RE: stuff that goes into GENERIC

["Latalladi, Eric" <ELatall@resmoney.com>]

You must be a pretty crappy sysadmin. Would you like Theo to come over and
do your laundry too? Or maybe wash your dishes? Why the hell don't you take
the time out and read about these kernel options? They were included in
GENERIC for a reason. How do you know if you don't need them if you don't
even know what they are? Do your homework, because right now you are
screaming incompetence and laziness.
-Eric Latalladi
NSAD 
General Motors/RMC
elatall@resmoney.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kocks [mailto:peter.kocks@baygate.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 1999 2:48 PM
To: Theo de Raadt; tech@openbsd.org
Subject: RE: stuff that goes into GENERIC 


> 
> I'm glad you know how to compile your own kernel, but most people should
> not need to know how.
>

I'm in that stage where I know how to recompile the kernel (and /usr land)
in order to make a new system, but I don't know whether or not I need stuff
like NULLFS or KMEMSTATS etc.  Since my primary use of OpenBSD is for
creating a firewalls, routers, kerberos authentication boxes, etc I don't
need, nor want all the extras.  I'd prefer a simpler and hopefully more
secure and stable system.  That is, in fact, precisely why I'm in the
OpenBSD
camp in first place (as opposed to FreeBSD or linux).

To me the following things would be helpful (and maybe they exist, but I
don't
know where)

1) A kernel config for a minimal system.  Call it something like MINIMUM, so
that I can just build the system using that one instead of GENERIC.

2) or perhaps simply adding some more comments to the GENERIC kernel
description
that highlights what is necessary and what is not.  I see the descriptions
of the
options in GENERIC, but sometimes I just don't know whether I need the stuff
or not.  E.g.  PCIVERBOSE  (most of my hardware does use PCI, but does that
mean I need PCIVERBOSE?)

3) Some basic documentation about what all those kernel config files are
meant
to be used for.  E.g.  What's the LUCIFER kernel?  Is that one of the
development
teams custom kernels?  A simple README in the directory should suffice.  The
README file should definitely have a not about rebuilding userland, since
that is a mistake I made once and I've read a couple of times on this e-mail
list that others have made the same mistake.


BTW, I'm still on 2.4, if things have changed in 2.5 sorry if this is no
longer
relevant...

My 2 cents
--pk