Compile on fast machine, run on slow machine?

[TalkieToaster]

I've scoured the forums for about half an hour, and I haven't seen precisely this question yet, so here goes:

I have a Gentoo-based desktop machine (Athlon XP 2400+, 768MB RAM) and a much less powerful machine that I plan to build into an arcade-style cabinet and run MAME on (Pentium 2/233, 64MB RAM).
Obviously, it wouldn't be much fun building the whole system on the P2 machine, so I'd like to compile a Pentium 2-optimized system on my desktop and create a tarball that I can just squirt straight across to the weaker machine. Once that's up and running, I'd also like to be able to maintain a separate portage tree on my desktop, so I can grab updates, compile binary packages and copy them across for installation.

I figure I can't follow the normal install procedure, as I assume things will start breaking when I start trying to run Intel-targeted binaries on my Athlon.

Does anyone know of a relatively straightforward way to do this with portage? Failing that, I'm willing to consider not optimizing for P2 (i.e. build a generic i386 system instead which should run without problems on my Athlon) but that's losing some of the benefits of using Gentoo in the first place.
Or should I try a different distribution? (I used to be a Debian man before defecting to the Gentoo camp, so that'd be my second choice)

If anyone can shed any light on this, it'd be much appreciated.

Cheers,
_________________
- TT
Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite, would you like a toasted teacake?

[DrACoNuS]

Distcc is great for gentoo follow this howto and only add the hostname of your fast machine to the make.conf on your slow machine. That will do all the linking (optimizations etc) on the slow machine but all the compiling will be done remotely on the fast machine neat isnt it?

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/distcc.xml
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Is that a huge bandwidth or are you just happy to see me?

[tdombrow]

Ditto what DrACoNuS says - distcc - AND HEED HIS MESSAGE about only putting the fast machines hostname in make.conf.

I tried the same thing, but I put the "slowmachine fastmachine" in make.conf and most of the compiles happened on the slow machine, which was taking forever. I learned the hard way to keep the "slowmachine" out. According to the distcc docs, if you want to use more than one machine for compilation, you should put the fastest machines first in the list - but if there is that much disparity between machines, I'd just leave it out.

Todd D.

[rhat]

Speaking of remote compilation, is there a way to break compliation down so that it can be efficiently spread over a cluster? I only ask because I'm in the process of building an openMosix cluster, and I thought it would be handy if I could make the entire cluster work on a compile rather than just a few nodes.

[cyrillic]

[TalkieToaster]

Thanks guys, that's excellent. I'll take a look at distcc straight away.

Thanks again,
_________________
- TT
Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite, would you like a toasted teacake?

[qubex]