On Sat, 23 Sep 2000, Keith Owens wrote:
> I worry about anything that increases the on disk size of bzImage, even
> if the extra data does not get loaded into kernel memory.
>
> 629590 2.2.16/arch/i386/boot/bzImage
> 786273 2.4.0-test8/arch/i386/boot/bzImage
>
> cat .config System.map | gzip | wc -c
> 107591
>
> That would take my 2.4.0 bzImage to 893864, it does not leave much room
> out of a 1.4Mb floppy for LILO files.
So (a) make it optional during the configuration stage, (b) extend strip
or some other user-land tool to rip 'em off afterwards for the corner cases
that don't want them, or (c) do both (a) and (b).
> This is all to protect those few poor 'administrators' who cannot keep
> track of three separate files. We should not coddle such idiots, if
> they cannot track 3 files they should not be configuring Linux.
By reductio ad absurdum, we should also get rid of gcc. It's just coddling
the idiots who can't do everything in assembly, after all, and therefore
shouldn't be programming Linux....
If appending them doesn't hurt anything, and makes life easier for people,
why not? It'd certainly make life easier for both kernel developers (since
bug report quality will increase with the lowered chance of said idiots
using the wrong System.map / no System.map) and for the ksymoops maintainer
(since you'll finally have one standard place to have it look for
System.map).
Granted, there are other ways to do the same thing. We could, for example,
combine what's now /boot and /lib/modules into one directory like
/lib/kernel, and have make install drop bzImage, System.map, .config, and
modules in /lib/kernel/'uname -r'/ . People would have to mount /lib/kernel
as a separate partition like they currently do /boot, and they'd have to
modify lilo.conf, ksymoops, and modutils, but after that it would work and
we'd still have a semi-idiocy-proof standard....
> "Think of it as evolution in action".
*shrug* It's "evolution in action" to append .config / System.map to bzImage
as well. What's your point?
later,
chris
--
Chris Ricker kaboom@gatech.edu
chris.ricker@genetics.utah.edu
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