compiling a kernel on a different machine

[Drew Tomlinson]

Rowdy told a big fish story including the following on 12/23/2003 1:31 PM:

> Greetings,
>
> My attempts to compile a (5.1-RELEASE) kernel on a very old PC take 
> around 5 hours (of compile time), while a much faster machine sits by 
> idle.  It would be great to be able to compile the kernel on the 
> faster machine and transfer it to the older machine.
>
> Would I be correct in thinking that the simplest way to do this would 
> be to execute the compile AND the install on the fast PC, then copy 
> the /boot/kernel directory from the fast PC to the old PC?  I realise 
> I would need to rename /boot/kernel.old back to /boot/kernel on the 
> fast PC so it would boot again.
>
> Or is there a better way without disrupting /boot on the fast PC?

Apologies if this get posted as html.  I'm trying a new mail client and 
may not have it configured correctly yet.

Anyway, there is a better way.  I briefly looked through the TOC of the 
handbook but could not find the page I was looking for.  However, I know 
I've seen it somewhere.

The basic procedure is to have your fast machine do the make buildworld 
and make buildkernel steps and then mount /usr/src and /usr/obj from the 
fast machine to the slow machine.  Then do the make installkernel and 
make installworld steps on the slow machine, thus copying the files that 
were built on the fast machine.

Maybe someone else will post the link to the detailed steps that I can't 
find at the moment.

HTH a little,

Drew