On Tue, 4 May 1999, Cary O'Brien wrote:
>> Of course, another critical factor is the size of the kernel. Every
>> little extraneous bit of code should be stripped out of the kernel.
> I was going to add this to my original message, but I started thinking,
> if most thing are kernel modules, isn't the kernel going to start out
> small and only put in what is necessary?
I don't know, but I assume that enabling module support (and kerneld
support?) in the kernel would take up some extra space. Probably not
much, but still, it could make a difference. And perhaps drivers compiled
as modules take up a little more space than drivers built into the kernel.
(Or perhaps less, someone should test this out. But I would bet modules
take up a little more space than equivalent built-in drivers.)
Unfortunately, it seems that some useful drivers such as some of the
masquerading add-ons can only be built as modules.
> I do make custom kernels for bootable floppys, but in a situation where
> there is enough disk space (and in this case 100MB should be plenty),
> would it really be worth the time to compile a static (i.e. no modules)
> kernel with everything turned off, or would simply making sure
> everything was a module save the same amount of ram.
Modules could save ram at times, if unused ones were unloaded. But
kerneld takes ram, and for a router most of the modules would be needed
most of the time, I guess. The only way to know for sure would be to test
various configurations.
> Hmm... Isn't there a boot flag to specify max memory?
> Here it is ,maxmem. So if you boot with maxmem=4M,
> you might be able to check how the system runs.
That's a good idea. What I had in mind was a small daemon that monitors
and stores maximum ram consumption, but even that may not give a full
picture of memory usage. At some times it may be safe to swap some
programs out, so swap space has to be worked in to the equation, and that
can be done with the maxmem flag.
Anyway, I think we may be getting a little carried away. For 2MB, it may
be necessary to take some radical action to prevent massive swapping. For
a reasonable 4MB setup, everything will be just fine.
Ed
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