Optimizationn questions?
Jeffrey Goldberg
jeffrey at goldmark.org
Sat Mar 17 00:40:38 UTC 2007
On Mar 16, 2007, at 10:00 AM, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 02:19:25AM +0100, Danny Pansters wrote:
>
>> On Friday 16 March 2007 01:04:51 Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
>>> me, too.
>>
>> Of course it will speed up booting but then again how much time
>> does one spend
>> booting, compared to using the puter: not much (at least I hope so
>> for them!)
Ah but some of us boot frequently. We have to after each kernel
rebuild.
>> If I do build my own kernel, for example to switch schedulers, I
>> tend to toss
>> out a heap of devices that I don't have anyway. But other than a
>> bit more
>> memory usage (which compared to the software that's run will
>> typically be
>> minor anyhow unless you're talking embedded system or maybe not-so-
>> embedded
>> but still of low spec special purpose boxes, like a satellite
>> receiver box)
>> you're not going to have a slower system because your kernel
>> happens to have
>> some built-in drivers that it doesn't use. The exception is a
>> debug kernel of
>> course that will impact performance because it increases runtime
>> tasks/load.
>>
>> On a server I'd strip down the kernel, but for other reasons
>> (avoiding any
>> unneeded complexity). On a desktop I don't care as long as thingie
>> works.
>> YMMV of course.
>
> I think what he was saying is that if you already need to build a
> kernel for some other reason, then go ahead and strip out the
> unused stuff. But, if you don't have any other reason to do it,
> it is not worth the bother to build another kernel just to strip
> it of unused stuff - that it won't make THAT much difference.
>
> I'd agree with that.
me, too.
I've got some linux workstations for which I've never felt the need
to compile my own kernel. But my FreeBSD box is a headless ITX-mini
board that will run as a public server. Because there was so much of
GENERIC that I could discard for my box, it seemed to make sense.
But I suppose the single most important factor in my decision to
compile my own kernel is
"Building a custom kernel is one of the most important rites of
passage nearly
every BSD user must endure."
From:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/
kernelconfig-custom-kernel.html
Also I have m0n0wall running on a Soekris box, and someday I may want
to customize that, so this is a good learning experience.
It's really
-j
--
Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
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