*BSD News Article 6852


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From: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch (Norbert Bladt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Compiling kernel from scratch takesa long time
Message-ID: <1992Oct21.072835.7599@autelca.ascom.ch>
Date: 21 Oct 92 07:28:35 GMT
References: <1992Oct18.073316.3616@Saigon.COM> <1992Oct20.143450.5967@cronkite.ocis.temple.edu>
Organization: Ascom Autelca AG, Guemligen, Switzerland
Lines: 48

lafollet@astro.ocis.temple.edu (Paul Lafollette) writes:

>David.Fox@Saigon.COM wrote:
>: Hi bsders,
>: 
>: I got the kernel source code and started to compile the kernel from scratch.
>: Everything was seemingly going smoothly until I noticed that the make was
>: stuck trying to compile nfs/nfs_serv.c, and it was taking about 1 1/2 HOURS
>: to compile this particular file.  After this long time, I decided to try 
>: doing a suspend to see what was going on, but lost control over the machine
>: and had to reboot.
>: 
>: Basically my question is should it really take THIS LONG to compile one
>: file?  (It's about 34K in size.)  Or is it a symptom of something pathological
>: happening, like running out of memory?  During this compile of the one file,
>: the hard disk was doing considerable work.  (I suppose compiling kernels can
>: void the warranty on the hard drive?) :)
I am surprised that it really took so long.
Yesterday I compiled the complete mit X11R5 stuff in about 2.5 hours on my
386BSD system at home !
That must be some more stuff than just the kernel of 386BSD.
I guess your RAM is too small or something along that line.

[ some text describing similar problem deleted - NB.]

>the same thing happens again with a different file.  Again a re-boot
>fixes the problem.  My guess as to what is happening is that
>there is a memory leak somewhere which causes the compiler to hang
>after doing a certain amount of work.  Re-booting restores the memory
>(or swap space?) and allows more compiling to happen until the memory
>(or swap space?) fills up again.  I have only seen this when re-compiling
>the kernel, but I haven't built anything else with that many files to
>compile all at once.  
>	I have installed all of the patches from the beta patch kit
>except for 47, the games patch, and the netstat things.  If this is
>a known problem with a fix, I would be curious to know what it is.
I am using 16 MB RAM and don't have this problem. Perhaps you are right
that memory is allocated but not free'd or something similar.
Oh, I even didn't "fix" (is it really a bug ?) make.

Sorry, that I can't help other than saying "it doesn't happen to me" even
if I compile a large amount of code like X11R5.

Norbert.
-- 
Norbert Bladt, Ascom Autelca AG, Worbstr. 201, CH-3073 Guemligen, Switzerland
Phone: +41 31 999 65 52			FAX: +41 31 999 65 44
Mail: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch   UUCP: ..!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt