[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Thu, 11 Jun 2009, Tom Potts wrote: > Does anyone know of a piece of software to check what modules are loaded > and can modify the compile script so I can compile small fast kernels > for old machines? Or even new ones? This is essentially what I do when brining up a new system - you don't necessarily save that much memory though, but booting can be a lot faster as everything gets dumped into RAM at once. I have a quick look at what modules the standard distro has brought in, but mostly use lspci to find out what's under the lid, then build a kernel to suit. There is a lot you simply don't need to compile in either - easy for me to do as I've been doing it since the year dot, but harder for someone to come in from scratch these days though, but mistakes are just time consuming :) These days it's quite frustrating starting from scratch too as there are so many dependencies being wired in too - you find you can't disable something until you disable something else, which depends on something else, and that's a module, so everything else is modules ... Compile, install, boot. Bother. Lather rinse repeat :) But once you have the basic kernel .config file, you can use it as a template for just about anything else, as in reality only 3 bits of hardware change - disk drivers, network drivers and video drivers... (then once you have something that boots and runs OK, you can fine-tune other stuff later like the hardware monitoring, powersaving, etc.) Biggest problem I now have is getting rid of udev off a running system that installed it by default. Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html