[yocto] Procedure to setup icecc for performing a distributed build

[Elvis Dowson]

Hi Gary,

On Sep 6, 2012, at 7:31 PM, Gary Thomas wrote:

> On 2012-09-06 09:23, Elvis Dowson wrote:
>> 
>> Unfortunately no. I've got two machines, both with quad-core intel i7 processors, but I just couldn't
>> get icecc to work with yocto. I end up regularly perform fresh builds at least 5 to 6 times a day,
>> and it takes me 2 hours to build core-image-minimal.
> 
> Just wondering the exact details of your system and why your performance is
> so very different from mine.
> 
> I have a HP box with 8-way Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz & 12GB RAM
> It will build a Yocto image from scratch in around 40 minutes.

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS virtualized on a 2011 Apple MacBook Pro 15", with
VMware Fusion 5.0.1. The VMware disk image resides on a SSD drive with a 3G
SATA interface.

The specs are 2.3GHz Intel quad-core i7-2820QM with 8MB L3 cache, 
8GB 1333 MHz RAM for the host.

The Ubuntu 12.04 guest is configured with 4GB RAM, 8 virtual CPU cores.
During core-image-minimal builds, the memory usage doesn't exceed 2 to 3GB.

A linux kernel 3.3.0 build for a powepc440 target takes 1 min 40 seconds, as
an additional data point.

Maybe next year, when the newer Mac Pros come out, I'll probably invest in
a 8-core or 10-core xeon configuration. The current Mac Pros are due for a refresh
then, so I'm waiting for the next hardware update.

I'm also considered buying an IBM Blade server, but haven't made up my mind yet.

Best regards,

Elvis Dowson