From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 11 02:59:48 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E46716A4CE for ; Thu, 11 Mar 2004 02:59:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from geminix.org (gen129.n001.c02.escapebox.net [213.73.91.129]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1FF3143D41 for ; Thu, 11 Mar 2004 02:59:48 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gemini@geminix.org) Message-ID: <405046A0.9080702@geminix.org> Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 11:59:44 +0100 From: Uwe Doering Organization: Private UNIX Site User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040119 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Mailing list References: <20040311090126.GA19147@alzatex.com> In-Reply-To: <20040311090126.GA19147@alzatex.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Received: from gemini by geminix.org with asmtp (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 3.36 #1) id 1B1Nuk-000EEH-00; Thu, 11 Mar 2004 11:59:46 +0100 Subject: Re: Kernel Questions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 10:59:48 -0000 Loren M. Lang wrote: > A few questions on the FreeBSD kernel: > > 1. If I specify a driver in the config file with a device command, does > that always mean that it's compiled in staticly and not as a module? It will then be compiled in statically, but this doesn't affect the module (see below). > 2. How does make decide what to compile as a module? Is it everything > not compiled into the kernel that it can compile as a module? And how > would I tell what can only be compiled staticly and won't be compiled if > it's not included with a device entry? Per default all devices get compiled and installed as modules, regardless of whether you compile some of the devices statically into the kernel or not. You can use makeoptions MODULES_OVERRIDE="..." to limit the modules to be compiled and installed to the list you provide with this option. See the comments in the 'LINT' file. > 3. The handbook seems to suggest to use the config, make, make install > procedure for installing the kernel if you have no other reason for not > using it, what is the reason for this? (The paragraph immediately > following procedure 2) This sequence takes care that all the modules get installed together with the matching kernel, that a backup of both the kernel and the modules is available (suffix '.old') in case the new kernel doesn't work properly, and it also deals with the system immutable flag ('schg') that protects '/kernel' from being deleted or clobbered by accident. You would have to do all these things by hand if you didn't use the recommended sequence. Uwe -- Uwe Doering | EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers gemini@geminix.org | http://www.escapebox.net