You can use DistCC or ccache (or both) to speed up compilation.
The main trick is to only make ONE target on the command line. i.e. don't try and do this make -j6 CC=distcc all modules_install or else the build will get screwed up and the whole thing will get remade each time.
Instead do this:
make -j6 CC=distcc all make modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=~/tmp
A script to copy a new LinuxKernel to remote machines:
#! /bin/bash # syntax m machine_num directory version H=/home/ian SRC=$H/linuxsrc/$2 VER=$3 rm $H/tmp/lib/modules/$VER/build rm $H/tmp/lib/modules/$VER/source rsync $SRC/System.map root@jandi$1:/boot/System.map-$VER rsync $SRC/arch/i386/boot/bzImage root@jandi$1:/boot/vmlinuz-$VER rsync $SRC/vmlinux root@jandi$1:/boot/vmlinux-$VER rsync -av $H/tmp/lib/modules/$VER root@jandi$1:/lib/modules
It has also been suggested to me to use kgdb with qemu and/or kgdboe to help with debugging.