Kernel size

[mreff555]

My dailyuse laptop kernel which is extramely functional, but in my optinion, fairly stripped down is 3.5M compressed or 5.5M uncompressed.
What can I compare this to. is this kernel small medium large?
I've hunted around on the internet and while there are plenty of guides on how to shrink your kernel. none really give a target.

how small is small?

[asturm]

It's reasonably small.

Actually quite similar to mine, LZO compressed:

[mreff555]

I used xz compression because it seemed to be a good balance of speed and compression ratio.
At this point it's pretty os specific. The only other changes I could see making would be to remove some of the kernel hacking options like printk

or to internalize certain modules. such as ath9k, udf. Does that actually improve kernel size if you are able to turn off loadable modules?

[Hu]

[mreff555]

Just to see what would happen I updated my kernel config, adjusted every module I could find to compile in to the kernel

I've been running on it for a few hours. lsmod confirms I have no modules loaded. wireless seems to be fine.
The only problem I've noticed is that 1-wire functionality seems to have stopped since I switched it to a module (battery monitor)
I'll have to play with that one.

anyway, my kernel size increased from compressed 3.5 to 3.7. If I removed loadable modules would it drop my kernel size be more than .2M or would it be better to just go back to a couple loadable modules.

[cach0rr0]

if you're dealing with wireless, i would lean heavily towards at the very least having wireless handled via modules

as kernel releases go, wireless seems to regularly shit the bed from one release to the next. In my case, with iwlwifi, I run into situations where iwlwifi segfaults, and my only recourse is to either reboot the machine, or, much more desirable, rmmod and modprobe (trying out different parameters/args from modinfo, some of which seem to have help).

sound cards are another one. Being able to pass args to modprobe is much easier than having to specify a bunch of crap on the kernel command line.

becomes almost a philosophical discussion of "to module, or not to module". For laptops, i lean module. For servers, i tend to have everything built in.

FWIW, my kernel is 4.0M, gzipped, my modules are 4.2M. I don't really notice any superfluous bloat.
_________________
Lost configuring your system?
dump lspci -n here | see Pappy's guide | Link Stash

[mreff555]

Yep, for now I've decided leaving some drivers such as wireless and video is definitely the best.
I did some more tweaking and I'm down to 3.4 compressed or 5.4 uncompressed. Removing loadable modules and building in my wifi and video cards pushes the uncompressed size up to 6.8megs

[wagglet]

I'm running an almost-monolithic kernel on my venerable-but-oh-so-reliable ThinkPad and since the upgrade from 3.3.8 to 3.5.7 I have to say it seems just a little snappier. I did notice a moderate size increase between the versions: it's gone up around 300K but I still think it is a reasonable size given very nearly everything is compiled-in (including WiFi firmware):-

Kernel (gzip compressed):-

[mconnolly]

My kernel is set up to be entirely monolithic (no modules loaded), and right now the kernel is 4MB, XZ compressed (version 3.6.6). I am going to tweak it some more, as I know I haven't done all the optimization I can. It's almost there, though.

Boot up is very quick (<10 seconds) and it's very snappy, although I have a SATA3 SSD in my computer so that's most of it there, I am sure.

[mreff555]

[dmpogo]

Well, kernel size is continously growing. Mine has reached 2.6 Mb, I remember how it started crossing 2Mb somewhere around 2.6.32

[mreff555]

I think the kernel may have shrunk somewhere around 3.7.x or 3.8.x because after that it became easier to keep it small. I gave up on a monolithic kernel because certain programs seem to require a module. Here's what I am down to now

[jimmij]

i915, atl1c, snd... as a modules, really?
What's the benefit of that besides artificially smaller kernel?

ps. My vanilla 3.10.9 with LZO compression has 4.4M.
_________________
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.
Libera temet ex inferis.

[TheLexx]

I've always leaned towards a more modular kernel. I used kernel-seeds and "make localmodconfig" along with my own script that 'merged' multiple ".config" files to come up with my .config file.

All my human interface devices are USB so built in enough USB such that Keyboards, mice and thumb drives can be read w/o any modules loaded. I compile a single kernel to run all my computers. They run on single core, but the most intense computing I do is play youtube and mp3.



ls -l kmh-bzImage-3.4.48-1 -> 2.19M
du -sk /lib/modules/3.4.48try1 -> 13.7 M


lsmod on computer: harrier

[eccerr0r]

I was hoping for minimal memory footprint, but with a twist: want to keep it small regardless of what machine I'm running it on.
Kernel:

[dmpogo]

wow, I never saw kernels over 3M

Here are the kernels I have installed on my Thinkpad laptop

[eccerr0r]

32 or 64 bit kernel?

My 64-bit machines (x86_64 and ia64) always had huge kernels... but 32-bit has been increasing...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

[asturm]

/me saw a steady increase in kernel size since 3.6, only partially due to additional needed options:

[toralf]

[mreff555]

[eccerr0r]

[Hu]

I configure with the rule that if a feature is likely to be loaded all or almost all of the time, then it is built-in. Thus, I include sound and graphics in the core, because both of them are difficult to unload and likely to be loaded as soon as I start using the system.

[asturm]

[dmpogo]

[dmpogo]