Messages in this thread |  | | Subject | Re: dropping kerneld... | From | Matthias Urlichs <> | Date | Tue, 30 Apr 1996 08:01:55 +0200 (MET DST) |
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In linux.dev.kernel, article <6F5724445CA@espoo.fipower.fi>, "Lauri Tischler" <ltischler@fipower.fi> writes: > > Yup, I'm missing a lot of pain and useless complications by not > using kerneld and modules. Quite useless contraptions both. > Ah, come on...
Here, we have a heap of server machines, different hardware (start with wildly differrent SCSI adapters), different software requirements (one serves Appletalk, the rest quite frankly can't be bothered).
Before modules and initrd, I've had to build a kernel for each of these beasts. Ugh. Now, I build the kerneld 100% modularized (OK, OK, binfmt_elf and ext2 aren't, but they're used on every system anyway). Initrd then just loads one SCSO adapter after the other until one is found, then kicks the real boot process which loads the network card and protocol drivers, and that's it. (I'm not loading the protocol stacks with kerneld because it doesn't work yet -- every call to ifconfig would load the whole code, only to find that there aren't any Appletalk or IPX addresses. The appropriate kernel code should not bother to ask kerneld if SIOCG* calls are made, IMHO, but I haven't had the time to actually do something about this.)
> Any lurking need to use kerneld is easily cured by getting enough > memory. > That is not an option for many people out there, and if given the choice to let heaps of dead code lie around in the kernel, or to spend a little bit of time and one additional page of memory when I do need the code, I'll happily take the latter route.
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