Re: Fast testing

From: Alan Jenkins
Date: Tue Apr 14 2009 - 09:36:59 EST


On 4/14/09, Dragoslav Zaric <dragoslav.zaric.kd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have question regarding fast testing of some change in some kernel
> source file. Since rebooting is a long process, there must be way to
> test some change faster [of course only if source file is not some boot
> connected file, but maybe this is also doable].
>
> This is question:
>
> When system is running, file that drives the system is "vmlinux" executable
> and it is located in "/" or "/boot" folder.

Nope.

Kernel code (and data) is not demand-paged. The kernel image is fully
loaded into memory at boot-time. Changing /boot/vmlinuz will have no
effect on the running kernel. And there are several other reasons why
what you describe would not work.

What you can do is compile some code as a module, and remove and
re-insert it to apply changes. This doesn't work for core code or
your main disk driver though :-).

Alan
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