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From: Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind1@gmail.com>
To: Michal Marek <mmarek@suse.cz>
Cc: linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Paulo Marques <pmarques@grupopie.com>
Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Kconfig: improve KALLSYMS_ALL documentation
Date: Mon,  4 Apr 2011 13:40:50 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1301913651-9055-1-git-send-email-dedekind1@gmail.com> (raw)

From: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>

Dumb users like myself are not able to grasp from the existing KALLSYMS_ALL
documentation that this option is not what they need. Improve the help
message and make it clearer that KALLSYMS is enough in the majority of
use cases, and KALLSYMS_ALL should really be used very rarely.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: Paulo Marques <pmarques@grupopie.com>
Cc: Michal Marek <mmarek@suse.cz>

---
 init/Kconfig |   18 ++++++++++++------
 1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig
index 56240e7..dae5297 100644
--- a/init/Kconfig
+++ b/init/Kconfig
@@ -968,12 +968,18 @@ config KALLSYMS_ALL
 	bool "Include all symbols in kallsyms"
 	depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && KALLSYMS
 	help
-	   Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions, for nicer
-	   OOPS messages.  Some debuggers can use kallsyms for other
-	   symbols too: say Y here to include all symbols, if you need them 
-	   and you don't care about adding 300k to the size of your kernel.
-
-	   Say N.
+	   Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions for nicer
+	   OOPS messages and backtraces(i.e., symbols from the text and inittext
+	   sections). This is sufficient for most cases. And only in very rare
+	   cases (e.g., when a debugger is used) all symbols are required (e.g.,
+	   names of variables from the data sections, etc).
+
+	   This option makes sure that all symbols are loaded into the kernel
+	   image (i.e., symbols from all sections) in cost of increased kernel
+	   size (depending on the kernel configuration, it may be 300KiB or
+	   something like this).
+
+	   Say N unless you really need all symbols.
 
 config KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS
 	bool "Do an extra kallsyms pass"
-- 
1.7.2.3


             reply	other threads:[~2011-04-04 10:37 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-04-04 10:40 Artem Bityutskiy [this message]
2011-04-04 10:40 ` [PATCH 2/2] kbuild: move KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS from Kconfig to Makefile Artem Bityutskiy
2011-04-04 12:17   ` Michal Marek
2011-04-04 12:48     ` Artem Bityutskiy
2011-04-04 12:45   ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2011-04-04 12:47     ` Artem Bityutskiy
2011-04-04 15:22       ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2011-04-04 15:37         ` Artem Bityutskiy
2011-04-04 16:01           ` Paulo Marques
2011-04-04 15:47     ` Artem Bityutskiy
2011-04-04 16:22 ` [PATCH 1/2] Kconfig: improve KALLSYMS_ALL documentation Randy Dunlap

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