[gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[Michael Sullivan]

I'm fed up with this.  I've restarted the emerge of gcc-4.1.1-r3 on my
server box four times now.  It always gets to compiling insn-attrtab.o
and then it never stops.  I even went into the Makefile to find the
exact command used to compile this particular object file and ran the
command manually.  It only took half an hour, but when I told it to
emerge sys-devel/gcc, I guess it didn't like my manually built file, so
it's doing it over again.  This time it's been trying to build this file
for over eight hours.

 4499 root      18   0  132m  35m  416 R  1.5 60.2   8:41.94 cc1 

bullet ~ # strace -p 4499
Process 4499 attached - interrupt to quit

This strace doesn't help me much.  What does "attached" mean, anyway?
Is there some other way for me to get gcc-4 on my server box?  Some
binary package for an i586 maybe?

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[gentoo-user] Re: OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[James]

Michael Sullivan <michael <at> espersunited.com> writes:


> Is there some other way for me to get gcc-4 on my server box?  Some
> binary package for an i586 maybe?


Hello Michael,

A few weeks ago (in December) there was an announcement
 (gentoo newsletter) about a livecd just for i586
machines. Maybe there are corresponding  files to build and 
maintain those machines somewhere.  I only use i586 for singular
purpose servers, like firewalls, DNS or mail.  Find your favorite
repository and see what options they use building i586 machines.

On one of my machines, which I only update once a month, I have:

(just a suggestion,  not an fix for your problem)

file a bug report?

hth,
James






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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[Randy Barlow]

On Saturday 13 January 2007 09:42, Michael Sullivan wrote:
> This strace doesn't help me much.  What does "attached" mean, anyway?

I don't know what the problem is, but I can tell you that strace "attaches" to 
a process meaning that it begins to watch the process to see what system 
calls it is making.  If the process doesn't make any system calls, then you 
won't see anything with strace.  For example,

#define BIG_NUMBER 4e15
main () {
	long x;
	for(int i=0; i<BIG_NUMBER; i++)
		x+=i;
}

When this small program is in the loop, it will not be making any system calls 
(i.e., no output/input or other system calls) so it will be a very busy 
process but it won't show anything in strace.  Hope that answers your 
question!

-- 
Randy Barlow
http://www.electronsweatshop.com
"Oh me of little faith..."
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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[Hans-Werner Hilse]

Hi,

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 12:29:09 -0500
Randy Barlow <randy@electronsweatshop.com> wrote:

> On Saturday 13 January 2007 09:42, Michael Sullivan wrote:
> > This strace doesn't help me much.  What does "attached" mean, anyway?
> 
> I don't know what the problem is, but I can tell you that strace "attaches" to 
> a process meaning that it begins to watch the process to see what system 
> calls it is making.  If the process doesn't make any system calls, then you 
> won't see anything with strace. [...]

I think since the suggestion of using "strace" to look if a certain
process is "doing" things was mine. So I owe this thread a bit more
input. Randy, you're completely right. And especially the compile task
in question, "gcc -o insn-attrtab.o" (shortened), is rather CPU- but
not kernel-intensive. I don't know what exactly it does (not familiar
with gcc internals), but it _heavily_ depends on the optimization
level. So my suggestion to the OP would be to carefully look at the
CFLAGS. Maybe -- please correct me if that is the case -- is a gcc
build restricted to certain CFLAGS, though. At this stage, I would
exclude a race condition involving the kernel, e.g. some stale or
missing files. It may have to do with threading, but gcc doesn't thread.

Question to the OP: What is the larger context of that gcc build? A
simple update? A larger scale configuration change?

-hwh
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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[Bo Ørsted Andresen]

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On Saturday 13 January 2007 15:42, Michael Sullivan wrote:
> I'm fed up with this.  I've restarted the emerge of gcc-4.1.1-r3 on my
> server box four times now.  It always gets to compiling insn-attrtab.o
> and then it never stops.

Telling us what file it stopped at isn't helpfull at all. Showing us the 
actual output where it got stuck (as in 20-30 lines) might be.

[SNIP]
>  4499 root      18   0  132m  35m  416 R  1.5 60.2   8:41.94 cc1
>
> bullet ~ # strace -p 4499
> Process 4499 attached - interrupt to quit
>
> This strace doesn't help me much.  What does "attached" mean, anyway?
> Is there some other way for me to get gcc-4 on my server box?  Some
> binary package for an i586 maybe?

If it does no interactions with the system then there probably is something 
wrong.

Problem is thus far you've told us almost nothing. You didn't even bother to 
reply to your first thread about this topic saying: "I've tried your 
suggestions and got nowhere.. Any other suggestions?". And yes, you should 
have included the above output from strace in that reply. Instead you've now 
created a new thread with almost no useful information in it.

