Kernel symbol file alternate location

[Daniel O'Connor]

Is it possible to tell installkernel to put the symbol files elsewhere?

IMO somewhere in /usr would be good - you don't need them to boot (or crashdump, etc) and they increase the size of the kernel by a factor of 5(!), eg..
[cain 14:07] /tmp >du -sh kernel
258M    kernel
[cain 14:07] /tmp >rm -f kernel/*.symbols
[cain 14:07] /tmp >du -sh kernel         
 50M    kernel

One downside is that you need to keep them in sync which is a bit of a drag, however I think most people use installworld for upgrades/builds so it would generally not be an issue.

I think this is the main reason / has had to grow - the actual kernel is relatively small so even a 256Mb / could hold several, but with the symbol files it is not possible.

I don't have patches to do this though :)

--
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
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