Questions about tinderbox

[Ion-Mihai Tetcu]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:43:04 -0500
Stephen Montgomery-Smith <stephen at missouri.edu> wrote:

> Chris Rees wrote:
> > On 15 June 2011 18:07, Ion-Mihai Tetcu<itetcu at freebsd.org>  wrote:
> >> On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:54:15 +0100
> >> Chris Rees<crees at marcuscom.com>  wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 15 June 2011 17:52, Stephen Montgomery-Smith
> >>> <stephen at missouri.edu>  wrote:
> >>>> Mark Johnston wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 11:19:21AM -0500, Stephen Montgomery-Smith
> >>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I have just started using tinderbox, and I have some questions.
> >>>>>>   But let me start with this first important question.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I am running tinderbox on an amd64 laptop with an i7 Intel
> >>>>>> processor. It claims to have 8 processors, but that is really
> >>>>>> disingenuous on Intel's part, because I find it only works
> >>>>>> efficiently when I use 2 processors.  In particular, using all 8
> >>>>>> far worse than using only 1.
> >>
> >> I'd suspect the results actually vary depending on the port you build.
> >>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> It seems to me that tinderbox tries to use the full set of
> >>>>>> processors. What is the best way to tell tinderbox to only one
> >>>>>> processor?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Are you talking about building world? If so, the following code
> >>>>> seems to indicate that one can make with -j1 by setting
> >>>>> NO_JAIL_JOBS=yes in env/GLOBAL.
> >>>>
> >>>> Sorry, I should have been clearer.  I am using tinderbox to make
> >>>> ports.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> If you find a textbook answer for this, let me know and I'll stick it
> >>> in the README :P
> >>
> >> Populate make.conf for the jail / build / PT ... with
> >> MAKE_JOBS_NUMBER=2 via one of the early hooks (ie. postJailExtract).
> >>
> >
> > So ./tc updateHookCmd -h postJailExtract -c 'echo MAKE_JOBS_NUMBER=2
> >>> ${DESTDIR}/etc/make.conf' would be OK?
> 
> I can see that this would limit the number of parallel build processes 
> within each port.

Yes.
 
> But does tinderbox build all the ports one at a time, 

Yes.

> or does it try to build several at once? 

No.

> Looking at the output of top, I had the 
> impression that it was trying to do several things at once.  This is 
> what I would really like to control.  But maybe I am wrong.
> 
> And if it doesn't do many builds at once, how does it work on a cluster? 

It doesn't really. One, if not the biggest, of it's failures.

>   Can you run many tinderbox builds at once, and they make sure that 
> they stay out of each others' way (i.e. they don't both try to build the 
> same dependency at once)?

In different "builds" yes, see tinderbox-devel port.
 


-- 
Ion-Mihai Tetcu <itetcu at FreeBSD.org>