On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 5:55 PM, P.V.Anthony <[email protected]>wrote:
> P.V.Anthony wrote: > > Was going to compile the latest 2.6 kernel and noticed that I do not know >> what all the options mean. Especially the "General Setup" and "Processor >> Type and Features". >> > > Thank you all for the advice. Here are more details of my situation. > > Currently using Gentoo Linux 64bit as servers. Have already done kernels > and they work. I wanted to recompile the kernel but this time to know what I > am activating in the menuconfig. > > In the past it was just to get the server up. Now I want to know more and > activate only stuff that is really needed. > > That is the reason for asking for more information. The help in menuconfig > is too deep for me. Need more simple help notes about each option in > "General Setup" and "Processor Type and Features" and their implications. > > I suppose what Anand wanted to know is why you want to pick and choose amongst the options. Activating only the stuff that is needed is a noble endeavour, but usually there's an underlying reason behind that. Is it like wanting to eke out every last cpu cycle, reduce kernel memory consumption or wanting to improve security by having a monolithic kernel and stripping all unnecessary parts? My thinking is that unless you have a farm of servers and a team of sysadmins managing them, it is not productive to do these. Performance gains, even if measurable, are not worth the time it takes me to do so for each kernel release. I'm not sure how much security improvement there is in making things monolithic these days, but I'd sooner see the effort+resource spent on other aspects (applications, infrastructure, selinux/apparmor, etc), and make the kernel monolithic only after exhausting most other avenues. There may be specific kernels options that could make a dramatic difference depending on your usage scenarios. Eg, scheduler, io elevator, etc. I think these are valid and worthwhile options to explore if you know that your usage scenario is special, or if you have been advised to do so by a group of like-minded hackers running similar workloads. If you do have a business or technical objective, do let us know - maybe someone will be able to help you focus on a smaller set of kernel options that affect that objective. If you're doing this purely for personal knowledge, it appears that the available documentation isn't up to the level a layperson can read and easily understand. But if you are keen to research what each option means and you're willing to pen the wisdom down, I'm sure it'll be well received.
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