[PATCH 1/2] Kconfig: improve KALLSYMS_ALL documentation

From: Artem Bityutskiy
Date: Mon Apr 04 2011 - 06:37:44 EST


From: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@xxxxxxxxx>

Dumb users like myself are not able to grasp from the existing KALLSYMS_ALL
documentation that this option is not what they need. Improve the help
message and make it clearer that KALLSYMS is enough in the majority of
use cases, and KALLSYMS_ALL should really be used very rarely.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Paulo Marques <pmarques@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Michal Marek <mmarek@xxxxxxx>

---
init/Kconfig | 18 ++++++++++++------
1 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig
index 56240e7..dae5297 100644
--- a/init/Kconfig
+++ b/init/Kconfig
@@ -968,12 +968,18 @@ config KALLSYMS_ALL
bool "Include all symbols in kallsyms"
depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && KALLSYMS
help
- Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions, for nicer
- OOPS messages. Some debuggers can use kallsyms for other
- symbols too: say Y here to include all symbols, if you need them
- and you don't care about adding 300k to the size of your kernel.
-
- Say N.
+ Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions for nicer
+ OOPS messages and backtraces(i.e., symbols from the text and inittext
+ sections). This is sufficient for most cases. And only in very rare
+ cases (e.g., when a debugger is used) all symbols are required (e.g.,
+ names of variables from the data sections, etc).
+
+ This option makes sure that all symbols are loaded into the kernel
+ image (i.e., symbols from all sections) in cost of increased kernel
+ size (depending on the kernel configuration, it may be 300KiB or
+ something like this).
+
+ Say N unless you really need all symbols.

config KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS
bool "Do an extra kallsyms pass"
--
1.7.2.3

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