Re: stuff that goes into GENERIC

[chuck <chuck@Yerkes.com>]

Clarification here:
One of my main hatreds of Solaris, esp as a 'secure' machine is that
there is no way to 'lock down' the kernel.  Indeed, Solaris 2.6 used
upto 180 files in it's boot; I know because I had a kernel 'go bad'
when some extra packages were removed and the on-site Sun support
guy couldn't figure out which of the files might have gone wrong.
Nice - a Win9x style reinstall.

I just want to emphasize that secure machines and dynamic kernels are,
to me, a contradiction.  No issue on most desktops, but my servers are
running kernels with LKM.

So for minor boots where security is not paramount (eg. from a floppy
during an install, or for a diskless boot that leading to a rebuild
(the PC version of "boot net" ala Athena), it'd be great to have
'optional' devices LKM.  (even in the latter cases, its usually
easy to build a kernel since you know the machine and it's devices.)

Quoting Trevor Schroeder (tschroed@acm.org):
> On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Trevor Schroeder wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, chuck wrote:
> > 
> > > kernel, then perhaps a different one is in order, perhaps with extra
> > > devices loaded as LKMs.  I could certainly see a kernel for initial
> > 
> > There's something:  is there a way to split out kernel functionality into
> > loadable modules (ie, similar to Linux)?
> 
> Hmmmm... I hate to be the lamer that follows up his own message, but the
> original was maybe not very clear.  What I mean to say, is there a way to
> take traditionally monolithic kernel items (such as KMEMSTATS or IPSEC) and
> instead compile them into LKMs?  Like you can when you select portions of
> the Linux kernel to compile as modules.  I would really like to have
> KMEMSTATS available if I wanted, but otherwise unload them without having
> to reboot to a different kernel.
> .......................................................................
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