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Date:      Mon, 8 Apr 2013 22:05:33 -0700
From:      Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>
To:        Kevin Day <toasty@dragondata.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org>, Amit Rawat <aamitr4@gmail.com>, Jilles Tjoelker <jilles@stack.nl>
Subject:   Re: GSOC 2013 project " Kernel Size Reduction for Embedded System "
Message-ID:  <CAJ-VmomWxcD=cRxoMbLtSLVuQ3Uevb1YVLB_7_LadSAez5mn1A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <FEDB1271-6D11-4F9A-A4DF-B2AD717DB067@dragondata.com>
References:  <CAOhv3dpTM9J9oiLpdw8xOAToXT_tQ3VW4Mv1F%2B8n7xhG%2BJK93w@mail.gmail.com> <20130408224423.GA64696@stack.nl> <CAJ-VmonVre%2BVT2tTdQf3hA6DvKifqrJtxDT1RX8KEyW6a-=EXQ@mail.gmail.com> <5163622F.60604@mu.org> <FEDB1271-6D11-4F9A-A4DF-B2AD717DB067@dragondata.com>

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On 8 April 2013 19:28, Kevin Day <toasty@dragondata.com> wrote:

> Ages ago we had to make things work in 16 or 32MB of total system memory =
on i386.
>
> For the most part, disabling every compiled-in option/driver we didn't ne=
ed was 90% of the effort. Which options/drivers is going to be totally appl=
ication dependent, so that really can't be done for you.
>
> As for the rest, there isn't any large low hanging fruit that can get cul=
led from the kernel easily. The base kernel isn't modular enough to trim ou=
t individual syscalls or anything, and doing so wouldn't have made a huge d=
ent.
>
> There are a lot of ways FreeBSD could be more embedded friendly (being ab=
le turn on/off parts of userland depending on licenses is a huge one), but =
producing a trimmed kernel isn't something I'd rank very highly. If buildin=
g a kernel with everything modularized as possible isn't small enough, Free=
BSD probably isn't going to work for you for other reasons.

The MIPS kernels I'm producing are pretty bare. There's not a lot of
options to disable at this point.. :(



Adrian



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