So for starters the output of `emerge --info`, and some real output from the 
emerge. Also did you make any major upgrades on this system recently (like 
changing the CHOST or upgrading from gcc-3.x to 4.x)? If you did, did you 
follow the official Gentoo upgrade docs about it? Did you try something as 
simple as `revdep-rebuild -i -vp`? Might tell us something about the 
condition of your system too..

-- 
Bo Andresen

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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[John Blinka]

Michael Sullivan wrote:
> I'm fed up with this.  I've restarted the emerge of gcc-4.1.1-r3 on my
> server box four times now.  It always gets to compiling insn-attrtab.o
> and then it never stops.  I even went into the Makefile to find the
> exact command used to compile this particular object file and ran the
> command manually.  It only took half an hour, but when I told it to
> emerge sys-devel/gcc, I guess it didn't like my manually built file, so
> it's doing it over again.  This time it's been trying to build this file
> for over eight hours.
>
>  4499 root      18   0  132m  35m  416 R  1.5 60.2   8:41.94 cc1 
>
> bullet ~ # strace -p 4499
> Process 4499 attached - interrupt to quit
>
> This strace doesn't help me much.  What does "attached" mean, anyway?
> Is there some other way for me to get gcc-4 on my server box?  Some
> binary package for an i586 maybe?
>   
You don't mention what sort of machine your server is, but if it's as 
old as an i586 then,
in my experience with an old box with very little memory, compiling 
insn-attrb takes a
very long time.  My 150 mhz laptop takes days to compile gcc and seems 
to get stuck
on insn-attrb for many hours.  It's been grinding away most of today in 
insn-attrb and
has accumulated a couple of hours of cpu time in the process.  It'll 
probably be
done by Monday or Tuesday.

Just start the emerge then go away and ignore it.  It'll finish eventually.

John Blinka
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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[PaulNM]

Michael Sullivan wrote:
> I'm fed up with this.  I've restarted the emerge of gcc-4.1.1-r3 on my
> server box four times now.  It always gets to compiling insn-attrtab.o
> and then it never stops.  I even went into the Makefile to find the
> exact command used to compile this particular object file and ran the
> command manually.  It only took half an hour, but when I told it to
> emerge sys-devel/gcc, I guess it didn't like my manually built file, so
> it's doing it over again.  This time it's been trying to build this file
> for over eight hours.
> 
>  4499 root      18   0  132m  35m  416 R  1.5 60.2   8:41.94 cc1 

I once experienced something similar on my [i686 Pentium II (Klamath)] 
server. I don't remember exactly what part of gcc was compiling at the 
time of the "hang", but I found switching kernel versions helped. 
According to top, kswapd0 was very busy, basically using up most of the 
systems resources. Ssh'ing in was very slow due to that and the gcc 
compile. I stopped and restarted it twice after letting it run over 
night (8+ hrs). Normal compile time is "genlop -t gcc" about 4hrs and 
15mins.

Googling kswapd0 showed it's related to the kernel swapping pages in and 
out. My system was swapping like nuts, but shouldn't have.
This is a good example of that happening : 
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2005-May/046804.html

You might want to try rebooting, or changing swapiness values to see if 
that helps. In my case there was a gentoo-sources update at the same 
time, so I just let that build and restarted.

 >  4499 root      18   0  132m  35m  416 R  1.5 60.2   8:41.94 cc1

According to this cc1 is only using 1.5% of cpu, and about 60% of ram. 
What does "free" give you, and does kswapd0 keep jumping up and down in 
terms of cpu%?


PaulNM
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Re: [gentoo-user] OT - Is there a gcc-4.1.1 alternative?

[Dan]

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007 02:39:07 -0500
PaulNM <gentoo@paulscrap.com> wrote:

> I once experienced something similar on my [i686 Pentium II
> (Klamath)] server. I don't remember exactly what part of gcc was
> compiling at the time of the "hang", but I found switching kernel
> versions helped. According to top, kswapd0 was very busy, basically
> using up most of the systems resources. Ssh'ing in was very slow due
> to that and the gcc compile. I stopped and restarted it twice after
> letting it run over night (8+ hrs). Normal compile time is "genlop -t
> gcc" about 4hrs and 15mins.

sounds like the classic low memory situation to me.  You run real low
on system memory, then swap, and kswapd has to work real hard to (I
assume this one) 'defragment' if you will the memory pages and keep as
much free memory available as possible.  sometimes, this manages to
slow things down so considerably that the program causing the problem
just hangs, trying to get more memory, and the rest of the programs on
the computer vie for limited resources, so things like ssh go real
slow.  

just a thought, in that you're running on a pentium, have you looked
into distributed compiling and crossdev?  It can't get tthe performance
you'd probably like out of your computer, but it might do a decent job
getting compile times down into the realm of tolerability.
Unfortunately, it probably won't help with gcc itself.  
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