From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 9 08:30:25 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 28C8F16A41F for ; Wed, 9 Nov 2005 08:30:25 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jmg@hydrogen.funkthat.com) Received: from hydrogen.funkthat.com (gate.funkthat.com [69.17.45.168]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D28143D46 for ; Wed, 9 Nov 2005 08:30:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jmg@hydrogen.funkthat.com) Received: from hydrogen.funkthat.com (localhost.funkthat.com [127.0.0.1]) by hydrogen.funkthat.com (8.13.3/8.13.3) with ESMTP id jA98UJuZ089698; Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:30:19 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jmg@hydrogen.funkthat.com) Received: (from jmg@localhost) by hydrogen.funkthat.com (8.13.3/8.13.3/Submit) id jA98UGwZ089694; Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:30:16 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jmg) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:30:16 -0800 From: John-Mark Gurney To: Miguel Message-ID: <20051109083016.GW775@funkthat.com> Mail-Followup-To: Miguel , freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <120ef0530511041210s6d3dbee8pc2db36129b44be2c@mail.gmail.com> <436BCA7B.6060700@voidmain.net> <4370D0A9.4030707@freebsd.org> <20051108195026.GR775@funkthat.com> <437105E7.6070605@123.com.sv> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <437105E7.6070605@123.com.sv> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE-p6 i386 X-PGP-Fingerprint: B7 EC EF F8 AE ED A7 31 96 7A 22 B3 D8 56 36 F4 X-Files: The truth is out there X-URL: http://resnet.uoregon.edu/~gurney_j/ X-Resume: http://resnet.uoregon.edu/~gurney_j/resume.html Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What should be in GENERIC? (was Re: Facilitating binary kernel upgrades) X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: John-Mark Gurney List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:30:25 -0000 Miguel wrote this message on Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 14:09 -0600: > John-Mark Gurney wrote: > > >GENERIC is already so large, that if you want/need a smaller kernel, > >you're going to rebuild anyways, > > > >Since I care about that extra 2megs, I recompiled my own kernel, > And the real problem of a big kernel is???? > I dont understand exactly why do you have to recompile, unless a new > future is needed, like SMP, isnt it?, what harm is doing those extra megs? > May be you could clarify on this (for the newbies... :-) ), i always add > things to generic instead of cut them down, especially that im not an > expert on every future commented there, and i am scared to break working > things, openbsd recomends dont recompile, shoul we? In the general case, no, you do not need to recompile.. Those extra megs aren't doing any harm... (besides taking up memory).. I recompile because I'm both familar with the kernel (if I break anything, I can clean it up) , and the extra size of the kernel means that I loose that much memory to running programs... As I said, now days it's not nearly the same, but when I started using FreeBSD, I had 4megs of memory, so saving 300kb was a HUGE deal... In other cases, we use FreeBSD at work on a device w/o swap, and we are constrained by memory, so saving a few megs gives us a bit extra room... Hmmm... maybe we should ship the SMP kernel along with the GENERIC kernel? That'd probably save a bit on new users, though now that we are shipping debug kernels, that'd bloat / by another 20+megs.. :( -- John-Mark Gurney Voice: +1 415 225 5579 "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."