Compile linux kernel for different machine

Question

I am new to kernel development, and I have to compile a kernel with some specific features and then install it on some machines. The problem is that these machines are slow, and hence I want to compile them on a fast desktop once and then install them on the machines. I am following this guide from Ubuntu wiki.

So what I plan to do is, download the source and generate a config file on one of the slow machines, copy both to the faster machine, generate the image on the faster machine and then install it on all the slow machines. The slow machines are almost identical (same cards, processors, OS etc.) but different from the fast machine(different OS and processor). So will this work or not? I googled, but the only relevant results seemed to be years old. (They said it works fine, btw).

Answer 1

Yes, this works, done it a lot in the past. If you need to compile for different architecture (say, you're on an x86 and want to compile for an ARM processor) then you would need a cross-compiler (done that as well). But if both machines are x86/x64 there's no problem.

Answer 2

Supply ARCH=i386 everywhere starting from menuconfig. .config generation need not to be done on target machine as well.