Re: /proc/config idea

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>]

Jeremy Jackson wrote:
> Yes, I like this.  I do this manually, it allows reproducability, and
> incremental
> modifications, tracing how that kernel on that problem system was made...
> 
> I think the ultimate would be to put all of .config (gzipped?) in a new ELF
> section without the Loadable attribute...  I wish System.map was the same.
> The you're guaranteed you know how a kernel on disk was configured.
> 
> To correlate a running kernel to one on disk (vmlinuz) you have LILO...
> it appends an environment variable to the kernel command line with
> the name of the file it booted.  This is not infallable, since LILO maps
> disk sectors, only using the filesystem at map install time.
> 
> Permaps an md5sum of the .text ELF section would conclusively
> link the in-core kernel with an on-disk vmlinuz?  Shouldn't be hard
> to do with objcopy and /proc/kmem?
[...]
> Comments anyone?

Instead of doing all this stuff in the kernel, you could simply update
symlinks to properly installed files at boot time.

Putting _files_ in the kernel is plain silly.  This is unreclaimable
memory, folks.  There is no need to special case an operation as simple
as reading a file.  [I think this about firmware images too, but that's
another thread]

-- 
Jeff Garzik       | May you have warm words on a cold evening,
Building 1024     | a full moon on a dark night,
MandrakeSoft      | and a smooth road all the way to your door.