Frank Steinmetzger <[email protected]> writes: > On Mon, Jan 04, 2016 at 04:38:56PM -0600, Dale wrote: > >> >>> what's taking so long when emerging packages despite distcc is used? >> >>> […] >> >>> Some compilations are being run on the remote machine, so distcc does >> >>> work. The log file on the remote machine shows compilation times of a >> >>> few milliseconds up to about 1.5 seconds at most. The distcc server >> >>> would be finished with the emerging within maybe 15 minutes, and the >> >>> client takes several hours already. >> >>> >> >>> Is there something going wrong? Is there a way to speed things up as >> >>> much as I would expect from using distcc? >> > […] >> > Can it be that the client is simply too slow compared to the server to >> > give it any significant load? (The client isn't exactly slow; it's slow >> > compared to the server.) >> >> Once a really long time ago I tried doing this sort of thing. What I >> found is that the network speed between the two systems was what was >> slowing it down. It just couldn't transfer the data back and forth fast >> enough. I had a network card that really didn't have any good drivers >> for it. Anyway, it may not be your problem but it may be worth looking >> at to be sure. Using iftop or some similar tool should tell you >> something. > > Well I’m using distcc over WiFi which gives me shy of 2 MB per second (only > the big PC which acts as server is connected to the router via cable). For > such cases I recommend using compression. It definitely increased throughput.
Wireless is a bad crutch which is only useful when it's entirely impossible to use a cable. I'd recommend using a cable, especially in this case where the CPU is already compiling so slow. Dale, thanks for the suggestion --- the network is fine and transfers about 100MB/sec+. > What I observe on my setup, though, is that sometimes a package builds with > distcc, and then all of a sudden I get (the meaning of) “distributing via > distcc failed, building locally” and after a while it works again. No idea > what’s going on there. The server might be busy, or it's not possible to compile remotely.
