Ryan Lewon wrote: > On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 03:47:23PM -0700, randall wrote: > > Does anyone know if there is a program that looks at the > > hardware on a linux platform, then lists the necessary kernel > > modules and no others? I want to optimize a kernel for one of > > my platforms, but a recent glance at menuconfig shows literally > > hundreds of possibilities that is becoming confusing and I am > > afraid to do this manually. > > > > - Randall > > Unfortunately, there is no such utility if there were, they > wouln't make monolithic MASSIVE kernels. It's best not to venture > into menuconfig if you don't know what you're doing in there > anyways especially hardware wise. > > -- Ryan Lewon /sbin.us >
Randall! Don't listen to him!! The people who've stuck with Linux over the long haul and know their stuff, are the ones who *experimented* when they came to this kind or situation. This is a *great* chance to become familiar with your hardware, your bootloader, the kernel, the documentation that is in your kernel source, and the kernel config tools. (There is more than menuconfig, but menuconfig has the least build requirements.) It's not dangerous. You won't get injured. The *worst* that could happen is that you might need a fresh installation. Back up your data and be smart, then the mistakes will be "AHA!" experiences instead of heartbreakers. Maybe you even have a little space on your disk that you could create a bootable partition on. Put a minimal installation on it and use it only for experimentation. The advice to see what modules were loaded by stock kernels is a good place to start. The "lsmod" command will list them for you. In the end though, you still need to just take the time to go carefully through the list. It won't be fast, and probably won't be fun, but it *will* pay off! You can save the kernel configs into a separate file between builds. If you only want to change a few things, reload it instead of starting from scratch. Wade Curry syntaxman -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
