Subject: Re: kernel symbol tables (was Re: vmstat, iostat etc no longer work?)
To: Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>
From: Curt Sampson <cjs@portal.ca>
List: current-users
Date: 11/15/1996 14:45:59
On Thu, 14 Nov 1996, Mike Long wrote:

> Yup.  We need kernel symbols for three things:
> 
> 1) DDB:  Symbols must be resident and nonpageable "forever".
> 2) KVM:  Symbols may be pageable, and may be discarded once kvm_mkdb
>          has been run.

I assume this means we change kvm_mkdb to get the symbols from the
kernel itself, and when it writes them to a file, we can then drop
them from the kernel? If so, I like this plan the best, and it
seems to solve all the problems. Is someone working on this?

> Well, let me put it this way:  How many people run NetBSD on machines
> where configuring DDB into the kernel would make it too big?

Me, for a start. Even with as much stripped out of the kernel as
I can possibly manage, my 3/50 still swaps when I log in.

cjs

Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca		Info at http://www.portal.ca/
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