Re: make -j

David Schleef (ds@stm.lbl.gov)
Thu, 10 Sep 1998 23:59:45 -0700

On Thu, Sep 10, 1998 at 10:02:58PM -0700, Sang Kang wrote:
> Hello kernel hackers,
>
> I've been trying to compile the kernel with 'make -j' option for
> some more cpu utilization. After a short while, the linux box
> rebooted itself. But some people were successful with this
> experiment (it happened on both 2.0.36(latest beta) and 2.1.120)
> Can someone shed me a light ?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sang Kang
>

Read the make man page.

Try a 'make -j 10'. It will limit the number of processes started
to 10; this seems to be adequate to keep my PPro200 busy. Specifying
no number is almost equivalent to a fork bomb on some of the linux
source directories. People with lots of RAM can get away with it.

This cures the symptom, but it leaves the question: why does linux
behave poorly in this situation?

dave...

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