Re: kernel-package??
On Friday 01 May 2009 09:34:58 Dave Witbrodt wrote:
> Faster? I promise that you would not notice the speedup. Conceivably
> your kernel will boot slightly faster without having to carry out the
> hardware detection for the 99% of modules that have no relevance for
> your particular system, but you would have great difficulty measuring
> the alleged time savings accurately. (There are great opportunities for
> decreasing the time needed to boot a Debian system, but these have to do
> with customizing the initialization scripts, not with replacing the
> kitchen-sink kernel with a custom kernel.)
Interesting, I would have thought the difference would have been a little more
noticeable. I may have to reconsider.
> As far as being in a hurry to leave out unnecessary things like ext2,
> ext4, and NTFS... I would ask you to reconsider. What happens if you
> meet other Linux users in your area, and they want to give you some
> files off of their USB flash drive formatted in ext2 or ext4? Or what
> happens if some Windows user you meet has some files on their external
> hard drive... formatted in NTFS? Now your really great idea about
> compiling your own kernel is really going to make you look smart to
> those folks, right? Your choices at that point will be to recompile
> your custom kernel, or boot to a Debian kitchen-sink kernel. (Which
> just raises the question of why you weren't using the Debian kernel in
> the first place.)
A very good point but one I have considered. The systems I have in mind are
some that I don't use for anything but grid computing. I run Bionc on projects
at the World Community Grid, these systems will just run 24/7 until they break
and I will then throw them in the trash. They are older systems not worth my
time to fix so your point above although valid in most cases doesn't apply to
my very particular goal. None of my daily use systems would be running a
custom kernel.
> I'm not trying to discourage you from building your own kernel. I'm
> trying to offer information that I think you should consider, and I'm
> offering the advice that you shouldn't bother building your own kernel
> unless you have some really good reason. (Really good reasons might
> include a burning desire to simply know how, or to be able to say you
> did it, but if one of those is you only reason then I think you will
> regret it by about halfway through the process.)
I understand there is a time investment and learning curve to consider. But
if I can get a little extra processor and ram use from a leaner kernel, this
is something I may do many more times in the future so it would be worth that
investment. But not if the increase in computing power has to be measured in
milliseconds per day!
> The Debian kernel team works really hard to make sure that the kernels
> work, and they do a good job. In the end, I was able to customize my
> kernel configuration to the point that I can compile a kernel in about
> 6 minutes on my desktop machine... which is (at least) 6 minutes longer
> than it would take me to install a Debian kernel. ;) If I hadn't had
> problems with ALSA support with this machine when I first put it
> together, I probably would not have bothered to learn to compile my own
> kernels. The amount of time in invested in learning how to do it now
> causes me to want to keep doing it, so I don't have the feeling that I
> wasted those dozens of hours -- and so I am condemned to the punishment
> of Sisyphus.
So on a dedicated system that is used for nothing but running a processor
intensive application 24/7, do you think there would be any real increase in
performance from a custom kernel?
>
> HTH,
> Dave W.
Thanks for your time and input Dave,
Randy
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