From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sun Nov  5 07:18:04 1995
Return-Path: owner-hackers
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id HAA03481
          for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 5 Nov 1995 07:18:04 -0800
Received: from cls.net (freeside.cls.de [192.129.50.1])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id HAA03473
          for <hackers@freebsd.org>; Sun, 5 Nov 1995 07:17:55 -0800
Received: by mail.cls.net (Smail3.1.28.1)
	  from allegro.lemis.de (192.109.197.134) with smtp
	  id <m0tC6pj-0011j4C@cls.net>; Sun, 5 Nov 95 15:18 GMT
From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany
Phone: +49-6637-919123
Fax:   +49-6637-919122
Reply-To: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
Received: (grog@localhost) by allegro.lemis.de (8.6.9/8.6.9) 
	id PAA12893; Sun, 5 Nov 1995 15:55:07 +0100
Message-Id: <199511051455.PAA12893@allegro.lemis.de>
Subject: Re: machine reboot & kernel maxusers option
To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans)
Date: Sun, 5 Nov 1995 15:55:07 +0100 (MET)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Hackers)
In-Reply-To: <199511051354.AAA05773@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Nov 6, 95 00:54:28 am
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 1504      
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

Bruce Evans writes:
> 
> >> >I'll go along with that.  "Not found" also scares off people who don't
> >> >realize that it's a normal state of affairs.
> >> 
> >> It's only normal (and not good) for GENERIC and other bloated kernels.
> 
> >Would you like to hazard a guess about what percentage of people
> >really, *really* customize their kernels?  Even if you do, you might
> 
> Low.  20%?

Well, I suppose it's a guess, but what do other people think?
Remember, this is a group of people who *understand* the system.  I'd
guess that not more than 1% of the users out there rebuild their
system, and those that do do it mainly because they have a problem
with the generic kernel.

> >need to keep things in that you don't have (I haven't found a clean
> >way to remove CD-ROM support, for example).  You're right, though,
> >that doesn't make it good.
> 
> I would at least disable the drivers for hardware that doesn't exist.
> This doesn't reduce the space bloat but it makes driver probes more
> reliable and turns "Not found" warnings into errors.

Sure, but how?  If I remove CD-ROM support for my dickless
workstations, I get unresolved references from other modules which do
need to stay.  Sure, I could go in and throw in some #ifdefs--maybe.
But that's going beyond a simple kernel rebuild.

Or are you saying "keep CD-ROM support, but remove the drivers"?  That
might work--I haven't tried it, because I don't like playing trial and
error, and I don't have time to analyse the sources.

Greg