Re: system.map

Keith Owens
2002-01-02T21:32:14Z

On Wed, 2 Jan 2002 16:17:30 -0500 (EST),
"Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> wrote:
>That's not a nice place. Besides the fact that System.map is
>neither library nor module, /lib/modules is less likely to
>exist than /boot is. It's a wee bit slower too.

/boot is a hangover from old i386 systems that could not boot past
cylinder 1024 so you needed a special partition to hold the boot
images. That restriction does not exist on any system less than 5
years old nor on most non-i386 machines, the requirement for a special
/boot is obsolete on most machines.

System.map is not required for booting, it is only used after init
starts, therefore it does not belong in /boot anyway.

IA64 requires boot files to be in /boot/efi which must be a VFAT style
partition. Trust me, you don't want anything in /boot/efi unless you
have to.

For all those reasons, putting System.map and .config in /boot is the
wrong thing to do. There is no point in creating yet another directory
to hold these files when /lib/modules/`uname -r` will do the job. Even
on systems with no modules, /lib/modules can be created to hold the
kernel specific files. I put my bootable kernels in /lib/modules as
well, then I have exactly one place to remove to get rid of an old
kernel.

If it makes you feel happier, think of /lib/modules as 'kernel specific
data'. Pity about the name but it is hard coded into too many programs
to change it to /lib/kernel or /kernel.

>It's a wee bit slower too.

????