I am building a kernel and I was wondering if there are any drawbacks to having a Monolithic Kernel. I am trying to optimize my web servers so I thought it would be best to build a custom kernel. If I know what the server needs and don't make very many changes then technically I shouldn't need any modules correct? Any thing I need I would just build into the kernel, right? If my logic is completely wrong please let me know as I would like to get some more direction from some experianced linux people.

AFAIK there are some options that cannot be build into the kernel, such as some options, but i'm not a kernel guru....

hi there
my logic goes as
i build those things in to kernel which i know will be required frequently

i build modules for those which i think i surely will require but rarely

so i get all i want and also getter a good kernel
bulding everyting in ot ther kernel will make it bigger and will affect ur performance

regards

Plus the image might be too big for a boot floppy...

what you guys have said makes alot of sense and I doubt that I will build a monlithic kernel. A question I have with modules is.... When I use modprobe to use a module, doesn't that mean that the kernel will load and use that module everytime from now on? If that is the case then how is that different than just compiling it in with the kernel? The reason I ask is that I didn't understand that comment - "i build modules for those which i think i surely will require but rarely".

Thanks for all your help

hi
the kernel image u build is vmlinux-2.6.8..........
which has he support of various things whcih u ahve compiled in ot the kernel

now modules are in /lib/modules, they are not in krnel so when i mount a ntfs diretory, if i have compiled athe support in my kernel then it will load it ,bur if i have a modular support it will look into /lib/modules directory for the driver

compiling ur kernel will surely benefit u..since the generic kernel we use have many things compiled into it
it will surely increase ur performance

regards