On Tuesday 01 February 2005 01:51 pm, Binand Sethumadhavan wrote: > On Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:42:20 +0530, Vinu Moses <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'd subsequently downloaded and compiled a pristine kernel from > > kernel.org (I never run Redhat/Fedora with their default kernels > > anyway... there's too much bloat in them) with eepro100 and > > eepro1000 drivers, and both NIC's worked perfectly. > > Where, exactly? Almost everything that is module-able is module-d in > Redhat/FC. So where is the bloat?
When you compile support for a feature as a module, say SCSI or Firewire support, some additional code is added to the kernel (hooks), that allows the kernel to support the module when it is loaded. This increases the size of the kernel by a few kilobytes. Agreed, this is not as much bloat as is compiling the driver into the kernel itself, but it still is bloat. And if you don't, for example, have IDE or Firewire or ISDN devices on your server, compiling them, even as modules, serves no purpose.... For a server, my preference would be to get a pristine kernel, apply any additional patches only if I deem that patch as absolutely necessary, and compile with the barest minimum options necessary for that server. Any functionality that I will not use, I do not compile, even as modules. Some people who use servers exposed to the net even advocate that loadable module support be disabled and all necessary drivers be compiled into the kernel itself.... to make it harder for a cracker who compromises the system to load a kernel module rootkit.... Having said all that, different people on the list may have different ideals. Some of us may prefer lean kernels with only required functionality, while others may prefer the heavily patched kernels that Redhat/FC et al. provide because they have been extensively tested to work with different types of hardware out of the box and can handle diverse kinds of loads. And I'm not sure if compiling everything into the kernel as modules affects the performance of the kernel in any way, other than increasing it's memory footprint... I've not come across anything on the net with regards to this. Shameless plug: I've been using RH/FC ever since RH5 and have so far never found a reason to look at another distro. Eeps..... have exams starting next week.... better get back to my studies.... guess I've already contributed enough bytes to this ailing mailing list with this long monologue :) Regards, Vinu.
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