Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:09:47 -0500 From: Doug Poland <doug@polands.org> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Removing kernel options and devices in today's world Message-ID: <20051028210946.GF46357@polands.org>
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Hello, I've been using FreeBSD since 2.1.5 and have dutifully tweaked my kernels to include devices I need, and remove unwanted things. This made a big difference on 486's with 16MB of memory. Over the years I've developed a procedure for keeping track of changes in GENERIC and reducing the amount of time it takes to build a custom kernel for a given box. Fast-forward to 2005, PCI, SMP, gigabytes of RAM, kernel loadable modules and FreeBSD 6.x. As I begin preparing some boxes for updating to 6, I'm wondering if it's really worth the effort to tweak a kernel? And by this I mean removing devices and options. It's trivial to have an include for the devices/options I need to add to every kernel. But the list of things to take out keeps getting bigger and bigger and the chance for errors in editing increase. I'm thinking of just running GENERIC with necessary additions. Most of my boxes are workstations or department-sized servers supporting basic web, email, and file/print services. Architecture is all 32-bit Intel ranging from modest PIII to 4-way Xeon P4. I can come up with several arguments for both cases (running GENERIC vs. trimming all unneeded "fat" from a kernel). Has anyone else wrestled with this issue and come up with interesting conclusions? -- Regards, Doug
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