How to find needed modules for rebuilding kernel

[Danny Pansters]

On Friday 01 April 2005 00:45, Pat Maddox wrote:
> Thanks for the info.  My terminology is off...apparently what I really
> meant is I'm wondering what drivers I need to compile into the kernel.
>  I've done what you've suggested - removed SCSI support, all of the
> NIC drivers besides the one I need, etc.  I'm just wondering how I can
> find out EXACTLY what I need in there, so I can have as little as
> possible.  It's a server, so it has a pretty narrow purpose, and I'd
> like to keep the kernel as small and fast as I can.

Surely it's not going to run out of memory or disk space any time soon with a 
few kB more or less for the kernel.

Like I said there _is_ documentation ranging from abundant to sparce to terse 
to the plain source. The latter is to be taken literally...  some things are 
only documented in the sources, if you're lucky in a line of normal text in a 
header file (e.g. with device drivers). Reading NOTES would be a start. 

But I'd like to caution you not to put too much efford in this. The point is 
you only need to go that far if really needed, and I'm quite sure it's not. 
It would hardly matter. If you want to do it the hard way, well then see the 
above for the hard way :)

You might be more interested in tuning(7) and the various device.hints to get 
the most out of your hardware. The "smallest size/footprint kernel" used to 
be a common issue when people had small drives, little RAM and had to use 
floppies. Also, if you want a server that runs well, invest some time into 
the configuration of your services. Things like maximum files, maximum forks, 
timeouts, ... Much more likely to appear as troublemakers than a somewhat 
overweight kernel.

Dan