Re: about modularization

From: Oleg Verych
Date: Sat Sep 01 2007 - 17:47:33 EST


* Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 15:19:00 +0200
* Received-SPF: softfail (mx3: transitioning domain of elte.hu does not designate 157.181.1.14 as permitted sender) client-ip=157.181.1.14; envelope-from=mingo@xxxxxxx; helo=elvis.elte.hu;

> If you boot into a distro kernel on
> a typical PC, about half of the kernel code that the box runs in any
> moment will be in modules, half of it is in the "kernel core". For
> example, on a random laptop:

That was your laptop and distro.

> $ echo `lsmod | cut -c1-30 | cut -d' ' -f2-` | sed 's/Size //' |
> sed 's/ /+/g' | bc
> 2513784
>
> i.e. 2.5 MB of modules. The core kernel's size:
>
> $ dmesg | grep 'kernel code'
> Memory: 2053212k/2087808k available (2185k kernel code, 33240k reserved, 1174k data, 244k init, 1170304k highmem)
>
> 2.1 MB of kernel core code. (of course the total body of "possible
> drivers" is 10 times larger than that of the core kernel - but the
> fundamental 'variety' is not.)

Just for reference here's my 2+ years old Asus A4K, kernel is form
Debian Etch:

deen:/tmp# uname -a
Linux deen 2.6.18-4-amd64 #1 SMP Mon Mar 26 11:36:53 CEST 2007 x86_64 x86_64
deen:/tmp# lsmod | (read a; while read a b c; do S=$((b+${S=0})); done; echo $S)
1583684
deen:/tmp# lsmod | grep xfs
xfs 485192 3
deen:/tmp# dmesg | grep kernel\ code
Memory: 506676k/523520k available (1930k kernel code, 16456k reserved, 868k data, 176k init)

Apart from diff in hardware and implied designing/coding skills, decision
was made

* after one "wrong" response plus illness from Con,
* brave core-duo by Ingo and Tomas, who made some bunch of students to test
scheduler and reported success to Linus.

I don't know why, after all that variety of things (mostly drivers, but
recent *fd also) there's such big resistance to anything that's useful
and used by ordinary people. A star sickness, pride? If yes, that's just
ridiculous, but who cares.
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