Re: Suspending and resuming compile process

[Mark McCorkell <markmccorkell@tiscali.co.uk>]

Celejar wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:06:33 +0100
> Jochen Schulz <ml@well-adjusted.de> wrote:
>
>   
> > Amit Uttamchandani:
> >     
> > > Now, I am thinking of applying this to kernel compilation, etc. Is this
> > > common practice? Do others do this as well?
> > >       
> > I suspended while compiling kernels a few times already. I didn't even
> > bother to suspend the process. No problems so far. But I agree it takes
> > a while to gain confidence that this really works. :)
> >     
>
> IANAE, but I really don't see why there should be any problem with this
> sort of thing.  Compilation is a pure userspace and conceptually
> simple (from a low-level, hardware standpoint, albeit technically quite
> complicated from a higher level, algorithmic perspective) task, and I
> don't know why there should be any more of a problem suspending and
> resuming it than any other userspace process.
>
> Just my $.02, and I may be completely wrong, in which case I do hope
> someone will kindly correct me.
>
> Celejar
> --
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>
>   
Like you say, there's no real technical barrier to do doing this. I 
often do it, but some of my co-workers seem surprised and/or shocked by 
my actions. I think it boils down to the fact that during a compile 
there's generally a lot of very advanced-looking stuff scrolling quickly 
by, which gives people the impression that their computer is doing 
something highly complex and they'd better not interrupt it.

I imagine in reality the under-the-hood processes of a Linux system are 
much more intricate than a user-space compile, but because people don't 
actually _see_ them in action, they don't think twice about 
suspending/resuming them.

--
Mark.