At 11:37 AM 5/11/99 -0400, Todd Vierling wrote:
>On 11 May 1999, Chris G. Demetriou wrote:
>
>: Realistically, given their current level of functionality, what
>: fraction of users find _any_ real utility from NULLFS, KERNFS, FDESC,
>: PORTAL, UMAPFS, PROCFS, or UNION?  How many users actually care about
>
>Procfs, most definitely.  Saved my ass with `ps' twice now.
>
>: the UFS QUOTA code, or XNS, CCITT, or ISO networking?  It's not an
>: insignificant number, but i'd bet there's a high correlation between
>: that set of users and the set that has a strong understanding of what
>: to put in a kernel config.
>
>Yes; however, the QUOTA code is likely used by far more people than the
>CCITT/ISO code.  (I was meaning to ask why it wasn't in an alpha GENERIC.)
>
>Now ... yes, I agree that we should have a way of doing an "everything"
>kernel different from a "support most things" kernel, but we need to
>STANDARDIZE THE FORMAT of the bloody config files (can someone say pmax?).
>Also, standardize what MI options go in the "support most things" kernel.
>
>We also need to make sure these things are kept up to date, and that the
>"support most things" kernel has *everything* listed in the "everything"
>kernel, with the appropriate things commented out, not "missing".
>
>I'll note that there's a few dozen useful kernel config knobs not listed
>in any GENERIC kernel out there.

I was under the impression that the LINT kernel was the one that had every
option under the sun (not SUN).

Years ago, I wrote a kernel buiding script that, when given no arguments,
would use the 'GENERIC' kernel.  No Problem.  When you specified a name
that didn't have a Config file, though, I neede a file that had more than
the GENERIC config.  I started copying LINT to the new file and using that.  

Also, my personal opinion is that the GENERIC kernel should have a
reasonable amount of bloat built in.  This isn't the floppy install, after
all.  It can afford to be relatively large.   Putting NFS, Quotas, verbose
messaging, etc. in the GENERIC kernel are all OK for me.

One thing that I haven't seen go by is the possibility of putting three or
four kernels into the kern.tgz file (a GENERIC IDE minimal kernel, a 'four
meg of memory' kernel, a FIREWALL kernel, and a ROUTER kernel, for example)
in the same way the X kernels are packaged.

>
>-- 
>-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)
>
>
>
--
Dave Burgess                   Network Engineer - Nebraska On-Ramp, Inc.
*bsd FAQ Maintainer / SysAdmin for the NetBSD system in my spare bedroom
"Just because something is stupid doesn't mean there isn't someone that
doesn't want to do it...."