[clue-tech] localyesconfig

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 10:45 -0700, Jason Ash wrote:

> I recently downloaded kernel 2.6.32.7 from kernel.org for my Gentoo
> box. Starting with kernel 2.6.32, they have a new feature that allows
> you automatically configure it to the hardware on your computer. The
> two variations are localmodconfig which makes modules for your
> hardware drivers, and localyesconfig, which builds it directly into
> the kernel. I chose the latter which resulted in very few modules and
> a much larger vmlinuz image. I also double-checked it with menuconfig,
> and it got everything right except for drivers for my ATI radeon card,
> and I chose to build support for ext4 file systems although I still
> use ext3. I seems to boot faster.

I think as part of the boot up process the boot up environment (init
scripts or whatever your distribution uses) has to do some probing to
see what modules need to be loaded.  Forcing them to load into the
kernel eliminates things like time-outs for drivers looking for hardware
that isn't present, etc.  Can any confirm in detail whether my thinking
about this is right?

I really don't want to start one of those "When I was young with Linux I
had to walk 5 miles to school" threads, BUT i used to hand-compile all
my kernels back in the day to cut out the fat and speed things up.  I
stopped that when modules came into Linux because they seemed so useful.
It's nice to be able to remove a module in-flight and reload it to avoid
having to do a reboot for something that's suffering.

-- 
Maxwell Spangler