Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Ian Soboroff]

Can anyone help me understand why 2.6-series kernel modules are so
huge?

$ cd /lib/modules
$ ls -l */kernel/fs/vfat
2.4.20-18.8bigmem/kernel/fs/vfat:
total 20
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        17678 May 29  2003 vfat.o

2.4.23-xfs/kernel/fs/vfat:
total 20
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        17614 Dec  3 18:04 vfat.o

2.6.0/kernel/fs/vfat:
total 288
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       288738 Feb 11 16:47 vfat.ko

2.6.3/kernel/fs/vfat:
total 288
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       289086 Feb 24 10:09 vfat.ko

Ian

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Norberto Bensa]

Ian Soboroff wrote:
> Can anyone help me understand why 2.6-series kernel modules are so
> huge?

Debuging symbols?

Regards,
Norberto

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Måns Rullgård]

Ian Soboroff <ian.soboroff@nist.gov> writes:

> Can anyone help me understand why 2.6-series kernel modules are so
> huge?
>
> 2.6.3/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 288
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root       289086 Feb 24 10:09 vfat.ko

My 2.6.3 vfat.ko is 15365 bytes.  Maybe you enabled kernel debugging
symbols.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Harald Dunkel]

Måns Rullgård wrote:
> 
> My 2.6.3 vfat.ko is 15365 bytes.  Maybe you enabled kernel debugging
> symbols.
> 

% ll /lib/modules/2.6.3/kernel/fs/vfat/
total 16
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        14232 Feb 19 07:43 vfat.ko

Assuming that you are on i686:

A size difference of 1 KByte (about 7%) is remarkable. Which
gcc did you use for building 2.6.3?

I am on Debian (Sid). Gcc is 3.3.3, which was released a
few days ago.


Regards

Harri

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Måns Rullgård]

Harald Dunkel <harald.dunkel@t-online.de> writes:

> Måns Rullgård wrote:
>> My 2.6.3 vfat.ko is 15365 bytes.  Maybe you enabled kernel debugging
>> symbols.
>>
>
> % ll /lib/modules/2.6.3/kernel/fs/vfat/
> total 16
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        14232 Feb 19 07:43 vfat.ko
>
> Assuming that you are on i686:
>
> A size difference of 1 KByte (about 7%) is remarkable. Which
> gcc did you use for building 2.6.3?

I used gcc 3.3.2.  Here's an objdump -h of that file:

/lib/modules/2.6.3/kernel/fs/vfat/vfat.ko:     file format elf32-i386

Sections:
Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
  0 .text         0000209c  00000000  00000000  00000034  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, READONLY, CODE
  1 .init.text    00000013  00000000  00000000  000020d0  2**0
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, READONLY, CODE
  2 .exit.text    00000013  00000000  00000000  000020e3  2**0
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, READONLY, CODE
  3 .rodata.str1.1 0000004c  00000000  00000000  000020f6  2**0
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  4 .rodata.str1.32 00000073  00000000  00000000  00002160  2**5
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  5 __ksymtab_strings 00000046  00000000  00000000  000021d3  2**0
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  6 __ksymtab     00000030  00000000  00000000  0000221c  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, READONLY, DATA
  7 .modinfo      00000059  00000000  00000000  00002260  2**5
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  8 .data         00000120  00000000  00000000  000022c0  2**5
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, DATA
  9 .gnu.linkonce.this_module 00000200  00000000  00000000  00002400  2**7
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, RELOC, DATA, LINK_ONCE_DISCARD
 10 .bss          00000000  00000000  00000000  00002600  2**2
                  ALLOC
 11 .comment      00000036  00000000  00000000  00002600  2**0
                  CONTENTS, READONLY


-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Brian Gerst]

Ian Soboroff wrote:
> Can anyone help me understand why 2.6-series kernel modules are so
> huge?
> 
> $ cd /lib/modules
> $ ls -l */kernel/fs/vfat
> 2.4.20-18.8bigmem/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 20
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        17678 May 29  2003 vfat.o
> 
> 2.4.23-xfs/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 20
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        17614 Dec  3 18:04 vfat.o
> 
> 2.6.0/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 288
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root       288738 Feb 11 16:47 vfat.ko
> 
> 2.6.3/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 288
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root       289086 Feb 24 10:09 vfat.ko
> 
> Ian
> 

You probably have debugging config options enabled (ie CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO).

--
				Brian Gerst

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Ian Soboroff]

Brian Gerst <bgerst@didntduck.org> writes:

>
> You probably have debugging config options enabled (ie CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO).
>

Duh.  Thanks.
Ian

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[Jan De Luyck]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 24 February 2004 16:30, Ian Soboroff wrote:
> Can anyone help me understand why 2.6-series kernel modules are so
> huge?
>
> $ cd /lib/modules
> $ ls -l */kernel/fs/vfat
> 2.4.20-18.8bigmem/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 20
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        17678 May 29  2003 vfat.o
>
> 2.6.3/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 288
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root       289086 Feb 24 10:09 vfat.ko

You probably have some sort of debugging on.

devilkin@precious:/lib/modules/2.6.2/kernel/fs/vfat$ ls -l
total 20
- -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        18750 2004-02-09 12:56 vfat.ko

Jan
- --
I will make you shorter by the head.
		-- Elizabeth I
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAO3LYUQQOfidJUwQRAnSrAJ4oV2H2wxWBSL7OcEW4A0c13nq/ewCfbcgQ
LCE637rjKmxxbDpiAvVy1NE=
=UVX/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: Why are 2.6 modules so huge?

[James Morris]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Ian Soboroff wrote:

> 
> Can anyone help me understand why 2.6-series kernel modules are so
> huge?
> 
> $ cd /lib/modules
> $ ls -l */kernel/fs/vfat
> 2.4.20-18.8bigmem/kernel/fs/vfat:
> total 20
> -rw-r--r--    1 root     root        17678 May 29  2003 vfat.o

You should use size(1) for this purpose, instead of ls.


- James
-- 
James Morris
<jmorris@redhat.com>