Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 11:18:14 -0600 From: Eric Schuele <e.schuele@computer.org> To: Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Advantages of trimmed kernel? Message-ID: <457C4156.8010309@computer.org> In-Reply-To: <20061210155022.GA28750@owl.midgard.homeip.net> References: <200612100905.30430.kirk@strauser.com> <20061210155022.GA28750@owl.midgard.homeip.net>
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On 12/10/06 09:50, Erik Trulsson wrote: > On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 09:05:25AM -0600, Kirk Strauser wrote: >> Are there any real advantages to building a kernel stripped of unused drivers, >> especially when running it on a fairly large machine? For years, I've been >> dutifully removing device drivers (or more recently, including GENERIC and >> using 'nodevice') for everything I don't have. But does this actually do >> anything useful, or am I just tilting at windmills? > > It will save a little bit of memory and diskspace and the machine will > probably boot slightly faster since it will not need to probe for > non-existing devices, but other than that I doubt it will make any > difference at all. > I'll second this one. FWIW... Its my understanding that - the memory saved would be negligible. - the performance differences while running are negligible - the boot time is shortened as the kernel will not probe removed devices. - [many|all] removed devices are available and loadable as kld. - as always, remove too much and you can cripple yourself. The above is my understandings from the many times this pops up on the list. You might do some searching on the archives as I think this comes up quite often. I do still however remove things from time to time as it makes me feel a little bit more geeky. :p But I don't think its necessary for performance. HTH. -- Regards, Eric
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