Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:25:46 +0100
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: qnx4ever <qnx4ever@gmail.com>
Cc: alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] What can we remove from our kernel?
Message-ID: <20120124112546.1fcea81a@ncopa-desktop.nor.wtbts.net>
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On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:45:39 +0400
qnx4ever <qnx4ever@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just to not make your life easier, it would be great if we can keep
> few versions of kernel. I suppose there could be a stripped down
> version to be used in the headless servers, routers and NAS devices
> without Sound, Video, etc.

That would be ideal yes. With different config depending on the task.
It would be nice with a non-smp and/or lowmem config, and a PAE config
etc.

Unfortunally, that adds pretty much workload on maintenance, so that
will not be possible.

Maybe we could have the x86 as lowmem no-smp? If you have multicore
you'd need the x86_64 kernel? Are there many x86-only multicore cpus?

> I believe we still need a "full" loaded
> kernel with all devices and yes PCMCIA is needed for older laptops.

Yes. I think we want split the kernel package into a few smaller ones.
Sound is a good example. The top-level sound/ directory is 7MB. If you
have a NAS you don't need the sound so it would be nice to be able opt
that out.

However, we don't want many of those subpackages and we want some clean
way to create them. We don't want keep a list of modules that needs to
be maintained manually. We don't want users need search though 20
packages to find the driver for his hardware.

~5 kernel packages would be nice. For example:

-base:      the kernel itself + basic libs and drivers
-virtual:   all modules that has to do with virtualization
-sound:     sound supporrt
-wireless:  wifi, irda, bluetooth wimax etc drivers
-media:     dvb, webcam drivers, radio drivers etc
-telephony: ISDN drivers, SIP support etc.
-extra:     the rest


So if you install a vitual guest, all you'll need would be in -virtual
(which pulls in -base as a dependency). I think Suse has something like
base and extra. If its a virtual machine you only need the -base
package.

The biggest challenge is: how do we split it so its easy for end users
and easy to maintain?

For compatibility (and for people who can accept bloat for getting
"just works") we can let the linux-grsec package pull in them all, like
it is today.

When I think of it, it would be nice with only 2 packages: base and
extra.

> Are we running out of CPU on the server to compile packages ?

No. There are lots of things the kernel support that I don't even know
what is. I just want help in deciding what we can strip out of the
kernel to fight the bloat. I don't want keep things we won't ever use.

-nc


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