From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262669AbTJNOyc (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:54:32 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262674AbTJNOyc (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:54:32 -0400 Received: from chaos.analogic.com ([204.178.40.224]:15232 "EHLO chaos.analogic.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262669AbTJNOy3 (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:54:29 -0400 Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:54:22 -0400 (EDT) From: "Richard B. Johnson" X-X-Sender: root@chaos Reply-To: root@chaos.analogic.com To: jlnance@unity.ncsu.edu cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Unbloating the kernel, was: :mem=16MB laptop testing In-Reply-To: <20031014143047.GA6332@ncsu.edu> Message-ID: References: <20031014143047.GA6332@ncsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 jlnance@unity.ncsu.edu wrote: > On Tue, Oct 14, 2003 at 09:24:17AM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote: > > On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Marco Fioretti wrote: > > > > > There are literally thousands of schools, all over the world, which > > > simply cannot afford any money on computers. The "HW is cheap" slogan is > > > very cruel when recited in places where 64 MB of RAM are one month's > > > salary. I am not kidding. > > Let me concur with the sentiments on this thread. > > When I started using Linux, it was on a 40 MHz 386 with 8Megs of ram and > a 200 Meg HD. This was a reasonably typical machine for the time (1993). > I ran X on this machine, and it was fine running several Xterms and you > could play the X version of Tetris or gnuchess. I used this machine to > write the program I was working on for my Masters degree. Information: Booting Linux-2.4.22 with mem=16M, I can still compile the kernel as `make -j 16 bzImage` with the following resources: total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached: Mem: 14544896 14118912 425984 0 274432 6713344 Swap: 1069268992 16510976 1052758016 MemTotal: 14204 kB MemFree: 416 kB MemShared: 0 kB Buffers: 268 kB Cached: 3264 kB SwapCached: 3320 kB Active: 5980 kB Inactive: 2944 kB HighTotal: 0 kB HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 14204 kB LowFree: 388 kB SwapTotal: 1044208 kB SwapFree: 1028084 kB After a `make clean`, this configuration normally takes about 3 minutes to compile. With mem=16M, it takes about 12 minutes. Not too bad. The kernel is as 'modular' as one can make it. I don't have any built-in stuff that I don't use. This helps keep it small. But...it is growing in size for no obvious gain. -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1532520 Mar 13 2003 vmlinux ^^^^^^^___ linux-2.4.20 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1567340 Oct 14 09:39 vmlinux ^^^^^^^___ linux-2.4.22 Both of these kernels have the exact configuration and are built with the exact same tools. Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.