Hi,

I'm building a firewall/fileserver with an atom board. I have tried to recompile the kernel to be able to boot faster (reduce number of kernel features). However I never seem to get it right.

What should be enabled for this kind of setup?

* Intel D945GSEJT
* Intel Atom
* 1 Realtek Gigabit NIC
* 1 Intel Desktop NIC
* 1 Atheros wireless NIC
* IDE-to-CF adapter

Two of the SATA ports are also connected via a eSATA bracket, so I need esata hotplug support. The same goes for USB, I need hotplug support for it aswell. Is this where udev comes in?

Should I build some of the drivers as modules? If so are they auto loaded if I put them in the /lib/modules directory?

QoS (Quality of Service) should it also be compiled into the kernel if I want to use it?

Udev is not a strict requirement, but many scripts and such stuff assume that it's present, so much rewriting if you want to remove it. Plus it shouldn't delay boot in a noticeable way.

Until you have problems with the kernel config, compile everything into the kernel unless you know you don't need that feature at boot. Modules should be automatically loaded. However, you need to check if the path is OK and if you get errors when trying to load some.

QoS may be compiled mostly as modules if you don't need it at boot. Probably you don't.