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Date:      Sun, 20 Apr 1997 18:14:24 -0600
From:      Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
To:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Speed deamons: How to build a build box? 
Message-ID:  <E0wJ6kT-0000x0-00@rover.village.org>

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Thanks to all who helped me out here.  I'm not building in the 135
minute range wich is less than half of the 308 minute range I started
in (but still a long way from the 90-100 minute range that others are
seeing).

I have learned the following:
	1) async and noatime really help a lot.  Do this to both
	   /usr/obj and /usr/src.
	2) Even slow disks can be made to build a fast system
	3) Sometimes one disk is better than two.
	4) Overclocking from 180->200 didn't help much
	5) Try to have the disk geometry match the physical disks'
	   (although I didn't measure anything relating to doing this
	    or not doing this).

These are based on the testing that I did.  7 world builds in all.
Ranging in time from 5:05 to 2:16.  All the builds started with a
dirty obj tree.  The seventh primed the pump.

Someone told me that I could get better performance out of a card
rather than the builtin scsi.  Comments?

As you can see, the biggest pop by far came from the use of async and
noatime on both /usr/src and /usr/obj.  I suspect that 5400 or 7200
rpm disks would do much better than the 4500 one that I have.  I also
suspect that ccd would help too.  However 2:21 is good enough for me
for the moment.  I'll have to try Dyson's latest kernel patch + his
CFLAGS settings to see if that gets me under 2hr.  However, 2hr is
good enough for me at the moment.

Warner

P.S.  Here are my numbers.  All of these were tested on a SuperMicro
6SNS with a PPro180 installed, 64M of 60ns EDO memory, 256k cache and
built in SCSI.

Setup					Time
JAZ drive with /, /usr and swap		5:08
   P6-180 at 180 MHz
   Bus at 60MHz

JAZ with /, /usr (with obj) and swap, 	4:46
   Quantum Fireball TM as /usr/src
   on /home mounted async.
   P6-180 at 180 MHz
   Bus at 60MHz

JAZ with /, /usr (with obj) and swap, 	2:23
   Quantum Fireball TM as /usr/src
   on /home mounted async, noatime.
   /usr mounted async, noatime.
   CLFAGS= -O2 -pipe NOMANCOMPRESS=true
   NOPROFILE=true
   P6-180 at 180 MHz
   Bus at 60MHz

JAZ with /, /usr (with obj) and swap, 	2:34
   Quantum Fireball TM as /usr/src
   on /home mounted async, noatime.
   /usr mounted async, noatime.
   CLFAGS= -O2 -pipe NOMANCOMPRESS=true
   P6-180 at 180 MHz
   Bus at 60MHz

JAZ with /, /usr (with obj) and swap, 	2:21
   Quantum Fireball TM as /usr/src
   on /home mounted async, noatime.
   /usr mounted async, noatime.
   CLFAGS= -O2 -pipe NOMANCOMPRESS=true
   P6-180 at 200 MHz
   Bus at 66MHz

Quantum Fireball TM as /, /usr and swap	2:16
   /usr/src and /usr/obj same partition
   mounted async, noatime.
   CLFAGS= -O2 -pipe NOMANCOMPRESS=true
   P6-180 at 200 MHz
   Bus at 66MHz



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