that makes things simpler.

Veto · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 83

Ugh, I've fixed this problem...the ftp server should be available now. Sorry about that.

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Veto

john.robinson · n00b Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 24

[fx] *BANG* *BANG* *BANG* [/fx of head against wall]

Wish I'd read to the end of the thread. I did do a month or so ago, the last time I checked it out, but now I was feeling brave enough to have a go. gcc is now compiling, but sure as fate it'll be all wrong, and I'll be better off using the tarball.

Thanks very much for your efforts, Veto and PowerFactor, and for keeping things up to date!

I do wonder, though, since distcc only passes pre-processed C source over, and Cygwin's own gcc binary package is only 3Mb, whether we can get this down to 3Mb or so? Or am I being really stupid

and we really do need all the other binutils, libs and includes?

Also, if I understand ylon's suggestion right, that means (i) building a cross-compiler from gentoo to cygwin targets, so that we can (ii) build the cross-compiler for cygwin? That might be quite cool, but just a little exhausting for our systems. OTOH once you've done it once, you'll have a distributed cc which can do it, so it'll be quicker the next time

john.robinson · n00b Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 24

Oh darn.

john.robinson · n00b Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 24

I whinged about gcc not working, but that doesn't seem to affect distcc. btw that gcc was i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc, I had the path etc. set properly, and the same results happen when you say `i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc --target=i686-pc-linux-gnu -o hello.o hello.c`, but I don't care; I think it's because hello.c says #include <stdio.h> which is of course done by distcc before the source is passed over. Anyway, ignorant musings over.

Happy New Year all!

Veto · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 83

I just wanted to let you guys know that I've updated my Cygwin hosted Linux distcc/gcc toolchain to 1.2 (012104). This toolchain will allow you to use your Windows boxes as Distcc compile hosts for your Linux machines. It is specifically designed for Gentoo Stable with the addition of distcc-2.12.1. I would guess it will work on other distributions, but I don't have any feedback on this.

The toolchain contains:

binutils-2.14.90.0.7
glibc-2.3.2-r9 (Gentoo patched and built with linuxthreads)
gcc-3.2.3-r3 (Gentoo patched)
distcc-2.12.1

This 25MB distribution can be found at ftp://ftp.dympna.com/pub/cross-linux-012104-stripped.tar.bz2

To install just cd /usr/local && tar xvjf /some/where/cross-linux-012104-stripped.tar.bz2. Read the README for making distcc a Windows Service so it'll run transparently and startup.

jago25_98 · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 180

So ftp://ftp.dympna.com/pub/cross-linux-012104-stripped.tar.bz2 is all a Windows user needs to be a distccd server?

Cygwin still need to be installed?

Is there a way we can make it simpler? - just double click would be best, if not, .zip?

Veto · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 83

You will still need a installed Cygwin install. I won't be doing an .exe or a .zip, but you are welcome to. 90% of the work is in actually getting the toolchain configured, built and installed properly and then into the tarball.

Downloading the file and reading the README might be a good start.

Harri · n00b Joined: 12 Apr 2002 Posts: 21 Location: Helsinki

Veto,

Thanks a million for this. It works great, and because of you I installed Cygwin for the first time and looked into it also.

warlock55 · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 8

Hi,
I got 3 box: 2 gentoo and 1 windows. I wanna run distcc on all of them.
On the Windows machine, I didnt use Veto file. I installed Cygwin and Gcc-3.2.3 and distcc.2.11.1 successfully... and distcc works fine on all of them. However, there're packages that the Windows machine will break the compilation like Python-2.3. It compile fine between 2 Gentoo systems. And there's packages like gaim-0.75 which distcc between 2 Gentoo systems also break the compilation.
the errors said: distcc on local host fail...
I'm wondering if the error is because of my wrong setup or distcc...
All the machine are using the same version of gcc and distcc.
Planning to compile openoffice tonight using distcc on 3 systems.

Veto · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 83

warlock55,

Are you using a consistently patched gcc and a consistently patched glibc? I've seen similar issues with the Cygwin/DistCC compiles when I used the plain distribution of either gcc or glibc. These went away when I switched to using the patched Gentoo sources to build the tools.

Hari,

Glad to see you liked it! It's actually pretty handy having Cygwin on a Windows box anyways.

-Veto

warlock55 · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 8

Oh Thanks alot Veto,
That's the reason, I'm using the plain distribution of gcc and distcc on the Windows machine...

gralves

gralves · Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 2:40 pm Post subject:

I've followed the instructions and I'having this error when I try to emerge something:

Veto · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 83

Thanks for the tip gralves, I'll add that to the next go at my toolchain.

Also, I don't have any scripts to do it, I do it by hand each time...and yes, it can be a pain in the ass. It's a 3-4hour ordeal each time with at least one recompile and some breakages to fix. I think it was the last go that I found that the plain gcc would compile fine, but the -r3 wouldn't. I knew that I had to make the -r3 work since a plain gcc will puke on some code and on top of that, it's the 'right thing (tm)' to do.

-Veto

rk187 · Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2004 7:44 pm Post subject:

maybe colinux with Gentoo...

http://www.colinux.org

Trejkaz · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 1:30 am Post subject:

I'm wondering if there are any pitfalls to watch out for with respect to multiple architectures (in the GCC -march sense of the word.)

The install instructions specify i686-pc-linux-gnu, now... GCC accepts -march=athlon-xp supposedly so would it make more sense if my Gentoo install were setup for that architecture, to setup things differently? Or does the setup descripted result in the Gentoo box passing -march=athlon-xp to the Cygwin daemon?

Also, what is the deal if you _do_ have multiple architectures around the network? Does a single distccd installation need to cater for just one sort? Or does it switch between the directories depending on what the client machines ask it to perform?

dewhite · Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 9:37 pm Post subject:

dewhite · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 3:22 am Post subject:

reading the readme a few times over really made this more clear to me. I think I've got it done and working now proper.

Is there a good way to know if it's working? Should I just watch task manager to see if its using process time?
_________________
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odessit · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 10:04 am Post subject:

You can just look at the task manager in Windows.
distcc has monitoring utility but I never used it.

What -j is everybody using?
I have 2 CPUS on 100-BT switched) LAN
localhost P3-866m and the cygwin host with XP1925MHz

-j3 barely touches the XP, ~30% with rare spikes to ~85%
-j4 does it better with ~60% util. and spikes up to ~90%

Should I try -j5/6 to load the cygwin-distcc even more?
Can this break anything? (<-linux nub paranoiah)

BTW, Thank you PowerFactor and Veto and other developers for working on this project :!:

odessit · Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2004 1:27 am Post subject: Bootable distcc CD

here's the link I found.
Looks like somebody created knoppix bootable CD with distcc on it.
fairly handy for the systems without cygwin or the hard drive

http://opendoorsoftware.com/cgi/http.pl?p=distccKNOPPIX

dewhite · Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2004 3:55 am Post subject:

2 questions...

1. Will that knoppix cd boot with nvnet support for my NF7-S mobo? Or, is there a way to make it work with said adapter?

2. If not, is there anyway you could repackage the bz2 image with gcc 3.3.2 instead of 3.2.3 for us ~x86 users veto?
_________________
Work FS: R7-5700g | 2x16Gb DDR4 | 500Gb NVMe LUKS root | 2x 8TB RAID1
Home FS: R7-1700x | 2x8Gb DDR4 | 275Gb M.2 SATA LUKS root | 2x 14TB RAID1