Re: stuff that goes into GENERIC

[chuck <chuck@Yerkes.com>]

Quoting Matthew Patton (matthew.patton@ra.pae.osd.mil):
> I was just glancing thru the FAQ's and such and saw that CCD, Raidframe,
> KMEMSTATS, NULLFS, PORTAL and a slew of other stuff is incorporated by
> default. Is GENERIC really supposed to be the kitchen sink? I understand
> having every device included, but some of this stuff is not exactly
> common nor in some cases considered perfectly stable, and others
> significantly slow stuff down (supposedly). What with space being tight,
> shouldn't we trim it down some?

Space being tight???  Where's that from?
I agree for GENERIC should have most of what people need, and plenty
of people can run with it quite happily.  It we need a small, minimal
kernel, then perhaps a different one is in order, perhaps with extra
devices loaded as LKMs.  I could certainly see a kernel for initial
setups (eg, from a CD) not supporting networks, or them fancy, frilly
disk array things or much beyond disk, MMU and a text console.  Then,
if the user needs network support modloading in the appropriate drivers.


In passing, I just threw RH Linux 5.2 on a Sparc here for kicks (spare
disk, and all).  I don't use it much, but there's a neat little framework
for building a kernel config that uses whole sentences to walk the novice
through it.  Be curious if anyone has tried to swipe that structure into
BSD.  Seems like it could be straightforward with a config file:

options {
    NULLFS {
        descr "a stub file system";
        required;
    }
    ...

And something to read this and spit it out with yes/no (curses) or a
tcl click box.

Hmmm.  Later.