What do people think about not installing a stripped /kernel ?

David Rhodus sdrhodus at gmail.com
Mon Oct 18 15:45:51 PDT 2004


On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:12:00 -0700 (PDT), Matthew Dillon
<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>     The only cost is disk space... e.g. 3MB stripped kernel verses 16MB
>     debug kernel.  But the debug info isn't actually loaded into memory so
>     the kernel load time and memory overhead is the same as with the stripped
>     version.
> 
>     The issue is bug reports and kernel core dumps.  I can't count the number
>     of times I have had to carefully instruct people to retrieve their
>     kernel.debug's for bug reporting purposes.  And even my own debugging
>     would be more convenient if I didn't have to save off a separate copy of
>     the debug version of the kernel.
> 
>     What I'm thinking of doing is having the installkernel target install the
>     debug version rather then the stripped version unless told to install
>     the stripped version with a new option, e.g. 'options INSTALL_STRIPPED'.
>     We would ship full debug GENERIC kernels instead of stripped kernels.
>     i.e. we aren't getting rid of the ability to install a stripped kernel,
>     we just aren't making it the default any more.
> 
>     What do people think?
> 
>                                                 -Matt
> 

I think its a great idea.  Installs default to 256MB / (I think) and
this should be more than enough for a kernel.debug file and the rest
of the system utils that are installed.  Installing the kernel.debug
used to be the default practice on fbsd but was change due to clumsy
admins filling up their / , most of the time do to files in /root .

-- 
                                            -David
                                            Steven David Rhodus
                                            <drhodus at xxxxxxxxxxx>





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