Leslie Katz wrote:
I'm trying to make an ancient laptop run with a mini-distribution, DSL.
As the laptop has only 64MB of RAM, I'm trying to make sure DSL
doesn't include any unnecessary services or modules when it boots up.
For instance, the laptop has two PCMCIA slots, so on bootup, DSL
starts cardmgr. However, I have no cards installed, so I configured a
file which runs on bootup shortly after cardmgr is started immediately
to stop cardmgr.
The elegant way to prevent this laptop from loading PCMCIA is to get the
kernel source code for your software. Once you've untar
this source code, cd to kernel-xxx-xxx-xx. Then copy your current config
(normally in /boot/config-xxx-xxx-xx) to .config and
run #make oldconfig. This is will copy .config to .config.old and create
a new .config which is a sync of your new source kernel.
Then do a # make menuconfig and figure out which ones to activate or
deactivate. Or #make config, if you are unable to run X.
The above will allow you to remove (disable) modules you do not want to
use. Disable pcmcia is one of them.
Then, run #make dep && make clean && make modules && make && make
modules_install && make install.
Having done what I think I can with services, I've now turned to
modules. For instance, on bootup, DSL loads the ieee1394 module.
However, the laptop has no Firewire port, so I configured the same
file immediately to unload the module.
However, I'm a bit worried about trying to do the same thing with
other modules. Since the laptop has no USB ports, I thought I could
get rid of the usbcore and hid modules in the same way I got rid of
the ieee1394 module, but trying that hung the laptop.
Can anyone point me to some source of information which would help me
decide which, if any, other modules I could safely dispense with? I've
tried via googling, but had no success.
Hope this helps.
O Plameras
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