Re: [Fwd: What do people think about not installing a stripped /kernel ?]

From: Maxim Sobolev (sobomax_at_FreeBSD.org)
Date: 10/20/04

  • Next message: Leandro Gasparotto Valladares: "FreeBSD 5.3 RC1" 
    Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 20:20:48 +0300
To: Alex de Kruijff <freebsd@akruijff.dds.nl>

    Let me clarify it down: it is only applies to HEAD, that is, unstable
    branch, which can be inheretedly buggy. STABLE/RELEASE doesn't really
    need this feature. This dismisses the following objections:

    1. HDD size constrains: nobody really want to run unpatched HEAD on CF
    or the like, since with HEAD you are expected to re-compile more than often.

    2. / partition size: anybody running HEAD is expected to allow this
    accomodate debugging kernel.

    3. Additional slowdown: since it is adds up to 10 seconds (I bet that
    even less on a modern system) who cares? This is HEAD, so that it is
    expected to be sub-optimal performance-wise.

    4. CD size constrains: again - it's for head. We don't put HEAD on CDs,
    except snapshots, but they generally go without packages.

    -Maxim

    Alex de Kruijff wrote:
    >>-------- Original Message --------
    >>Subject: What do people think about not installing a stripped /kernel ?
    >>Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:12:00 -0700 (PDT)
    >>From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
    >>Newsgroups: dragonfly.kernel
    >>
    >>The only cost is disk space... e.g. 3MB stripped kernel verses 16MB
    >>debug kernel. But the debug info isn't actually loaded into memory so
    >>the kernel load time and memory overhead is the same as with the stripped
    >>version.
    >>
    >>The issue is bug reports and kernel core dumps. I can't count the number
    >>of times I have had to carefully instruct people to retrieve their
    >>kernel.debug's for bug reporting purposes. And even my own debugging
    >>would be more convenient if I didn't have to save off a separate copy of
    >>the debug version of the kernel.
    >>
    >>What I'm thinking of doing is having the installkernel target install the
    >>debug version rather then the stripped version unless told to install
    >>the stripped version with a new option, e.g. 'options INSTALL_STRIPPED'.
    >>We would ship full debug GENERIC kernels instead of stripped kernels.
    >>i.e. we aren't getting rid of the ability to install a stripped kernel,
    >>we just aren't making it the default any more.
    >>
    >>What do people think?
    >
    >
    > There are a couple downside.
    >
    > 1. Performance issues. (i.e. Longer startup time)
    > 2. There's more kernel to go in to the memory.
    > 3. The root partition need to be bigger.
    >
    > FreeBSD 5.0 was slow when it came out of the box. So I think its a great idee for the prerelease but bad the releases them selfs.

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