I have succeeded in compiling Gentoo Linux-2.4.34-sparc kernel on my new ULTRA1. This machine-toy has kept me off the streets and out of trouble for the last couple days. (The weather has been cooperative toward the same end.) I have a question. The Gentoo instructions <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-sparc.xml?part=1&chap=7#compiling> tell me that if my kernel is too big that it might not boot. "If the (uncompressed) size is bigger than 2.5 MB (for Sparc32) or 3.5 MB (for Sparc64), reconfigure your kernel until it doesn't exceed these limits. One way of accomplishing this is by having most kernel drivers compiled as modules. Ignoring this can lead to a non-booting kernel." My kernel after a strip command is still 3.7M. -----------snip from command line after a strip command----------- (chroot) livecd linux # strip -R .comment -R .note vmlinux (chroot) livecd linux # ls -lh vmlinux -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.7M Apr 13 06:03 vmlinux --------------end snip---------------- Should I take this warning seriously? How do I figure out which drivers to deselect from menuconfig? lspci gives me no response. I am not sure what is in my machine. Ken Jones
On Friday 13 April 2007, ken jones wrote:
Should I take this warning seriously?
last i recall playing with my sparc the answer is yes
How do I figure out which drivers to deselect from menuconfig?
modularize ... turn everything you dont need to actually open the root filesystem and get network access into a module ... well, maybe not everything, but you get the hint
lspci gives me no response. I am not sure what is in my machine.
i imagine your sparc is one with some older sun-specific bus so lspci wouldnt walk it -mike
On Fri, 13 Apr 2007, Mike Frysinger wrote:
How do I figure out which drivers to deselect from menuconfig?
modularize ... turn everything you dont need to actually open the root filesystem and get network access into a module ... well, maybe not everything, but you get the hint
Alternatively, I was playing with Debian 3.1/Sarge on an Ultra 2 not too long ago, and I believe that newer versions of SILO will deal with gzipped kernels correctly. I built a no-module kernel using all the hardware I knew I had and gzipped it, it ended up being a tad over 1 MB for my Ultra 2-specific 2.4.34, and had no problem firing up from SILO. Dmesg will give (the OP) a pretty good idea of what the generic kernel is seeing. Brian J. Conway
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Yes!!! That warning is serious. Make as many modules as possible for that sparc! I do remember that Eric ken jones wrote:
I have succeeded in compiling Gentoo Linux-2.4.34-sparc kernel on my new ULTRA1. This machine-toy has kept me off the streets and out of trouble for the last couple days. (The weather has been cooperative toward the same end.)
I have a question. The Gentoo instructions <http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-sparc.xml?part=1&chap=7#compiling> tell me that if my kernel is too big that it might not boot.
"If the (uncompressed) size is bigger than 2.5 MB (for Sparc32) or 3.5 MB (for Sparc64), reconfigure your kernel until it doesn't exceed these limits. One way of accomplishing this is by having most kernel drivers compiled as modules. Ignoring this can lead to a non-booting kernel."
My kernel after a strip command is still 3.7M.
-----------snip from command line after a strip command----------- (chroot) livecd linux # strip -R .comment -R .note vmlinux (chroot) livecd linux # ls -lh vmlinux -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3.7M Apr 13 06:03 vmlinux --------------end snip----------------
Should I take this warning seriously? How do I figure out which drivers to deselect from menuconfig? lspci gives me no response. I am not sure what is in my machine.
Ken Jones _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
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On Fri, 13 Apr 2007, Eric Martin wrote:
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Yes!!! That warning is serious. Make as many modules as possible for that sparc! I do remember that
Eric
And my lack of reading comprehension led me to skip the part about the uncompressed kernel size. Disregard my previous point, clearly my uncompressed mono-kernel was under the size requirement. -b
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I realize I may need to qualify my last post. by 'Make as many modules as possible' I meant what Mike said. Anything that you don't need to get the root filesystem is a good candidate for a module. Mike Frysinger wrote:
On Friday 13 April 2007, ken jones wrote:
Should I take this warning seriously?
