[OpenAFS-devel] Issue building 1.5.77 rpms for i386

[omalleys@msu.edu]

Quoting Simon Wilkinson <sxw@inf.ed.ac.uk>:

>
> On 8 Oct 2010, at 11:37, Phillip Moore wrote:
>
>> No, the problem is that the openafs.spec file behaves a little  
>> wierd for the i386 and i686 targets.  I confess to not really  
>> understand the practical difference here.
>
> Historically, all RedHat operating systems built userspace binaries  
> for the i386 architecture, and kernel modules for i586 and i686.

IIRC RedHat didn't start shipping i586 and i686 kernel binaries until  
about RH6(or 7). Prior to that, you just built your own custom kernel  
to take advantage of the newer cpus or you used the Mandrake kernel  
(after that distro started..)

At that time most people (at least the ones i knew) rebuilt the kernel  
regardless of distro for various reasons. :

-There was a big speed boost by using the i586 and i686 instructions  
especially in the kernel.

-The smaller footprint, the better as ram was at a premium. We had a  
competitions to see how could build the smallest -functional- kernel.

-Peer pressure.

-- most of the time you didn't bother with rebuilding userspace tools  
with the extra compiler flags -unless- you were heavily using that  
application for say a server instance. ie say maybe ptserver you would  
have rebuilt, and klog you wouldn't bother with.

All that being said I bought a new machine at home because it took 40  
minutes to compile the kernel. 15 years later, I just waited 6 hours  
for a flipping kernel to compile. lol