Reducing the need to compile a custom kernel

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Nenhum_de_Nos <matheus at eternamente.info> (from Tue, 14 Feb  
2012 10:49:56 -0200):

> On Tue, February 14, 2012 08:31, Alexander Leidinger wrote:

>> Embedded devices are out of the scope of this, normally you do a lot
>> of other modifictions to such systems anyway, so a custom kernel
>> should be not a big problem.
>>
>> I will also not touch the dual-stack part of the kernel config (it
>> shall still allow the generic purpose computing like the GERNERIC
>> config).
>
> I'm really curious why, if they are the piece of hardware that  
> usually are worse to compile things
> on, for access issues to poor hardware (great to compile  
> kernel+world on i7, pain to do so in my
> net5501-70).

Typically embedded environments have a different goal regarding the  
kernel, than a normal server/desktop. In an embedded sytem RAM and  
disc space may be very limited and as such you need to get rid of a  
lot of things you want to have in a server kernel. A server is also  
some kind of generic purpose device, whereas an embedded system is a  
special purpose device. If we do not know the special purpose of the  
device, we can not provide a suitable kernel for it (a NAS has other  
requirements than a router, firewall, WLAN access point or multimedia  
system).

Regarding the compile time issue you talked about: cross compiling a  
world/kernel is supported by FreeBSD.

It may be not a bad idea to provide examples of special purpose  
kernels with FreeBSD, but this is a completely different topic I (as  
the thread started) want to discuss in this thread about the work _I_  
want to do and need input from the community for. You are off course  
free to open a new thread to discuss the kernel-config of special  
purpose devices.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
Bender: Bite my shiny, metal ass!

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http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137