From: hpa@ahab.eecs.nwu.edu (H. Peter Anvin N9ITP) Subject: Re: ALPHA-pl10 Gripe Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 18:01:46 GMT
In article <1993May28.154724.28015@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> of comp.os.linux,
jerry@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
> Hello! I just picked up the Alpha pl10 kernel, and I have a selfish gripe
> to report :-)
>
> I usually try to build a very small kernel. I include no FPU emulation,
> no networking, no SCSI support, no busmouse support, and no more than three
> filesystems (xiafs, msdos, proc).
>
> Before the pl10 Alpha, the size of my Image was always around 270KB. The
> pl10 Image with the same features is 400KB. My guess is that a lot of
> networking stuff that I don't need is being compiled in (yes, I disabled
> networking during "make config"). I hope that the release version of pl10
> will be smarter about leaving all that stuff out.
>
> Also, what's with the new driver architecture? I've always admired Linux
> for being so small and fast. Now I see Space.c and have nasty System V
> flashbacks.
Linux has always had a Space.c as long as it had TCP/IP, although Fred
van Kempen is trying to make it more universal. The idea, as far as I
understand, is to get all the configuration information in one place,
a good idea as far as I am concerned.
The reason your new kernel is larger is that you compiled a
non-compressed kernel (Image) instead of a compressed kernel (zImage).
Alpha-10 kernel is about 40K larger than a pl9 kernel when both are
compressed, and TCP/IP are compiled in (and that stands for most of
the difference).
Try "make zImage" and see if you don't get a lot smaller kernel this
time.
/hpa
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