Question for Gene Heskett about slow Firefox launch

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 17 January 2007 03:03, Ric Moore wrote:
>On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 00:22 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> Basicly I did a make xconfig in the kernel tree I had already built
>> and was running, with an eye to getting rid of that which isn't of any
>> perceived usefullness to me.  If, as you go thru the xconfig screens
>> item by item, you read the help that pops into the lower right corner
>> of the window, and it says "if you don't know what this option does,
>> you probably don't need it, say N".  By the time I got down to the
>> bottom of 'block devices' I'll bet I'd turned off a hundred things
>> that were being built, and which had no earthly use to me, but the
>> previous 'make oldconfig' had enabled them.  With this newer compiler
>> seemingly being as slow as it it, that cut the build time by about 7
>> minutes, down to 24 IIRC, but I can recall building a kernel for this
>> machine in under 8 minutes back in the mists of time.  And the system,
>> once booted to it, does seem a bit snappier at some operations.  I
>> think I can probably cut that much more the next time I have half an
>> hour to work in an xconfig window.
>
>Gene, I'm struggling to remember back in the old days when burning a
>kernel, didn't we have to make mrproper and do something with some
>links? Or directory names or something like that?? Also, wasn't there
>some sort of gcc option that would kick it into overdrive and compile
>faster? I'm trying to remember... and it hurts. :) I might just try to
>roll my own to keep my hand in it and see if she goes or blows. Ric

IIRC my buildit26 script, the one that does the unpacking and patching, 
used to do an mrproper back in 2.4 days, but now just does a make 
oldconfig.  The secret is that it does the oldconfig for say -rc4, 
against a copy of .config pulled in from the previously built tree 
of -rc3, or however far back you want it to reach.  In this manner, your 
particular config options are carried over from build to build and stuff 
that you had enabled stays enabled and vice-versa.  "buildit26"'s final 
step is to run a make xconfig so I can dbl-chk stuff, but apparently I 
was napping somewhere along the line.

Both of these scripts (there is a makeit script too that does everything 
but edit grub.conf once I'm happy with the xconfig) require editing to 
update the version numbers and such used on a per kernel basis, one of 
the reasons I haven't loosed them on this sometimes unsuspecting group.

They would also show me in an emberasing(sp) light as to my knowledge 
about howto write a bash script.  But they work, and they darned sure 
reduce the typos if I was to do all that stuff from a cli.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
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Copyright 2007 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.