I have compiled a custom kernel for my laptop. I am using openSuSE 11.4 x86_64. The kernel compilation and installation was a success. I have another question. I have looked in the lib/modules directory and I have seen that the modules that correspond to my custom kernel although they are less in number than then modules of the prebuilt kernel consume more space. I have check also per module basis and I have seen that for example module 3c59x.ko has size 98344 bytes for the prebuilt kernel and 654460 for the custom kernel, the same happens for other modules. Why this happens? Is there any special switch that you have to chose during compilation. I just made:
make,
make modules, make modules_install, make install
There are several options when you compile a kernel. You can leave out modules you know are not needed for the target audience, you can even request the kernel compile with the smallest kernel it can. I would say that unless you are running out of disk space and if we can assume the kernel you compiled works, then I am not sure I would worry about it size too much. I do have a bash script you can use to automate the kernel compile process and it offers the option to change the kernel compilation options. Message #62 has the most recent version of sakc, if you have never considered using it before…
I saw in the config file that the Kernel hacking options are enabled. Does this mean that the custom kernel has debug code into it? The truth is that I didn’t did configuration myself but I gave
I saw in the config file that the Kernel hacking options are enabled. Does this mean that the custom kernel has debug code into it? The truth is that I didn’t did configuration myself but I gave
If you are using the kernel source files from kernel.org, some debug code can be enabled. I can’t say that I really know what they normally do, but I have found experimental code which can be disabled and you can eliminate any coding not needed for your PC. But in the end, I have not found a particular advantage to such efforts and often you can render the kernel unusable and unable to load. I love to try out the most recent kernel to see how it works as right now I am using kernel 3.0-rc4 and the nVIDIA driver version NVIDIA 275.09.07 which is working just fine. I use the original kernel configuration file from the openSUSE kernel-desktop and take the default settings for any new modules that have been added. I then use the command make menuconfig to allow you to modify that configuration. Again, this is in the sakc bach script that I mentioned before. I have a blog post for sakc 2.50 you can read about here: