Need a lean-mean kernel!!
 

I'll apologized upfront if this is a stupid idea! I just installed Mandrake 10.2 or I guess it's called LE 2005. In any case, I loaded everything from networking and servers to the development packages. Originally I was going to try and get MythTV installed but got side tracked installing Galleon and other HME apps to talk to my TiVo. Everything is working just fine but I had the idea to create a more streamlined kernel that has only the networking packages installed so that I can boot up with the "production" kernel or with the bigger "development" kernel if I want to build and install more apps. Does that make sense or am I barking up the wrong tree? Can someone tell me how I go about building a streamlined kernel? Also, is my approach sound?

Thanks in advance,
Jeff.

Take a look at http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/Mandrak...-chapter.html. Should answer all your questions.

The kernel doesn't determine what packages are installed - the same packages will be installed no matter which kernel you boot up on your machine. Also the same services and programs will startup with the machine.

It makes sense because distros like Mandriva, which try to be all things to all people, compile almost everything into the default kernel. That means that there are probably a lot of features in your kernel that you might not need or use and there may even be some drivers in there for hardware which you don't have (although most drivers are compiled as modules). If you follow the instructions iggep posted and pick and choose what's in your kernel you can probably get a bit of a speed increase.

Of course instead of recompiling the kernel it might be easier to just disable things like kat and any services that you don't need. :)

iggep....I tried the link in your reply (thanks by the way) and it's broken. I went to Mandriva's homepage and snooped around. Can you resend the link?

Thanks.
Jeff.

You need to keep in your mind a sharp and clear distinction between "what is the kernel" and "what is not."

"The kernel" is the hardware-control program. If you can see it and touch it, then the kernel controls it. But the word "control" means exactly what it says: it gives the computer, and the applications that run on it, the ability to use the device. It does not tell them, in any way whatever, what to do with it.

"The kernel" includes not only the resident portion, that is compiled directly into it, but also kernel modules that are loaded dynamically and may be unloaded again. Many distros include a rather-obscene number of modules but most of them are never loaded, so they don't take up any memory.

Reading your post again, I believe that most of the ideas you're coming up with, while they may be very-good ones, actually have nothing to do with "the kernel."

One thing that you can do is to use the Linux concept of "runlevels" to set up different configurations in which different sets of daemons, or services, are loaded when the machine starts up...

Interesting discussion....I appreciate you taking the time to touch on a couple things I've lost sight of... My Linux experience stems from about 10 years of Unix system administration (SunOS and Solaris) beginning about 20 years ago. When Linux first came out, it was intriguing to say the least but a real pain to install and configure. It's just been recently that I've decided to get back into it... As in many areas, dynamically linked resources are more common today than they were 20 years ago. It sounds like I might be better off controlling performance through the services that I have running. Regarding the kernel however, do you think I can get a reasonable performance increase by creating a new kernel that only knows about hardware I have and use on my system? I'm mostly using Samba to mount photos and music folders from my Windows XP server, running a network printer, an ftp service, and running HME applications to talk to my TiVo.

Thanks again,
Jeff.

You'd get a very marginal performance increase, and then mostly during boot up, not when the system is loaded and actually running. My suggestion is don't bother but it's up to you. If you want some more OMG H4X0R suggestions for improving performance may I point you to the Gentoo Linux forums? They think they're pretty good over there :)