Kernel Compile in tmpfs crumples in 2.4.12 w/epoll patch

[David E. Weekly]

Hey all,

I was trying to speed up kernel compiles experimentally by moving the source
tree into tmpfs and compiling there. It seemed to work okay and crunched
through the dep phase and most of the main build phase just fine, but then
it hit a file, got an internal segfault, and stopped. I tried again -- this
time make itself segfaulted. Three more times of make segfaulting -- a
strace on make didn't reveal what was failing. Then strace started
segfaulting. Eventually "ls" segfaulted and the machine needed to be
manually rebooted. Ouch!

I ran the full memtest86 suite on the machine, and it passed with flying
colors. So the memory proper is okay.

I come to one of two conclusions: this is a wierd problem with my north
bridge, or there's something funky going on with tmpfs.

Is tmpfs stable?

Yours,
 -david