Linked by James Ingraham on Thu 12th Apr 2012 22:36 UTC
I don't actually have a reason for trying to build a Linux kernel with the CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT patch set. There's no way I can even measure the impact of it. Still, I felt like having a "real-time" Linux box, and set out to make one. Little did I know how difficult it would be to even get started.
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RE: simplifying and speeding up the process
by fasteez on Thu 12th Apr 2012 23:29
in reply to "simplifying and speeding up the process"
Member since:2007-03-13
I too noticed the far too long amount of build time. You're probably right about the modules, and I guess Vbox does not help here. It took my little core2duo (throttled 1.2-1.6G) 20 minutes.
With a core i7 machine I would go LFS just to see if GCC test suite can run under 20 minutes.
I didn't know about `make all` being coupled to LILO, always good to know.
RE: simplifying and speeding up the process
by froh on Thu 12th Apr 2012 23:31
in reply to "simplifying and speeding up the process"
Member since:2009-03-01
RE[2]: simplifying and speeding up the process
by AnyoneEB on Thu 12th Apr 2012 23:35
in reply to "RE: simplifying and speeding up the process"
Member since:2008-10-26
Ah, found it. It's called make localmodconfig: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_32#head-11f54cdac41ad6150ef817fd...
RE: simplifying and speeding up the process
by Valhalla on Fri 13th Apr 2012 04:05
in reply to "simplifying and speeding up the process"
Member since:2006-01-24
Also, on a modern multicore, don't forget the -jn option to make where n is the number of processes to run in parallel. The recommendation I usually see is to use number of cores + 1, but I don't know what the actual best value is.
Yes, the first thing that struck me was 4 hours? On a core i7? Then I saw he wrote 'make', rather than 'make -j5'. Using only one core out of 4 is quite inefficient.
RE: simplifying and speeding up the process
by ingraham on Fri 13th Apr 2012 15:34
in reply to "simplifying and speeding up the process"
Member since:2006-05-20
The "O=/path/to/build_dir" option just puts the output somewhere else. This isn't especially useful, but it made me feel better. I hate having all the source and binaries jumbled up.
Interesting to know about the compile time. It was longer than I expected, but not a LOT longer. I'll have to see what I can do to trim it down.
Note that I was in a virtual machine. My experience has been the a VM has virtually no impact on purely processor-intensive tasks, but I only gave the VM 1 processor, which is why I didn't use the -jn option.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2008-10-26
The Linux kernel build process can definitely be a bit intimidating at first.
I am not sure why you needed the "O=/path/to/build_dir" option. I've never run across that before; maybe something different in your setup compared to the Debian systems I have built kernels on. Also, after the kernel is built, running make install, make modules_install, and update-grub should handle putting it into the /boot directory and adding it to the grub menu (not sure if update-grub is a Debian-specific tool). You shouldn't have to know about the filenames of everything. As the previous kernel should still be in your grub menu, there isn't much to worry about on whether it works or not: if not, just boot the old kernel and try again.
The kernel you compiled is huge and took a very long time to compile. I suspect this is because you used the Arch default config which (like any distro's configuration) has every driver you could ever possibly want. Kernel builds usually take a few minutes for me (on a Core 2, so it should be faster on your Core i7), but that's with only the drivers I actually use enabled (I vaguely remember some make option for detecting your hardware, but I don't know what it was or if it works well). Also, on a modern multicore, don't forget the -jn option to make where n is the number of processes to run in parallel. The recommendation I usually see is to use number of cores + 1, but I don't know what the actual best value is.