Modular type GENERIC?

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Adrian Chadd <adrian at freebsd.org> (from Sun, 24 Feb 2008  
19:26:04 +0900):

> G'day,
>
> I was just wondering why we're not shipping a GENERIC type
> configuration that simply loads the modules at startup, rather than a
> statically linked kernel. I thought that was a large part of the push
> for the modular framework in years past.

Using modules needs more space than having all in the kernel (or  
generating one big "super-module" which contains the code from all  
modules). There's some kind of space overhead for each module. When  
module support was added, space on the install media was a critical  
resource. Today this could be revisited (at least for the kernel which  
will be installed on the destination medium).

> As a quick experiment, I trimmed all the modular devices out of
> RELENG_7 GENERIC into a "BASE" configuration file and filled
> /boot/loader.conf with modules relevant to my system. Everything
> booted just fine.
>
> How feasible do people think it would be to ship a "GENERIC"
> configuration which simply includes all the devices in a default
> module list, and users can select/deselect modules they wish to load?

I'm running a mini kernel since years, and everything I need is added  
as a module (if possible). So I would probably be one of the consumers  
of such a config.

> Here's the kernel and loader configuration files I'm using just on my
> system. I think acpi_load is a bit extraneous as acpi is included in
> the amd64 DEFAULTS.

acpi is also loaded automatically on i386 (or not, if specified in the  
loader, so it should not be added in the config)

> http://people.freebsd.org/~adrian/BASE.txt
> http://people.freebsd.org/~adrian/loader.conf

I haven't looked at this.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
Some men are so macho they'll get you pregnant just to kill a rabbit.
		-- Maureen Murphy

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137