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

Message

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Sat May 22, 2004 5:32 am

There is a new binutils out...I'll be rebuilding the toolkit soon, does anyone still want the -history- out of it?

-veto

ryceck · Post by **ryceck** » Thu May 27, 2004 6:22 pm

I got a Windows XP pc here with cygwin on it ofcourse and after a lot of tweaking and doing and using the cross-tools.bz2 presented here i got distcc running at it, but.....

I get this weird error when compiling from my gentoo-box:

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gcc -fno-strict-aliasing -DNDEBUG -O3 -march=athlon -funroll-loops -pipe -fPIC -DALL_STATIC=1 -Ic/i386 -I/usr/include/python2.3 -c c/psyco.c -o build/temp.linux-i686-2.3/c/psyco.o
cc1: warning: -fPIC ignored for target (all code is position independent)
gcc -pthread -shared -O3 -march=athlon -funroll-loops -pipe build/temp.linux-i686-2.3/c/psyco.o -o build/lib.linux-i686-2.3/psyco/_psyco.so
build/temp.linux-i686-2.3/c/psyco.o: file not recognized: File format not recognized
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
distcc[28006] ERROR: compile (null) on localhost failed
error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

!!! ERROR: dev-python/psyco-1.2 failed.
!!! Function distutils_src_compile, Line 38, Exitcode 1
!!! compilation failed

The "cc1" it mentions here is the compiler from Cygwin.... but it seems like that one cant compile the .o file...
I tried this with multiple emerges (centericq for example) and it all gives the same error. With distcc disabled or with this host removed from my distcc/hosts list it does work so the problem is with the compiler at cygwin.

I retrieved the latest file from: ftp://ftp.dympna.com/pub/cross-linux-latest.tar.bz2 and put that one in: /usr/local/cross-linux.
I created the necessary exports and created the service using

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cygrunsrv.exe -I distcc -d "CYGWIN Distcc" -e "CYGWIN=ntsec tty" -p /usr/local/bin/distccd.sh

Looks to me i did everything right but i must have forgotten something....
Anyone got a clue?

[edit]
Hmm.... The windows box doesnt seem to be the problem.... it appears to be a problem on my gentoo box. Cuz my laptop compiles wonderful using the windows-pc as a distcc-dump. Gonna try and debug my gentoo-box then

Another [edit]: Recompiled distcc and the problem seems to be gone.
The problem was apparantely caused by starting a second emerge next to the one already distcc'ing... That kinda b0rked my distcc :/
[/edit]

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:54 am

Well, it looks like it's time to rebuild the toolkit since we got a new binutils recently and now we have a new gcc and glibc. I'll be rebuilding the toolkit sometime before the end of the week. I'll make sure to keep a history for anyone who cares to try to script something up.

image · Post by **image** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 6:26 am

cool, thanks veto. i just did a couple mixed envirornment distcc compiles, and my laptop doesn't seem to have any kinds of problems using a combo of 3.3.3 and 3.3.2, but it would be great to update my cygwin boxes asap.

helamonster · Post by **helamonster** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 8:50 am

Just a heads up to everyone: If you enable gettext, you will need the gettext-devel cygwin package to make binutils.

I tried without it and the make of binutils failed because of the lack of the msgfmt program.

alterself.com · Post by **alterself.com** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 5:41 am

The how-to I wrote is for getting distcc to work and accept jobs from my gentoo boxes. the link can be found here at my site: http://www.alterself.com/.
please let me know if there are any qustions, comments or issues, let me know.

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:21 pm

I have updated the tool-chain, FINALLY. You can find it at ftp://ftp.geocomputing.net/pub/cross-li ... 04.tar.bz2. It's about 20MB in size, but has been migrated to a much faster server.

I just realized that I built glibc with --mcpu=athlon-xp, but it's not --march so it should work everywhere.

Let me know if you encounter any issues.

bizkit · Post by **bizkit** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:08 pm

Way to complicated, I would definetily use it if it were more simple.

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 4:37 pm

It's one of those things, if you can't intstall Cygwin and do a tar, read a README then don't use it.

No harm, no foul.

I've been asked to make a Win32 installer and my response is always the same: No, I've already spent the considerable time to create the tool-chain, strip the appropriate binaries and package it up. If others can't manage to use Cygwin and use tar, there is no way I want to support them.

Now if someone else want's to package it up in an installer, they are more than welcome to use my tool-chain.

bqf · Post by **bqf** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 10:26 pm

Thanks again Veto

I actually do have a fully automated 12meg executable for deploying a very small cygwin install and configuring the distccd as a startup service - if anyone is interested in getting it and / or hosting it just let me know (because I don't have that much spare bandwidth).

john.robinson · Post by **john.robinson** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 12:58 pm

Veto - I quite agree with you but I wonder if bizkit was referring to the content of the first page or so of this thread, before you'd packaged it all and people were having to try and build by hand

Oh and thanks again for your build!

I've put a copy of bqf's ready-to-run build with installer up at ftp://ftp.yuiop.co.uk/gentoo/win32/distccd_install.exe for anyone who wants to try it, but please direct any queries to him/her not me.

The ftp server only supports passive mode, and it if hits more than a couple of hundred downloads a month we'll have to find somewhere else to put it. (My hosting provider's bandwidth is not cheap but I've got spare at the moment; I just don't want this pushing me up the the next charge band)

bqf · Post by **bqf** » Fri Jul 30, 2004 3:34 pm

The installer john.robinson posted a link to...

installs cygwin/distcc to c:\cygwin (you don't have a choice)
needs about 70 MiB of free HD space on c:
needs to be run as an admin user for being able to add the cygwin registry entries
configures the distccd as a boot service with a niceness of 19 (i.e. lowest possible / idle) and starts it right after the installation

It was done using Veto's toolchain, a very small cygwin install, 7zip and AutoIt.

If you don't like it or want it to be configurable - well, bad luck

(unless enough people want me to do a "real" setup for this)

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 4:09 pm

If you guys need a place to host this, I can offer a high-speed FTP server.

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 9:11 pm

I've mirrored bqf's .exe installer on my site.

ftp://ftp.geocomputing.net/pub/

-Veto

BarryJ · Post by **BarryJ** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 7:44 pm

I installed this using Veto's tarball (thanks very much by the way, it works great!), how do I change the niceness of the service? It's eating up a bit more of my CPU than I'd like on my windows computer.

Bad_Byte · Post by **Bad_Byte** » Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:27 pm

About the "distccd_install.exe" is it able to run on my amd xp and assist compiling for my amd64, creating 64bit binaries. ?

PowerFactor · Post by **PowerFactor** » Sat Aug 21, 2004 4:04 am

Just to let everyone know, I have finally posted the howto on the gentoo-wiki. Feel free to make any updates that I missed. It's been quite a while since the last time I did anything with it..

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:19 am

Barry,

If I remember correctly, just right click on the process in Taskman and select it's priority and I think it remembers it across service start/stops...but I'm not certain.

bqf · Post by **bqf** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 2:21 pm

BarryJ:
Either do what Veto proposed (I don't think it "remembers" the niceness level though), or change the DISTCCD_ARGS in $yourcygwinpath\usr\local\bin\distccd.sh to

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DISTCCD_ARGS="--nice 19 --no-detach --daemon"

(or whatever level you want) and restart the daemon. Note that if you are using "my" .exe installer it's already set to lowest priority.

Bad_Byte:
I "somehow don't think" (i.e. I don't know) it would work, but you can always just try doing it

xenu · Post by **xenu** » Sat Aug 28, 2004 4:20 pm

What version of DISTCC was used in the distccd_install.exe

Is there a simple way of updating the version of distcc?I can download the latest tar, but it I can't make install. I'm asuming it's missing pieces.

Sorry for the nub question. Just trying to speed builds on a PII pc.

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 6:15 am

FYI, I'll be rebuilding this weekend (or sooner, depends on if I can free up tomorrow afternoon...and how much of the previous build I deleted!) for the new gcc.

-Veto

Twink · Post by **Twink** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:16 am

Hi, I'm trying to follow the commands to get a distcc on a windows box however i can't seem to compile glibc on my linux box.

using

configure --enable-add-ons --prefix=/usr/local/cross-linux/i686-pc-linux-gnu/

I get *** Linux threads and NPTL addons are both available, only one must be used.

unfortunately i'm not sure what NPTL is or how to disable it for this compile

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 6:41 am

I've rebuilt the tool-chain and will strip and package it tomorrow for public consumption.

Veto · Post by **Veto** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 5:49 pm

The tool-chain has been rebuilt and is now with the latest stable Cygwin with Gentoo stable binutils-2.14.90.0.8-r1, gcc-3.3.4, glibc-2.3.3.

It can be found at the normal place:

ftp://ftp.geocomputing.net/pub/cross-li ... 04.tar.bz2
ftp://ftp.geocomputing.net/pub/cross-li ... st.tar.bz2

Enjoy!

hotplainrice · Post by **hotplainrice** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:23 pm

Veto, can I still use the distcc binaries that you provide even though I have changed to linux26-headers, glibc for nptl?

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

requirement: gettext-devel

distcc + windows howto