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Compilation using make -j freezes the system
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this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Make's -j option specifies the number of concurrent jobs to run, and without an argument doesn't limit that number at all. Usually you pass an argument to it with the number of cpu cores you want to utilize. Going over the number of cores you have available (like it does without an argument) will be slower or even freeze your system with all the context switching it has to do.
Using the exact number of cores I have as the argument (from /proc/cpuinfo) makes the compilation go smooth. Are you saying that without an argument, Make uses a very high default number that causes other processes to starve ? Nevertheless, kernel shouldnt allow such a situation as far as I understrand, and perhaps should be considered a bug in the kernel ?
Without an argument, the -j option will start jobs with no limits - depending on the project, this could be thousands or tens of thousands of processes at once. The kernel will do its best to manage this, but when your interface is competing for cpu resources with 10,000 other cpu-intensive processes, it will appear frozen.