Karl Bongers wrote: >Put your .config file in a cool dry place. make mrproper deletes it, >and you can put a lot of effort getting a .config file right. >Also, edit the Makefile each time and add an incrementing tag: >EXTRAVERSION =-sf1 >That helps avoid writing over the top of the last kernel modules >installed in /lib/modules/version-xxx and gives you your own version tag. Excellent ideas, Karl! You have obviously built more than a kernel or two! [other good ideas by Karl omitted] >You start thinking, hmmm, those guys making the distro's one size >fit all kernels and initrds aren't so stupid. Generally, a distribution's installation kernel will come with huge initrd (or a second initrd that is huge) containing all the software required to install the distribution. The one used by Aurora 1.0 (Red Hat 7.3 Sparc) is well over 100 MB in size. >I want a lean mean initrd, nothing that requires gobs of RAM. >RedHat has an interesting one, uses dash, compiled with dietlibc, to avoid >the huge bloat of /lib/glibc. dietlibc is neat, you compile like this: >diet gcc prog.c -o prog >And it spits out a nice small prog with no dependencies. After installation is complete, the generic initrd built by Aurora 1.0 is only about 4MB. >One of my pet peaves is the live-cds, boot disks, that all require >GOBS of ram(for big initrd's), making them useless on older machines. >When knoppixs boots on a 128MB machine and says I don't have enough ram >that makes me mad(I know, I can boot without the gui). I'm confused. Are you trying to build a small initrd for normal booting or a small initrd to install a distribution on a machine with low memory? A huge installation initrd on a CD-ROM could be loop mounted read only right on the CD rather than loaded into memory and the memory image loop mounted. This way the installation should work (slowly) on even very low (8-16MB) memory machines. Sincerely, Ken Fuchs <kfuchs at winternet.com> _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list