Re: Safety of -j N when building kernels?

[Fernando [Quatro]]

> Ok, stupid question of the moment-
> 
> I always read about the kernel compilation benchmarks people run on the
> ultra-snazzy new machines, but do people actually run the kernels thus
> generated?
> 
> I have visions of a process being backgrounded to generate some files, and
> not completing before the one of the old files gets linked into the kernel
> (because not all files were listed as dependencies, for example).
> 
> So are the kernel's current Makefiles really SMP safe -- can one really
> run multiple jobs when building Linux kernels? Any horror stories, or am
> I just paranoid?

I think it's safe... I ran a `make -j` once (dual pIII 933MHz, 1Gb RAM).
The load average went to 200+!  In the end, the kernel was fine and booted
all right... I don't do that anymore because it takes longer building with a sane number
in 'make -j N'...

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Fernando Korndorfer - [e-mail]
Quatro Informatica Ltda.
Novo Hamburgo - RS/Brasil
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