[wplug] I'm a Linux whimp (need kernel help)

[Chester R. Hosey]

On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 10:03 -0400, Poyner, Brandon wrote: 
> > You did bring up a good point, though -- it's a great (!) idea to
> > enable /proc/config[.gz] while configuring your kernel. If you end up
> > losing the configuration for a bootable kernel, you can still retrieve
> > it later if needed. I believe that there's even a script to 
> > extract this
> > information from a non-running kernel if you built it with 
> > /proc/config
> > support.
> 
> RedHat thinks it's "stupid" [1] to put the config inside of the kernel,
> and has it turned off by default.  Their argument is that there is no
> advantage over a file in /boot, and the disadvantage is increased memory
> usage.  Hah, RedHat against bloat?  Yes, I use many RedHat products, but
> I wouldn't say bloat is a big concern of theirs.
> 
> As for extracting the config from a non-running kernel, use
> scripts/extract-ikconfig from the kernel source directory.  This only
> works if IKCONFIG was enabled, and /proc/config.gz only exists if
> IKCONFIG_PROC was enabled.
> 
> [1] "its done this way because the other way is _stupid_"  Dave Jones
> <davej @ redhat . com>

I get the impression that Red Hat's position is that you shouldn't be
using a kernel other than theirs anyways. You should install their
package and be happy about it.

Unfortunately, when you do roll your own, it's often easy to forget to
back up the kernel configuration when you make a copy of the kernel
binary. There are many reasons why it's less desirable to have to update
information in multiple locations. I agree with your comments regarding
Red Hat bloatware -- rhnsd takes a whopping 6 megabytes of RAM and as
far as I can tell all it does it periodically execute rhn_check (heaven
forbid it include some form of useful failure logging).

Thanks for the clarification of the configuration options -- my memory
failed me and my 2.6-based Debian machine is inaccessible from work at
the moment. As usual you have been concise and informative.

Chet