Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 16 Jul 2007 01:05:24 +0200 | From | Adrian Bunk <> | Subject | Re: Patches for REALLY TINY 386 kernels |
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On Sun, Jul 15, 2007 at 02:00:29PM -0700, Jonathan Campbell wrote: > I wrote a set of patches out of concern that even if you compile a 386 > kernel a lot of code irrelevent to legacy machines still remains. Things > like the Pentium TSC register, DMI information, ESCD parsing, and the use > of CPUID do not apply to these machines, but looking at System.map you can > see they're still there. > > Already with these patches I can compile a zImage kernel that is 450kb > large (890kb decompressed) with a small initramfs payload, floppy and > kernel module support, FPU emulation, that can successfully boot on an > ancient 386 laptop with only 1MB of extended memory. Eventually what I'd > like to have is the ability to compile a pure 386 kernel with all non-386 > functions removed (and perhaps the same for 486 machines). >...
Besides some issues with the patch itself you didn't provide the one important number: By how much does your patch decrease the size of the kernel?
Also note that when aiming for a tiny kernel enabling module support is a huge mistake since it increases the amount of RAM used when running the kernel by at about 10%.
cu Adrian
--
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