On Thu, Jun 11, 1998 at 09:41:03AM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote: > The problem is that the Debian installation kernel tries to be all things > to all people. As there are machines that boot from SCSI drives, it was > necessary to have all the scsi controlers "built in" to the kernel, hense > its large size. > > We should recommend that everyone, once they have a standard system and > can build a kernel, should build a custom kernel for their machine as > early as possible. > > Another solution is the one that slackware provides. They build a "bunch" > of kernels, each one for a specific hardware configuration (broad enought > to cover a range of hardware, and chosen to keep incopatibly drivers out > of the picture {like the wd9000 driver that plonks ethernet cards})
I'm working on a better solution that involves using initrd to load the required controllers (built as loadable modules). I've tested using initrd for lowmem installations and it works flawlessly (just have a look at lowmem boot disk in boot-floppies_2.0.7 when I upload it next weekend). Using initrd, our default kernel may be reduced to half its current size, as all those different controllers may be built as modules and only the required ones will be loaded at boot time. That will save our users a few hundred KBs of RAM, and will make building a custom kernel a not so needed step. When I have a "proof-of-concept" implementation, I plan to discuss the details with Herbert Xu, our kernel maintainer, to see if we can adopt this solution for slink. -- Enrique Zanardi [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]