[Gllug] Module vs compiled in...

[Stuart Sears]

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On Friday 18 July 2003 7:05 pm, I thought I heard Dylan say 
> On Friday 18 July 2003 18:37, Stuart Sears wrote:
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> > On Friday 18 July 2003 2:23 pm, I thought I heard Dylan say
> >
> > > Hello All,
> > >
> > > I'm currently tinkering with LinuxFromScratch to get a good handle on
> > > how the system hangs together. Now, on a box with onboard devices
> > > (which will necessarily not be swapped out, therefore) such as NIC and
> > > graphics card, what are the opinions on the swings and roundabouts of
> > > compiling the drivers as modules or compiling them into the kernel?
> > >
> > > The way I see it, a NIC and graphics card are effectively in constant
> > > use, hence the load-on-demand benefits (such as memory usage) simply
> > > don't apply...
> > >
> > > Any comments/thoughts welcomed.
> > >
> > > Dylan
> > >
> > > --
> > > Sweet moderation
> > > Heart of this nation
> > > Desert us not
> > > We are between the wars
> > > - Billy Bragg
> >
> > personally I compile everything I am going to be using into the kernel,
> > except for two items - video card (i can't, it's NVidia)
>
> Well, this machine isn't - but one I'll be moving on to later does and
> there are always compromises to be made.
>
> > - -emu10k1 for my SBlive (similar reasons)
>
> Hmmm didn't know that one was closed aswell :((
>
> > [I've never got on with alsa...]
> > I find it a lot less hassle than messing around with modules.conf,
>
> That's another reason why I asked - less to configure = less to go wrong.
>
> > particualrly as I use devfs on the current system
>
> Can you point to some good resources for devfs, is it worth the effort of
> learning about...?
it's nice to know how it works  - the whole system seems more logical to me, 
but some apps don't necessarily agree with it, and/or look at specific nodes 
for hardware/disk access (mind you it can be run in compatibility mode, which 
provides symlinks for all of the /dev/hda blah blah stuff)
I have had trouble with CD writing frontends since using it  - none of them 
seem to want to agree wiht me when i tell them there is an empty writeable 
disk in my SCSI writer (cdrecord has no probas whatsoever)
in any case, if you are playing wiht LFS, do read the lfs hints for various 
topics at
http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org
(I believe there are two different devfs hints) there has also been a lot of 
traffic, albeit not recently, on the support lists about this, much of which 
was from me!
you can search the lists at the LFS website, or merely subscribe to them, like 
me...

>
> > In any case, I know that the hardware in my machine is supported by
> > default then - anything and everything I don't use is not compiled at
> > all.
>
> Indeed - one of my main reasons for looking at LFS was that I hate having
> all this irrelevant crapola on my hard drive (like 3 different text-based
> mail clients and god knows how many modules for hardware I don't own)
I don't even have a text-based mail client on my system! (or sendmail for that 
matter)

> About a year ago, I stepped thru the instructions and got a working box
> (3.? I think) and I've got to the same point again now on 4.1 Next step is
> to really think about what I'm doing and where I'm going. I hope to have a
> server (nfs, nis, mail, etc...) up and running but figure it might be 6
> months before I can swap out the SuSE based one I'm using at the moment (at
> home, that is.)
it shouldn't take that long to do.
there are instructions and hints in both the BLFS book 
http://beyond.linuxfromscratch.org
and on the hints page
for most if not all of those things...
Stuart

- -- 
Stuart Sears RHCT (Registered Linux User #284465. LFS user #6416)
- -- 
LEVERAGE:
	Even if someone doesn't care what the world thinks
	about them, they always hope their mother doesn't find out.
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