last i recall playing with my sparc the answer is yes
How do I figure out which drivers to deselect from menuconfig?
modularize ... turn everything you dont need to actually open the root filesystem and get network access into a module ... well, maybe not everything, but you get the hint
lspci gives me no response. I am not sure what is in my machine.
i imagine your sparc is one with some older sun-specific bus so lspci wouldnt walk it -mike
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Ahhh ... one lovely advantage to Sparc, is that it doesn't have the same silly size limitations that x86 does. So ... _don't_ worry about the size of the kernel. If you have room in memory, it will load. In fat, my own kernel on my Ultra 10 is 3.3MB. That's one reason why there is no "make zImage" for sparc. Of course, a smaller kernel means lower memory utilization, and that of course has its own benefits, but it's not necessary to do all that slimming that is needed for x86. Also, if you want to save some space on your disk, at the cost of a little bit of speed at boot time, you can just gzip -9 your kernel. I did this, myself. The SILO boot loader is smart enough to notice that it is a gzipped image and just decompress it itself. See on my own machine: gomer@callisto:/boot$ ls -l vmlinuz* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 May 18 2005 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-2.4.18-sun4u -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1379575 May 18 2005 vmlinuz-2.4.18-sun4u gomer@callisto:/boot$ file vmlinuz-2.4.18-sun4u vmlinuz-2.4.18-sun4u: gzip compressed data, was "vmlinux", from Unix, max compression gomer@callisto:/boot$ cp vmlinuz-2.4.18-sun4u ~/kernel.gz gomer@callisto:~$ gzip -d kernel.gz gomer@callisto:~$ ls -l kernel -rw-r--r-- 1 gomer gomer 3371524 Apr 15 09:06 kernel gomer@callisto:~$ file kernel kernel: ELF 64-bit MSB executable, SPARC V9, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, not stripped (not even stripped), lol. So, please, don't lose any sleep over the size of your Kernel ... not on Sparc64 at least. --Adam On Fri, 2007-04-13 at 17:51 -0400, Eric Martin wrote:
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I realize I may need to qualify my last post. by 'Make as many modules as possible' I meant what Mike said. Anything that you don't need to get the root filesystem is a good candidate for a module.
Mike Frysinger wrote:
On Friday 13 April 2007, ken jones wrote:
Should I take this warning seriously?
last i recall playing with my sparc the answer is yes
How do I figure out which drivers to deselect from menuconfig?
modularize ... turn everything you dont need to actually open the root filesystem and get network access into a module ... well, maybe not everything, but you get the hint
lspci gives me no response. I am not sure what is in my machine.
i imagine your sparc is one with some older sun-specific bus so lspci wouldnt walk it -mike
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On Fri, 2007-04-13 at 11:36 -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
On Friday 13 April 2007, ken jones wrote:
Should I take this warning seriously?
last i recall playing with my sparc the answer is yes
Not the case for Sparc64. And on older 32 bit sparc systems, the size limit was about 2.6MB
How do I figure out which drivers to deselect from menuconfig?
modularize ... turn everything you dont need to actually open the root filesystem and get network access into a module ... well, maybe not everything, but you get the hint
lspci gives me no response. I am not sure what is in my machine.
i imagine your sparc is one with some older sun-specific bus so lspci wouldnt walk it -mike
Your distribution should have come with a tool called prtconf. This will list the OBP tree for you (it's a port of the solaris version of the command). In order for the command to work, though, you need to have the device /dev/openprom. This is an option in the Kernel. So, without having to worry about size limitations, this is not really a critical issue. but if you want to slim the kernel down anyway, compile a larger kernel for now that includes /dev/openprom and then use prtconf to figure out what you need / don't need for your next compile. There is also an eeprom command (/usr/sbin/eeprom) which should provide you with similar info ... Then to save you some more disk space (if you are concerned about that, too), you can gzip -9 your kernel, and SILO will decompress it itself at boot time (just takes a couple extra seconds to boot the box). --Adam
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participants (5)
-
Adam Gomes -
Brian J. Conway -
Eric Martin -
ken jones -
Mike Frysinger