Building BProc

The BProc system consists of a modified kernel, a kernel module and user space daemons to tie it all together. Before the kernel module or the daemons can be built, you have to build a kernel with the BProc patch applied.

These instructions presume that you are familiar with the process of configuring and compiling Linux kernels. See the documentation included with the Linux kernel for more information about configuring and compiling Linux kernels.

As of this writing, BProc supports the Linux 2.4.x series kernels. Before configuring and compilding the kernel, you have to apply the BProc patch to the kernel. This patch is provided in the "patches" directory and is named something like bproc-patch-2.4.X. When configuring the kernel make sure to turn on CONFIG_BPROC or "Beowulf Distributed Process Space" under General Setup. Also, loadable module support is required since BProc can only be built as a module. Also, if you will be using Beoboot, make sure to turn on CONFIG_ROMFS, CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM, CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD and CONFIG_TMPFS.

After building your new kernel, it is possible to build BProc. Do this by running make in the top level bproc directory. The makefile presumes that the kernel tree to build against resides in /usr/src/linux. If this is not the case, provide a LINUX=/path/to/linux argument on the make command line.