Re: Bootint big kernels
On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, Enrique Zanardi wrote:
> 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).
I have wondered why we didn't try this once the kernel supported initrd.
To be honest I haven't figured out yet how to do the device selection,
other than going through a list of drivers, trying to insmod each one
until you are successful.
I would love to see your solution for this, even in whatever the current
state is.
>
> 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.
>
Yes, this would be a great improvement over the current situation, making
the installation kernel appropriate for a system kernel with no
rebuilding.
> 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.
>
This is wonderful Enrique, thanks for all your fine work on this package!
I look forward to seeing this,
Dwarf
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