Custom Kernel questions...

[Erik Trulsson]

On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 04:52:45PM -0700, Andrew Carton wrote:
> While I am not exactly new to FreeBSD or other *nix variants, I choose to
> use FreeBSD because of its blazing performance, especially on older,
> slower machines. Yet, I also wish to strip that kernel to squeeze out
> every bit of usable power I can. My delving into kernel customizing with
> FreeBSD has been realativly short, and for the most part error free, but
> in comparison to Linux, it seems to offer fewer customizing options.
>    
>   More specificly, many of my machines are being setup as servers, and
>   thusly have no need of many services such as sound drivers, yet it
>   appears that I see code for them passing by the screen as I configure
>   and compile. Has anyone here delved deeper into the configuration of the
>   kernel, are there more options is other files aside from the main
>   configuration file?
>    
>   Andrew


Sound drivers are not included in the kernel unless explicitly listed in
the kernel config file.
What you see is probably the kernel modules being compiled.
All modules are normally always compiled and installed regardless of the
kernel configuration.  (One can change this using various options in
/etc/make.conf, but unless disk space is really tight or the time needed
to compile a kernel has to be reduced as much as possible, there is not
really any need to disable various modules from being built.)


To find all the options that can be used in the kernel config file you can
look at /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES (for machine-independent options) and
/usr/src/sys/i386/conf/NOTES  (for i386-specific options.)

You should also read the FreeBSD handbook's chapter on kernel configuration
if you have not already done so:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig.html



-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se