Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 08:22:01 -0800 From: Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org> To: freebsd@voidmain.net Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Richard Bejtlich <taosecurity@gmail.com> Subject: What should be in GENERIC? (was Re: Facilitating binary kernel upgrades) Message-ID: <4370D0A9.4030707@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <436BCA7B.6060700@voidmain.net> References: <120ef0530511041210s6d3dbee8pc2db36129b44be2c@mail.gmail.com> <436BCA7B.6060700@voidmain.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Tom Grove wrote: > Richard Bejtlich wrote: >> After speaking with Colin, he mentioned that IPSec, NAT, and disk >> quotas (enabled via options QUOTA) are the three most popular kernel >> changes that prevent people from running GENERIC and hence using >> freebsd-update for binary kernel updates. >> >> Can anyone shed light on why those three features are not available in >> GENERIC? > > My guess is that just because those are the three most popular kernel > changes that prevent people from running GENERIC doesn't mean that the > majority of users implement these changes. I find this argument hard to accept. The vast majority of FreeBSD users will never need the NFS_ROOT option, and many systems do not even have the hardware for serial or parallel ports, yet those are supported in the GENERIC kernel. In deciding what options should go into the GENERIC kernel, I think the question we should be asking is not "how many people use this?", but instead "would adding this option inconvenience more people than it would help?". Colin Percival
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4370D0A9.4030707>