From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S935553AbXGRSUa (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:20:30 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S933631AbXGRSUX (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:20:23 -0400 Received: from one.firstfloor.org ([213.235.205.2]:46968 "EHLO one.firstfloor.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933813AbXGRSUW (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:20:22 -0400 Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:20:21 +0200 From: Andi Kleen To: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: Andi Kleen , Jonathan Campbell , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@transmeta.com Subject: Re: Patches for REALLY TINY 386 kernels Message-ID: <20070718182021.GA3898@one.firstfloor.org> References: <469A8AED.7070207@nerdgrounds.com> <469E3806.4030804@zytor.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <469E3806.4030804@zytor.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 08:55:50AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > 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 you don't have enough memory for a few tens of KB of init sections you're very unlikely to have enough memory for user space. -Andi