Re: Bootint big kernels
On Thu, Jun 11, 1998 at 09:41:03AM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> The problem is that the Debian installation kernel tries to be all things
> to all people. As there are machines that boot from SCSI drives, it was
> necessary to have all the scsi controlers "built in" to the kernel, hense
> its large size.
>
> We should recommend that everyone, once they have a standard system and
> can build a kernel, should build a custom kernel for their machine as
> early as possible.
>
> Another solution is the one that slackware provides. They build a "bunch"
> of kernels, each one for a specific hardware configuration (broad enought
> to cover a range of hardware, and chosen to keep incopatibly drivers out
> of the picture {like the wd9000 driver that plonks ethernet cards})
I'm working on a better solution that involves using initrd to
load the required controllers (built as loadable modules). I've tested
using initrd for lowmem installations and it works flawlessly (just have
a look at lowmem boot disk in boot-floppies_2.0.7 when I upload it next
weekend).
Using initrd, our default kernel may be reduced to half its current size,
as all those different controllers may be built as modules and only the
required ones will be loaded at boot time. That will save our users a few
hundred KBs of RAM, and will make building a custom kernel a not so
needed step.
When I have a "proof-of-concept" implementation, I plan to discuss the
details with Herbert Xu, our kernel maintainer, to see if we can adopt
this solution for slink.
--
Enrique Zanardi ezanardi@ull.es
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: