[Techtalk] why is my kernel so big???

[James]

On Thu, 9 May 2002, /dev/null wrote:

> complaints to: /dev/null

Sounds like most of the spam I get :-)

> got one of those fairly regular kernel questions... im trying to compile
> 2.5.1 on an IBM thinkpad 600E, 128Mb ram, running Mandrake 8.2... it
> looks like that will be the best way to get sound happening, doing a
> kernel compile and setting up alsa.
> 
> but my kernel is always too big!! 

Do you mean you get the "error" saying "Warning: kernel is too big for 
standalone boot from floppy"? If so, ignore that: just put the kernel 
image on a floppy along with LILO/grub/syslinux.

If you mean it doesn't fit on a floppy, you need to turn some of your 
options into modules. A good place to start would be the sound drivers: 
you obviously don't need those until the machine has booted far enough to 
access the HDD!

Basically, go through and change everything which isn't needed for booting 
into "M" rather than "Y". Then rebuild:

make bzimage
make modules
make modules_install

and you should have a bootable kernel image, which is small enough...


James.