From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933605AbXGRQCu (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:02:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1760160AbXGRQCn (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:02:43 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:48957 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1759888AbXGRQCm (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:02:42 -0400 Message-ID: <469E3806.4030804@zytor.com> Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:55:50 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (X11/20070419) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andi Kleen CC: Jonathan Campbell , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@transmeta.com Subject: Re: Patches for REALLY TINY 386 kernels References: <469A8AED.7070207@nerdgrounds.com> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Andi Kleen wrote: > >> Already with these patches I can compile a zImage kernel that is 450kb >> large (890kb decompressed) > > The important part is not how big the vmlinux is, but how much > memory is actually used after boot. > > I expect concentrating some of the dynamic data structures would > be more fruitful in fact. > Well, how big the vmlinux file is matters if it doesn't fit in memory with enough time to get to the phase where it is dumping the init sections. *If that is not the issue*, then axing stuff like CPUID is a major lose in terms of code maintainability for zero gain. -hpa