[CLUE-Tech] Monolithic Kernel....needs to be smaller

[Matt Gushee]

On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 10:46:04AM -0800, Eric Batalden wrote:
> I am working on getting my kernel down to a managable
> size.  it currently weighs in at 1.6MB.  I have looked

Boy, is that ever bloated. I've been compiling my own kernels
for about 3 years, and I think the biggest I've ever gotten
was about 450kB. Of course, I'm still on the 2.2 series, so
YMMV.

The most obvious thing is that stock kernels generally include
a lot of support for specific devices that you don't have --
e.g. various vendors' ethernet cards ...

Hmm, on second thought, those are probably modules. But if you
run 'make xconfig', most options have help files; many of them
say things like 'if you don't know what this is, you don't need
it' ... I've never gone wrong following that advice.

But anyway, rules of thumb I follow:

  * Generic device support:
    Make it a module whenever possible, except for ext2fs
    (or whatever filesystem my boot device uses). Leave
    out support for any generic device types I don't
    currently use and have no immediate plans to buy
    (e.g. SCSI tape backups). Once you get used to
    compiling kernels, unless you have a really, really
    slow machine, it's not much of a chore to compile
    a new one every 2 or 3 months.

  * Vendor-specific device support:
    When in doubt, leave it out. This only gets really
    tricky with sound cards, because there's a lot of
    ambiguous information surrounding the concept of
    "Soundblaster-compatible."

HTH.
-- 
Matt Gushee
Englewood, Colorado, USA
mgushee at havenrock.com
http://www.havenrock.com/