Re: The Kernel (fwd)

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On 24 Jan 1998 jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:

> I have looked at the patches in the Debian kernel and in them I found
> the kernel config file so I was able to determine what is being
> compiled in the kernel shipped with Debian.  They have compiled initrd
> but nearly all the SCSI drivers are compiled in.  That makes little
> sense to me.  Initrd is only of interest when you are booting with a
> modular drive.  I also looked at networking features and most of them
> are left out.


It makes EXTREME sense to me ... I have a scsi system.  If get some
corruption in that partition, I would not be able to repair it!

Some things should not be configured as modules ... things essential to
being able to shut yor system down are among them.
> 
> I am basing in the 1.3.1 Debian found in Infomagic August.

Ok ... than is rather old.

The point is this ... there are too many possible points of failure in my
opinion for an initrd boot to handle a modularized disk driver to suit me.
As long as I can get linux loaded, I am ok with the current scheme.  In an
initrd boot, if the script has been hosed by me or something else or the
root image file is corrupted or the modules directory on the main
partition is bad for some reason, I can not even run fsck to fix it, I am
dead in the water.  I do NOT want to have the disk drivers that I need to
run my system not available when I need them most ... to fix a screwup.

Besides ... lets get right down to it ... what difference is <1 meg going
to amke any how and have you MEASURED the performance hit?  How many
bogomips difference does it make?  I suspect that it will be miniscule.
You might notice it on a 386 with 4mb of ram but a doubt that you will at
all on a P166 (the slowest processor Intel is manufacturing right now)
with 32MB of RAM (standard on systems for sale for Win95).

As a matter of fact, I do not think you will see ANY performance hit ...
the code is simply never called again after an initial probe (that
granted, DOES take a few miliseconds).

I think we risk breaking many people's systems or making it MUCH more
difficult to recover them without showing all that much of a performance
gain.

> Only necessary for people needing PCMCIA drivers for installing.

Uhm ... no.  I installed COL-Standard and needed the modules disk ... on
two different systems even.  If I recall, it was for the lp driver and a
couple of other things ... my Vortex net card, I think.


> Initrd uses a RAM disk loaded by LILO from a file.  AT the time this
> RAM disk is used there are only root processes running.  When the real
> / is mounted then the processes loaded from the ramdisk are supposed
> to die.  If root is stupid enough for allowing write access to the
> initrd file or for placing in it programs not related to the mounting
> of / then it will be his responsibility.



> choosing the distrib by vote instead of examination, than over 50% of
> the people in this list were using Debian.  That is several times over
> the Debian share in the Linux population.  If Debian is so good why
> such an overreprsentation of Debian users in a list formed by people
> unhappy with present distributions?

Deian's problem quite frankly is dselect.  Once beginners get past that
learning curve, it is a very good distribution. I have not ever seen a
distro as well integrated.

> My personal opinion is than the real reason is than packagers
> envisionned a Debian user being a hacker who will compile his kernel
> anyway and for whom this would not be a problem.

I really do not understand this "thing" you have about thinking the debian
kernel has to be recompiled.  

I still think there are larger issues that need attention before we get
around to doing this.


George Bonser 
If NT is the answer, you didn't understand the question. (NOTE: Stolen sig)
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.