On Saturday 05 January 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > to de-junk a default config - even if you don't know what you do, > > is in realm of half an hour to an hour. If you read everything. > > Do you have a de-junked .config that I can diff against the > default.. it would be a way to see what kinds of things get dropped.
Drivers for stuff you don't need and you will likely never use. Like ham radio stuff, v4linux (first version), I20, on a notebook all the enterprise-grade connect-a-machine-to-storage-stuff like iSCSI and Infiniband, all of ISA and MCA and the pre-pci bus drivers, old disk types like mfm and on modern boards usually even IDE as well. Removing all these unused drivers is the single largest improvement in reducing kernel size. The general rule with drivers is that if you are familiar with YOUR hardware and you've never heard of something in the config then you don't have it and don't need it :-) Complete kernel sub-systems are a bit harder, although some are still obvious. Like virtualisation. I assure you that if you have never heard of kvm and paravirt, then you certainly don't need it. With other stuff I usually end up leaving them in and removing things gradually as I compile the next kernel and learn more about stuff out there. If say HPET intrigues you and you want to know more, then Google it. Tomorrow you can do another one. Like I said in an earlier mail, it's not an easy process. It's only easy if you know most of it already - like Volker. I'd guess he has long since forgotten what it took to learn everything he knows, so of course "It's obvious!"... Comparing his and your configs is mostly pointless as your machines will differ considerably. The config file is >70k and even on two recent standard ubuntu configs the differences are over 1000 lines. Good luck with comparing that lot and trying to figure out what's going on :-) alan -- Alan McKinnon alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
