# I want to create a compiler farm

## MasquedAvenger

Hey everyone.  As an experiment in distributed computing, I'd like to daisy chain a whole bunch of old Pentiums and Pentium II's and create a compiler farm that I can use to do distrubuted compiling for a single system.  For example, I'd like to tell my desktop Gentoo system to compile something, and not only have my desktop do some of the compiling, but also have my compiler farm do a great deal of the work.  This is more of an experiment than anything else.  I know it is possible to create a compiler farm with existing tools, but have had no experience and really do not know what I am getting myself into yet.  Anyone have any good ideas?  What kind of hardware/software should I be using?  Any input at all?  Thanks in advance  :Smile: 

James

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## delta407

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> As an experiment in distributed computing, I'd like to daisy chain a whole bunch of old Pentiums and Pentium II's and create a compiler farm that I can use to do distrubuted compiling for a single system.

 Ick.

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> but have had no experience and really do not know what I am getting myself into yet.

 At least you admit it.  :Wink: 

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> Anyone have any good ideas?

 Personally, I'd shell out $150 for a modern CPU, a motherboard, and a stick of RAM.

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> What kind of hardware/software should I be using?

 You'd probably want to look at distcc if you're serious about doing this... it'll do what you want, but personally, I wouldn't bother.

(Instead, I would make them Gentoo SETI boxes.  :Wink: )

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## MasquedAvenger

This is more just for the "I did this all by myself" type of experience, so yup, I'm going to go ahead with this.  I know that in a real-world environment, this would not be very practical at all.  Thanks for the mention of distcc by the way  :Smile: 

James

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## MasquedAvenger

By the way, how would I get distcc working?  Does it have to be installed as a network daemon on all the other systems?  Where should I go to learn more about it?

James

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## delta407

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> By the way, how would I get distcc working?

 Get each box running and install distcc on each computer (compile farm and box that initiates compiling). Tell the "master" where to find each of the slaves, tell the slaves to accept commands from the master, start the daemons, tell Portage to use distcc (a FEATURES option in make.conf? I need sleep), and you should be off and crawling.  :Rolling Eyes: 

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> Does it have to be installed as a network daemon on all the other systems?

 Yes, and I hope you have an adequately firewalled internal network, because distcc is in no way designed to go into the wild.

 *MasquedAvenger wrote:*   

> Where should I go to learn more about it?

 The distcc homepage, distcc manpage, and distccd manpage wouldn't be a bad place to start.  :Wink: 

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## delta407

See also the results of a quick forums search.

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## MasquedAvenger

Cool, thanks a lot for the help.  It will be a small internal network, and for a while, will be disconnected completely from the internet.  This is going to be fun   :Very Happy:   (Yes, I know, I have no life  :Razz: )

James

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## Jerri

Just curious about how well your compiler farm worked out..

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## MasquedAvenger

It didn't, although I obtained a free Xeon processor/server motherboard recently, and seeing as how it's the only use I can think of for it, I may revive the project yet  :Smile: 

James

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