Re: Patches for REALLY TINY 386 kernels

[Yinghai Lu]

On 7/24/07, Adrian Bunk <bunk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2007 at 01:50:35PM -0700, Yinghai Lu wrote:
> > On 7/24/07, Helge Hafting <helge.hafting@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Andi Kleen wrote:
> >> >> Some people are putting Linux kernels in the "BIOS" (i.e. ROM chip)
> >> when
> >> >> using LinuxBIOS (www.linuxbios.org). It _does_ make a lot of difference
> >> >> there how big the kernel is. At the moment you can't do that with
> >> >> anything smaller than a 1 MB chip. But if people could use 512 KB chips
> >> >> because the kernel is small enough that would sure be a great thing.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > I'm sure it would be possibel to save a lot of text size. But I don't
> >> > think removing the relatively small CPUID code is the right way.
> >> > That is just a big maintenance issue for little gain.
> >> >
> >> Well - anyone compiling linux for BIOS usage is targetting
> >> a single machine.  So an ability to target a single machine is useful,
> >> i.e. run the CPUID at compile-time, put the answer in a constant/macro,
> >> let the optimizer prune the alternatives. :-)
> >
> > we are using AMD64 + LinuxBIOS + Kernel (without acpi) + kexec to load
> > final kernel.
> > So we can use drivers in kernel for any media (SCSI, SATA, IB,...),
> > not like EFI need every driver re-porting. and We could use KVM in
> > kernel to load other OS if needed.
> >
> > The problem is Kernel is getting bigger and bigger. and old Tiny
> > kernel is stopping at 2.6.18...
> >...
>
> Please send:
> - the .config for the last kernel small enough
> - your size limit
> - your gcc version
> and I'll look at this.

http://www.linuxbios.org/Tyan_S2892_Build_Tutorial
http://www.linuxbios.org/pipermail/linuxbios/2006-October/016558.html

YH
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